Published at 4th of July 2021 7:15 am

Volume 4 Chapter 2: Where the Journey Takes Us (Part 5)

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

With that, Sora and I walked around the small town to see if we could find some clues about Keith’s whereabouts.

It might be because the town was near the border, the vibes here were much more different than the last one. It was a small town so it only boasted a handful of shops, but there were lots of plants I had never seen before.

The foreign architecture of the buildings caught my attention, and I didn’t realize I was looking around with sparkles in my eyes. Sora gave a gentle smile when he saw this.

“Is everything here new to you?”

“Yes, everything looks so refreshing! All the towns we’ve visited had their own unique things, but this town is the most interesting one. This is the first time I’ve left the capital, so this trip has been really fun for me.”

“Yea, I do recall that you said that before.” Sora gave a light chuckle.

“Why are you laughing?” I was perplexed.

“Ah, well it’s because I never expected us to go on a trip together, if you get what I mean.”

Sora went back to his usual way of speaking.

I did indeed recall that Sora had told me stories about the times he spent in different countries. And it was happening right now with me!

“I always thought that because we lived worlds apart this would never be possible…”

He said the same thing back then, and I chose to give the same response.

“What do you mean? We’re standing together right now, right in the same world.”

“Yes we are together on a trip. And this was only because of you.”

Sora reached into his pocket and took something familiar - it was the brooch with a blue jewel embedded in it that I had given him.

“Wow! You had it on you the entire time…”

Though it was just a cheap brooch I bought as a souvenir during the Academy’s Festival, it made me happy that he treasured it so much.

“You bet I did, it’s a special gift you gave me. It matches the colour of our eyes. I’ll treasure it with all my heart.”

Sora gave a warm smile, the same one I had seen before. Unlike the gentleman smile he wore during the entire trip, this one looked much better on him.

“Hehe, hey Sora, your smile right now looks much better than the formal looking one you always have!” I commented.

“?”

Huh? What’s going on? He’s hugging me? Uhm wait, didn’t something like this happen before? Uhm… is it because Sora is from another country? Is this his country’s way of greeting?”

Sora just continued smiling as I stood frozen in his arms, but his smile was mixed with some awkwardness this time.

“You are really quite the lady, huh? How did you manage to catch so many guys all around you…”

“Catch? What? As in… catch some fish? How did the topic change to fishing?

“…And you really aren’t careful with yourself. I can see why Prince Geord is constantly worried about you.”

After saying that, Sora stopped hugging me.

“As much as I would like to waste the time with you… it wouldn’t be wise to let Prince Geord see this. Shall we continue with our search, miss?”

“Ah…sure”

I had lost track of our conversation and we ended up like this, but surely the hug was a greeting, right? And what did he mean by catching fish?

