How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 559

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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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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Noble Family (559)

“What’s so good about a team.”

Ulrike stepped closer to me, speaking quickly as if worried I might change my mind. It seems I hadn’t given him enough confidence. I understand. I can see sweat flowing like rain on his face. Only his eyes gleam between his darkly tanned skin. All our clothes have been soaked for a long time. Since Ulrike would collapse from having his life force drained by this fire like the unfamiliar alliance mages lying outside if he didn’t drink elixir, he put his mouth to the hose whenever he had a chance.

There was another problem for me, different from Ulrike giving me vague yet certain hope. I know Ulrike’s abilities. He’s an outstanding student worthy of being among the 7 carefully selected by the school, so he would surely perform excellently at any task beyond his age. He grew up to do so and has the ability to do it. Ulrike might feel a sense of efficacy when doing such things.

Nevertheless, my thoughts differed from the school’s or the imperial court’s.

While the school and imperial court would be full of thoughts about how to use Ulrike somehow, I didn’t want to see him struggle. If Julia or Leonard had come, these thoughts would certainly not have disappeared and would have continued to torment my heart, but they would have been somewhat lessened. But Ulrike was different. And Haike too. I clenched my fist. My hand that had been trembling weakly inside the glove now stopped.

But, so what?

If I really intended to do that, I wouldn’t have brought up the topic to Ulrike at all. My resolve hadn’t changed. While Narke approached the hallway and poured out divine power, Ulrike took another step closer to me. His voice became somewhat fierce.

“You’re not going to say you’ll go alone again this time even though Julia and I went to rescue you last time, are you?”

I narrowed my eyes slightly. As soon as I heard those words, my stomach felt bitter. It was a reflex. That day I saw Ulrike’s clear eyes, which had always been so student-like, settle calmly like dawn mist, and I noticed that all the energy and atmosphere he emanated had changed completely from before. He was destined to leave his purely joyful school days and enter darkness from the day he was selected for the cadet corps, but I never thought that day would come so soon, that he would experience such things just a month or two after being selected. I was impressed by Ulrike’s composure but at the same time felt my heart sinking, which is why I remember that scene vividly to this day. Even if it weren’t so, I couldn’t have forgotten it. I closed my eyes tightly, pressed my forehead, and spoke with difficulty.

“I didn’t go in knowing there was some other space.”

“Right, no one could have predicted that. But that’s not the point.”

Saying that, Ulrike narrowed his eyes. He glanced at Narke for a moment, then shifted his gaze back to me.

“I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t go alone. I know your abilities make you… jump into various fields. But—”

Whoosh—

[This is the confidence we have in approaching Him!]

The heat that struck the left side of my face broke in an instant. Ulrike shouted with a cracking voice and roughly swung his right hand to redirect the flames coming down from the 5th floor stairs upward. Beyond his trembling hand, the fire bent to the opposite side of the green barrier.

“[If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.] I know. So you jump in because you think you have enough chance of survival, not because you’re crazy and want to die, right? And yet you go while expecting that 10% risk because you know ‘we’re fly-like lives anyway, and it wouldn’t be strange whether we die today or tomorrow as command members.’ Continuously.”

I nodded while turning my left foot toward the stairs and raising my other hand to my face to count. 3, 2… 1. As soon as I finished counting, Ulrike’s barrier scattered and red magic power replaced it.

[And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—]

Kwaaaaang— Kwadeuk—

[We know that we have what we asked of Him.]

The red light that shot up the stairs like flames covers the sound of fire. My magic power would be blocking the flames up to the 5th floor stairs.

I bought some time. Before Ulrike could express concern to me—for example, why isn’t your magic power absorbed by the fire—I quickly pulled him toward the hallway where Narke was. Narke is continuously drinking elixir. I walked one step ahead of Ulrike and swept away the flames from rooms spreading into the hallway that Narke had organized. Ulrike continued speaking.

“You know what I want to say. Then guess what I’m about to say next.”

I moved my lips in difficulty and slightly frowned. While doing so, I recited an incantation like reciting the Lord’s Prayer during an exorcism ritual.

[Even though I walk through the valley of trouble—]

“We have to die together even if we die.”

I closed my eyes, swallowed, and continued the incantation.

[…You will revive me and stretch out Your hand to stop my enemies’ anger, and Your right hand will save me.]

“We’ve been close for about two or three months now, so you’d feel this is forced, right? It would sound like I’m speaking weightless, excessive sentimentalism. Or you’d think that someone like me who acts friendly to everyone doesn’t really think of you that way. How about it, am I wrong?”

Wrong. I don’t think that way. I don’t think in the twisted way you expect about what heart you’re speaking with. Those words didn’t come out. Not because they weren’t sincere, but because I didn’t want to interrupt his words that were pouring out like a burst dam. Ulrike’s sword makes a cutting sound on the opposite side.

