A different kind of mana stone?
Or did something strange seep in while Reinhild was absorbing mana?
Or else a signature aura unique to a particular stone?
He didn’t know.
Right now, Reinhild hadn’t recovered enough to tell the difference.
There was nothing he could figure out just by looking.
This sort of thing had to be examined while feeling the mana itself, but Reinhild wasn’t in a state to do that.
There was also a method of cracking the stone and extracting the mana inside for study, but that too was impossible at the moment.
It required extremely finicky, delicate mana control, and a place where he could keep perfectly calm.
Reinhild had neither.
He wanted to thump his chest from frustration, but he held back, not wanting to touch his clothes gone damp and clammy from the rain.
“Why would something like this be in my necklace stone only?”
Reinhild grabbed the stone on his necklace and shook it hard.
Naturally, he felt nothing.
‘If it came from my body, that’s bad.’
Maybe, during the process of absorbing the necklace stone’s mana, something from Reinhild’s body had flowed into it.
If so, Reinhild absolutely had to study this stone.
If the impurity turned out to be harmful to Reinhild or to Xion, that would be serious.
It might be what was blocking Reinhild’s mana recovery. Or perhaps some abnormality in his body was causing this phenomenon.
‘What if it’s because I was stabbed by the hero’s sword?’
If so, would there be a way to fix it? He didn’t know. But he couldn’t just do nothing.
He had to find the cause of this as quickly as possible.
“Uuugh…!”
With a grunt, Reinhild tried to puzzle out the nature of the subtle mana mixed into the stone, but all he gained was a sharp awareness of his own inadequacy.
Just as he was about to give up and turn away, the spent stones piled in a corner of the shed caught his eye.
‘If this came from my body, then the spent stones should have the same thing in them, right?’
A reasonable guess.
And the only method he could verify at his current level.
Reinhild picked up a spent stone.
“It’s not completely empty.”
There was a little mana left in the stones rolling on the floor.
And that same impurity was mixed into every stone.
‘It really did come from me?’
Reinhild’s heart lurched.
If this phenomenon was happening because he was the demon king…
If this unknown stuff was tainted with demonic energy, it would obviously be very harmful to Xion, a human.
He’d thought he’d finally become a demon king who didn’t cause trouble for Xion…
This brought him right back to square one.
He’d thought the problem resolved and returned to Xion, and no matter how hard he tried, all he was doing was making Xion miserable.
‘Is it because I’m the demon king?’
Was a demon king truly nothing more than a being that harasses humans?
Did he have to make the same choice as before and leave this place again?
And if he did… would Xion come looking for him again like last time?
‘I can’t let this happen.’
Reinhild pulled himself together and clenched his fists.
A demon king who makes humans suffer just by existing, without doing anything at all?
That made no sense.
‘…Or does it?’
On second thought, it did.
There were humans who, just hearing that a demon king had appeared, became so terrified they couldn’t go on with daily life.
Set that kind aside for now. A demon king was doing everything in his power not to make humans unhappy, so this shouldn’t be happening.
The notion that something inside the mana stones came from his body was only a hypothesis. And guessing that it would be harmful to Xion was pure speculation.
Even if it were true, there would surely be a way to solve it.
If there wasn’t, he’d make one.
Reinhild headed back to the house.
In the meantime, the rain had turned into a storm.
He’d only gone as far as the shed, ten paces from the front door, and he was drenched.
Now that he felt just how wet he was, he began to worry about Xion, who had gone all the way to the edge of the village.
Pummeled by drops this heavy, would he be black-and-blue?
What if he slipped on the slick ground and landed on his backside?
With rain so thick it blinded, what if he lost his way home?
Reinhild stood there without even changing out of his wet clothes, hopping from foot to foot as he waited for Xion.
“He said he’d be right back…”
It was nice that an opportunity had opened to check the shed, but he hated being apart from Xion this long.
And he hated even more not knowing when Xion would return, being left to worry.
If it was going to be like this, maybe it would have been better not to look into mana stones or mana at all and just have Xion stay by his side.
‘No. This is for Xion, so I have to figure it out.’
