NOVEL NEXT Ch. 25
Chapter 25
Henrik Dusk-raised under Hunter Dusk and whispered about in the Northern City as the hero who saved it.
Scribble, scribble.
Carmine jotted the fact into his notebook.
For several days he had tailed Henrik.
Inside the academy Carmine himself shadowed him; outside, William took over, recording every step.
The upshot: Henrik was brewing something.
Last night William reported that the professor had swept through the market and bought herbs by the sack-load.
Every ingredient was stocked by the MacClane trading house.
On the surface, nothing incriminating: the cover-company sold legitimate, top-grade goods and enjoyed a solid reputation.
The problem lay in what Henrik had bought.
Clearly a recipe, but no matter how Carmine parsed the combination, he couldn’t guess its purpose-nor why the quantities were so enormous.
Five kilos of licorice, three of gold-pouch flower, eight of poison-arrow root, two of wild ginseng labeled “rare,” and more.
Common herbs, rare herbs-even straight poisons.
Why anyone would mix poison-herbs into a potion was beyond him.
Curiosity prickled.
What was the man up to?
The sudden celebrity who set the academy buzzing every single day-what project demanded this botanical mountain?
Right now Henrik Dusk was Carmine’s most fascinating mystery.
He was definitely eccentric.
Those absurd daily workouts, the sudden impossible leap in strength-
‘Maybe the freakish growth spurt comes from whatever he’s swallowing. What exactly are you cooking, Professor?’
Curiosity won.
Carmine’s father had drilled the same rule into him: the moment a question forms, chase it.
Curiosity, he’d said, is either the key that unlocks a case or the ladder that lets you climb higher.
Carmine flipped his notebook open and checked Henrik’s schedule.
05:00 - muscle training in private room
06:00 - run the training yard with Amecitia
08:00 - breakfast
09:00 - prep lecture in office
10:00 - morning demonology class
12:00 - lunch break
...
He made up his mind: break into Henrik’s office.
The perfect window was the brief gap when Henrik left for class.
Ten o’clock, just before the lecture began.
Minutes later Carmine stood outside the office-outside the window, to be exact.
Using his clan’s secret art, Perception Interference, he had scaled the wall unseen.
Click.
He tried the sash; it didn’t budge-latched.
‘Figures.’
Out came a pair of tweezers and a lock-pick; the latch surrendered with a tiny rasp and snap.
Swish-he slipped inside and pulled the window shut.
‘Cleaner than I expected.’
The office smelled faintly of herbs and looked more like an alchemist’s study than a demonologist’s lair.
No cages of live demons, no half-dissected corpses-just shelves of books, a huge work-bench crowded with retorts and tubes, and even potted herbs on the sill.
Anyone would take it for a lecturer’s sanctum-if not for the demon-slayer gear stacked in one corner and the bounty bulletins tacked to the wall.
‘Still, he’s a demonology professor.’
Carmine eyed the weapons: crossbow, blades, every edge lovingly maintained-obsessively so.
‘So where did all those herbs go?’
He shifted his gaze to the workbench.
Amid the glassware lay the same ingredients William had listed.
A crate in the corner carried a sticker: DISPOSAL.
It brimmed with failed potions-enough to fill a small casket.
Now the market-shopping spree made sense.
‘Potion-crafting?’
Alchemy was still half-mystery: dosage, formulation, even the mana-type you fed in could flip an elixir’s effect.
Carmine had studied the basics to brew poisons for the clan, so he recognized the setup.
Not poison, though-this looked like medicine.
The gear was simple but complete, the kind a master would choose, and the immaculate upkeep screamed meticulous planner.
From the tidy lab and the clipped herbs Carmine could tell: the professor knew exactly what he was doing.
The curiosity sharpened.
It felt as if some secret lay just out of sight.
......
Then he spotted it: a fresh potion, still warm, not yet bottled.
Unable to resist, Carmine lifted the flask.
The liquid shimmered red.
He sniffed-sweet, almost like candle-wax.
A casual swirl and the stuff turned purple, suddenly hot.
Startled, he let go.
Clang!
The instant the vial shattered, the potion pooling across the floor belched up thick, acrid smoke.
“Cough! Cough!”
Carmine clamped a hand over his mouth, flung the window open, and waved the fumes away.
‘I breathed it in!’
He frisked himself for any sudden mutation-horns, tail, glowing eyes. Nothing. For the moment, at least, no effect or side-effect announced itself.
Still, the crash had been loud. Carmine flipped his hood up, triggered Perception Interference, and slipped out of Henrik’s office like a ghost.
* * *
Demonology classroom.
Amecitia kept glancing at the back row, where Carmine sat unnaturally still. Ever since he’d staked a small fortune on that duel with Oliver, she’d wondered what sort of person he really was.
‘It’s not the money, I swear!’
