Show Me Your Stats!-Chapter 194

Ayra furrowed her brow slightly. Why was awakening magic suddenly being brought up at a time like this?

She opened Shinje’s Stat Window—and sure enough, there they were: Mana Stone Detection and Mana Stone Processing listed under his skills. So his abilities really were specialized in mana stones.

Awakening magic followed a different track from ordinary spells. It was the kind of magic that pushed one’s natural-born talents to their utmost limits. Even for Ayra, who had encountered many forms of awakening magic, this was the first time seeing one that involved detecting mana stones.

Normally, mana stones couldn’t be detected through magical means at all. So while she now understood how Shinje had managed to live so comfortably in the labyrinth, what did that have to do with their current situation? Ayra pressed him again.

“So?”

“I followed you to Solar because I’d never been to the North before. A funeral, well—it seemed like a good excuse to make the trip. The steeper the mountain ranges, the more likely you are to find mana stone clusters. But then...”

He hesitated like he was reluctant to say it out loud, his expression twisted in frustration, before he finally sighed and opened his mouth.

“Underneath this keep... there was an enormous cluster of mana stones, with a kind of magic I’d never seen before. Just... immense. Unbelievable in strength.”

“...Under this keep?”

Ayra had been appointed lord some time ago, but she had never once heard of a large deposit of mana stones beneath the manor. If she had known, she would have used them long ago to pay off the estate’s debt. It wasn’t even Shinje’s property, yet he looked as though the loss still pained him deeply as he squeezed his eyes shut and confessed.

“Yes! I knew I shouldn’t, but I got greedy... No one in the castle seemed to know about the mana stones, so I figured I’d just take them for myself. But then, as soon as you arrived, you cast those security spells—and I couldn’t do anything...”

That was expected. Not just Ayra, but most lords sealed their entire castles with anti-intrusion spells, meant to keep out extraordinary individuals like knights or mages. When Ayra had broken into Solar to rescue Bloom, the spell placed over the prison had been that very sort of security magic.

And of course, Shinje was a labyrinth mage. A basic barrier like that would’ve been child’s play for him to bypass. But Ayra was not the type to cast simple protective spells. This was her own domain—she had poured time and care into every layer of security magic. Except for the great hall and a few guest rooms frequented by servants and retainers, all other areas were restricted to specific individuals only.

What’s more, the keep was built atop solid bedrock. Thanks to that, Shinje had never managed to even set foot near the underground level of the manor—he could only stomp in frustration outside.

“I couldn’t give up. I pretended to return to the labyrinth but lingered around Solar instead. That’s when a spy from the Lord of Sobletz approached me. And surprisingly, that lord—he already knew about the mana stones beneath this manor. Even though no one in Solar did.”

As she listened, Ayra furrowed her brows. If Shinje was telling the truth, how had Jumenier Orseng, the lord of Sobletz, come to know about the cluster of mana stones beneath the keep? She shelved the question for now and focused on hearing the rest.

“So I agreed to cooperate with the Lord of Sobletz in exchange for getting a portion of the stones. After that, I spied on Solar and passed on intel. The Karcal incident, teaming up with Teon... all of that was at his command. T-That’s everything.”

Shinje squirmed, repeatedly glancing up to gauge Ayra’s reaction. But her cold gaze never wavered. Desperate to say anything more, he racked his brain before suddenly jerking his head up.

“Oh! R-Right. You—you have one too.”

“...What do I have?”

“A mana stone. One exactly like the ones buried under the keep.”

“What are you talking about?”

He was about to say more—but then caught sight of something behind Ayra and let out a squeal.

Ayra turned quickly. All she saw was Janus yawning with a sleepy expression, and Bloom glaring at Shinje with cold intensity. ...What the hell? She tilted her head, then looked back at Shinje, who was now breathless and retreating toward a corner, his voice trembling as he spoke.

“In your study. That one.”

“...What kind of mana stone? Speak clearly.”

“The one that showed up recently... the day that dragon took down the Karcal.”

Ayra furrowed her brows. There were several mana stones in her study—but then her eyes widened.

The day Janus had killed the Karcal... Only one special mana stone had entered her study that day.

The one Janus had yanked straight out of the chest of the dragon trying to approach Ayra.

Her voice trembled faintly.

“You’re saying... the stones buried under the keep... are all dragon cores?”

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“H-Here. Right here, underneath.”

Shinje, who had been completely out of it ever since realizing that the stones he wanted were dragon cores, now pointed weakly at the ground. “Dragon cores,” he kept mumbling in disbelief. “Those were dragon cores...”

Ayra fixed her gaze on the spot he was pointing at.

