22 – Episode 22
# 22
As the sun began to set, the innkeeper announced the bath was ready.
Unfortunately, the meal prep had also finished around the same time.
“Why can’t you do things separately…”
As Ian protested, the innkeeper looked at Ian incredulously.
“Isn’t it because you decided to bathe, that our mealtime got delayed?”
In the inn, there was only one person seeking bathwater – Ian. The meal time had been delayed in making a bath especially for Ian. Ian, understanding the situation, couldn’t confront the innkeeper.
“Don’t just sit idle, go stoke the fire.”
“Me?”
“I provided the water for you, lent you the pot, even prepared firewood. Can’t you even start a fire?”
The stares surrounding him were fierce. The guests were angry that their mealtime had been pushed back because of Ian.
Especially the men who were tightly huddled at one table, their menacing glances were wild. Every single one had arms as thick as logs, evidently mercenaries of some sort.
“What’s that, the son of the innkeeper?”
“You enduring is enough. Are you planning to make this place a mess?”
As the atmosphere became more hostile, Ian resignedly did as the innkeeper asked.
“Lucy. I’m going to take a bath. Stay calm.”
“Okay! I’ll eat first and then go upstairs!”
Despite being reluctant, Ian languidly went to the backyard.
Cursed medieval times. It was this troublesome just trying to take a bath.
“Sigh”
As Ian moved the embers from the kitchen with a poker, a man quietly observed him from a dark corner.
‘Things are going unusually well?’
As soon as Ian left the inn, the troublemaker, Willy, signaled to his friends that their opportunity had come.
Their original plan was to wait until things had quieted down a bit, then discreetly call the two out and cause a commotion.
But with the man leaving the woman, there couldn’t be a better opportunity.
‘Let’s go!’
The most dubious looking friend of Willy entered the inn through the fog.
Meanwhile, as soon as the annoying nagging of Ian disappeared, Lucy quickly took off her robe and began her dinner.
‘Ian worries too much.’
Lucy, who was suffocated by continuously covering her face in the inn where she wanted to rest comfortably, even if wearing a robe was the right thing to do before passing the Earth Dragon Mountain for fear of being tracked. Does she really need to hide her face all the way to River Ville?
When Lucy’s beautiful face was exposed, she felt the slight gathering of men’s glances.
Lucy quietly enjoyed the attention of those men.
‘hehehe, do they like my face that much? These peasants.’
She felt as if she had returned to the time when she was praised as a noble. Though it was a distorted way, it at least filled Lucy’s self-esteem a little bit.
But Lucy was unaware.
Among those looking at her, some carried ill intentions.
‘Is it true?’
Willie’s friend stared blankly at Lucy’s elegant appearance. He had assumed Willie was just bragging… but there was a truly beautiful woman, alone, staying at the inn!
Willie’s friend approached Lucy with a ‘sincere smile’, which he used to lower women’s guards, a tactic that had won him the affection of village maidens.
“Beautiful lady, are you by any chance traveling with a black-haired traveler?”
“…? Who are you?”
Even though he was a stranger, when he mentioned Ian, Lucy unintentionally let down her guard.
‘Things seem to be going well.’
“I am the errand boy hired by that traveler. He gave me money to tell you a ‘very’ important secret.”
He showed her a coin he had prepared in advance, a prop to embellish his bright red lie. Upon hearing that he even paid to send a person, Lucy believed the man’s words like a rock.
“An important story? What is it!”
“I’m just a messenger, so I don’t know everything… But I was told to bring you to the pier as soon as possible.”
“The pier? Where is that…”
“It’s urgent, so I’ll show you the way.”
He even helped Lucie to get dressed and led her out of the inn.
To prevent Lucie from having any second thoughts, her accomplices who were waiting for her blocked her path.
They confused Lucie’s thoughts by creating a fuss.
“Hurry! We need to hurry!”
“We said it’s urgent! We have to run!”
As the swindlers continued to spout nonsense, Lucie grew increasingly scared.
‘Did I just meet a tracker?’
The first thing that came to her mind was the tracker sent by the Marquis. Did these people manage to sneak into River Village already? Then what about Ian…?
But as she walked a few more steps, she started to sense that something was off.
‘… Why would someone who is going to take a bath suddenly…?’
Met a tracker on the way to the bath? That didn’t make any sense.
Plus, if she had really met a tracker, she could have immediately returned to the inn, so there was no need to…
“Huh?”
Lucie, who was just turning a corner of the alley, froze when she saw what was beyond the fence of the inn’s backyard.
There in the inn’s backyard…
There was Ian, working hard to create fire under a large cauldron…!
Why on earth was Ian there, the Ian who was supposed to be at the pier?
“Hold on…!”
Just as Lucy was about to stop, the delinquents showed amazing teamwork by suddenly picking her up. One covered her mouth with a scarf while the others held her down and put her into a prepared sack.
This was the so-called ‘bo ssam’ style of abduction!
Regardless of place or era, when abducting a woman, using a sack was the best. This was a fact even known in history.
“Argh… Mmph! Mmph!”
The delinquents who abducted Lucy in a blink of an eye headed towards the river.
They ‘borrowed’ a boat and sailed across the river, planning to romantically share ‘Unwoo’ moments with Lucy.
For reference, Unwoo refers to s*x.
If a paragraph discussing Unwoo appears in classical literature, it is fine to interpret it as ‘they did it’ and move on.
In ‘Chunhyangjeon’, every time Mongryong and Chunhyang make eye contact, they engage in Unwoo – if one were to see this in a live action adaptation of ‘Chunhyangjeon’…(omitted thereafter)
Anyway, the delinquents successfully got Lucy as planned. Now it was Willy’s turn.
