Monsters Wag Their Tails Only at Me

I steeled myself and threw the door open.

Then I came face-to-face with someone I had not expected at all.

“Hhuuugh—!”

Margon sucked in a noisy gasp and clutched his chest. He must have been badly startled, because his jaw trembled as he looked up at me.

“L-Lord Ceryl...!”

“Why are you sitting here?”

When I stared down at him in disbelief, Margon—who had been seated in front of my door—brushed off his backside and stood up.

The scabbard fastened at his waist clanked.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m standing guard.”

“I mean, why here...?”

“What place could be more dangerous for you than this house?”

Having expressed his stubborn devotion, Margon looked at Varen, who had come out behind me.

Then, with a face that said he hated the sight of it, he added bitterly,

“Tch. I didn’t expect someone to come climbing in through the window.”

“No ordinary human could get up there, so relax.”

“Of course. You’d have to be a noble dragon lord to even think of entering through a window.”

His tone was obviously sarcastic.

But Varen simply lifted his chin and said this was nothing for a dragon.

He wasn’t praising you.

Still, I gave him a rough pat on the back as if to say well done and turned to Margon.

“Margon, good timing. I was about to call you too.”

“What? Why me?”

“I’m going down to the basement right now. We’ll find a clue about that damned magic and run away in the middle of the night.”

At my words, Margon nodded with a hardened expression.

We went down the stairs with our footsteps muffled. Varen followed a few centimeters above the floor, so he made no sound at all.

Even Margon did not know where the basement used for magical experiments was. I took the lead, following Ceryl’s memories.

The dark interior was lit by blue moonlight pouring in through the windows. The reception room on the first floor was empty.

A small door beside the fireplace was the entrance leading down to the basement. Standing in front of it, I grabbed the knob, turned it, and frowned.

“It’s locked. The key should be in Phiren’s room.”

I had forgotten because it had been so long since I had been here. Phiren kept the key to the basement door, and I had always gone there with him.

An unexpected obstacle, but... in times like this, the best baby was still the answer.

I had an all-purpose key who could slip through shadows and open doors for me. Just as I was about to call for Rami at the cuff of my sleeve—

Click. The locked door opened with a sharp sound.

I turned in surprise and saw Varen holding the doorknob.

“I opened it.”

Varen said it proudly, but I couldn’t smile.

He hadn’t opened it with magic. He had ripped the entire lock out by force.

Either way, once we fled tonight they would discover by morning that we had raided the basement, but to leave evidence this boldly—

Still, seeing those sparkling blue eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to scold him. I only pressed my lips into a flat line and nodded.

Once the door opened, a narrow, long corridor stretched ahead. Luminous stones embedded here and there cast light over the floor.

The secret passage required two turns and three branching paths. As he followed me while I found the way without hesitation, Margon tilted his head.

“Lord Ceryl, do you know this path?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know a route even I don’t know?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. For now, just follow me.”

After passing through the narrow corridor, we arrived at a small storage room. It was full of odds and ends buried beneath a thick layer of dust.

Without hesitation, I headed to the left side of the storeroom. Then I found one brick that was only slightly darker than the others.

I placed my palm against it as if using fingerprint recognition. At once, a faint light spread across the whole wall.

Margon stepped back with a tense face, while Varen watched with interest.

When the light quickly faded, a door that had not been there before appeared in the wall. This was Phiren’s secret laboratory.

Swallowing dryly, I grabbed the handle and turned it. But unlike before, the door did not open.

“Huh...? Why, why won’t it open...?”

In the past, it had definitely been a door that opened with Ceryl’s palm.

As I rattled the handle in confusion, Phiren’s face suddenly came to mind.

That bastard... did he really change the password on the entrance just because the nephew he’d lived with for over ten years had been out of contact for a few months?

I twisted the handle irritably, but it refused to budge. Then long white fingers covered my hand.

“Ceryl, doors aren’t opened by force.”

Coming from the one who had torn the knob off an entire door, that was rich, but I held my tongue.

When I stepped back, Varen placed his palm against the door. Then his blue eyes began to glow.

As mana collided with mana, wind burst through the cracks of the door. Dust piled in the storeroom flew up in clouds and blocked our vision.