They were in the underground level of the keep. More precisely, near the silk spiders’ breeding chamber, where the spiders were still hard at work spinning their webs. Ayra raised a hand and pressed it to her aching forehead.

Now it all made sense—the keep’s absurdly strong preservation enchantments, and the silk spiders’ overactive production. If Shinje’s words were true, then the keep was sitting on an almost infinite energy source.

She began lifting the bricks she had placed earlier with physical magic. Oddly, they came up too easily. As if someone had already pried them loose once before. Frowning in confusion, she stacked them to one side and began digging into the damp earth below.

After excavating several meters, Ayra stopped casting her spell. She stepped forward and stood at the edge of the pit, staring down with disbelieving eyes.

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Just as Shinje had said, underneath the keep was a massive pile of radiant, glowing dragon cores. It didn’t look like a mana stone stash—it looked like someone had gathered every gemstone in the world and buried them here. A rough count showed there were easily more than twenty.

And they weren’t just lying in the ground, either. Each one was stored in a peculiar jar made from some unknown material.

“...What is this?”

Ayra knelt down and reached out to touch one of the jars. As she brushed off the dirt and examined it more closely, she realized it wasn’t man-made. It looked more like twisted stone roots had woven themselves into a round vessel.

Who had managed to collect this many dragon cores—and buried them beneath her estate? It must have happened before she arrived in Solar...

As that thought struck her, she slowly turned her head. There was Janus, mid-yawn, looking drowsy. His mouth hung wide open, and today, his sharp fangs were particularly bright.

“Janus... I just want to ask, to be sure—this isn’t something you buried, right?”

Her voice trembled faintly. But no matter how she thought about it, there was only one person who had the power to slay dragons and had been in Solar before she arrived: Janus.

He bared his teeth in a long grin.

“It is.”

Shinje, who had been slumped on the ground in shock, gasped so hard it sounded like his soul had left his body. Ayra rubbed her aching neck and closed her eyes for a moment.

So the reason Sobletz and Bolni had targeted Solar was... because Janus had buried a massive cache of dragon cores under her estate.

“You buried all of this under my keep and didn’t say a word?!”

Ayra flared with a mix of betrayal and fury. But Janus’s response was unbelievably «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» simple.

“I forgot.”

“You forgot?!”

How does someone forget they buried a pile of dragon cores?! But judging from Janus’s completely casual tone, he was serious. More importantly, Pebble, who was always monitoring for lies, hadn’t made a single peep.

“I gathered them over the years after I came to Solar. There wasn’t really anywhere good to put them. I figured if I buried them under the biggest building in Solar, I wouldn’t forget. I remembered around the time you started building the spider breeding room down here.”

“Ha...”

All Ayra could do was sigh at the sheer audacity of it.

“I thought about telling you, but I figured I might need them myself, so I kept it hidden. Want some? I’ll be generous and give you, like... half?”

“Wait—hold on.”

Ayra raised a hand to silence him. Something had been nagging at her all this time. A persistent discomfort that came up every time Janus triggered an earthquake. And now, she finally realized what it was.

According to Botello, the earthquakes in Solar had started not long after she was born. But Janus had only arrived ten years ago.

Which meant... the earlier earthquakes, before his arrival, weren’t random. They weren’t natural disasters. They happened right after she was born.

Ayra took a deep breath and began piecing it all together.

“If you’ve been collecting them over the past few years, then these are... all dragon cores you got near Solar?”

“Yup.”

Janus replied half-heartedly. He looked like he just wanted to finish up and crawl into Ayra’s bedroom for a nap. Ayra stared silently at the jars full of dragon cores before asking again. A chill ran down her spine.

“Dragons don’t... have multiple cores, right? Unlike magical beasts?”

“Of course not. Just one each.”

“Then...”

Her voice caught. To be sure, she floated the cores up with magic and counted them one by one.

Thirty-two.

Thirty-two dragons had wandered around near Solar over the past few years.

Her vision went dark for a moment. Even the stoic, silent knight commander, who had quietly observed the whole time, let out a muffled groan.

As she stared at the glittering cores, Janus’s words came back to her—how dragons would always kill each other when they met.

“...Are there normally this many dragons in the world, or is Solar just... cursed?”

“Hm...”

For the first time, Janus hesitated, stroking his chin. He glanced toward Bloom and Shinje, and for a fleeting moment, there was a glimmer of harmless bloodlust in his eyes—If it comes to it, I’ll just kill them. Before Ayra could intervene, he opened his mouth.

“There’s something humans have always misunderstood about dragons. One of those things is the idea that a bond between a dragon and its mate is strictly one-to-one.”