Chapter 17

“Ow!”

A black creature suddenly buried its claws into his calf and vanished like a lightning bolt. The beast, trailing a fluttering butterfly, rolled its oversized eyes and glanced at Isaac as it streaked past. The other two followed, stampeding directly over Isaac’s instep.

“Goodness, that gave me a fright. What should we do about those cats? Poor little things. Once the hunt commences, they will be in peril. We should relocate them before they get crushed under horse hooves…”

“Let them get trampled for once!”

Isaac snapped before he could check his tongue. Every eye turned toward him, filled with icy judgment that clearly read: What a heartless bastard. Isaac found it entirely unfair.

He was just rolling up his sleeves, intent on catching the beasts to drive them far away, when trumpets blared in the distance. It was the signal marking the King’s arrival.

In an instant, the atmosphere shifted. The lethargic air tightened with sudden, sharp tension. Deputy Captain Brown and the other guards scrambled to their posts. Isaac followed suit, standing rigidly beside the path where the royal procession would pass, his eyes scanning the horizon.

Led by armored bodyguards, a procession emerged from the distance. After the guards passed in crisp, disciplined ranks, their eyes scanning the terrain with predatory focus, the King and Queen appeared on horses draped in lavish tack, smiling with magnanimous grace at the commoners lining the road.

Beneath his rounded jaw and ample belly, the benevolent King radiated the warmth of a monarch adored by his subjects, alongside his gentle, affectionate Queen. At least, as long as one did not attempt to plunder a golden calf from the treasure vault, he remained a kind master to those below him. Beside the King, whose expression held a peace ill-suited for a man about to hunt, sat the Queen, who had aged with exquisite poise. The direct royal line followed, their faces languid and drowsy—the price of trading half their days to magicians in exchange for relief from the pain of their curse.

Among them, one man caught the eye more sharply than any other.

Kaiyan.

He trailed behind with an expression of such profound indifference that he seemed perpetually bored.

While there was a languor to his movements, it was distinct—sharper and more clinical than the sluggish exhaustion of the others. He would endure the biting agony of the curse a thousand times over before he surrendered a single heartbeat of his existence to a magician.

Isaac moved to turn his face from the prince as the man rode past, but a cat—appearing from nowhere—latched onto his shoelace and began to gnaw, deftly working it loose. Isaac dived behind a line of onlookers, crouching to secure the lace. As he knelt, his eyes tracked the rhythmic clop of the prince’s horse retreating into the distance. His gaze drifted, snagging on three cats seated in perfect, chilling formation before him, their stares unblinking.

“Seriously, what are you even staring at?”

「Chewing gum.」

“…”

What kind of archaic, nonsensical nonsense have these creatures dredged up now? Isaac shook his head, spiraling into a pit of silent despair. Where in this world could he possibly lock these things away and consider the matter settled?

「Doesn’t he look like he’s wallowing in useless thoughts again?」

「As if he’s ever managed an original thought that wasn’t useless.」

「True enough. Anyway, that handsome one who rode by looking as though he found existence itself tedious. That was our mark from the last new moon, wasn’t it? Seeing him in the sunlight, he really is remarkably tall and refined.」

「Of course he is. He is the realm’s greatest beauty. Do you honestly believe I brought him here for nothing?」

「We do have a keen eye for talent, after all.」

“You damned, persistent cat bastards—just because you have mouths to run—!”

They had invited a catastrophe the likes of which heaven had never seen, and this was their attitude? Isaac could stomach no more. He lunged for the scruff of the nearest cat, but his fingers clawed only empty air. The trio had already receded, sitting in a neat row, slitting their enormous eyes at him in open contempt. Isaac pressed his face into his knees, praying for the boiling fury in his head to dissipate.

After a long, suffocating silence, he muttered, his voice ragged with pain, “Fine. Let’s concede that the die is cast. The curse on the royals—is there truly no way to break it?”

「Why wouldn’t there be? There are three ways, to be precise.」

The cat with the largest eyes replied with infuriating casualness, pausing to lick a paw. Isaac’s head snapped up, his eyes wide.

“Wait, what? Are you serious? Tell me.”

「The witch who cast the hex could rescind it, they could relocate to a land entirely free of witches, or they could shatter it with the tinderbox.」

“…Which means…”

「You simply need to locate the tinderbox. How difficult could that possibly be?」

“Right. So impossibly simple that I could just weep.”

Isaac grabbed a handful of dirt and hurled it. A stray speck must have landed on them, for the cats erupted into a cacophony of yowls and vitriol. Ignoring them, Isaac slumped as though he had been cast into the abyss, burying his face back against his knees.

Ever since that day—a side effect, he assumed, of the flint—he had been plagued by the voices of these oversized beasts even in his waking hours. At this rate, whether he perished from a stroke of rage or a stress-induced ulcer, his end felt inevitable. He was a dead man either way.

“So, the long and short of it is that I have no hope of survival without that goddamned tinderbox,” Isaac muttered.