But… I guess it doesn’t matter.

~~~

We continued touring the town, trying out best to dig up any information that might pertain to Keith’s whereabouts. But after doing countless sweeps of the entire area, the search went unsurprisingly fruitless.

“Hmm… We can’t find anything here, at this rate we might have to cross the borders to continue our search…” I said with a twinge of excitement.

“Don’t you think you are having way too much fun?” Sora commented, seemingly surprised by my reaction.

Shoots… Cats out the bag!

I told Sora why I was excited about being able to enter another country, but my reason made Sora surprised again, before his expression changed to a grave one.

“Uhm… it might not be a good thing.”

“Why? But you told me so many stories about your trips and they all sounded fun, didn’t they?”

I recalled hearing all sorts of stories about Sora’s adventures overseas after the kidnapping incident. I was pretty excited by them because I had never stepped beyond the borders. I was even tempted to go on a trip myself.

“I do admit that the other kingdoms have their own sort of unique fun, but it has its own set of dangers too.”

“Dangers…?”

I struggled to think of what dangers he was referring to.

“Uhm… the thing is that, the place you lived in since you were born, the Kingdom of Sorcie, is very safe and peaceful. But crime is much more frequent elsewhere.”

“Eh? Really?”

Even Japan was peaceful and quiet. I lived in the countryside then, uhm… did we have anything dangerous there? Maybe we would occasionally get some raccoons stealing from the garden? The Kingdom of Sorcie was just as peaceful as Japan.

I was raised with lots of love and care in Claes Mansion, and was accompanied and tended to by servants whenever I left the capital for nearby towns. I had never seen any crimes, so I never found myself in a situation to worry about my own safety.

When I expressed my thoughts to Sora, he got surprised again.

“Wait, don’t you remember that I used Dark Magic on you? And I kidnapped you too. Those are crimes…”

He mumbled to himself quietly before composing himself.

“Well… I guess this is just because your way of thinking is absurd.”

Huh? What does this have to do with my way of thinking?

“…Anyways, the neighbouring kingdoms’ law and order are worlds apart from Sorcie’s. This is especially so for Le Sable, the closest kingdom across the border. That place is infamous for its crime. The laws there are only words on a paper with no practical use, the slave trade is the largest there.”

“Slave trade…:”

I lived in a very peaceful place my entire life, so I only came across these words in novels. This was now a major eye-opening event, and I fell silent to process everything being said. Sora continued with a serious look.

“This is common in other countries, especially in the one I was born in.”

“…”

It appeared that I had been too sheltered because of my peaceful upbringing. I only learnt about other countries through interesting stories, so I perceived them to be fun places to visit. I felt ashamed by my ignorance.

“…For me to get all excited without knowing all these… I’m an idiot,” My head dropped as I drowned in guilt and shame.

“You’re really harsh on yourself, but it’s ok. You can always learn the things you don’t know, right?”

“Learning… Yes, yes, that’s right.”

I needed to be open about this, I just needed to learn about the things I didn’t know. And I sought to stay devoted to that idea, so I turned towards Sora to ask him more about Le Sable and the next town we were heading to, which was called Nore.

“Since Le Sable is known for its crimes, lots of criminals frequent there. The slave trade there is the biggest in this continent. Though Nore is located right between Sorcie and Le Sable, the crime there is quite concerning.”

“I… I see.”

Now that I knew what Nore was like… I was getting a little scared to head there soon.

Hmmm… Wait a minute…

“…If that place is really as dangerous as you say, is there a chance that Keith would even be there? If he was going to flee overseas, he would have chosen a safer place, wouldn’t he?”

I knew Keith like the back of my hand. For someone that intelligent, it made no sense for him to approach such a dangerous place.

“Hmm… that does make sense…” Sora chimed in quietly with a complicated expression.

Did Keith really travel that far? Can I really trust the bear’s words? We really need to find him soon if he’s in such a dangerous place. Is he safe? Did anything happen to him?

The fear I felt in the morning was back again, much worse this time, and my body began to tremble with anxiety.

We quickly wrapped up our investigation and made our way back to the carriage. George ran up to us.

“Did he do anything to you? You’re ok, right?”

What is with these weird questions again… And why is he looking at my neck? Uhm? What is it?

Nothing turned up in our investigation in this town and we left on our carriage to our next destination, Nore.

~~~

It was early in the evening when we arrived at Nore. Though Sora told me that this place was quite dangerous, it didn’t seem so on its first impression. It looked like every town I had seen. But upon closer observation, I noticed that there were some fishy people walking around.

Larna and Geord were aware of the situation in this town.

We didn’t plan to do any sight-seeing here, so went straight to the inn after doing a little investigation in town. I did my best to do what I can, which was to stay close with everyone and not get distracted. I kept my eyes front and didn’t look at any of the stores. We walked together in silence and Maria stopped in her tracks the next second.

Hm? Is she looking for a store?

When I saw her face, I knew that wasn’t so because she had a grim expression. I wasn’t the only one to notice this because everyone else stopped too. She continued to stay rooted to the spot for a while. Her reaction made me very worried.

I called out to her, “Maria… Maria! What’s wrong?”

She broke out of her trance and looked at me.

“Ah, Katarina-sama… it’s nothing… I just thought that I saw…”

“Hm? What did you see?”

“Um… it’s uhm…:”

I waited for her response and it took a while for her to continue.

“I thought I saw someone possessed… by Dark Magic. But why is that person like that?” She muttered.

“I must have been mistaken,” she laughed it off with a shrug.

Maria had said that because there had been a huge crackdown on Dark Magic after the last incident. It was odd for anyone else here to be able to use Dark Magic, except for Sora, and not even Sora himself was allowed to use it without receiving permission from the bureau.

That was why it was odd that Maria had spotted someone using Dark Magic, I understand why she didn’t believe it too. But Larna had a different reaction to Maria’s spotting.

“Where did you see this person, Maria? You can just point it out.”

“Ah…no. I was mistaken—”

“I still want to know. Please tell me.”

