“Hm.”
“…Ice Lance.”
While Riley was deep in thought, appearing to have readied her magic, the three-fingered girl under the rag created a boulder-sized icicle with her magic spell chant and shot it at Riley.
“How about you realize what’s happening a little by now?”
Riley unsheathed the sword on his waist and swung his right arm at a speed far greater than the icicle that was flying toward him.
In the end, the icicle was able to get close to Riley, but it was still impossible for it to deal any damage to Riley.
“…?!”
Under the rag, the girl’s expression twitched.
It was because the icicle that she sent was cut clean in half without any sound and crashed to the ground.
“What… What are you doing? Nainiae! Kill that bastard! I said kill him!”
Her voice was hysteric.
After easily slicing the ice magic that was launched at him, he turned his head toward where the voice was coming from.
The owner of the voice was shivering and quickly walked behind the girl under the rag when she saw Riley looking at her.
“Ugh…”
The woman, who scrunched her face for a moment due to the girl’s stench, firmed her face again and ordered the girl,
“Nainiae, hurry up and just kill him… We are running out of time. I have faith in you?”
“All right, Beta. Just trust me. I will get it done. I will kill him. I will kill him fast.”
Riley dusted off the sword he used to slice through the ice magic. With a gaze that looked like how one stares at something he finds to be an annoying pest, Riley looked at the woman standing behind the girl. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂
‘That woman?’
It was when Riley first arrived in Solia.
It was the woman from the ‘pickpocket incident’ that he watched as he was drinking a brown-sugar beer.
That was not all.
It was the same woman that targeted their wallets when he was enjoying his time together with Iris taking a walk through street vendors.
‘Really, Ian and Sera sure have big hearts. They are too kind.’
If there was no way to make it certain that they never bother Riley’s party again, Sera and Ian should have taken more extreme measures. That would have been the best.
Riley thought Sera and Ian eliminated that woman back then. Upon realizing that it was not the case, Riley sighed.
‘It cannot be helped.’
There was someone in front of him that was saying she would bring him more bothersome troubles if she was left to her own devices. Therefore, there was only one option that Riley could take.
‘Now that it turned out like this. I should clean up the bothersome stuff and take care of other businesses as well.’
Riley looked at the magic appearing in mid air, and then he looked at the eyes of the girl casting the magic.
It was intriguing.
Other than a ghastly appearance, her eye behind her hair could be seen.
Her eye looked familiar to Riley. He felt like he had seen it somewhere before.
‘…Should I go for a test run?’
Riley lowered his chin as he fiddled with the sword’s handle.
* * *
To immediately capture and bring in the culprit that shattered the mana measurement boulder.
It was the assignment given to Peruda the day before yesterday, for the one who was in charge of the Magic Tower’s first floor.
The assignment even had a time limit of ‘before the Great Mage Astroa notices it.’
“Ha…”
He was in mid-twenties.
He had a whole life ahead of him.
However, his face was cast in shadows.
“At this rate, am I going to get kicked out of the Magic Tower?”
‘Am I going to be able to handle the assignment within the time limit?’
The answer was, ‘impossible.’
Peruda was thinking that way.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have a guess on who might have done it.
However.
“Riley? Did you say Riley? If ‘Riley’ is his name, isn’t that the Lazy Swordsman from Iphelleta House?”