Chapter – 67
“What are you doing, Aska?”
I was watching Aska.
Stage Two was training conducted on a flat practice field. There were several obstacles placed around, allowing evasive maneuvers and defensive use of terrain.
If anything, this should have been Aska’s ideal stage, given that she wielded a crossbow. Yet she was struggling badly.
“I’m asking you. What exactly are you doing, Aska?”
“Shut up!”
Her hair was already drenched with sweat. Even after fighting for half a day, she hadn’t been able to reach a conclusion.
“I already saw your skills in Stage One, didn’t I? This is training with a difficulty similar to Stage One.”
“…I know.”
Aska lifted her blue crossbow, then lowered the firing mechanism again. It seemed she simply couldn’t shoot. Her elven skin, already pale by nature, had turned even whiter.
“Should we stop the training for now?”
“No.”
She was being stubborn. The cold, composed demeanor she usually had was gone—she looked more like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum.
She shook her numbed hands a few times, then climbed up a tall tree. That, too, was one of the training field’s facilities.
“That damn golem…”
At her words, I glanced again at the golem I had prepared.
It was a golem of an ambiguous rank. Average destructive power, average speed. Its one defining feature was self-repair. That was because it used a “core” similar to those of monsters—a biological mechanism.
If the core was destroyed, it died instantly. Conversely, as long as the core remained intact, it would repair itself no matter what.
In other words, it was a golem with an extremely clear method of defeat.
What I added to it was minimal setup.
First, the golem would have a humanoid form.
Second, its core would be located in the head.
That was all.
Yet because of those two simple conditions, Aska hadn’t managed to land a single crossbow bolt on the golem.
It was a farce.
“I’ll carve you apart.”
Aska seemed to have come up with another idea. In an instant, she fired six bolts, blasting apart the golem’s limbs and torso.
Then she fired dozens more, deliberately grazing the head—carefully shaving it down while avoiding the core.
“You seem to think you know something about me, but that won’t work.”
Sweat poured down Aska’s face. At last, the red core was exposed, and she loaded a single bolt.
“It’s over.”
But the moment the exposed core caught the sunlight, her bolt missed it yet again.
The core rolled away across the ground and immediately began reconstructing its body.
Aska started dry-heaving.
“Urgh…!”
“You thought it would be easy.”
I had been watching everything from atop a tall pole.
“Did you think I wouldn’t anticipate that? I may not look it, but I am the Great Prophet. Everyone keeps forgetting that.”
The core was mimicking a woman’s face.
That was why she couldn’t shoot.
And that was her weakness.
Aska of the Farin Forest—she cannot shoot a person’s vital point.
While Aska staggered, retching, the golem—its body fully restored—charged forward and kicked her. She rolled backward several times before collapsing.
Close-quarters combat with the golem was a terrible matchup. Aska raised her blue crossbow and fired, desperate to escape—
Shwehk—
She missed again.
And just as the golem’s stone fist was about to crash into her face—
“Stop.”
I halted the golem’s operation.
Aska lay there, breathing raggedly with hollow eyes. In the silence of the training field, I jumped down and sat beside her, forcibly meeting her gaze.
“Do you understand now, Aska?”
“……”
“If you keep fighting like this, you’ll die someday. All because you failed to land a single arrow.”
And that was a future Aska understood all too well—without needing prophecy.
“Calling him a trash mage—does that even make sense?”
“You can’t put the word ‘trash’ next to ‘mage.’”
“Mages are noble, after all.”
At the time, Zeo was ten years old.
A child born to a genius mage father and a genius mage mother. A child believed to be destined for greatness. A pitiful prodigy who lost both parents to a mysterious mana explosion at birth.
At eight years old, he was transferred to the magic academy. So many professors attended his entrance ceremony that it showed just how much attention he drew.
But his abilities were disastrous. He couldn’t assemble a single spell formula. It wasn’t that his theory was lacking, nor that his practical sense was poor.
After examining his magic circuits, the physician reached a conclusion.
“He has a constitution incapable of creating magic.”
That verdict cast him straight into the abyss.
Scholarships were still piled upon him. He didn’t fall behind in theoretical classes, so he could remain at the academy.
But his treatment fell to rock bottom.
“Trash. Look up.”
It was the same with his peers.
Among those who had lost all attention to him after the early days were those who began to torment him.
Everyone in the magic academy knew Zeo was beaten during breaks—everyone except the teachers.
“What did this guy have again?”
“His magic circuits are inverted, twisted, and constricted. The causes are complex, so treatment is impossible.”
