Its appearance resembled Kishiar, but the aura it held was like Yuder’s—what could that possibly mean? Seeing the confusion on Yuder’s face, Kishiar said that he too wanted to gather his thoughts a bit more before explaining further.

With that, they left the bedroom, each wrapped in their own thoughts. When they arrived in the meeting room, everyone was already seated and waiting.

The first thing that caught Yuder’s eye was the pile of miscellaneous items spread across the table. Bracelets strung with colored stones, papers with strange patterns drawn in dried blood, black-red ropes, small farming tools—it was clear that these were the goods sold by the impersonators of the Shuden Merchant Group.

Yuder narrowed his eyes and strode toward the table. As he suddenly picked up one of the items, he felt everyone’s attention shift to him.

‘...As expected.’

“These items here... they’re not complete fakes.”

Yuder’s words rang out like a declaration, and the retainers reacted with astonished expressions.

“What? How can you tell that just by looking at them...?” 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

“We only realized it ourselves after showing them to a specialist in monster byproduct processing...”

“I can tell.”

Unlike the retainers, the Cavalry members from the Northern branch looked perfectly calm. They had no idea how Yuder could identify monster byproducts on sight—but their trust in Yuder Aile ran so deep that nothing he did surprised them anymore.

‘Well, it’s Yuder...’

‘Better than the specialist. Efficient, even.’

But the retainers, seeing that reaction, misunderstood—thinking Yuder must possess some incredible, undisclosed ability. They had never directly seen him use his powers, and though they intellectually understood his achievements, they had always viewed him as just a quiet young man. Now their perception shifted.

Yuder, indifferent to any of this, swept his hand over the other items, deep in thought.

‘Most of these items contain some specific material... likely monster bone and blood. Doesn’t seem to be a mix—probably all from the same species...’

On the surface, they looked like cheap, fake junk—but they weren’t. To Yuder’s eyes, they were items that subtly embedded real monster byproducts within the cheap materials.

‘It reeks of malice, to hide genuine parts so cleverly even an expert might miss them.’

But to Yuder, who was weak to ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) monsters, the moment he touched the object and felt his strength drain, it was immediately clear whether the material was authentic. He clenched the bead on the bracelet wrapped around his finger, intending to crush it.

Crack...

His power didn’t work on it, so he had to crush it with raw strength—but thankfully, it broke easily in his grip.

The inside of the broken bead was hollow. Yet a faint, familiar sensation crept in.

‘This is...’

Just then, Kishiar approached and casually took the shattered bracelet from Yuder’s hand, waving his other hand gently over it.

“Hm. It holds unpleasant magical energy.”

In an instant, the ring on Kishiar’s finger glowed, and the subtle sensation Yuder had been feeling vanished completely. Though he did feel a bit lighter from removing the monster byproduct bracelet, this was something else.

“Did you say... magical energy just now?”

Durney asked with wide eyes. Kishiar nodded and held the bracelet high so everyone could see.

“Yes. The monster byproducts in this item aren’t ordinary. There was a faint, unpleasant magic contained within it.”

“Ah... could it be, the kind used as a magical catalyst?”

“You’re saying they put that expensive material into all these cheap trinkets? Including magic?”

As people who’d made their living processing monster byproducts, the Peleta retainers quickly grasped what Kishiar meant.

“It might seem expensive from a monster byproduct perspective, but by magical catalyst standards, this is among the cheapest. While it's hard to obtain here in the North, it’s relatively accessible in other countries. It’s not popular because the efficiency is too low compared to something like a dragon heart fragment or bone.”

‘Just as I thought.’

Yuder recalled the Southern Nation merchants who had self-destructed and died in the South. They had carried processed dragon bones that looked like black stones—magical conduits designed to distort local mana and trigger abnormal rifts.

‘Then the subtle feeling I had earlier must have been magic too.’

It hadn’t been visible, but Yuder had always been unusually sensitive to magical presence—enough to astonish trained mages. He must have sensed the tiny residue of mana lingering in the bracelet.

“Duke, I’m not quite sure what it means for the magic inside to be unpleasant. Could putting mana in these items actually... be harmful to us? It’s not poison. And isn’t mana something that exists everywhere in the world?”

“True. Normal mana isn’t harmful to us. But mana that’s stagnated in one place for too long is a different story. It condenses and goes bad like still water—then begins to negatively affect the environment. I’ve encountered such magic before in the West. What I just felt was very similar.”

“...Huh.”

Yuder thought of the “Mana Spring” that had caused the Saran Great Forest to expand endlessly.

“In short, what’s inside these items is something like corrupted, rotting water. The more these things are used, the more it seeps out and spreads. Now imagine it covering the entire North like a storm cloud.”

“......”

“Whatever happens, it won’t be good for us.”

“And you’re saying... that’s what caused the rift?”

“That’s what I believe.”

At Kishiar’s answer, the retainers of Peleta grew visibly grim. And Kishiar’s expression was hardly gentle. He looked toward Yuder with a cold smile and asked in a low voice:

“Well. Now that it’s been confirmed, I suppose there’s no need to examine the rest. Right?”

“Yes.”

Those trinkets clearly bore the intent of those who sold them. The culprits had infused a small amount of impure magical energy into magical catalyst-based objects and distributed them across the North.

Individually, the amount of mana each item contained was tiny.

But enough of it, gathered over time, could grow into something much larger.

Most likely, the impostors who mimicked the Shuden Group had intended just that—selling the items and patiently waiting for the effects to spread. But Kishiar and Yuder had unexpectedly intervened and disrupted the buildup, causing the abnormal rift to appear much sooner than planned.

‘In a way, it might have been better to detonate it early before it could grow too large.’

“We’ll start retrieving and destroying all of these items immediately. And of course, we’ll need to track down the merchants who sold them. Has there been any new information?”

“Nothing certain, but there was a rumor two days ago about a wandering merchant group heading toward Afeim.”

“Afeim...”

Afeim was the heartland of House Apeto.

‘Naturally, we won’t get much cooperation there.’

But neither Kishiar, Yuder, Peleta’s retainers, nor the Northern branch Cavalry members showed any sign of concern.

“We’ll just go and find them. I suppose I’ll need to write Revlin a letter.”