Larna’s voice deepened, and the situation turned serious quickly. Maria gave her reply in a stammer.

“The person… who just walked past us. They were wearing a hood… so I didn’t get to see their face. They went over there.”

“How strong was it? The Dark Magic on them.”

“…Uhm. It looked like there was a faint misp enveloping them. It wasn’t a strong presence… but the fear I felt… it was overwhelming…”

Maria told us everything and her face was drained of blood. But Larna gave her a gentle smile in return.

“Thank you for telling us everything, Maria,” Larna thanked her and urged us to get back to the inn.

I was still clueless about what was going on. But Larna looked so grim that I did not want to question her and so we all went straight to the inn without another word.

~~~

The inn we were staying in was picked by Sora, and Larna had double checked it to confirm that it was the safest option in this town. Everyone wanted to know why Larna had gotten so serious just now, but she left right after we entered the inn because she had ‘something to do’.

With nothing else to do, the rest of us retreated back into our rooms.

Just like usual, we were split into two groups for the rooming order, one for the girls and the other for the guys. Larna took the bear with her when she left. As for Maria and I, we sat at the table in the room again.

We had always been talking about the new things we saw and all the sight-seeing we did. Our chats would go late into the night, but it was different tonight. We barely talked as we drank our tea, even the delicious looking snacks that were apparently Nore’s specialty didn’t look that appetising anymore, in fact I barely even touched them.

Every time there was food in front of me, I would gobble up everything, but I didn’t feel like doing it at all now.

Maria’s expression didn’t look that good either because she didn’t try the snacks too. I tried convincing her to try some but she would brush it off with “Maybe late…”

“Maria? Are you ok?” I decided to speak up after a while.

Her face was still drained of colour the entire time.

“Yea… I’m fine,” she replied with a slight tremble in her voice, which begged to differ what she had just said.

She was probably still shaken by what she had seen this afternoon. The phrase “Dark Magic” was enough to send chills down my spine too.

I felt scared when I first learnt about Dark Magic too, and this was the second time it had appeared around me. Raphael and Geord said that the existence of Dark Magic was a national secret. Someone who was well adept in Dark Magic could even crush someone’s heart with ease. The very knowledge of that shook me to the core.

Maria looked much worse than before, her face was extremely discoloured. Not only did she have to experience it twice, she even witnessed it twice too. Dark Magic was only visible by those who possessed affinity for Light Magic, so I had no idea what it looked like. It must look horrible because Maria looked very shaken.

I really want to know what she saw.

“Maria, why are you so scared? Did it really look that bad?” I decided to ask upfront.

Maria kept silent.

“Would you like to talk about it? You might feel better if you do.”

“You’re probably right,” she gave me a pained smile and starting talking about her thoughts.

“It’s hard to put it into words… It felt different. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before from Dark Magic. This one was much more disgusting, weird, traumatising and scaring… I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said each word with so much terror.

That must feel horrible. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer alone. My body moved instinctively towards Maria and I embraced her in a tight hug.

“!”

Maria was surprised by my actions.

“You’ll feel much better like this, right?” I said, trying to give my brightest smile.

“…You’re right, Katarina-sama,” she mumbled with a blushed face.

When Keith and I were children, Keith would often wake up pale from his sleep because of his nightmares. When I hugged him like this the colour would return to his face. Ever since then, I would hold his hand to sleep.

We obviously stopped doing that now, but those memories were as vivid as yesterday.

I was the youngest child in my family from my last life, so I always wanted a little sibling to rely on me like that. It was always my dream to be a big sister. But sadly, Keith became dexterous at everything and quite the independent child after that…

Dark Magic was present in this town. And it was not just any Dark Magic, it belonged to someone so strong that it made Maria this fearful. And it worried me that… there was a chance that Keith was a longer distance away.

While I hugged the terrified Maria who was trembling, memories of my brother wailing flooded into my head.

Hey, Keith… You’re safe, right? You’re not… crying somewhere out there, right?”

***

I, Larna Smith, along with my magical tool Alexander, am once again standing on the roof of the tallest building in this town to contact my employee, Rafael.

Just that this building was home to some creepy-looking guys, they were criminals, I guess.

“Please lend me your roof for a while,” I did ask them politely.

