Happy New Year!
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty: Those Who Had Disappeared
It was a scene after everything had ended.
“Ms. Alchemist! Please help us!”
The owner of the wailing voice abruptly stopped her sobbing, spotted Karen, and rushed over.
The woman looked like an adventurer.
And for some reason, she was clutching a robe tightly in her hands.
It was too large for the petite woman to wear, so the only thing clear was that it wasn’t hers.
“My husband! He disappeared! The moment those people threw black powder on him!”
The female adventurer screamed, half-crazed, and pressed the robe against Karen.
Saying her husband had disappeared, the woman pressed the empty garment against her.
In other words, she was saying that her husband, who had been wearing this robe, had disappeared.
Julius, who was beside the speechless Karen, opened his mouth instead:
“…Your husband is a mage, an adventurer like you?”
“That’s right! Why are you asking such a thing!?”
She glared at Julius. With eyes swollen red from crying, it was as if she already anticipated what would be said.
“I was also covered in black powder. I know the effects of that powder firsthand. That is a cursed object that steals all the magical power from whatever it touches. If your husband was a high-ranking mage whose flesh was mostly sustained by magical power, then—”
“No! Don’t say it! Save him with a panacea!”
“It’s futile. A panacea cannot bring back the dead. Much less can it help someone who has already lost even his physical body.”
“He has a body! It’s right here! His magic core and his heart—!”
Julius shielded Karen from the screaming woman’s view.
While hidden in Julius’s shadow, Karen looked around the devastated camp in a daze.
There were no traces of intense combat.
Most of the remaining traces were the corpses of what appeared to be Horst’s companions, killed one-sidedly and brutally. The spa guests who had similar circumstances to Horst.
They were probably people who had been commuting to the eighth floor, pretending to be spa guests in order to build a settlement in the magical power blank zone without anyone noticing.
“Sis! Thank goodness! You’re safe!”
“Thor…”
“You’re still a bit faint, but you’re the same old Sis. I’m glad. I believed you’d be okay even if you were weak, Sis.”
Thor peered into Karen’s face and said with relief.
After returning from the blank zone, her internal magical power recovered with each breath.
Surely Julius was the same.
Once they left the plateau, that hunger-driven look disappeared from his eyes.
“Thor, are you okay?”
“Yeah, some black powder was thrown on me. Lots of people got messed up bad, but I was fine. My magical power was completely drained, though.”
“Are you really okay!? Are you hungry!?”
“It’s about time to eat, so I’m hungry, but now’s not the time for that.”
Thor’s tone was casual.
He didn’t seem to be in a state of feeling appetite toward humans.
“—Perhaps this really was nothing more than me being overtaken by madness.”
“No, Mr. Julius, you were made to drink poison or something. It’s definitely because of that.”
For some reason, Julius believed without doubt that his hunger for Karen came from desires welling up from within himself, and Karen retorted sharply from behind his back.
Thor tilted his head.
“Is Julius in bad shape too? But listen, our Wanda’s in real trouble. Julius looks perfectly fine, so could you check on Wanda first?”
“What happened to Ms. Wanda?”
“I’ll tell you while we walk. So, after I got separated from you, Sis, we’d caught that Horst guy, but his companions started rampaging. They scattered black powder everywhere, threw it on themselves, threw it at people nearby. That black powder’s dangerous—when you touch it, the parts supplemented by magical power disappear. There was a comrade who’d had his arm cleanly cut off and regrown it with a major healing potion, but when powder was thrown on him, just that part disappeared. There were others like that too, and they drank healing potions but… they didn’t heal in the end and died.”
“That wasn’t because of a cooldown issue, was it—”
“It seems healing potions don’t work as well on us now after being covered in the black powder.”
He said that Wanda was in danger. Guessing from the flow of the conversation, Karen gasped.
“Ms. Wanda was also covered in powder?”
“I shielded her and took it instead, so she wasn’t directly covered, but she seems to have inhaled a little, and just from that, she was coughing up blood. Probably several of her organs disappeared.”
“That’s really bad!”
“It seems she gets better with magical power recovery medicine—Sis, do you have any magical power recovery potions?”
