Yong let out a quiet sigh, not the careless kind he usually made but something slower, and his gaze lingered on Fainyx for a moment before shifting toward Ruth.
Ruth noticed immediately. His golden eyes narrowed slightly. "Will you continue?"
There was no need to clarify what that meant.
Yong already knew.
Silence settled between them for a moment, the night breeze moving through the trees and the soft rustling of leaves filling the space where words hadn't formed yet. Then Yong answered.
"Yes."
No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just a simple firm answer.
"I will continue."
Ruth held his gaze, searching for even the slightest trace of doubt. There was none.
"You understand what this means," Ruth said. "This is not a minor condition. It will not simply disappear with time."
"I know." Yong rolled his shoulders slightly, the gesture easy and unhurried. "I heard everything you said." His lips curved faintly. "But that doesn't change anything."
Ruth remained silent.
Yong turned his head and looked directly at Fainyx.
"He's my disciple," he said, his voice calm and warm at the same time, carrying a weight that made it difficult to simply dismiss. "And I don't abandon my disciple over something like this."
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Ruth let out a soft scoff, a faint smirk appearing at the corner of his mouth. "You really haven't changed."
Yong smiled. "Why would I?"
Fainyx sat quietly and watched them.
His expression did not change. It never did. But inside something shifted, small and quiet and entirely unexpected, a warmth that he hadn't anticipated and didn't quite know what to do with. It settled before he could examine it too closely and left something steadier behind.
He had not expected that answer.
And yet somehow it had felt like the most natural outcome possible.
His thoughts moved on quickly because they always did.
The treatment. The side effects.
He would throw up blood randomly. When he overexerted himself.
Fainyx lowered his gaze slightly and turned that over in his mind with the particular calm of someone assessing a problem rather than reacting to it. The blood itself didn't concern him that much. What concerned him was the attention it would bring. Estrella would notice immediately, she noticed everything about him, and once she noticed the others would follow and once questions started they tended to keep going in directions he couldn't always control.
Questions were troublesome.
He preferred to avoid them whenever possible.
He filed it away as something to manage later and returned his attention to the present because there were more immediate matters and Yong had already stood up.
The movement was abrupt enough to draw attention, a sudden shift from the quiet weight of the conversation into something entirely different. Yong stretched lightly and looked at Fainyx with an expression that had recovered most of its usual brightness.
"Alright," he said. "We still have time and worrying about problems we can't solve tonight won't help anyone. So." He looked at Fainyx directly. "Let's figure out your affinity."
Ruth made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite objection and crossed his arms.
Fainyx looked up with something that was not quite visible interest but was close enough that Yong seemed to catch it anyway.
Yong lifted a hand.
A small flame flickered into existence above his palm, burning steadily with the particular control of someone who had done this so many times it required no thought at all. Then it changed. The flame vanished and a small sphere of water appeared in its place, hovering calmly. That shifted into wind, then into a low dense current of earth, each element appearing and dissolving without delay or waste or any visible effort between them.
"Basic elements," Yong said. "Nothing complicated." He lowered his hand. "You'll try them."
Fainyx nodded and raised his own hand.
No chants. No circles. His mana responded immediately, gathering with the quiet precision that came from years of solitary practice, and a flame formed above his palm, clean and stable from the moment it appeared. Yong's eyes sharpened slightly and Fainyx kept going without waiting for comment, the fire fading into wind and then water and then earth, each element responding without resistance or imbalance, moving through the sequence with the same unhurried steadiness.
He lowered his hand.
Ruth had been watching from the side with his arms still crossed. "...Balanced," he muttered.
Yong shook his head slightly, his gaze still on Fainyx. "No." A brief pause. "It's more than that."
Fainyx looked at him but didn't write anything and Yong didn't elaborate immediately, just stood there with that considering expression for a moment before his face shifted back into something more energetic.
"Now," he said, stepping back and putting some distance between himself and the others, "I'll show you something else." He stretched both arms out to his sides and rolled his neck once. "It's been a long time since I properly warmed up."
Ruth uncrossed his arms just enough to gesture at Fainyx. "Pay attention to what he does."
Fainyx glanced at him.
Ruth's smirk was faint. "What he's about to do... most humans can't."
Fainyx's attention returned to Yong.
Yong stood still for a moment and nothing happened and then his mana moved and Fainyx's eyes sharpened immediately because it was wrong in a way that was completely right, no circles, no formations, no visible structure guiding the flow at all, and yet it wasn't chaotic. Yong began chanting something low and the mana gathered around him in smooth flowing currents, like separate strands of light finding each other and weaving together into something that didn't follow the usual rules of how magic in this world was supposed to work.
It was controlled perfectly.
The air responded. The mana rose upward and expanded into the space above them in a slow graceful motion that had nothing explosive about it, nothing aggressive, just a quiet expansion of something enormous being handled with complete ease. Soft light spread outward and illuminated the surrounding garden in a brilliance that felt almost unreal against the dark.
His own spell. Built without circles. Without any external structure at all.
