STABLE BOY ; Trash of the Count's Family

73. SPIDERWEB

"It really is odd how he's adapted to Dead Mana, yet he's not a spiderweb human."

"I can't form a bond with Mana, so it can't leave any marks on my skin."

The group stared at him, exasperated.

"You can't just answer our mysteries like it's obvious!" Cage threw her arms into the air.

Rosalyn whined, "what the hell were we so seriously speculating for if you're just going to give us the answer?"

"I'm sorry," South returned easily. "I thought it was a question. I will refrain from now on."

"Don't," Choi Han sounded concerned, "tell us these things."

Mary, a human, twenty-five years old. The innkeeper sort of cares for her.

She lives in constant agony as the curse of taking too much Dead Mana into her body and becoming a necromancer to survive in this desert. She's always covered by a hooded cloak and her arms are all covered in ugly spiderweb scars.

South's only heard the description so far. He's been given very pointed warnings about her– specifically, Cale made sure Vicross and Choi Han and Raon were all present when he said, "you're not allowed to take anything from her. Got it?"

But South was curious.

Mana adapted to his body like a foreign substance. He doesn't produce any, and he cannot utilize any. The same thing happened to Dead Mana— so if he took Mary's Dead Mana scars, which were wounds and connections, into his body... would he be able to finally bridge that gap between his body and Mana for the first time?

...Would he be able to use magic, that way?

(It's not as if he really desires to be a mage. But the thought lingered in his mind.)

(If he could properly use dead mana, would he be able to utilize all the skills of his past life again? Would he be able to find him again?)

(Should he?)

-

Well, what Young Master doesn't know won't hurt him.

"This is young South. He's been very helpful in the inn lately," the innkeeper introduces them. "Young South, this is Mary. She will be around, but I assure you she won't be in the way, so don't mind her, alright? She is like a daughter to me."

Mary didn't raise an arm to shake, so neither did South.

"...is your body fine, so contaminated like that?" Mary asked him, quietly, once they've been left alone.

Her voice was cold and stoic, like one would hear computer generated rather than coming from a human. South understood. She had either lived so long holding herself back to bear with it a little better. , or she had grown so used to pain that she could no longer muster any extra strength to put into things like tone.

"No, but I'm used to it," South said.

"Oh," Mary simply said. Because she understood, too.

They sipped on their warm drinks, and spent the rest of the day there in the lounge of the inn, both instructed to not do any work yet not having anything much else to do.

"You can read?"

"You cannot?"

South looked like he was considering if he should be offended.

"I used to be able to understand any language in the world," he admitted, after contemplating it. "The information would come straight to me. I didn't like it, though. I preferred listening, instead of being fed that information directly into my head. I preferred to hear words from other people's hearts, rather than taking them from written text. So, I refused to read. I only listened when someone told me stories."