IWSE 7

Chapter 7

“Ha.”

A tingling sensation rushed through her fingertips. This was the hidden cave that wouldn’t be discovered for another three months. It was a mysterious place that the knight Tristan had stumbled upon after tumbling down the cliff.

Elodie swallowed nervously and stepped forward.

“Now, it’s mine.”

Her footsteps echoed eerily through the cave as she entered.

After walking a short distance, she spotted a fallen skeleton and a shallow pool of water. The pitiful skeleton lay face-down on the ground, dressed in worn-out rags. And beside it was a bag.

“I’m sorry, and thank you.”

After observing a brief moment of silence, Elodie picked up the new bag. Technically, it wasn’t a new bag, but it was still usable.

“Then, please forgive me for intruding once again.”

Her impatient hands rummaged through the skeleton’s clothes.

It should definitely be somewhere around here…

Found it.

Her five fingers tightly grasped a small bead from inside the skeleton’s clothing. The coldness against her palm gave her goosebumps, but her entire body was burning with excitement.

“Finally.”

This tiny bead, no bigger than her fingernail, was the first goal Elodie had been pursuing all along.

“The Essence of Enlightenment.”

This was the treasure that Tristan, the shield knight, had obtained.

Tristan and Louise won’t join the group until a month from now.

He had discovered a diary and a small crystal orb here. They were the first traces of another person they had encountered on the island. Without hesitation, Tristan had opened the diary.

[That skeleton was a great magician. You’ll understand once you read the diary, too. Ah, Your Highness! Please, you should read it first!]

After reading the diary in the cave, Tristan had promptly swallowed the orb. An ordinary person might at least have been suspicious, but Tristan Flan was a knight whose brain was filled entirely with muscles and Robert.

[The great magician said he was leaving everything he had to the next survivor, didn’t he?]

[…And that’s why you ate it?]

[And then, look! It worked! I succeeded!]

Even without memory magic, Elodie could never forget that day. No, everyone who had been there probably felt the same way.

Crackle!

Tristan’s thick forearm turned completely white with frost.

[Tristan! What is this?!]

[Lord Robert, this is absolutely unbelievable!]

After consuming the ‘Essence of Enlightenment’ described in the diary, Tristan Flan had acquired ice magic. An entirely new kind of magic, not bloodline magic, learned after birth!

“Before, you all got everything. Now it’s finally my turn.”

Her shimmering violet eyes remained fixed on the tiny bead.

It was an extraordinarily valuable treasure that couldn’t be found anywhere in the Empire. A special elixir containing the concentrated enlightenment of those who had mastered magic.

With this, even I can…!

Gulp.

Elodie swallowed the bead. The Essence of Enlightenment dissolved smoothly inside her throat. She slowly closed her eyes.

And then—

A surge of blue energy began pouring out from within her body. Fierce winds swept through the cave, making her pale blonde hair flutter wildly. A vein bulged on the forehead of the ambitious thief.

Tristan Flan. You liar.

Elodie groaned. No, perhaps she even screamed.

You never told me it would hurt this much!

An unbearable pain swept through her, as though every drop of blood in her body were being replaced.

But by the time she regained consciousness, it was already the middle of the night.

“Peep, peep, peeeeeep!”

The cheerful morning greetings of the monstrous birds echoed outside.

The thief, who had only been sleeping lightly, woke up and hung her head. Her face was covered in unmistakable tear stains.

“Sniff.”

Her tear ducts burst open once again.

Yesterday and today, Elodie had sobbed uncontrollably in front of the skeleton. Truly, she had cried her eyes out.

“Waaaah! Sniff. Huuuuuh!”

Her lips trembled.

Was it because she had harbored such ill intentions? Or because the treasure hadn’t gone to its original owner?

“Why can’t I do it?! Why?!”

Tristan had learned ice magic, but Elodie hadn’t.

All she had gained was the immense pain of absorbing a tremendous amount of mana. No matter how much she waved her hands or chanted various spells throughout the night, not a single thing emerged from her fingertips.

“Hic! Ice, please! H-Hurt… Sniff! Block what’s in front of me…! I said, block what’s in front of meee!”

Why on earth had the magic that so reliably raised a wall of ice whenever Tristan asked for it refused to work for Elodie?

