So he couldn’t possibly be the mastermind behind the scenes, then who was left.
Malin was really very curious.
But he also understood that sometimes curiosity could be fatal, so curiosity was one thing, and risking your life was another, and for the sake of curiosity, throwing away your life was a foolish thing that Malin would never do.
It was just making knives, after all. The Karna family still had some conscience; they didn’t drive that last child to death, and he had chosen to compromise, so it was better to pretend that incident never happened.
Malin wasn’t a saint, though he also didn’t like such things, but... one should undertake only as much as one’s capabilities allow. What he could do now was to remember this incident, and when he one day had enough strength, he would come back to see what secrets behind it he didn’t know.
Wiping the last row of chairs clean and tossing the cloth into the bucket, Malin decided to leave: "I’ll leave this place to you."
"Thanks for your hard work."
"For the service of the congregation next week."
Hearing Colin’s thanks, Malin, very rarely, made a joke that only he understood.
After finishing his tasks, Malin still had nothing to do. So much time had passed, and the spell formation instructors still remembered old Hoffman’s orders. When it came to martial skills, Malin’s strength meant that nearly all the instructors couldn’t teach normally—many of them couldn’t even block Malin’s strikes, let alone demonstrate their actual power.
However, the elven instructor of the sword dance class could teach Malin, but she always stated that Malin didn’t understand the true essence of the sword dance; she didn’t want a barbarian learning a skill that elves alone were worthy of possessing, which was really troubling for Malin.
I don’t want to be a barbarian either; I want to be a handsome elf that could kill with his looks, but one can’t freely choose their parents. The lot he’d drawn this time around was not bad. If he’d been born to one of those streetwalkers’ kids in the Western District, Malin felt there was no need to try so hard, and he might as well creatively combine a rope with a rafter.
Of course, that was only a joke. In Malin’s eyes, suicide was nothing more than an escape from fate. A true man would always strive to reach the pinnacle of life no matter what.
That’s why these days Malin had been practicing dance steps daily—everyone said that this could effectively train one’s balance and movement coordination.
As a result, it had been almost three days since Malin had fought any children.
It wasn’t that it wasn’t fun, but there was no sensation of fun at all; no matter how hard most of them tried, they could never keep up with Malin’s speed, much less block his attacks.
The very few who could keep up couldn’t bring about any joy—it was just a matter of changing from one hammer blow to two.
And now with the World Tree Sapling, Malin didn’t need to hold back at all. With bruises forming, when the World Tree Sapling struck those kids and they flew, bruises would appear while the injuries would start to heal with the aid of the World Tree Sapling. According to those who had been hit, the whole process was painful yet pleasurable.
The former was due to excessive bruising, while the latter was when the healing effect kicked in.
So Malin quickly grew bored of such battles, and if it weren’t for the good amount of credits he could earn with each day’s fight, Malin wouldn’t have wanted to fight at all.
What, getting hit could also make them stronger... How could that be possible; Malin certainly didn’t think so.
And so the days passed by, one after another. Aside from being bored and daydreaming, Malin could only feel joy when he was acting alongside the girl, even if it was just as her pack mule; it was better than idling away at the Church.
What finally freed Malin from boredom was still the letters from his father. Every month or two, his father would send a letter saying that he was still pursuing his goal, and each time he would admonish Malin not to let Maya go hungry.
Every time he saw this sentence, Malin would turn his head to look at Maya who was in the living room doing fitness stretches with a few older girls to lose weight.
How can you not know just how much your own daughter can eat, you as a father? And yet you still write about it every time? Do you believe I’d raise a pig for you when you return... I just can’t bear the thought. My sister is so cute, her tail so pretty, her hair so smooth.
After putting the book he had finished reading into the letter box, Malin turned to look at Clovis, the bunny girl who wasn’t exercising like her sisters. Malin had asked her why, and she had refused him with the excuse that exercising wouldn’t get rid of a few strands of her fur.
Malin thought about it and realized he hadn’t taken into account Clovis’s feelings, so he stroked the bunny girl’s ears and then continued to lounge about lazily.
Then Logan knocked on Malin’s door.
"I’m here to introduce a new job to you, Malin, a big job," Logan said. Although he’d nearly died last time, he was fortunate to have survived and made it to the Church. Hence, after resting for a month, he could run around, and although he couldn’t use spell formations for the time being, he could still make himself useful elsewhere as Carterburg’s number one assistant.
"What’s the job? Not babysitting again, I hope," Malin said, eyeing the young man. A few days ago, he’d claimed there was a big job, but when Malin showed up, he found it was only a rich kid looking for a nanny to tour around. It wasn’t any kind of apprentice advancement. There were only a few unlucky arthropod spirits, and Malin couldn’t find a chance to act before the kids shot them dead with guns.
Afterward, Malin got a less-than-impressive rating at the Adventurers’ Guild, which annoyed him so much that he threw down the gauntlet and caned each of those brats with a twig, making them go back to the Guild to revise their reviews.
Their parents and the Church the kids were affiliated with didn’t know whether to laugh or cry after hearing about the incident, and even old Hoffman made a rare joke with Malin about it.
So when he heard the word ’big job’ from Logan’s mouth again, Malin truly dreaded it—it was like a stain on his life.
"Don’t worry, Malin, this time it’s definitely a big job. Miriam is going to advance to Tier Nine, and I’m asking for your help," Logan reassured him. Malin laughed and patted the youngster’s shoulder, "Alright, I’ll help you. We’re brothers; I’ll do it for free this time."
Malin had seen the relationship between this guy and Miriam; thus, he felt it was his bounden duty to help when Logan asked.
"That won’t do, no matter what, you must take something, even if it’s just a token of appreciation," Logan insisted, shaking his head.
"Alright then, I’ll handle both of your advancements and won’t charge you, but when you marry Miriam, don’t expect a wedding gift from me, okay?" Malin said with a smile. "If you don’t agree, I won’t get involved."
"Thanks, brother!" Logan grinned. "I’m not fully recovered yet, and tagging along would just be a nuisance, so I’m really counting on you this time."
"No problem, I’ll take Faye and the others to help. What kind of spirit is Miriam planning to hunt?"
"It’s a bit far, at the western side of the Central Administrative Province, on the Pamir Plains. A Burrowing Dragon, a very large animal spirit," Logan explained.
"Size doesn’t matter, we’ll find a way to deal with it when the time comes. Go back and tell Miriam that your business is my business," Malin said after some thought. Burrowing Dragons were quadrupedal animal spirits with low intelligence, relying entirely on their size, immense strength, and inherent spell formations to become lethal.
The strength of an adult Burrowing Dragon, if quantified, should be no less than 20, but its size made this strength even more dangerous.
Moreover, the Burrowing Dragon’s inherent spell formation was ’turn mud into stone’—it could turn all of the ground within a 200-yard radius into stone.
Under normal circumstances, hunting a Burrowing Dragon wasn’t a good idea. It seemed Miriam’s advancement had something to do with its internal organs.
Something related to dragons? How intriguing.