“No, Lucas. If that were the case, I couldn’t have acted that way toward Haike either.”

The red light at the tip of the wand momentarily turned white. Fragments of sunlight scatter among the black smoke. Nevertheless, Ulrike’s eyes standing in the hallway are fixed only on mine. I looked at him too. I know. I know how deep affection Ulrike has for all things. His love certainly brushes the surface of all things like sunlight, but it doesn’t remain only on the surface and is always ready to seep into the skin, into the blood vessels, into the heart. Eyes shining with love are like that. I don’t think it’s simply because he’s a high school student, because he’s still young. Age might be a cause of purity, but I’ve never thought it’s only because of youth. Such thinking is not respect.

Leonard has eyes full of hope compared to Elias’s dark blue eyes marked with wounds, resentment, and indignation. Yet the heavy responsibility placed on his shoulders from birth is enough to weigh down a person’s breathing, so Leonard’s pupils are as quiet as those of someone decades older. Except for the moments when he becomes uniquely ‘unlike himself’ in front of me, that is, becomes his age, as he himself admitted, he always has the proper and clean eyes of an old man called wise by the world.

Ulrike’s eyes shine endlessly compared to such Leonard. He loves everyone he meets equally first, then decides the future. How long I’ve known him doesn’t matter to someone like him. This is why I don’t want to put Ulrike in danger.

And today’s me knows how selfish it is to try to leave their bodies in the rear to protect eyes shining with love. More than selfishness, it’s wrong. It’s something that would fade their souls.

Why?

[…Yahweh will perfect that which concerns me.]

Kwaaaaang—!

In the empty room, my hands didn’t discriminate between front and back. I wanted to quickly finish these flames, find survivors and send them down, and focus on Ulrike’s words. But Ulrike continues speaking as if he can’t wait for such a time. Even though he’s somewhat distant from me, his voice was clear.

“Being with you all until retirement was the future held in my hands.”

[Yahweh, Your lovingkindness endures forever; do not forsake the works of Your hands.]

Kwaang—…

I deflected the beam fragments falling from the ceiling with magic power and pulled Ulrike along. I ran down the long hallway with a barrier around him.

“But look now. What’s left for me?”

Ulrike, running behind me, shows his empty outstretched hands. Even with the noisy sound of flames in my ears, his voice is clear. I glanced down at his gloves. Ulrike shouted without hesitation as if saying something he’d been thinking about for a long time.

“We no longer have Haike, and you’ve nearly disappeared time and again. The only reason you haven’t died yet is because your abilities are incomparably excellent compared to anyone else’s. If it were someone else, they would have died hundreds of times over. Elias can’t even come out because of the imperial court that our family was so loyal to.”

Ulrike coughed with a completely hoarse voice. Even the barrier protecting him couldn’t block the minimal amount of smoke seeping through. I ran to Narke who was handling the stairs on the other side, giving him time to drink elixir while remaining silent. I wanted to let Ulrike speak when his mouth moved. Even if Ulrike, unable to inhale elixir while speaking, might collapse from exhaustion, I no longer wanted to block their will. Ulrike spoke while panting—fast and urgently enough to sound that way.

“The relatively safe people would be Narke from Italy, and Leo and Julia who are heirs to the kingdom and duchy. I know the imperial court can’t protect me. The imperial court won’t protect someone like me without backing. Surely like Haike… no, like the countless alliance mages who became deceased, they’ll make me face death when necessary.”

The imperial court failed to give him trust to the extent that someone who is both a Junker and from a military family would use the expression ‘without backing.’ I left Narke and led him to the opposite stairs, where we first were, while patting his shoulder. Divine power would be seeping in, but Ulrike says nothing about that.

“But my wanting to go with you now isn’t because I know I’ll die someday because of the imperial court. It’s not the mindset of ‘I’ll die anytime before that anyway, being dragged around to handle magic crimes here and there.'”

[As it is written, ‘I believed and therefore I spoke.’]

I murmured while keeping my consciousness focused so the calculation wouldn’t be wrong. The ash floating in the air in the pitch-black vision is pushed away.

‘Today’s me knows how selfish it is to try to leave their bodies in the rear to protect eyes shining with love. More than selfishness, it’s wrong.’ I thought about why this was wrong earlier. I know the answer.

[Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak.]

“I want to protect what’s given to me before more is taken away.”

Ulrike’s eyes are speaking more intensely than these flames.

