Star-Embracing Swordmaster - Chapter 277
Kihano Side Story – Suspicious Village (1)
The child’s chubby cheeks were cute.
Even the eyes moving back and forth following Kihano’s hand.
Even Quijano, who was tempting the child by waving eye candy and telling him to look here, couldn’t stop laughing at the plain appearance.
“So you keep hearing strange noises at night these days?”
“……huh.”
“It’s a sound that adults can’t hear, but only you and your friends can hear.”
“Yes.”
The bright eyes were still focused on the candy Quijano was holding, but the child’s outstretched fingers were now pointing towards the hill above.
Head towards the windmill standing on the village hill with your long arms hanging down.
“That windmill. “Someone keeps crying over there.”
“…Are you crying?”
“huh. I’m crying. “Windmills every night.”
When the child said that windmills cry, Jan next to him began to tilt his head as if he couldn’t understand.
However, Kihano’s eyes remained calm as he listened to the child’s words.
“I told you everything… Can you please give me some candy now?”
After finishing speaking, the child spread both hands towards Quijano as if asking for candy.
Kihano let go of the eye candy he was holding after seeing his cute appearance.
While the child smiled broadly as he looked at the eye candy placed in his hand, Quijano quietly began to bend his back.
“The windmill cries.”
There is a rumor about a windmill that can be heard crying every night.
However, since only children heard it, it was a rumor that everyone easily ignored, but now Quijano’s eyes became serious.
“…Now, five people have said the same thing.”
That’s because the children’s testimony was exactly the same.
No matter how young children are, if they hear the same thing over and over again five times, it will inevitably become testimony worth listening to.
‘But that wizard told me not to come near the windmill.’
However, the grim-looking wizard I met yesterday told me not to even go near the windmill.
It gives off a strange vibe that may be advice or warning.
Thinking back to that incident, Kihano bit down on the last bit of eye candy and began to fall into deep thought.
※※※※
“Anyway, I hope you don’t come near the windmill.”
For a quiet village, the village chief’s house was quite well built.
In order to build a house like this, you would think that he must have been highly popular or had to put in a lot of effort.
“It’s good to research witches, but it would be nice to avoid that area at least.”
However, the person who greeted Quijano here now was not the village chief, but a completely different person.
A man with a bleak appearance wearing a robe with colorful embroidery.
The middle-aged man, who looked like a wizard just by looking at his clothes, looked interested as he looked at Quijano, who had just arrived.
“What we’re doing here is an experiment that requires some level of security. So, I hope you understand.”
The tone of voice was full of elegance, as if he had learned well.
In addition, there is an expensive-looking robe that an ordinary person would not be able to easily wear.
Even Quijano would have been mistaken for a formal person if it weren’t for the two feet draped loosely on the table.
“Well… if you do that much, I won’t really care about what you do.”
The collector next to him was shocked by the rude behavior, but the man’s attitude towards Quijano was very calm.
A man who does not waver at all even when faced with the noble name of Frausen.
He, who identified himself as Samonte, greeted Quijano as if this was his land.
“It can’t be helped since this is an experiment directly supervised by the Dragulia family.”
“You are a young man of quick understanding.”
However, no matter how rude the man in front of me was, I had no choice but to bow my head before the name Dragulia.
Even if they were not dragons, they could not carelessly mistreat those who carried out their name.
“I wonder what kind of experiment is going on in this small town, but that’s all I have to cooperate with.”
“yes.”
However, the man standing in front of Samonte now is the famous bastard of the Frausen family.
Perhaps, if he had been careful in his actions during this time, the word ‘bastard’ would not have been added to Quijano’s name.
“But it’s quite elaborate. “In the village watched over by the Dragullia family, a witch that is rare to find appears.”
“…….”
“If this were all a coincidence, it would be truly amazing.”
Frausen’s son, who was pretending to smile but not smiling, and the wizard of Dragullia, who still had his stern expression on his face.
Jan felt like he was suffocating at the uncomfortable atmosphere these two were creating.
※※※※
“I followed Kihano for no reason . I guess he came…”
On the way back to the inn from earlier after leaving the village chief’s house.
Jan, who was walking while pulling a small donkey, began to call out to Quijano in front of him in an anxious voice.
“If I keep doing this, I won’t get caught too, right? “He is from Dragulia.”
It seems that Jan was quite uneasy about what had just happened.
In fact, for a boy who had only lived in a rural village, the scene just happened was bound to be a shock.
“…Yes, it’s Dragullia.”
“yes?”
“But why was Dragulia using an excommunicated wizard?”
However, Yan’s voice could not be heard in the ears of Quihano, who was walking ahead. He
was just lost in his own world and thinking over and over again.
“That’s a wizard from a fallen family in the south. Was he in that much of a hurry?”
“…Kihano-sama? What are you saying now?”
The atmosphere of Quijano, who was constantly muttering to himself, seemed somewhat unfamiliar.
He seemed completely different from anything Jan had seen before.
“A fallen family from the south. What does all this mean?”
“what?”
“No, you just said that. Someone was excommunicated.”
Quijano had been lost in thought for a while.
When he saw Jan with his eyes wide open, the expression on his face began to return as if he had come to his senses.
