The wheels rolled over the smooth stone road with a dull rumble.
On both sides of the street, vendors loudly hawked their fresh goods, and the crowd bustled shoulder to shoulder.
"So lively…"
Just stepping into this small city called "Rune" by the passersby, Mira—who had lived her whole life in a world of magic—couldn't help murmuring in surprise.
She had assumed that without the convenient power of magic, the common people of Edolas would live fairly bleak, difficult lives.
Unexpectedly, this place was full of vivid, ordinary warmth.
"Life always finds its own way. Even without magic, people still have to eat and wear clothes."
Shane kept most of his attention on that faintly visible branch of the causal line. Beneath his hood, his eyes were lowered slightly as he answered casually.
"Besides, this is the only settlement within a hundred miles. It's not that strange for it to be this prosperous."
"The way you say that makes it sound like you've personally seen a world without magic before."
Mira caught the certainty in his tone and tilted her head curiously.
"Let's just say… I've seen one in a dream."
Shane gave a perfunctory twitch of the lips.
With memories of his previous life, a society run purely by human effort was naturally nothing unusual to him.
They had not walked far side by side before another wagon loaded with goods brushed past them.
Suddenly, Mira stopped and grabbed Shane's sleeve.
"What is it?" Shane turned back.
"I feel…" The girl closed her eyes. "There seems to be free-floating magic in the air."
"Where? I don't feel anything."
Shane frowned slightly.
By all logic, Mira had lost her magic right now. Her senses should not have been sharper than his while he was in full condition.
"Over there!"
Mira confidently raised a hand and pointed toward the deepest part of the city.
Shane followed the direction of her finger, and his gaze sharpened.
That direction was not only the city center of Rune—
it also perfectly overlapped with the path of the causal branch in his vision.
That absolutely could not be coincidence.
"There really is something off?"
Shane rubbed his chin and roughly figured out what was going on.
Mira's body right now was probably like a completely dried-out sponge, making her abnormally sensitive to even the tiniest drop of free magic.
Meanwhile, the Dragon Furnace Heart inside him was roaring constantly. His own magic was so abundant that it instead drowned out those tiny external sparks.
"Let's go. We'll check it out."
The two no longer hesitated and immediately quickened their pace.
But what felt strange was this:
This was clearly the prime central area of the city, and the road beneath their feet was growing wider and smoother, yet the farther they walked in, the fewer voices they heard.
Not only did pedestrians vanish from the streets, even the beautifully decorated shops along the way became sparse and tightly shut.
"Strange. This is the city center," Mira said, looking around at the dead-quiet street.
"Why does it feel like… the residents are deliberately avoiding this place?"
"Mm. The road doesn't look abandoned, so people must have used it frequently at some point."
Shane also felt something was off.
Just as the two of them were walking through the empty street, with almost no one in sight—
Rattle, rattle—
Accompanied by the scraping sound of wooden wheels, a little girl with a high ponytail came flying past them on a crude wooden skateboard.
"Cecilia! Come back! You're not allowed to go near that place!"
Immediately after, a woman in a silk dress stumbled out from around the street corner.
Her hair was messy, her full figure rising and falling violently with her hurried breathing, and her face was full of panic.
"Bleh~ no way! I'm going to the big crystal!"
The girl named Cecilia turned back and made a face. With one hard kick, her skateboard sped up even more, and in the blink of an eye, she had already slid far away.
The woman truly couldn't run anymore. In despair, she lifted her head and happened to see Shane and Mira standing by the roadside, as if she had found her last hope.
"Quick! Please, help me stop her!"
The woman braced her hands on her knees and shouted anxiously at the two of them.
"It's already time for the 'tax offering.' The guards at Crystal Plaza have all been withdrawn! It's too dangerous!"
"Tax offering?"
Shane stopped. "What does that mean?"
The woman froze for a moment. Although she found it strange that someone wouldn't know such basic common sense, her daughter's figure was about to disappear at the end of the street, so she couldn't afford to think too much.
"That's the magic power our whole city saved up for an entire year. It's the tax specially offered to the Black Dragon!"
At those words, a strange look flashed through Shane's eyes.
Black Dragon?
He had heard from Mystogan that his counterpart was frantically plundering magic all over the world, but he truly hadn't expected that the other party had actually established this kind of systematic "harvesting" method.
Wasn't he supposed to have lost his mind?
How did he still know how to use long-term terror to keep cities like livestock?
Shane felt a chill in his heart. This counterpart might be far more troublesome than he had imagined.
"Please!" Seeing Shane still deep in thought, the woman was so anxious that tears started falling. "That child's father died early. She's all I have. No one knows when the Black Dragon will descend to collect the tax. Please, help me bring Cecilia back!"
Shane returned to himself and frowned slightly at the woman's frantic expression.
"Ma'am, asking two complete strangers to risk facing the Black Dragon for you is a little inappropriate, isn't it?"
The woman's expression froze instantly, her face going white as paper.
Seeing that she really had just panicked and didn't have any ulterior motives, Shane softened his tone.
"Just kidding. Got it. We were headed there anyway."
With that, he turned, just about to say to Mira, "We got some useful information."
Only to find that the space beside him was empty. The white-haired figure had already vanished.
Shane looked up and saw that Mira had already sprinted off, chasing in the direction the little girl had disappeared.
"Tch. Acting on your own again."
Shane sighed, turned back to comfort the mother with "Wait here," and immediately chased after her.
Following the footprints of the one large and one small figure, Shane quickly rounded a street corner, and his view suddenly opened up.
It was an enormous circular plaza.
At the center of the plaza stood a massive stone platform built up high.
On top of the platform was an astonishingly large Lacrima crystal giving off a faint glow.
The magic Mira had sensed earlier was coming from this crystal.
At that moment, the girl named Cecilia had already abandoned her skateboard and was using both hands and feet to climb up the stone steps of the platform.
"Stop right there!"
Mira, who had arrived ahead of him, dashed forward in one step, grabbed the girl's thin arm, and forcefully dragged her down from the steps.
The white-haired girl's face turned stern, her voice harsher than ever before.
"You little girl, didn't you see your mother chasing after you, so worried she was about to cry?"
"Who are you?"
With her wrist seized, Cecilia struggled hard, kicking her little feet wildly.
"Let me go! Mind your own business!"
Thud!
Thud!
Before Mira could answer, two dull knocks rang out.
"You too!"
Shane arrived just in time and mercilessly gave each of them a flick to the forehead.
"Why me too?"
Mira clutched her head and glared at him.
"Didn't we agree that all actions were supposed to follow my orders?"
Shane gave her an annoyed look, though he wasn't truly angry.
After all, Elfman and Lisanna's tragedy had also begun because they acted on their own.
When it came to children running off without caring how their families felt, Mira was probably more sensitive than anyone else.