But the moment he saw Luke, a spark returned to his eyes. He parted his lips—dry and cracked from lack of water—as if he wanted to say something.
"This is all your fault!!"
The next second, the male mage suddenly flew into a rage for no reason. His eyes burned with fury as he roared and tried to lunge at Luke.
His body slammed into the iron cage with a deafening clang.
"What did I do wrong?! What did I do wrong!!"
He howled like a madman, his crazed behavior frightening a lot of people nearby.
Behind Luke, Lux's body trembled slightly, and she instinctively clutched the edge of his sleeve.
Fiora frowned, but sighed inwardly.
"Behave yourself!"
"Shut up!"
At the rear of the cart, the two Mageseekers snapped back to attention. Cursing, they yanked hard on the chains in their hands, jerking the mage's body sideways until he crashed into the bars.
At the same time—crack!—one of the Mageseekers' whips came down.
Then again.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
"Aah!" The mage screamed miserably, collapsing weakly inside the iron cage. His rough cloth shirt quickly seeped with bright red blood.
Before long, he didn't even have the strength left to cry out.
Unable to bear it, Lux shut her eyes.
By now, the two knights who had finished saluting Luke had already swung back into their saddles and continued escorting the prisoners onward.
"I… did nothing wrong…"
Inside the iron cage, the mage—eyes gone hollow—murmured in a voice so low it was almost inaudible, repeating the same words over and over.
"Let's go."
Luke pulled his gaze away from the mage and prepared to leave.
He stepped off first. Lux was still holding onto his sleeve, and she hurriedly followed after him.
The three of them left that street behind.
But they also fell far quieter. What they had just seen had clearly affected them.
A thick helplessness surged up in Lux's chest. The man's desperate eyes were like a chain, dragging her toward an abyss. She could only watch—she couldn't do anything.
She was even afraid—afraid that one day she would wake from a dream and find shackles locked around her own wrists and ankles.
Fiora's silence came from a different place. She couldn't truly put herself in his shoes.
Things like this happened in Demacia without pause. By now, it no longer felt as simple as right and wrong.
And in an era like this, she was nothing more than a bird trapped in a cage.
As for Luke, he was thinking even more.
Because he was a seer—he had some sense of what was coming.
This seemed to be the first time he had seen Demacia and a mage collide head-on.
He'd been living so leisurely lately that he'd nearly forgotten what kind of world he was living in.
Was that mage at fault?
Maybe, in the first half of his life, he'd been a perfectly ordinary man—married, had children—but because his magic surged out of control without him even realizing it, he burned his own home to the ground.
In that fire, the thing that burned along with the house… was his life.
The Mageseekers found him, of course. And maybe from that moment on, he had no future left at all.
So where did his "wrong" come from?
His only wrong… was being a mage, in Demacia.
Since ancient times, Demacia and mages had been like fire and water—utterly incompatible.
In the beginning, Demacia was founded as a refuge, meant to protect people from the harm of magical energies.
Back then, magical disasters weren't limited to mages—but as years passed, humans gradually became the clearest vessels for magic, and the opposition sharpened into what it was today.
Times changed. So much time had passed that the old refuge had become a powerful empire.
And the words anti-magic had sunk their roots deep into the land.
And right then, Luke couldn't avoid facing a problem.
The life he had now was what he'd always wanted—no worries about food or shelter, doing whatever he pleased.
But if he wanted those days to continue… then he would have to become a butterfly, and flap his wings as hard as he could.
That was certain. Absolutely certain.
He glanced back at Lux. She looked weighed down with worry, her small hand still clutching at him.
Luke couldn't help but smile. "Are you really that timid? You've never even seen something like that before?"
Lux looked up—and only then realized she was still tugging at Luke's clothes without thinking. She hurriedly let go.
Then she lifted her chin and huffed. "Who are you calling timid? I'm brave beyond measure, okay!"
