Chapter 32

Chapter 32

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After having breakfast with Van, he went to the meeting Mamil had arranged. He explained the details to Van, but didn't bring him along.

It wasn't because Van was in the way. The problem was Mamil's personality. The more people he was around, the more hysterical he would become. Fewer people were better for a comfortable meeting.

“Let's see, the cafe ‘Carrot and Chiffon’.......”

A cafe with the cute name ‘Carrot and Chiffon’ was Mamil's hand-picked meeting spot. He left as if he was running away using the teleport magic, so he didn't write down the appointment time...... Well, if he waited, Mamil would come. Cadel decided to keep it simple.

After asking a passerby for directions to the cafe, he found it deserted, with only a few customers inside. Cautiously looking around for a table, he wondered if Mamil would be there first. Soon, out of the corner of his eye, a familiar face caught his eye.

Unfortunately, it was not a welcome sight at all.

“Why are you here?”

With a look of disbelief on his face, he approached the table where a man sat. The man sat gracefully cross-legged with a newspaper spread wide open. Peeking out from beneath the folds of the newspaper, his piercing blue eyes stared up at Cadel.

“Do you know that you ask that every time you see me these days?”

“That's because you keep showing up in the strangest places! What are you doing here? Go back. Mamil will run away when he sees your face!”

“Running away after seeing my face? No way. Normally, he'd be too stunned to move a step.”

Stunned or not, Lumen was the one who humiliated Mamil. While Cadel himself was the ultimate culprit, it was Lumen's sneer that sent Mamil on the run.

Mamil certainly hadn't forgotten yesterday's humiliation, and if he were to find Lumen sitting at the meeting place he'd come to so anxiously, he'd probably leave for good. Anxiously, Cadel glanced back and forth between the cafe's door and Lumen.

“You're gonna blow my hard-earned opportunity? You may be a temporary member, but you should at least have some decency. Did you forget we're watching each other? You're leaving a pretty bitter taste right now.”

“Leader isn't exactly sweet either.” T/his chapter is updated by nov(ê(l)biin.co/m

“Are you really going to be like this!”

What kind of stubbornness was this? He didn't know when Mamil was going to show up, so he was stomping his feet.

‘If Mamil gets here, I’m screwed. No, I'll have to take him out by force.......’

He couldn't guarantee that he could pull him out, but he’d try to grab him by the collar for now. With that in mind, Cadel snatched the newspaper that Lumen was holding.

“......What did you say?”

“I'm embarrassed to say that I can't decipher what was written even when I open it―”

“W, wait.”

Mamil hastily raised a hand to interrupt Cadel. He picked his ears for a moment as if he'd heard something he shouldn't have, and then his gaze settled.

“Did you just say that you can use the magic of two attributes? You? Fire and wind?”

“Yes!”

“If you dare to prank me again.......”

“Um? Why would I?”

Cadel had an innocent look on his face, as if he really had no reason to, and as far as Mamil was concerned, there was no reason for Cadel to tell a lie that would be discovered so quickly.

But he couldn't believe it. The young man in front of him was in his mid-twenties at best, his demeanor flippant and devoid of any trace of intellectual grace. He was a genius magician with two attributes? This stupid man who couldn't crack a magic book on his own and begged him to teach him basic things like mana operation and management?

Facing Mamil, who expressed his disbelief with every facial muscle in his body, Cadel held out both hands in a good-natured gesture.

“If you don't believe me, I'll show you.”

He spread his palms out on the table, and a small ball of fire appeared in one hand, and a small puff of wind hissed and pulsed in the other. Mamil's eyes widened as if they couldn't get any wider. Cadel thought his eyes would fall.

“What......!”

“It's done now, right? Please decode the magic book first.”

Cadel quickly and casually withdrew the spell, but Mamil's shock did not fade.

He was amazed that Cadel was truly a two-attribute magician, that he could cast a spell, however weak, so instantly and without a chant, and once again that he could manifest both attributes simultaneously.

He was stunned and speechless. He was once again struck by the absurdity of the world, something he had tried to avoid thinking about after he reached a certain age.

‘Someone of his caliber would come all the way out here to ask me for basic magic lessons? That's ridiculous. He's a two-attribute magician, not some other guy. I'm sure a bunch of name-obsessed magicians would be clamoring to take him on as a disciple. Neither the family nor the territories he belonged to would have left him alone. And yet he doesn't even know the basics....... Has he been hiding his power? But why? There's no reason for that.......’

While repeating reasoning about Cadel’s unconvincing behavior, a hypothesis flashed through Mamil's head.

‘This punk, don’t tell me......!’