How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 610

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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 (610)

There is nothing but light seeping through closed eyelids. I wanted to make it nothing. The heavenly world—despite everything else that interferes with me, those words make my mind grow distant. More than the oil-like liquid seeping beneath my tunic and the terribly bitter smell emanating from it, human words are beating me down.

You were possibilities, and I created you. Wrong. Shocked, I harden inside and retreat. Wrong, I didn’t create it. I didn’t create this world. I still don’t know exactly how this place operates. Doesn’t that very ignorance guarantee my innocence? I know nothing.

“Without the Lord, we are not truly alive even if we live. The Lord decides everything and decides our lives too. If the Lord does not make us appear within You, we are nothing. Even if we exist, we are nothing. We are Your creations, and if we leave Your hands, we are not truly living. That is not our true selves but merely imitation. An imitation that cannot have the power to continue living.”

Really? I let out a hollow laugh. Since I can’t move anything, I just believe I’m laughing.

But how did you know that—that without me, you wouldn’t truly be alive even if you lived? If I don’t enter this world, you don’t move, and only when I perceive this world with my own eyes do you move. I’ll acknowledge it. Even if it’s not quite the Lord’s power, it could be accepted as something special. How did you know that? You are beings who have been born for barely more than ten days.

Is it the ability of that great Marie Noailles, before whom even the Bourbons bow their heads, to guess the correct answer and prepare rituals within ten days of birth? Or did Marie Noailles foresee this alone even in the past of 1851, not the extra chapter of 1898? Ah, this is an important question. In the past of the 1898 worldline, only the Duke of Osterreicheste moved to before Ion Forso, not me, so how do they say I visited their world? They now know the various worlds I’ve passed through, even worlds that were never realized in the 1898 worldline. How is that possible? My reasoning is that he’s like a shaman or medium who came to know even other worlds through astral energy—I can’t think of anything else. Nothing else explains it. So hurry up and convince me…

In a world of nothingness, only voices live and echo.

“So may the Lord bestow grace and lead all Your servants to complete life.”

Complete life—always watch over you so you continue to live. Whether I stay in this world forever or take them to another world…

I keep laughing inside. My nose stings, but my mind is laughing. Do they know? Right now you’re kneeling before me and begging, but I’m actually powerless. I can achieve the deprivation of life that you fear so much without even realizing it by leaving this place—that’s all. The air weighs heavily on my shoulders, and the oil-soaked tunic clings to my body, refusing to fall away. Every time I breathe, the cold clothes scrape my nerves. I was trapped beneath my body, unable to escape physical pain, listening to your nonsense. Having lost free will, I bow my head under the air and voices that overwhelm me, looking down below the altar. Even that I can’t be certain of—it’s speculation. Before, I hoped you would tell me something, but now I can’t even ask you to tell me more about ‘when I came to your side’ after hearing your stories.

I think in my own way about what they might be doing. Perhaps what covers my body is embalming fluid applied to corpses. Myrrh, that is. Is the chair I’m sitting on made of gold? Then the faint incense burning in the hall would be frankincense. It makes me laugh. Are you the Magi who came with gifts when Jesus was born? A ridiculous imitation of scripture… Wrong. It’s not child’s play. Only I mock while everyone in this place performs a real ritual, steeped in fanatical fervor—that’s what shocks me.

Hands clasp hands again.

“Lord, please hear the voice of those who support You.”

From the fact that hands clasp hands, doesn’t he realize his faith is wrong? No matter how much he regards my body as unimportant, doesn’t he feel through this touch that he’s doing something wrong? When I’m bound to flesh like this, when the woody smell vibrates enough to give me a headache and my nose feels like it might burst and all the capillaries in my face expand with rising heat—what do they see to call me the messiah? Yes, that must be unpleasant. All my physiological reactions would shatter their fantasy and make them realize the truth that I’m not the messiah. So they must have covered my face because they found human nature disgusting to look at.

I should be one who neither eats nor sleeps. Whatever they fed me earlier, no saliva comes. They emptied not just my stomach but also eliminated what should come from my mouth. If I could laugh, I would have. Go ahead and try. That doesn’t make me any more divine.

Flesh touches my hand and falls away. Did Marie Noailles just kiss my hand? Is Marie Noailles present here? I was curious about that.

Those who grew up in the Christian world and believe only in Christianity try to interpret me, with my special abilities, in Christian terms. Thus they become heretics and criminals. They believed God must come to judge the world to condemn Bonaparte and the citizens, so they mistake a transcendent being who appeared at just the right time for God and believe in him. They spoke of combining remarkable insight with Bourbon restoration.

