Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 39

She quickened her pace, her gaze fixed on the opponent bound tightly by the violet whip.

After walking several hundred meters, they arrived at the wasteland where the ice laid down by Lenok was slowly melting. Only then could they properly see the opponent’s face.

Her posture was bizarre, one arm twisted grotesquely behind her as if she had been trying to pull out the shotgun she carried on her back. Her feet were frozen solid to the ice, a result of Lenok’s magic, and the tank top that exposed her abdomen trembled in the cold.

A fierce-looking woman with dark navy hair tied back in a ponytail.

She let out a deep sigh upon seeing Lenok.

“Shit… Of all people, I had to get caught by a monster like this.”

Swearing from the start. She must have quite the foul mouth.

Lenok stared at the woman with an expressionless face before lightly flicking his finger.

*Wham!*

“Agh!! Be gentle!”

He struck the woman’s back with an impact spell, causing the shotgun on her back to fall to the ground. She yelled at the top of her lungs.

Lenok scoffed.

“Why would I?”

“What did I do wrong?!”

“You were hiding suspiciously and then ran away when you were caught.”

“That’s… I just didn’t want to bother you. I didn’t want to disturb the mage’s comfortable hunt.”

“How persuasive.”

At Lenok’s indifferent reply, the woman slumped as if giving up.

“Haa… Okay, can you at least remove this ice? My toes are getting cold, and I think I’m getting frostbite.”

“We’ll see.”

She seemed to have completely given up on resisting, but who knew what she was really thinking.

Lenok already knew that this woman’s movements were very fluid, and he didn’t want to rule out the possibility that she might suddenly pull out a hidden weapon and attack.

Of course, he thought that [Gravity Bind] alone was enough to subdue a mercenary, but being cautious was a different matter.

Seeing Lenok fiddling with his revolver, the woman quickly spoke, her face turning slightly pale.

“D, Dylan!!”

“What?”

“…I work with Dylan. I’m just a regular mercenary.”

She seemed embarrassed that she had used her colleague’s name, and her earlobes turned bright red.

However, Lenok frowned, his face displeased.

“How did you know I know Dylan? Did Dylan talk about me?”

“…Ah.”

“………”

Seeing the woman shut her mouth with a look of having made a mistake, Lenok let out a deep sigh.

Despite her excellent movements, she was a bit of a scatterbrain.

“If you work with Dylan, you must be affiliated with the Antares Office.”

“Y, yes.”

“Why were you spying on us? And tell me how you were able to hide from my magic sense.”

Lenok had never thought his magic detection was perfect, but he didn’t think it was that sloppy either.

This detection method, also called ‘ki-sense’ by warriors who enhance their bodies with magic, seemed to work in a very rough way, but its effect was considerable.

Operating as a sixth sense different from the simple five senses, this detection method drastically enhances human perception in a very intuitive way.

Especially for Lenok, who had an outstanding magic sensitivity, this magic detection was a powerful weapon, incomparable to the weak and dull senses of the physical body.

If she could hide from Lenok’s sensory range even for a moment, it was more reasonable to assume that she had some other means rather than Lenok’s detection ability being insufficient.

Especially if it was working in the same way as when he caught Taylor Evans.

“No, I wasn’t hiding to do anything to you. I just didn’t want to get caught up in it, so I was hiding nearby.”

The woman quickly made excuses after seeing Lenok’s expression.

“And if I really wanted to kill you, I would have attacked first. Honestly, I had plenty of time to do that.”

“……”

“And the reason I could hide from your magic detection is nothing special. It’s just the power of money.”

“The power of money?”

“This. See the charm on my waist?”

As she said, there was a small, dark green charm attached to the side of her leather belt.

At first glance, it had a plain design that could be easily overlooked as a simple accessory.

Lenok would have also passed it by without a second thought if she hadn’t mentioned it, as no power was emanating from it.

“It’s a fairy charm made directly by a high-ranking druid. It’s expensive, but it’s worth the money. Most mercenaries who make a decent living have one… Hey, give it back!”

Ignoring her shouting, Lenok snatched the charm from her waist and examined it closely.

The druid’s nature-based techniques are, strictly speaking, in a different position from magic.

Although they share the same large branch of techniques, unlike magic, which uses the most versatile energy called magic power as its power source, nature-based techniques do not have an energy that can be called a power source.

Their power comes from a strong faith in the existence of nature and the power inherent in it, and therefore, there are no signs or traces on the surface.

The reason Lenok didn’t notice the druid’s power was also due to the principle of such nature-based techniques.

‘There might be some overlap in terms of mental abilities… but the talents I acquired back then were almost entirely related to magic power.’

Lenok thought that the possibility of achieving the same level of success with techniques that did not use magic power was low.

That’s why he had hardly touched knowledge other than magic power, but because of the existence of such charms, he felt he needed to study related knowledge a little more.

Lenok nodded, turning the charm around in his hand.

‘I roughly understand how it works.’

It wasn’t just that possessing the charm concealed one’s presence, but that the nature-based technique was activated when certain conditions were met.

Even Lenok himself felt his presence gradually fading and his breathing calming down as he stood still in place for a while.

‘It’s a useful item for hiding in place. It’s not something that can be used for ambushes or preemptive strikes.’

Moreover, from the moment Lenok started benefiting from the charm’s effect, one of the lines in the pattern decorating the charm was gradually fading.

In light of this, it was likely a consumable item with a limited number of uses.

Unless it was for ambushing and catching someone off guard, it seemed unlikely that the woman had any intention of attacking Lenok.

The woman, who had been looking at Lenok with an anxious expression, spoke.