Of course they weren’t going to go along with it. So I had been forced to use some magic to kindly lead the lads out of the building. Now the building was nicely empty and peaceful, a perfect base for operations now.

I raised up my hand to bring the transmitter higher into the night sky to call my employee again.

“Larna Smith here. Do you copy Rafael?”

“Yes, this is Rafael Volt, I can hear you loud and clear.”

Now that the transmitter was connected to Rafael, I began to tell him what Maria saw earlier today. There was a chance that a Dark Magician was in this area.

After my talk, Raphael reported back, “We actually got some new information here too and I was just about to report it to you.”

His tone dropped a pitch as he continued, “We received some more information from Prince Jeffrey’s side… we have found the person who last contacted Keith Claes on the day of his disappearance.”

“Is that so? Well, who is it?”

“Apparently, it was Keith’s biological mother.”

“His real mother? The one who used to be a prostitute, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. His mother made contact with him when he was entering the downtown area. There was a witness to the entire event. His description seemed to have matched Keith’s appearance, and the way he described his mother… was quite unforgettable…”

“So Keith left with his mother?”

“No, his mother lured him into a trap where she sold him for quite a sum of money. So she had been hired by someone who wanted to kidnap Keith.”

Rafael’s voice got deeper as he continued on. I could tell he was angry at how Keith’s mother had so easily sold her son away without any guilt. After all, Rafael was raised by a very loving and endearing mother, so he could have a hard time accepting the fact that there was such a cruel mother like Keith’s.

I differed from his way of thinking. I knew such parents existed. After all, I was raised in nobility. It was a common sight for parents to treat their children like objects.

“Well, did we uncover who was the one who bought Keith?”

“No, his mother claimed that she couldn’t remember anything.”

“She didn’t couldn’t remember? Isn’t that a blatant lie?”

“Yes, I initially thought the same too. But our deeper investigation did reveal that she really had no memories of the incident. I saw that Keith’s mother had the symptoms of someone who had Dark Magic casted on them. And, that must’ve…”

“…I understand. My thoughts proved to be true — A Dark Magician must be behind all this…” I gave a loud sigh.

“It would seem so, Larna-sama,” he replied with some sharpness to his voice.

“If that’s so, there is a high chance that the person Maria saw is the culprit behind Keith’s disappearance. I will use Alexander to detect their whereabouts. There’s a possibility that Keith is in this town.”

“Do take care. If we get any more information here, I will contact you as soon as possible.”

“I understand. I am depending on you, best-recruit Rafael.”

I ended the transmission and summoned Alexander to do its job.

With everything that has happened, it was impossible to conceal everything from Katarina and the others. If Keith’s whereabouts are found, I will have to tell them everything. I don’t want to get Katarina worried, but… the situation is getting critical.

I steeled myself and made my way to the direction Alexander was pointing to.

***

It was getting late but Larna was not back yet. I was getting worried when she came back right before the day ended. Her expression did not look good.

Without any second spared, Larna called everyone to gather in our room.

“I need to tell everyone something,” she said with such a grim look I have never seen on her before.

“When searching for the runaway Keith… we discovered that he did not run away from home.”

“!”

I gulped on my saliva.

Keith… didn’t run away? Then, what happened to him?”

“The whole time, the Bureau has been looking into this matter under Duke Claes’ request. And the investigation has uncovered that Keith had disappeared because… he was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?!”

I roared as I shot up the chair.

So Keith didn’t run away… but he was kidnapped?!

“Yes. Keith Claes is a victim of a kidnapping.”

Whatever Larna said hit me point-blank. It felt like a bucket of ice-cold water had been dunked on me. Never before have I felt this shocked and horrified.

Larna continued to detail the incident. Apparently, on the day he disappeared, Keith had met with his biological mother, who he hadn’t seen in years. His mother had lured him somewhere and sold him to someone else.

The most shocking revelation was that Keith’s mother had been under the influence of Dark Magic. All her memories had been wiped, so she couldn’t remember who had asked her to lure Keith into a trap and who she had given him to.

I was having a hard time processing all this. I stood there unable to mutter a single word as Larna continued talking.

The whole time, I believed that Keith ran away from home because I had offended him. I thought that we only needed to find him, then I would apologise to him and he would come back home. But he had been kidnapped? Dark Magic? I struggled to understand everything.

Standing next to me was Geord, he was the first to speak and he looked very grim too.

