Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 136

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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 136
Caliona’s return was as welcome news to Liriope as the anticipation that had filled her days waiting for it.
“There’s no need to know certain things. Don’t seek them out in the future.”
Yet separate from that, she could not shake the thought that Belkiers was trying to redirect Liriope’s attention elsewhere.
“It’s the only way you and your sister might find some measure of peace living in the Magic Tower.”
It was incomprehensible why he spoke as though he genuinely cared for Liriope’s future even now, and why his Mana was quietly restoring her injured body even at this moment…….
Belkiers’s contradictory conduct made it impossible for Liriope to suppress her emotions.
It was Belkiers who broke eye contact first.
He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and reached out his hand to Liriope once more.
“You can’t be in this rain too long. Let’s return to the Magic Tower first, then we’ll talk again.”
“There’s nothing left to say.”
But Liriope stepped backward, evading the hand that moved toward her.
Unlike moments before, when her anger had been unmistakable, her gesture and voice now were restrained, stripped of all feeling. Yet that hardly made her refusal any gentler than before.
Belkiers perceived it with keen awareness. His hand froze in midair, seized by an ominous premonition.
“You said it yourself just now—nothing happened between us on the night of the banquet?”
Her quiet voice fell like rain.
“You want to pretend that what happened in your room between you and me never was. But if that was truly nothing, then all the time we spent together before it must be nothing too.”
“Liriope.”
This time Belkiers stared at her as though hearing words he could not believe.
“So there’s nothing more to discuss between us.”
When he moved forward a step, Liriope refused him. A small Spatial Teleportation Magic Circle glowed beneath her feet.
“I’m going alone. Don’t follow.”
Belkiers’s frozen face blurred away between the light.
“I can’t accept this.”
His gaze pierced through that space.
“I won’t accept that it ends like this.”
Liriope closed her eyes.
The Flood Period had stolen the ground beneath people’s feet, shattered their daily lives, and ruthlessly stained even their humblest hopes for the future black.
Those dark things always took something precious from Liriope.
This Flood Period was no exception—she felt a small void open within her that had not existed before.
So passed the midsummer cold that had been cruel to all. Yet as though an unseasonable winter had begun, that summer remained strangely bitter and chill.
11.5. Traps and Lies
“Welcome back, child.”
When Caliona emerged from the Ancient Ruin, a stranger was the first to greet her.
“I have been waiting for your return.”
A heavy, crushing chill that weighed down her entire body, and golden eyes that seemed to swallow her whole.
Caliona had lost all sense of time within the Ancient Ruin. She had expected to open her eyes either at the Contaminated Holy Site where the Flood Period was still advancing, or in the chamber where magical artifacts were kept…….
But as she stepped outside, her eyes were dazzled by warm sunlight pouring through the glass ceiling, flooding the chamber.
Yet something else was making her mind grow distant.
A beautiful woman approached, trailing black robes. An unspeakably chilling aura pressed in alongside her.
But Caliona’s spine did not creep with fear or wariness toward this stranger.
“Pitiful—your appearance is quite wretched. It seems your troubles have weighed far more heavily than I suspected.”
The woman’s voice was cold and dry. Yet to Caliona’s ears, it sounded achingly sweet and dulcet, as though her eardrums would melt.
“Five were drawn into the ruins during the Flood Period, and only you have returned alive. How you must have suffered.”
The woman stopped before her, gazing down at Caliona with kindly golden eyes that held a glacial gleam.
What Caliona felt from the woman was paradoxical in nature, yet before she could even begin to untangle her confusion, a cool hand touched her cheek.
“But perhaps I should bear some responsibility—for leaving you alone so long.”
In the moment she found herself face to face with the beautiful woman at such close range, Caliona could recognize that the person before her was the Magic Tower Master, Seraphina.
She had never seen the Magic Tower Master in person before, but she had heard stories from Evangellin and Liriope.
Evangellin had revered Seraphina almost as a god, while Liriope had been wary and uncomfortable in regard to her.
Naturally, even then Caliona had trusted her younger sister’s reasoned judgment over Evangellin’s mindless praise.
Yet astonishingly, what she now understood in her very bones was Evangellin’s blind devotion and adoration—which she had so thoroughly mistrusted until now.
If what Liriope had felt upon seeing Seraphina before was an overwhelming sense of obedience forcibly suppressed, then what pierced Caliona’s heart now was admiration and reverence so great her chest felt it might burst.
It was as though she had finally found the owner of a soul she had long sought.
The body and spirit that had never taken root anywhere, floating precariously like duckweed with nothing to lean upon or depend on, seemed at last to have found their place.
Even the sticky bonds of affection so strong that no one could sever them completely made her heart roil with turbulent feeling.
Caliona’s breath caught as she could not master the fierce, alien emotion burning through her.
She was horrified that she could not fathom why she felt this way toward the woman before her. Yet before she could even begin to understand, a gentle touch caressed her face and stole away her soul.
“Just as I hold you now as close as my own blood and flesh, so too do you feel a causeless intimacy toward me.”
Seraphina spoke as though she could see straight through every turbulent feeling tearing up Caliona’s heart.
“Wherever you are, I can sense you. You too have always longed for me and sought me desperately.”
Every word from her lips felt like self-evident truth, like the natural order of the world itself.
“When Evangellin made you his follower, the power that dwells within you has its origin in me.”
Yet Caliona instinctively recognized that the woman who had appeared like a god was lying to her.
“But how lonely you must have been, these three years, while I neglected you.”
Even as her heart burned hot with intoxicating emotion, her clouded mind began to clear as though fog were lifting.
Was it because she had recalled the old nightmares she had forgotten in that mirrored ruin where she had been trapped?
The moment Seraphina appeared before her, Caliona simply knew.
The Magic Tower Master Seraphina and Caliona were most certainly not meeting for the first time today.
That she could feel such familiarity toward someone who should have been utterly foreign—this was not only because of what Seraphina claimed. Of that, she was certain.
“I have made a promise with Belkiers, so I cannot take you as my daughter as Evangellin wished……. But thinking on it, it seems there may be even more I can offer you instead.”
The thought crossed her mind that Belkiers coming to meet her in the ruins before Seraphina had arrived was perhaps no coincidence at all.
Thanks to that, Caliona could face the woman’s seductive lies with a mind colder and clearer than ever.
“I am truly so fond of you and your sister, as though you were my own dear daughters…….”
And so Caliona found genuine joy in the sweet whisper brushing her ear—a joy so deep it ached, so profound she was grateful.
The voice that lingered in her ear like a nightmare still. The eyes that had smiled with such chilling cruelty in that nightmare.
A person so perfectly mirrored to that nightmare had appeared before her of her own accord.
And so Caliona laughed.
Willingly stepping into the trap before her, she too laid down her own small, hidden trap beneath her feet with a lie of her own.
If she could only escape this cruel nightmare of the past, she would not mind perishing alongside the monster in that trap.

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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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