Reinhild clutched the stone on his necklace tight, flung the front door wide, and waited for Xion to appear.
“Rein!”
At last, a human shape shimmered through the curtain of rain in the distance. It was Xion.
Reinhild bolted out into the storm as if he’d been waiting for that very moment.
Xion clearly hadn’t expected him to rush into the rain; startled, he hurried over and pulled Reinhild into his arms.
He hadn’t planned it that way, but thanks to getting soaked in the process, Xion wouldn’t notice that Reinhild’s clothes had already been wet to begin with.
Seeing that Reinhild was drenched, Xion grew alarmed.
Reinhild’s body had weakened as it was; if he caught a chill, it could turn serious.
The moment they were inside, Xion fetched a long towel and wrapped it around Reinhild.
He must have left the door open while he stood there waiting, because rain had blown all the way into the house and pooled on the floor.
Xion silently swore again that he would not leave Reinhild alone.
“Did you wait long?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“The children were rescued safely. None of them were hurt, and by now they’ll be resting somewhere warm.”
“Huh? O-oh.”
Had he said human children were trapped under a collapse?
Maybe so… he wasn’t sure.
That topic had fallen out of Reinhild’s interest long ago.
“Your body’s much too cold. Go wash up with warm water, Rein.”
“You’re colder than I am.”
“I’m fine.”
Before he could explain that a demon king’s skin ran cool by nature, Reinhild found himself gently pushed along and lowered into a hot bath.
His hands and feet had been trembling a little with the chill; now he could feel his whole body unwind.
He hummed softly, basking in the comfort.
‘This isn’t the time!’
The longer he lingered here, the longer it would take before Xion could warm himself.
Xion had been out in the rain even longer than Reinhild; he had to be much colder.
Realizing that far too late, Reinhild climbed out of the tub.
Fresh, fluffy clothes were waiting for him.
Xion had brought them while he was washing.
Reinhild dressed and, last of all, picked up his necklace with the mana stone.
“Hm?”
The stone was filled to the brim with mana.
‘Must be a new stone.’
Having roughly pieced together the situation, Reinhild didn’t startle this time.
He must have burned mana fast maintaining his body temperature after the drenching and exposure to cold air.
Without even knowing it, he had absorbed mana much more quickly than usual, enough that the stone had been spent before nightfall. While setting out Reinhild’s clothes, Xion must have noticed and swapped in a new stone.
Going a few hours without the stone’s help wouldn’t have been a problem, but as a way to keep a rain-soaked Reinhild from catching a cold, it wasn’t a bad choice.
Reinhild liked that sort of thoughtfulness from Xion.
“After being out in the rain, it’s mana work, of course!”
If he did some mana control while waiting for Xion to finish bathing, it would be perfect.
And while he was at it, he could check whether anything strange bled out of his body during recovery.
On days of heavy rain, the mana saturating nature grew denser, which helped training a lot.
It was even better to do it while actually in the rain, but he’d already washed, and it would make Xion worry, so he’d save that for another time…
“…Huh?”
As he sorted his thoughts and lifted the necklace to his neck, Reinhild noticed something odd.
The stone on the necklace was a brand-new one Xion had just swapped in.
Brimming with mana, it was no different from one freshly extracted from a monster.
Then why… was impurity mixed into the new stone?
“This… wasn’t coming from my body?”
Reinhild had held the necklace for less than a minute. Of that, his skin had been in direct contact with the stone for maybe three seconds.
For that amount of impurity to have seeped into the stone in so short a span made no sense. Even if he tried to force it, he couldn’t do that in a few seconds.
Maybe the Reinhild of five hundred years ago, but certainly not now.
Someone had shoved it in.
Before the clean stone from the shed ever touched Reinhild’s neck.
Knock, knock.
At the sudden rapping at the door, Reinhild sucked in a breath.
“Rein, are you finished washing? I’ve prepared soup to warm you up.”
As always, Xion’s gentle voice came from beyond the door.
“Uh, y-yeah…”
His own voice just now had definitely sounded awkward.
But Reinhild didn’t trust himself to answer as if nothing were wrong.
Something was starting to go strangely awry.
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