Chapter 10: Misguided Desire (2)

After Brandy left, Lucas, alone in the cabin, felt his insides twist.

Lucas, who had restrained himself from using his superhuman strength to strangle the man, was pouring all his effort into suppressing the magic power that threatened to burst out.

‘What a despicable guy… How dare he lay a hand on me?’

The man examined Lucas from head to toe, then smiled contentedly and led him out of the cabin by the hand.

Lucas, almost running to keep up with the man’s quick pace, was almost out of breath.

‘What a thoughtless human brat!’

Just as Lucas, cursing his short legs, was about to give up, the man stopped in the middle of the forest.

“Heh… Kid… Now you can go to a good place…”

With the man’s words, Lucas, his eyes wide open, squeezed out the last of his patience to endure the situation.

‘I wish I could send you to that good place right now.’

The man raised his hand and shot a beam of light into the sky.

After a while, people began to gather around the two. They were all wearing the same dark red robes.

“Looks like we have a high-quality offering.”

“Indeed, it does.”

“How many times has it been… I hope this time it succeeds.”

As the people who saw Lucas began to comment, the man who had brought him spoke.

“It was… hard to get…”

The word ‘offering’ made Lucas’s brows furrow.

‘How dare these despicable humans call this body an offering!’

He wanted to kill all the humans in front of him right away.

But he had to hold back. He couldn’t give Aman, who was watching the situation with a transparency spell, an easy target.

When the man let go of his hand, figures began to surround Lucas.

‘One, two, three… a total of eight.’

Lucas, counting the number of humans surrounding him, thought to himself.

Eight humans. It wasn’t a particularly impressive number.

Eight for an offering. It seemed rather small.

‘There might be more elsewhere.’

After finishing his calculations, Lucas put on an innocent expression and began to observe the humans.

Although he didn’t have the ability to measure magic power, he had lived for five thousand years.

He was confident he could tell which human was the highest in rank just by looking around.

‘None. There’s no one here who looks like the leader.’

Lucas’s guess was correct. There was no one here who looked like the leader or even a mid-level officer.

They seemed to be just low-level members of the organization.

“Shall we begin?”

“If this succeeds, we’ll finally get our positions as promised.”

“Yes, if that happens… it would be great… hehehe…”

As the people finished speaking, they each took their positions and began to chant a spell, with Lucas in the center.

Lucas knew very well what spell they were chanting.

‘Black magic. Offering their souls for something… humans never change, do they?’

The spell they were chanting was a black magic that extracted and trapped souls.

Whenever humans used souls for something, this damn magic always appeared.

As they chanted halfway through, Lucas began to feel uneasy.

A magic circle was being drawn on the ground, and Aman should have appeared by now to wipe them out, but there was no sign of Aman.

‘Can’t you tell what spell they’re chanting just by looking at their mouth movements?’

Aman would have recognized the spell they were chanting even before the magic circle was drawn.

But Aman still hadn’t shown up.

When the magic circle was 70% complete, Lucas’s unease grew.

‘Why isn’t that crazy lizard showing up yet?!”

If he wanted to investigate the surroundings, he could have used a detection spell to find out if there were more people, but he wouldn’t have gone looking for more people on foot.

80%.

Lucas’s pupils began to tremble slightly.

‘If this is completed, I’ll be left as an empty shell with my soul sucked out?!’

90%.

‘Damn it!!! Then there’s no reincarnation or anything?!’

95%.

That was his limit. He raised his hand high and gathered mana.

‘Don’t you dare die!!’

The mana gathered at Lucas’s fingertips finally exploded.

-BOOM!!!

With a deafening roar, the ground shook, and the people chanting the spell were all flung away, gasping for breath.

-Clap, clap, clap

Hearing the applause from behind, Lucas, standing on the incomplete magic circle, was filled with anger.

“Of course! Our wise Lucas! I knew you could handle it on your own!”

“Damn you!!!”

-BOOM!

In the end, Lucas couldn’t hold back the anger he had been suppressing.

Aman, who had casually deflected the magic shot from Lucas’s hand with one hand, smiled contentedly.

“It seems you have a lot of power. I almost got blown away too.”

Aman, brushing his hand over his chest, saw a torrent of curses pour out of Lucas’s mouth.

“Damn you, you son of a bitch. I was about to be left as an empty shell with my soul sucked out, and you’re spouting such bullshit? Huh?”

Despite the torrent of curses coming from the small human’s mouth, Aman kept smiling.

“Oh my! Cursing is bad!”

Moreover, Aman’s gesture of covering his mouth with his hand made Lucas’s teeth chatter.

Aman looked around and shook his head.

“With so much power… I didn’t expect our Lucas, who could barely summon a light, to have such abilities!”