In the end, this too is greed. Because greed makes them fall into bias, despite being human, I’m frozen in this place, covered in oil sprinkled like making the sign of the cross. I had to wonder if they might soon set fire. Even facing a life-or-death crisis, my heart remains calm. My heart was being controlled separately. Heat rises in my face as if I’ve caught the flu, which I feel terribly clearly, but unlike the dilated blood vessels, my heart is regulated to beat at a steady pace. Everything is uncomfortable. The oil-soaked veil sticking to my cheek, the myrrh pooled on my legs and the chair, the sensation of oil seeping through fabric and pooling, then flowing down again—all of it would be a lie if it didn’t startle me. Everything reminded me of their madness. The imperial court’s inconsiderate aptitude tests at least had limits to what they would do thanks to their clear purpose. They might have put me in a blood bath, but they wouldn’t have distorted scripture to concoct wrong deeds. But in this ritual, anything could happen. I don’t know how not to hold my breath before limitless madness. Even though my breath is no longer my own, I think I have choices. If I die here, what will happen to me? Even if I leave before dying, if I return to this world…

I hear the sound of people withdrawing. If I could have spoken at this moment, I would have been shocked. The footsteps of everyone in the hall gathered toward the center as if forming a short line. I hear the sound of someone climbing stairs. Someone seemed to kneel before me.

Someone grasps the hem of my tunic. Though it’s already soaked in oil with no dry edges left, they deliberately get myrrh oil on their hands. They worship the clothes desperately as if there’s something in the hem. The oil-stained hand grips my right hand. With trembling hands, he carefully wraps my hand in both hands like holding a holy relic, then kisses it. The gesture of respect that medieval lords demanded from people hadn’t lost its original meaning in him. He spoke prayers I couldn’t understand as rapidly as machine-gun fire. Then he carefully withdrew and went down the stairs.

Someone with a slightly lighter body steps on the stairs. I now understand what it means to hear the voices of those who support me. Someone grabs the hem of my clothes, then kisses my hand while looking up at me or speaking from below.

“I now know once again that God’s will is here. Though I briefly had other thoughts, I’ve confirmed through the Lord’s presence that I was wrong. I will do my best for Bourbon to triumph according to the Lord’s will.”

The person cried, shedding tears on my hand and pressing their cheek against it, sad that the beloved Bourbon dynasty was pushed out by citizens’ hands. What’s so sorrowful? Shouldn’t the ones lamenting now be the citizens who will lose their sovereignty, not the Bourbons?

I wanted to lift my head to the sky and exhale. Whose words make you believe such nonsense about the Lord’s presence? Who convinced you? Is this really persuasion, or magic?

“Lord.”

Ah, my stomach twisted and something boiled up from within. Stop calling me that. Someone grabs my hand. The myrrh that was on his hand transfers to mine. He kisses my hand repeatedly. A different kind of respect from what I showed Rosalie, respect I’d never imagined, contaminates my hand. The person’s nose and chin press against my hand. They fall away and stick again. The oil that would have been less disgusting if there were enough to squeeze and wring out passes between his hand and mine. The person suffers and cries, sprinkling tears on my hand.

I understand their tears, but I’m on the verge of tears myself in various ways at his foolishness. Person, this isn’t the place. This isn’t where you should go. This isn’t where you should make vows. What frightens you? What makes a person do such things to another person? What makes it possible to achieve your humanity by trampling on my humanity? Yet they touch my clothes and hold my hands. They beg me not to abandon them. Rough, thick fingers slide across my hand, desperately grasping. Stop. Stop now—how far do you plan to accumulate sins? You’re thinking wrongly. You’re confirming false beliefs with sight. Even if you dress me up like Yahweh and perform rituals for Yahweh, the fact that I’m human doesn’t change. For the sake of those who would bow their heads to the ground, I shouldn’t have touched them any more here. I constantly tried to break free.

“Lord, please tell us. Are we truly the living?”

Among those who cry out for Bourbon and make wishes, some question the essence. The voice still comes from below.

“Lord, why did You make Your servants beings who live briefly and will not live? Lord, You know everything. What the Lord accomplishes in the future changes the past we believe in, and today we believe it truly came to pass.”

What I do changes the past? No surprise. That’s why they speak of ouroboros. Everything goes round and round. They believe everything changes completely based on one person’s choice—mine alone.