Yeah. Someday you'll even dare to walk into a dungeon.
Muttering that to himself, Luke asked, "Is there any creature you're afraid of?"
Lux had just finished boasting, so she immediately answered with full confidence, "Afraid? I don't even know how to write the word!"
So Luke's gaze dropped a couple inches, landing on her shoulder, and he said with a grin, "Then I'm relieved to tell you this—there's a spider crawling up your neck right now."
The moment he said it, Miss Crownguard didn't even look down. Her pupils shrank, and the rosy color in her face drained white in an instant.
When someone gets frightened, they usually have two reactions.
One is screaming at the top of their lungs.
The other is being so scared they can't make a sound at all.
Lux was clearly the second.
"H-help… me…"
Her lips trembled as she looked at Luke with pitiful eyes, begging for help.
She didn't dare lower her head. She didn't even dare move—terrified the spider would jump onto her face.
"I'm teasing. I thought you said you weren't afraid."
Luke said it in the most innocent tone imaginable.
Lux froze in place.
Only then did she dare glance at her shoulder—there was nothing there. She looked up again and saw that infuriating face wearing that infuriating smile.
She clenched her teeth, and a blazing fury surged up inside her.
"I'm going to kill you!!!"
Miss Crownguard shouted—completely abandoning any sense of dignity—and was practically ready to commit murder in the street.
She chased Luke all over the road.
Fiora watched with an amused smile. In her eyes, Luke really did deserve a beating—who in the world joked with a girl like that?
It was obvious Lux was genuinely furious this time.
To calm her down, Luke not only took a few punches, he also agreed to cover her ice cream for a whole week—and to let her be the first to try the candy apple.
Only then did Miss Crownguard grudgingly cool off.
As they walked, Lux puffed up proudly and declared, "Spiders or whatever—I'm not scared."
Luke asked, "Have you ever heard a story?"
Lux grew curious. "What story?"
"It's something I heard back when I was still at the palace. A patrolling guard mentioned it once."
Luke gathered himself and lowered his voice a little. "It's called The Red-Spotted Spider of the Dungeon."
Just hearing the title was enough to raise goosebumps on Lux's skin.
Fiora also glanced over.
"That guard was on dungeon duty. In the dark corridor, there was only the faintest bit of light. That day was no different from any other. He walked and walked… and suddenly, he heard a faint rustling from the ceiling behind him."
"At first, he didn't pay it any attention. But the sound grew louder… and louder… so he turned and looked up at the ceiling. And then—suddenly—the sound vanished, and…"
Luke dragged it out with a ghost-story cadence.
The blonde girl beside him was already tense by the end.
So Luke raised his tone slightly. "And he saw nothing."
Hearing that, Lux finally let out the breath she'd been holding.
Then Luke abruptly sped up: "But the moment he turned back around, a palm-sized red-spotted spider lunged straight at his face!"
"Hh—!"
Lux sucked in a sharp breath of cold air, nearly choking herself.
When the image formed in her mind, she suddenly felt like… maybe dying would be easier.
"That red-spotted spider—palm-sized, covered in fine hairs, everywhere—"
"D-don't. Don't say it."
Lux stopped him, face bloodless. Just imagining it made her stomach crawl with icy dread.
She swore silently that no matter what happened, she would never set foot in a dungeon again.
"Is that it?" Fiora asked after listening, her expression unchanged.
Maybe because she wasn't afraid of spiders.
Luke asked, "Then what creature is the duelist afraid of?"
"I'm not particularly afraid of anything," Fiora thought for a moment, "but there is one disgusting thing I can't stand—something called a long-faced bat."
Luke nodded. "Easy. Just swap the red-spotted spider in the story with a long-faced bat."
So you're sharing horror stories now?
Fiora shot Luke a look, but tried imagining it anyway—replacing the red-spotted spider with the creature she hated—and sure enough, a chill ran through her.
