Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 577

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 29.
The Princess and the Detective (29)
Maximian hadn’t believed that folding the letter would end this matter.
He’d merely been trying to avoid Juspian’s ‘brilliant idea’ that had just occurred to him. Of course, with the letter folded away and his words cut short, Juspian would be even more furious. But at least he’d have time to reconsider whether his own reasoning was justified. That would be enough.
Juspian might rage like a natural disaster, but he wasn’t a villain. Admittedly, he often acted like a mad mage, but when you touched his rational side just right, a surprisingly moral nature would emerge. A professor had once said that mages unexpectedly needed morality as a quality. Though I didn’t know exactly what that meant, by that standard, Juspian, who was called a Grand Mage, should possess an overflowing sense of morality.
“Damn it, I can’t even believe my own thinking.”
Maximian shook his head. It seemed far too optimistic a prospect. In his rage, Juspian might cleanly blow up the Nenyaple Dormitory where Maximian lived, and then reach some brilliant moral conclusion by building a charity hospital in its place. Who knew?
Honestly, that might actually be a truly moral choice.
Maximian stood at the dormitory entrance, thinking such thoughts. His classmates, shocked that the dreaded November exam—something they’d feared all year—had ended so anticlimactically, were stumbling through the corridors shrieking. A fitting horde of November zombies.
“Someone like me… deserves to die! I deserve it!”
“Hey! Someone cut down that guy hanging from the curtain! He’s been at it for thirty minutes!”
“If anyone could spare me just one glass of absinthe… and some sugar… I swear I’ll repay you next year…”
“Hey, seriously, if I dig from now until next spring, do you think I might find the tuition money? Huh? Where should I start digging?”
“Who took the bed sheets from my room? Did you see? Why do you touch other people’s things when you’re drunk!”
“But wasn’t that spell he was muttering the one for finding mouse holes? Or wasn’t it? Do you know? Huh? Can’t remember?”
“Hey, you crazy bastard, the exam is over! Stop it!”
Had Espin been present, she would have understood very precisely what Marie Louis had meant about ‘Nenyaple students being slightly mad around that time.’ That night, Nenyaple was far removed from the passionate academic space of intellectual exchange and elevated discussion that Espin had imagined, transcending nationality and status. Instead, it was filled with a guy wrapped around the curtains begging someone to cut him down, another guy shouting everything he’d failed to memorize yesterday with someone beside him correcting each mistake, a drunk guy chanting random spells to fix the ceramic pot he’d smashed, and another guy casually kicking over a different pot and vanishing—a landscape that looked like the world had ended an hour ago.
But it had been exactly the same last year. Today, when those who would normally jump at the mere mention of alcohol were collectively going mad, was the only day Maximian appeared relatively sane by comparison. He looked down upon them, raised and lowered his eyebrows once, then solemnly formed a hand seal connecting both shoulders and heart. It was the seal that the legendary demon hunter Araskis Veil, who roamed the Land of Mortals, supposedly used each time he sent a hundred corpses to their tombs.
“I seal these innocently mad fools into their beds and bestow upon them the blessing of hangovers.”
Then, turning up his collar, he walked in like a hero entering hell. It was impressive as he passed through the corridor with compassionate eyes toward the zombies, but on the landing he stepped in something terrible. It wasn’t zombie brains, though.
“That Riley bastard alternated between cheap whisky and Lindiz pickles and threw up.”
A third-year coming down the stairs pointed to a bundle of sheets crumpled in the corner of the landing and informed him before hopping away and disappearing.
Having entered hell, I couldn’t avoid dirtying my own feet… but damn it! That Riley should have been permanently expelled for developing such an innovative biochemical weapon, passing the graduation exam ahead of schedule. And I’d recommend settling accounts with the owner of the bed sheets wrapped around him in a duel in the backyard tomorrow—to the death.
Arriving at his room, Maximian wondered whether he should leave one shoe outside the door. Besides it being old, no one would steal it because of the smell. Thinking such thoughts, he was just opening the door to his quarters—the so-called ‘Acorn Villa’—from which warm light was spilling out.
“Huh?”
Maximian stood frozen at the doorway.
Everything that should have been there was gone. The firelight, the comfortable sofas—though two were out—the pile of books on the table, the chessboard, the unnecessarily luxurious carpet someone had brought, the peanut shells accumulated over four days, the pie crumbs. And all the roommates who should have been asleep with books over their faces or rolling dice to decide who’d buy snacks.
