Genius Actor

My original plan had been to leave Sharia and see whether I could put together a team of my own, or go look for Isolte. As for Rudeus, I had no intention of getting involved with him.

As long as I was in the northern Magic Tri-Kingdoms, I was bound to run into him eventually anyway.

I remembered that he should have reached the Red Dragon Lower Jaw when Eris was around fifteen. That should have been coming up soon already, so why was Hitogami telling me to go to Shirone to save his sister?

It felt like the whole timeline had been thrown into chaos.

Just then, I remembered a detail—one I had forgotten all this time. The last time I saw Paul in Roa, he seemed to be alone.

I hadn't seen him with Norn. Where had Norn gone? She couldn't have been teleported off into the middle of nowhere all by herself, could she?

That would be way too terrifying. That was the ruthless one fated to marry Ruijerd!

Her fate shouldn't have been that fragile. I hoped no tragedy like that had happened.

Also, Hitogami had been a little abnormal this time. By the usual pattern, he should have given a few pieces of advice first, gained my trust, and then made some small request. Usually, that kind of request was actually a trap to harm the other party.

But this time, after giving me only one piece of advice, Hitogami had immediately made a request of me.

And the request was to go save someone in such a faraway place. That already didn't count as a small request.

Had Hitogami already seen through the fact that I wouldn't truly trust him, so this was the snare he had laid?

I was really torn, not knowing whether or not I should carry out Hitogami's mission. In my memory, Aisha and the others were saved because Hitogami told Rudeus their location.

If he didn't tell him their location, then it was possible Rudeus wouldn't run into the two of them.

Although I couldn't be sure the two of them would be harmed, if that scumbag prince really did crush flowers with a ruthless hand, then things would be bad!

So I still had to go, but I couldn't follow Hitogami's suggestion. I was planning to find another path.

After setting out from Sharia, I didn't take the normal road. I went directly south, and after riding for two weeks, I arrived at the Red Dragon Mountains.

That's right. I planned to catch Hitogami off guard and cross the Red Dragon Mountains directly to reach Fittoa Territory in Asura.

Although it was very possible he knew through future sight that I would take this route, if I chose not to take the Red Dragon Mountains precisely because he knew I would, that might also be within his calculations.

This was hard to explain. In the eyes of someone with future sight, every move you made could be something the other party had guided you into.

So no matter which way I went, it felt like it had all been arranged by the other party.

But as a stubborn mule, I was determined, just this once, not to follow the normal route.

After arriving at the Red Dragon Mountains, I released the horse I had bought in Sharia back into the mountains and forest, then carried my luggage and climbed alone.

I didn't choose to fly over. That would make my mana insufficient, and if a red dragon attacked me while my mana was empty, that would be a fatal loss.

So I planned to cross the mountains on foot. If I encountered a large number of red dragons and couldn't beat them, then I would use flight to escape.

The stretch from the foot of the mountain to the mountainside was very safe. Perhaps because red dragons occupied the mountain, there were very few Demonic Beasts near it.

When I had climbed to within a thousand meters of the summit, a fierce roar rang out across the quiet peak.

Red dragons could fly. In places with a certain slope, they could use the force of a dive to take flight.

But on flat ground, they could only run on two legs. That was also why S-rank adventurers often received quests to subjugate dragons that had fallen behind, because if a red dragon accidentally landed on flat ground, it couldn't climb back up and could only wander across the earth.

A red dragon had just flown over my head. They were like loyal servants, constantly patrolling the Red Dragon Mountains, killing every enemy who dared to cross the peaks.

My luck didn't hold forever. Although I was very small, aside from having excellent eyes, red dragons also had sharp noses. When I was still five hundred meters from the summit, I was attacked by one.

This time was different from the ground-bound red dragon I fought last time. After this red dragon discovered me, it immediately unleashed Dragon Breath at me from the air. A huge blaze came rushing toward me.

But I had already thought up a countermeasure for this move long ago.

I used mana to control the wind elements in the air, extracting all the oxygen from the air in the direction where the red dragon was spraying flame at me.

After the oxygen was extracted, only nitrogen and a small amount of other gases remained in the air. Nitrogen didn't support combustion at all.

So it looked like a lighter without an igniter. The red dragon was blowing at me from the air, but the flame simply couldn't burn. I had to admit, it was a little funny.

Haha, I felt like that red dragon flew into a rage from embarrassment. It flew toward me, as if it wanted to ram me to death headfirst.

I didn't give it that chance. I fired four Rock Cannons into the air in succession. Just like last time, the red dragon thought its scales could easily block my little magic and didn't dodge at all. As a result, after being hit by the Rock Cannons, the shells exploded in the wounds on its body.

I easily ended that red dragon's little life. What a pity about all those materials. Last time, the materials from one red dragon sold for several hundred gold coins.

This time, I didn't have time to go collect them. Most importantly, one person couldn't carry them all anyway.

After a wail of grief, the red dragon fell from the sky into the valley, causing massive landslides. Only after five minutes did things finally settle down.

