Chapter 512 – On the Brink of Death

It was officially announced in the Royal Capital that the Crown Prince, who had been accompanying the Saint’s party through the kingdom, had been suddenly recalled because of illness.

If brainwashing was treated as an illness of the mind, then the announcement wasn’t entirely false.

It must have been a painful decision for the royal family.

If what Prince Fleue had said was correct, then within a few days the Crown Prince would probably step down from his position on the grounds of illness.

After that, he would likely be confined to a tower under the pretext of receiving treatment.

Their conversation with Prince Fleue had been grim, though the prince had at least been happy to hear that Tauro and his companions intended to continue adventuring.

That made it even harder for Tauro to leave the Royal Capital while Fleue was dealing with such a crisis.

“Should we… stay in the capital a little longer?”

Aeris gently made the suggestion after noticing Tauro’s unease.

The two were walking through the streets of the Royal Capital after leaving the castle.

“Maybe… Would that be all right? We should talk to the others first, though. I wonder where the three of them are right now.”

Tauro was referring to Ragune, Ankh, and Zion.

Aeris had a spell that allowed her to sense the approximate locations of her party members.

“Give me a moment… [Mana Detection].”

Aeris raised her ebony staff toward the sky and cast the spell.

Her magical power spread across the capital in ripples like waves on water.

“Huh? I can’t sense Ragune at all… Maybe she went back to the Dragonfolk Village. Zion’s magical power is faint too. She’s somewhere in the city, but… it feels like an unusually open place with no houses nearby. Ankh’s presence is weak as well… He seems to be near the tavern district, on a side street or perhaps in a small plaza. …No, something is wrong! Tauro, I’ll go to Zion! You go to Ankh!”

Realizing that something was wrong with their companions’ magical signatures, Aeris immediately divided the search between them.

There was an inn at the corner of the street, with several horses being kept beside it.

“R-right! Let’s borrow horses there! Pella, just to be safe, go with Aeris and protect her!”

Pella, the Slime Emperor familiar that had been disguised as Tauro’s belt, released its disguise at its master’s command, sprang upward, and landed on Aeris’s shoulder.

They paid the innkeeper generously to borrow two horses, mounted at once, and galloped toward the places where Aeris had sensed Ankh and Zion.

A few hours earlier—

Ragune and Zion had been shopping together on Sewing Street in the Royal Capital.

“Ragune, don’t you think this one is cute?”

Zion held up a cute, frilly outfit that had nothing to do with adventuring and placed it against herself to see how it looked.

“It suits you, Zion.”

Ragune smiled approvingly—and then it happened.

From deeper inside the shop, Zion could see Ragune near the entrance. For the briefest instant, she thought she saw a shadow appear behind her.

It was there for only an instant—so quickly that Zion almost doubted what she had seen.

In the next instant, both the fleeting shadow and Ragune vanished from where they had been standing.

“Huh?”

Zion blinked, unable to believe what had just happened.

She hurriedly put the clothes she had been holding onto a nearby shelf and ran to the front of the shop.

“Ragune!? Where are you!?”

She looked up and down the street, but Ragune was nowhere to be seen.

Then Zion saw fresh blood on the ground.

The stains looked as though they had been spilled only moments earlier.

Zion knew instinctively that the blood belonged to Ragune.

As she stared in shock at the crimson drops, something hot struck her back, followed immediately by searing pain tearing through her entire body.

“Ah!”

By the time Zion cried out, she was already standing in the middle of what looked like an empty lot far from Sewing Street.

Pain flared through her back. When she reached behind herself, her fingers touched the hilt of a dagger buried in her body.

The pain was quickly followed by numbness spreading through every limb.

Her knees gave way, and she collapsed to the ground.

When she looked behind her, she saw a hooded figure standing there.

“Stay here. I still have to finish off the other one.”

The voice clearly belonged to a man.

With that, he vanished into thin air.

“…T-teleportation…?”

Unable to endure the numbness spreading through her body, Zion collapsed completely.

At the same time, Ragune’s ordeal had begun the instant she sensed a presence and murderous intent behind her outside the clothing shop. A sharp pain tore into her side.

In the next instant, she found herself inside what appeared to be an abandoned building.

A dagger was lodged deep in her side.

She coughed up blood and dropped to one knee.

For a split second she caught sight of a shadow behind her, but it immediately vanished again.

“The dagger is coated with a deadly paralytic poison…”

Ragune recognized it at once from the numbness and pain coursing through her body.

She understood instinctively that remaining there meant certain death. The attacker would undoubtedly return.

Knowing she didn’t have much time, Ragune immediately opened [Dimensional Corridor] and threw herself through it.

Back in the empty lot, Zion lay face down and immediately began healing herself.

The strange paralytic poison made it difficult to gather magical power, but Zion had endured similar conditions during her training in the Dragon’s Den at the Dragonfolk Village. She could still act.

About a minute passed while she concentrated entirely on healing herself. Then she suddenly sensed a presence nearby again.

A pair of boots entered her blurred field of vision.

“Well, well… I turn my back for fifteen seconds, and the dying lizard woman I locked in that abandoned building disappears. I didn’t get to finish her off, but in that condition she won’t get far.”

Hearing that, Zion immediately knew he was talking about Ragune.

“Hmm? You can still heal yourself after taking my special paralysis poison? Impressive. Just like that dragonfolk woman earlier, you have quite an ability. But… too bad. This time I’ll make sure you stay down.”

With those words, the man drove another dagger into Zion’s back.

“Ahh!”

Even through the numbness, Zion felt the excruciating pain and let out a small cry.

“My master told me to make you suffer, but I still have three more targets. You can die quickly.”

The man ripped the dagger from Zion’s back and then plunged it into her chest, aiming straight for her heart.

The light rapidly faded from Zion’s eyes.

“…Tauro-sama…”

Her hand reached weakly forward, then fell lifelessly to the ground.

“Next target… the man in the tavern district.”

Apparently uninterested in Zion’s death, the man muttered the location of his next target, Ankh, and vanished from the scene once more.

A few seconds later—

Thump.

Zion’s heart began beating again.

A special ability she had prepared on herself in advance—one she had never thought she would actually need—had activated.

Thanks to it, she was still alive.

Barely. She was still dying.

At this rate, death was only a matter of time.

She had shifted the position of her heart at the last instant and avoided immediate death, but she had been stabbed deeply in three places and was losing a tremendous amount of blood.

Zion quickly used her ability to stop the bleeding, but she knew it wouldn’t last long.

As her consciousness faded, Zion chose the only way she could think of to survive even a little longer: she induced a state of suspended animation and closed her eyes.