Chapter 31: Contemplating
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Although I was rattled I could still keep a relatively stable poker face. Furthermore, Lucan took a brief pause, which allowed me to shake off my stupor.

I started thinking about why Lucan could say Kasa put magic on me with certainty. My thoughts ranged from Lucan misunderstanding something to Lucan seeing it happen.

I scratched my head with one hand and spoke with the calmest voice I could muster. "Are you sure it was Kasa and not someone else?"

Lucan looked at the leaves in the trees for a few seconds before responding. He started speaking while rubbing his chin, "I can say with relative certainty. You might not know this but Duke Pendel has agents that monitor your safety. However you probably did not know that, specifically on you, the tracking magic used by those agents emits a distinct signature that serves as a premature warning to anyone trying to swindle you. It warns them that someone strong is protecting you."

So that's the reason I was generally avoided whenever I walked outside, well at least one of the main reasons. Still, it was interesting to note that, out of all Duke Pendle's children, only I had a signature on me. Because of my inability to use mana, I would've thought I was the last person who needed one. I was tempted to ask Lucan what he meant by signature, but I decided on asking him later. I wanted to know why he was mentioning this.  Although at this point, I could guess Lucan's next sentence.

"It is apparent that the signature on this magic is not from an agent. It doesn't have a signature at all. Therefore, it must've come from a third party. Combining my prior reasoning with your recent rumors, I can say with 99% certainty it was the little girl who put magic on you."

"What rumors?"

" Amusingly, you're probably the only person who genuinely doesn't know the rumors about themself. Rumors along with the vine state that you no longer visit prison because you were scared straight by the princess."

I didn't respond to Lucan because I was pretty surprised by that rumor. I didn't think anyone cared enough about me to spread rumors- besides the visiting the prison rumor. It was interesting to note that even a relatively useless son of a Duke has some fame. Perhaps it was more accurate to call it infamy.

I internally shook my head, 'That's not important right now, what's important is the reason why she put Tracking magic on me."
It wasn't hard to figure out the reason behind using Tracking magic, she wanted to Track my position. Rather, the question was why she wanted to track my position.

I focused my thoughts on the most obvious conclusion, Kasa wanted to figure out when I was close to her so she could apologize. The more I thought about it, the less sense this reason made. If she really wanted to find my position to apologize, she would've approached me already. My next thought was she wanted to figure out where I went when I wasn't with her. This reason made more sense than the last one because she couldn't ask about where I went after we argued. However, rather than give me an answer, it raised more questions. She never asked me where I went, she's only asked me if I visited the prison. Does that mean she realized that I was lying?

'Hahaha, there's no way that's true,' I was confident in my ability to lie to someone like Kasa. However, the more I thought about it, the less confident I became. At this point, other questions started to pop up in my head. I tried to ignore these questions but I couldn't stop my thoughts from snowballing towards them. Questions like 'When did start tracking me?' and 'How often did she track me?' were broader and open to interpretation. This let my imagination run wild with sinister thoughts like 'She's tracked you since you've met.' and 'She tracked you every single day.'

The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to think about it. I felt like my privacy had been invaded.

Seemingly sensing my inner thoughts, Lucan broke the silence.

"I can't tell you when it was put on you, but I can tell you that I only noticed it yesterday. I'm not sure if she realized that she could hide her spell using another spell's signature or if she got lucky, but the spell itself was well executed. I only noticed it through a coincidence. Luckily for you, the spell causes no harm, it just tracks the user's location and generates a heatmap the caster can analyze. This version of the spell is probably somewhere in the range of tier 2 or 3 spell, it's always hard to tell with null-type magic like this. In any case, finding her reasoning behind putting a spell on you would probably be a good idea."

After Lucan said that, an idea popped into my head.

"Would it be possible for you to dissipate the spell?"

"It would be fairly trivial but I'm not sure if-" I interjected him because I already thought about the consequences; I didn't need to hear his lengthy explanations.

"It's fine, I know that it would alert the caster, I would still like it dissipated."

"Well, if you insist, I suppose I can do it right now."

I waited for a few seconds for Lucan to pull out a staff or start chanting, but he just stood still. A few seconds later, he told me that he dispelled the magic.

I thought he was joking with me, but he explained that at his level, dispelling that spell required little to no effort. As I bid him an early farewell, I couldn't help but wonder how strong he was.

My decision to dispel might seem crazy, but the reasoning was solid. It's impossible to guess Kasa's intentions without actually talking to her, but I can't bring this up because she would realize someone told me about the magic. Therefore, I needed her to bring it up. The only way I can see her bringing it up is if something happens to the magic. Although she would get suspicious of me, I can just feign innocence while probing her intentions.

Even if my plan went awry, Kasa has shown that the farthest she's willing to go is tracking magic. Furthermore, even if she is angry, in a few weeks she's leaving for a few years, which would presumably be long enough for her to calm down.

At the very least, I thought this solution was better than living in fear for the next few weeks.

After I returned to my room, I had very little to do. I ended up spending the rest of my day practicing my soul techniques and trying to flip a coin and catch it with one hand.

The next day, as I was getting ready to leave, I heard a knock on my door.

 

 

 

 

 

   

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