Chapter Thirty-Two: You’re Courting Death!

Miona was furious, truly furious. Of course, there wasn’t any great reason—it was simply because Ruby had failed to keep a promise he’d made to her. Ruby had become so absorbed in crafting a new product that he’d completely forgotten. Such things happened all the time in daily life, and Miona’s little outburst was nothing unusual. It certainly wasn’t because she was upset that Ruby valued his research more than her.

“Are you mad?” Ruby approached Miona with an amused look, asking the question. It was almost laughable—here she was, an adult acting like a sulking schoolgirl over something so trivial. For the moment, he had no idea how to placate her.

“Hmph!” Miona snorted heavily, turning her head away to ignore him.

“Fine, fine, I won’t talk to you.” Ruby, sensing her mood, quietly left her side and took some money to go buy ingredients. Whenever the two of them ate together, it was always quick and easy; grocery shopping had become part of their daily routine.

“Woman, aren’t you getting more and more willful lately?” Dracon, for once, was not perched atop Ruby’s head but instead stood on the table, addressing Miona.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Think about it—were you always this petty? Would you have gotten angry over something so trivial before?”

“I suppose not…” Miona thought for a moment and denied it. It seemed she only ever became emotional in front of Ruby. As for the reason, she neither knew nor cared to know.

“So, what do you see yourself as, living with my partner? His lover? A friend? His creditor?”

“Why are you suddenly asking me this?” The question stumped Miona. She had no idea how long she intended to keep living with Ruby; she only knew that life with him was carefree and full of joy, and she didn’t want to give that up.

“I’m just reminding you—my partner is a strange one. He’s not so much used to loneliness as he is chasing after it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not human—my mind works differently. I could spend centuries staring at the sky in silence, but people aren’t like that. Try staying in the same place for three days without speaking to another soul—it’s far more painful than you imagine.

“I noticed him the very first day he arrived in this world. I’ve been quietly observing him ever since. He could have moved to Delis, but stubbornly stayed here. As long as he had enough to eat, he could go a whole month without talking to another person, spending all his time holed up in his room tinkering with his projects. That’s not normal, is it? The last survivor from another world—such a title is far heavier than you think.”

Dracon recounted many things about Ruby, and it was precisely his loneliness that compelled Dracon to reach out to him. The rewards for doing so, of course, had been beyond anything he could have imagined.

“…After all that, what are you trying to say?”

Miona fell silent for a long while. Were it not for Dracon’s reminder, she would have forgotten how Ruby had come into her life. After all he’d been through, she wondered if he would ever truly hold her in his heart.

“It’s nothing important. Just a warning that you might lose my partner without even realizing it.”

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“So, where are we going?” Ruby had no idea that Dracon and Miona were discussing him. At the moment, he faced a serious crisis: both hands were bound behind him by vines, and three great magicians were keeping a close watch on him.

“To the delivery site,” answered the leader curtly. The man looked vicious, a great scar running from his left eye all the way down to his chin. His two companions called him One-Eye.

“So, I’ve become cargo now. Why kidnap me?” Ruby asked with a sigh. This was the very definition of bad luck. He’d just finished shopping for groceries in Delis and was on his way home when he was caught by this trio. As for their reason, he couldn’t begin to guess.

“Probably because you don’t have any magic,” One-Eye replied. He was quite mystified by Ruby’s body; after checking several times, he confirmed the man truly had no magic power at all. In this world, magic was life itself—if someone had not a trace of it, it was as good as being dead. Yet this man lived perfectly well.

It was only because Ruby lived in a small place like Delis that he didn’t stand out. Had he been in the imperial capital, the old magicians would have come by daily to study his body. In this small town, people merely gossiped about the young man without magic over their tea. But this detail had been noticed by a passing dark magician, and once he learned of it, he issued a mission to capture Ruby.

“You’re snatching food from a tiger’s mouth here. Just let me go,” Ruby advised kindly. He didn’t believe they’d actually succeed in delivering him. As for Miona, her temper aside, she was fiercely protective—if anything happened to him, she’d be the first to hunt these men down. Even Dracon would be too much for them to handle.

“You mean the Tier Three beast, Earth Tiger? I wouldn’t be afraid of ten thousand of those!” One-Eye had no idea who really stood behind Ruby and paid his words no heed. Still, Ruby’s calmness seemed odd for a hostage, so One-Eye tried to frighten him further.

“You don’t seem nervous at all. You realize the one who issued the mission is a dark magician from the Black Mage Church? Those people kill without blinking and conduct all kinds of living experiments.”

Dark magicians were, in essence, wicked mages. All magicians knew that magic itself was neither good nor evil—take fireball: used properly, it could light a fire; used wrongly, it could take a life. Magic had both sides.

Dark magic was different. Created solely for killing, such as curses—spells that could only inflict suffering on other magicians. From the moment they were conceived, these spells bore malice. Those who devoted themselves to such arts were known as dark magicians.

“There’s nothing to fear. My life was already won back once. I doubt they’ll do much to me even if they catch me—at worst, I’ll just be locked up as a research subject,” Ruby said with confidence. As the world’s only specimen of his kind, he was sure they wouldn’t harm him easily—not before they’d finished their studies.

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“Up ahead is the teleportation circle. We can’t let you know its exact location, so you’ll have to take a little nap first.” One-Eye led Ruby near the teleportation array, intending to knock him out. Dark magicians, always on the move across the empires, had set up many such circles for their own safety, and there happened to be one nearby.

“Stone Magic—Stone Fist!” As One-Eye summoned his power, his fist began to transform, yellow rock forming around it. This was not a generic spell but an innate talent—some magicians were born with unique gifts, perhaps from a mutation in their bloodline, allowing them to perform magic regular magicians could not. One-Eye was one of these lucky few; he could turn his whole body to stone at will, greatly increasing his defense.

Once his fist was fully transformed, he swung at Ruby’s head, seeking to knock him out in one blow. Ruby, unable to dodge, was struck down easily—blood from a split brow streaming down his face.

“That won’t work. There’s bone behind the forehead. If you want to knock someone out, aim for the back of the head—here. Use just enough force to render them unconscious; too much and you’ll kill them,” Ruby advised, struggling to his feet despite the blow, and began instructing One-Eye on how to properly knock someone out. It was for his own good—he didn’t want to be struck again.

One-Eye was speechless. He began to wonder if Ruby was even human. Not only did he not scream, but he was now teaching his captor how to knock him out. What was wrong with this picture? Still, he stubbornly struck Ruby’s forehead again, this time with just the right force to render him unconscious.

“One-Eye, is he dead?” asked his colleague, Gale. With all the blood on Ruby’s face, he looked dead, and Gale worried their mission had failed.

“No, I was careful,” One-Eye replied, a seasoned old hand. He knew that while Ruby looked worse for wear, he’d simply lost a bit of blood—his life was not in danger. Still, to be safe, he prepared to heal him, but before he could cast a spell, he was startled by a figure descending from the sky: Miona, who, unable to wait for Ruby to return, had come searching for him.

“Ru…by?” Miona stared blankly at Ruby, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. It felt as if something inside her had snapped, and her magic surged out of control in a wild storm.

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