*crunch*
Rotsard reached up, placing his palm on the wall, and curled his fingers that dug right into the stone. With that leverage, he pulled himself up and swung his body outside, causing the magic barrier to fluctuate and release a rainbow of colors like an oil spill on water.
In times of peace without wars or criminals lurking around, the Royal Academy's barrier was set to block spells, but it wasn't set to block humans, though.
When a human would pass through it in a spot that wasn't meant for it, the barrier would scan and record them and the time at which they trespassed.
It was especially sensitive towards any signs of gedwyld, and would raise an alarm if the human passing through had their natural mana barrier reinforced too much for the barrier to penetrate it for the scan.
After all, that would be too suspicious.
The person who couldn't be scanned would be marked so that they could be pursued, and unless an 8th tier magician cleansed them, the mark would remain indefinitely, using the target's own mana to sustain itself.
But, in Rotsard's case, nothing like that happened. Despite the treatment from Mira, his natural mana barrier didn't return as of yet, and the Academy's barrier's basic scan was done a lot faster than it would normally.
Not that it was something pleasant, of course.
"..."
As Rotsard landed softly on the other side, he instantly looked around in search of the source of THAT scent.
From that side, a peaceful artificially maintained forest, almost a park but one where humans wouldn't pass through, was only a few dozen yards from the wall, with a pond serving as an emergency water reservoir between it and the wall.
"Come out."
Since he couldn't spot what he was looking for, Rotsard called out, his voice carrying on the water surface and into the forest.
There was no answer, and that made the boy furrow his brows.
He walked past the pond and stopped before the line of trees, keenly looking around.
Acting as if he was certain that he would find someone hiding there.
But that certainty didn't last long, as with another gust of wind from the pond, the scent he was following disappeared without a trace…
…and no other senses confirmed Rotsard's assumption, making his shoulder slump as he looked around with the expression of a confused puppy that didn't quite yet understand it was abandoned.
Was it… was it that he simply imagined that scent?
In the deepest corners of his heart, he wished so much that his brain finally made it up just to quench the tiniest bit of that longing?
"..."
No, that couldn't be it! Rotsard furrowed his brows and shook his head, making a determined expression.
The boy entered the forest.
Its atmosphere was… unnerving.
Maybe because he was a member of the Vallhall family that prided itself about their beastly origin, Rotsard felt unnerved by the artificiality of it.
All trees planted in perfect rows with the same distance from each other, with barely any vegetation except plain grass between… no saplings in sight, everything planned.
Everything per…
"...?"
..fect…?
As it turned out, not everywhere was perfect.
There was a certain spot between the trees where the grass was more lush and a couple of peculiar flowers bloomed.
…with leaves that seemed to be coated in silvery hairs, pea-like blue flowers were growing out of a stem, forming a spike reaching towards the sky…
"...lupine…? Here?"
Rotsard furrowed his brows and muttered to himself in confusion.
He was well acquainted with the flower itself.
After all, lupine or lupinus, as some called it, was a flower associated with wolves. To be even more specific, the white and blue lupines were a part of the Vallhall family's original crest.
But none of that could change the fact that a clump of them in that one spot was the only place they could be found within the forest.
"..."
Rotsard blinked repeatedly while staring at the flowers, not understanding himself what about them was making him so uneasy.
He looked around and swallowed his saliva anxiously before his next move.
Then, guided by an urge, an intuition that he himself found confusing, he leaned down and smelled the lupines.
"..."
…and then he put one hand against the grass next to the plants to support himself and leaned even lower…
…and hesitantly sniffed the ground…
"?!?!"
*WHOOSH* *thump*
The next moment, he was already on his back several yards away, with goosebumps all over his body.
Rotsard wasn't attacked.
He jumped back on his own in pure panic.
His beastly yellow eyes were widened, and he was trembling as if struck down with a terrible fever.
His first move after propping himself up on his elbows was to start shaking his head in denial, without uttering a single word.
Without taking his eyes from the spot where blue and white lupines grew.
He tried to stand up, but his legs gave up on him, yet instead of accepting that, he shifted on all fours and crawled back there.
He couldn't force his hands to stop shaking, but he could roll up his sleeves, sink his fingers into the soil, and start digging.
Not bothered by the dirt, with earth under his fingernails, Rotsard Vallhall dug in the ground.
He was slow with it, fearful, praying that he was mistaken.
"...!"
And for a second, when a wolf's skull bore its yellowish-white bone, a hope budded in the boy's heart.
It was a dead wolf.
A skeleton of a dead wolf.
"..."
But just as the hope emerged, so did the anxiety, fear, and suspicion.