Chapter 49: Malice

Before going to visit Nera's father I changed my clothes and my mask, I don't think this will be very effective for hiding my identity but it's better than nothing.

Also, the three fairies are following us for some reason.

"You don't need to come with us if you don't want to you know."

"You're going to use dark magic to cure someone's illness, aren't you? We want to see how you do it!"

Do they think that they can learn something from just watching? Or are they just curious? Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with them watching.

"Nera, will these fairies be allowed to enter your father's room with us?"

"No, but we won't be allowed either. You'll probably need to put a few people to sleep..."

Oh, I guess I should have expected that.

...

"Look, there it is."

Two guards are standing in front of a door.

"Halt! Who are you!?"

'Mind void'

Inside the room, I can see a man laying on a bed and nobody else...

Really? Only two guards and nobody else? Isn't this supposed to be the king?

"Father!"

"Nera? You're back?"

He really does not look like a king at all. Well, that’s probably because the clothes he’s wearing are rather plain and his face is very pale.

"Look, this is Luna, she's a healer. I'm sure that she'll be able to figure out what your illness is."

"Nera... I've already been examined by dozens of healers and none of them were able to do anything. I don't know who that masked lady is but you should not get your hopes up."

"You don't understand, Luna is in a league of her own, the logic of normal people does not apply to her."

"Oh, it's unusual for you to praise someone that much, I guess we could give her a chance."

Is Nera saying that I'm a weird person? Well, I should try to do my best to heal her father, I don't want to betray her trust.

"Sir, could you please tell me what symptoms you have been experiencing?"

"I feel very tired at all times and have trouble breathing, I keep getting light-headed and at times I feel pain all over my body."

Let's see, first of all, I need to check if there's any magic affecting him in some way.

'Mana sense'

Hmmm, I cannot feel any mana in him other than his own... there are a few small clumps of mana that feel a bit strange, but nothing that could be the cause of his symptoms. However, feeling that mana made me feel uneasy for some reason.

Then let's check his breathing, his eyes, ears, throat... his skin seems a bit blue in some places.

"Your blood pressure seems very low."

"Yes, some of the others also mentioned that, but they couldn't figure out the reason."

After another 15 minutes examining him I still cannot figure this out, I had never had this much trouble identifying someone's illness. Back when I was doing my research on healing dark magic I used to approach sick people to examine them in secret, I know that it was wrong for me to do that without permission but I needed to practice somehow and nobody would let me do it. I must have done that thousands of times and despite not being able to examine them as I wanted I was still able to figure out what the illness was in a matter of seconds every single time, that's why I had a lot of confidence in my abilities, and yet, this time I'm at a complete loss.

"Do you mind if I take a blood sample?"

"Go ahead."

The only clue I have is that there seems to be something wrong with his blood, so I will use a magic circle of my own creation to separate everything in this one drop I took from him.

"This is..."

"Did you find anything?"

"It's a very small amount, but there was some air in that blood."

"Air?"

Could this be...

'Mana sense'

This time I focus on searching his blood and I look for wind mana specifically.

"There's several clumps of wind attribute mana in your blood. They are all really small and are wrapped by your own mana, making them extremely difficult to detect."

Whoever this mana belongs to seems to be able to use some really unique forms of magic, I had never even heard of something like this, also, there's something about this mana that I really do not like.

"If even you had trouble finding them, it's no wonder that none of the other healers could figure this out."

"So that's what's adding air to my blood?"

"Yes, the wind mana is creating some really small air bubbles at random intervals, that's probably when you feel pain, then they disappear after a short while. The mana must have been used for an air creation spell and then it was placed on something you drank or ate, you could say that it was a magic poison."

"Can you remove that mana?"

"That's easy, I'll just use 'mana corrosion' to remove all the mana in your body, your own mana will regenerate after a day, but the foreign mana will stay gone."

"Isn't 'mana corrosion' dark magic?"

Oh, we didn't tell him that I use dark magic. Whatever, I'll just...

...

Uh... for some reason, I have a really bad feeling about this, I cannot explain what it is but my instincts are telling me that there's something really bad about this magic...

I think I'll test it first, I'll use 'mana corrosion' on only one of the clumps of mana on his left arm.

'mana corrosion'

"What!?"

As soon as the mana begins to dissolve it creates a much larger than usual air bubble that seems like it's going to keep expanding.

'Shadow knife'

"Ouch!"

"Luna! What are you doing!?"

"It was a trap."

"A trap?"

"That mana is prepared to create as much air as possible if someone tries to get rid of it, I had to make a cut to let the air escape before the bubble got too big."

That was close, if I had tried to remove all of the mana in his body at the same time... I don't even want to imagine what would have happened. Seriously, a trap for when someone tries to heal him? Who would even think of doing something like that!?

This is the first time I've felt genuine fear from someone's magic, part of it is the fact that it almost made me unwittingly kill the king, but that's not the real reason...

Magic can be said to be an art as much as it's a science, it's possible to tell some aspects of the personality of a mage by sensing their spells, and from this magic, what I feel is an unbelievable amount of malice, almost as if the person that this mana belongs to wants to cause as much harm as possible rather than accomplishing whatever goals they had in mind when they prepared it.

I hope that this is all just my imagination, I don't want to think that someone like that really exists.

"Luna... can you still heal my father?"

"Ah, yes, I can use my own mana to move all the foreign mana out of his body manually, it will take some time but it should be safe."

In the end, this ended up taking almost two hours, I wonder if something like this should be called 'magic surgery' or something like that...

"Oh, I think that I feel better already."

"It will still take a few days for you to recover completely."

"Yes, thank you, who could have known that the queen of darkness would be such a great healer?"

"Eh!? You know who I am!?"

"It would have been much more strange for me to not know, don't you think?"

Uh, I guess it was really obvious if you think about it...

"Father, Luna's bad reputation is just a misunderstanding, she's really a good person!"

"Then what was all that stuff I heard about her taking over the city?"

"That was a misunderstanding as well, we were trying to take the crystal of mother's contract with Kalroth but she didn't have it with her and then things got out of hand. Actually, I also wanted to ask you for help to explain everything."

"So it's all a misunderstanding then... very well, I'll do whatever I can."

"Eh!? Are you really going to trust me so easily!?"

"It's not like I have a choice, my daughter seems to trust you and I owe you my life."

Oh! This is great! With the king on my side, I might be able to get out of this without fighting!

"Uh... excuse me."

Oh, the fairies were still here, I had forgotten about them.

"We have been thinking for a while... that 'contract crystal' you were looking for, is it a blue and green crystal filled with mana by any chance?"

"Yeah, I think it looks like that."

"You see... the truth is that we took something that looked like that from the queen earlier."

"What!? Why!?"

"Well, she had been mean to us and that thing seemed important, so we took it to get back at her."

"You cannot steal anything you want just like that!"

"Sorry! Sorry!"

"Well, that's fine, so you have it with you then?"

"No, we gave it to that friend of yours with the pointy hat."

"You gave it to Arana?"

"No, not the one with the white hat, the one with the green hat."

"I don't have a friend with a green hat."

"But she said that she was your friend! And that you wanted us to give her that thing!"

"And you believed her!?"

"Well, yeah, she seemed really trustworthy."

"What do you mean 'trustworthy'?"

"She had a very gentle face! I've never seen anyone who looks more like a good person than her! Also, she seemed to have an aura that puts everyone around her at ease. As soon as we saw her, we all agreed that she was someone that could be trusted."

A girl with a green hat... is that someone else Arana knows? I can't exactly explain it, but there's something about this that I really do not like...

forli