Wrong. In the world of 1898, what I accomplished in the extra chapter wasn’t reflected at all. Leonard doesn’t know his teacher Lucas Everett, Mecklenburg doesn’t know his friend Lucas Muller. The Duke of Osterreicheste still doesn’t exist in the world. Yuri Alekseyev remains trapped as Mikhail Ismailov. I couldn’t prevent anything. The 1898 world and the extra chapter are disconnected worlds, and only my blood could bring out the astral body of Osterreicheste from another world. Besides going to one world’s past, crossing between worlds different enough to be named in my system was impossible even with the Duke of Osterreicheste’s abilities. But how do you believe I’m changing the present of all other worlds? Is this world one where the influence of the first extra chapter remains? Or…

If not that, no matter how I look at it, I can only say their knowledge originated from Marie Noailles’s abilities.

If I had the chance, I wanted to jump up and run madly to escape this place. Dull pain spreads slowly from my tilted waist, and it’s the same in my left arm muscles where strength is concentrated. Someone grabs my right hand. My hand tingles as if electric current passes through it after too much friction. He cries and speaks in tongues. Hot. Tears touch flesh, melting myrrh and flowing to my fingertips. What I feel is hot tears and his dry lips making my hand more painful, so my ears can’t fully catch his words. I can avoid understanding and remembering. Flesh prevents me from going farther away. In pain, ironically, it liberates me within limitations.

I think I fell asleep. My eardrums, that is. The eardrums were the problem. Everyone’s voices scratch my eardrums like ants and go in and out of my ears. I wanted to shout once to chase away all the ants. Now the person who came shakes my body by hugging my hand tightly and repeats supplications that sound like tongues. The double veil on my head shakes and myrrh falls to my legs. Such sensations were vividly annoying to me. I am human, after all. It just makes me laugh. Humans are skilled at making other humans into less-than-human beings and killing them, and also skilled at making humans into more-than-human beings and killing them. Before the pain of dignified ones who become less-than-human and lie suffering, I cannot speak of the pain of being driven as a more-than-human being and sitting in this place, but is there superior or inferior pain in life? All these things I feel and perceive are my story. Now I could at least tell myself that I’m suffering.

But since I don’t speak, you don’t know. You didn’t need to know. But since you kill without knowing, you should know. How was this series of events different from what I experienced in past years? Anyone freely grabs my hand, kisses it until the skin blisters, and makes me stroke their head with my hand. My will isn’t in it. They regard the myrrh flowing from me as supreme. You’re not human. You can’t become the same being as us. Because we won’t accept you as an equal human. That’s what they were confessing while bowing to me. Lord, do You know? We can so clearly make another person into a non-human being and handle them as we please. That’s what’s happening to You now from us. You are supreme and great, so You shouldn’t receive the same treatment as us.

The echoes I’ve heard all my life repeat with only the surface changed. How convenient and easy it is to evaluate others at will when trapped in a narrow life! So I think. Those who want to be revered are not me but them. They held my free will. Yet they don’t know it. They do everything their way and then ask if I didn’t worship that great you. You’re made of good things and receiving good worship, so this cannot be pain.

Breath touches my hand. It hurts. I too know how to say it hurts. And they didn’t allow it. What could be new on hands already covered in saliva, tears, and oil, but the hardened myrrh melts and becomes sticky from the heat of rough breathing. It wasn’t very good. Just from the waistband pressing deep into my belly with each breath and then falling away, I already knew well about the annoying aspects of hardened myrrh, but they leave the places where oil should drip and only scrape innocent hands. If they knew the messiah was fed up with tactile sensations, they’d say this is a person, not some messiah. Ridiculous bastards… That’s the truth. That’s reality. I was sick of it, afraid, and troubled, so I wanted to shout at them. You should come to your senses. Don’t you see this and feel it’s a problem? Is it right to be stripped of the right to exist humanly because you have abilities they don’t understand? Is it right that I should accept your attempts to put me on a cliff edge at will, whether criticism or worship, because I’m living a life filled with things that look good regardless of my will? I know how good-looking things kill life. Someone whispers.

“Lord, You know. You know You accomplish impossible things Yourself. Your apostle said that by Your choice, all people on this earth would briefly open their eyes, then close them again, and Your apostle would remain in a world where everything stopped.”

How many times did I hear such words after that? They try to cloud my mind while supplicating. They ask me why I made them but don’t save them. Even when I try to escape, their questions grab my ankles. Under hundreds of questions and prayers, I end up asking this too: Did I create it?

Even the discomfort of clothes touching flesh and falling away with breathing now lulls me to sleep. Each person who comes kneels, takes a deep breath, and puts their head to the floor. They bring my hand to their heads and bury their cheeks in my palm. The painful tears gathered on their eyebrows mix with the oil on my hands. They grip the hem of my tunic tightly and apply rough myrrh from me to their hands and foreheads. Above all, this surprises me. Nothing becomes something just by passing through me. Myrrh that passed through me is just myrrh more contaminated by air and skin bacteria. If you’re going to use a living person for consecration purposes, why leave consciousness? Aren’t I in a worse state than Lebanese cedar or Berlin fountain statues?