She just couldn’t picture him losing his cool. Clearing her throat, she leaned toward her neighbor.
“Grimory, does Carmine look... green to you?”
Grimory twisted around. “He does. Think he caught something?”
Carmine was sweating bullets, spine rigid. Every few seconds he shifted on the bench as if the wood had turned to hot iron.
“I’ll ask,” Amecitia declared, popping up.
“Carmine! You okay?”
“......!”
He jerked so hard his knee slammed the desk.
“You’re drenched. Fever?”
“I’m fine.”
She reached for his forehead; he slapped her hand away.
“D-don’t touch me.”
He squirmed, cheeks hollow.
‘Crap, why now?’
A cramp twisted his gut. He’d felt normal when he sat down, but the closer the clock crept to lecture time, the louder his intestines screamed. The culprit was obvious: that rainbow-colored smoke he’d inhaled in Henrik’s office.
Even a stomach trained to digest venom couldn’t ignore this.
-gururururururk!
The entire class heard the rumble. Carmine dropped his forehead to the desk and moaned.
“Ugh... ah...”
Amecitia caught on fast. Eyes sparkling, she poked his shoulder.
“Oho, Carmine’s got tummy trouble!”
“Leave... me...”
Before she could torment him further, Grimory hauled her back to her seat.
‘Damn it!’
Carmine ground his teeth. ‘Laxative? Or a booby trap for intruders?’
The door swung open.
“Open your texts to page sixty-four.”
Henrik started lecturing the moment he entered. For Carmine, the next two hours were purgatory. He sat hunched over his aching belly, catching every third word, praying for the bell.
He couldn’t ask to leave; Henrik would sniff out the break-in. He’d endured poison-immunity drills, whip-training while tied to a chair, even being dumped on a snowpeak naked-but this was worse.
“And that concludes today’s lesson.”
Salvation. Henrik closed his book. Carmine bolted.
He sprinted the length of the corridor at full throttle, every ounce of mana funneled into speed.
“First time I’ve seen Carmine run.”
“What happened?”
Students whispered, heads popping out of doorways.
* * *
After a day-long duel with the toilet, Carmine finally escaped his private hell. Legs numb, rear on fire, he trudged home. Yet his body felt oddly light-emptied, cleansed, almost buoyant.
He opened the front door. William, oblivious, triggered the nightly trap.
Boom!
Whoosh!
Clubs and daggers came flying.
“...?”
Yet everything seemed to crawl through the air in slow motion, creeping toward him one lazy inch at a time.
Carmine snatched a club out of mid-air and flicked the daggers aside; William burst from hiding.
“Today is Wednesday, Young Master-the day I personally attend you! Brace yourself, for it will not be easy!”
William’s fist shot forward.
Carmine’s eyes snapped open; he slipped the blow.
Whoosh!
The fist skimmed past. William spun into a low kick; Carmine tapped the wall and vaulted away.
Swish!
Trap plus William’s flurry-normally he would have taken a hit or two, but today every strike hung in the air as if painted.
Reflexes sharpened to a knife’s edge.
What happened to my body?
Nothing special...
‘Don’t tell me-Henrik’s potion?’
It was supposed to be nothing more than a stomach-ache in a bottle.
Yet that was the only explanation. Carmine replayed the day: besides the cramps, he felt... light.
“The potion. Yes, that was it.”
He murmured, eyes glittering.
The horrors of the morning lecture had already been erased from his mind.
“Young Master?”
William lowered his fists and stepped closer.
“Have you stumbled upon something amusing? After fifty years of service I can read that face! It is the very expression you wore at three when you cornered a garden snake!”
Interest flared across Carmine’s features.
‘Professor Henrik.’
The more he peeled the man back, the stranger the layers became.
* * *
Henrik returned to his office after lecture, meaning both to dispose of the failed draught and to start fresh experiments.
He pushed the door open to find the window flung wide and the curtain billowing.
‘Not like Carmine to leave a mess.’
He shut the door, then the window.
For days Carmine had been tailing him; Henrik had been waiting for the moment the boy would slip inside. Apparently he had come and gone before lecture.
Near the bench, a broken test tube rolled across the floor.
The spilled potion exhaled a faint, acrid smoke.
Henrik picked up a rag and mopped casually.
“......”
Carmine had shown interest in the potion.
He remembered the boy sweating bullets during class and chuckled.
‘A failed batch whose side-effects even I found hard to stomach-and he went and sniffed it.’
The rag, stained purple, told him Carmine must have shaken the vial violently.
Reflex accelerator-just a jostle turned the stuff caustic and hot; he had meant to throw it out. Instead, Carmine had breathed the reacting vapor.
“He’s had a rough day.”
Still, the effect was real; the boy would have felt it.
“Should I ask how it went?”
Henrik set the market herbs on the desk, lit the lamp, and began a new brew.
If he knew Carmine, the lad would turn up on his own.