“Aaaaaah!”

Even after the sun rose, the thief continued crying miserably for another hour.

“…And that’s what happened. Do you understand? Do you have any idea how much I suffered?”

Elodie, who had propped up the fallen skeleton and was pouring out her grievances to it, sniffled.

“Well, I suppose even you, who were apparently such a famous magician, ended up dying like this.”

With her face still damp from tears, the thief opened the skeleton’s diary.

It has been two months since I arrived here. I’ve lost all the companions who came with me. Is this as far as I can go…?

Her slender fingers pitifully flipped through the diary.

The contents were exactly the same as in her previous life. Nothing was different.

“Why on earth?!”

Elodie stamped her foot and threw the diary away.

Flutter.

I, Alan de Fleur, once shook the world with my ice magic. I have sealed the last of my power within the Essence of Enlightenment. To whoever reads this diary, I leave everything I possess.

I pray that you survive. And please, at least take this ring and bury it in my homeland.

In her previous life, Robert’s group had been overwhelmed with awe.

[To pass down magic in this manner… Only those from the Magic Kingdom, at least two hundred years ago, could have accomplished something like this!]

[He must have been an extraordinary magician!]

…And that was precisely the problem. An extraordinary magician was lying dead right here.

Elodie let out a deep sigh, as though the ground had fallen out beneath her, and stood up.

“Pull yourself together. I don’t have time.”

Since her first attempt had failed, she needed to set her next goal even more quickly.

According to her original plan, she had intended to go after the necklace Sylvia had obtained…

“But everything’s gone wrong because I can’t use ice magic.”

Elodie gently pressed her eyelids, which had swollen to twice their normal size.

For now, she should return and get a proper night’s sleep.

“I need some time to recover emotionally…”

“…Indeed. This is no ordinary island.”

“Did you see that bear? It was so scary! It looked absolutely terrifying!”

“From now on, we’ll call that creature the Big-Footed Brown Bear.”

Robert waved his hand dismissively at the tearful Sylvia before dropping heavily onto the ground.

It was already their fifth day on the island.

They checked the direction of the sea where they had landed every day, but they hadn’t sensed even the slightest trace of magical energy.

Stefan bent forward and pouted.

“I’m starving to death. Wolf meat tastes awful. Sylvia, isn’t there some other way you can cook it?”

“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never cooked before, either!”

Robert let out a quiet sigh.

The others were becoming increasingly irritable. He had been doing his best to maintain order as the prince, but even he was gradually reaching his limits.

…The wolf meat really was tough, though.

“Your Highness! Let’s go farther into the forest!”

Stefan swept his dark blonde hair back.

“It’s a forest, after all. There must be something edible deeper inside. Something other than those tiny, bitter berries!”

“Haah.”

Robert’s red eyebrows twitched.

He had considered that option himself, but…

“Even if we go in and find something, there’s a problem.”

“A-a problem?”

“We’ll have to determine whether the food we find is actually edible. It would be disastrous if it were poisonous.”

Ugh.

Stefan raised his shoulders nervously.

“Then are we just going to starve like this? We’re hardly seeing any Quino Wolves anymore, either…”

“Then, how about making a fishing rod?”

“…Do you know how to make one?”

“Huh? Me?”

The prince pressed down on his increasingly furrowed brows before turning his head away.

A dense forest of trees. A vast expanse of sky.

Perhaps because he was exhausted, the words slipped out of his mouth without him thinking.

“…If Elodie Fontaine were here, she might have been able to tell poisonous mushrooms apart.”

“…”

This time, everyone fell silent, their mouths tightly shut like clams.

Crunch. Crunch.

After returning to the Tree of Rest, Elodie gnawed on strawberries with gritted teeth. A sinister stream of red juice trickled down from the corner of her mouth.

“I-I’m going to eat them all.”

The thief renewed her resolve.

She was going to take every single opportunity and treasure her former companions had obtained, without leaving a single one behind!

“Every hidden magic from now on will belong to me…”

If she found ten, surely at least one of them would work!

The strawberry in her grasp was crushed into pulp, as though screaming in protest.

Today, she needed to eat a little more generously.

Elodie stuffed a handful of white mushrooms into her mouth and chewed.

“As expected, White-Cap Mushrooms taste best when roasted.”