After all, nobody wanted to be walking along and suddenly end up face-to-face with something they hated or feared.
Luke glanced at Lux, who still looked a little dazed, and couldn't help but smile.
Someday, Lux stepping into a dungeon might become the fuse that lit everything.
Or maybe, whether she stepped in or not, it wouldn't change the ending.
What Luke was doing now was nothing more than a precaution—a small shot in advance.
The three of them made their final stop the Illuminator Church.
Lux wanted to visit Kahina, and Luke also remembered that he'd agreed to meet Moff again in three days.
Fiora had nothing else to do, so she came along as well.
But when they arrived at the Illuminator Church, they found the atmosphere here wasn't quite the same as usual.
There were far more Illuminators than before, and plenty of ordinary citizens too—Barrett among them.
Half his hair had gone white. He wore a priest's long robe and stood in the crowd.
"Uncle Barrett."
Luke walked up, greeted him, then asked in confusion, "Did something happen here?"
Seeing Luke, Barrett didn't look surprised. His daughter Kahina had mentioned before that Luke occasionally came to the Illuminator Church.
Barrett spoke slowly. "A few children have gone missing. One of them is named Moff. I heard you're very close—do you know anything?"
"Moff?"
Luke was even more puzzled. He shook his head. "I don't know anything."
"Your Highness!"
Kahina's voice came from that direction. When Luke looked over, he saw her running straight toward them.
"I was just about to send someone to find you."
She stopped in front of them, breathing hard. After catching her breath, she said, "Moff and the others… I think they probably ran away from home."
That only made Luke more confused.
As she spoke, Kahina pulled out a flattened, crumpled note from her pocket and handed it over. "This was found under Moff's pillow."
Luke took it and unfolded it. A few big words were scrawled crookedly across the paper. The handwriting was clearly a child's—there were even two misspellings.
"I'm going to earn money! Don't worry about me!"
It was a very simple sentence, and it made Moff's intent clear.
It seemed he'd left it on purpose.
From this, it really did seem likely that Moff left of his own will.
Luke folded the note and looked up. "How many are missing? When did you notice?"
"Five. Moff and a little girl, plus three kids who are eight or nine. And it was only discovered a short while ago."
Kahina explained, "They were still here this morning. But around noon, Moff took the others out. These last few days they've been going out to play near the church, so we didn't think much of it."
"They're very well-behaved. They always finish helping the church with chores before they go out. Today was the same, so we didn't pay attention. Usually they play for a while and come back."
"But today they were gone a bit too long. I went to check nearby, but I didn't see any of them. That's when I realized something was wrong."
Kahina's mood darkened as she sighed, guilt in her voice.
"If I'd noticed earlier, maybe… After that, we searched around the area, but couldn't find them. And then it turned into this."
She informed her father, and Barrett hurried over.
Even though he was a high-ranking priest of the Illuminators, he still had other responsibilities and wasn't here all the time.
Hearing that five children were missing, he gathered some of the Illuminators to look for clues, and asked nearby residents to help search as well.
Even if Moff left voluntarily, they were still five children. Of course they were worried.
"Why would Moff run away from home?" Luke asked, still baffled.
He knew Moff fairly well. The kid matured early—by all logic he shouldn't have done this.
The note said he was going to earn money.
But at his age, what money could he possibly earn?
"Maybe it's because he's too sensible," Kahina sighed again. "There are three Illuminator churches in the capital, and the monthly expenses are enormous. Recently, more and more children have been taken in. Every mouth is waiting to be fed. The Illuminators have been feeling a lot of pressure… and Moff might have noticed."
As said before, the Illuminators were a charitable organization, devoted to helping the weak and the sick.
It wasn't as simple as taking in a few children and then finding families willing to adopt them.
The Illuminators had far more to do than that.
Even with House Buvelle's influence and Barrett's call for donations, and even though people contributed every year…
That money all went to worthy causes—and often still wasn't enough.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.