Instead, before his eyes lay an open plain.
5. A Place Unsuitable for Spending Summer Vacation
Maximian looked around the dusky plain. It was a sandy expanse with no trees, only sparse weeds. It would have been better called a desert, but the cooler evening hour prevented him from realizing it immediately.
There wasn’t a single person, nothing else moving. Only a massive structure stood, glowing red against the setting sun. A place where people lived? Well, the roof was completely open and there was no entrance. At a height of about four stories, there wasn’t a single window.
The black structure with a burning halo looked both ominous and mysterious. As a hot wind blew, the sound of blowing sand scratched at his ears. Then a strange smell wafted over. Disgusting and acrid, like rotting meat or a corpse.
Thinking that far, Maximian suddenly came to his senses. He had definitely opened the door to the dormitory villa where four friends lived. So this was either a dream, an illusion, or he’d drunk too much… no, that couldn’t be. He was only nineteen. Anyway, this was someone’s trick. I shouldn’t fall for it.
Even if Maximian was a failure at magic, he’d attended the Magic School for two years and picked up some knowledge. He deliberately spoke aloud.
“This isn’t real.”
Then he turned around. But when he did, he was even more shocked. The door was still there. The very door he’d just opened. It stood alone in the middle of the plain as if rooted, with no walls or frame around it. But its appearance was exactly as he always saw it.
Maximian instinctively grabbed the doorknob. Yes. I couldn’t afford to lose this door. I had to get out quickly.
“Th-this is…”
The doorknob wouldn’t turn. It wouldn’t pull or push. While he twisted the innocent knob as if trying to uproot it, sweating profusely, an ominous sound reached his ears.
Sssssss…
Maximian gripped the doorknob with both hands, turning his head awkwardly over his shoulder to peer into the darkness beyond. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, leaving only a hazy twilight. The source of the noise remained hidden in shadow, yet I could feel it drawing closer. The sound grew louder with each passing moment.
Sssssssss….
It seemed to be crawling across the ground. Or perhaps dragging something. Whatever it was, it might not have feet. And there might be more than one.
I tried pulling the doorknob again, but it still wouldn’t budge. I desperately racked my brain for anything I’d learned. It wasn’t difficult—mainly because I knew almost nothing. In five seconds, I’d exhausted my entire arsenal and found what I needed. Light!
“Anabo!”
Ugh, it was so simple I barely remembered it.
A sphere of light materialized in the empty space I indicated with my left hand. No one at Nenyaple would ever believe the Failing King could cast such magic. It looked so feeble it might extinguish at any moment, but it was magic nonetheless. There was no time to savor the accomplishment. The light did its job perfectly—I could now see what had approached. It was absurd, really. It was just a wooden plank.
On second look, it wasn’t just a plank. It was moving toward me.
By appearance alone, it resembled something a third-year student at Nenyaple might have salvaged from a barn after some ambitious explosion—a tattered, splintered thing. The holes punched through it suggested it might be sheet metal rather than wood. I examined it carefully for any sign of a person or creature lurking behind it, but found none.
My tension evaporated. I couldn’t decide whether to simply let this plank pass by, or if I should kick it. What if something was waiting to strike the back of my head? Perhaps it was safer to just crouch quietly and wait….
“Move!”
A shout came from somewhere, and my reflexes—sharp only in moments like these—kicked in instantly. I dove aside. At the same moment, the plank—or rather, the metal sheet—lifted into the air and began crumpling of its own accord. I’d heard of something like this before. A form of telekinesis. An invisible force compressed the metal sheet like paper, crushing it into a ball roughly the size of a watermelon, then hurled it away.
Thud!
The plank embedded itself in the sandy ground as if it had never moved a muscle, and remained perfectly still.
I stared intently, half-expecting it to move again, when I heard footsteps and turned around. Beyond my rapidly fading magical light, a figure was approaching.
A gaunt man in a loose white robe, handsome in his base features yet exhausted, haggard, fastidious, and irritable in expression—a man in his forties, though not truly that age. In any case, the type who always brought trouble when encountered. It was Juspian. Normally I’d flee on sight, but meeting him here felt almost reassuring.
“Ah… what are you doing here?”
That was all I could manage to say. Juspian shouted as if it were obvious.
“What are *you* doing there! Do you want your head bashed in? Don’t you know what that thing is?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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