Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 10

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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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Episode 10
“At this point, we won’t get far anyway. And we have nowhere to hide together with my sister.”
“What, what? So what are you saying?”
“I found this place first in the first place. So I have rights too. But if you keep trying to drive me out, I’ll just scream now and call those kids here instead.”
“This is…! Are you insane?”
“So either we all die here together, or if you don’t like that, we both give up half.”
Liriope’s words were unexpected, and the boy who had been about to rage fiercely faltered.
“We hide my sister and your subordinate here, and you and I watch the situation from outside and lure those kids somewhere else. What do you think?”
“…….”
“I have to keep my sister safe no matter what, and you can’t just abandon that kid and leave either, right?”
The boy’s lips twitched reflexively as if to contradict her. But in the end, he only glared at Liriope with sharp eyes, and did not deny her words.
“So help each other. Then we can protect the people we each need to protect more efficiently than if we all go down together, don’t you think?”
The boy’s blue eyes fixed on Liriope as if to pierce her.
Liriope did not back down either, meeting his gaze straight on.
After a brief silence of only a few seconds but felt many times longer, the red-haired boy finally moved, spitting out curses as before.
“Damn it, you…! Just so you know, I’m only letting this slide this time!”
He took Caliona from Liriope’s back and quickly pushed her into a crevice between rocks.
“Did you and your sister both grease your tongues or something? Now I see it—you both have the same infuriatingly clever way of talking!”
It was a temporary alliance.
While the boy rambled on uselessly, Liriope wiped away as much of the footprints and bloodstains they had left around the area as she could.
The boy also brought over a stone the size of his head and covered the entrance with it.
It would have been better to find other cover and seal the hole more thoroughly, but there was no time for that, so they had no choice but to hurry away with what they had.
Starting from a point a little distance from the rock, Liriope wrung out her damp clothes with her hands, deliberately creating clear bloodstains. The boy also tore the hem of his tattered shirt and planted it on a dry branch-like spot, as if it had caught by accident.
[They work together strangely well…. Could they have known each other from before?]
‘It’s basic survival. Any kid who’s lived outside for more than a year without a guardian knows how to do this much, even a five-year-old.’
[…….]
As the two moved while leaving false traces, a small groan suddenly spilled from beside them.
Looking closer, the red-haired boy was running with his left hand gripping his abdomen, cold sweat dripping down his face.
“Does your stomach hurt?”
At Liriope’s question, the boy’s face flushed deeply.
“It’s because of that cursed sorcerer! It’s definitely not because I need to—I mean, it’s not urgent like that!”
She had naturally assumed it was internal damage from Magic Transmission, but the boy hurriedly denied the embarrassing misunderstanding.
If not for the pursuers’ shouts heard not far away just then, he probably would have continued with pointless explanations.
“Huh? Hey, hey! Wait, someone come here a moment! There’s a bloodstain here!”
“Where? Ah, it’s real! Looks like someone got away!”
“But they seem hurt. Well, there’s no way someone who just underwent the Ceremony of Ascension could be unscathed.”
“Find them quick and we’ll shake them down too!”
Liriope and the red-haired boy also felt the limits of their endurance and decided to hide their bodies at this point.
But just before they parted, the boy, whose complexion had worsened, called to Liriope in a lowered voice.
“Hey, I don’t know where this place is, what those bastards want, or what’s going to happen to you or me, but since things have come to this, let’s just make one agreement.”
His rapid words carried an almost solemn weight.
“If either you or I gets into trouble, the one left behind has to go back to that rock and help both people there. Fairly—don’t just take care of one person because you don’t care about the other. Got it?”
As if it were a habit born of surviving in the back alleys, the boy glared at Liriope right to the end, enforcing the promise threateningly.
Liriope did not answer, instead turning to the left and crouching down between piles of nameless grass and scattered stones both large and small.
The red-haired boy stood as close as possible behind a rotting log stump on the right side.
Neither spot was adequate for hiding, but it was the best choice in their current situation.
“How is it, did you find them?”
“Not yet! It seems to be this way though……”
“We can’t miss them! Damn it, if we end up with a troublesome problem later, Zed will half-kill us.”
Liriope and the boy’s eyes met across the small distance between them.
Listening to the pursuers’ whispered voices, Liriope gave a quiet nod. Only then did the boy’s expression ease slightly.
Holding their breath in silence and concentrating all their senses on the approaching presence, stillness descended over their surroundings.
The scent of dry grass and earth that seemed both familiar and foreign drifted faintly to her nostrils.
In that hushed landscape where time seemed to flow slowly, Liriope felt as though she had become a mouse hiding from a cat.
Being in the position of prey was, in fact, familiar to her.
So unlike the red-haired boy, whose tension was evident, Liriope was not particularly frightened by their current situation.
Hiss, sss—.
But at that very moment, something about the length and thickness of Liriope’s forearm slithered toward her from the side.
A blue snake with white stripes.
Its split red tongue flicked threateningly toward Liriope.
An ordinary thirteen-year-old child would have seized up and screamed.
But Liriope merely flinched once, showing no visible reaction.
A bead of sweat rolled down her pale jaw and fell onto a grayish-white blade of grass, absorbed without a trace.
‘Wait. Grayish-white?’
Suddenly aware of this detail, Liriope’s head snapped up.
When had this started?
The grass growing long all around and the rough earth below were abnormally withered, as if all moisture had been drained away.
The soil that had been a light brown just moments before, the grass that had held a deep green—both had faded to a grayish-white within just a few minutes.
At this distinct sign of danger, a chill suddenly ran down her spine.
The voice in her mind, too, seemed to grasp the situation, warning her softly.
[Wait…. We seem to have stepped into a dangerous zone.]

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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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