How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 484

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

Elias felt the heat all around him recede in a circle, avoiding him. Narke’s water-colored eyes that he had once seen in the hospital room were directed at him. The crimson fascia and decorations signifying a cardinal caught his eye. Elias found himself saying without thinking.

“Is it okay?”

Is it okay to be like that? You didn’t want this. But he knew that the entrance to the archives would have been blocked by the old man, and to enter this place, there would have been no choice but to break through the wall or ceiling, and to break the roof of a Roman influential’s house, he would have had no choice but to reveal his identity as a Vatican mage. Even if he didn’t reveal ‘which’ Vatican mage he was… Narke smiled silently, and Elias understood his answer.

Narke looked at the Pentaron mask and triangular hat rolling on the floor, raised an eyebrow, then created an identical mask and hat with one hand and put them on. The difference was that his were all white, including the hat. Even with the mask on, his water-colored eyes that clearly revealed the boundaries of his pupils were eerie, making it seem like anyone could tell from a distance that he was from the Vatican.

“What do you mean you changed today?”

“…Well, in some ways, I created an opening for myself to come here. I originally had no intention of coming here.” Before he could ask what other aspects there might be if there were some aspects, Narke gestured toward the flames. “I only envisioned a future where the three of you would be trapped helplessly. I predicted that the fire would only start when I came to help you.”

Fire, Elias now felt his vision expanding. The archives were still burning in massive flames that must have been at least 3 meters high. The heavy, towering bookshelves that had stood their ground had long since collapsed. The blackened books were half-burned and unrecognizable, and all the classified documents had turned to gray ash flying between the flames. However, no fire could invade the small space where the three of them stood. Elias brushed away the ash powder that grazed his eyes and asked.

“Can you put out fire with divine power too?”

“Originally, I shouldn’t be able to. I can’t put it out even now.”

Now that he looked, it was more like emitting divine power and using it to push away the air. He had thought it was hard to breathe, and this must have been why. Blocking fire this way clearly had limits, so it wouldn’t be long before it became too much to handle. Should he remove the spatial magic of this place? But he didn’t know if Elias could break the coordinate system that had only shown slight trembling without even cracking with his own power, and if he enlisted Narke’s power, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate divine power on blocking the fire, so they would soon be engulfed in flames. Even if the sky was open, the problem was the same. Who could say there would be no one burning to death outside? Seeing that Narke had entered, the height of the spatial magic went up to the dome, meaning this wasn’t a wide-area spatial magic like Pleroma’s, but spatial magic applied only to buildings as many do. Perhaps the fire could distort the spatial magic. But right now, for them to survive, the fire had to disappear. Narke looked up at the opened ceiling and said.

“I wish it would rain. Elias, what do you think?”

“…Yes. I think so too.” Elias held his sleeping friend and looked around. Power entered his blue eyes. “I wish it would rain until all the water in the Tiber dried up.”

“Hahaha, if it rains, the river will overflow too. Are you going to turn the river water into rainwater?”

Narke laughed cheerfully and struck down his staff. Then he said to Elias who was looking at him.

“Hold it.”

Light rippled from the staff. He couldn’t understand why he was being told to grab someone else’s staff with magic flowing through it. This was no different from being told to grasp a blade. But Elias, as if enchanted, reached out his hand and grasped the platinum pillar. Strangely, it didn’t hurt. Narke looked up at the sky again and said.

“Shall we make the bottom of the Tiber visible?”

Elias found himself laughing at those words. The thought of Rome’s lifeline completely drying up, all the land cracking open, and Rome’s proud influential people being thrown into confusion at the sight somehow made him laugh for some unknown reason. He thought this way because he secretly considered them like ancient priests. He knew well about the relationship between drought and rulers—priests and people, and knew full well that he couldn’t use it as a joke, but he couldn’t help it knowing that the fairy-tale scene he had drawn in his head was an unreasonable thought. Even so, he thought it would be good if they could stop the fire that was trying to devour them, even by borrowing the waters of the Tiber. Or by moving the air mass to suddenly bring rain from the sky. Perhaps, if it were Narke…

Plop, a sound came. Elias jerked his head up at a drop of cold water falling on his head. The raindrops that had been sparsely scattered in his vision quickly turned into a downpour and fell, making the sound of waves. No matter what was on the ground, the rain covered everything without exception. Small fires flickered trying to avoid the rain, then soon died out. Before he could even try to block it, his hair got soaked as if his head had been dipped in water and hung limply. Elias roughly swept his hair back that was stinging his eyes and covered his friend’s face. Then, still with a shocked expression, he said to Narke.

