Unsealing Emptiness

Then again, it seemed unlikely with the way he had closed his eyes again.

Unknown to her, Ozul was thinking about her at this moment just that his line of thoughts did not match what she fantasized about.

The Light Element’s particles flocking around her bothered him to no end. He tried to endure it and go back to enjoy his peacetime, but he could not stop thinking about it. Like an annoying fly, it did not let him focus on anything else.

Since he could not focus, there was no point in being here either. He stood up, startling Clara, who did not have the chance to properly look at his body before he had gotten out of the water and fog covered him.

A little regretful and relieved, Clara wondered if she had disturbed him or he got irritated because of her.

But since she had this place to herself now, she began to wash off the dirt with various thoughts running through her mind.

.....

After another hour or so, she was finished and could not relax in the warm water either.

As she went near her clothes, she frowned, looking at its dirty appearance and the worn-out condition. She had almost forgotten that she had spare clothes in her Spatial Ring.

After changing into those clothes, she was about to walk back to the woods when she noticed something from the corner of her eyes.

She turned to look to her side and noticed Ozul lying on the ground with a barely noticeable black cat near him. Jinx was really hard to notice once she closed her eyes in the dark.

Clara nervously looked around before she took a deep breath and approached Ozul. He had his prosthetic arms under his head as he gazed at the sky.

As if she had made up her mind, she nodded to herself before sitting a few meters from him. Ozul had, of course, noticed her presence, but he ignored it for now.

At least she was not so clingy as before. She maintained her distance, which was enough for Ozul to be able to endure without losing his interest.

“...”

She stayed like this for a long time. Just then, she noticed that Ozul had put back his prosthetic arms.

“So... what happened?” Clara said while pointing towards his hands.

Hearing this sudden voice, Ozul turned around to face her before noticing that her finger was pointing at his prosthetic arms.

“They got cut,” Ozul stated the obvious.

Clara stared back at his eyes for a couple of seconds to see if he was intentionally doing it. But she could not see through him no matter how much she tried.

Although she could not properly see his body, just the hands part was something that she could not ignore so easily.

“... I can see that. I meant, what happened?” Clara emphasized her question.

Ozul turned to look at her for a moment before turning back. He understood what she wanted to ask, but he simply was not in the mood to explain anything.

Clara waited for a while before she sighed, realizing that he was now ignoring her. It meant that she had indeed been disturbing him for him to ignore her so coldly.

Although she understood the situation, it did not help improve her mood. With the princess’s temperament from childhood, getting ignored by someone was probably the first for her.

She stood up with a huff, disgruntled, but she could not even express her anger before Ozul.

Ozul finally felt some peace again as she walked off.

Clara walked all the way back to her spot. Cyril and Mark had already killed off the Beasts lurking around, so they were also back to their drinking and smoking.

When Clara walked past them, she did not even bother to spare them an extra glance.

“She was not satisfied even after so long?!” Cyril commented after Clara had gone off in the distance.

“Hmhm. They probably fought,” Mark suggested.

“Yeah. Whatever...” Cyril said as both of them shrugged before changing the topic.

——

The next day, they quietly ran through the forest.

It hadn’t even been a few hours before Ozul felt some presences ahead. He focused and noticed that there was a road right next to them.

A road meant that there would usually be people passing by. He credited the presence up ahead to that and continued their advance.

As they passed by the road, the group noticed a disabled man from the corner of their eyes.

At first glance, the man was undoubtedly bleeding with one of his legs cut. He was hopelessly dragging himself to the side of the path, waiting for someone to help.

Ozul, Cyril, and Mark ignored it and continued running, but it was different for Clara. Though she had seen gore worse than that, she could not bring herself to ignore a man desperately asking for help.

Since Clara had suddenly stopped, the other three turned around and looked at her with questioning eyes.

“Shouldn’t we help that person?” Clara started, “It would not make any difference to us in the first place-”

“No.” Ozul interjected in the middle of Clara’s speech.

“Huh?”

“We are not helping. Let’s go now,” Ozul repeated when Clara stood there dumbfoundedly.

“B-but, why can’t we help?!” Clara asked.

“And why should we?” Ozul asked as he apathetically looked straight into her eyes, making her even more nervous.

“Because that’s what we should do! As a believer of The Lord, I can’t ignore something like this!” Even when Clara was apprehensive, she did not back down.

Ozul stared at her for a few moments before he replied, “Okay. Do as you wish.”

Cyril and Mark looked at Ozul, a little surprised that he had allowed her to help that person.

Looking at the man crawling in the middle of the path with no other tracks of his body being dragged anywhere else, anyone with a little brain could instantly figure out that this was a newbie trap.

Although confused, the duo did not ask any questions and stood behind Ozul quietly. With their line of business, they would not spare this scene another glance even if it weren’t a trap.

Clara, who had grown up being protected, was not aware of such things. She just saw someone critically injured and went ahead to help him.

She took out a purple vial of potion from her Spatial ring and approached that man who had supposedly not noticed her. He had his back facing towards Clara, so she could not see his expressions either.

From afar, Ozul’s eyes almost twitched as he noticed the purple vial.

Clara advanced, unaware of Ozul’s annoyance at the sight of the healing potion in her hands.

“Mister?” Clara said, but the man did not react in the slightest. She was still at a few feet distance from him.

When she received no response from the man, she extended her arm to touch his shoulder. But just as she was about to do so, the man suddenly turned around.

Unlike how he looked, the man was very much vigorous as he did not give Clara a chance to think before thrusting a dagger at her stomach.

Clara did not even have the time to blink before a small line of red appeared on that man’s neck. Before she could make sense of her situation, the man’s head suddenly fell off the ground, and blood spurted out of the neck.

A few drops splashed on her face as she instinctively closed her eyes.

Her brain only started to process everything after she opened her eyes again. Everything had happened too fast for her to comprehend, but she did realize that the person was actually not injured at all.

*Thud*

The man’s headless body fell on the ground, waking her up from her stupor.

The scene of the cut appearing on that man’s neck flashed in her mind as she realized who might have helped her. She turned around to face Ozul, who emotionlessly stood there on the tree.

Her dilated pupils then moved to the headless corpse in her feet. Before she could recover from the shock, she heard the voice, “Helped enough? Let’s go now.”

Ozul urged before jumping to the next tree. Behind him, Cyril and Mark exchanged glances before following right after.

‘How cruel...’ Both of them had the same thoughts in their mind while looking at Ozul’s back.

For them, something like beheading a person was not a big deal. But even they could tell that Clara was some pampered lady, who probably had not seen it done so close to her.

Not to mention, this man was also the person she was going to help. So it had a considerable impact on her mind. However, Ozul did not even let her come to her senses.

As professional assassins, they were aware that even the slightest psychological changes on a Mage’s mind could change their whole future.

However, they did not voice out their thoughts since it had nothing to do with them anyway. Moreover, they just thought that Ozul was trying to do something and they were just Rank-8 Mages who could not comprehend the actions of a Rank-9 existence.

Ozul had intentionally slowed down a little for Clara to catch up. Although he had urged her to hurry up, he knew that she would take a few moments to recover.