Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 20

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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 20
“Damn it. What’s all the noise about?”
Zed, who had stepped away for a moment, returned just in time to punctuate Liriope’s thoughts.
“I’m dying from keeping up with you lot, and now you’re all lounging around with nothing to do?”
He pressed the children with an ominous tone, his expression still visibly irritated.
“Oh, it’s not that. We were just cleaning up the new ones like you told us to.”
Zed’s gaze followed her excuse toward Liriope and Kaliona.
In that instant, his eyes gleamed with damp hunger.
“Ho? What’s this? Wait, this is better than I imagined?”
Zed stepped forward and thrust his face uncomfortably close to the sisters.
“So you’ve been hiding faces like these the whole time? I thought the Northern Magic Tower’s water must be bad, bringing in only ugly ones like you.”
The children’s expressions shifted slightly at his crude insult, but none of them dared to protest.
His glossy gray eyes raked over the two of them from close range, lingering especially on Kaliona’s unconscious face.
“Good. Very good. You two deserve my special care.”
Eyes so repulsively filthy that even insects crawling across your skin would be preferable.
‘Kill him.’
It took less than a second to decide.
‘He needs to die. Now.’
Purple eyes holding a cold light fixed on crushed Red Berries trampled beneath someone’s foot on the floor, as if piercing through them—then her eyelids closed, veiling them from view.
That night, Liriope quietly organized her plan alone in the darkness.
4. Elder Sister’s Worthless Ex-Lover
“What? Why are you stopping all of a sudden?”
“It’s just… I think I heard something over there.”
The next day, Liriope was conscripted into the search again. This time, she was not alone—Bins was with her.
While Liriope had been selected because she was the last witness to see the missing children, Bins had been dragged into the search reluctantly, being the weakest-spirited child of Slave Class in the group.
Zed’s Group bound both their hands with rope and dragged them along like dogs on a walk.
Until yesterday, it seemed Liriope had been granted some freedom, but whether to cut off even a whisper of escape possibility, she too was bound by rope again.
Perhaps it was because they were planning to break her in with alternating carrots and sticks.
Liriope endured this humiliating treatment without changing her expression, walking silently in their wake until suddenly she stopped.
Zed, hearing her words, furrowed his brows and turned his head.
“You heard something?”
“I’m not certain.”
A sharp gaze, as if checking whether she was plotting something, landed on Liriope. But at her uncertain response, his suspicion seemed to ease.
“Hmm, it wouldn’t be bad to check it out. There might be other gangs nearby, so let’s move quietly.”
Zed seemed to be in an oddly good mood today, and as a result, he offered little resistance to the sudden detour in their search route.
The loosened vigilance worked in Liriope’s favor, but remembering why his mood had improved made her stomach turn.
After walking a bit further, they came upon the Vine Field they had passed through during yesterday’s search. There, plump Red Berries hung temptingly on the vines.
The expressions of Zed’s group grew ashen, as if recalling the horrific death from yesterday.
“Pah! How unlucky. Zed, let’s go another way.”
“What, are you scared?”
“What? No, that’s not it…”
“You bastard, you survived the Man-Eating Flower and the Blood-Sucking Moths before—what’s scary about this? As long as you don’t eat them, there’s no problem, right?”
Zed puffed out his chest as he glanced at Liriope, acting tougher than usual.
“Just follow me. We didn’t check the far side yesterday, so since we’re here anyway, we might as well take a quick look.”
In the end, they decided to cut across the Vine Field.
“Hey, everyone watch your step. One moment of carelessness and you’ll trip on the vines…”
“Ahhh!”
But before his words could finish, Bins and Liriope stumbled and fell.
To all appearances, Bins had caught his foot on a vine first, lost his balance, and dragged Liriope down with him.
“What kind of clumsy idiot are you? Why do you collapse the moment my mouth opens?”
“S-sorry! I didn’t mean to—my foot just caught on—”
“Stupid bastard, shut your mouth before berry juice gets in it!”
The Red Berries, which had looked appetizing before yesterday’s incident, now seemed utterly repulsive.
The crushed flesh where Liriope and Bins had fallen gave off a rich, sweet smell.
