How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 1

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Noble Family (1)

“How pitiful.”

That was my impression after reading one chapter of the book.

I couldn’t help but feel that way.

A story about a genius who would have made a name for himself in the world, but lived as a complete wreck due to his hyung’s jealousy and was eventually killed by him.

It was fortunate that what I read was just the story of a passing supporting character, otherwise I would have gotten so angry that I almost closed the book right then and there.

‘At least it’s good that it was revealed that hyung ruined his brother’s life.’

Even after death, that supporting character was covered in all sorts of infamy and cursed by the entire nation.

Even his family didn’t shed a single tear at his death, which says it all.

Anyway, that villain lost his honor and wealth and died at the hands of the protagonist, so the ending was decent enough.

‘No, but still, this crossed the line.’

In this world, was there no one else to kill that he had to kill his brother? Just to get ahead in life?

‘No, it’s not like it really happened anyway.’

I tried to cut off my thoughts appropriately, but found myself clicking my tongue again.

Perhaps because I had expended so much emotional energy, fatigue washed over me. The greater the suffering, the greater the thrill of revenge I felt, but the fatigue was unavoidable.

I closed the book and turned on my phone to set an alarm.

‘I’ll just sleep for 10 minutes.’

When I wake up, I should be able to escape from these excessive emotions.

It would be better to read the next chapter with a clearer mind.

With that thought, I collapsed onto the bed.

* * *

‘Ah… this is crazy.’

When I woke up, the world had already turned completely dark.

What 10 minutes? I must have slept for about 10 hours.

Otherwise, there’s no way the world would be this dark when I fell asleep in broad daylight. My body felt heavy from sleeping too long.

‘…But…’

Why can’t I see anything?

Even though I was clearly opening my eyes, the surroundings were so black that I couldn’t make out anything.

I frantically groped around. Apart from the rough stone floor, there was nothing I could feel with my hands.

‘Stone?’

I slept on a bed, so why is there a stone floor?

Should I assume that my bed turned into a stone bed overnight? After having such ridiculous thoughts, I quickly sensed the seriousness of the situation and hardened my expression.

I opened my mouth to try shouting, but I couldn’t produce that much volume. About half the sound that came out was like air escaping. I somehow squeezed my throat and managed to produce sound again.

“Ah, ah.”

Fortunately, it was enough for a person to understand.

I couldn’t shout, but if someone came close, I would be able to ask for help.

‘Should I try moving first?’

I slowly raised my body.

I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel that my sense of balance wasn’t normal right now.

With even more caution than before, I put my hands on the ground and put strength into my legs.

Clank―

“…?”

It was the sound of metal hitting metal.

In an already frightening situation, would such a sound occur just from moving one leg?

When I moved my leg again just in case, I could tell that something was caught around my ankle.

‘…This is insane…’

No matter how I thought about it, this seemed to be the worst case scenario I could imagine.

Once I roughly grasped what the situation was, the fear I had been trying to ignore in order to think quickly rushed over me all at once. Before my breathing became rapid, I blocked my nose to calm my breathing.

“Whew.”

Let’s stay calm.

First of all, there are no humans around.

Even if I’m tied up, I have time to assess the situation.

I reached out and felt around my leg. I caught something made of metal.

Fortunately, since I hadn’t tried to forcibly pull it out, there were no wounds around it. There was a slight gap, so blood was circulating well.

If I could just cut this off, there would be no problem with running.

‘No phone.’

As if they would leave my phone alone while creating this kind of situation.

Since I hadn’t expected it, I wasn’t disappointed either. I tried to maintain my composure while groping around.

Then, I heard voices in the distance.

My heart started beating rapidly. Before I could mentally prepare myself, light appeared in the form of a line in the pitch-black space, then instantly formed a plane.

Having been in darkness for a long time, my eyes stung when they received the light.

“Have you been well?”

A gentle voice wrapped around my ears.

Someone walked in with pure white light behind them.

I urgently opened my mouth.

“Hyung… Hyung-nim.”

‘Huh?’

Was there someone I would call hyung-nim?

No, first of all, these words didn’t come out of my own will. I was trying to ask where this place was, not trying to open my mouth to say something incomprehensible.

