Chapter – 21
Yeah, I know. I was hopeless at magic too.
Hard to believe? Well, suit yourself.
I was an idiot who couldn’t cast a single proper spell even after more than ten years of studying the arcane.
The dimwit of the Phoenix Order.
Everyone made sure I heard them whispering behind my back, and I never had anything to say for myself.
I still don’t know what my master saw in me when he let me join.
Honestly, it might’ve been better if I’d never met him.
If I hadn’t run into Lady Lijewyn in a back alley of Cayndeia on my second day after migration… I probably would’ve just died there, quietly, alone.
Sometimes I even find myself thinking that would’ve been easier.
Ridiculous and embarrassing in hindsight, I know.
But now? I envy that version of myself so much.
That idiot who didn’t even realize how blessed she was, who had no idea where to turn.
Back then… at least Master was still alive.
I never had a father—not in Pangaea, not here—so I can’t say for sure, but…
Yes. He was like a father to me.
Everyone else said he was eccentric, twisted, hard to talk to, but at least for me…
Even when he grumbled, even when he did things I couldn’t understand, he was the only one who looked after me from behind.
Only after he died did I finally come to my senses.
And it took me less than three years to grow from a fool into a Grand Mage.
That’s what I regret.
Having that kind of talent all along… yet only gaining the strength to protect after I’d already lost everything.
And despite all that…
I’m excited. I’m happy.
Because I finally have the chance to avenge him.
Now—this is me speaking as Pangaea’s representative.
Go.
The rest is in your hands.
Everything around us had turned to ash.
One spell from her—just one—had done this.
The stench of burned flesh hung thick in the air.
There wasn’t a single survivor.
With flames like that, even the magic stones that powered their regeneration would’ve melted instantly.
I couldn’t hide my shock.
I never imagined the lively, troublemaking girl I’d been traveling with could produce something like this.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“…….”
Nothing about her behavior had ever struck me as suspicious, even when she said it took her seven minutes to finish a proper incantation.
She’d had no reason to lie to me.
But growing this much in just a week?
Even for a migrant, that was absurd.
Absurd—but not impossible.
If she was Hyacinth, the woman who would later rise as the Scarlet Grand Mage.
How had I failed to notice?
Actually… maybe it made sense.
Hyacinth only appeared after Lijewyn, the head of the Phoenix Order, died.
Her past before that was never described.
She was always portrayed as a master of magic—precise, infallible, serious to a fault.
None of that matched the girl in front of me.
But she called Lijewyn her master.
And more importantly—no one else alive could use Incantation of Embered Speech.
And she came from Pangaea.
It was undeniable.
She was Hyacinth—core member of the Expeditionary Order and one of Pangaea’s planetary representatives.
There was nothing for me to do but accept it.
What a ridiculous coincidence.
“Let’s go.”
I stopped thinking.
Who she was didn’t matter.
What I had to do remained the same.
Stop the experiment. Save Lijewyn.
Everything else could wait.
When the air cooled enough to breathe again, we moved forward.
At the far end of the room was another space, with another magic circle.
“It’s the same one we saw in the storage room. A spatial transfer formation.”
I nodded, and Hyacinth activated it.
Light wrapped around us, then vanished, revealing a new place.
Dark, again.
More solidly built than before.
A single small iron cage sat in the center.
Strange green characters crawled up the walls like serpents.
Inside the cage sat a child.
Seven or eight years old—hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl.
Wrapped in a scrap of cloth, with something like needles or spikes driven into their back.
They stared blankly up at the dark ceiling, not reacting even to our presence.
It was unnatural enough to mistake them for a doll.
I tore my gaze away and scanned the surroundings.
The cage was tiny—five steps from end to end.
More like a birdcage than a prison.
Hyacinth started wandering curiously.
I said nothing. Didn’t touch the child. Just waited.
Eventually, the air rippled—and someone appeared.
A surge of magic.
Hyacinth raised a hand to cast, but I stopped her.
She frowned in confusion but didn’t resist.
A man wrapped in red mana finished materializing.
Red hair, red robe.
Tall, thin.
Glasses perched above dark circles under his eyes.
A long staff at his side.
Fragile, scholarly—yet unmistakable.
The Crimson Sage, Lijewyn.
Hyacinth recognized him instantly and ran forward.
“Master!”
“Hyacinth? How are you here?”
“Uh. I sort of… ended up here…?”
“‘Ended up here.’ Yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing Hyacinth would say.”
He looked exasperated, then turned his gaze to me.
