Realizing the magical beast was likely heading back to attack the village, Igor immediately turned around to return.
Aivrel took a deep look at the receding Ice Pool behind her, firmly memorizing the sensation from earlier.
There was something she hadn’t told Igor.
The moment her consciousness had touched that deep pool water, she had felt a strange, indescribable sense of familiarity faintly emanating from the pool’s depths, as if calling to her very essence.
Cold, pure, and alluring.
Deep within that pool water…
Something seemed to be summoning her.
But she hadn’t told Igor.
Igor was in a perilous situation, the magical beast’s trail was unclear, the village was likely to be attacked, probing the depths of the Ice Pool was not a priority.
Telling him now would only be a distraction.
Besides, he was already the lord of Frostwhisper, the master of the Ice Pool. Once the matter of the magical beast was resolved, they would have plenty of opportunities to return and investigate.
Aivrel had waited through ten years of imprisonment; her patience was far greater than before.
…
Igor moved quickly.
The half-hour mountain path taken on the way there was left behind in just fifteen minutes under his full-speed sprint.
When he rushed back to Frostwhisper Village like a gale, the expected chaos and screams did not materialize.
The village was still shrouded in an eerie silence.
Smoke curled lazily from a few chimneys, some villagers were working sluggishly in the fields, and occasionally, the playful laughter of children drifted from between the houses. Everything seemed… unnaturally calm.
Standing at the village entrance, Igor panted slightly, his wary gaze sweeping over the entire village.
No signs of battle, no smell of blood, even the villagers’ looks towards him remained the same as before, cold and wary.
“It didn’t come back?”
Igor frowned, suspicion growing in his heart.
Had Lord Ale misjudged?
Or did the magical beast have another target?
He pondered for a moment, then turned and headed towards Snow Vow Manor.
The carpenter Ruben and his apprentices had already been imprisoned by the guards. Perhaps he could extract more information about the magical beast from them.
Inside the manor dungeon, the atmosphere remained cold and damp.
Ruben was locked alone in a stone cell, shackled hand and foot, sitting slumped against the wall.
“Honorable noble lord, did you catch that monster?”
He spoke hoarsely, his tone probing:
“Or did it lead you on a wild chase as well?”
His tone was light, even faintly provocative, but the young man heard the barely suppressed bluster and anxiety beneath it.
“As well”…?
A thought stirred in Igor’s mind.
He ignored the probing taunt, walked up to the cell door, and looked at Ruben calmly:
“Ruben, I don’t have time to play games with you. Tell me, where is that magical beast most likely to go, the ‘Lord’ you speak of?”
“Aside from the Ice Pool, does it have any other hiding places? Or… how does it usually obtain its 【food】?”
Igor emphasized the last word heavily.
Ruben’s body stiffened almost imperceptibly, his eyes flickering slightly.
He seemed to realize something, faintly relieved, but then became stubborn and obstinate again:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Our village has no magical beasts, never had, and still doesn’t.”
Igor did not let him off. He stared intently at him, asking in an extremely serious tone:
“Then… is the ‘Lord’ you speak of the 【Lord】 I am thinking of?”
【Lord】…
This was the term the villagers repeatedly used.
As far as Igor knew, in the Kingdom of Northeland, commoners would only use such a form of address for nobles, or Elementalists.
Nobles and Elementalists often held overlapping identities.
The Frostwhisper Knight’s Domain was remote. The 【Lord】 whom the villagers so revered… there weren’t actually many possible identities.
No.
To be precise, there was really only one.
Recalling the information he had browsed about Frostwhisper, Igor’s gaze grew increasingly complex.
He looked at the carpenter, his scrutinizing gaze carrying a hint of inquiry.
But Ruben abruptly shut his mouth, turned his head away, refusing to look at Igor, adopting an utterly uncooperative stance.
Igor knew that for people driven by fanaticism and hatred, conventional interrogation was rarely effective.
But it was enough.
Sometimes, silence and refusal to answer were the best answers.
Igor wasted no more time and turned towards the cells holding the other apprentices.
Those young men were far more fragile than Ruben. Under the deliberate release of a sliver of an Elementalist’s pressure from Igor, they had already turned pale and were trembling.
Yet, surprisingly, even gripped by such fear, when Igor asked about the magical beast’s whereabouts, they still clenched their lips tightly, not uttering a single word. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Their loyalty to that magical beast was beyond imagination.
And this loyalty made Igor more certain of his speculation.
Just as he was conducting the interrogation, somewhat hurried footsteps came from the dungeon entrance.
A guard who had remained behind approached Igor, holding a stack of papers that looked old and soiled:
“Lord Bolo! After searching as you instructed, we found these notes on a table next to the secret prison! But none of us can read, please take a look!”
Notes left in the secret prison?
Igor’s spirits lifted, and he immediately took them from the guard.
There were two sets of notes. One was written on rather refined but yellowed parchment, the handwriting frantic and scribbled. The other was a rough, grayish-yellow straw-paper notebook, the handwriting slanted and stained with many smudges.
Igor first opened the parchment notes.
It seemed to be an unfinished letter. The handwriting was chaotic, the strokes twisted, indicating the writer’s extremely unstable mental state:
“Lord Baron!”
“It’s him…! He’s back! He’s not dead!”
“He has returned from hell! He’s come to take revenge on everyone!”
“He became a monster! He’s right outside!”
“I hear his footsteps! He… he’s coming for me!”
“I was wrong! I’ll never dare again! Please save me… I want to return to Gray Harbor…!”
“Please save—”
The letter ended abruptly here.
The last few words were crossed out by a long, dragging ink stroke, also stained with several hideous bloodstains, as if the writer had been suddenly interrupted or dragged away in the height of terror.
Igor slowly closed the parchment and took a deep breath of the dungeon’s cold air.
This letter matched the handwriting of the former lord, Carey Leslie, that Igor had seen in the main house’s study. It was clearly left by him.
Moreover, his fear… was almost overflowing. It was evidently a final message written in his last moments of life.
“Him? Monster?”
Igor raised an eyebrow slightly.
At this moment, the image of that hideous magical beast locked in the wooden box in the secret prison flashed through his mind.
“It seems… the one who killed Knight Carey really wasn’t the Blood Wolf mercenary group…”
As if connecting something, Igor’s gaze grew even more complex.
Heaving a deep sigh, he picked up the other set of straw-paper notes.