Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 867: Fair Play

“What I want is simple,” Mordred said. He reached into the pockets of his thick fur coat. “I just need answers to a few questions. My research is the only thing I’m here to do. The moment I’ve got what I need, I’ll be on my way and out of yours. That’s all.”

“What kind of questions?” Brayden asked warily. He still had his sword at the ready, and seemed to be waiting for the first excuse that he could get to use it. “And why are you so obsessed with Lee?”

“Why?” Mordred exclaimed, still rifling through his coat. “What do you mean, why? How could you not be?”

“I don’t have the faintest damn idea what that’s meant to mean,” Brayden said. “But I’ll be frank, I’m not much a fan of any of the implications it might have. You’re a creep.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Mordred asked. He let out a curse and pulled his hand free of the pocket, only to pull open the other half of his jacket and start rifling around in it promptly afterward. “My intentions are pure! I am nothing but a researcher! How could the pursuit of knowledge not interest you?”

“Perhaps it’s because you haven’t said what knowledge it is you’re after and you manage to word everything in the most suspicious way possible,” Noah said. “Also, you’ve been harassing Lee for days. You already spoke with her, and she made it clear she wanted nothing more to do with you. That should have been more than enough to end the conversation.”

Mordred paused. He looked up at Noah, his brow furrowed. “But we hadn’t finished our conversation.”

Is this guy an obsessive stalker or just insanely dense?

“Just get on with it,” Noah said with a sigh. As badly as he wanted to just kill the guy and get it out of the way, he was pretty sure starting a fight with Mordred didn’t have any scenarios in which they won in the end. He was powerful enough to force Lee to retreat. Any conflict with him would be dangerous, even if it wasn’t for the risks of drawing the Prophet’s attention by killing him.

“I’m trying,” Mordred said. He looked up, his face slightly paler than it had been a moment ago. “I, ah, seem to have misplaced my list of questions. I know I had it just a moment ago. It was in my jacket. But it seems like it may have slipped free.”

You cannot be serious.

“Your list?” Noah repeated. “Can’t you just ask whatever it is you wanted without—”

“Of course not!” Mordred snapped. He pulled his jacket off and tossed it onto the ground. Noah’s eye twitched. There must have been at least twenty pockets sewn into the jacket’s interior. And they weren’t just loose pockets. They had buttons that tightly held them closed.

Buttons that stubbornly resisted Mordred’s attempts to undo them. He fiddled with the buttons desperately, his finger motions growing more and more uncoordinated with every passing second. A droplet of sweat rolled down the man’s head.

Brayden caught Noah’s eye.

“This is sad,” he mouthed. He sent a pointed glance at his sword, as if suggesting it might be best to simply put Mordred out of his misery before the scene went on any longer.

Noah just shook his head.

Mordred finally got one of the pockets open. He shoved his hand into it, only to pull free a small cracker. He stared at it for a moment.

Then he shoved the cracker back into the pocket and shot to his feet, pulling the window back open and poking his head out.

“What pocket was the—”

“Third from the left on—,” came the reply before he’d even had a chance to finish. And, in what seemed to be a pattern, Mordred slammed the window closed again before his compatriot could finish answering his question.

“Aha!” Mordred spun back to his jacket and crouched, grabbing for the pocket in question. He battled the button for a few more seconds before finally managing to get it open. He reached in. “Found it! Now we may begin!”

Mordred pulled a small bundle of cards free with a flourish. He grinned at Noah, then rose back to his feet and cleared his throat, flipping the first of the cards over and starting to read from its back.

“Do you enjoy traveling? My job takes me all over the kingdom, and I don’t think I would be well suited to someone who preferred to remain at home.”

Everyone stared at him.

“What?” Noah asked.

Mordred paused for a moment. He glanced from the card to the rest of the deck in his hand. He flipped another one over. Then he let out a slew of curses and shoved the window back open, sticking his head outside.

“You rotting sod! That was the wrong deck! I even separated them out! I need the questions for Lee, you idiot! Where did I put the questions? Why would I need the dating deck again? Why do I even still have this one?”

“Because you’re single!” Came the response. “And the questions are where they said, you idiot! Third from the left, on the row second from the bottom!”

