Under the weight of every pair of eyes in the room, the robed figure’s pale hands trembled slightly as they gripped the edge of the hood, each tug seeming to cost an enormous effort.
Finally, caught between Kaelin’s encouraging gaze and Sodden’s unyielding stare, the figure seemed to reach some kind of decision. Both arms rose slowly, and the heavy hood began to slide back.
The first thing revealed was a head of dark brown hair, cut roughly to the jaw and slightly disheveled. Then came a face — a young Human Race girl’s face, with skin so fair it was nearly translucent, delicate features that still carried a faint trace of youth not yet fully shed.
Taken on its own, her face was unremarkable — the kind you’d pass a dozen times walking through any town, no different from Lian or any other girl like her. Only in those downcast eyes was there something that didn’t quite fit her age: a quiet, stubborn resilience.
A flicker of surprise passed through Raine’s mind.
He’d already guessed from the figure’s build that the mysterious Caster was likely female, but he hadn’t expected her to be this young.
After all, this was the "Caster who preferred to remain unnamed" — the one who had taken down a rampaging Bear Goblin and whose abilities had earned the approval of even the exceptionally talented Sarah.
Beside him, Sodden let out a quiet breath, and a look of confusion settled over his rough-hewn face.
He’d imagined any number of things under that hood — a gruesome scar running halfway across a face, a bizarre Demon Eye capable of inflicting Petrification, maybe even some mutant strain of Gray Dwarves.
What he had not imagined was this: an ordinary Human Race girl’s face, one he’d have struggled to pick out of a crowd. It was about as far from his mental image of "a strange Caster going out of their way to hide their identity" as anything could be.
But just as the tension in the room began to ease, the hood fell away completely — and the atmosphere clamped back down again.
Nestled among strands of dark brown hair, a pair of black spiral horns, curving like a ram’s, pushed out through the locks and rose on either side of her brow.
They were smooth as black glass, catching the last of the evening light in shifting hues of deep crimson — something unmistakably Demonic, casting a warped, Hell-tinged pall over the dim room.
And it wasn’t over yet.
The horned girl bit down on her lower lip and pulled the brown hood free entirely. As she did, a slender dark shape came into view.
Raine could see it clearly: a tail, covered in fine short black fur, the hair at the tip slightly longer and naturally flared into a loosely fluffy Heart-shaped tuft.
At that moment, the tail was coiled tightly around her slender waist — a dead giveaway of just how wound up she was inside.
Her head stayed down, thick lashes veiling eyes of vivid blue, her expression unreadable.
But her whole body had drawn inward into a defensive curl, as if she were silently bracing for a verdict that was already on its way.
The room was dead silent.
Raine looked at her — at those unmistakable features — and drew a slow, quiet breath.
A race the Sloppy Ranger had described more than once, always with that layered, complicated tone, surfaced clearly in his mind.
Tiefling.
In ages long past, certain ancestors of the Human Race had forged blood pacts with Demons. Their descendants inherited the consequence — a Cursed bloodline they could never escape, not in this life or any other.
To ordinary people, those Demon-like horns and that tail were symbols of evil and dread, plain and simple.
Tieflings carried human blood in their veins, yet no human settlement had ever truly accepted them.
"Get away from me, you Cursed little Demon spawn!"
"What are you staring at? Freak! Your eyes make me sick!"
"Get out of our village! We don’t want your kind bringing misfortune here!"
"Mama, she’s so ugly — she scares me!"
Icy shouts, contemptuous stares, stones hurled in hatred, the terrified wailing of children — scenes like these made up almost the entirety of a Tiefling’s memories of growing up.
To many people, their very existence was an unforgivable mistake.
Tiefling meant danger. Tiefling meant evil. It had become something close to an accepted truth that no one felt the need to question.
People rarely stopped to consider the character or inner life of any individual among them. The sin was in the blood — and that alone was enough to mark them as walking disasters.
With that thought in mind, when Raine’s gaze returned to her, everything fell into place.
Why she’d worked so hard to hide herself needed no explanation.
Only beneath the cover of that oversized brown robe could she carve out even a small space to breathe — a way to avoid the disgust that seemed to follow her everywhere.
That hood was her fragile Armor. The only shelter she’d been able to find in a world that met her with hostility at every turn.
"No wonder she was so insistent about wanting a partial Invisibility Potion. She must have been planning to conceal the horns and the tail."
Raine studied the black-glass horns with a calm eye, tracing the elegant curve of each spiral, the dark crimson shimmer drifting across their surface.
Set aside the world’s prejudices, and there was actually something striking about them — an unusual kind of beauty, like a piece of finely crafted art.
His gaze drifted past her fair, delicate face — so purely human — and finally settled on the black tail with its Heart-shaped tip.
Seeing it coiled tight with anxiety, the Sloppy Ranger’s animated, grinning face pushed its way into Raine’s mind at the most inopportune moment.
The old lecher had once bragged with that trademark lecherous look of his about his "story that had to be told" involving a female Tiefling Wanderer he called his "Queen."
He’d claimed that a Tiefling’s tail was a direct readout of their emotions — it never lied — and that being wrapped up in one felt absolutely incredible.
Looking at it now, the old bastard hadn’t been entirely full of it, at least on that particular point.
"I have to say, the shape of that tail tip is rather... distinctive."
None of the unease a typical native of this world might have felt stirred in Raine at all.
As a Transmigrator, what mattered to him was what a person did — not what they were.
She had stepped forward that night, taken down a rampaging Bear Goblin, and saved the lives of several Adventurer Guards who would very likely have looked at her with those same suspicious eyes. That was proof enough of who she was.
The world had thrown her away, and she’d still chosen to stand up. That meant far more than any "Cursed" label people chose to slap on her.
Even as he assessed her, a faint, barely perceptible curiosity flickered in Raine’s eyes.
What kind of soul was hiding beneath a shell that had been met with cold rejection at every turn? And what kind of life had shaped her into this — someone so capable, yet so visibly fragile at the same time?
Raine pulled his gaze away and raised no objection to her joining the party.
As far as he was concerned, a Caster who could act when it counted, a Caster who could break through a Magic Barrier — that was someone worth having. The horns and the tail were just "teammate quirks" he’d have to get used to.
Judging by the quiet weight of her presence, she wasn’t as powerful as the middle-aged Mage from the Ring of Steel, and she hadn’t yet crossed the threshold into being a true Professional — but she seemed like she was right on the doorstep.
Besides, Kaelin had already chosen her. That alone was reason enough not to refuse.
Raine shifted his gaze to Sodden.
Now it came down to what the Dwarf had to say.