Chapter 67: Want to Play a Game?

"You killed it??" Faye’s eyes went wide, clearly stunned.

"I just knocked it out. It’s still alive." Magna said, then added silently in his head, ’Probably.’

He hadn’t really thought it through when he threw the rock. He had just wanted to hit it and catch it.

It seemed like his assassin trait was making him decide things without giving much thought to emotion or ethics.

"Can I go look at it?" Magna asked, turning to Harlan first since he was still their guide and the responsible adult in the group.

Once Harlan gave a silent nod, he walked over.

When he got close, he saw its chest rising and falling quickly. Relief washed over him, since it was still alive.

He picked it up by its long ears and brought it back.

"Look, it’s just sleeping." He showed it to Faye.

Her eyes lit up instantly as she reached out to hug the fluffy white animal, but Magna pulled it back.

"Be careful playing with it. It’s still a wild animal. It could bite." He didn’t want Faye getting infected by anything from a bite.

Hearing it might bite her, Faye suddenly pulled back, all the excitement draining from her face, looking like she had completely given up on the idea of hugging it.

Meanwhile, the rabbit started coming to, struggling in Magna’s grip.

He didn’t hold onto it for long. He set it down on the ground and let it go, watching it dart off deeper into the forest.

Since Faye already seemed to have lost interest, he didn’t want to carry it around for the rest of the trip anyway.

"Should we keep going?" He turned to ask the middle-aged hunter, who was still staring at him with shock in his eyes.

"Yes..." Harlan finally answered, turning his head back toward the depths of the forest and continuing on.

—

"Goddess, that scared me," a hunter muttered, hidden behind some bushes nearby. ’’I thought he was throwing the rock at me. ’’

She was one of Titus’s hunters, currently assigned to keep a close eye on the two children.

Titus had warned them beforehand that the boy had unusually sharp senses, so they needed to stay hidden as far back as possible to avoid being detected.

At first, she had been skeptical, even a little offended by the idea. How good could a child like that possibly be at spotting experienced hunters like them in the middle of the forest?

But while she was watching from a distance, the moment Magna suddenly stopped and turned to look right at where she was hiding, she felt her breath catch for a second.

"I swear he was looking straight at me." She could still feel the weight of those eyes, as if she had been staring straight into the gaze of a wild beast.

Then, when the rock struck a rabbit wandering nearby instead, she felt a brief wave of relief, though she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling of having just been intimidated by a child.

Collecting herself, she got up from her hiding spot and continued following them, this time making sure to keep her distance as far as she possibly could.

—

As Magna continued following Harlan, his eyes kept scanning the surroundings, looking as though he were just admiring the scenery of the forest.

In reality, he was checking the presences moving around them.

’They don’t seem to have any hostile intent. Probably the people hired to protect us,’ he thought, not too concerned, since it was already something he had expected.

He just needed to make sure they kept following from a distance, barely staying within sight, since whenever he found a mana-rich food and ate it, he didn’t want them to see too clearly what exactly he was eating.

After walking for more than half an hour, the group finally stopped as Harlan announced. "We’ve arrived."

Magna looked around to the area. It didn’t look much different from everywhere else they had passed through so far.

The only real difference was that the roots of the trees here were surrounded by thick bushes, with small, round, yellow fruit visible scattered among them, apparently sunberries.

He walked straight over to the nearest bush and picked one up to check.

’This is just a normal fruit.’ Unfortunately, its shape wasn’t like the golden sunberry he had eaten before, and he couldn’t sense any mana coming from it at all.

As for how he could actually feel mana, it wasn’t because of any special trait he possessed. It just felt similar to the warm energy that filled him every time he ate something.

He was so used to that feeling by now that he could faintly detect a light, tingling warmth just by touching something.

Not discouraged, he kept searching through the bushes, collecting whatever he found into a cloth bag Harlan had given him just to avoid looking too suspicious.

Faye seemed to be having a great time too, trailing behind Magna and munching on the sunberries he tossed into his bag.

"Why don’t you gather your own berries?" Magna frowned, looking at his bag, still nearly empty despite how much he had already picked.

Faye pouted between bites. "I’m not fast enough. And the bushes scratch my hands."

"But you’re plenty fast when it comes to eating." He was honestly a little surprised by how fast she could eat, wondering if she was starting to pick up his own gluttony.

Faye laughed, finishing what was in her hand before reaching into his bag for another one. "They’re small, and the inside is just sweet and juicy. I don’t even have to chew."

Unlike the golden sunberry, these were smaller and had a texture closer to liquid.

Bored of gathering fruit just so Faye could eat it on the spot, Magna finally said. "Want to play a game?"

Faye swallowed the last bite as her eyes lit up instantly. "Yes! What kind of game?"

"Let’s have a contest." He pulled a Sunberry from the bag to show her. "Whoever finds the biggest, most perfectly round sunberry first wins."

That way, at least he could get her to actually help search and hopefully speed things up.

Faye didn’t hesitate for a second, accepting the challenge immediately.

"Then when I win, you have to be my horse for a whole day." Throwing that line out, she dashed off toward a bush and started digging through it, not caring in the slightest whether the sharp branches scratched her hands.

Magna didn’t even get the chance to argue against the completely one sided bet before she was already gone. He turned his attention back to the bush in front of him.

’Is this really the right spot?’ He started to wonder, since all he could find were ordinary Sunberries.

Of course, finding a golden sunberry wouldn’t be easy, but he still didn’t want to waste the whole day and walk away empty-handed.

Just as he decided to turn and ask Harlan, who was standing nearby scanning the area, whether there might be another spot where sunberries grew, something small caught his eye.

A few meters ahead, tucked among the bushes at the base of a tree, was something caught in the sunlight, giving off a faint glimmer.

At first he thought it might be one of the hunters trailing them, but since he couldn’t sense any presence coming from that direction, he walked closer to check.