Chapter 434:
You’re My Security Blanket
“BY THE WAY…how exactly do you use these magic stones?” the captain asked.
My father and I were silent. How do we use them… How do we use them?
“Sorry, we don’t know. We don’t even know how to break a summoning circle’s spell in the first place, so I can’t even imagine how to use them.”
“Ah…right.” The captain pursed his lips in thought. I stared at him as he thought it over, until our eyes suddenly met. The captain smiled sheepishly at my inquisitive gaze. “Ivy…you’ve got a good look in your eyes. Reminds me of myself when I was young.”
I have a good look in my eyes? What does he mean by that? I glanced at my dad and saw he was smiling proudly. I gave him a quizzical look and he patted my head.
“Did you go through a phase like that, Captain?” he asked.
“Of course I did.”
I hung on to every word, but it still didn’t make sense to me. But they were both amused, so everything must have been okay.
“Truth be told, I don’t want to get you two any more involved than you already are, but I suspect it’s already too late. Besides, you should probably know the truth. Wait just a moment.” With that, the captain left the room.
“What did he mean about my eyes?” I asked. I just couldn’t let it go.
“When you look at people, Ivy…you look them straight in the eye, to get a better sense of who they are.”
Do I do that? Yeah…maybe I do. But why does it matter?
“Older people like the captain and I are quick to judge or suspect others—we think too much about things, and we forget to just really see a person for who they are. Our years of experience and knowledge get in the way. That’s why, Ivy, when we see the way you earnestly look at someone to see who they are, you really shine.”
Now that makes sense. But I feel like a lot of that is because I’m of a lower status than everyone else. The only ones I have to worry about protecting are those who can fit in my tiny embrace. I don’t have big groups of people to take care of like my father or the captain do, so I think I’m a little too vulnerable at times. And besides—I glanced at my father—I trust that my father will take care of me, so a part of me feels safe to open up.
“I just think you’re my security blanket, Dad.”
“Er, your security blanket? Really? I don’t feel like it,” he protested, shaking his head.
“Oh, but you are,” I insisted again. “You keep me warm and cozy.” My father looked down at me with a proud smile.
“Hm? Something happen while I was gone?” The captain wandered into the room and interrupted our little moment with a searching stare.
“We were just having a father-daughter moment,” my father said.
The captain smiled. “Lucky you. My kids are all grown up and don’t have time for me. And even when I do see them, they’re never as affectionate as they used to be.” There was a loneliness in his voice as he set a stack of papers on the desk. They had summoning circles drawn on them. “You draw this first summoning circle on the floor, and this second one on the ceiling above it.”
The drawings were numbered, and the captain pointed at each of them in turn.
“I see that the floor and ceiling summoning circles are different,” my father observed.
“This is ancient script, apparently.”
Ancient script? Does he mean letters? I looked at the glyphs the captain was pointing to. I couldn’t read them at all, probably because they were no longer used today. There were also drawings of animals on the papers. A snake, and a horned creature walking on two legs… What is it? Hmm… I dunno. I don’t recognize a lot of these animals.
“Those things that look like animals? They’re actually letters.”
“What?! These are letters, sir?”
But they look like a bunch of animals to me. Wow, ancient peoples sure wrote in crazy ways.
“So to break the spell, you put the enchanted victims on the summoning circle drawn on the floor, then you activate it. This summoning circle supposedly has the power to heal a wounded magic core.”
“Supposedly? Has it never been tested?” My father cast a doubtful glance at the captain.
He nervously shook his head and held up his hands. “We have tested it properly on a small sample size, and it did work. That’s how we know it can heal a wounded magic core. But this time…there’s just so many people. We also need to keep in mind that it might have been a fluke.”
There really were a lot of people to heal. Most of the adventurers and the village watchmen were under the spell. I looked at the magic stones in the captain’s hand. We should probably ask Sol how to use them.
“Sol, do you put these magic stones inside the summoning circle?”
Sol answered with silence.
That means no. Do we have the enchanted people hold the stones? No, that doesn’t feel quite right, either. We have so many people to heal, too.
“Does the caster hold the stones?”
“Pefu!”
“Captain, I think the caster has to hold these magic stones.”
The captain, who’d seen my little exchange with Sol, nodded. “Got it. Thanks.” He looked at the magic stones, then at me and my father. “I’m so sorry I got you both caught up in this mess.”
My father and I both shook our heads. “We were under the spell, too. We have every reason to try to help.”
“He’s right, sir.”
The captain smiled sheepishly. “But you’re just a pair of travelers who happened by this village. If you were adventurers, we would obviously ask for your help, but you’re not adventurers—you’re travelers.”
He was technically right: Since my father and I weren’t registered with the adventurer guild, we were not adventurers. That would make us travelers, meaning we were under no obligation to help Hataka in their time of need.
“But we just did what our hearts told us to, sir,” I said. The captain gave me a questioning look. “Sure, it would have been easier not to get involved, but I think we would have been dying of curiosity.”
We could have left Hataka the moment we were freed from the spell. There were still the brainwashed sharmy, but surely Ciel could have disposed of them all if it wanted to. But my father and I decided to stay, and that was surely because we couldn’t stand the thought of doing nothing to help. What if we found out later through the grapevine that everyone in Hataka had died? I know for sure I would have hated myself for failing to act.
“We just don’t want to feel guilty in the future, sir.”
The captain’s eyes were somber. Fate really had helped me meet some truly good people.
“Yes, but…”
“You’ll be in trouble, too, Captain, once this problem is solved—or whenever those people from the capital arrive. You’ll be forced to hide us.”
I was shocked at the provisions in that crazy contract he’d signed.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve already drawn up a plan to get you two out of this village without anybody noticing.”
Whoa, he already thought up a plan? I looked at my father and he seemed equally surprised.
“Isn’t it a bit soon for that?” my father asked.
“There’s no telling when help will arrive, so please rest assured. Now I’m going to go get everything prepared! In just a little while, our summoning circles will be ready.”
“Where are you putting the summoning circles?” my father asked.
“In a tiny room on the first floor… Wanna come see?” the captain asked after a short pause.
“Could we? Isn’t it technically illegal?”
“It feels wrong to hide it from you after everything we’ve been through together.” Still, there was conflict in his voice as he said that.
“Uhh… Ivy, what do you say? Wanna see it?”
I had only gotten a good look at one summoning circle before: the one that controlled poor Snakey like a puppet. And since I had only seen a small part of the summoning circle in the cave, I was actually a little disappointed about it.
“I think I do want to see it.”
I was curious. Besides, I seemed to be a magnet for trouble. Maybe I’d get caught up in summoning circle shenanigans again someday. I really wanted to avoid it, of course! But looking back on all my experiences thus far, it seemed best for me to learn as much as I could.
“Okay. Let’s go, then…”
The captain left the room, so we followed suit. I had forgotten about the pandemonium on the first floor earlier, but it was very quiet now.
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