“Don’t You know this too, Lord? Lord, we fear we will disappear. Please look down on Your servants… Keep us alive and keep us fulfilling Your will and give us opportunities. We can accomplish what the Lord desires. Please don’t forget. Please help us.”

The ritual grows more distant. Rosalie wanted to torment me so much, she might be happy to see me get royally screwed. Is this current situation at a level to be so happy about? I don’t know. How it would look to others wasn’t important. However it looked, they distorted everything about me into something sacred, and that could be proven by the existence of people now frantically placing my hand on their heads. The myrrh on my upper body dries little by little, but the myrrh pooled in the chair shows no sign of drying. Whether it’s because of capillaries dilated by the strong fragrance or I really caught a cold this time, my consciousness is hazy. Do I want to fall asleep? I don’t think so. Anyway, when this unmoving body tries to fall into sleep, someone grabs my sore hand and sobs. That sound pulls me back up from the depths of falling asleep.

No one was holding my hand anymore.

When I woke thinking that, I realized I’d forgotten about the frankincense filling the hall. Acrid fragrance filled my lungs. People were holding frankincense censers right beside me. Pain surges along my skull. It was clearly a ceremony to advance to the next stage.

In the consciousness that returned after briefly falling asleep, there was a voice.

“The Lord is… long…”

It was a voice I’d heard. The Rohan person who conversed with me when I was in Lucien Noailles’s form. It was too hard to think more. Sleep enters through my nose, pervades my whole body, then scatters with my exhale.

“You came to us… and promised the glory of France. That is the clear evidence that makes our Rohan family remain the Rohan family… He… promised our ancestor Rohan to accomplish what He desires…”

When did I. That’s the only thing I can think. I repeatedly fall asleep and wake in the frankincense.

“We Rohans did not know this. …However, Duke Marie of Noailles, who was seated beside the Lord, received the spirituality of that person and informed us of the hidden history of Rohan and France. Today’s recognition of the Lord’s presence is also Duke Marie’s great work. Everyone does their best to somehow accomplish what the Lord commanded. You don’t know, but while you don’t know, all life stops and our lives continue only when the Lord looks at us. We appeared in midair one day, and the Lord gave each of us everyone’s calling. That is… clear reality. We exist in a picture the Lord drew. It’s an unprecedented discovery. If we restore Bourbon’s glory according to the Lord’s will, we might be promised complete life. The Lord has directly heard your suffering until now…”

The Rohan person grabbed my hand and lifted it to an appropriate height to show. The sound of something opening as a box’s joints come undone. A variable—I had to pay sharp attention to what he was doing.

“When this golden ring is fitted, the Lord promises each of us our lifetime. We will eventually join Him in the heavenly world according to the Lord’s will. But if it doesn’t fit, the Lord intends to give us other plans.”

Ah.

Hollow laughter close to despair, resignation, and fatigue… Who am I connected to this time? This is symbolic subjugation. I don’t know if it can exert real power like the subjugation Leonard prepared, but at least their supplications and hopes will be tied to this finger, considered connected to my heart, and won’t separate from me. The greed to do so is connected to them through my finger. They will want me to rise soon. Keeping my consciousness awake and constantly wanting proof—I could gradually feel it, but since I can’t move, they had to pray to me, though what they truly want is for me to do something for them. Rather than them pressing their cheeks to my hand and begging me to please listen to them, they want me to directly place my hand on their heads with my own strength, bless them, and shed tears for them.

Someone grabs and lifts my hand. It’s a bit different. He was holding my fingertips, which was enough to sharpen my senses and nerves. His hand moves from my middle finger one space over. Then with his other hand, he carefully grips my wrist and palm. Metal slides like oil into the inside of my finger but gets blocked at the middle bone. If I twist the angle a little, perhaps…

When indescribable displeasure writhed, when revulsion clearly raised its head unlike usual, when the desire to escape this place rose instead of drowsiness but I recognized there was no way—vibration shook the chair. I almost opened my eyes from the roar that pushed my eardrums in one blow. I hear people’s shrill screams. Sharp French words like “be careful” cut through the hall.

Someone grabbed my arm and pulled, then lifted me up. He lowered his body and ran like flying, kicking the ground minimally and quickly. It’s a somehow familiar frame. The sound of stepping on the ground changes several times. He’s fleeing, stepping on ground of different properties. The sound of magic flying at them is louder than the sound of people chasing.

“Don’t you think the intelligence scale is large?”

In the indifferent whisper that pierces my eardrums while scattering in the wind, habitual cynicism clings. Then I recognized the owner of the running body.

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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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