But as if mocking my rushing confusion, my mouth continued to produce a voice trembling with fear.

“I’m, I’m sorry… I, I was wrong. From now on, never again…”

“What? No. What are you talking about, Luca.”

“I’ll never do it again, hyung-nim. I was wrong. From now on, I’ll take proper care of things. Really. Please spare me…”

“Luca.”

At the other person’s rebuke, my mouth that had been frantically muttering something stopped. The other person was glaring at me with a deeply furrowed brow.

Whether this unknown person glared at me or not, it was fortunate for me anyway.

The more I kept opening my mouth, the more unknown fear and terror filled my head, causing my attempts to figure out this situation to fail one after another.

Only now, with my gradually clearing consciousness, I retraced the other person’s words.

‘Just now… he called me Luca.’

Of course, I’m not that person.

Coincidentally, there was a character named Luca in the book I read before sleeping… but it probably doesn’t have much to do with this.

Either they mistook me for someone else, or this is a kidnapping scene where they use aliases I don’t know about, or both.

Anyway, there must be a reason they kept me tied up all night, so they probably won’t kill me right away. I have more time to assess the situation.

I pretended to be scared and rolled my eyes around.

‘Nothing particularly dangerous.’

The room was surprisingly empty, and two people were standing near the door. There seemed to be no way to physically shake them off and get out of here.

Somehow I had to figure out what this situation was and convince them that I’m not Luca.

As I kept my mouth shut as I intended, the ‘hyung’ who had been putting on a stern face softened his expression gently and opened his mouth.

“You must have waited a long time. I was just on my way back from looking into your condition.”

“…Condition?”

“Yes, you were right. It wasn’t that you weren’t taking your medicine.”

Medicine?

Suddenly an out-of-the-blue topic came up.

The incomprehensible topic, along with the tone as if he had known me for a long time, was quite irritating.

‘…But…’

Even while thinking it was out of the blue, an ominous feeling crept into my heart. Unlike before when nothing clicked, now a rough outline was beginning to take shape.

I didn’t need to open my mouth to draw out more information. The other person looked at me with pitying eyes and soon continued speaking.

“Your illness has worsened. They said the amount you’ve been drinking so far won’t be effective anymore. I should have noticed earlier, it’s all my fault. I’m sorry for misunderstanding.”

“…Illness?”

“What? Oh no… You must have been in a lot of pain. What has everyone been doing to let it get to this point?”

The sharp question made those guarding the door scramble to explain themselves.

While he was scolding the others and demanding answers for their mistakes, I quickly racked my brain.

‘Four bottles’, medicine, hyung, and Luca.

My heart beat even faster.

At this point, I couldn’t help but think of the character from the book I had just read.

That ‘Luca’ also had a hyung, and was taking medicine while suffering from an incurable disease of unknown cause.

My brow furrowed at this impossible coincidence.

Perhaps interpreting my reaction as shock over the worsening condition, he offered words of comfort.

“I increased the dosage, so it should be fine now. More than that, it breaks my heart to think how scared you must have been in this place for the past week. Please understand. You can’t have another accident like before because of that disease making you go berserk… It was all for your sake.”

At his gesture, one of the people standing guard at the door handed him a black wooden box.

Thanks to the light coming from behind, I could see the contents clearly. It was filled with crystal bottles about the size of a finger joint, and black liquid sloshed with the box’s subtle movements.

It was something I’d never seen before, yet at the same time, something I knew well.

If the drug that the ‘hyung’ used to ruin his younger brother’s life in the book I just read existed in reality, it would look exactly like this.

“…This is…”

“Yes, it looks exactly the same as what you’ve been drinking so far. I just raised the concentration a bit and increased the amount, so you shouldn’t feel any resistance.”

He pulled out one crystal bottle and held it up to my face.

“At least you’ll be able to go to school on schedule. I thought you might never be able to go, so this is fortunate, isn’t it?”

“…”

“Come to think of it… I heard you already drank two bottles yesterday, so my contact was a bit late. I need you to drink it to know if this batch was made properly. But it can’t be helped.”

He rambled on with useless words by himself.

I didn’t have the luxury of listening to such talk.

Luca has no disease.

The ‘rampage’ that hyung mentioned never existed in the first place.