A strange expression.
Then understanding dawned.
“You must be Hyacinth’s helper, yes?”
“Helper?”
“The one who put the troll blood back in the storage room. Wasn’t it you?”
I glanced at Hyacinth.
She had gone pale.
So she hadn’t told him herself.
Though I wasn’t sure how he knew the troll blood had been “stolen” at all.
I missed my timing to answer, and Lijewyn continued:
“I left it deliberately vulnerable, so the numbers shouldn’t have matched. But someone replenished it. And it couldn’t have been Hyacinth alone.”
“…Correct.”
“Oh, I’m not interrogating you. Just curious. So, then—what’s next?”
“Next? Master?” Hyacinth asked.
“Yes. Who is he, and how did he end up here?”
“I kind of got… dragged into things.”
“You two really do talk the same way.”
Lijewyn studied me.
No hostility. No friendliness.
Just a cool, analytical gaze.
Curiosity, and beneath it, a faint academic interest.
A dangerous man.
Brilliant mind. Piercing insight.
The kind of person who could unravel inconsistencies in my story with only a handful of clues.
I had nothing to gain by explaining myself.
If I said the wrong thing, I risked drawing the attention of those things again.
I didn’t need him to understand me.
All I needed was to remain an enigma.
He didn’t press.
He simply sighed.
“I triggered one of my alarms and came expecting the culprits.”
“Culprits?” I asked.
“The ones who built this prison.”
“Why are you here, Master?” Hyacinth asked.
“I told you before—children in the city have been disappearing.”
She nodded.
“I found hints connecting the disappearances to the Tower. I chased the trail for two months with little progress, until the storage room incident happened.”
“Ah… that.”
“I chose to tail the thief instead of stopping them. They stole exactly twelve phials of troll blood. Odd, isn’t it? With so many expensive materials lying around, why take only troll blood?”
“Right. Come to think of it—”
“Let me finish. From that behavior, I deduced a few things. Troll blood is mainly used in regenerative biological research. Remidia has been active in that field lately. Not much to go on, but enough.”
“Hmm…”
“And then, this very morning, I ran into that thief again. Inside the tower. Followed them—and ended up here.”
“So that’s why you disappeared so suddenly…”
Hyacinth suddenly glanced upward—probably checking whatever message told her I’d kept my promise.
Her stiff expression relaxed.
I was relieved too.
If she’d lost her mana over something so absurd and failed to join the expedition party… I didn’t want to imagine the consequences.
“So,” Lijewyn prompted. “You said ‘come to think of it.’”
“Oh—right, Master. We ran into Callam Castruna.”
Lijewyn froze.
“Where?”
“In Remidia’s storage room. We… kind of… dug around and found the transfer circle leading here. She ambushed us while I was deciphering it.”
“She attacked you? You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I know…”
Lijewyn fell silent, thinking.
I kept my mouth shut.
Two geniuses could handle the deductions on their own.
Strangely, neither Hyacinth nor Lijewyn seemed particularly suspicious of me.
If anything, Lijewyn looked like he wanted me to listen.
He adjusted his glasses.
“What a coincidence. The thief I mentioned earlier—the one who stole the troll blood?”
“Yes?”
“That was Callam Castruna.”
“What?”
“And she’s also the prime suspect in the child abductions.”
“That makes no sense! She’s one of the Seven Council Elders! What does she have to do with kidnapping?”
“Hyacinth. You didn’t see it, but… this prison has eight separate cultivation chambers branching from this central room. The experimental subjects are varied. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, trolls—even some rare beasts.”
“Yes…”
“That alone would be troubling. But there were humans. Children. Some matched the descriptions from the missing-person reports. Though they were… altered.”
“Altered… how?”
“For starters, seeing an orc’s leg where a human arm should be.”
“…….”
“All the subjects share one trait. They can’t be killed normally. I’m sure you two saw some yourself?”
“The ones whose throats we slit, but healed instantly…”
“Exactly. At first I thought it was accelerated regeneration. But no—they have cores. Unless the core is destroyed, they don’t stop.”
“Most of them?”
“Yes. The ones from the more secure chambers didn’t even have cores. Burned them to ashes and they grew back out of the soot, fully formed, and kept attacking. I ran. There was no other way.”
“That’s even possible…?”
“If they released their findings, it would be a groundbreaking discovery in life science.”
He pulled out a book.
On the cover, written in crooked, worm-like handwriting, Hyacinth read aloud:
“Regarding the Experiment to Halve Immortality?…
