Chapter 18
Aiden watched Alice and the cat with a look of quiet amusement before speaking.
“Since you like it so much, why not give it a name?”
“Isn’t calling it ‘Spell’ enough?”
“That’s like naming a cat ‘Cat.’”
“Hmm…”
Alice lifted the cat in her hands and examined it. She hadn’t really thought about giving the magical beast a name.
Looking into the cat’s bright red eyes, Alice finally spoke.
“Let’s call you Cherry.”
“Cherry?”
“Yeah, your eyes are red.”
Because its red pupils reminded her of cherries. Cherry responded to her words with a sound.
“Meow!”
“See? It doesn’t like it.”
“No, it likes it.”
Neither of them could truly understand what Cherry was saying, but they each interpreted the meow in their own way. Alice placed Cherry on the cave floor and said:
“Cherry, we need to remove the demonic energy spreading from this cave all the way to the forest outside. Can you do that?”
“Meow!”
As soon as Cherry got down, it immediately ran toward the crystal infused with the demonic energy.
Reaching the crystal, Cherry opened its mouth wide. A strong gust of wind whipped through the cave, howling as it echoed off the walls.
“Wait, what…!”
Alice covered her face with her arm. Dust swirled around, blocking her view.
“Meow!”
When the wind settled, Cherry leapt back in front of Alice. She lowered her arm and looked ahead.
“Oh?”
What she saw left her stunned. All the dense demonic energy had completely vanished.
Alice stepped out of the cave to check outside. Even the forest, once thick with demonic energy, was now completely cleansed.
“How is this even possible?”
Even though she saw it with her own eyes, it was hard to believe. Normally, a single priest would take hours to purify energy of that magnitude. And Cherry had done it in mere seconds.
Aiden, too, seemed impressed by Cherry’s performance, letting out a small sound of admiration.
“Wow…”
“You suggested this, and yet you’re the one surprised?”
“It’s my first time seeing it up close. It’s more impressive than I thought.”
Cherry rubbed its face against Alice’s leg, seemingly understanding the praise. Alice picked it back up and walked further into the cave.
She carefully examined the orb beneath the crystal. It still seemed to be the core of a magical beast.
No matter how she looked at it, she still didn’t understand why the core was in the forest, how the demonic energy was emanating from it, or how it spread across the entire forest.
“There’s still so much we don’t know.”
Alice frowned in frustration. Aiden approached her and asked:
“You said your knights patrolled the whole mountain range, right? The fog at the forest entrance, the cave covered by logs… they shouldn’t have missed these things.”
“That’s true. According to the reports, both the forest and mountains were fully surveyed. But it’s strange that Nil, who has a keen sense for detecting magical energy, didn’t notice anything. Even if the stranger Emma mentioned acted after the knights left…”
Alice paused mid-sentence. A thought suddenly crossed her mind.
“Come to think of it, what about that stranger?”
“Well… maybe he ran away?”
“Ran away from a forest full of demonic energy? That would have been difficult.”
A normal person exposed to the energy would have quickly fallen into a poisoned state. In other words, if he were innocent, he should have been lying here with Matthew.
The fact that he wasn’t there meant either he had managed to escape during the kidnapping, or he was the one responsible.
If he had merely escaped, that would be lucky. But if not, it implied he was as strong a mage as Alice, or perhaps a demon like Aiden—someone capable of surviving this overwhelming demonic energy.
This made the situation far more serious than she had initially thought.
Alice stroked Cherry’s soft fur, as if trying to clear her thoughts, and walked back.
“For now, let’s take the missing people back to the village.”
She wanted desperately to chase the culprit immediately, but the victims’ safety came first.
Alice and Aiden returned to the fallen missing persons. The demonic energy was gone, but they still couldn’t wake up.
Just because the demonic energy had disappeared didn’t mean the poisoning had been undone.
“Can you absorb the energy that’s already inside their bodies?” Alice asked softly.
She couldn’t just take them back to the village as they were. Leaving people who had been long exposed to the energy in the same place as unexposed villagers could risk spreading the poisoning further.
Seeming to understand Alice’s concern, Cherry leapt down.
The cat opened its mouth wide as if inhaling all the air around it, and then closed it. The demonic energy was drawn into Cherry’s mouth.
“…Is it done?”
Alice cautiously approached the people and checked their faces. The faint purple hue had returned to its natural color.
She placed her hand gently on their faces. Their skin was unusually cold from being outside for so long, but no demonic energy was detected. They should be able to regain consciousness soon.
“Meow!”
Cherry purred happily, apparently full.
It was incredible that it could even absorb the energy stored inside human bodies. Truly an amazing ability.
Alice looked at Cherry briefly, then turned her attention back to the people.
Aiden followed her gaze, saying:
“Now, the problem is how we’re going to get these people back to the village.”
Alice sighed lightly at his comment. Without a cart, it would be impossible for just the two of them to carry all these people one by one.
In fact, Alice had one solution in mind. Being a mage, she always relied on magic when she couldn’t do something physically.
“I could use a large-scale teleportation spell…”
With magic, moving all the people at once to the village would be easy. But the problem was…
She had previously made a huge mistake summoning a demon while casting such a spell. Just moments ago, she had nearly summoned a magical beast with a small summoning circle.
Teleportation across spaces required extremely complex magic circles. Large-scale teleportation was a challenge of a whole different magnitude.
For someone like Alice, a single misdrawn line could turn a large-scale teleportation circle into a demon summoning circle, with catastrophic results.
Having already made that mistake once, she hesitated now, worried it might happen again. What if she accidentally summoned another demon or magical beast?
“Why am I acting like this…? It’s not like me.”
To regain focus, Alice lightly slapped both her cheeks.
The great Alice Erdin had already made that mistake once. There was no reason she would do it again. She steadied herself.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled a magic staff from her ring. Gripping it tightly, she said:
“I’m going to draw a large-scale teleportation circle now. You just watch.”
Alice stepped outside the cave, staff in hand, and began drawing the magic circle on the dirt floor.
Unlike the small summoning circle she had drawn earlier, this large-scale teleportation circle required extreme caution, and her actions were reverent.
Aiden, holding Cherry, sat on a nearby rock, watching Alice work.
Since she couldn’t leave the people inside the cave, she levitated them in the air while carefully drawing the circle with her staff. Even Aiden, not a mage, was awestruck by her skill.
Cherry twisted its body, trying to wriggle free from Aiden.
“Meow!”
“Shh, don’t disturb your master.”
At Aiden’s words, Cherry calmed down. He stroked its fur and turned his gaze back to Alice.