“…And you don’t even have this kind of unique ability.”

“I don’t.”

“You moved natural elements with pure knowledge?”

Had he been to the river before coming here? Or had he looked at the sky and layered clouds? He knew Narke was learned, but he didn’t know he was this excellent. He had thought the wide-area magic that amazed viewers and the mysterious purification magic were thanks to his vast amount of magical power, rarely thinking it was thanks to his special magical formulas. Narke tilted his head.

“You helped too.”

At Narke’s way of speaking, Elias opened his mouth with his brow furrowed. This wasn’t the time for this. Elias gestured toward his friend in his arms and said urgently.

“Wake him up. I don’t know if his brain will work properly in the future if we leave him like this. Everything is exploding here.”

There was no way to accurately explain everything that had flashed through his mind. Despite his confusing explanation, Narke nodded with a calm expression.

“Seeing that he’s still lost in thought, the aftereffects of the magic must still remain.”

Narke placed his hand on his friend’s forehead and released divine power. White light flowed along his face. While Elias was focusing on his friend’s sleeping face who still hadn’t regained consciousness, Narke bit the inside of his lips and kept his mouth tightly shut. Looking closely, Narke’s arm was shaking as if electricity had passed through it. Before Elias could panic and help him, Narke exhaled deeply and removed his hand.

“It’s done.”

As if those words served as a signal, Elias quickly grabbed his friend’s face and looked down at him. His thin-skinned eyelids twitched. But that was the end. His friend’s limbs began to go limp once again. As he gaped in shock, Narke carefully explained.

“He’s sleeping now. His body must have been tired.”

“…That startled me.”

He felt an inexplicable anxiety from those words about why he specifically said ‘his body’ was tired, but Elias didn’t ask. Instead, he turned his head.

“The duke is going to try to kill us all. We need to catch that bastard first. He’s blindly obsessed with killing people in the name of preventing destruction.”

“Yes. We need to catch him.”

“Are you certain this person cooperated with Terminus Yukairya?”

Then Narke nodded. Instead of being pleased that his guess was correct, Elias sighed deeply and asked.

“What about accomplices? Did you find out who they are?”

“To some extent. But the accomplices probably didn’t know they were Terminus Yukairya’s accomplices.”

When he looked at Narke wondering what he meant, he quietly listened to the commotion outside and then spoke quickly.

“Instead, they probably thought of themselves as ‘collaborators of Duke Orsini on some subject.'”

“What are you talking about? Why?”

“Otherwise, they wouldn’t have avoided being caught in the Vatican’s suspicious inspections during the relic theft. There were more than enough people loyal to Orsini, the head of one of Rome’s great families, so just being loyal to Orsini would have made it easy to avoid inspections. The number of people Duke Orsini used this way would be hard to count on two hands.”

Outside the archives building, the voices in the garden grew increasingly noisy. There were certainly people gathered outside watching, but no one entered the building, whether they were waiting for Narke to come out. No one wanted to jump into the middle of a magical crime. Everyone was just watching. Nevertheless, Narke continued speaking rapidly without rest.

“While you were here, I stopped by, but the letters exchanged with the Secretary of State weren’t stored anywhere. They must have checked and burned them immediately upon receipt. But why did they burn even ordinary official documents?”

“He must have shot himself in the foot.”

“Right. Because the duke himself had something to feel guilty about. Because… all the information this old man was passing to Terminus Yukairya came from the Secretary of State’s ‘general’ information.”

General, Narke smiled, raising his eyebrows as he emphasized the word.

“So even official documents notifying minor guidelines seemed to him like evidence of his crimes. Wouldn’t you agree?”

When Elias nodded, Narke pulled out a letter from his pocket.

“It’s a letter that arrived in the duke’s room without going through the communication office. [To His Grace Duke Genaro Orsini and Deputy Duke Annunziata Orsini. His Holiness did not make such a decision. He never sent a separate letter to Caetani either. There seems to have been an unfortunate error in communication. Our Vatican has not yet completed the review of the late Elda Caetani as a beatification candidate and has not communicated the evaluation status of the beatification candidate anywhere. We send some helpful encyclicals together. From the Roman Curia Secretary of State, Marino Rucci].”

Since the Secretary of State is the Pope’s secretary, it was normal for explanations that the Pope didn’t do such things to come through the Secretary of State. However, there was something that bothered him. Elias squinted as he swept back his hair falling in the rain.

“Encyclicals?”

