NOVEL WEB Ch. 6.6
"Wait a minute, I'm not a suspicious person!"
"No, you're definitely suspicious. Super suspicious."
That was quite reasonable. She had come barging in from the air while someone was resting and had been peering through the crack. The girl in the shrine seemed to understand that the sudden visitor was about her own age, so she called off her second wave attack, but showed no signs of letting down her guard.
"What, are you a sorcerer?"
"I am a black magician. One who reveals the principles of this world and guides the blind masses..."
Safi delivered a line she had long decided to say someday, but stumbled slightly over it. There was no deep meaning to those words—they were copied exactly from something she'd heard in a bedtime story. She had simply longed for a stylish debut.
"What the heck is that? See, you really are super suspicious. And those clothes too... hm, hm?"
When Safi set foot near the crack in the shrine, the luminous object shone even brighter.
"It was dark and weak until just now, but is this thing reacting to magical power?"
The detailed mechanism was unclear, but the luminous object was certainly reacting to or absorbing magical power. The interior of the old shrine now shone brilliantly, brightly illuminating the face of the girl holding the luminous object.
She had a cute face with distinctive small lips and well-shaped eyebrows. Her hair was short, and for a moment she looked like a boy, but she was a girl. However, her appearance was sleeveless rags, giving an undeniably crude impression.
She wasn't the type Safi could feel good about. She was well-endowed. Though she appeared to be about the same age, her figure was voluptuous, and moreover she exposed her slender arms and legs. She had a body type that would appeal to men, and Safi absolutely couldn't feel good about her.
She couldn't tell the color of her skin or hair well. The light from the luminous object grew even stronger, dyeing the inside of the shrine blue and green.
“What is that thing you are holding?”
"Oh, this? It's complicated, you could say."
She spoke meaningfully. The short-haired girl sprang out of the crack with nimble movements and sat cross-legged on the shrine's roof. She was an ill-mannered, rough sort of girl. Her bare legs protruded from short pants like those worn by village boys. They were beautiful legs that would surely catch men's eyes, and Safi felt discomfort. It was jealousy and resentment, and the owner wasn't at fault.
More importantly, what needed careful observation was the luminous object she held.
"A glowing stone? I've heard of such things but maybe never seen one,” Safi said.
“There was a rumor about a rare jewel, but this seems to be something different,” The girl carelessly tossed the luminous object as if handling garbage or pebbles. When Safi caught it, it changed color and glowed red, then became purplish. It changed colors rapidly and also flickered.
"No no, this is definitely a rare jewel. If you sell it, you might get a considerable price, and it seems to have some hidden power,” Safi said as she looked at the object.
"I'm not going to sell it or anything. I'm not a thief,” The girl suddenly said.
She was a thief. Setting aside the unsuitable first-person pronoun "boku," she was definitely a thief. There was no need to compare her with the wanted poster seen at the chapel.
Was it strange to be surprised by the person who created the portrait when meeting the wanted criminal by chance...
Safi was greatly impressed. The person who drew that wanted poster was quite capable, matching everything from facial outline to features perfectly.
"You're the thief who snuck into the castle, right? I know various things about it. Because of you, I was suspected of being the culprit and thrown into prison."
"Really? Were you tortured or anything?" The thief girl frowned and worried about her.
When Safi said there was no torture and she got out immediately, the thief girl looked a little disappointed. She might be a bad person at heart.
"So, after the you successfully stole the jewel, why were you sleeping in a place like this?"
"I wasn't sleeping."
She said that while she had successfully broken through the tight security and infiltrated the inner sanctuary where the target treasure was located, after stealing the treasure, she got severely lost inside the castle during her escape and was surrounded by many guards. She drove them back with attack magic, but pursuers kept appearing one after another. When she fled into the town, she had almost exhausted her strength and didn't have the energy left to break through the castle gates...
"I thought I'd be fine if there was a lightly guarded area, but it wasn't that easy."
Exhausted, she was at her wit's end. She had hidden in a deserted place waiting to recover, but with no possibility in sight, her nerves were frayed and she was hungry. Contrary to her spirited appearance when they first met, she seemed exhausted and dispirited.
"You're a magician who can even fly, right?"
"I'm a black magician, but what of it?"
"Could you carry me—yeah, take me outside the walls? As thanks, though it's not much, I'll give you this jewel."
It was an easy task. When calculated, it seemed like a transaction where the thief girl would lose big, and Safi pressed her to reconfirm her intention, but she answered there was no problem. She said that the mysterious luminous object that definitely looked like a secret treasure wasn't the item she was after and had absolutely no value to her.
The black magician agreed. It would be easy to lift the thief girl into the air and guide her outside the castle, but here her playful spirit asserted itself. It was Safi's bad habit. Escape scenes should be spectacular and leave pursuers dumbfounded.
When the two passed through the sacred grove and faced the massive castle wall, Safi slowly extended her right hand and murmured an incantation. Actually, incantations had nothing to do with activating magic, but this was more stylish. Muttering under her breath, she opened her clasped fingers one by one.
The black sphere born at the tip of her right hand grew larger as it advanced straight ahead, opening a hole in the lower part of the castle wall. A round hole. The sphere passed through soundlessly, leaving a large hole.
"Whoa, that's amazing. What kind of technique was that..."
Seeing her surprised, wide-eyed expression, Safi could bask in a little sense of superiority.
"You saved me. Thanks, uh, black magician girl!"
"This spell technique originally..."
Without even trying to listen to what others were saying, the thief girl left the scene, quickly passing through the hole and going out. There was virtually no farewell greeting, and there was no time to ask who or where she was from. Travelers often encountered such scenes. It was just a brief moment of interaction.
While watching her figure grow smaller in the distance, Safi was convinced that her chest was definitely bouncing dramatically.
❁❁❁ From the Author 🧙♀️ ❁❁❁
The thief girl is a main character (second in hierarchy) who plays an important role.
After this, they'll reunite in some town and their journey of adventure and chat will begin in earnest, but due to various circumstances, that's still quite a ways off.