“Yeah, yeah! That one!”
Someone mocked the physician.
They were unusually excited that day. And beyond excitement, a strange madness had taken hold of them.
Even the fact that they carefully locked the door felt wrong to Zeo. The ringleader spoke.
“…Zeo.”
“Yes.”
“My father says he regrets the scholarship he gave you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no need to apologize. Instead, he asked me for a favor.”
The leader forced on a pitiful expression.
“If you were to die in some unknown accident during the semester, the scholarship payments would stop. He wondered if you could help with that.”
“What are you—”
“Hey, tie him up.”
They tried to restrain Zeo. He naturally tried to run and curl up defensively, but that day was different.
They were serious.
Spells rained down, and blades appeared.
Zeo poured every ounce of mana he had into casting magic, but of course, nothing happened.
After recklessly firing spells down to the very depths of his unconsciousness, he blacked out.
When he woke, what he saw was horrific.
The warehouse was completely gone. Under a clear sky and green plains, he lay on his back.
When he stood up, everyone else was missing their upper bodies. Something had killed them.
Terrified, Zeo ran immediately. His belongings in the dormitory didn’t matter anymore.
He hid in the back alleys of a rundown city. A few days later, he read the news.
[Mage Zeo murders 23 classmates with magic. Allegedly concealed his abilities intentionally.]
Zeo ended his brief recollection.
Everything felt hazy.
What happened after that…?
Branded a murderous mage, he abandoned his original identity. No one knew he was Zeo anymore.
Even after becoming that, he couldn’t abandon magic. He became a fixer in the back alleys, handling dirty jobs, all while trying desperately to revive his magic circuits.
But all that remained were incidents.
Whenever he was pushed into danger during a job, he would once again unleash massive magic unconsciously, causing disasters.
It felt like a curse now.
That was when he received a letter from Allen Bahar.
Does that man know the secret?
Even Zeo—who had scored well in theory classes—had never unraveled the mystery.
But Allen Bahar looked like he knew far too much.
The use of playful golems made sense too—he knew that Zeo triggered miraculous magic when on the brink of death.
“But…”
Zeo’s cracked lips moved faintly.
This time, he wasn’t on the brink of death.
He was truly dying.
His Stage Two was the extermination of mana-leeching mosquitoes. But his body was riddled with holes, blood drained away.
“I think this time… it’s really over…”
Just as his knees buckled—
Splash.
Someone stepped into the small pond, halting the mosquitoes.
It was Allen Bahar.
“Lost your way?”
“…A little.”
“That’s not just ‘a little.’”
Zeo gave a bitter smile. It sounded like Allen was disappointed in him.
So he gave up and asked.
“What am I supposed to do here?”
“From the looks of it, the problem isn’t understanding the method—it’s your state of mind.”
“Huh?”
“Zeo. You’re soaked in despair.”
Allen thought for a moment, then let the mosquitoes move again. One of them sank its proboscis into Zeo’s body with a shk.
Allen didn’t care and continued.
“How do you think I’m standing among these mosquitoes right now?”
“Because you’re strong?”
“If I were strong, violence would be inevitable. This is the opposite, Zeo.”
“…Because you’re weak?”
“Look closely at my mana.”
Only then did Zeo see it.
Allen Bahar had no mana in his body at all—less than stone. He was like air itself, like a man made of wind.
“How…?”
No matter how much mana one expelled from their circuits, the mana core remained.
And even if the mana core was emptied, life-sustaining mana remained.
To empty that was insanity.
“Didn’t you already do it in Stage One?”
At his words, Zeo realized.
He had done exactly that just one day ago.
“Believe in yourself, Zeo. You’re not incapable. You’re just different. With such closed-off circuits, you’re better than anyone at hiding, aren’t you?”
“I…”
The words wouldn’t come, but there was no choice except to try.
Zeo evaporated all the mana in his body.
Just as Allen said, the mosquitoes pulled away. They hovered aimlessly, and when Allen fired a clump of mana into the distance, they all flocked to it.
Then Allen clapped his hands.
“Stage Two cleared.”
“Huff… huff…”
Zeo gasped for breath. Scattering even his life-sustaining mana made breathing difficult and his body unbearably heavy.
Still, it was better than being drained dry.
“Well done. You really are good at this.”
“Then now…”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll teach you everything at once—the secret of your magic. But Stage Three will be even harsher.”
At last, Zeo stood at the edge of uncovering the truth behind his terrible curse.
Staggering, he nodded hard.
“I’ll do it.”
