Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 254

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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254
Chapter

The Southern Mage Tower was a wreck. Blood trails greeted me at the entrance, telling their own story of whatever violence had unfolded within.
“From the signs, it happened not long ago.”
I searched the lower floors methodically, half-hoping someone might still be there. No one was.
“Arelin……”
No one, that is, except Jemello—who was maintaining the barrier that wrapped the entire city, something the Southern Mage Tower had activated.
“Jemello!”
The barrier holding over the city meant he had to be fine, or so I’d thought. But the man I found was far from it.
“What on earth happened?”
Jemello, propped against a pillar with one arm missing, was in the process of self-treating with Healing Magic. He tried to speak but dissolved into coughing instead.
“Cough, cough!”
“Take your time.”
I knelt beside him and cast Healing Magic. His expression eased visibly.
Jemello warned me then.
“It’s dangerous here. You need to leave. Now.”
“Leave to where?”
“Right.”
His face darkened.
“Out of the city… that would be difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“More or less.”
He grimaced as if even speaking cost him effort.
“What exactly happened here?”
“Honestly, I don’t know the full story. The mages from the Southern Mage Tower were lying around exhausted, and then they suddenly went mad and came at me.”
“The ones who were attacked?”
“Dragged off somewhere. I don’t know where… damn it.”
Jemello was the only one left in the tower. And even he was in terrible shape.
“Don’t talk—you’re opening your wounds and bleeding again.”
“It’s fine, this is enough.”
“Enough? You look like you need months of recovery.”
“I’m really all right. You don’t need to waste energy trying to save me.”
I faltered, my hands stilling over my spell work.
“What are you talking about?”
When I glared at him, Jemello shook his head as our eyes met.
“I’m going to seal this city.”
“……!”
Broken as he was, Jemello gripped his Staff with his remaining arm, utterly composed.
“Until the Ruin is dealt with, no one goes in or out. At least the Mage Tower is intact—there’s that much, anyway. Without it, I’d have had a much harder time.”
This wasn’t a joke.
I took a deep breath and held his gaze steadily.
“A seal……?”
“I was inside the Mage Tower, but I could feel the wrongness pervading the city. The Ruin’s eruption is only beginning. If that corruption spreads beyond the city limits, the entire continent won’t be safe.”
I wanted to protest, but the words caught in my throat. Jemello nodded as if understanding.
“The real problem is we don’t know what’s inside the Ruin. If something we can’t handle is in there and continues to leak out at this rate? Sealing it at least prevents anyone else from wandering in.”
“…I know that, but…”
Jemello was right. What he was planning to do made sense.
“But then… you would…”
Be trapped with the city.
To be more precise, trapped in this broken body, weathering the aftershock of a Sealing Magic of such magnitude—no one could know if he’d survive it.
This was no different from saying he was going to seal the city and die.
“Why do you look at me like that? Becoming a star is every mage’s dream.”
How could he make a joke at a moment like this?
“No one will ever know about a sacrifice like this.”
“You’ll know.”
“Only I’ll know.”
“That’s enough. The stars will know.”
As if in answer, Jemello’s body gave off a faint luminescence. The Blessing of the Stars wrapped around him more powerfully than I’d ever seen.
“If the stars know, then the world knows.”
“That’s sophistry.”
“I’ve lived long—twice as long as most. I never uncovered the world’s secrets, but if I can save other people, isn’t that an achievement worth something for a mage?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t have to. You’re still a child.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Still young.”
Jemello reached out and stroked my hair.
Any other time, I would have batted his hand away. Today, I sat still and let him.
“And besides, it’s not just you I want to save.”
He spoke with an expression full of longing and regret, mentioning his brother’s grandchildren, living out there beyond the city.
“You’re going to the Ruin?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s where the secrets lie now. Nowhere else left.”
Right to the end, Jemello wore that playful smile as he blessed my path forward.
“May the stars light the way you walk.”