Mordred paused. He looked back down at his jacket, where there was an open pocket on the bottom row. He cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes.”

Then he closed the window again.

The man meekly reached down to the aforementioned row, undoing the button on the pocket and pulling free another deck of cards. He very pointedly returned the first one back to their original pocket.

“Was this how the last conversation went?” Noah asked, the secondhand embarrassment so bad that a part of him was forced to wonder if Mordred was using some sort of technique to get everyone in the room to kill themselves.

“Yeah,” Lee said with a sigh. “Pretty much.”

“Okay,” Mordred said. “Ignore that last one. It was the dating deck. Now I have the right one. We can begin properly.”

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“Why do you have a dating deck?” Brayden asked.

“Because I am single,” Modred said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Yes,” Brayden said. “Incredibly. Have you considered that you might be single because of the dating deck?”

“What?” Mordred blinked. “Nonsense. Those questions are very important. Just not as important as these. Now please, I would thank you not to distract me. I am here to ensure record of one of the rarest monsters I have ever seen is properly preserved. Now, Lee, please — would you tell me of where you come from? Not the exact location. I don’t need that. Just about it. Do your people play? Do they sing? What is their purpose?”

“What do you think I am?” Lee asked, her brow furrowing. “I’m from the Damned Plains. I’m a demon. We did things demons did.”

“You are far more than just some demon,” Modred replied with a bark of laughter. He thrust a finger in Lee’s direction. “You are different. I simply wish to know if there are more like you.”

Noah repressed the small frown that tried to form on his face. Mordred had somehow figured out that Lee wasn’t a normal demon from the tiny amount of interaction that they’d had. His senses must have been ridiculously good — and there was still no explanation as to how he’d managed to track them down through Aqua Terra’s anti-domain field.

Lee’s brow furrowed as she pondered Mordred’s question. Then she shook her head. “No. There’s only one Lee.”

“And is Lee your name? Or your species?”

“Are you stupid?”

“Right. Name it is,” Mordred said. He cleared his throat, then grabbed for another card. “How did you break my magic like that? It felt like you took a bite right out of my soul.”

“I’m not telling you my abilities,” Lee said flatly. “Why would I do that? It’s completely stupid.”

“Hmm. So it is,” Mordred agreed with a sage nod. He replaced his card with another. “Are there demons similar to you? Perhaps not the exact same, but evolved? Different from normal ones?”

Lee shrugged. “I guess?”

“Many?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Can I speak to any of them?”

“No,” Lee said. “You’ll harass them.”

“Oh.” Mordred’s face fell. Surprisingly, he seemed completely accepting of that response. “I do suppose I would. Then… do you know how your evolution happened? You seem to be consciously aware of your difference to other demons. Is this something you inherited from birth? Or was it a more recent development?”

Lee paused for a moment. Mordred’s questions were getting uneasily close to information that they really didn’t need getting out. Even if demons didn’t seem nearly as feared in Obsidia as they had been within Arbalest, spreading around the fact that they had a way to purge a demon’s weakness from them didn’t seem like a very good idea. The best case scenario was demons swamping them from all over the empire and asking to be freed from the limits of their runes. And the worst… well, Noah didn’t want to even think about that.

“I’m not answering that either,” Lee said. “Can I answer that I don’t want to answer to all of your questions preemptively?”

“There’s no reason you wouldn’t tell me if you were born like this, though. You don’t deny the fact that you’re different than other demons,” Mordred said. A small smile pulled across his lips. “The only reason to refuse to say how you came to be like this would be if it was something that happened. Something replicable, I’d guess. You wouldn’t have any issue mentioning a one-off either.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly. Mordred was a hell of a lot sharper than he acted. Getting rid of him was increasingly feeling like the optimal solution. Unfortunately, Mordred had made such a damn huge mess of showing up that even if Noah could have deleted him from existence on the spot, the number of eye witnesses that could tie him to killing someone working for the Prophet were just too high.

Could that have been intentional? Did he draw a ridiculous amount of attention purely just to make sure we had no way to reasonably fight back? He certainly doesn’t seem even slightly scared about the potential of being attacked. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s an idiot, arrogant, or if he’s planned everything out.

