Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 45

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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 45
Kam swayed unsteadily in vision still not fully sharp and clear.
Kaliona unconsciously staggered backward.
Kam, fumbling for the Spear Shaft, lurched toward her without control of his own body.
Kaliona found her feet rooted to the floor as if glued there…….
“……You fool, what are you doing standing there like a blank-faced idiot? Snap out of it!”
But then someone burst from nowhere and kicked Kam hard, shoving him away.
“Are you stupid? Why are you standing there like some glazed-over fool!”
And immediately, a torrent of fierce rebuke came crashing down, stinging Kaliona’s cheek.
The boy who suddenly appeared before her eyes was the red-haired youth she’d seen once in the Banquet Hall.
“Damn it, can’t you hear me?! If you don’t want you and your sister to drop dead right now, get your wits together……!”
But there was no time to wonder why this brat had burst out here.
Kaliona’s eyes flew wide open and darted frantically toward where her sister had been.
“Lili, Lili’s gone. What happened? She was right there…….”
“Your sister? I saw someone taking her that way! So we have to get out of here now! Damn it, I keep seeing strange things……. Stay here much longer and it’ll get harder and harder to leave. So hurry up, get your head straight, and run!”
Kassel’s face was twisted grotesquely.
Now she could see that face was mottled and stained with compulsion, anxiety, and dread.
Even now he squeezed his eyes shut as if shaking off something, spitting out curses and apologies in alternation at unknown targets, then took the lead and began to run.
Kaliona ran after him without thinking.
Fortunately, the Hallucinations that had plagued her relentlessly until just moments ago were no longer heard.
* * *
Whoosh, whoosh.
Shortly after, the sound of dragging feet came from where small groans echoed.
Whoosh, whoosh.
Where that sound finally ceased was in front of the gray-haired boy Kam, who had collapsed with a spear run clean through him.
“Cough, cough……. Hnngh, guh…….”
Kam, grievously wounded, did not immediately notice the presence of the figure approaching his side, only hacking up cough after cough stained with blood.
A pain beyond description churned in his abdomen where the cold blade had pierced through.
But that was not all that tormented him.
Something unknown that had begun to writhe and coil through the blood vessels deep within his body.
He did not know why such a thought should occur to him…….
That sensation was almost like a tiny seed sprouting soft sprouts, taking root, and tickling his flesh…….
Thus coughing violently once more and convulsing his body, Kam belatedly discovered the person who had been gazing down at him all this while.
“Z-Zed.”
He pleaded, sobbing.
“P-please……save me.”
The strongest boy among all those he’d seen since entering this wretched outpost of the Northern Magic Tower.
With vague hope that Zed might help him, a faint glimmer returned to his dimming eyes.
And once he spoke those words of desperate plea aloud, all the resentment he had been pressing down came pouring out like a thread unwinding.
“W-why is this happening……. Why, why must I end up like this……? Why me……. Sob.”
He had done nothing but try hard to live—why was the world so cruel to him?
The injustice and anguish overwhelmed him; he could not hold back the tears that spilled forth.
“Huff, huh…….”
“Cough, Z-Zed?”
But from above Kam’s head came only a bizarre breathing that reeked of blood.
“Done for…….”
And then a low voice that seemed to scrape the vocal cords pierced through to his eardrums.
“This, huff. Can’t make it……to the end. Huh…….”
With rough breathing mixed in and words breaking unnaturally at each syllable, it was hard to make out clearly what was being said…….
Yet somehow hearing that voice made goosebumps erupt across his entire body as if insects were crawling through him.
“Then, huff……. For now, at least…….”
Before he could even grasp what Zed was muttering to himself, a powerful hand suddenly gripped the Spear Shaft lodged in Kam’s abdomen.
“W-what? What are you—. Aaaaah!”
Whoosh, whoosh.
Zed wrenched the spear free without hesitation, then grabbed Kam’s legs and began dragging him somewhere.
Though Kam screamed in agony, blood streaming from him, the pace never slowed.
Moments later, where Zed stopped was none other than the pit that had been dug earlier.
“Huh, wh-what?”
This time, grabbed by the back of the neck and pitched forward, Kam’s eyes saw insects swarming blackly and writhing inside the pit.
And before he could even resist, the strong grip forced his head down into the pit.
“Aaaagh!”
Kam let out a shriek of anguish.
But it was not a good choice. Dreadful insects poured uncontrollably into his gaping mouth.
Not just his mouth, but through every opening in his body, black things flowed endlessly, endlessly, packed in and in like stuffing being crammed into a cloth doll.
At some point, Kam could no longer even scream, only convulsing his entire frame in spasms.
When his body finally became covered with the same deep gray discoloration as the flowers surrounding it.
Whoosh!
The fire Zed summoned swept over everything around him in scarlet except for Zed himself.
The blossoms, blooming red, devoured the forest’s blue and danced violently.
As ash accumulated where the Fire Magic had swept, a grayish-black mark like soot gradually accumulated within the Diamond Mark etched on the boy’s forearm.
Moreover, as he absorbed the Black Energy rising from the blue flowers, his wounded body slowly began to regain its original form.
Zed left that place only after the boy he’d been holding and the Flower Cluster completely lost their shapes and crumbled to dust.
* * *
“Ah, Zed!”
Shortly after, it was Milena who spotted Zed first.
“You’ve come back safely!”
She had left the Flower Cluster first with the other children and was waiting for Zed anxiously. Then, seeing a figure emerge from the smoke, Milena ran forward eagerly.
But her steps halted after only a few paces.
“Z-Zed?”
“Huff, huff…….”
From Zed, who was breathing roughly, wafted a stench far more terrible than before.
Moreover, that bizarre aura that made the spine instinctively shudder.
All the children, still groaning in the lingering aftermath of the Hallucinations, trembled with chills upon seeing Zed like this.
“A-are you alright, Zed? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Only Milena, despite her instinctive unease, forced herself to approach Zed carefully.
It was perhaps fortunate that, despite Zed’s strange aura, he appeared outwardly unharmed.
“That fire—did you make it……?”
Black smoke was still billowing thickly from the direction of the Flower Cluster they had barely escaped.
There was no one among them who could do such a thing but Zed.
Yet Zed did not answer Milena’s question, only staring at her with dull, lusterless eyes.
Milena flinched involuntarily and stepped back.
Why, why was he looking at her with eyes like that?
That gaze was almost like appraising an object……. No, to be more precise, it was something slightly different from that.
Strictly speaking, it was not the gaze of one assessing an object’s worth.
Ah, yes.
It resembled more closely the look Milena’s father would sometimes give the chickens and pigs he kept at home, calculating when to slaughter them.
So that gaze of Zed’s was like looking at livestock being raised with the eventual intention of killing and eating them, that sort of similar…….

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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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