Reading Is a... Poison?

Was that... interrupted casting?

Uncertainty had gained another restriction: it required casting time, during which it could not be interrupted. The exact duration was still unknown.

Wood chips scattered through the air as the Great Night Hawk lightly beat its wings, tearing away the wooden wall along with part of the roof.

It tossed aside the plank in its claws and hovered in the air as if in provocation, barely a few inches above the ground.

Hovering... that was something hummingbirds did—those tiny, insect-like birds capable of such acrobatic movements.

But the Great Night Hawk was no hummingbird. It was far larger than any bird Hope had ever seen, and its hovering seemed to rely on some supernatural force.

The Great Night Hawk made no other move, but its eyes remained fixed on Hope, never leaving him for an instant.

Hope understood. The Great Night Hawk could not kill him.

Just as Wilbur had said, Night Hawks were like vultures. They were scavengers.

Perhaps because of instinct, perhaps due to some restriction, or perhaps because of some professional ethics incomprehensible to humans, they did not hunt living creatures.

But it wanted to trap me here until I die.

The Great Night Hawk had targeted me because it smelled the Star Hemp here. It did not need to kill me itself; all it had to do was keep me trapped here.

Hope stood up. After hesitating briefly, he jumped through the gap the Great Night Hawk had torn open, right in front of it.

The Great Night Hawk hovered beside him. Hope gently touched its feathers. They were not particularly rough; they felt like stroking a large rooster.

The Great Night Hawk did not resist. It did not care about Hope's touch.

Hope crouched and rolled across the dirt, moving from beneath the Great Night Hawk to its rear. This time, the Great Night Hawk moved, turning around to continue watching Hope.

So that was it. Its intelligence exceeded my expectations in some ways. It must have observed me for quite some time.

When I returned to the little room, Uncertainty failed once. That must have been its doing too.

Whether by coincidence or deliberate experimentation, the Great Night Hawk had learned the conditions Uncertainty required.

Now that it seemed to have everything prepared, it had come to catch me, a little chick with nowhere left to run.

Hope walked around the Great Night Hawk and headed out of the Rose Garden as if it did not exist at all. His steps were slightly quick, but he remained as calm and unhurried as if taking a stroll.

He passed one rosebush after another, heading straight for Old Williams's wooden fence.

At that moment, a blast of hot, foul-smelling wind swept over him. Amid the flapping of wings, the Great Night Hawk flew over and blocked Hope's path.

"Tata!" The Great Night Hawk let out a piercing cry, warning Hope.

The entire Rose Garden is the graveyard it prepared for me. Hope thought.

He did not stop. He merely changed direction, went around the Great Night Hawk, and headed out from the side. Bracing one hand on the wood, he easily vaulted over the fence.

I'm more agile than I thought... The first number probably wasn't talent... The Great Night Hawk can hover in the air...

Hope changed the original "talent" before the first number to "agility."

The Great Night Hawk beat its wings, anxiously sending gust after gust of wind against Hope.

"Tata! Tata! Tata!" it screeched, the sound so piercing that Hope had to cover his ears. It was as unpleasant as a bird stripped bare of all its feathers.

Is it trying to blow me back, or knock me out with its stink... Still refusing to make physical contact with me...

Looks like this thing has even more restrictions than I expected. Maybe it cannot harm me at all.

Hope did not consider that the restriction might be an inability to touch him, because he had just touched the Great Night Hawk himself.

Hope took another step forward. The Great Night Hawk flew over and blocked him again, its beak open. "Tata! Tata!"

It looked angry. He could see anger on a bird's face.

Hope stepped to the side, and this time the Great Night Hawk immediately followed.

It changed tactics. No more intimidation. Instead, it spread its thirteen-foot wings and enclosed Hope within them, cutting off every direction he could advance in except backward.

Hope took a step back and felt slightly dizzy. He had breathed the air here for too long.

The Great Night Hawk cried, "Tatatata!" This time, it sounded like laughter.

Hope smiled too. He took two steps back, then suddenly accelerated. He leaped in front of the Great Night Hawk, as light as a bird himself, and pressed one hand against its wing as if he were pressing against Old Williams's wooden fence.

