The Immortal Had a Guardian Spirit Chapter 16

It wasn’t exactly the same, but a vaguely similar feeling. Just enough similarity that it could be a mistaken impression.

…But why did it leave such a foul feeling?

With his lips pressed firmly shut, he examined the corpses a little more. They were torn apart to a gruesome degree, but upon focusing, it wasn’t at a level where no information could be obtained.

“…There are traces of having learned orthodox martial arts.”

The calluses on the hands and the well-developed muscles told him that.

They had learned cleanly established martial arts, the kind knights would learn, not the sinister, unrefined swordsmanship of some back alley.

[Guardian spirit ??? says they seem too valuable to waste just to kidnap one young noble.]

“Well… if politics or a succession dispute is involved, it’s not entirely incomprehensible.”

The question was who killed these men.

Was there a traitor within? Seeing no proper signs of resistance, they had likely been ambushed or killed by someone overwhelmingly more skilled.

‘There’s naturally nothing to deduce their identities from…’

Rummage, rummage.

Without any hesitation, Raven rummaged through the corpses, which were unpleasant even to touch, and checked their clothes and belongings before letting out a deep sigh.

“Just as there are no traces of carriage wheels or hoof prints, there are no marks around the bodies besides footprints… It seems I’ll have to be on my guard.”

This was also one of the feelings of wrongness he’d felt when he first discovered the child.

Because even at the spot where the child was found, he hadn’t been able to find any traces whatsoever. Though they were said to have abandoned the child and fled when the gate burst open, they should have at least been using horses or a carriage at that time.

‘Kidnapping a child and coming all the way here without using any means of transport is practically absurd.’

Moreover, even the route the ‘kidnappers’ would likely have taken was clean, without any such traces.

[Guardian spirit ??? asks if it wouldn’t be better to leave her behind if you must be on guard.]

“…Rather than leaving her out of sight and feeling uneasy, I’d feel more at ease keeping her within my sight.”

Having thought that far, Raven crookedly raised the corner of his mouth.

“And besides, isn’t it easier to fall into a trap in order to figure out their true intentions?”

[Guardian spirit ??? frowns.]

“At worst, all that can happen is dying, isn’t it?”

Being unable to die was really convenient at times like this. Having nothing to lose, he could walk right into traps without worry.

Even in the worst case, if he were captured and his feet were tied, dying voluntarily a few times would somehow resolve things.

The captors, creeped out by sharing air with a horrifying monster that couldn’t die, might be the first to tie stones to his body and throw him into the sea, off a cliff, or into a furnace. Or Death, unable to stand watching any longer, might show itself.

In any case, since he was a body that had to keep moving, even to end the contract of immortality, Death wouldn’t just leave him be. If he used that, escaping would be no trouble at all.

“…The kid will be waiting. She might have called for me already.”

Let’s go back.

After gazing up at the dark night sky for only a moment, Raven turned his back without hesitation.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Shh—.”

Deciver sat on a tree, watching Raven turn his steps back toward the inn.

Unlike usual, he wasn’t alone. In his two hands, a crow was firmly held.

“It’s better to fix that habit of stalking others.”

Covering the black bird’s eyes and ears, he whispered words that reached no one. He had been quietly watching until Raven, having finished his investigation, retraced his steps back. Soon, the corner of his mouth lifted, almost imperceptibly.

“As expected, you’re so sensitive.”

Was it because of me that he became even more so?

Thinking that, the sight was truly pleasing to see.

A strange emotion mixed into the laughter that had been steeped in mockery and mischief.

“I should call it just like our master, to think of it as a trap yet still intend to keep what was already promised.”

He had expected it. Given who the other party was and what the situation was. In the first place, he had led things this way knowing that.

In any other situation, it would have been frustrating, but this time, the recipient of that benefit being who it was, Deciver found it exceedingly welcome and tilted his head slightly.

“More than that, a ‘trap,’ he says…”

Is it a trap?

He himself didn’t particularly think so, but he didn’t know where human… no, his master’s standards lay, so he couldn’t readily affirm it. If he considered it a trap, then it would be a trap.

The likelihood that he’d take it as a trap was high.

But.

‘…Still, the 10 years without Father were boring.’

Even so, he had no intention of changing his mind.

Rather, considering he’d disappeared without a word for 10 years, wasn’t this much mischief fairly mild?

‘Though I am the cause of that disappearance.’

Well then.

Just as he smirked and was about to leave, he paused and glanced down at the shard soul he’d been keeping confined. …As if he had never smiled, the expression vanished from his face.

‘Should I kill it?’