There’s no need to take medicine, and no reason to be confined in this underground place.

The fact that someone healthier than anyone else, born with unmatched talent, lives like this is all because of his hyung.

In a world that runs on magic, birth order holds no meaning whatsoever.

Only those with the strongest magic inherit titles and claim the position of family head.

The hyung, born with outstanding talent, would have easily ascended to the family head position without lifting a finger.

‘If Luca hadn’t been born, that is.’

Unlike his hyung whose magical power manifested at age six, Luca used magic at a higher level than his hyung at just three years old.

No one doubted that Luca would become the most outstanding mage in the family’s history.

Since a stronger person had been born, there was no possibility of him becoming the family head, so hyung decided to block Luca’s magical power.

The medicine that hyung had been going on about wasn’t medicine to cure a disease, but poison to kill magical power.

Luca, who had been drinking that poison for half his life, became unable to use magic as his hyung wished, and slowly approached death.

My gaze fell on the transparent medicine bottle in his hand.

He definitely said the ‘condition had worsened’ earlier.

In hyung’s terms, that meant Luca’s magical power had become too strong to suppress with poison.

‘It seems he misunderstood that I hadn’t taken the medicine because the effects had weakened.’

Combining this with the incomprehensible sounds that came from my mouth, I could roughly picture the situation.

Where in the world is there a hyung who locks his younger brother in a place where no light enters because he misunderstood that he hadn’t taken poison?

And then to say it was all for his younger brother’s sake – how shameless could he be.

‘Still, up to this point would be relatively happy.’

Around the time Luca graduates school, becomes an adult, and is locked away in a small room again, hyung kills Luca with his own hands.

Slowly killing him with medicine wasn’t satisfying enough.

But now, aren’t I being called by the name of someone who dies at twenty, and placed in that very situation?

‘This is insane.’

Only then did I look down at my body.

Unlike when there was no light, many things came into view.

Clothing that seemed somehow unusual, from an unfamiliar era and region. Shaggy hair covering my vision, a body with nothing but bones, and strangely bluish-pale skin.

This wasn’t my body. Even if I died and came back to life, it wasn’t mine.

It would be more convincing to say this was the body of an extra who lived drinking poison made by his hyung while suffering from a disease his hyung fabricated, only to die at twenty.

Considering the apology that poured from my mouth without my knowledge and the fear toward this ‘hyung’ I was seeing for the first time, even more so.

Perhaps my mind had been transferred into the body of a supporting character from that insane novel.

There was no other way to explain this situation besides that hypothesis.

Setting aside whether this made sense, all the sensations reaching me were real.

An insane situation had struck, but my perception wasn’t insane. After confirming that evidence with my own eyes, I felt a strange sense of relief instead.

“The introduction was too long.”

Perhaps knowing I wasn’t listening, he stopped talking and tapped the bottle with his finger to get my attention.

The black poison with a bluish tint swayed before my eyes.

He smiled gently and spoke softly.

“Drink it right now, Luca.”

“…!”

The servants’ eyes widened. Mine did as well.

I had already drunk twice the usual dosage.

And now he wanted me to drink more of the medicine made even stronger?

‘…Theoretically, I could die.’

The servants must have thought the same, as someone urgently spoke up.

“Y-Young master…!”

“Do you have something to say?”

Despite the gentle tone, the meaning was clear.

The servants exchanged glances, then apologized and left.

In the end, only the other person and I remained in this spacious basement. He examined my face, then smiled gently again.

“You won’t die. Trust me. You know it’s all for your sake.”

How ridiculous. There’s no way that bastard doesn’t know the danger of that drug.

It’s impossible unless he considers his younger brother’s life lighter than a fly’s.

‘…Crazy bastard.’

My nails dug into my palms.

The sound of my pulse gradually filled my eardrums.

The fear I had barely held back swept over my entire body like a bursting dam.

The moment my breathing began to quicken, a pure white light appeared before my eyes.

Ding―!

〈 Chapter 0. Every Beginning is Difficult 〉

Suggestion: Make the optimal choice. (0/1)

* Route 1 ― 〈 Chapter 1. Help Yourself, and God Will Help You Too (1) 〉

* Route 2 ― 〈 Death 〉

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————