“Julius, I want to go hunt Magical Beasts.”
“?”
In the workshop, the black-haired boy was absentmindedly counting the scratches on the tabletop. Upon hearing this, he almost jabbed his own finger.
It was rare to finally have a couple of peaceful days—he wondered if he was starting to hallucinate from too much rest.
“What did you just say?”
Julius rubbed his ear, looking at the girl beside him with suspicion.
“Hunt Magical Beasts.”
Helos repeated each word clearly.
Julius stared at her, leaning back, his face full of disbelief.
“Are you serious? Those things aren’t stray cats and dogs you find on the street corner.”
Helos raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Obviously. Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Then why do you still want to hunt them?”
“Don’t you think it’s something thrilling?”
“It is.”
Julius shrugged, his tone slow and lazy, “Not just thrilling—it also comes with the risk of death.”
He paused, then added, “Honestly, even the weakest Magical Beast could give you a few nasty wounds.”
“If you’re there, isn’t that fine?”
Helos shot him a glance, her tone absolutely confident. “You just wear it down until it’s nearly dead, and then I’ll figure out a way to finish it off. Isn’t that simple?”
Julius was speechless for a moment, raising his hand to rub his forehead.
“…You really dare to dream, huh.”
Helos gave a light snort, a touch of displeasure showing in her expression.
“I’m not joking. I really want to go hunt Magical Beasts.”
The boy took a deep breath, crossing his arms firmly in front of his chest, his tone unwavering.
“So, don’t even think about it—over my dead body will I agree to something like that.”
“If I really agreed, someone would skin me alive for sure.”
“Besides, where do you get the confidence that I could beat those Magical Beasts?”
“What?”
Helos froze for a moment, eyebrows lifting in surprise. “You can’t beat a Magical Beast?”
At the corner of her eye, a teasing smile curled at her lips.
“How can a man say he’s not up to it!”
“Because I’m not an idiot.”
Julius spread his hands, looking completely natural.
“Wake up, will you? I’m not one of those storybook protagonists who can shout about friendship and bonds and suddenly get a hundred times stronger—the kind of brave heroes from those tales.”
“So you actually aren’t, huh…”
Helos sighed, a trace of disappointment on her face.
Julius was silent, rolling his eyes despite himself.
“What are you even disappointed about?”
Then, after staring at her for a while, his tone tightened a bit. “Seriously, why did you come up with such a dangerous idea?”
“Uh…”
Faced with that question, Helos suddenly found herself at a loss for words.
She couldn’t exactly say she needed to unlock the martial branch of alchemy, right?
But without even a reason, it really was a bit hard to justify.
After lowering her head in thought for a while, the girl finally looked up, her gaze steady on Julius.
“I want to study the body structure of Magical Beasts!”
“What kind of Magical Beast?”
“A-Any Magical Beast will do… probably.”
“Very suspicious.”
Julius narrowed his eyes, watching Helos’s shifty gaze. He propped his chin with a slow, suspicious air.
“You aren’t cooking up another ‘explosive research project’, are you?”
“More or less?”
Julius’s expression froze, and he immediately shook his head.
“Why!”
Helos instantly widened her eyes.
“Whenever you work on those explosive research projects, who’s the one who gets blown up?”
Julius shot back.
Without even thinking, the girl answered straight away.
“You.”
The boy was silent for two seconds, a dark line appearing on his face. “You know and you still ask!”
“Sigh, well, you have a point.”
Helos leaned back, lazily nestling into the chair in front of the workbench, gently pushing off with her hands so the chair rocked back and forth.
She glanced up at Julius, casually asking, “By the way, have those Abyssal Cultists made any moves in the last couple of days?”
“No.”
Julius shook his head, his expression becoming a bit more alert. “Even Baron Black has been behaving himself lately.”
Helos narrowed her eyes slightly, murmuring thoughtfully, “Strange… That’s not like those guys at all.”
“Miss Eleanor has the same doubts,” Julius added, a trace of gravity in his voice, “So these last couple of days, Kyle and Selina have been patrolling the lower city even more closely than before.”
“Wonder what they’ll find.”
***
A few days later.
Kyle strode down a cobblestone alley in the lower city, tapping the wall with his sword hilt, then glanced back at the vampire girl beside him.
“Lin.”
He spoke in a low voice, curiosity evident. “Didn’t you send your familiar to follow that group of Abyssal Cultists? How come there’s been no word at all?”
Selina paused for a moment, but her eyes remained calm as if she had been expecting this.
“It lost them.”
“Lost them?!”
Kyle raised an eyebrow, lowering his voice even more. “Don’t you always brag that your familiar never fails?”
“Never mind what happened when you were watching Miss Helos, but how did it lose them this time?”
Selina turned her face slightly, shooting him a cold glance.
“Let’s be clear—I didn’t lie.”
“But this time… it’s really gone missing, as if something deliberately cut off the connection.”
The air between the two of them froze briefly.
Kyle stroked his chin, the usual playfulness in his eyes finally fading as his voice dropped.
“If they can shake off your familiar…”
“That means they’re even more cunning than we thought.”
“Anyone who could escape the Western Church District’s siege must have some skills.”
Selina sighed, a hint of unwillingness flashing in her gray eyes, her voice low.
“Maybe we underestimated them.”
“Heard anything from the tavern owners lately?”
Kyle stopped in his tracks, turning to ask the girl.
“No.”
Selina shook her head, her expression unchanged. “Even that man in the black robe hasn’t shown up again.”
“They’ve either given up, or—”
The gray-haired girl pressed her lips together, intentionally stopping mid-sentence before looking over at him.
Kyle met her gaze, giving a cold snort.
“Planning some new scheme, right?”
“Yeah, we should remind Miss Helos and Julius to stay alert.”
Selina added softly, and as soon as she finished speaking, she suddenly stopped.
In the shadow at the corner of the street, an empty bottle lay in the dust, mouth-down. The liquor inside had long since dried up, but the label on the bottle was still clearly visible.
She stepped closer, bent down and picked up the bottle, her fingertips lightly brushing over the label.
The patterns and lines almost perfectly matched something in her memory, but there seemed to be a subtle difference.
“What’s wrong?”
Kyle glanced at the wine bottle in her hand, curiosity in his voice. “Isn’t that a bottle from our Dawn Dew Brew?”
Selina hesitated for a moment, then answered softly, “This bottle… feels a bit off.”