"Haa~. Hey, Drois. You should also take a break now. Don't stress your body too much."
As Dongo dragged his heavy feet toward the makeshift tent to take a break, he saw Drois engrossed in his work with a brooding expression.
Being similarly based in the Royal Capital, Dongo had known Drois for a while already. While they belonged to different branches, north and south respectively, the pool of C-rank explorers was small enough that many faces became familiar.
Among them, Dongo was particularly sociable and had a wide circle of acquaintances.
"Ah, Dongo-san. I was... well, thinking of taking a break after a while..."
Noticing Drois' dull mumbling and his fixated gaze in Al's direction with a hint of grudge with a faint glimpse of awe, Dongo's expression shifted into a wry smile.
Drois was probably fatigued in more than one aspect.
He could understand. With his age approaching 40, he already gauged his true caliber long ago. Nevertheless, he also felt a sense of hollowness whenever he gazed at Al. The boy was like a window showing the unfair reality.
......He didn't mean to be like that though. Dongo passed his gratitude to Allen Rovenne and Daniel Serdos mentally. Had he not seen those two in action, he would be swallowing the same bitterness as well, drowning in misery.
The talent for magic. A brutally stark divide between those who have it and those who don’t.
Ice mages, due to their rarity, were not accustomed to being compared to others from the same perspective.
Dongo understood Drois’ feelings as if they were his own.
"It's just now that I finally realized why that Academy was said to be a den of monsters... On top of that, he’s a first-year student in Class A, said to be among the best of this generation, and the leader of a group of magically gifted students gathered from all over the country as the president of the Magic Research Club.
You don’t need to belittle yourself. At your age, being a C-rank explorer is already quite impressive. Far more than me, at least. The worlds we inhabit are fundamentally different. We knew that from the start, didn’t we?"
Drois clenched his teeth and nodded slowly.
"Yeah... I knew. I knew it, but I just kept looking away."
He couldn’t bring himself to voice the reality that he was just one among the many, a mere ordinary person.
◆◆◆
Just before time was up, the tip of my rod bent slightly, informing me that the fish this time was something different.
I wanted to set the hook immediately, but I held back.
According to Gramps, if you set the hook on the initial bite, the lake perch would escape more often than not.
I slowly reeled the line in, mimicking the movements of a fleeing heron.
After that, if I count to three before setting the hook, I’ll catch one out of three according to him.
I shifted all of my concentration to it and counted in my mind.
One—
...Had I ever been this serious in a competition before?
My head was unprecedentedly clear at this moment. It was as if time around me was in slow motion, much like what boxers in my previous life used to say they experienced.
Two—
The moment I counted to two, the tip of the rod bent sharply. I instinctively activated my Body Strengthening magic and pulled the rod back forcefully.
In that instant, the rod bent significantly, and a huge fish, presumably a lake perch, began thrashing around on the surface.
"Hyahaha! I can feel it, Dan!"
“Anyone with detection magic should focus on searching for any stray Hellrowcast! Don’t let any of them get away! It’ll be over if the chain-hatching spreads any further! Also, gather everyone from the security perimeter one to five and spread them out! If we can’t stop this, we’ll crush as many as we can before they all hatch!”
“Understood!”
“I... I should have known this would happen... I understood his feelings... Why, why the hell didn't I comfort him?!"
Overwhelmed by a swirl of intense regret, Dongo stood there frozen in place.
Around then, Caprine, with her silver hair tied back, also arrived and immediately raised her baton, swiftly freezing up three eggs.
However, given that she barely recovered her mana, her technique was rather rough in freezing the eggs, leaving her panting.
Still gritting her teeth, she continued to contain the situation as best as she could, while carefully spinning her words for Dongo.
"Can you move, Dongo-san? I know you feel strongly responsible for this, but no one can blame you or Drois, who has been putting in effort for days. But we need to focus on what's before us right now, alright? We’ll tackle it one step at a time, starting with what’s nearby. You can do that, right?”
With his face pale, Dongo barely managed a nod, and turned his wand toward an egg, holding it with both hands. However, gripped in his sweaty hands, the weight of his wand felt more pronounced due to exhaustion, and it slipped from his grasp, striking the egg directly.
Dongo's head went blank and he immediately scurried to pick it up, channeling his mana in it with full force.
“Dongo-san!!”
Caprine sensed the abnormality and hurriedly tried to stop him, but she was a step late.
The mana stone affixed to the wand released a dazzling white radiance in channeling his pure, unaltered mana, and then it turned it into a large quantity of ice.
Seeing this, Caprine couldn't maintain her usual composure and shouted with a pale face.
"M-Mana explosion inbound! It's unstoppable!!!"
After a moment of silence, Hugo shouted.
“W-What the hell!! Dongo! What about the safety mechanism?!”
Dongo moved his mouth in a daze, his voice unfocused.
“I was... trying to be more efficient... to process as many eggs as possible... Why now?... How did I fail to transform attributes now?!”
Tears streamed down Dongo’s face as he desperately tried to control the rampaging wand.
“I failed... The resistance is too great.”
The moment he let go, the wand would explode. And even if he didn’t let go, once Dongo’s mana ran dry—
Hugo briefly shut his eyes tight, gritting his teeth to the point of bleeding, then calmly announced in a flat voice.
“...Everyone, fall back for now. We’re raising the subjugation operation to phase 3!”
Despair ran across Dongo’s face as he shook his head vigorously.
“No... I don’t want to die... I don’t want to die! My wife is pregnant. How long... how long had we waited for this blessing!!!"
Nevertheless, Hugo didn't look back at Dongo again, and gave another shout for everyone to escape in a merciless tone, but—
—In a split moment, a blue-haired young boy rushed past Hugo, beelining for the Dongo.
T/N - So... onion cutting ninjas incoming I guess.
E/N - Dang, lots of stuff going wrong in this chapter. Though I doubt Al will die given that spoilers from the end of volume one gave us his future title already.
And lol at Allen, he does have the habit of counting his chickens before they hatch ????