It was clearly intentional. Aman’s plan to draw out Lucas’s power.

“…Do you want to die? You son of a bitch, I’d feel better if I fried you in oil.”

Aman, hearing the harsh curses from the small mouth, dramatically hugged his arm and shook his body.

“What a harsh thing to say!”

As Lucas’s eyes glowed, Aman felt an inexplicable pressure from the small human.

Seeing Aman slightly flinch, Lucas let out a long sigh.

“Ha… That’s enough. It’s not fun anymore.”

No matter how small the human body was, he had lived for many years.

He couldn’t undo what had already happened, and he couldn’t take back the curses he had already spewed.

So, this time too, he had to go along with the ridiculous lizard in front of him.

“Rather, can you explain how this happened?”

Lucas, turning his back to Aman, who shrugged, waved his hand.

There was no point in dealing with that crazy lizard any longer.

“Let’s talk about it later.”

Lucas, pointing to the people lying around, bleeding, with his chin, said,

“Clean up the mess yourself.”

***

‘Damn lizard. You knew everything.’

His suspicions were correct. The cunning Aman knew everything.

Even if he didn’t know exactly who he was, he had certainly realized he wasn’t an ordinary human.

But he needed an excuse to turn his suspicions into certainty, and the opportunity had come.

But the opportunity had gone terribly wrong. It was as if he had gambled with his life.

Lucas was boiling with anger. He wanted to find Aman right away and tear him to pieces.

But his body was no more than a weak human.

There was no way to defeat Aman, who was a dragon, even if he was reborn.

He couldn’t control the boiling anger and even thought about ending his life and becoming a god.

No, he had even tried to execute the plan.

But as he gathered mana in his hand, the sorrowful cries of his mother, Blain, before he left home echoed in his ears.

As if she were right beside him.

That vivid memory held him back.

“Damn it!”

He shot the mana he had gathered in his hand roughly into the ground, and curses flew from his mouth.

“Fine. I’ll show you properly.”

Lucas clenched his small fist.

‘I’ll live this ridiculous life properly.’

***

Aman’s lips curled at the scene left behind.

The men who had surrounded Lucas were lying far away, groaning.

“Guh… Grr…”

A few had fainted from the sudden shock. But he ignored them and approached one of the men who was still conscious.

“Now, shall we talk? What did you plan to do to the academy student?”

He was in a very bad mood.

If Lucas’s identity had been revealed, it would have been different, but normally, he wouldn’t have tolerated hearing such curses from a human child, let alone hearing them.

‘It was an incredible amount of cursing. I’ve never experienced such a humiliating moment in my life.’

Moreover, this audacious child had even pointed his chin at him and treated him like a subordinate!

But the worst part was that he couldn’t say a word to the small child who had shown such bad attitude and was now doing what the child had told him to do.

The inexplicable pressure and hostility emanating from the small body were even felt by the dragon Aman.

‘I’m not doing this because he told me to. I’m doing this for my own amusement…’

No matter how much he tried to calm himself and rationalize it, his damaged pride couldn’t be restored.

All that anger was now being directed at the humans lying on the ground.

“How dare you, arrogant scum, to lay a hand on an academy student, let alone… to spit on what’s mine?”

He raised his hand.

“How dare you!”

-SMACK!!!

The man, expecting magic to rain down from the sky, saw stars in front of his eyes as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“I… spit on…”

-SMACK!!! SMACK!!!

“Gah! Gah!”

“On my… precious… amusement!”

-SMACK!!! SMACK!!! SMACK!!!

“Gah! Cough! Cough!”

One, two, three! The simple and brutal violence of Aman made the man feel more sorrow than pain.

‘Rather… rather use magic!!!’

The words he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud due to the pain swirled in the man’s mouth.

***

“Is that true?”

“Yes, I had all those who tried to harm Lucas put in the underground prison.”

“What a close call.”

As Aman reported the situation to Alberto after sorting things out, Alberto’s expression darkened.

“Thank you for preventing a disaster. Professor Aman.”

“No, it’s my duty to protect the students.”

Alberto, looking at Aman’s sly smile, stood up.

“I’ll go check it out.”

“Yes, you should.”

As Aman followed, Alberto raised his hand to stop him.

“I’ll go alone, so you can go back to your other duties, Professor.”

“Oh, in that case… then.”

Aman, giving a short bow, stepped back as Alberto quickly headed to the underground prison.

Aman’s eyes turned fierce as he watched Alberto’s retreating back.

‘I’ve erased their memories, so they won’t remember that Lucas used magic…’

Alberto, turning a corner and disappearing with quick steps.

“But why is that human… acting like a dog with a full bladder?”

Aman, ignoring the small suspicion that arose in his heart, moved his steps.