He felt the cats cheering beside him, but he ignored them, opting instead to fling another fistful of dirt. He had to secure that tinderbox. It was not merely for the sake of the monthly encounters with the prince; he could no longer endure the relentless psychological siege of these creatures.

…And then there was the other matter.

—You, too, can ascend to become a pure-blood witch. Once you reach that exalted state, you will be capable of boarding the moon-shard boat and sailing away to the distant Land of the New Moon.

Those words were branded into his ears. Isaac had never entertained the desire to become a witch, and even now, the notion felt alien. Yet, the suggestion had carved itself into his soul, refusing to fade. Had he been harboring such a secret yearning without realizing it?

Regardless, the tinderbox remained the key. If he found it, the doors would swing open. He could bargain with the prince, trading the broken curse for his own freedom. Then he would leisurely sail away to the Land of the New Moon… or would he? A part of him still clung to the soil where he had been born.

「Doesn’t he look like he’s worrying about something entirely hypothetical again?」

「He hasn’t even caught the scent of the tinderbox, and he’s already counting his kimchi cabbages…」

「What, exactly, is a kimchi?」 one meowed.

「It exists. A delicacy from a distant eastern nation,」 another replied.

Isaac attempted to stomp on their tails, but one slapped his ankle with lightning speed, dancing out of reach.

Meanwhile, in the distance, the king stood before the assembly, delivering his pre-tournament address. He spoke of the knights’ valor and the necessity of caution, his voice booming over the gathered crowd. As the speech concluded, the hunt began.

“Roverni’s strange assailant…”

The name escaped Isaac’s lips like a fading breath. He found it impossible to believe he could hook such a massive target, but it was the only thread he could pretend to grasp in this tangled mess. Even then, the prospect felt like a death sentence. Was it not safer, perhaps, to simply accept his fate as a living blood bag? After all, he was a precious painkiller. Surely Kaiyan would not kill him. No, but…

“Ugh. How the hell did my life end up this completely fucked?”

Isaac was just beginning to tear at his hair, drowning in unanswered questions, when the king’s final word echoed, the trumpets blared, and a massive cheer erupted like a thunderclap, shaking the very ground beneath him.

The hunting tournament had commenced.

Nobles and knights from myriad houses coalesced into small, bustling detachments before spurring their mounts toward the tree line. Scores of blooded chargers thundered into the dense woods, their hooves churning the loam into a fine mist of earth and grass.

The royal guards assumed their duties with practiced efficiency. Isaac, having been consigned to the rescue team, drifted toward his designated sector while his peers fell into stride beside him.

“Hope today passes without a hitch,” one murmured.

“Amen,” the others echoed. The voices, thick with habit, were uniformly tranquil.

In the context of a hunting tournament, where peril could manifest in a heartbeat, the rescue team sat in the crosshairs of potential catastrophe. Conversely, barring a disaster, it remained one of the most undemanding assignments in the service. After all, the highborn participants were shadowed by court magicians, ensuring that serious injuries remained a statistical anomaly.

Isaac trailed behind the initial wave of hunters, meandering through the canopy-dappled woods at a languid pace. If he encountered a superficial scratch or a bruised shin, he administered ointment; should someone present a more grievous wound, he simply ferried them to the nearest magician. On occasion, he stumbled upon a party mid-hunt and assisted in flushing their quarry into the open, or offered a spare waterskin to a parched rider. In that effortless fashion, he occupied his support role and treated the day as a scenic woodland stroll.

Time eroded quickly under such ease. A long, clarion blast from a horn reverberated through the trees, signaling the midday meal.

Those who had penetrated deep into the forest would break their fast where they stood, while those positioned near the perimeter returned to the field where the massive base camp had been erected. Isaac retreated from the shade of the trees and made for the royal guards’ mess tent, where a queue of colleagues had already formed.

“You’re here. Any excitement?”

“Hardly. Why, did something interesting happen on your side of the woods?”

“Nothing, except they’ve laced both the stew and the croquettes with the peas I despise.”

“Really? I’ll take them off your hands.”

Isaac settled beside Horden, who was currently venting his frustrations over his tray, and darted his fork forward with predatory speed. Despite his vociferous complaints, Horden swiped his tray away with impressive reflexes, saving the croquette from seizure. Isaac clicked his tongue in defeat and directed his fork toward his own portion.

“This year will likely wrap up without a single incident, just as always. With this many high-ranking mages loitering about, there’s hardly any room for calamity.”

“No kidding. More arrived this year than usual. Regardless, whenever Lord Kaiyan appears, they swarm like curs. Every magician in the realm is desperate to land a contract with him.”

“From what I hear, the potency of a magician’s craft rests heavily on the latent strength of their contractor,” Isaac muttered, working through his croquette.

Apparently, that strength was not a matter of mere physical brawn, but some esoteric, innate energy. Prince Kaiyan’s reserves, so far as anyone could ascertain, were so gargantuan that they were considered singular in history, perhaps never to be replicated.