Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 41

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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 41
But knowing it was false, Liriope forced her gaze away from the afterimage that kept trying to catch her eye.
[Good thing you came to your senses early. You nearly became fertilizer for that Carnivorous Flower.]
‘I was prepared. Still, it’s making me dizzy.’
Her palm throbbed where she’d deliberately scraped it raw with branches while passing through the forest.
When she unclenched her fist, which she’d been gripping so hard her nails carved into the wound, blood trickled down her forearm in rivulets.
Liriope stared irritably at her two hands, bound by Vines and raised uncomfortably above her head, then opened her mouth.
Only after she gnawed through the Vines to break free could she finally stand on both feet.
Of course, standing on bare ground was difficult with the Vines writhing ceaselessly around her.
Just moments ago, as they walked toward the heart of the forest, they had caught the scent of something acrid wafting in from nowhere.
But that lasted only at first—soon, an intoxicatingly sweet fragrance had bewitched the group.
Liriope had come to her senses relatively quickly, but the other children remained trapped in nightmares, becoming food for the flower.
[Those fools said they’d prepared after visiting this forest before, yet look at them now. Tsk tsk, all their big talk, and yet they’re as fragile as glass.]
As Ode had said, before crossing the forest, it wasn’t only Liriope who had shielded her Respiratory Protection as much as possible and deliberately wounded herself.
The faces of those who had tensely recalled the time they’d stumbled into this forest in ignorance seeking an exit, lost comrades, and nearly died, came back to her.
‘They’re still young. I was the same once.’
Breaking free from the chains that bound oneself was truly no easy task.
“Sister.”
The enormous flower contracted its petals and then unfurled them, releasing a fragrance potent enough to numb the nose.
“P-please save me……. Sob.”
“Sister, wake up.”
Liriope reached out to wake her sister, who was suffering as though trapped in a nightmare, but froze at the eerie sensation that suddenly gripped her.
Something that had flashed across the edge of her vision just moments before.
What on earth was that?
When she turned her gaze to see properly what had captured her attention for that brief moment, she spotted a dark silhouette standing like a stake in the center of the blooming flowers.
At first, she thought it was a shadow rooted in the Corrupted Holy Ground.
But standing motionless like a doll with a string through its crown was none other than Jed.
If only he’d been muttering to himself like the other children, it might have been slightly better.
Yet the air surrounding him was suffocatingly silent.
It was terribly ominous and made her skin crawl.
Liriope had certainly despised Jed before.
But now, like watching hundreds of centipedes writhing together in a single mass, this visceral revulsion welling up from deep in her gut was indescribable.
[No, that figure……. It’s like a corpse moving with only its shell alive.]
True to that assessment, the boy before her radiated not the faintest glimmer of human vitality.
But at that very moment, a single flower moving silently above Jed’s head opened its petals wide like a gaping maw, and then…….
Gulp!
Jed vanished from Liriope’s sight.
Boom!
But in the next instant, a ball of flame erupted explosively, consuming the petals as it burst outward.
Jed, backlit by the light, turned his head.
Liriope thought his gray eyes, mottled like the flower’s spots, were fixed on her.
But Jed’s gaze had found a different target than Liriope.
He moved slowly in an unnatural gait, as though controlled by strings like a puppet.
Looking closer, Jed’s left leg bore an injury from when the flower colony had caught him—twisted grotesquely to the side with bone showing through.
Yet he moved the dangling leg with no sensation of pain, as though numb to it all.
Slick, slick.
The sound of his dragging feet seemed to roll down her spine like an icy chill.
Jed moved toward the largest and most luscious flower—the one with peculiarly thick gray mottling caked across its petals, grotesque and repulsive.
It unfurled its petals wide, which had been half-closed as though coveting approaching prey.
Yet simultaneously, due to the ball of flame hovering above Jed’s head, it refrained from swallowing him and instead watched intently, waiting for an opening.
Jed paid no attention even to the blue Vines teeming around him. Instead, he suddenly bent at an awkward angle and began clawing at the ground.
Each time his raw, pale hands scraped away the ashen-gray soil, the hole deepened, and roots of the flower—looking as though rotted—became exposed.
Looking closely, black insects squirmed within.
Finally, when the black hole had grown large enough to fit a human torso, Jed plunged his head directly into it.
“…….”
A cold bead of sweat rolled down Liriope’s jaw.
She moved her body slowly, keeping her breathing silent and controlled.
Her entire frame bristled with horror at the grotesque scene she’d just witnessed, and her blood felt frozen in her veins.
[Liriope, move quietly. I sense Malevolent Energy radiating from that one. Perhaps he has already…….]
Even without hearing the rest of Ode’s words, Liriope already knew.
Jed’s condition—by any measure—was not that of a normal person.
Rather, one could no longer even call him a person.
Liriope forcefully snapped the Vines binding Kaliona’s body tight.
Fortunately, thanks to the people around her seeing illusions and babbling nonsense, her actions drew no one’s attention.
“I-I’ll run faster. Please don’t leave me behind…….”
Liriope started to carry her sister away, but her gaze suddenly stopped on Milena.
The girl’s body was more than half-consumed by the flower, yet she still wept and babbled incoherently.
[What are you doing? If you’re ready, let’s go.]
Liriope’s brow furrowed.
Honestly, she found Milena irritating. But it was also true that the child had helped her a few times…….
Liriope bit her lip, dissatisfied with her own hesitation.
Just a week ago, she would have left them all here without a second thought.
But now, for some reason, turning away from Milena and leaving felt slightly harder than it once had.
‘Wait.’
In the end, Liriope foolishly chose to waste a little time and rescue Milena.
“Come to your senses.”
Crack!
With all her strength, Liriope pulled Milena out from within the petals and struck her cheek twice.
Soon, pale eyes of soft green emerged beneath heavy lids, fixing on Liriope.
“W-what? Mother?”
“Who’s your mother? Snap out of it and look around.”
As Liriope instructed, Milena turned her head dazedly, and moments later, a shrill cry burst from her lips.
“Wh-what, what, what is this place? What is that? A C-Carnivorous Flower?! It’s so huge!”
“Stay quiet and follow me. We have to get out of here while we have the chance.”
“Wait, what about the others? They’re in danger……!”
But the moment Milena regained consciousness, she scrambled to her feet and rushed toward the nearest child.
“We h-have to help them! We can’t leave anyone behind……!”
She began tearing frantically at the thick Vines binding the children’s bodies with her bare hands.
“That’s Natali, isn’t it? Your competitor, yet you’re going to save her?”
“Th-that doesn’t matter right now. Huff, puff. It doesn’t matter…….”
Milena was too busy rescuing the children being dragged into the petals to notice Liriope behind her anymore.
Liriope’s slightly parted lips closed again in silence.
She turned wordlessly and hoisted Kaliona onto her back.
[Are you not taking that Milena girl with you? After going to the trouble of saving her.]
‘It’s done. It was her choice.’
Liriope turned her back on everything behind her and began walking to escape the colony of flowers.

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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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