It clinging to Father was one thing, but he disliked it in many ways. However…

Since it was obvious that if Dan died, ‘Didi’ would be the first to be suspected, after a brief deliberation, he tossed the shard soul into the air.

The crow, floundering from the sudden return of sensation, belatedly regained its balance and turned to look back for the one who had captured it. But the unknowable being who always acted as he pleased had already vanished without a trace.

∞ ∞ ∞

Raven, who had returned to the inn without incident, was about to open the door—but stopped abruptly at the scene visible through the window.

“Ah….”

He saw Dan, whether due to the innkeeper lady’s additional meddling or because he’d paid for it, sitting at a table near the door mechanically spooning soup into his mouth while glaring only at the entrance. But that wasn’t what made him stop.

‘…A person who can’t even remember someone for a full day.’

It was because the steaming soup placed on an empty table, with no one there, had caught his eye.

Raven looked once at the soup, once at the back of the lady who was working, unaware, waiting for the guest who had gone for a walk to return.

And just as he was about to impulsively turn his body, his eyes met Dan’s through the window.

“…”

“…”

It had disappeared at some point after he’d sent it far away for the conversation with the guardian spirit, but until then, it had constantly watched through the shard soul. Yet as if anxious about something, a fierce gaze immediately followed. Flap—, the sound of a black bird’s wings melting into the night stimulated his eardrums.

If that sounded like the clinking of shackles declaring it would follow him wherever he went, was it just his imagination?

After a brief staring contest with Dan, Raven let out a faint sigh.

‘Right, I just have to not eat the meal.’

He had no intention of shoving food into a stomach that had been peacefully idle without much movement for over 10 years. Wasn’t that too cruel to his stomach?

‘…Anyway, after a day… no, not even a day. Just a little time passes, and she’ll forget why she even prepared soup at an empty seat.’

It would end with her tidying it away, saying she must be getting forgetful, with a bit of worry. There was no need to concern himself.

He raised his head and found the window of the rented room among several windows. He kicked off the ground, leaped up, kicked off a tree once to launch himself again, and landed silently on the open window frame.

──And immediately twisted his body and threw a dagger behind him.

Thud!

“…!”

The dagger, which had flown in an instant, grazed past the crow and pierced the snake behind it, pinning it to the tree.

It was clearly aiming for the crow. Raven giggled at the crow, which was looking back and forth between the now limp, dead snake and him as if bewildered.

“That’s what happens when you leave your heart exposed like that.”

If a shard soul dies, the soul bearer also dies. That’s why most shard soul bearers always keep their shard souls near them unless there’s a necessary task.

When he lived normally, there would have been no need for the crow shard soul, and when caught by the slaver, he’d rather have had to hide it, so he understood not being accustomed to keeping a shard soul close. But it was almost surprising he had survived this long.

“You wouldn’t not know that an off-guard shard soul is essentially no different from that animal itself…”

He muttered thoughtlessly, as if the habit from his teaching days remained, but then he suddenly found it bothersome and shut his mouth. Like an ebbing tide, the smile vanished from his face.

As he said, Dan wouldn’t be unaware either. He wasn’t a disciple or anything, so there was no need to nag him about it.

“…Until tomorrow morning… no, until noon, I’m going to rest here without going anywhere, so you get some rest too.”

You’ve already overexerted yourself a lot.

Perhaps because the direction of his words had suddenly changed, or trying to ascertain the truth of the statement thrown out as if granting a favor, the crow stared straight at him. Whether he felt the gaze or not, Raven ignored it and turned away.

He wanted to close the window, but Didi might call from the next room, so he left it as it was and threw his body onto the bed.

It was a little cold.

∞ ∞ ∞

The four guild presidents’ search for their master became even more aggressive.

Going so far as to procure a room without windows and a door with a meal slot, becoming the center of bizarre rumors, yet unbothered, they had steadfastly placed requests with the two information guilds that split the continent.

Originally, they had each placed separate requests, but they consolidated them and added more money, urging the search for ‘someone.’ So as the head of an information guild, what could she do?

“Assign more personnel.”

“We’re already short on people even without that. There’s nowhere else to pull them from…”

“Minimize other jobs for the time being. Focus everything else on this one.”

Starbe, the overseer in charge of the central branch of the Esperanes Information Guild, spoke firmly.

“It’s a request placed by the guild presidents, no less.”

Questions like why they were looking for the target, and if it was for a bad reason, why on earth they were decorating a decent room to confine him instead of killing him or throwing him in prison, were not important.

