Chapter 137 – Red Net (5)

— Now, who’s next to attack? Don’t hesitate too much and raise your hand one by one. Or try them all at once.

Was it because of my mood?
After making eye contact for a moment, Scarlett turned her attention back to the students.
I also continued my business by bringing bags of sugar.
When she returned to the canteen in the evening, she heard unexpected news from Adela.

“Caroline went there?”
“Yes! She said she left something in the basement!”
“Did you by any chance let them in?”
“No?”
“Good job.”

I stroked her frizzy hair.
Adela sometimes shows off and causes terrible disasters to those around her.
However, when it’s really important, I don’t do anything that is inconvenient to me.
So she couldn’t help but be this pretty.

“Teacher, can I go with you tomorrow?”
“Of course. Baron? “Please check the store tomorrow.”

She seemed to be in a good mood because of my praise, and she quietly clung to me and said,
I looked back at Liv for a moment and asked.
She looked somewhat displeased, but since she had me all to herself for the day, she reluctantly nodded, saying yes.
I was very happy to see them taking a step back like this recently.
It was a peace maintained by a delicate balance between forces.

Next day.
While baking dalgona in the same spot, I ran into a problem.

“Adella, what if I eat all the food I make?”
“It’s delicious.”

As if she wasn’t afraid of her teeth rotting, she started to glance at Dalgona, avoiding my busy eyes.
Unlike Liv, who was able to make dalgona skillfully after several attempts, she kept burning it and eating it.

“The fire is too strong. 〈 Utterance 〉 is a top tier magic, so why do you keep failing?”
“I’m only good at using ice magic. “It got worse after I learned the unique magic.”
‘I don’t think I’m using that properly either…’

When she broke more than five ladles, I asked her to do something else.
They gave us a mold made by bending a thin iron plate and told us to stamp the shape on the finished Dalgona.

“Take pictures of what the customers in front want. “If you bring it back in the form of success, I’ll give you one more.”
“Yes.”

Then a moment later.
While I was making dalgona, I heard a strange conversation next to me.

“Excuse me… “I asked for a square.”
“You don’t like ice duck? What don’t you like? Please tell me. “Please speak clearly with this cute duck in front of me.”
“Oh, no. I’ll just take it…”

I’m going around.

Thanks to Adela, who keeps making ice duck molds and handing them out to customers, the number of people who are successful in drawing has decreased.
Because duck shapes are more difficult to make than triangles or squares.
She even bent the iron plate to perfectly create detailed fur expressions.
I never imagined that the engraved lines on a lump of sugar would have such detail that it was close to art.

‘Now that I think about it, I was surprisingly good at drawing.’

In the past, I showed off my skills when the salon was in full swing.
It is said that Satan’s Gate, which Adela painted in oil at that time, still hangs at the entrance of the art club, which had been turned into a devil worship club.

In fact, isn’t it the world that is wrong, not Adela?
She was perfect from the beginning.

“Teacher?”
“… “I’ll come back after getting some air.”

Did she smell like burnt sugar?
Suddenly, her head started to hurt, so I left Adela in charge of the stall for a while and went to a corner of the building to take a break and took out her cigarette.
It was a cigarette I received from Caroline not long ago.
Perhaps because it was made from dried tobacco leaves that only grow in Seongguk, I felt like the strange thoughts I had heard a while ago were completely gone.

“Hey.”

In addition, an illusion of Caroline can be seen through the smoke.
It wasn’t a mistake.
There is no way there are two people in the academy with those enormous pockets of divine power——

“Double body, did you drink the medicine? “Why aren’t you answering?”
“Caroline?”
“I’ve been looking for it for a while. You wasted money at the canteen twice yesterday and today. What are you doing here?”

It was the real Caroline.

***

“What’s going on?”
“I asked first.”

I greeted her with her slightly wary attitude.
This is because it didn’t look good to try to find out not only my identity but also the secrets of the basement through Adela.

“I’m just doing business.”
“What are you selling?”
“You can see it at the stall over there. Check it.”
“… Hey.”
“Huh?”

But when my voice became brusque, she suddenly became intimidated and started glancing at her almost finished cigarette.
As if projecting oneself onto a completely smoked cigarette butt.

“You don’t like me?”
“What… ?”
“You got a kiss, so you’re just throwing it away?”

The weather suddenly became cold, and the chilly autumn wind passed through my body.
There were gloomy clouds and the sky looked like it was going to rain at any moment.

“Sniff! Hey… You shouldn’t do that to me. I’m putting up with the fact that I ended up like this because of you…”

A small twinkle appears in Caroline’s eyes as she cries.
The Heretic Questioner who had called me a fool just a moment ago was nowhere to be seen.
It was clearly a corner wall with no one around, but a few passers-by happened to see me and whisper.

— Oh my, look over there. It looks like they came to the festival and started fighting.
— A woman is crying? Didn’t the man do something wrong?
— They say there’s something wrong with my body… I guess they made me pregnant.
– Also… Trash.
— Kate? Do you know someone?

