Chapter 52

After a while, Katty woke up from her sleep in a stuporous manner. After rubbing her eyes, the first thing she saw was Aren's ''passionate'' Uh... no, questioning? stare. Whatever it was, that stare was disturbing.

But even after a minute, when she saw him showing no signs of averting his eyes, her dazed expression changed as if she understood something. Putting her two small palms on her cheeks which had turned red, or at least she thought had turned red, for some unknown reason which she had suddenly ''understood'', she shyly started saying.

"Big brother Aren is such a bad person. Even... even after sleeping with me last night, you still... Umm. Big sister had taught me that ''young maidens'' should be treated with care otherwise an ''irreversible accident'' might happ-"

"Cut this crap." When she was just about to finish her ''words of advice'', Aren interjected in annoyance as he found out what she was meaning to say. Maiden? She still had her baby fat, where did that thought even come from?

Then, giving the girl no time to experience the shock of her fantasies falling apart, he asked with a stern expression.

"Did you meet someone yesterday other than me?"

Seeing him being angry for no reason, Katty was taken aback. However, as her teacher had told her to do whatever Aren said, she still answered his question without any compliant. "Yes. I met the smelly..."

When she had said up to this, she suddenly felt some guilt in her heart and so she corrected herself. "...Well, somewhat good smelling guy."

"Is he the same person I told you to not get near of and be careful of?" he again pressed with another question, while ignoring the fact why she changed ''smelly'' to ''good smelling'' midway.

"Yeah, the same guy."

As he heard her answer which sounded extremely nonchalant, hundreds of phrases of scolding had already been thought in his mind. Nevertheless, he knew that lecturing this girl was just wasting his breath. So he asked her about everything that had happened yesterday before she met him.

While listening to her account which had turned into a story at some point in time, from her perspective, Aren's facial expressions twitched from time to time.

The story began with her conquest to find a large moonspring. On the way, she met a stalker type apprentice who quickly submitted to her. As per her orders, When she was attacked, she was protected from a large number of pythons by that ''Foul-smelling, ugly faced yet a brave and kind-hearted apprentice mage''.

Then, after a long fight, the brave mage managed to fend off all the pythons casting one spell after another and saved her. But even so, that mage had to sacrifice his life to accomplish that. Thereafter, accompanying the sorrow of the death of her newfound subordinate, she continued her journey to find the large moonspring...

[A/N: This girl has the potential to become a fiction genre writer!]

After he finished listening, Aren inwardly discarded most of the bullshit she had blurted out and sorted the key information he got. Aren then became confirmed that whoever that apprentice was, he definitely had malicious purpose to lead Katty towards the ogre settlement.

As for the whole sacrificing thing. Bah... There was no way a cunning person like him would do that. Aren was sure that the guy had already got away from the python and was recovering somewhere.

'She said there was a large moonspring somewhere nearby...' Aren thought as he took out his map and started marking the areas near the ogre settlement.

There were three pathways to reach the Ogre settlement from the direction they came and among the three, two were used by katty and him. As for the last one, it was a pathway that circled around from the one katty came.

So that meant the apprentice had given her a direction towards the large moonspring but never exactly told her which route to take. As per the plans of that apprentice, Katty had taken the straight route and even if she took another route, it would still lead her to the ogre settlement. It's just that she might find the large moonspring on the way. Aren put his map back into his pocket after rolling it and started musing on the matter.

'This type of meticulous plan cannot be made by a simple apprentice. He also knew beforehand that there was a large moonspring there... which means he is from a major family!' Among all other families, Aren was sure that if any family that could get this type of secret information, it had to be the major families. The question was, which major family that apprentice was from?

'According to how Katty described him fighting, there are no distinct features of magic from a major family. The apprentice had most likely used forbidden magic but as far as I know, there is no major family that practices forbidden magic exclusively...'

'I can't find an answer to this just by thinking. For now, let's head towards that large moonspring and see how tough the guardian there is.' After he organised his thoughts, he withdrew himself from his pensive state and said to Katty.

"Hurry up and wear your robe, we're going towards the large moonspring now."

As she heard what he said, she scrambled to reach out her robe and hurriedly started wearing it.

"I'm hungry... we should eat something." she suddenly said as she put her hands inside the pocket of her large blue robe.

"My snacks are all finished. We'll think about food later." Aren turned around and started walking quickly, hoping that the girl would increase her pacing if he did so. But just as he had walked for four to five steps, he was forced to stop.

"Wait... I have something to eat with me." as she said, Aren took a quick glance at her and saw that she had taken out two packages of milk-cream bread on her hands.

Aren had eaten it before and if he were to be honest, that thing was undoubtedly the sweetest bread he had eaten ever since he came to this world.

...

"That brat must be dead by now." mumbled Chauv as he walked under the shade of tall trees. Although he had done his job, he had to make sure that the girl was dead. So he was still keeping watch near the area.

After getting away from that Nekismis Python yesterday, he had unknowingly came near the large moonspring. Troubled due to the fact that python might come to the moonspring, he hadn't gone there yet. However, even after waiting till today, when he found out that the guardian still hadn't come, Chauv's worries had lessened.

Now, he was going to the moonspring and see if that brat really had taken the moonstones there.

But when he reached there, to his suprise, the moonstones were still there, untouched and even without a guardian. If he knew about this, then he would surely have told Mary to retrieve these moonstones. He had only told her to leave it there not to arouse suspicion from that brat. It seemed that he had been overcautious in this matter.

However, just as he about to go forward and collect those ten or so moonstones, he suddenly heard a male voice say from behind some distance away.

"A human Guardian of a moonspring?"