Ch 14 Sovereign of Night

His one and only familiar.

The companion who had shared life and death with him longer than anyone else.

“…This is bad.”

The familiar’s link was dead silent. That didn’t just mean she was far away; it meant her life signs had practically stopped.

For a familiar that sustained its life by feeding on its master’s mana, a hundred years without it was a death sentence—a slow, agonizing process of withering away.

While Asterion had been asleep, she must have wrung her empty mana circuits dry, just waiting for her master.

Down in the 11th-floor labyrinth where he’d been sleeping? Or tucked away somewhere in this academy, clinging to his lingering scent?

Kurou could be dead.

Just the thought of it made his heart plummet to his toes all over again.

No, he was being delusional. She was dead. The severed link proved it.

With all his comrades already dead… even Kurou had died while he was off snoozing…

“Damn it.”

His mana rumbled unconsciously. With his control slipping from his emotions, the ground around him started to shake, and the presence of monsters and animals scattered like running away from an earthquake.

Wait.

If her mana had completely run out, it was obvious her mana heart would have stopped, but her physical body could be sitting somewhere.

If her body was still intact, he could breathe his mana into her and bring her back to life.

If her body was still intact.

In a world crawling with monsters, would she really be left untouched?

No, she was a smart familiar. She would’ve kept her body hidden somewhere safe. Asterion knew it. Believed it.

Where would her body be?

Asterion thought it through. A familiar starved of mana would instinctively set out to find its master. But considering Asterion had been buried way down below, she probably would have sought out the next closest thing to her master’s mana.

She has to be near this academy.

He was certain of it.

He thought of Kurou. She wasn’t just some simple summoned beast. She was his partner, always right by his side.

Master!

Her bright, cheerful voice echoed vividly in his ears. Kurou definitely would have headed to the place with the most massive concentration of her master’s mana, or wherever even the slightest trace of his scent remained.

He couldn’t imagine her being anywhere else. She would be waiting for him to return.

…I have to find her.

Asterion placed his hand against the cold wall of the academy’s main building. He felt the vibration of the stone transfer through his palm.

Then, he let out a long, slow breath. Asterion closed his eyes.

If he used high-tier magic, he’d trip the academy’s defense network and emergency alarms would blare across the entire school.

I don’t need to search for her mana. I just need to find the heart I made for her.

He opted against blasting his mana outward; instead, he chose a highly intricate, silent method.

Specifically, quietly synchronizing his consciousness with the mana circuits flowing through the entire academy.

It was essentially hijacking the power lines, stealing the ambient mana spread across the other buildings to use as his own. It was a feat only Asterion could pull off.

“[Resonance],” Asterion whispered.

The principle behind it was incredibly simple.

It was like plucking a guitar string you crafted yourself, causing an identical string far away to subtly vibrate in response.

This academy building was constructed using the mana stones and adamantium Asterion had left behind. In other words, this entire school was nothing more than a giant speaker primed to react to Asterion’s magic.

He gently laid his consciousness over the building’s mana grid, then, pulsed out a frequency perfectly tuned to Kurou’s mana heart. Instantly, he felt a faint, vibration return.

It was a tiny, sputtering ember, one that felt like it could extinguish at any second.

He immediately [Shadow Stepped] to the location.

“…Here?”

Asterion’s eyes sank into a cold, chilling gaze.

The place he arrived at was an isolated alley behind the academy’s main building. Hidden in the deep shadows of the glamorous ivory tower, it was a dumping ground reeking of all sorts of piled waste.

It was an absolutely unimaginable place for the familiar of the hero who saved the world to be. Asterion’s brow hardened into a stiff frown.

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There was only a corner piled high with mountains of filthy garbage bags.

But as he stepped closer, black feathers soaked in filth began to catch his eye one by one.

Asterion’s heart plummeted to his toes.

He retracted his steps. In the garbage pile, there was a single lump that looked like a deflated black plastic bag.

Originally, Kurou was a raven so massive that unfurling her wings would completely blot out the sun.

Whenever she took flight, a dense shadow would fall over even in broad daylight. Out of sheer awe, people used to call her the Eclipse. Or they would praise her as the Sovereign of the Night.

But the sight in front of Asterion right now was a far cry from that legacy.

The Kurou in front of him was in a miserable state.

Just a tiny, broken black bird mixed with garbage bags.

“Kurou?”

Asterion immediately knelt down and cradled her lifeless body.

More than half of her once-glossy feathers had fallen out, and the rest were matted and soaked in mud. Her massive beak, which used to be able to crush solid steel, was splintered and cracked. The razor-sharp talons that used to gently grip her master’s shoulder were worn down to blunt nubs.

Had someone heckled her?

Or had she just collapsed from exhaustion and starvation?

“Kurou. Kurou?”

A creature that used to weigh as much as a grown man was now so light a normal human could hold her in one arm. For a grueling century, without receiving a single drop of mana, she had been carving away at her own flesh and bone just to survive—stubbornly guarding this territory simply because it still held her master’s scent.

A hollow laugh escaped his lips.

“Kurou, wake up. I get it now. You got me.”

For the first time, Asterion’s voice trembled.

His usual lazy composure was completely gone. Kurou’s body in his arms was as cold as a sheet of ice, and her mana core had long since ceased to function.

“Kurou! This isn’t funny.”

He held Kurou tightly against his chest.

What was he supposed to do?

Damn it, damn it.

Without thinking, he [Tepelorted] to the most mana-dense place in the world—the 11^th floor of the Abyss, his new home.

***

[Abyss 11th Floor, Saint’s Sanctuary.]

Ignoring the System message, Asterion stroked Kurou’s body. She was cold as ice.

“…You must have been so cold.”

Asterion whispered, gently stroking Kurou’s ruined feathers. He wanted to pour his mana into her right this second.

He wasn’t ready to dig up a grave. He didn’t want to say good-bye.

If only, if only he had his treasures.