“Where is this leading?” Noah asked. “What’s the point of all this?”

“The point?” Mordred asked. His head tilted to the side as if genuinely confused at that question. “What do you mean, the point? This is science. Art. To question is to live. To learn is to exist. There is no purpose beyond the pursuit of knowledge.”

Wow. That might have been the most annoying answer he possibly could have given us. If he’s actually serious… there’s nothing that could be worse than someone who is genuinely interested in learning about Lee purely for the sake of learning.

“And how long exactly do you expect us to stand here dancing around questions?” Noah asked. “Because we’ve got a tournament to get to, and I really don’t see what Lee gets out of engaging with a stalker.”

“I am not a stalker,” Mordred said. “My interest is purely professional. I gather knowledge. That is all.”

“That doesn’t answer the question of why she should be obligated to interact with you,” Brayden said. He tapped a finger against the hilt of his sword. “It’s a very one-sided deal. Hardly fair.”

“Are you proposing an exchange of information?” Mordred asked. “I would be happy to explain more about myself.”

“Why would anyone give a shit about you?” Brayden asked in disbelief. “Though I would like to know your rank. That would be helpful.”

“Rank 6,” Mordred replied immediately. “My Keystone rune is Lifethread. I am 4 runes into my advancement. I was born in the Coral Empire and grew up—”

“I don’t think we need to know your whole life story. We definitely don’t have time for it,” Noah said, though he didn’t miss the fact that the odd man before them was considerably more powerful than the vast majority of people that had been in Arbalest. “And frankly, we don’t care.”

“If you wanna trade info, then you have to tell us something that matters to us,” Lee said with a nod. “Like something about the tournament.”

Mordred scratched the side of his neck in thought. “I’m not sure that would work.”

“If you can’t give us anything useful in exchange, then this conversation is over,” Noah said flatly.

“No, no. It’s not that,” Mordred said. “I simply don’t have the ability to inform you about anything significant in the tournament at this stage. Information about it is heavily restricted until it begins.”

“Then you’re useless.” Noah shrugged. “We’ve humored you enough. This—”

“But!” Mordred raised a finger into the air. “There is still an option. I am not quite ready to give up on my research. It is of too much importance. So what about a compromise?”

Lee’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of compromise?”

“I have researched more than just monsters,” Mordred said with a sly smile. “Runes have also fallen within the realm of my interests. I have quite the knack for determining exactly how they work. If I accompany you into the tournament, I can figure out exactly what your opponents runes do by observing their fights. It will astronomically increase how far you can go.”

“What makes you think we need your help?” Brayden asked.

“Because none of you are Rank 6. The disruption field over Aqua Terra is very effective, but there are ways to squeeze some degree of your domain around it,” Mordred said with a shrug. “And if you are planning to go up against some of the strongest Rank 6s in Obsidia, you will not be able to do it without some extra backup.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Lee asked.

“The purpose of a tournament is to prove your power. Knowledge is power. Thus, this could not possibly be cheating. It is simply using an asset at your disposal.”

That was a pretty fancy way to justify cheating.

But, in a somewhat unfortunate trait for a teacher, Noah rather liked cheating.

He glanced at Lee.

She gave him a one-shouldered shrug in response. It didn’t seem like she really cared all that much about Mordred one way or the other. He likely didn’t rate as anything more than ‘annoying’ on her problem scale.

This guy is weird, but there’s no denying the fact that he’s competent when push comes to shove. And I need every advantage I can get to make sure everyone can find us.

Damn. I think I’d be an idiot to turn this down. But…

“We might be able to take you up on that. But first, I need something from you.” Noah said. He pointed at Mordred’s jacket. “Give me the first deck you had.”

“What? My dating deck?” Mordred’s brow furrowed.

“Yes,” Noah said. “I need it for a moment.”

Mordred shrugged. He reached into his pocket and pulled the deck in question free, handing it over to Noah. “What do you need with—”

Noah released a sliver of Unraveling Disruption’s power. Angry cracks of purple-pink magic carved through the cards, disintegrating them into nothingness in an instant.

“There we go,” Noah said, letting his hand drop. “Okay. Now we can take you up on that offer.”