Red liquid stained their bodies here and there, making them look as though drenched in blood from a distance.
Zed’s group recoiled from the toxic liquid as if the two of them had become corpses.
“Everyone walk carefully if you don’t want to die here! Especially you, Bins! If you fall one more time, I’ll stuff every berry in this field down your throat.”
“Kyiii!”
Zed barked his threat savagely, then yanked the ropes of Liriope and Bins with a cruder hand than before.
Only the lethality of direct oral ingestion of these berries had been proven.
So Zed’s group seemed somewhat cautious, wondering if the berry juice seeping into skin alone might not also be dangerous.
However, the poison in these berries only worked through reaction with stomach acid, so neither of them showed symptoms of poisoning.
So everyone seemed relieved, but…
A far greater disaster was about to strike.
“Huh? Wait, what is that?”
“A cloud? Mist? No, something looks strange about it…”
“Huh, it’s getting closer?”
At first, they thought a dark storm cloud was approaching.
But this was the Underground, sealed all the way to the ceiling, so there couldn’t possibly be any clouds.
Buzzzzzz!
The truth revealed itself soon enough.
“Ahhhhh! Bees!”
“Are you kidding me!”
Giant Bees the size of a human head swarmed in and closed the distance in an instant.
Zed hastily conjured a Fire Ball and threw a wall in front of them.
The charred bees shrieked and writhed, their formation scattering.
Zed, enraged, hurled a barrage of Fire Balls at the swarm that kept diving at him, cursing viciously.
Twice, three times. Amid the panicked children, Liriope counted coldly.
“Damn it, everyone run this way!”
They all started running frantically after Zed, batting at the bees with whatever weapons they held, terror-stricken.
The Vine Field burned alongside the bees, sending acrid smoke trailing behind them.
But absurdly, Zed, who had been charging ahead, caught his foot on a vine just like the Bins he’d cursed moments before and pitched forward.
“Zed!”
“Oof!”
Mercifully, only Bins—the slowest to react among those following close behind—caught on Zed’s body and fell together with him.
Buzzzzzz!
The bees descended on the two who had fallen behind.
With the distance too close for spellcasting, Zed used Bins in his grasp as a shield instead.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
Bins let out a harrowing scream as the stingers pierced him.
Zed roasted every bee that had embedded its stinger in Bins without regard for the burns he was inflicting.
“Get up, you fat bastard! Do you actually want to die here?”
Then Zed quickly scrambled to his feet and dragged Bins along.
Zed’s group barely escaped the bees’ pursuit once they had completely cleared the Vine Field.
After that, they sprawled across the grayish-white earth, breathing hard up to their chins.
‘Still five more.’
Then, seeming to realize something, Zed fixed Bins and Liriope with a murderous glare.
“Damn it! You two brought them down with your stench, didn’t you?”
‘So he finally figured it out.’
Smack!
“You stupid shit! That’s why I told you to be careful!”
“Ahhhhh!”
Zed began beating Bins.
Between the bee stings and the burns, Bins’s back was hideously swollen with peeling skin.
But Zed showed not a trace of pity for the whimpering boy.
“Hey, you all! Strip off those clothes if you don’t want to die by my hand!”
He cursed viciously and was brandishing violence when he caught sight of Liriope and paused for a moment. Then, uncharacteristically more gentle, he gave a subtle nod.
“Tsk. Still, she’s a girl—I can’t strip her completely and bring her back like that. Hey, take off your clothes and give them to her.”
“What? Me…? If I give her my clothes, what about me? You’re telling me to go to the temporary shelter naked?”
“You won’t be the only one stripping, so don’t worry. Hey, you there—hand me your clothes. My own got dirty, so I need to change.”
In the end, everything unfolded according to Zed’s will.
Liriope pretended to undo her buttons slowly.
The two suddenly robbed of their clothes didn’t dare protest to Zed; instead, they glared at her and Bins with resentment.
But they would soon have reason to be grateful to the two of them.
Rumble!
‘It’s here…!’
At the vibration she finally felt, Liriope’s eyes flashed with a keen glimmer.

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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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