Guiding the Male Lead out of His Trauma - Chapter 30.1
The crystal rapidly grew to the size of a palm, solidly blocking the way in front of me.
While I stared, eyes wide, the irregularly-shaped, manifested mana blocked the bullet.
Crack. Crackle, shatter—!
Thanks to that, I was unharmed.
As the crystal shattered into pieces and I landed on the ground, I swept a current of electricity at the person holding the gun.
When he dropped the gun, which reeked of gunpowder, I kicked it far away.
“Acteon!”
In that moment, Acteon had knocked out the other watcher who’d rushed at him.
Surrounding the powerless lackey of the crown prince with mana to prevent his escape, Acteon spoke.
“Almost got hit.”
“What? Where—?”
“Not me, you, Senior.”
Although Acteon’s outward appearance was calm and composed, his mana fluctuated with instability.
The sound of his hardening mana cracking and buzzing did not allow for silence in this place.
But I strode straight over to Acteon.
Lifting his arm, which smelled faintly burned, I saw his wrist was blackened and scorched.
I was familiar with the warning signs of a control stone bracelet detecting unauthorized mana usage.
But the warning from the bracelet he was wearing would be a bit different.
“Stop now. You already got a burn. If you keep going, it’ll get really dangerous.”
At my firm gaze, Acteon glanced at the captive lackey, then stopped using his mana.
‘If he’d kept going just a little longer…’
His heart itself, which conducted the mana, might have stopped instead of just overheating like this. My chest tightened in fear.
‘I was careless. I meant for only myself to commit the unauthorized act that would call the custodians…’
I felt guilty that Acteon had gotten caught up in it too.
I never expected the crown prince would allow his lackeys to use force.
My mood, which had briefly settled, fell even further.
As soon as Acteon stopped using his mana, the lackey slumped to the ground.
His face was now filled with clear terror toward Acteon.
I grabbed him by the collar, biting my lip, not sure what to say.
In the end, I let go without doing anything. He didn’t do anything else either.
At this point, pretending to mistake him for a spy felt ridiculous.
Instead, I wanted to ask something else.
‘Why did he fire? He’d been watching us, so he must have known our ranks.’
Whether I liked it or not, both Acteon and I had manifested as S-Class, a rarity across the entire continent.
Yet this person attacked us, even though our value couldn’t be replaced by anything.
It wasn’t just the anger that a mere Unawakened had attacked us.
It’s only natural for the Unawakened to fear and shun people like us who are so far from normal.
I could understand.
Whether I wanted it or not, I was now in a position of power.
There would certainly be people who felt threatened just by our existence.
But the one who gave them these orders was the crown prince.
Someone who understood our usefulness better than anyone else.
He was a man who would wield and use, or dispose of, even our power as an extension of his own authority.
‘Anyone could see, they deliberately avoided a fatal shot. That means—’
He couldn’t kill us.
But if we got hurt, it didn’t matter. It was a warning that we’d be forced to kneel if we ever tried to defy him.
The one who brought me back to my senses was none other than Acteon.
“We’re surrounded. It must be the custodians.”
“Let me see your hand, let’s do first aid.”
As I pulled a bottle of clear disinfectant from my jacket and cooled the burn on his wrist, the custodians, who had surrounded the alley, rushed in.
Seeing me wrapping his wound with a handkerchief instead of a bandage, one of them stared and asked in surprise,
“Cadet Liliope Ortis?”
“Yes?”
I answered reflexively, then was taken aback myself.
Her face looked familiar somehow.
Acteon, recognizing her before I did, nodded in silent greeting.
Then he quietly clued me in.
“She’s the one who came to the mansion before. When you fainted during my first awakening.”
Of course you might not remember.
Acteon added that, but I thought I knew who she was.
She was the one who came when the Lorraine County was reported, even before Acteon’s first awakening.
To arrive in such a rush only to find the culprits of unauthorized action were me and a newly-registered S-Class Transcendent… No wonder she looked so bewildered.
She let out a heavy sigh, apparently troubled by this being the third time she’d caught me breaking the law.
Then she gestured at the crown prince’s lackeys we’d apprehended.
“I’ll give you time to explain what happened.”
With Acteon’s injury and the arrival of the custodians, my anger had cooled somewhat, so I answered shortly,
“They’re spies.”
Unlike his unconscious companion, the remaining lackey protested,
“Spies? We’re—!”
“They’ve been acting suspiciously since the plaza. You know as well as I do, Custodian. Acteon Brondearn here is a newly-registered S-Class Transcendent. With such a powerful asset, there will always be foreign spies trying to make contact for recruitment.”
Even when I distorted the truth, the lackey couldn’t easily refute it.
“And when we gave chase, he fled without revealing his identity and ultimately attacked us first. We simply responded accordingly.”
Unable to finish his sentence, he glared at me and Acteon as if we were monsters.
Just that one statement was enough for the custodian to quickly have the lackey taken away.
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