Fainyx watched every detail of it and felt something tighten in his thoughts that wasn't quite recognition and wasn't quite awe but was somewhere between the two.
This was mastery. Not power for its own sake but power made entirely natural, absorbed so thoroughly into the person wielding it that it simply moved when they moved and stopped when they stopped.
Beside him Ruth let out a quiet sound. "...See?"
Fainyx nodded faintly.
Then his thoughts sharpened in a different direction because that much mana expanding outward in a garden attached to a noble estate in the middle of the night was the kind of thing that could not be allowed to be noticed and he was just beginning to calculate how quickly it would reach the mansion's outer perimeter when a faint ripple passed through the air around them, subtle and layered, settling into place like a wall that wasn't visible but was absolutely there.
A barrier.
He glanced at Ruth.
Ruth clicked his tongue. "Good thing I set up an illusion barrier earlier."
Fainyx relaxed slightly.
Yong meanwhile had slowly lowered his hand, the light fading and the mana dispersing back into the night air, and turned back toward them with an expression that was just slightly sheepish.
"...Oops. I put too much mana in. Ahaha."
Ruth stared at him.
"You realized just now?"
"A little late," Yong admitted, scratching the back of his head.
"You almost exposed everything," Ruth said flatly.
"Sorry. I got carried away." Yong had the look of someone who was genuinely apologetic and also not entirely surprised at himself. "You know I haven't warmed up properly in a long time."
Ruth shook his head slowly with the air of someone who had accepted that this was simply what Yong was like and had made peace with it years ago.
Yong looked back at Fainyx, his expression brightening again. "So? What do you think?"
Fainyx paused briefly and then wrote.
[ It was impressive. ]
More than that. It was something worth studying properly.
Yong grinned. "Right? It's cool."
[ Yes. ]
Yong crossed his arms with entirely too much satisfaction. "You'll be able to do that too someday."
Fainyx blinked once and internally sighed because that was a completely unnecessary thing to say and he was not going to write that down.
He simply nodded.
The night had grown deeper while they had been talking, the moon sitting lower than it had been when they arrived, and Ruth glanced upward with the quiet assessment of someone who tracked time without needing to think about it.
"It's time."
Yong followed his gaze and nodded. "Yeah." He looked at Fainyx. "You should get some rest."
Fainyx stood.
Then paused.
Then reached out and lightly caught the edge of Yong's cape.
Yong looked down, clearly not expecting that. "Hm? What is it?"
Fainyx opened his notebook and wrote carefully.
[ Do you know an adventurer called The Silver Wraith? ]
Yong went still.
It was subtle but it was there, a brief quality of stillness that passed through him before his expression settled back into something neutral. "...Where did you hear that?" he asked.
Fainyx met his gaze calmly and wrote.
[ I found the name in some adventurer guide books. I became interested because they used magic and a sword at the same time. ]
Yong looked at him for a moment longer than necessary. Then exhaled slowly. "...I see."
Something shifted in his expression, not dramatically, but enough.
"I know her," he said. "I knew her party too."
Fainyx's grip on the notebook tightened just slightly.
"There were several of them," Yong continued, his gaze drifting slightly as if looking at something that wasn't in the garden. "A well known group. The most recognized were the leader, The Silver Wraith, and the one they called the Masked Thief." A pause. "They've been missing for years now. No one knows where they went."
His voice lowered.
"They might be dead."
Silence followed.
"But the party didn't disband," he added. "The rest kept traveling." Then something seemed to surface in his memory. "Actually, they're coming here. Tomorrow. They'll be staying for about a year." He was quiet for a moment. "This is the place where their leader disappeared. I think it's something like a death anniversary for those two."
Fainyx wrote.
[ You met them? ]
"Yeah." A faint smile appeared on Yong's face, brief and genuine. "A long time ago. We used to meet at a bar when I was still adventuring. They were always together, the Masked Thief and their leader." He let out a quiet breath. "That's all I know."
Fainyx nodded and closed his notebook.
No more questions.
Yong looked at him for a moment and then smiled faintly. "Get some rest."
Ruth stepped back. "We'll return tomorrow."
Fainyx inclined his head once and then both of them were simply gone, the garden settling back into its quiet as if they had never been there at all.
He stood alone.
The night felt deeper than it had before.
He looked up at the sky briefly and then turned and started walking back toward the mansion, his steps calm and unhurried, his thoughts considerably less so.
The Masked Thief.
He turned that over carefully.
Estrella had said she went with his mother. That she served as trap detector. That she had been her maid and her closest friend and her family.
A maid with exceptional trap detection skills accompanying an adventurer who hid her identity completely.
The Masked Thief.
It fit.
Fainyx lowered his gaze slightly as he walked, the pieces arranging themselves quietly in his mind the way pieces always did when there were enough of them.
His mother had lived a considerably more interesting life than he had managed to piece together from a covered painting and a library full of magic books. And the people she had gathered around her apparently had a habit of showing up in his life whether he planned for it or not.
He thought about meeting them.
His mother's remaining party members, coming here tomorrow, staying for a year.
Maybe, he thought, it wouldn't be the worst thing.