I resumed climbing. But I didn't know if it was because of the previous red dragon's death cry; less than ten minutes later, three more red dragons flew over from the sky.

They took turns breathing fire at me as if they had been trained.

If I hadn't had a scientific method to stop combustion from happening, those three dragons taking turns with their breaths were something even a king-tier magician probably couldn't withstand.

After I used Rock Cannon to shoot down one red dragon, the other two red dragons also learned to dodge my attacks.

Red dragons really did have very high intelligence. No wonder they were the strongest race in the Six-Sided World.

When I was two hundred meters from the summit, I was too lazy to keep wasting time with them. After all, there was no reward for winning.

I used earth magic to create a long block of earth from the ground, lifting me up. After reaching the highest point, I used water magic, Water Splash, to create a huge expanse of mist on the mountaintop.

Finally, I used Invisible Wings to leap down from the peak and continued southward all the way.

Because I was flying downward from a very high mountain peak, it was like "wingsuit flying," and the mana consumption was more than half lower than normal flight.

I didn't know exactly how far I had flown, but when I had only twenty percent of my mana left, I chose to land.

I should have already passed the area around Roa and reached the central part of Fittoa Territory.

During this period, there were many poor souls who had been sent away by the Teleportation Incident and then made their way back to Fittoa Territory alone. So a lone person walking across the ground of Fittoa Territory in a hood didn't stand out at all.

Across the vast land, though three years had already passed, the green on the ground was still terribly sparse.

Aside from scattered weeds, it was still the same as it had been three years ago.

If we wanted to rely only on nature's strength to restore this territory, it would probably take around fifty years.

After walking for close to another week, I ran into a merchant caravan. I bought a horse from the caravan, then continued on my Shirone journey.

I was nearly nineteen now, and though I had been rushing east and west these past few days, I had traveled more roads than most adults would in a lifetime.

But on my previous journeys, there had always been several people with me. This should be the first journey I had ever taken alone.

I hadn't felt it when I was climbing through the Red Dragon Mountains before. Maybe it was because things had been more dangerous then, and my nerves had been drawn taut.

Now that I was lying on horseback, I finally realized just how lonely traveling alone was. There wasn't even anyone to talk to. It was truly pitiful.

When I passed Bonn City and the Red Dragon Lower Jaw, I thought of Eris. I was starting to miss them a little!

Starting from Sharia, it took me only half a year to reach Ubon City, the royal capital of the Shirone Kingdom.

Only after arriving here did I discover that this place really did resemble a Southeast Asian country somewhat.

Everyone ate rice, and even their clothing was very similar. I didn't know if it was because the latitude was relatively low, but rainy weather was frequent here, and the air was rather damp.

Ordinary people liked to wear rainproof bamboo hats when they went out. I couldn't really describe the style of the clothes, but they were fairly similar to the clothing Vietnamese farmers used to wear on television.

Ordinary cotton-linen shirts paired with coarse linen trousers.

Most importantly, the people here looked very much like my countrymen, all with yellow skin and rather slender builds. It gave me a sense of closeness.

Ubon City, according to their meaning, was the City of Lotuses. The moat was filled with lotuses.

The houses in the city were also basically two-story buildings, and lodging areas were generally upstairs. It was probably because the local rainfall was heavy, and the first floor often flooded.

I rented a room in a relatively luxurious local inn and began thinking over my rescue plan.

First, I ruled out using my identity to force the Shirone royal family to hand them over. After all, I had left the Prodia Family without saying goodbye. I hadn't informed anyone, hadn't left any letters, and had simply disappeared.

But I also hadn't heard of any forces searching for me over the past few years. I didn't know what my grandfather and parents were thinking. They couldn't think I was dead, could they?

Then basically, my only choice was to infiltrate and find them. I remembered that fat prince, Pax, had created a barrier that made it impossible to use magic. Though I didn't know whether that barrier had the ability to lock down a King-ranked magician like me, caution was still the better part of valor.

I would make some preparations in advance!

First, I went to the Adventurer Guild to gather local intelligence. After pouring a bellyful of the local Tudi Wine into myself, I managed to ask around and learn a great deal.

First of all, each prince of the Shirone Kingdom would form his own personal guard. In reality, these personal guards were Escort Knights recruited from among the people. Anyone with a certain level of strength could sign up.

I prepared to sign up for the personal guard, then slip into this country's royal palace. After confirming Lilia and Aisha's locations, I would directly use flight magic to take the two of them out of this country with me.

That should solve the problem fastest and keep the impact to a minimum.

Very soon, I found the place where the Shirone Kingdom recruited personal guards, and I went to sign up under the name of an advanced swordsman of the Water God Style.

After several rounds of very low-intensity matches, I easily slipped into this country's personal guard organization.

My luck was extremely good, so good it gave me the illusion that everything had been arranged. I was assigned under the name of that fat prince, Pax Shirone.

Sure enough, he was very similar to my impression of him. This fat prince had a bowl cut, a face full of bulging flesh, small eyes, and a big mouth.

To be honest, he looked more like the grandson of my grandfather Darius.