“You’re quick to notice.” Narke smiled. “But the encyclicals enclosed with this letter have no problems, at least on the surface. The problem is elsewhere.”

At the words ‘no problems on the surface,’ something flashed through Elias’s mind. Code. There had been a code in the letter the Secretary of State’s collaborator sent to Duke Orsini. Narke pulled out a lavishly decorated illuminated manuscript from his pocket and handed it to Elias.

“These are the encyclicals the duke was reading just before he left. Clement XII’s In eminenti apostolatus specula and Benedict XIV’s Ex Omnibus. Respectively, an encyclical opposing Freemasonry, and an encyclical as Benedict XIV’s reply to Louis XV regarding Jansenism that arose in France and the authority issues of the Catholic Church. Even if they had heard the situation from Annunziata Orsini right after the Caetani side visited, of course the duke had stepped back from government affairs under the excuse of being ill, and whether it was beatification or canonization, these encyclicals had little to do with our charade about Elda Caetani.”

The old man had decoded the cipher through the letter and fake encyclicals sent by the Secretary of State, and finally found the ‘real encyclicals’ the Secretary of State wanted to convey. Elias nodded. These people had been secretly exchanging signals through papal encyclicals. Seeing that the Secretary of State’s collaborator sent Freemasonry encyclicals meant they suspected ‘someone had approached Caetani and Orsini with false information.’ Narke said.

“…Anyway, there’s no time now, so let’s explain later. I was planning to return to Germany and hold a trial, but now there’s no choice. I’ll have to catch the duke directly too, and since I’ve revealed my cardinal position, I have no choice but to resolve everything here before returning.”

Then Elias picked up his friend and stood up.

“Let’s go together. Let’s fight together. We need to find out where he escaped to.”

“No, I have to catch him.”

When Elias narrowed his eyes at those words, Narke said firmly.

“What are you going to do about Lucas?”

“….”

“You can’t just leave him. You don’t know what Genaro Orsini might do with whatever magic he uses. You’ve experienced it directly, so you know it would be hard to deal with without divine power.”

“But you. Even if you have divine power, you’re much younger than that old man.”

It felt awkward to say this after seeing him make it rain, but wasn’t it true that Narke’s experience was far less compared to an old man who had lived at least a century longer than Narke? His knowledge would be the same.

“I am…”

Narke’s lips moved slightly. No sound came out. His expressionless face should have meant tranquility, but Elias read bewilderment. Narke smiled.

“That’s an unusual worry to hear in Rome.”

* * *

So Narke went to find Genaro Orsini, that is, Duke Orsini.

Now Elias was at Villa Borghese in central Rome. In the forest-like massive garden, at the Temple of Asclepius facing a blue pond that looked perfect for swimming. He was anxious about being in the heart of Rome, but since it was in the forest, this place wasn’t visible from outside, and since it belonged to the influential Borghese family, outsiders couldn’t enter freely either. Most importantly, there must have been reasons why Narke left the two of them here. Perhaps he was somehow close to the Borghese family—though of course Elias didn’t expect this to be certain.

‘What did he mean by saying it’s an unusual worry to hear in Rome? Does it mean he has no rivals? …But he didn’t seem that way.’

The thought didn’t last long. Elias sat leaning against a pillar of the temple and looked down at his friend. He had taken out all the clothes that weren’t wet from his bag to make a makeshift bed, but it actually looked uncomfortable to lie on. If it were Elias himself, he would never sleep under such poor conditions. Having such thoughts, he quietly looked down at his friend. Normally he would have grabbed his cheeks and stretched them to wake him up, but not now. Elias stared blankly at the pond where frogs were croaking, then drank an elixir to relieve his mounting fatigue.

Ah. When he realized this was the last remaining bottle because he had used them all up trying to survive the fire, he had already drunk half of it. Elias moved his body and poured the remaining elixir into his friend’s mouth. He moved his friend’s head well so that at least the liquid wouldn’t go down his airway, but after doing so, no reaction came back at all, making Elias a little afraid—he had secretly thought his friend would naturally cough.

Elias watched ants and snails crawling around the temple and counted the number of stars. He counted on his fingers how many times the wind blew into the temple. However, he didn’t properly understand how insects moved around the temple’s granite floor. He quickly forgot how much light was embedded in the sky. He didn’t even know whether his collar fluttered in the wind or not. His gaze turned to his friend who had fallen asleep before he could finish counting.

Elias sat quietly for a long time. At some point, he began to see thin pink irises in his vision. Elias waited until it became a complete circle. Then he asked.

“Are you awake?”

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