“So do we know who was the individual that used that Dark Magic?”

Geord was better than me in situations like this. He quickly grasped the severity of the situation.

“…No, not yet. The culprit has been hiding from us, so haven’t found a trace of them yet,” Larna said as she furrowed her brows.

The gears in my head started to turn. So currently, we know Keith has been kidnapped, but we have yet to find the culprit behind it.

“Then do we know where Keith is now? Do we not know anything?” I asked frantically.

Larna fell into silence as she started to ponder about something. Then continued on with a deeper tone, as though she was calculating.

“…No, we are not entirely clueless. There is one place I have in mind, he might be there.”

“R-Really?! Where is it? Is he there?” My body tilted forward with anxiety.

“When everyone was here, I sent Alexander to try to detect his presence.”

“Do you remember that Maria said that she saw someone had Dark Magic on them, right? Keith’s kidnapping has a Dark Magician behind it. Even if the user has tried to clean their tracks, it is inevitable for there to be some leaks every so often. I hope I’m not wrong, it can’t just be a coincidence that the magical tool has led us here and we have run into someone with Dark Magic on them.”

She continued explaining, “Furthermore, since Maria had only seen remnants of Dark Magic when it has been used recently, I suspect that Keith is closeby so I sent out my magic tool in hopes of finding him.”

“So… did you?”

“Yes, indeed. Alexander detected his presence in a specific mansion here.”

I shot up again from my chair when I heard those words.

“Please tell me where the mansion is at. I’ll go! I’ll go now!”

I’ll save you right now, Keith!

I felt Geord put his hand on my shoulder and push me down to my seat.

“At this time? It will be too dangerous. You need to calm down and rationalise your actions first.”

He picked up a treat from the table and shoved it into my mouth. My mouth started chewing out of reflex. Seeing this, Geord turned towards Larna.

“I get what you have just said, Lady Larna. Please pardon my rude remarks, but this is the first time you have used your magical tool for situations like this, right? Do we have any more information that can back-up this claim? Do we know for sure that this is the place?” he was straightforward about his questions.

The bear, who was sitting next to Larna, didn’t look too happy about that.

But Larna didn’t look offended.

“Just like you said, this magical tool is still a prototype. There is no way to completely confirm the suspicion that Keith Claes is in that mansion with just this tool. But we can try to detect traces of Dark Magic within the mansion’s vicinity. Our only lead right now is that Dark Magic was involved in the kidnapping, if we could detect any traces of it from the mansion, we might be able to confirm Keith’s whereabouts too.”

“Traces of Dark Magic… Do you mean Maria has too appraise the mansion?”

“That’s right. But Maria won’t be alone, we will let Sora appraise it too. We might uncover more information with both of their evaluations.”

“…Lady Larna, were you perhaps aware of this the whole time? Was this why you had them accompany us?”

“Ha. You’re overestimating me, Prince Geord. I just invited them along for additional precautions.”

Crunch crunch crunch.

Larna and Geord had been conversing in some deep euphemisms that I couldn’t understand when I finally swallowed down the snack Geord gave me. I was listening the entire time though!

Maria and Sora would scout around the mansion we had our eyes on, and then we would know how to set our future plans.

“Well then, we’ll go right now,” I stood up but Larna stopped me in my tracks.

“We should wait till sunrise. The mansion is quite a distance away from Nore. It’s too far out.”

Larna persuaded me to wait, and we went back to our rooms to recover our energy for the mission.

I honestly didn’t believe I’d be able to fall asleep, even though I knew I needed to. How could I fall asleep when Keith had been kidnapped… and it might have been by a Dark Magician. I didn’t know his condition right now. I couldn’t stop thinking about Keith.

I struggled to fall asleep as I curled up under the sheets. This was the first time I was experiencing this; even when I was abducted, I had no trouble falling asleep. After a while, the exhaustion from the day’s trip peaked in me, and I started feeling drowsy…

And then, I started dreaming.

A little boy was crying alone as he hugged his knees. He looked just like little Keith with his fair hair. He was crying with so much despair that my heart ached for him

I exerted all my strength, my everything, to help him. But he couldn’t hear me. I reached out to embrace him, but my hand just went through him. I couldn’t do anything for him. I could only watch on in silence as the boy wept to himself.

The sun had risen. My eyes slowly flipped open and I felt that my cheeks were damp. It must have been because of that nightmare.

If this was a normal dream, it would vanish from my head immediately… But not this time, I was going to engrave it deep into my mind, I was not going to forget it.The boy in my dreams was Keith… my heart, it hurts.

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