“Hey… You’re going to give it back properly, right? It’s a bit expensive. Very expensive.”

“…I can’t promise anything.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll use it well and leave it with Dylan.”

“Shit… That guy doesn’t even care what’s in his wallet.”

The woman grumbled, but surprisingly, she didn’t complain much about Lenok taking the charm.

Was she thinking it was a decent trade for her life?

Lenok was really only planning to study the operating principle of the technique imbued in the charm and return it, but she seemed resigned to giving up the charm.

The magic power that had been forming the ice ran out, and the ice fragments that had been binding her feet quickly melted.

It wasn’t a long-lasting magic in the first place, and it didn’t contain much magic power, so its duration wasn’t long.

Only then did the woman shake off her frozen feet and jump up and down.

“Ah, damn it. My boots are full of water. What are you going to do about this?”

“Is that what’s important right now?”

“What again? I told you, I didn’t have any intention of doing anything to you… Although, there is something I’d like to try with you.”

Lenok chuckled at the woman’s words, which finally revealed her true intentions.

He took out his phone and immediately called Jenny.

He had no intention of letting her go just because he heard the name Dylan.

At the very least, he needed to verify through an acquaintance whether she was actually affiliated with the Antares Office.

[…Blue hair…? That… crazy… is there… there… met…]

The call quality was terrible, probably because they were somewhat outside the city.

They said that self-storms often occurred in the outer districts, so was it due to that influence?

Jenny’s voice was barely audible, but he roughly confirmed the important details.

He turned off the phone, which was no longer connecting and only making strange noises, and Lenok nodded.

He released the Gravity Bind that had been tightly binding her upper body and asked.

“What’s your name?”

“Camilla. Just call me Mila.”

She replied, swinging her arms around.

Kroken was also bound by that binding magic for a very short time. If she had been bound by such a whip, her body wouldn’t have moved properly.

“Is that how you usually shorten it?”

“It’s my name, what does it matter? You’re Ban, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Mila opened her mouth, glancing at Lenok and picking up the shotgun that had fallen on the ground and slinging it over her back.

“Anyway, Ban, you came here to subjugate the Contaminants too, right?”

“Isn’t that the same for you?”

“Well, yeah. I needed some quick cash these days, so I was taking any job that came my way, but my boss said that taking requests was a loss for the time being because of some Deep Web thing. So, I came here to make some pocket money.”

“……..”

“What? Is there something wrong?”

“…It’s nothing.”

Lenok naturally trailed off and turned his gaze away.

The circumstances she had just mentioned were quite unexpected.

It was one thing that she had taken on a Contaminant subjugation request under very similar circumstances to Lenok, but judging from what she was saying, it was clear that she was also in the stage of rapidly accumulating achievements and having her value fluctuate.

To put it simply, she had come this far by successfully completing requests of a similar difficulty to what Lenok had done so far… Surprisingly, Lenok had never heard her name even once.

‘This industry is really wide as hell.’

At the same time, it was revealed that Lenok’s information-gathering ability was also poor.

Clients who place requests in this industry or brokers like Jenny might be aware of such information, but for Lenok, the gap was far too wide.

Until now, he had been completely dependent on brokers like Jenny for information gathering, but it seemed he needed a route to obtain information on his own.

‘It would be nice if there was a separate community for that…’

Considering his experience on Earth, he could somewhat guess how a society with an active network would operate.

Based on Lenok’s common sense, even if the access difficulty might be considerable, it seemed highly likely that a community for exchanging such information existed somewhere on the network.

He decided to ask Jenny about it once he finished this job and then listened to Mila’s words.

“Anyway. Assuming you cooperate, there’s a way to catch all the Contaminants at once. It’ll save time, and we can rake in a ton of money. Let’s split the money we earn 50/50. How about it?”

“70/30.”

Lenok replied indifferently.

Mila jumped up and down in protest.

“Hey! What am I supposed to live on then?!”

“From what I hear, isn’t it ultimately me who has to sweep away the Contaminants? Otherwise, there’s no way you’d be waiting here, wanting to work with me. It seems like I have more work to do, so this is only natural.”

“What nonsense… No, I came up with the idea! And you’re supposed to respect the face of the planner. Don’t do something that goes against business ethics, and let’s split it cleanly 50/50. Okay?”

“Who was the one who broke business ethics first?”

Mila flinched at Lenok’s cold reply and then let out a string of curses.

“…60/40. I can’t concede any more than that. This is a really amazing idea.”

“I don’t know what kind of brilliant idea you have… Fine. 60/40.”

Even if Lenok was angry at Mila, he had no intention of taking 70/30.

Taking just a little more than half was enough.

He didn’t expect much from her anyway, but he thought that if she was affiliated with the Antares Office and was a skilled person who had raised her value similar to Lenok, it was worth working with her at least once.

Mila grinned as Lenok nodded and immediately turned around.

“Great! Let’s go right away.”

“Are we walking?”

“No. I found something good at this construction site. Let’s ride this.”

Mila led Lenok to a rusty, old forklift that was on the verge of collapsing.

“……..”

Lenok, who had climbed onto the forklift with a dazed expression, stared at Mila, who was grabbing the steering wheel, and opened his mouth slightly.

He had never imagined that his first drive with another person in this world would be on a dusty forklift at a construction site.

*Rattle rattle!*

“…It’s moving better than I thought.”

“Right? I just dusted it off and reconnected the tangled wires, and it started up. It’s so much better than walking.”

Instead of replying, Lenok pulled up his magic power and shot a lightning fox straight ahead.