“Samonte was the one who was excommunicated.”
“……yes?”
Quihano suddenly started talking incomprehensibly.
Seeing him like that, Jan couldn’t hide his confusion.
“That person was excommunicated? Did he say something like that earlier?”
“I don’t know what to say. You just know it when you see it.”
Looking at Quijano answering so calmly, Jan wondered what on earth this meant. He was the son of a
fallen family from the south, and he was an excommunicated wizard.
That kind of information had to be heard in words, so how could it be known just by looking at it?
“…. ..I have no idea what Kihano is talking about right now.”
“You saw it too. The robe that Samonte was wearing.”
“Why the robe?”
Quijano frowned as he looked at Jan, who was still just wandering around. His
eyes looked as if he was asking why he couldn’t recognize it.
“It was a robe with very ornate embroidery. That type of ornate pattern is mainly popular in the South.”
“yes.”
“And the boots you’re wearing are shiny, right? That means they’ve already been waterproofed, but the only people in the southern region who take care of their boots that way are the ones with a lot of wetlands.”
“iced coffee.”
Even though he saw the same person in the same place, the information he captured was bound to be different.
It was because of Quijano’s keen observational skills from birth.
“From what I’ve heard, it seems like he’s from the South. But what does it mean to be a fallen aristocrat? are you?”
“The ring he was wearing was a family signet ring, only used by nobles. But it had a pattern I had never seen before, so it could be said to belong to a family that fell into ruin at least a generation ago.”
When on earth did he even see the ring during that short meeting?
Jan was just cowering in the oppressive atmosphere created by the man named Samonte, so what Quijano said now was just surprising. “
Besides, your clothes were all worn out. Your personality. “He seems to be very sensitive and takes good care of his clothes, but the fact that he is still wearing old clothes means that his pocketbook is in trouble.”
“…So what do you mean, you’re an excommunicated wizard?”
Each time he heard each one, Jan’s eyes began to sparkle more and more as Quijano’s reasoning sounded plausible.
Then, when Jan looked at him wondering how he could have found out that he had been excommunicated, this time, Quijano shrugged his shoulders as if he had nothing to say. He shrugged.
“…I didn’t know that either.”
“yes?”
Quijano just said that a wizard named Samonte was excommunicated, but he doesn’t know the reason.
Jan was confused as he looked at Quijano like that, but someone other than Quijano was giving him the answer.
“It smells bad . “I did it.”
An old man’s sharp voice was heard from inside Quihano’s arms.
It was a frog that kept blinking its eyes, as if it was stuffy
inside where it was hiding. “There were a lot of mysteries that shouldn’t be revealed around that guy. It was so rotten that I couldn’t come to my senses. “It was.”
A frog crawled up to Quijano’s shoulder with a small cone-shaped hat on its head.
The frog, who had been named Andrew when he was human, started scratching his head with his hind legs as if he was disgusted just thinking about it. “It seems like it might be the
black magic that is spreading among wizards these days. If the mystery had been that bad, the excommunication would have probably been done a long time ago.”
Yan’s expression began to look awkward, as if this was his first time hearing the word “black magic” even though he had heard of the word “magic.” However, the atmosphere given was
enough to know that the word “black” in front of it meant something ominous. “ What
on earth is going on in this town? I don’t know if I’ve gotten caught up in something for nothing.”
At first, it was just a trip to be forgiven for the rudeness I had committed.
However, when I arrived at this place, it was a very strange village haunted by witches and a suspicious wizard. While
walking through the village, Quijano looked at the increasingly dark sky of Consuegra and saw a small I started clicking my tongue with the sound.
※※※※
Now it was completely dark, so I couldn’t even see a shadow at the windmill on the hill.
Inside the most recently built windmill, dozens of wizards were still moving around busily, with faint light streaming in between the windows. “ …
It looks like Baron Turlec made a mistake in his appointment.”
And the highest point of the windmill. The place where the wings hang.
Samonte, who was quietly contemplating the previous incident in his workshop provided there, still seemed to be bothered by the irreverent attitude shown by the young man named Quijano. “Or,” he said
. “Did the Frausen family force it into you?”
They don’t know who it is, but the experiment has been delayed thanks to an unknown woman who keeps interfering with them.
They asked them to send a useful knight to catch her, but the person who actually arrived was not a knight from Turlec, and the blood was still dry on their heads. It was Frausen’s son of a bitch.
“This has become a pain in the ass.” “There’s still a mountain of work to do.”
Samonte began to moan softly, pressing his temples as if he was in real pain.
Samonte has been receiving support from Dragulia for the reconstruction of his fallen family and the success of new experiments.
But now, as the time to show the results approached, the feeling of anxiety was gradually showing itself in a corner of his mind.
“…So go ahead and cry. “You nasty guy.”
The only thing Samonte can hope for is a small snake inside a flask.
-……!……!
Inside the flask that Samonte was holding was a young snake.
A snake so small that it can’t even fit the palm of an adult’s hand.
This guy is constantly hissing as if he is telling Samonte to let go of his hand as he looks at him.
The young snake, which had not even grown yet and had sharp teeth, was all white like the moon rising in the night sky.