* * *

The road from the Mage Tower to the Ruin.
The city, which had regained its vitality with each dawn until yesterday, remained unnaturally quiet.
“Arelin.”
At the entrance to the Ruin.
Fession called to me as I stood with my gaze still fixed on the Mage Tower.
“Fession……”
He didn’t offer hollow reassurance—that Jemello would be fine, that nothing would happen.
“I’m with you.”
He simply squeezed the hand I was holding.
“Jemello will……”
Fession shook his head quietly.
I knew it intellectually. That Jemello’s choice deserved my respect, and that his death would be fitting for a mage. I knew that.
But.
“I guess I’m still not mature enough.”
I wished no one would ever have to die. That everyone I cared for would simply stay by my side.
I didn’t want to lose anyone.
“You won’t ever leave me, will you?”
Fession seemed surprised that such words could come from me. He smiled.
“Not even if you asked me to.”

* * *

Jemello watched the two figures disappear toward the Ruin, then gave a dry cough.
“Cough……”
What he hadn’t told Arelin was that he was well aware he wasn’t in a normal state anymore.
‘…The Corruption is severe.’
Bearing the barrier that wrapped the massive city alone meant that the Corruption accumulated from the backlash of his mana drain was building exponentially.
Especially after spending two nights at it.
This was one of several reasons Jemello had decided to seal Gairen.

“Brother, if you become a mage, you’ll be able to save our parents, right?”

His vision was growing hazy. In childhood, the two brothers had lost their parents to an accident, and then were betrayed by the village elder—stripped of everything, left to wander the streets.
All that time, the longing for their lost parents only grew, and even after Jemello became a mage, his brother joked about such impossibilities.

“There’s no magic to bring back the dead.”

But the human heart isn’t so easily made to surrender. Even as he told his brother it was impossible, Jemello yearned for it desperately.
If he studied the Immortals, perhaps resurrection—a domain thought reserved for divinity—could be touched by magic.
Time passed. The two who seemed destined to remain children grew into adults.
While Jemello devoted himself to his research, his brother married and built a new family. And then one day, he said something.

“Brother, I’m so happy these days. When I was young, everything was so hard I didn’t know how we’d survive. But now… I miss our parents, but I think I can go see them soon. I’m satisfied.”

His younger brother, always younger than him, had grown old. The Mana had slowed his Biological Time, but his brother had aged naturally, his face lined and creased as he smiled radiantly.

“I just hope your remaining life is happy, brother.”

After his brother died, Jemello had hidden himself from the family’s remaining members. It was easier than eating cold rice. He had been a Star-rank Mage for a long time now, and in principle, he belonged only to the Sky Tower. So if he wished it, they would never see him again.
But like a thorn in his throat, curiosity nagged at him, and when he had looked in on his brother’s family, they had overcome their grief and were living so very happily.
Unlike Jemello himself, who remained frozen in the moment after his parents died and his brother and he wandered the streets before luck brought him to become a mage.
“Dying doesn’t frighten me.”
His hand trembled slightly as it gripped the Staff.
Perhaps it did frighten him, after all.
Fear of death was an emotion any living thing could feel.
But.
“…Better than dying without doing anything.”
Jemello recalled it.
Last night, the sinister man who had extended his hand, offering to grant whatever Jemello desired.
How close he’d come to accepting that temptation.

“Do what you can. What you truly want to do.”

He smiled, remembering the advice the Grand Mage had given him before his departure.
Arelin had called this a sacrifice, but it wasn’t.
It was simply the most meaningful thing he could do.
Whooooom—
Jemello’s mana, woven through the Mage Tower, transformed the nature of the barrier surrounding the city. The vast mana enfolding the city silenced it completely.
Only the stars hovering in the sky bore witness to that magnificent sight.

* * *

Passing through the entrance of the Ruin, which gaped like an abyss opening its jaws, we stepped into an alien atmosphere.
Tense with anticipation for what lay ahead, I was caught off guard by what greeted us once the darkness of the entrance gave way.
“What is this?”
An open sky. Vast grasslands. And in the distance, structures of unknown purpose. The landscape before us was nothing like what I had imagined.

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