As assigned, Willy was secretly watching Ian, and if anything went wrong, he was to knock Ian out and run.
Now that the delinquents succeeded, all that was left was to get away.
However, Lucy’s sudden death-cry-like scream ruined everything.
“Lucy?”
Ian had heard Lucy’s scream!
Lifting his head, Ian felt something was terribly wrong beyond the fence.
At the same time, he was flabbergasted.
He had only taken his eyes off her for a second. How did he let Lucy get kidnapped?
‘I will never accept a bodyguard request again.’
It was just an emulation of the trope in fantasy novels – guarding VIPs.
The job of bodyguarding was quite stressful, especially if the body to be guarded was a beautiful package like this!
‘She looks like Princess Peach.’
In Ian’s eyes, Lucy was a Princess Peach with dark blue hair. Although if we had to get specific, she looked more like Princess Print Print from Devil’s Village.
Ian was about to throw himself over the fence to rescue Lucy.
Just then…
“aaah!”
Suddenly, someone sprung out from the grassy bush. I’ve never seen this face before.
He looked like a bum who hadn’t shaved for months, swinging a club at me.
‘An..assassin…?’
I was slightly surprised by the sudden attack.
Could it be an assassin sent by Lord Jin? But what kind of an assassin looks so pitiful?
The answer was simple. The other party was not an assassin.
He was just a neighborhood riffraff with a desire to split the division of Lucis and Unwoo.
As proof, the club whirling towards me was crude and lacking power.
Just enough for me to prepare magic!
I closed my eyes and tuned in to the mystical voices.
A magician, who decides ‘I should use this kind of magic~’ and manipulates magic, is a magician of some caliber.
A famous magician like Aeredis, accepted by everyone, has the ability to utilize the magic they want at the timing they desire.
Yet a novice magician like me doesn’t have the luxury to freely wield magic as desired.
In the past, the Earth Magic spell I cast in an attempt to repair Longtail’s house ended in failure. If the mystic refuses to lend its power, magic turns out to be a failure.
Therefore, I had to select from the mystics ready to lend me power, a mystic that I could use.
[Human! The light is dimming!]
[It’s a good time for fun!]
[Shall we play together?]
The first to respond was darkness itself.
Ian had a strangely good rapport with darkness. Even with minimal verbal interactions, darkness sought to converse gleefully with him.
“Is this what the master meant by compatibility?”
Just as each person has different talents, abilities to receive mysteries also differ.
Darkness was ready to converse with Ian.
In that case, there is no need to call upon other mysteries.
“[Oh, darkness!]”
As Ian picked up a branch from the ground, he brought about dense darkness.
Black darkness gathered around Ian, transforming twilight into a space darker than deep midnight.
“Wh…what?”
Professional bum, troublemaker Willie, who ambushed Ian, lost track of Ian’s location due to the sudden darkness.
Willie froze in place, seeing nothing as if he were blind.
Smack!
Ian thumped the defenseless Willie with the branch.
Even if Ian is a magician, physical force was needed in the end to knock down the enemy.
That’s right. Ian was a power mage.
Like the magician Gandalf in the classics of the fantasy world, the Lord of the Rings, who used a staff to beat the enemy, Ian is a traditional and original magician.
Smack! Smack!
“Ah! Ahhh!”
In the pitch-black darkness, Willie was energetically beaten up, and out of surprise, he lost his judgement.
He was so startled that…
He thought the reason why the surroundings became pitch-black was not because of the magical darkness that Ian summoned, but because his eyes were blinded…!
“I surrender! I surrender!”
Smack! Smack!
“Can someone save me! My eyes! My eyes are gone!”
‘This kid?’
People started gathering one by one as Willie screamed for his life.
Ian quickly gathered the magic of darkness and tightly grasped the collar of Willi.
“You! Are you with those bastards?”
“Eh…? My eyes…? I can see again?”
Smack!
“Answer the question I’m asking!”
Just when Ian was about to continue his interrogation of Willi.
“That’s enough. Let him go, lad.”
A low and powerful voice brought Ian to a standstill.
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It was just the right thing to happen. If not, Ian was about to leave Willi and follow after Lucy.
However, as Ian attempted to move, a dagger flew from behind him and stuck into the fence.
“…”
A sharp and accurate throw.
It wasn’t a sloppy skill at all.
Ian slowly turned his head.
‘Damn it…’
Bulky figures that he had seen in the inn were gathered in hordes there.
All with weapons in their hands.
A sturdy old man with white hair stepped forward.
“The darkness earlier… did you summon it?”
As indicated by the words “white hair” and “sturdy” being used for the same person, the old man wasn’t a typical old man.
A gaze as sharp as a honed blade!
It was a deadly gaze, as though promising to take off Ian’s head if he did anything foolish.
Given the circumstances, Ian had no prowess for deflecting an incoming sharpened steel. Even a boastful magician could meet his end at the edge of a sword.
In this world, a magician is simply a strange foreign-language speaker, not an invincible superhuman.
Out of necessity, Ian began the work of a magician.
That is, he began to spin a tale.
“Yes, I’m the magician who summoned the darkness.”
Willie whined and grabbed the old man’s leg.
“Please, save me! My Lord! This crazy magician tried to kill me!”
“…Is this true?”
With the deadly gaze of the old man upon him, Ian felt a chill permeate his spine.
But it wasn’t unbearable; after all, he had previously endured the intense presence of Drake.
Though unaware, the aura of Drake had helped strengthen his courage.
Ian replied with a slight grin.
“Sir, could you please lend me that sword?”
“The sword?”
With cold, settled eyes, Ian glared at Willie.
“Let me get rid of this bastard for good.”
“…”
At Ian’s words, the armed brutes slightly faltered.
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Wanita Beban, 😮💨