Vaulting that wooden fence had been so easy. This wing was only a little higher and a little less stable.

Then he suddenly sensed something wrong... the speed of the wing...

The Great Night Hawk's wing abruptly accelerated, and the previously soft wind turned sharp.

Both of Hope's feet had already left the ground. He had anticipated the Great Night Hawk's wingbeat in advance, but he had forgotten that he was not facing a preset parkour obstacle. He was facing a living, vicious bird.

He was swatted away, flying over the wooden fence and landing back in the rose field.

"Tata! Tata!"

The Great Night Hawk sneered and once again enclosed Hope within its wings.

It hurt... Hope got back to his feet... The dizziness worsened. He did not have much time left.

He took a breath, assuming a running stance. Turning sideways, he drove his shoulder hard into the Great Night Hawk's soft, down-covered chest!

"Guh..."

The Great Night Hawk was physically stronger than Hope, but it was hovering in the air with nowhere to brace itself. The impact sent it flying back several yards. What came from its beak was no longer its strange tata cries, but a mournful wail.

Using that momentum, Hope staggered forward several steps and nearly fell.

Hope smiled... but the moment his smile appeared, it was interrupted by an intense pain.

My head...

It felt as if a nail had been driven into his brain, its tip scraping through the folds of his cerebral cortex.

"Tata! Tata!" The Great Night Hawk shrieked. It had to be laughing this time; Hope could hear the mockery in its voice.

Hope clutched his head and barely managed to keep his balance. The stabbing pain combined with the Star Hemp's poison, dizziness and agony scrambling his mind.

Fuck... So attacking it isn't allowed either... No wonder it used its body to block me...

The Great Night Hawk drifted back like a kite.

"Tata!"

Its enormous wings enclosed Hope once more.

...Not merely enclosing him. It descended, wrapping him in its embrace like a mother holding a child.

It was summer midnight, and the sun had set long ago. The temperature was no longer as scorching as during the day; waves of cold seeped through his thin clothes instead.

The Great Night Hawk's embrace was like a blanket that had already been warmed. Hope instinctively leaned closer, and the warmth eased some of the pain.

"Tata, tata, tata."

The voice remained shrill and unpleasant, but it had softened considerably. It was tempting Hope to give up resisting.

"Tata, tata."

Maybe this isn't so bad.

Hope suddenly thought.

This was an entire Rose Garden, after all.

How did martial arts novels put it again?

To die beneath peony flowers is to remain romantic even as a ghost.

There were no peonies in this foreign land, but since roses belonged to the same family, they should not be much worse.

But what about that girl? I still haven't gotten her out of Whateley House. What would Wilbur do when he saw her? His spell...

Hope raised his hand and stuffed what he had been holding into his mouth.

They were several rose petals, yellow, red, and white. Hope had casually plucked them while walking over.

The texture was not very good, like chewing expensive paper. There was a hint of sweetness, but a stronger bitter taste.

They tasted awful. He did not understand why anyone ate roses. Flowers like these were best admired.

Hope reached toward the breast pocket of his shirt. In the Great Night Hawk's embrace, amid the dizziness, this movement was extraordinarily difficult.

Trembling, he drew out a scrap of paper from inside and held it between two fingers. It nearly slipped from his grasp.

He stuffed the paper into his mouth as well.

The so-called fragrance of ink was nothing but bitterness in his mouth. It tasted disgusting.

It was a fragment of an old newspaper, which Hope had casually torn off in Old Williams's storage room.

Tricolor Rose petals and a piece of paper with writing on it, plus Star Hemp...

This was Old Williams's Reading Potion. The proportions were severely unbalanced, the materials unbelievably slapdash. It was so arbitrary that even the type of text in the newspaper had not been specified, simplified to the point of mixing the ingredients directly in his mouth.

One of the ingredients had even been inhaled beforehand.

A potion made this way could not guarantee any effect. It would certainly carry some toxicity.

Still... it was better than directly inhaling Star Hemp.

Hope opened his pink eyes.

He smelled that damned bird stench again.