Of course. Because they love me as much as I love them. Ulrike cherishes me as much as I cherish Ulrike, and cherishes Elias, Leonard, Narke, and Julia. Haike, who came as such a tremendous shock to him, goes without saying. The period we’ve known each other was never very important to someone like him. Just as I love my friends with all my heart and hope they’ll be strong in everything, the friends who love me hope I’ll be strong in everything. So I can’t show off saying I’ll leave them behind and somehow manage well with my abilities. That would be ridiculously desperate selfishness. If there’s something I learned from surviving once again through Leonard, it’s that I had been unintentionally selfish in front of those who love me. And now I see the same thing through Ulrike’s eyes in this place. Ulrike is angry. He’s afraid.

The thought was instantaneous. The 5th floor doesn’t have strong flames due to water’s influence. Ulrike, who grasped the same fact, silently stomped his foot and jumped into the flames.

“Wait, Luise!”

I chased after him. I cut through the darkness following where Ulrike’s voice could be heard.

[…For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and sound mind.]

I began reciting the magic formula that would follow before he used magic.

“Luise, wait! [So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me His prisoner—]”

Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. I closed my mouth without finishing that incantation and only thrust out my wand. The green magic power faded and red magic power spread like a blade where he was about to strike. Vision opened up.

Ulrike discovered people collapsed on the 5th floor and smashed the windows. People wearing artifact gas masks from far on the ground spotted us and drew their wands. Narke, who came up the opposite stairs, does the same thing in another room. The sounds of breaking doors and windows and sending people down continue. Ulrike continued speaking while doing this. Because he knows it’s now time for my plan, my declaration about creating the same situation as Stadelheim Prison, to be executed.

“Surviving alone isn’t living for me. I’m scared now.”

Ulrike grabbed my arm and left the room, looking around frantically while speaking.

“Of what? Seeing the world I believed in get smashed? Seeing new friends I believed I’d be with forever die? Both are the same problem. I don’t know. Why the things I believed in and loved so much… the things that raised me to this day drive innocent things to this state, I don’t know. To call it a matter of fate, I don’t seem devout enough. Though I am praying to God right now. So this is a problem of the world. Everyone including me was doing something wrong, whether they knew it or not.”

“…”

“I knew that day. Since I know, I don’t want to see things go wrong anymore. If I’m absent and see everything innocent fall into the river Lethe without a chance to help, I…”

Now the vision is somewhat brighter even without us using magic power. Smoke escapes through the broken windows. Narke’s divine power also helped. Narke, who was organizing the remaining fire, slowly came to our side.

Ulrike spoke as if not telling anyone. Yet his eyes still burned with will and intelligence.

“I don’t know. I mean I don’t know what to believe and live by from then on. How to forgive myself for living without knowing anything until now, how to accept our family that I’ve always been proud of, and how to accept the magic power flowing in my body, no, before blaming it on magic power, how to accept the blood of the selfish being called human flowing in my body.”

The cheerful 18-year-old I knew is gone. He realized this society is going wrong somewhere and traced back to find the cause. As everyone does at least once. Just as I did in the 21st century, he does so in the 19th century. Amid the crackling sounds, Ulrike speaks calmly.

“What should I sustain in a world where everything I loved kills everything I love? Do you understand what I mean?”

Yes, so. Not content with making the word injustice come from Leonard’s mouth through my self-righteousness, not content with shaking a friend’s identity and causing the pain of having what he believed to be himself uprooted, I don’t want to do the same to yet another friend. If I had experienced this moment before, I probably couldn’t have thought like today. This had to be today. If it were before the day Leonard dropped me on the church roof, I would have desperately protected Ulrike as always to keep him maintaining his light. Though Ulrike is going through the process of breaking away from the past on his own even without me doing anything, if I can help him, that help would surely lead him to the right path he wants.

“I’m afraid of being absent, so I have to go with you. If you’re going to do something alone, defeat me first.”

Ulrike grabbed my wrist. His grip crushes my bones. I swallowed, lowered my eyes, then turned my head. Then I recited an incantation.

[And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.]

Magic power made without any light spreads around us. Ulrike’s breathing stabilizes as it becomes a bit easier to breathe.

I had so much to say to him that I couldn’t choose any words. I looked at Ulrike for a long time before opening my mouth.

“That’s why I brought it up to you.”

I told you about Stadelheim Prison because I knew what you were talking about. If you wanted, I was planning to go with you. The me before Easter couldn’t have done that, but not anymore… Suddenly, a different light appears in Ulrike’s eyes. Ulrike’s eyes wavered for a moment, then fixed firmly again.

“I’m not satisfied with that. Tell me you won’t try to keep me safe.”

I was a bit flustered by the unexpected words and opened my eyes wide. I quickly understood what he was saying. I couldn’t not know. Ulrike spoke rapidly like someone seizing an opportunity, his eyes shining yet stern.

