Several days had passed since Terlo encountered the caterpillar magic beast in the basement.
Yet he had spent those days training while repeatedly recalling that moment.
His first battle against a magic beast had left that strong an impression on him.
It had been on an entirely different level from training against the armored dummies.
The taut tension, excitement, and exhilaration he had felt then.
Those were not emotions he could easily experience in ordinary circumstances.
Terlo wanted to encounter the caterpillar magic beast again badly enough to surprise even himself.
But since that was impossible, he was at least running simulations in his mind.
‘What if….’
What if the caterpillar, which had focused only on him, had immediately attacked the sword-wielding skeleton instead?
What if the basement had been so narrow that they could not avoid the slime when the caterpillar sprayed it like a fountain around itself?
What if the caterpillar had crawled faster?
And what if his Black Shield had melted beneath its stream of slime?
‘What would I have done then?’
How should he have broken through those situations?
Terlo pushed himself into increasingly extreme scenarios and considered numerous possibilities.
No matter how much he thought, more ways to win continued coming to mind.
Though he had no way of confirming whether those methods would actually work.
But even as he devised different moves, one thing kept returning to his thoughts.
It was something he had tried not to think about because he could not have used it anyway.
‘The black form beside the caterpillar….’
Despite being a magic beast, it had possessed a visible black form.
Terlo had seen black forms beside every living creature until now, but he had never imagined he would see one beside a magic beast.
That was part of the reason his body had frozen when he first discovered the caterpillar on the ceiling.
‘If only Ina hadn’t been there.’
He would have chanted Connect immediately.
He did not know when he might encounter another magic beast, so losing that opportunity frustrated him deeply.
That was why he had tried not to think about it….
But he could not shake his questions.
Would Connect have worked properly and linked him to the magic beast?
Would he have heard the magic beast’s inner thoughts?
And what part of a caterpillar with neither hands nor feet could he have controlled?
He imagined hundreds of other possibilities in an attempt to drive those questions away.
But it seemed they would never leave him unless he experienced the answer himself.
‘Couldn’t I have briefly covered everything with illusion black magic so Ina wouldn’t see?’
Terlo had eventually begun wondering how he might have used Connect in that situation.
Hook had used illusion black magic when they entered and left the building belonging to the black-robed organization More.
It would be useful if Terlo could use that spell himself.
He recalled Hook creating the illusion veil.
Then he began imitating him while looking toward the entrance of the training ground.
‘I think he did it like this.’
Terlo arranged dark mana in a straight line along the floor near the entrance.
Then he chanted the spell and tried to raise the wavering line of dark mana upward.
When he recited the spell as he remembered it, the line of dark mana began rising.
Once it reached the height Terlo intended, it dispersed.
‘Did it work?’
When Hook used the spell, a veil had formed in the wake of the dark mana line, as though it had taken a perfect imprint of that area.
But since nothing appeared to have changed, Terlo could not tell whether the spell had activated.
Just then, the servant Bail’s face peeked through the training ground doorway.
“Bail! Go to the castle right now and bring me something simple to eat!”
“S-Something simple to eat? Understood, Young Master!”
Terlo heard Bail’s footsteps growing increasingly distant.
Yet Bail’s face remained visible, still peeking through the doorway.
‘Oh.’
Having succeeded on his first attempt, Terlo headed toward the training ground entrance.
He wanted to examine his flawless illusion veil.
Even when he approached and inspected it closely, there was nothing unnatural about it.
Then something strange caught his eye.
‘What’s wrong with the side?’
The flat illusion veil Hook had created had been as thin as a thread when viewed from the side, making it almost impossible to notice.
But Terlo’s illusion veil was extraordinarily thick from the side.
It looked as though an actual wall had been erected there.
“…….”
Illusion black magic was bound to become distorted when something touched it.
To avoid suspicion, it therefore had to be created only when needed and removed afterward….
At this rate, however, someone would notice it long before that happened.
‘…It’s only my first attempt.’
Terlo dispersed the thick veil and cast the illusion spell again.
But even after numerous repetitions, the veil did not become any thinner.
‘Is this because of my compression too?’
When using black magic, Terlo was particularly poor at forming shapes.
His powerful compression allowed him to create something with a similar general form, but it lacked fine detail.
The illusion veil seemed to suffer from the same problem.
‘Hmm. I’ll have to use it only when no one can see it from the side.’
Or somewhere enclosed on both sides….
Despite his rapid success, the unsatisfactory result left Terlo smacking his lips.
He was about to leave the training ground as the appointed time approached when Bail ran inside carrying a basket filled with bread.
“Haaah… Hah. Hah. Young Master, I brought freshly baked bread that should make for a simple meal.”
“Oh. You eat it.”
“P-Pardon? Is the bread not to your liking? Then I will bring you something else.”
“No. I have somewhere to go. Enjoy it.”
“…?”
Terlo lightly patted Bail’s forearm and left the training ground.
Bail blinked while holding the basket of bread and watched Terlo stride away until he disappeared from sight.
***
After leaving the castle, Terlo arrived at the meeting place.
There he saw Ina sitting down and fiddling with something.
Instead of greeting her, he leaned over to look.
Startled, Ina fell backward onto her rear.
