Kanon stood there alone, shields and thorns formed from floating ice orbiting around her.
Sensing a presence approaching, she immediately went on guard, ready to fight at any moment, but then the figure's Aether gave off a clearer signature Kanon could recognize.
It was Kuon.
"Is everything alright here?"
The voice made Kanon breathe a small sigh of relief. She nodded and lowered her weapons. "It was a bit of a hassle at first, but everyone pitched in, so this area's fairly clear now."
Every so often a monster would slip out of hiding and attack her, but Kanon herself didn't really regard them as much of a threat, striking them down without giving the monsters any time to react.
Still, compared to before, things had grown noticeably calmer.
Once she was certain no monsters remained in hiding, Kanon lowered her hand and began drawing back the Aether she'd spread out earlier. She still had a fair amount left, but she wanted to conserve it as much as possible.
"Did you just come to check on me?"
"That's about it. Vierra asked me to come by. Is your contact with the other teams still holding steady?"
Kanon nodded. "Milia came by with Humarc to check on me earlier. I think their area's gotten safer too. They said we can leave the rest to the reinforcement unit now."
That was indeed a luxury Kuon would have loved to enjoy. But he still couldn't quite relax. At the very least, not until the promised knight unit arrived did he want to let his guard down.
Even so, he couldn't say the same for Kanon.
She'd already been working harder than usual. And given the state she was in, there was no telling what might happen next.
Kuon even found himself feeling guilty for dragging Kanon into such a massive mess, even though she'd already told him she didn't mind it at all.
" ... I'll take you to the rest post."
Kanon said nothing as she let Kuon lift her into both arms.
Instantly, her body felt impossibly light as Kuon moved, cutting straight through the resistance of the air. He leapt along the path between the trees, running at a speed that would put any athlete to shame.
"Your body feels so much stronger than it did a few days ago. Has the physical enhancement from that transaction really helped that much?"
Out of curiosity, Kanon tried asking. She didn't expect a genuine answer from Kuon. At most, she figured he'd give her something short, or a vague reply. But to her surprise, Kuon let out a light chuckle before answering.
"What I asked for from that transaction was a body strong enough to keep growing and adapting quickly. It didn't hand me superhuman strength outright—it just gave me the room to keep developing my own physical condition."
" ... Is that so?"
When they'd first met, Kuon had already shown impressive strength, endurance, and physical speed. But in just a few weeks, all of it had climbed to a point that could only be called 'terrifying.'
As Kanon traced the extent of Kuon's growth, the two of them finally stopped moving. She could now sense other Aether presences within her range, but beyond that, she couldn't perceive anything more.
"There are a few small huts built here, and Milia's resting in one of them right now. Do you want to head there?"
Even without Kanon showing any sign of her limitation, Kuon had already stepped in to help her.
Hearing that, Kanon couldn't help but sigh and shake her head. "No need to bother her. Let's rest somewhere else."
As he set Kanon down, Kuon replied, "Sorry, I can't stay with you. I still need to go check the situation elsewhere. Would you mind waiting?"
"I mind. Let's rest, and wait for Vierra and Felix to come back."
Kanon gently pinched the sleeve of Kuon's clothes, as though trying to stop him from leaving. Kuon glanced at her, momentarily unsure what to do. But as though she'd seen straight through his confusion, Kanon continued speaking.
"It's already late, and the situation's been handled well enough. You don't need to step in every single time. They're not so weak that you have to jump in constantly."
What Kanon said made sense, but for some reason, Kuon still couldn't quite settle down.
Facing Kuon's stubborn silence, Kanon almost clicked her tongue, but held herself back and had to settle for a resigned sigh instead.
"You don't need to worry about them so much. They're not weak enough that you have to watch over them every moment. Rest matters, even for you."
"Besides, there's something I want to talk about—it's about your condition. Can we?"
For a moment, Kuon simply stared at her in silence. But seeing how serious Kanon looked, he couldn't help but reconsider what he'd originally meant to do.
There was also a matter concerning his own condition that Kanon wanted to discuss, and he'd more or less already guessed what it was—Kanon had made it clear enough already.
' ... I suppose this is fine.'
Kuon adjusted the position of his monocle for a moment as he made up his mind. "Alright, let's rest over there," he said, pointing toward one of the huts.
Kuon walked ahead while Kanon followed quietly behind. Once they reached one of the huts, the two of them sat down without saying anything for a while.
For a moment, Kuon genuinely wanted to breathe a sigh of relief in this place. But his body was still restless, an aftereffect of the prolonged, unrelenting fighting that had gone on for days now. He could still hear the sounds of battle happening elsewhere.
Even though his exhausted mind craved silence right now, his naturally enhanced hearing kept picking up every sound from the events around them. And when he closed his eyes, the sounds grew even sharper, nearly intruding on his own thoughts.
Normally, the effect wouldn't have bothered him this much. But maybe days of nonstop Accel use had taken a toll on the state of his mind.
"Wasn't there something you wanted to talk about earlier?"
" ... Let's hold off on that for a bit. Turns out I'm a lot more tired than I thought."
