Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 264
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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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Chapter 264
Valere was lost in a haze.
He’d been heading somewhere, but at some point he’d forgotten what he was moving toward.
His memories flowed backward.
‘I have to find it.’
Find what?
‘I have to save them.’
Save whom?
That was the question—who had it been?
His sister, perhaps?
Though he had failed countless times trying to save someone, even in that accumulated mass of memories that couldn’t possibly belong to just one person, a single detail had been cleanly excised: exactly whom he had tried to save.
The Pendant clutched tight in his left hand like a lifeline was the only thing that could faintly tell him what he was supposed to be doing here.
Yet now he couldn’t even remember what the Pendant itself was.
—Valere.
The only thing he hadn’t forgotten was his own name.
—Valere, my poor brother.
It was thanks to someone’s voice, echoing endlessly, that he could hold onto it.
Was this his sister’s voice?
‘My beloved sister.’
Even if no tender memories of her came to mind, he remembered how much he had loved her.
‘Sister…….’
He tried to call forth some memory of the sister who had once been his entire world, but nothing came.
The memories of childhood spent with her were from so long ago that they had weathered into vagueness.
It wasn’t just his sister.
It was the same with himself.
He sensed he had been yearning for something desperately.
But whenever he stopped, unable to understand why he was wandering, darkness swallowed him whole.
A space of emptiness that reduced everything—even the self—to nothing.
Sometimes he thought it wouldn’t be so bad to dissolve completely into this void and become nothing at all.
—Are you going to give up again?
There was only one reason he hadn’t been completely consumed by darkness.
Whenever he stopped, his sister’s phantom always appeared without fail.
—Valere.
—Why are you doing this? You’re worrying me.
A voice that moved him like a miraculous incantation.
—You should be happy. Yes? My poor brother.
Why was he always her poor brother? Why did she want his happiness?
He didn’t know what he was searching for or where he was going. Memories only disappeared; nothing came back. Yet Valere stared blankly at the phantom of his sister smiling toward him.
Despite remembering nothing, that smile devastated him too deeply to quit.
“I have to find it.”
So.
“I have to save them.”
Even if he didn’t know what it was.
How long had he been wandering?
A single figure caught the eye of Valere, who moved through instinct alone, having lost all sense of direction.
“Father.”
“…….”
“Why are you like this? You’re worrying me.”
It was beyond his control. As if cursed by magic, strength drained from his hands.
His instinct screamed to cut down the existence before him—the strange presence, the profound wrongness—but his hands only trembled. They wouldn’t move.
Was this his sister?
At first glance, they resembled each other so completely it was easy to mistake.
But seeing the face up close, he could sense directly that this was not his sister.
His sister wasn’t this small. His sister didn’t smile like that. His sister didn’t speak that way. His sister…….
His sister was already dead.
‘No matter how many times I turn back time, I can’t save her.’
An ancient despair crashed over him.
Those days of begging his sister to live had passed. No matter how much he wept and pleaded, no matter how much he threw tantrums saying he’d die in her stead—time could not be undone.
But the warmth felt in the grasped arm was real.
It was as if to tell him this was an actual person, not some phantom.
The moment he understood that, other memories surged back.
A sharp wave of rejection pierced his lungs.
“Don’t come near me.”
A person with no place in his memories, whom he’d never met once in all his wandering.
The trembling that crept across his fingertips came from more than simple rejection.
It was fear of an impossible human.
As Valere staggered back and found himself alone again, the memories that had surged back and tangled became chaos. He couldn’t think straight.
He clenched his teeth, enduring the agony of his brain turning to pulp.
A fragment of memory surfaced amid the shock that shook him to his core.
“Shall I make you a god?”
A man Valere had encountered while wandering somewhere.
The man wore a black Robe, and his golden eyes had glowed with an uncanny yellow brilliance.
* * *
“Luca, guide me to the Gairen Ruins where it erupted.”
“Why me?!”
Luca protested.
“First, reveal your true nature. What connection do you have with the demon of the Ruins? If you came to the Mage Association voluntarily, there would be no bloodshed.”
I sighed and pointed my Staff at Luca, who was trying to take the hard path instead of the easy one.
“Mage Association, my ass. But why suddenly the Mage Association? Did the mages in this world split into two factions?”
“Hmph, do you think I’d fall for such a leading question? Everyone knows that fifteen years ago, the Tower Master of Sky Tower vanished all of a sudden, and the mages split into two factions!”
“Wherever you go, there’s always some upheaval around my master.”
“Master? What are you talking about?”
Whether Luca pointed his Staff or not, my Mana was already moving.
Soon my Mana shone white and the magic executed, binding Luca’s body in midair. Even so, Luca was startled by something else.
“The Shadowless Incantation?!”
Luca stared at me with eyes wide as saucers.
“Are you a Star-rank Mage?!”
I nodded, watching Luca suddenly become respectful.
Easy. So easy.
* * *
In the previous world too, Luca had caved the moment I used high-level magic.
This time was no different.
‘Thought I’d try it just in case.’
Luca guided me to the Gairen Ruins, eyes gleaming with an almost burdensome admiration.
“But the place is so dangerous that it’s sealed off…….”
“Hmm?”
Something was blocking the path, so I punched a hole through the seal just large enough for the two of us. Then Luca, who’d been about to say something, stopped and just blinked at me.
“Never mind.”
“What? Why did you stop mid-sentence?”
“It’s nothing. Just pointless talk.”
“?”
Either way, we were able to walk peacefully toward the Ruins.
“But why do you admire Star-rank Mages so much?”
“Usually people say ‘admire’ rather than ‘like’ when speaking of such things, don’t they?”
“Well, whatever. As long as we understand each other.”
“It’s unbelievable that such a careless person received Star’s Selection.”
Luca looked at me with exasperation.
“Aren’t Star-rank Mages still human? Star-rank Mages eat and use the bathroom too.”
“I know that much, obviously.”
“You seemed like you didn’t, the way you were treating it like such a burden.”
I found it curious how, perhaps because my illusions about Star-rank Mages were shattered so early, Luca’s admiration remained so consistent across every parallel world.
“Do you want to become a Star-rank Mage?”
“Any mage would want to.”
“I suppose so.”
As the overwhelming scarcity of Star-rank Mages compared to the total number of mages showed, Star’s Selection wasn’t something that happened often. Most mages accepted their limits once they recognized them, having no further aspirations.
Humans each wanted different things, and mages were still human after all.
“Even so, I hope someday I’ll receive Star’s Selection.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s cool?”
Just for that reason……? I thought, when Luca began elaborating with an animated face.
“When I was little, a great flood came to the town where I lived. An entire village was about to be submerged, but a Star-rank Mage passing by solved it. The sight of all that water covering the town rising up into the sky was so beautiful…… I still see it in my dreams sometimes.”
The expression on Luca’s face as he gazed at the sky was as beautiful as a dream.
“I decided then that I too wanted to become a mage who could help people like that. So why are you looking at me like that?”
“No, I just thought I was being too narrow-minded. Yes. It’s wonderful.”
“……?”
Luca tilted his head in confusion.
Does Luca know that he’s already helping me plenty, even without being a Star-rank Mage?
“We’ve arrived.”
The Ruins appeared before me, its entrance shattered by the eruption and reeking of ominous power.
And the moment I confirmed the Ruins, I understood what I’d felt when I met Father.
“It’s real.”
Father and the Ruins were connected, damn it!
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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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