"It's quite pretty."
Kroya was very curious about the Moonlight Dewgrass and looked it over a few more times. But as he gazed at it, an uncontrollable desire suddenly welled up inside him.
He knew perfectly well where that desire came from-it was the original owner's longing for it. That very desire had driven the original owner to sign the contract and ultimately gotten him killed.
It was greed.
To be honest, everyone felt greed, but he instinctively felt that this desire had appeared far too suddenly, almost inexplicably.
In fact, thinking back carefully now, the process by which the original owner had signed the contract with Stein was riddled with things that felt wrong.
Take the simplest example.
A fifth-level magic plant. Would Stein really stake a treasure of that caliber just because he was jealous of the original owner, using it to lure him into signing a contract?
No matter how fond Mage Zell was of him, surely he would not go that far.
How many first-level mages' lives could a single fifth-level magic plant buy?
And had the original owner never thought twice about it? Had he truly believed someone stupid enough to wager a fifth-level magic plant?
Something was wrong on both sides.
Very strange.
Kroya recalled the faint sensation he had felt while casting Symphony and controlling mana alongside the Orpheus Swan Recorder Tree.
Something on Zell had resonated with his mana. Otherwise, killing a level-four mage would have taken a little more effort.
Could it really be that old cliché... the original owner had some treasure, and killing him outright would attract too much attention, so they exiled him instead?
He thought that guess was quite plausible.
*Looks like I'll have to interrogate Stein properly later. If I'd known, I would have used Symphony