Maklin wanted to ask Ritzy more about the big guy he had seen but eventually decided not to when he saw Ritzy yawn wide enough to swallow an apple in one bite. When he looked closer, Maklin could see clear signs of fatigue covering every inch of both Ritzy’s and Gerhart’s bodies.
Instead of pestering them about meaningless questions that probably wouldn’t even satisfy his curiosity, Maklin should just lead them out of the forest and let them rest.
However, Maklin not saying anything didn’t mean the other two would be silent, especially not Ritzy.
“Hey, old man, how far away is Chitron, by the way?”
Maklin glanced at Ritzy and saw how his curiosity pushed aside the exhaustion in the young man’s eyes. Maybe some entertainment, even if it were in the form of conversation, would keep Ritzy and Gerhart from falling asleep while walking.
“First of all, I am not that old.”
“My mad, young man.”
“...alright. And it will be a day or two until we get to the closest border town, Mirrae. But at this rate, we can cross the border in a couple of hours.”
“Oh, wow. That’s nice. And when do we leave the rain?”
“As soon as we leave the forest. So… in half an hour or so.”
“Uhu.”
Ritzy was silent for a moment while deliberating over whether or not it would be worth asking Maklin about the rain. But he couldn’t find a reason not to.
“And that isn’t just a coincidence, is it, young man?”
Maklin hesitated under Ritzy’s pointed gaze.
“...It might be, and it might not be. What’s it to you anyways?”
“We just spent a week straight with this rain pouring its wet revenge on us. I think it would be polite to tell us if it’s because of someone in Chitron or not.”
Maklin could tell Ritzy was directing a pretty accusatory gaze in his direction, but he didn’t meet it and just looked off in a random direction while stroking his chin.
“...Well, it was supposed to be secret in case anyone in Shiria found out. But it’s probably too late for them to react by now, so I might as well tell you.”
Maklin nodded decisively. Even if Ritzy and Gerhart were spies and had some hidden magic tool on them that would let them communicate with their superiors in Shiria, the people in Shiria wouldn’t be able to stop what was coming for them.
“Yep. The rain is Grandmaster Kenro’s work. It’s part of a larger plan to basically force Shiria into a losing position by flooding the east region of the kingdom.”
“Huh. So we just had bad timing?”
Maklin tilted his head in response to Ritzy’s question.
“You could say that.”
“Damn.”
Ritzy clicked his tongue.
“I knew I should have waited a week. The fire would have been good enough to take down Lenny with that.”
Ritzy whipped his head around and looked at Maklin as he realized what he had just said out loud.
“Not that I had anything to do with the fire, of course.”
Ritzy stared straight into Maklin’s eyes and nodded slowly to make him agree.
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“Of course.”
Maklin didn’t feel like forcing Ritzy to admit to setting fire to a town, so he agreed. The fact that such a young man had spoken so easily of torching an entire town and killing a man he knew by name was a little unsettling. But Ritzy’s harmless appearance, skull in hands and Deathbeds excluded, made it difficult for Maklin to think ill of Ritzy.
Besides, as someone working for a few higher-ups in the military, Maklin wasn’t a stranger to violence. People died. And it was wartime. They couldn’t expect things to be peaceful all the time.
And the number of residents in a town was definitely lower than the casualties on a battlefield. It was just that the circumstances during the deaths and the perpetrator were a little different. It was no big deal.
Maklin still decided he shouldn’t piss Ritzy off any more than necessary, though.
Although Ritzy didn’t appear to be too strong or powerful, based on what Maklin could sense from Ritzy himself and the fluctuations from his magic, he was a necromancer and probably could use some weird magic. After all, it was Maklin’s first time seeing a couple of beds made from only bone float along with their necromancer. He also saw a couple of bodies on them, well, one body and one skeleton.
Neither of them looked very active, but the beds looked like they were made to transport undead. And Maklin was smart enough to realize that dead bodies in the hands of a necromancer were as far from useless as they could get.
The intact body was probably material or a future servant, and the skeleton was a skeleton ready to be used. At least that’s what it would be like if Ritzy followed and stretched the official rules of necromancy that everyone with a position of power had agreed to follow the necromancy trend the Dark One inspired.
If Ritzy were caught breaking those rules, fellow necromancers and anyone out for a bounty would come for him. It would be even worse if he were caught committing a taboo, which Ritzy looked too innocent to do.
But then Maklin remembered the town, the fire, and the alleged assassination. Maybe he wasn’t too innocent to commit a few continental crimes.
In any case, Ritzy seemed to be a tricky, troublemaking necromancer kid with a slight penchant for murder.
Even if he was stronger than him, Maklin didn’t feel like it would be a good idea to get on Ritzy’s bad side.
As Maklin thought about how he was going to get along with Ritzy from now on until they separated, whether that be before or after Ritzy and Gerhart cross through Chitron, he realized that they had reached the edge of the forest.
“You two sleeping?”
Maklin looked at Ritzy and Gerhart, both of whom had trouble walking straight. The closer they got to escaping the forest, the heavier their legs became. It was as if the exhaustion they had tried to outrun had caught up to them once they realized they would be safe from pursuers now that they had run into this squad of scouts from Chitron.
“Mmmnot yet.”
Ritzy managed to yawn out an answer, but Gerhart just yawned.
“Well, we will be out of the forest and the rain in a minute or so. But the ground will be pretty wet and soaking. So, if you two can manage it and want to sleep on dry ground, there’s a hill a few more minutes away that should be pretty dry.”
“Mmm.”
“I’ll take that as ‘the hill sounds nice.’”
“Mmm.”
Maklin didn’t hear any protests from either Ritzy or Gerhart, so he kept walking even after leaving the forest.
The rain clouds stretched out and covered a couple of more steps. But then, as if they had encountered a wall, they stopped spreading. There was a clear line in the ground from where the rain stopped.
The water from more than a week had still seeped out and soaked the ground nearby, just as Maklin had said.
But the sunny afternoon sky was such a stark contrast to the dreary and damp world that Ritzy and Gerhart had lived in the past week. At some points, when the clouds and their rain were at their heaviest, they hadn’t even been able to discern between night and day.
Ritzy and Gerhart stopped walking as soon as they left the rain and bathed in the sunlight that had no trouble reaching them since there were no longer any clouds barring its path.
The two closed their eyes and spread their arms, letting the sunlight warm their bodies, which had grown cold to the bone marrow. The air was still damp and cold due to the nearby skyfall, but the sunshine was like a warm fur of coat.
Maklin didn’t urge them to continue walking, even if he wanted to get to the hill before they fell asleep so that he didn’t have to carry them. He could only imagine what it would be like to march through a dense forest for a week while in the middle of a seemingly endless rain. They didn’t even have any proper rain clothes, tents, or, by the looks of it, food. They were also novices in their respective professions.
They had gone through one hell of an experience, despite their youth.
Maklin wondered if he would have been able to do that at their age. He had been big and strong since he was young, but he wasn’t sure that would have been much of an advantage without his scouting and forest-delving skills.
He also couldn’t quite tell how old Ritzy was since he looked youthful – acted kind of childish, too – but there was a sparkle of intelligence in his eyes that made him look older. Gerhart also looked older, but they spoke as if they were about the same age. Ritzy’s white hair, which looked ancient, didn’t help.
“Hey…?”
While he was busy thinking, Ritzy and Gerhart had fallen asleep standing.