“Whether in your plan or my plan, I’m saying don’t rely on your abilities to try to keep us safe. That’s worse than not participating at all.”

“Of course. I respect you, Luise. I never haven’t.”

No answer came. I took a breath and looked at Ulrike’s eyes shining in the darkness as I spoke.

“I realized I was immature, so I just believe the method should change now.”

Ulrike didn’t fully understand what I was saying. His eyes are telling me so. Since he doesn’t know in detail the process by which I stood up with Leonard’s help, it’s natural. However, Ulrike certainly believes my words even if he doesn’t know the detailed process. If we hadn’t known that I respected him and that he respected me in our respective ways, we would have had to go back to the beginning before discussing the next plan here and now.

“…Alright, then. Explain it. Why do you want to repeat Stadelheim.”

Perhaps because he received all the confirmations, Ulrike’s voice settles stably.

“And what do I need to do by doing that.”

Thankfully, he didn’t say something direct like ‘You’re going to collapse the building or what.’ I cast a sound-blocking spell. Though no one was listening, I wanted to thoroughly hide even our voices. I pulled Narke closer and said.

“Let’s start from here. You need to know this first before I can explain in more detail to you. Narke.”

“Yeah.”

Even though I hadn’t said anything, Narke glanced at me and used divine power to speak to Ulrike.

—”Lucas asked me to tell you earlier that the cadet training ground needs to be protected. He’s asking you to whisper what you reported to the control room.”

What I was thinking is conveyed through him exactly as is. I’m learning for the first time now that you can get chills even when it’s this hot here. It’s simply amazing. I turned my head and pulled up the corners of my mouth. It’s a good thing, but really… Narke looked into Ulrike’s eyes as she sat with a serious expression and spoke without moving his lips once.

―”Als ich nach Deutschland kam, sprach Seine Heiligkeit: ‘Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis’. Ora è giunto il momento.(When I came to Germany, His Holiness said ‘Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis’, and now the time has come.)”

Words made of divine power are hammering into our heads. What we heard was calm, but he mixed German and Italian as if he had really been urgent at the time and confused his words. Only his characteristic elderly way of speaking remains the same.

―”Die Lage ist jetzt äußerst dringlich. A mio avviso, il prossimo obiettivo dei nemici sarà probabilmente il campo di addestramento del corpo studentesco dell’Istituto Imperiale di Formazione II… der Kaiserliche Bildungsanstalt II sein. Sensus fidei, Wir müssen die Kinder Gottes unter dem Beichtstuhl schützen.(The situation is extremely urgent now. In my opinion, the next target the enemies will probably aim for is the Imperial 2nd Education Institute Student Corps Training Ground. Sensus fidei, we must protect God’s children under the confessional.)”

Ulrike furrowed her brow.

Isn’t it strange?

If Narke had blurted out Italian due to nervousness, he could have switched to German when speaking to us. The reason he’s mixing languages even to us now is because that’s what Narke intended. And it’s also why I asked Narke to relay this.

In this urgent situation, he says ‘Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis’, that His Holiness sent him on a mission. It’s something he could certainly say, but if the listener is even slightly perceptive, they would immediately realize it. The reason this Latin suddenly appeared. ‘Urbi et Orbi’ is used when the Pope gives blessings to the entire world, meaning ‘to Rome and the world’. Literally translated, it’s ‘to the city and the world’. ‘Ite, missi estis’ isn’t commonly used, but if it was intended as ‘Ite, missa est’, this is what priests say at the end of mass. It paints a picture of people leaving the cathedral and scattering to their homes. If it’s ‘Ite, missi estis’, it means ‘go, you have been sent’. Now this must be combined with the previous words.

The listener would think this is sufficient as an opening remark, but let’s look at the world from a twisted perspective once. Did Narke really need to tell the control room personnel this flowery phrase about being sent to the city and world?

Sensus fidei, this refers to the faith of all believer groups. Faith widely believed at the believer-civilian level.

There’s one more thing that bothers me. What does ‘under the confessional’ mean? What comes to mind with confessional is secrecy, and with secrecy comes roses. If they’re familiar with the phrase ‘Sub rosa’ as Europeans, they would immediately realize this means to keep everything confidential, but even if they only guess at the implications contained in the word confessional, they would sufficiently understand the intention. The words to protect people under the confessional means to handle everything secretly without openly revealing all that you’ve grasped.

In summary?

Ulrike looked at me and Narke with wide eyes and an expression like ‘so what is this supposed to be’, then curled up the corners of her mouth. We also recognized that expression. I was about to explain, but with just these clues, Ulrike had grasped what we had in mind.

It’s an information disruption operation. With that thought making her eyes shine, Ulrike nodded and beckoned with her finger toward herself.

“Good. What’s next.”

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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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