Margon and I hurriedly raised our arms. We shut our eyes, held our breath, and turned our heads away.

A moment later, the wind that had whipped through the cramped space died down. I coughed and fanned the air in front of me.

“It’s open, Ceryl.”

Standing before the opened door, Varen spoke lightly. The dust drifting through the air slowly began to settle.

I hurried over to him and checked the state of the door. There was no sign of damage anywhere. It was perfectly intact.

At my look demanding an explanation, Varen tipped his head.

“I broke the barrier.”

“...You can do that too?”

“I’m a Dravergh.”

Come to think of it, Varen had fully awakened a dragon’s power in Beljena.

But after that, while traveling with Morpha, most problems had been handled by Morpha. Because of that, I had barely had any chance to see Varen’s magic.

Then again, he could reduce boulders piled like mountains to dust with one flash from his eyes. A barrier like this was probably nothing to him.

Something about it still felt vaguely suspicious, but for now I just patted him on the back for doing well and stepped through the open door.

The staircase leading down to the basement was narrow and dark as well. Only after going down what felt like two floors did the hidden laboratory finally reveal itself.

“Whew... we finally made it.”

I let out a light sigh and looked around the laboratory.

The space, lit by dim luminous stones, was filled with damp, stale air. One wall was crammed full of thick magic books.

On the opposite wall stood a long row of desks. They were broad enough for ten people to sit side by side, but the tops were so cluttered with objects there was hardly room to open a book.

Varen walked around calmly with his hands clasped behind his back, inspecting the room, while I went straight to the desk. Our roles divided themselves naturally.

And Margon scratched his head with a dumbfounded expression and asked,

“Lord Ceryl, what exactly am I supposed to look for?”

“Anything is fine. A magic circle, information on a compound, anything. Grab whatever you can see and take it with us.”

“I wouldn’t know what any of it means even if I saw it...”

Speaking in an uncertain voice, Margon began rummaging through the desk, glancing at me now and then.

Not knowing much was my problem too. So I swept up every notebook packed with writing and every sheet of paper that looked like it had something resembling a magic circle drawn on it.

The pack from Beljena with spatial magic on it was useful in every possible way.

Varen ran his fingertips over the magic books covering one wall. Whenever he paused, he pulled out whatever book his hand had landed on.

“Varen, are you picking those because you know what kind of books they are?”

“I don’t know either. I’m only choosing the books that feel strongest with human traces. That means they were taken out often.”

Dragons were born with magic, not taught it. They simply awakened and wielded that power as they lived.

By that logic, Varen was practically as ignorant about formal magical knowledge as I was.

As I cleared off the desk, I prayed desperately that the material we needed would be somewhere in this pile.

Just then, Margon brought me a long scroll he had unrolled.

“Lord Ceryl, look at this.”

I had been rummaging like a thief, and I took what he held out. The long sheet was densely packed with people’s names.

I looked at him as if asking why he had brought me this, and Margon pointed to one of the names.

“Leobin’s name is here.”

Only then did the exact name stand out among the mass of letters.

Leobin Brainholt. His full name was included there.

A bad feeling passed through me. I spread the long sheet across the desk and brought one of the luminous stones from the wall closer.

There were roughly a hundred names written on the paper. I ran my hand quickly down the list.

At the top of the list, there were no names I recognized. But from Leobin onward, the names written below were familiar.

“Milo... Toby, Greta... Peter, Helena...”

I murmured aloud the names I knew.

Then Margon, standing close beside me, whispered quietly,

“They’re servants of the Aylos family.”

“But... your name isn’t here, is it?”

“No. Not all the servants are written down.”

There was something else suspicious about this list. Several of the names had lines drawn through them.

But there was no line through Leobin’s name.

I read aloud again the names of the Aylos household servants that had been crossed out.

“Margon, you went to the annex today, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then Toby and Peter? Were they there?”

The two with lines drawn through their names were guards who had worked in this house for ten years.

Margon shook his head, looking puzzled by the question.

“No. I was told they quit last month.”

“Then what about Helena?”

“They said Helena quit a few months ago too...”

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