“Huh? …It heals with magical power recovery potions?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t completely cure it, but it made healing potions work better.”
“I see…”
Karen glanced at Julius, then sneakily took out the last magical power recovery potion from her pouch.
“This… It’s only a small one, though.”
“That helps. We’re out of stock.”
After handing the potion to Thor, Karen timidly looked at Julius.
“I’m sorry… if I’d given that to you to drink, Mr. Julius, maybe you wouldn’t have been tormented by that strange urge…”
She had known that Julius’s magical power was depleted.
However, after being told that kissing her had calmed him down, Karen hadn’t remembered about the magical power recovery potion. After that, she kept accepting his kisses, telling herself it would settle things, even as she felt disappointed that what he directed at her was hunger.
Realizing that her mind had been so consumed with kissing Julius that everything else had slipped away, Karen turned so red she felt like she might breathe fire from her face.
“I-It’s not like I was hiding it because I wanted to do, you know, that with you, Mr. Julius! For some reason, I couldn’t remember—”
“I understand, Karen.”
To Karen’s flustered excuses, Julius responded strangely calmly.
“In that place, magical power continues to be stolen just by existing there. Even drinking a magic recovery potion would have been like pouring water on a hot stone.”
“That’s really true! So it couldn’t be helped, right!?”
“Yes. It’s good we didn’t waste it uselessly there. We would have been unable to use it for Thor’s companion. Besides, I fully understand that you didn’t willingly accept my ugly desires.”
“Huh? No—”
Karen tried to deny it.
However, it wasn’t a conversation that could be continued in front of Wanda, who had been forced to drink the magical power recovery potion by Thor but had immediately coughed up blood.
“—I’ll go make magical power recovery potions.”
“I’m counting on you, Sis. Do you have materials?”
“I have magic mushrooms in stock, but depending on how many people are in Ms. Wanda’s state, it might not be enough.”
“Alright. I’ll go gather some. Julius, I don’t know what you’re moping about, but protect Sis.”
“You’re entrusting Karen to me? I might hurt Karen instead.”
“Are you seriously moping? Let me tell you, Sis isn’t weak enough to be hurt by you!”
Julius’s eyes widened at Thor’s words.
Stopping his feet as he was about to leave the tent, Thor added one last thing:
“But if you really do hurt her, I’ll crush you. Actually, I’ll stop you perfectly before that. After all, I’m stronger!”
“…Thank you, Thor.”
“Hmph.”
After looking at the relieved Julius with exasperated eyes, Thor left the tent.
Karen ran out to fulfill her own duty as if chasing after him.
When she headed to Waltride’s tent to get materials, she found Dorotea with a cane and the pale Irmlinde being supported by Dorotea, who, upon spotting Karen, dragged their trembling bodies closer.
“Lady Karen.”
“Were you two also covered in black powder? If so, please don’t move too much and focus on recovering your magical power. I’ll make magical power recovery potions right away—”
“Her Royal Highness the Princess is missing.”
“What?”
“One of those people threw black powder on us, and until just a moment ago, we were both unconscious. When we woke up, Her Highness Waltride wasn’t in the tent. We’re searching for her now!”
Karen was stunned by their words.
“It can’t be…”
Karen rushed into the tent. Waltride wasn’t inside the tent.
However, there were no traces of black powder having been scattered either.
There were none of the remnants left by those whose bodies had vanished after exposure to the black powder—no empty clothes, no scraps of flesh, no magic core.
“…Even Lady Waltride might not have been able to stay put in an emergency like this. Perhaps she went to His Highness Boromias?”
Karen said, pinning her hopes on this.
People grow when they fall into desperate situations.
The goddess desires this too, and gives rewards to those who grow.
This world is made that way.
Irmlinde and Dorotea looked at Karen with wavering eyes.
“We sincerely hope that is the case, but…”
“Um, it is Her Highness Waltride we’re talking about, right?”
“Right.”
In this situation, there was no way she would step even one foot outside the tent of her own will.
Karen, Irmlinde, and Dorotea were in complete understanding without saying everything aloud.
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