The morning rush at "The Rusty Spoon" was a chaotic symphony that Lencar had learned to conduct with his eyes closed. The scent of yeast and caramelized onions hung heavy in the air, mixing with the sharp tang of Gorn's cheap coffee.
"Order up! Three stews, extra bread, and tell the guy at Table 6 that if he wants more ale, he needs to pay his tab first!" Gorn bellowed, his face glistening with sweat.
Lencar caught a flying plate mid-air—a clumsy slip from a new server—and slid it onto the counter without breaking his stride. "Got it, boss. And Table 6 is good for it; he's a merchant from Kikka waiting on a shipment. He'll pay."
"You know everyone's business, don't you?" Gorn grumbled, though he looked relieved.
"I just listen," Lencar shrugged, flashing a tired but genuine smile.
He wasn't acting right now. This was the strange duality of his life. He genuinely liked the rhythm of the kitchen. It was honest work. Physics and heat. Cause and effect. Unlike the magical world, where people could bend reality with a scream, here, if you didn't watch the oven, the bread burned. Simple rules.
By evening, the chaos subsided into the warm, drowsy hum of a well-fed house. The customers left, the "Closed" sign was flipped, and the Scarlet household settled in.
Dinner was a family affair. Lencar sat on the rug, surrounded by the kids.
"Tell us the one about the Prince with the Sword of Nothing!" Marco demanded, bouncing on his heels.
"Again?" Lencar laughed, ruffling the boy's hair. "You know how it ends. He screams a lot and hits things really hard."
"That's the best part!"
Lencar obliged, spinning a sanitized version of Asta's journey so far, turning his rival into a fairy tale hero. Rebecca sat in the armchair mending a tunic, listening with a soft smile. It was a perfect, domestic scene. It felt real.
But as the moon climbed higher and the children's breathing turned rhythmic and deep in the next room, the warmth faded from Lencar's eyes.
He stood up, stretching his neck. "Goodnight, Rebecca."
"Night, Lencar," she whispered, not looking up from her sewing. "Be careful... with whatever 'homework' you're doing."
Lencar paused at the door. She knew something was up—she was too smart not to—but she never pushed. "I will."
He retreated to his room. The transformation was instant. The helpful employee vanished; the Sovereign emerged.
He pulled the dossiers Jareth had given him from the drawer. He spread them out on his desk.
Target: The Red Hoods.
Location: Last seen near the border of the Forsaken Realm, moving toward the minor noble estate of House Vane.
Threat Level: Moderate. Fanatical obsession with "purifying" noble bloodlines through fire.
"Fanatics," Lencar muttered, tapping the paper. "Hard to reason with. Hard to predict. But if I can leash them... they have no fear of death. Perfect shock troopers."
He geared up. Black cloak. Wooden mask. The Void Vault on his finger.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the map coordinates Jareth had provided.
[Spatial Magic]: [Long-Range Coordinate Shift]
The air in his room twisted. With a silent pop, Lencar was gone.
He reappeared in a dense thicket of trees, miles away from Nairn. The air here was cooler, smelling of pine and damp earth. He was in the borderlands between the Common and Forsaken realms—a lawless strip where the Magic Knights rarely patrolled.
"Now to find them," Lencar whispered.
He could use standard mana sensing, but the range was limited, and if the Red Hoods had a sensor type, they'd feel him scanning. He needed something passive. Something that covered a massive area without alerting the prey.
He opened his grimoire. He began to weave multiple attributes together, a complex lattice of stolen magic.
"Structure: Plant Magic for the network. Wind Magic for the vibration. Spatial Magic for the distance. Concealment Magic to hide the pulse."
He placed his hand on the trunk of a massive oak tree.
[Composite Magic]: [Sensory Domain: The Whispering Roots]
His consciousness expanded.
It wasn't like seeing. It was like becoming the forest. He felt the roots of the trees connecting underground, a vast web of biological wires. He felt the wind rustling the leaves three kilometers away. He felt the displacement of space where bodies moved through the brush.
The forest became a radar screen in his mind.
A fox hunting a rabbit to the north.
A stream flowing to the west.
And to the east... chaos.
He felt the heavy, chaotic vibrations of explosions. He felt the heat signature of uncontrolled fire spreading through timber.
"Got you," Lencar snapped his eyes open, withdrawing his hand from the tree.
He moved. Using [Wind Magic]: [Gale Step], he blitzed through the treetops, a shadow against the moon.
He arrived at the edge of a clearing ten minutes later and stopped on a high branch.
Below him was House Vane. It was a modest estate—basically a large manor with a surrounding wall—belonging to a lower-class noble family that managed the local grain silos.
It was burning.
The Red Hoods were there. There were about twelve of them, wearing crimson cloaks that looked like they had been dyed in blood. They were laughing.
Lencar watched, his face impassive behind the mask, though his grip on the tree branch tightened enough to crack the bark.
In the courtyard, an elderly man—likely the head of the house—was on his knees, blood pouring from a head wound. His wand was snapped in two.
"Please," the old man wheezed. "Take the gold. Take the grain. Just let the children go."
The leader of the bandits, a tall man with a scar running through his eyebrow, stepped forward. He held a torch.
"Gold?" the leader scoffed. "We don't want your dirty money, old man. We want to watch your legacy burn. Fire cleanses all sins!"
He kicked the old man in the chest.
Behind him, other bandits were dragging two young teenagers out of the house. They beat them with the hilts of their swords until the kids stopped moving, tossing them onto the grass like sacks of potatoes.
Then, with a roar of excitement, the bandits threw torches into the main hall. The dry timber of the old house caught instantly.
"YEAH! BURN!" one of the bandits screamed, dancing a jig. "Look at it go! That's the color of justice!"
Lencar felt a cold, hard knot form in his stomach.
"Speechless," Lencar whispered to himself. "I expected thieves. I expected thugs. But this... this is just waste. Pointless, loud, inefficient waste."
He watched as they looted the pantry, grabbing bags of food and silverware—hypocrites, after claiming they didn't want the gold—and then marched out of the gate, leaving the family unconscious while their home turned into an inferno.
Lencar looked at the burning house and at the old man and two kids. He decided to put out the fire, although he wasn't a hero. He would still help if he could. And although these people were Nobels they had never bullied and looked down upon the commoners like most nobels did, and they also helped the commoners with some common works according to the information that he got from Jareth and he can also see that many people after seeing that the bandits are gone from here, are rescuing the old man and the kids and also trying putting out the fire.
[Water magic]: [Sliding Waterfall]
With this spell the fire was put out.
He followed the Red hoods. He watched the Red Hoods leave the valley, traveling nearly twenty kilometers into the deep woods until they felt safe.
They set up camp in a rocky depression. They cracked open the stolen wine. They started roasting the stolen chickens.
"To the purification!" the Leader toasted, raising a silver goblet.
"To the Red Hoods!" the men cheered.
Lencar stepped out of the shadows, walking right into the light of their campfire.
"You know," Lencar said, his voice cutting through their celebration like a razor blade. "For a group that preaches about purification, you sure do drink a lot of stolen wine. Isn't that a sin?"
The campsite went dead silent. Twelve pairs of eyes snapped to the figure in the black cloak and wooden mask standing casually by the log.
"Who the hell are you?" the Leader snarled, dropping his goblet.
"I'm the consequences," Lencar said dryly. "And frankly, your decorating skills back at that house were terrible. Too much orange."