The moment he came up, he asked about my family background. I didn't lie, and very directly told the prince that I came from Loman City in the Donadi Territory of the Asura Kingdom.

I was the son of a minor noble, but I couldn't inherit the family estate, so I had come out to make my way in the world.

I had learned my Water God Style at the Water God Style dojo in Ars, and my name was Dolin Grey.

After saying all that, even I felt there wasn't a single mistake in it. Could it be that I was a natural-born fraud genius?

After Pax Shirone put on airs and analyzed my experiences for a while, he quickly trusted me, and even encouraged me to find a woman in Ubon City and settle down as soon as possible.

It seemed he wasn't very satisfied with my current lone-wolf lifestyle.

Perhaps because he had no leverage over me, I wasn't assigned the task of protecting him. He told me to go watch over prisoners.

That suited me perfectly. While following a colleague to the prison where the prisoners lived, I probed for information.

I asked about the prince's hobbies, and whether there was anything recently that I should be careful about to avoid offending the prince.

The personal guard member leading the way was also very enthusiastic. Along the way, he told me many things in the royal palace that I needed to watch out for, as well as how His Highness the Prince was terribly petty, and how if I found a wife, it was best if she was a little ugly, otherwise he might take a fancy to her and such.

Good grief. No wonder he told me to settle down early. So he was a Cao thief.

After we arrived at the "prison," the personal guard opened the door. Calling it a prison was actually a bit excessive. It was basically just a place like a basement.

Although there was only one door, I didn't see any iron bars or straw on the ground at all. It was rather far from the prison I had imagined.

After entering the dark basement, my colleague lit the oil lamp on the wall. What entered my eyes was a delicate, pitiful little girl. She wore a maid uniform that had been altered smaller, and lay on the ground with barely a breath left in her, as if she were ill.

My colleague saw me staring blankly at that little girl, came over and patted my shoulder, then said:

"Don't worry. She's pretending. Three meals a day are supplied to her normally. Don't be fooled just because she's a child. This kid is actually sharp as a ghost!"

Several guards had been tricked by her before and wanted to take her away to escape.

If her mother had not been locked up somewhere else, she would have vanished without a trace long ago."

Mother, maid, a face from the Asura Kingdom—this was truly searching high and low only to find it without any effort. She was probably Aisha Greyrat. A ruthless person who stole a bite of her own nephew and engaged in a boy-raising plan.

I put on an utterly indifferent look and said to my colleague, "Don't worry. I'm not softhearted enough to be fooled by a child."

Seeing that I did not seem to be lying, my colleague said, "That's good. We'll take turns on shifts. I'll come replace you tonight."

Then he left.

For the half hour after my colleague left, Aisha and I did not say a single word. I just wanted to see how mature this child was. If she really could keep holding back and lie there without moving, I would still admire her quite a bit.

Another silent hour passed. I began to doubt my own judgment. Aisha lay there without moving at all.

Judging from the area near her nose, she should still have been breathing. She did not look like she had fallen asleep either.

I really could not put my mind at ease, so I walked forward and came before Aisha, carefully observing her condition.

I found that her brows were knitted together, her lips were dry and cracked, her face was pale, and she looked utterly drained.

In the end, my heart softened, and I cast a healing spell on her:

The power of the divine is mellow grain. Grant strength to those who have lost their vigor, and let them stand once more—"Healing."

After I cast the healing spell, Aisha seemed as if she had truly recovered. Her eyes opened slightly, tears brimmed at the corners, and she mumbled indistinctly by her lips:

"Mom, Mom, I miss you so much. I don't want to leave you, Mom."

Tears slowly gathered at the corners of her eyes, then slid down.

If this was acting? Then I felt there was nothing in the world that could be called real.

A child of around eight was crying like this right before my eyes. Even if I had been told in advance that this was an act, I would rather be deceived. Besides, I had already planned to take her out in the first place.

I helped Aisha sit up and said to her:

"Little girl, it's all right now. Your mother must still be alive. You have to be strong. Don't give up."

Aisha opened her eyes by a sliver, saw me, and then said in a weak voice:

"Big brother, thank you. I'm truly grateful to you. You're the kindest big brother I've ever met.

Unfortunately, I'm very sleepy right now. I don't have any strength. If I get the chance, I'll definitely repay you."

"It's fine. I've already used healing magic on you. I'll go get you some food. Hurry and eat more, and you'll have strength."

I gently laid her back on the bed and tenderly wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. Then I went out to get food for her.

After I walked out the door, I took a dozen steps toward the cafeteria, then used flying magic to secretly fly back and hid by the window to check the scene in the basement.

About two minutes after I left, I saw Aisha spring up as if nothing had happened. She tiptoed to the door and tried to open it. When she saw that I had locked the door from the outside, she shook her head in disappointment, returned to the bed, crossed her legs, and sat there looking smug and pleased with herself. She was probably happy about her superb acting skills.

Seeing that she was indeed a clever, mischievous little girl, I relaxed as well. This was more like a child, wasn't it? Though this child was a bit too precocious.

After confirming her condition, I flew back to the cafeteria, got the food, and returned to the basement.