“Damn, you scared me. Can you make some noise when you approach?”
“What’s that?”
Ina frowned at Terlo’s question, brushed herself off, and stood.
Then she tossed him the object in her hand.
It was a flat, oval-shaped device.
“It’s a communicator Boss Hook gave me, so keep it safe. We’re working separately starting today. We need to report anything worth reporting.”
‘A communicator.’
It looked different from the communicators in the castle.
Terlo examined it from several angles and said,
“Got it. You can go.”
“…I was going even without you telling me.”
Ina had been considering whether to explain it further, but at Terlo’s words, she sharply turned her head and walked away.
Only then did Terlo look up from the communicator and head in the opposite direction.
Starting today, their missions had been divided.
Those delivering goods or conducting trades were Ina’s responsibility.
Those capturing people and extracting information from them were Terlo’s responsibility.
Those carrying out threats and collecting payments were Hook’s responsibility.
The remaining minor tasks were assigned to Hook’s organization members.
Their effort to interfere with the small fry of More had now begun in earnest.
Terlo’s first destination that day was a particular tent.
‘There’s supposed to be a tent this way?’
While pursuing More, Terlo was discovering places he had never known about in his previous life.
His range of movement had been extremely narrow because he had acted only within the territory, and mostly near the castle….
Even so, he knew who lived where and what could be found in every location.
Yet so many places had been hidden away in the territory’s secluded corners.
‘I can see why they were caught so late.’
How could they have been caught when they operated only in remote places where people rarely passed?
If they had continued like this, they might never have been discovered.
Terlo could not imagine what they had stolen that finally exposed them.
They must have had a compelling reason to take such a risk after hiding so well.
‘Was the item that important?’
For some reason, the identity of the item had never been revealed, even after More was captured.
Even Doristen, who frequently visited the royal court, had heard nothing about it.
Terlo was curious about the item shrouded in mystery, but he could not wait until More attempted to steal it.
There was still a considerable amount of time before that happened, and Terlo had already joined Hook’s plan.
‘Who knows? I might pick up even a small clue along the way.’
Still, he did not expect much.
Terlo’s objective was to capture the organization infamous in his previous life and have his achievement recognized.
It had nothing to do with the item.
As he walked while lost in thought, the tent soon came into view.
‘Is that it?’
Terlo approached the tent, hid in a suitable place, and listened.
A man inside was shouting that he truly knew nothing.
From what Terlo could hear, the threats intended to extract information had already been going on for some time.
‘I arrived at exactly the right time.’
The conversation, accompanied by violence, continued for a while longer.
When it still led nowhere, the man making the threats reluctantly issued an order through his communicator.
The muffled noises immediately became frantic.
“Whoa, whoa. You should’ve talked when I asked nicely. Heh-heh. Then your bitch of a wife and your bastard brat wouldn’t be getting dragged here. Well, whatever. They’ll be here soon, so let’s wait.”
“Mmph…! Mmmph! Nnngh!!”
“Feeling like talking now? Hmm. If you spout more nonsense this time, I think I’m going to get angry. Heh-heh. Should I trust you again or not?”
After the mocking voice, there came the sound of violent movement.
Then came the sound of the bound man expelling a breath, as though his restraints had been loosened.
“Haaah… I-I really don’t know! I don’t! But I-I heard something…!”
“Oh? So you finally remembered hearing something. Depending on what it is, your family might return unharmed or come back half crippled. Heh-heh. Think carefully before you speak.”
“……They said they were making something.”
“Making something? What?”
“Before that… swear you won’t touch the hair on my family’s heads. Otherwise….”
Before the bound man could finish,
The other man began wheezing with laughter as though he had heard something unbelievably funny.
“Damn, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying. Hey. Who do you think is threatening them? If that’s how you’re going to act, keep your mouth shut. You’ll be spilling everything soon enough anyway.”
“……I-I’ll talk! So please….”
‘This should be enough.’
Deciding that the time had come, Terlo rose from his hiding place.
His purpose here was to ensure that the member of More obtained no information.
But it would be a waste for Terlo not to hear it himself, so he intended to listen.
If More was going this far to obtain the information, it had to be important.
He could not simply let such information disappear.
But if he rescued the captive from the beginning, the man would not talk willingly.
A dramatic moment was always necessary.
And this was that moment.
WHOOM—
Terlo fired a black sphere through a gap in the tent.
The sphere flew rapidly toward the back of the interrogator’s head.
But contrary to Terlo’s expectation that the man would sense and block it,
THUD!
THUMP.
The attack struck him squarely in the back of the head, and he toppled forward.
The bound man’s eyes widened.
But Terlo was just as surprised.
He had assumed the attack would be blocked, so its success left him bewildered.
‘Even small fry go down that easily…?’
I held back, so he shouldn’t be dead.
Although the result was deeply unexpected, it worked in Terlo’s favor.
One way or another, it had saved him effort.
Thanks to that, he could move straight to the point.
<Teleport.>
WHOOSH—
When Terlo suddenly appeared, the bound man’s eyes widened until they nearly popped out.
“W-Who are you?! Please, spare my life…!”
The blood covering his face made him look even more pitiful, but Terlo asked indifferently,
“So who was it? What did they say they were making?”