Those who occupied the very top of each field, respected even by the leaders of a nation, and not just one but all of them gathered, had placed a request and were urging its completion.

“Their request is the top priority.”

The Esperanes Information Guild specialized in being well-versed in history and grasping the shifting political landscape, so they were weak in finding people outside the political field. But the clients were such clients that they couldn’t give up for such a reason.

Having given her orders and dismissed the people, Starbe bowed her head with a tired face. Through the silver-lavender hair that had come loose from being loosely tied to one side and hung down like a curtain, the document listing the physical description of the person they were looking for was visible.

‘I must find this person.’

The name given was ‘Raven.’ Gender, male.

He had long black hair that came down to his waist, eyes that shifted between gray and green, and wore a choker with a red gem around his neck.

‘Eyes that shift between gray and green—I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, whether they’re gray or green…’

But he was said to be so exceptionally beautiful that he occasionally used seduction as a tactic, so the search wouldn’t be completely impossible.

Of course, it wasn’t as if those who could throw the entire continent into chaos if they set their minds to it had placed the request for nothing, having failed to find him in the end.

She had to find him somehow.

‘At the very least, others must not be allowed to find him.’

Especially if the other party was Aurel, the information guild that had grown large enough to threaten their side, even more so.

The head of the tired but unresting person busily turned. Placing the main cause of her busyness at the center of her thoughts, she slowly closed her eyes and then opened them.

‘I’ve heard that side refused this request…’

But they were said to be searching for the person called ‘Raven’ themselves.

To be searching for the target after throwing away this golden opportunity, they surely had some ulterior motive.

She had already been informed of the reason they gave for refusing, but there was no way it was sincere. Starbe was sure of it.

So this was a good chance to find out their scheme as well.

‘I’ll have to keep an eye on Aurel’s movements.’

For my own position, too.

Word was already coming from the higher-ups, asking if it made any sense that their influence was being eaten away by a fledgling information guild from the slums.

On top of that, she’d even received news recently that they’d lost another source of funding, so she couldn’t afford to lose this position yet.

‘I really hope something turns up.’

Her violet eyes glinted darkly.

∞ ∞ ∞

[I refuse.]

It was the answer Edardo, head of the information guild Aurel, which had started in the slums and rapidly grown over the past 10 years to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Esperanes Information Guild, gave after hearing the request.

[…The reason?]

[Aurel must minimize failure, even to raise its credibility. All people see is solely the result, the success rate. No one cares about the circumstances behind each failed mission. As such, we must choose our requests carefully.]

In that sense.

He leisurely tilted his head.

[A being easily forgotten, whom the guild presidents haven’t found in 10 years… It’s intriguing, but the possibility of failure is high. Doesn’t the fact that there have been no results so far, even though you placed your requests long ago, prove that?]

He would accept the withdrawal of the requests placed individually. However, he would refuse any subsequent requests.

At Edardo’s firm attitude, Reve, Raven’s second disciple, furrowed his brow and spoke in a sharp voice.

[Ha, how is this any different from a dog tucking its tail and running away beforehand?]

[President of the Shard Soul Bearers Guild, I am aware that you have lost your shard soul. It seems your personality has grown hasty with death near…]

[What?! You…!]

[Still, it would be best to hear a person out until the end. From now on, Aurel will independently pursue ‘Raven.’ This is not done by accepting a request, but purely for information gathering, and…]

[…!]

To be an existence I haven’t managed to grasp, despite having such notable features, is it not truly intriguing and also quite galling?

Having added that, Edardo slightly curled the corner of his mouth at those who had exclamation marks above their heads and spoke with finality.

[If we discover his whereabouts in the process, we will inform you then. I am well aware of how selfish this choice is, so let’s refrain from any nonsense like telling me to keep the request posted.]

It meant he would simply inform them without any compensation.

It was an act that cost the guild presidents nothing. Therefore, three of the four silently agreed and ended the communication, and the remaining one, who harbored no small dissatisfaction with Edardo’s attitude, could only grit his teeth and retreat, knowing he was ultimately the one in a hurry.

Of course, he didn’t retreat meekly.

[You’d better watch your mouth. If a low-born wretch like you keeps acting so insolently, you never know when you’ll fall into the abyss.]

[A warning about ‘falling’ to someone from the bottom… Very well, I’ll keep it in mind for now.]

Having lightly brushed off the fierce warning, Edardo said to his siblings as soon as the communication was cut off,

“You all heard, so I shouldn’t need to explain.”

“…”

“Find him.”

Golden eyes flashed like a beast’s.

“Find him, and erase his traces.”