Kanon's voice trailed off as she finished the sentence. At the same moment, faint dark lines began to show clearly beneath her eyes, marring her pale white skin.
Indeed, compared to Kuon and everyone else fighting directly on the front lines, Kanon's job might have sounded trivial. Even so, the truth was, if she hadn't filled her role in the back lines, today's battle—and every battle before it—would have gone in a completely different direction.
Kanon had already drained her own Aether dry several times to support everyone else's magic use, and although her Aether efficiency was fairly average, the sheer volume of spells she'd cast nearly nonstop could easily surpass what a Magician with a normal Aether capacity could ever put out.
Kanon rubbed her eyes and checked what remained of her Aether. There was still a few percent left of her full capacity, but that likely wouldn't be enough to carry her through much more fighting.
Snowflakes appeared and vanished as Kanon clenched her fist, showing off just how far she'd come in her ice-manipulation training.
"You've gotten a lot better at this. Have you been practicing nonstop?"
Kanon replied by tilting her head. "Not really. I just tried applying the theory you once explained—about how snow forms in nature—and I could do it right away. Maybe it's because the application itself is simple and doesn't require constantly juggling a bunch of variables at once."
Indeed, compared to other elements, ice tended to be easier to grasp and master, since at its core it was really just a transformation of a basic element. The truly complex calculations only came into play when Kanon wanted to simulate the transformation of water and water vapor into ice fragments, without needing to create the water first.
Kuon didn't argue and simply agreed. In reality, ice magic wasn't nearly that simple. The elemental transformation itself wasn't especially complicated, but everything beyond that demanded deep knowledge and understanding of how atomic structures behaved. In that sense, Kanon—who'd managed to manifest ice magic by working through that entire process—was a natural genius.
Still, that raised another question for Kuon.
"Sorry if this question's a bit much, feel free to answer or not, but ... let me ask, just how smart are you, really?"
Kanon seemed to think for a moment before answering, a touch of hesitation in her voice. "I'm not sure what level I'm at, since I never really finished any formal education, but even after I stopped going to school, I kept studying at home."
Kanon explained that she'd stopped attending school after losing her sight.
"Did someone teach you?"
For a moment, Kuon hesitated to ask that, worried it might be too sensitive a topic. After all, he remembered Kanon once saying her parents were on the list of people she wanted to end with her own two hands. Kuon had concluded their personal relationship was far from good.
Even so, Kanon didn't seem to mind, answering every question of his without hesitation.
Kanon nodded. "My uncle. He was the one who always taught me all kinds of things, including how to read or use braille. He was annoying, but he was a genuinely smart man."
'So that's the person who shaped how her mind developed....'
Kuon still felt like he wanted to ask more, but decided to let it go right there, not wanting to dig too deep into Kanon's past.
If he wanted to know more about her past, then Kanon would have to share it on her own initiative.
Their casual conversation felt so relaxed and calming that, without either of them noticing, the sound of battle in the distance had faded away.
"The reinforcement troops must have arrived by now," Kanon said, and Kuon replied with a nod.
"Do you want to go meet them?"
Kanon turned her head and asked the question without her expression shifting in the slightest. Even so, Kuon immediately realized the question was some kind of 'test.'
"Unfortunately, I'm already far too comfortable here, so I think I'll rest instead. Let's go meet them tomorrow to confirm the end of our mission."
The answer made Kanon nod, satisfied, and Kuon let out a relieved sigh for having chosen the right response.
'Why am I even worried about this...?'
Kuon glanced at Kanon for a moment, questions forming in his mind. But in the end, none of them really mattered. Kuon calmly swallowed back everything he'd meant to say, letting silence fill the space between them once more.
The silence was calming, but neither Kuon nor Kanon had forgotten the real reason they'd sat down here in the first place. They were simply waiting for the right moment, and perhaps, this was it.
"A few hours ago...."
Kanon tried to open the conversation, but she struggled to find the right words, eventually having to correct herself.
"Sorry, let me start over. Kuon, you made direct contact with the Black Tide earlier, didn't you?"
***
The question came out, and even though Kuon had braced himself for it, he had no answer he could offer with any real certainty, since he didn't fully understand the situation himself.
It had happened over a dozen hours earlier, when the fighting had reached its peak intensity, and Kuon had been forced to fight alone against a swarm of monsters slowly dragging him toward a pool of Black Tide.
'Direct contact' sounded like an understatement. In truth, Kuon had fallen and been submerged in that sludge for a short while. And yet, nothing had happened to him.
Normally, the early effects or symptoms of Black Tide exposure would show up almost immediately after first contact. Milia's case had already proven that.
Over the past several hours, Kuon had checked his own condition again and again. But there'd been no change, no symptoms. No purplish-black crystal growing on his body, and no change in the behavior of his Aether either.
"Did you find out about the situation from your viewers?"
Kanon nodded, drawing a weak laugh from Kuon. This was the core problem with being a Drifter. Outside of certain moments, he couldn't count on privacy or keep critical information from spreading.
"What actually happened?"
Kuon wished he could give her an answer, but even he had no real understanding of the situation. At best, he could only offer a guess.