I walked over to her and tried to calm her down as her shoulders began to shake.
She was usually the calm me.
However, as the images of the saint and the crying image overlapped in my mind, my heart began to pound and tighten.

“No, I’m not abandoning you… !”
“Then you hate it?”
“Not even that… “Try to calm down.”
“Then… I like you?”

At that time, there was a radiance in Caroline’s eyes as she looked over her bangs.
Seonghwi, 〈Question of Truth〉.
However, I was so embarrassed that I just nodded without even having time to think about it.

“Yes? What… “I like it.”
“Really… ? “Then do me a favor.”
“Okay, so don’t cry.”

I reflexively handed her the broken dalgona from my pocket that I had made earlier and said,
Caroline, who was dazed for a moment after receiving it, suddenly straightened her back and muttered to the sky.

“It’s enough now. Thank you.”
“?”
“You said you would do me a favor, right? “Then let me meet the princess.”

Caroline to Arzebet?
No, was that sniffling just a moment ago just acting?

“Are you fooling me now?”
“Who cheated? “This is more delicious than that.”

I watched Caroline’s back as she walked away, chewing on a dalgona.
Even in the red season when maple leaves fall from the sky, her hair with its sunlight shines so brightly that I cannot take my eyes off her.

“How much is one? “I want to stock up on something to eat when I’m craving something sweet.”
“…”
“Louis?”
“50 gold…”

I felt around my chest to check if the necklace under my clothes was working properly.
The necklace was not broken.

‘Is it broken?’

***

I asked him to arrange a meeting with Erzsebet, but surprisingly, there wasn’t much Louis could do.
Recently, Erzébet has been increasingly absent from her school events or classes.
It was exactly after he returned from Skandal, and he seemed to be busy with state affairs.
First, Caroline, who had heard the location of the student council room, avoided answering when he asked her why.

“… “It’s not something to talk about now.”

He said he would tell me later and leaned back on the simple chair.
And she gently closed her eyes, smelling the sweet smell next to Lewis, who was making dalgona.
I felt people’s eyes on me, but I didn’t really care anymore.

She was a body with no place to focus her eyes.
The chest and silence followed reveal a beauty that cannot be hidden behind the arbitrarily modified priest’s uniform.
I thought the body scent was a bit excessive, but I gave up.
No matter which painter who is famous in the royal capital is brought in, one would praise him as having sculpted the ultimate form of beauty by God.

‘That’s actually true, damn it.’

Anyway, I didn’t care what other people thought.
But Lewis, who was next to me, didn’t seem to think so.

“If it’s cold, cover with this.”

Caroline felt more than grateful but also dumbfounded when the empty sugar bag suddenly flew over her body.
Did you throw this out of consideration?
It is made of dense hemp fiber and could be used as a blanket by street adventurers, but it is truly unusual for covering a woman’s body.

“Why are you turning your head?”
“… Stop paying attention and bake those sugar cookies. “Customers are waiting.”

But the consideration was not unpleasant.
Rather, to calm down the corners of her mouth that kept rising, Caroline averted her eyes towards the Ammon Stadium.

Peaceful Parencia with a noisy atmosphere.
She suddenly wished with all her heart that this time would never end.

“By the way, where has Adella gone without even saying a word?”

However, Caroline was startled when she heard Lewis muttering while baking her dalgona, and she shook his shoulder.

“Hey! “Isn’t this the Adela Sylvester you were talking about?”
“Huh? Who?”
“Excuse me! “Right in front of the five-colored ball!!”
“Crazy…”

In the direction Caroline pointed to, there was Adella waving her hand on top of the Dube Magic Tower stadium.
The customer who had been waiting the longest handed money to Lewis, who was dumbfounded and didn’t know what was going on.

“A little while ago, I heard from another student about the rewards that could be earned through sparring, and I ran out.”
“Compensation? “Are you going to be scouted after graduation?”
“No, the magic tower. When I told you that if you defeat Five Colors, she can become the owner of the Dube Magic Tower, you attacked me right away, right?”
“…”

What is the biggest shortcoming of Roshoar, the so-called ruler of the North?
The point is that they did not build a magic tower that could be said to be a culmination of the study of magic and to train younger students.
The reincarnation artist, the five-colored artist, the gourmet artist, and even the illusionist who had been vacant for several years each had a magic tower as their base, but Roshoar had no interest in anything other than dealing with demons.
Adella told Liv that the only thing she was pushed into was the Magic Tower, so she left to get what she wanted.

“I’ll be back for a bit. “I’m selling some dalgona.”
“Well, that’s not the problem! What are you going to do… !”
“Anyway, I have to bring him.”
“I think it’s already too late…”

At the stadium, Scarlett, hearing Adela’s name, slightly tightened the corners of her eyes and soon began to cast her magic.
It happened before Lewis even set foot on his feet.
Everyone in the audience covered their eyes from the tremendous heat and light.
And right away——

Kwaaaaang———!!!

The Five Colors Gong (Five Colors Gong).
In keeping with that meaning, the five-colored, brilliant elemental light gathered in both hands and radiated towards Adella.