"There's a chance my physical enhancement and regeneration had something to do with it, but I also don't want to rule out the possibility that Drifter have some small chance of surviving Apocrypt."
The moment he said that, Kanon immediately shot it down. "I doubt the second possibility. You might not know, since your access to information about other Drifter has been cut off, but at least one or two Drifter have already fallen into Black Tide and shown signs of Apocrypt on their bodies right away."
"Then the most likely answer is my first guess. But...."
Was it really his physical enhancement and regeneration that had saved him from Apocrypt? Kuon still had his doubts, but he couldn't come up with any other explanation.
Aside from the conditions he'd set for himself when he first became a Drifter, there was truly nothing special about his body that would make him immune to Apocrypt.
For a moment, Kuon genuinely considered confirming it once more, by throwing himself back into the pool of Black Tide. But he had no intention of taking such a reckless risk.
"What about from your perspective, Kanon? Do you see anything strange with my Aether?"
Kuon genuinely felt his Aether's behavior was still normal, but the result might look different through Kanon's eyes.
Still, given how quiet Kanon had stayed this whole time, Kuon already sensed that nothing had changed with his Aether. Kanon confirmed it directly herself.
Kanon blinked for a moment before answering, "Nothing's really different. I made sure to check—Milia's Aether flow looked slightly damaged after being hit with Apocrypt, and it's been slowly recovering over time."
"But in your case, absolutely nothing has changed."
Though somewhat reluctant to admit it, Kanon had been monitoring the patterns and flow of Aether for everyone she knew, and she was confident enough to identify each person by their Aether flow alone.
And so far, she hadn't sensed any truly significant change in Kuon's own Aether.
Hearing her answer, Kuon could only let out a resigned sigh.
For now, it seemed they'd hit a dead end. Still, both of them made sure to keep monitoring the situation until any visible change appeared.
Setting all of that aside for a moment, this was the last day of his mission as an Adept here. Tomorrow, his team and Humarc's would have to head back to the city center to file their reports and collect their pay.
Kuon looked down at his own hands. In just a few days of fighting, he'd adapted so thoroughly that it seemed almost impossible to believe he'd started out as nothing more than a researcher with no real combat experience.
Now his body could fight exceptionally well, and his use of material-manipulation magic had grown far more efficient than before; probably because he'd been using it constantly, not just for combat, but also to create and repair everyone's metal equipment.
Honestly, Kuon wanted to explore this progress even further, but his mind was already too exhausted for that. Constant Accel use had truly worn down both his body and his mind. A while ago, the side effects had still been bearable, probably because he'd been suggesting to himself that he could hold off all that pain and fatigue.
Now, the true effects had caught up, tearing him apart relentlessly, both inside and out. The hunger brought on by his energy deficit had been gnawing at him for a while now, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Meanwhile, Kanon was more or less in the same state.
Once their conversation ended, she immediately laid herself down, closing her eyes toward the thatched ceiling of the small hut where they were resting.
Kuon glanced at her for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall as she tried to steady her breathing. Perhaps these fourteen days here had been an incredibly intense stretch of time for her.
For someone like Kanon, who'd lived a sheltered life for years, a change this drastic had to be exhausting and frustrating. In fact, even Kuon couldn't quite understand how she'd managed to stay calm and sharp through even the harshest moments.
Was she pushing herself too hard? Kuon didn't know, and he wasn't going to ask.
Kuon turned his gaze forward again and removed the monocle that had been fixed over his right eye. His eyes narrowed as his fingers carefully traced the silver frame of the monocle.
It was at that moment he sensed a presence creeping closer.
It was Kanon, her expression fixed as though she were staring at him intently from the side.
" ... What?"
"I just realized—using Accel that much must be draining your mind and energy, right? Kuon, are you hungry?"
Kuon didn't answer, and Kanon didn't seem to be waiting for one anyway. She simply turned over and began rummaging through a pouch she'd kept stashed at the resting spot.
A moment later, she turned back and held something out to Kuon. It was a piece of fruit—a deep, rich red, still looking fresh despite the time that had passed.
"I don't know how, but this salted apple's still in perfectly good shape even after weeks. I didn't even use my magic to slow down the decay."
Kuon took the apple from her and, with visible interest, began turning it over in his hands. "This really is a fruit with a magical attribute, isn't it? It tastes salty, and it's still very fresh even after being stored for so long."
"Mhmm, if I could, I'd genuinely love to learn more about it, but that might be difficult for now."
Kanon showed him the pouch. Only a few were left, and she felt it'd be such a shame to use them all up.
" ... Let's try planting them later. I should be able to enrich the soil and speed up the tree's growth with my power too."
Kanon nodded gently, a faint smile on her lips. She then sat down beside Kuon and started taking small bites out of the apple in her hand.
Watching how relaxed she seemed, Kuon couldn't help but be drawn in, deciding to eat his own apple as well.
It tasted bland to him, but faintly, he could make out a touch of saltiness and freshness spreading across his tongue. And honestly, it was deeply satisfying.
'I wonder what it actually tastes like.'