Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 60

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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 60
The moment Velkius heard those words from Liriope—genuine words he’d never imagined her capable of speaking—he felt something indescribable wash over him.
He found himself holding his breath without thinking.
Processing the strange emotion clawing at his heart felt far more difficult than repairing the tattered organ beneath his ribs.
Velkius stared unblinking at the black mist beyond the Defensive Barrier for a long moment.
Then, after a pause, his perfectly sculpted face—though his insides might be anything but whole—turned away again, rigid and unyielding.
But Liriope had already fallen asleep.
Watching her rest peacefully, Velkius sensed that something within him had gone terribly wrong.
He couldn’t say precisely what, but something deep inside him was undeniably, unmistakably broken.
Yet he had no idea what reason could explain this creeping sense of crisis that gripped him now.
That feeling swelled to a breaking point when Liriope stirred in her sleep and rolled toward him, drawing close.
Velkius felt an invisible force shake his entire being far more violently than when the Tower Master’s Mana had ground through his body—and he jerked upright.
His cold red eyes, still veiling his true nature, fixed on Liriope’s sleeping face with something like menace.
The heat rising in his chest and the erratic hammering of his heart suggested he was angry.
Yes—it was clear he was irritated: Liriope kept bringing up her sister, thanking him with brazen familiarity, and now she had the audacity to encroach on the space where he lay.
“Ode, be quiet…….”
Then Liriope murmured something in her sleep, her voice thin and drowsy.
Velkius’s gaze sharpened as he stared at her lips.
After her sister, now Ode—who in the world was that?
Velkius decided he would make certain to tell Liriope his name the next time they met.
He found himself suddenly curious what sound his name would make falling from those lips instead of another’s.
But then, why wasn’t he shaking her awake right now to get what he wanted? Why was he instead sitting beside her in silence, barely breathing?
That, too, he couldn’t understand.
And so that strange day alone in the Outer Estate drew to a close.
Meanwhile, the peculiar bond between the two young souls had crossed its threshold and truly begun.
After that, time flowed forward relentlessly for all.
Sun and moon rose and fell without end, and seasons turned over more than once.
One year passed.
In that long, brief span, the day of the next Banquet Ceremony arrived at last.
And that day marked Liriope’s final liberation from the Outer Estate.
Part 2. Inner Estate of Northern Magic Tower
9. Children of Belegot
Caw, caw!
A forest dense with pale grayish-blue leaves stretching overhead.
At its heart stood a tree so massive that fifty grown men with their arms spread could not encircle it.
Even individual branches sprawling freely in all directions were thick as ordinary tree trunks.
So vast was it that a sleeping figure upon its boughs would appear no larger than a cicada clinging to an ancient trunk.
-Shriek!
Then a creature descended—a bird the size of a house, with steel-black wings and fangs sharp as daggers—arrowing down toward the tree.
To the predator’s eyes, a single girl curled upon a branch seemed nothing more than a bite-sized morsel.
Crash!
But in the next instant, the bird hurtled forward with its beak agape only to strike an invisible Barrier, its bones shattering throughout its body before it plummeted ruthlessly to the ground.
At the same moment, the girl felt the ripple wash across her senses and woke.
[You really do sleep soundly in situations like this, I’ve noticed.]
The moment her heavy golden lashes lifted, amethyst eyes—luminous as precious stones—revealed themselves beneath.
And a voice, tinged with complaint, echoed in her mind.
Liriope blinked slowly, still drowsy, taking in the situation.
The familiar dark ceiling.
Instead of birdsong, the soft chirping of grass insects calling out the morning.
Brilliant blue leaves piercing her vision and artificial lights twinkling like stars in the void.
At last Liriope raised her hand and rubbed her gritty eyes.
‘What… Have I been asleep for a while?’
[Yes—look at that Hourglass. Hasn’t the time I set almost run out?]
Following Ode’s words, she turned her head and spotted the small Hourglass floating in the air.
The shimmering golden sand inside had nearly all fallen to the bottom, forming a small mountain.
Liriope yawned, then withdrew her Mana. The Hourglass floating in the void became golden mist and vanished in an instant.
As she slowly sat up, her hair—grown longer over the year since she hadn’t cut it once—cascaded down her back like a curtain woven from sunlight.
Liriope stretched her arms upward from her perch on the thick branch, arching her back.
The sight was quite serene and peaceful—so much so it seemed unbelievable she was still within the Outer Estate.
‘I really did sleep well—must have been almost three days straight. You must have been bored, Ode.’
[Oh, absolutely! Every minute, every second crawled by like a tortoise, it was maddening! Today especially felt like time itself had stopped, I thought I’d lose my mind.]
‘If you’re that bored, just wake me up.’
[How could I wake a child in the middle of sound sleep? Do I look like such an irresponsible teacher?]
Liriope’s expression grew wry as she listened to Ode complain.
Though her body was young, Liriope’s mind was far more mature, and yet Ode knew this perfectly well while always treating her like a child.
Perhaps the years they’d spent together had made him see her as even younger.
[But thinking that even this tiresome scenery ends today—it’s such a relief.]
Hearing Ode’s sigh, Liriope surveyed the landscape below the tree slowly.
The place where she’d been sleeping until just now was the massive tree that held the exit to the Outer Estate.
Grown far larger than it had been a year ago, from its crown the lush forest spread below her gaze.
A memory flickered—of that forest dyed entirely in sickly black—but only for an instant.
She closed her eyes once, opened them, and as the forest’s blue-green landscape returned to view, a feeling similar to what Ode had expressed washed over her.
Just half a year past, she’d never dared to set foot in this forest.
No—it wasn’t just the forest.
The Contamination density throughout the Outer Estate had swollen to an unfathomable level, such that at first she could barely find any safe ground in this underground cavern.
It had taken nearly a month before her Mana Core recovered enough for her to use even weak Purification Magic on her own.
From then on, she began purifying earth and air from the periphery inward, gradually expanding her range of activity toward the center.
Whoosh!
Liriope continued purifying daily, yet poisonous vapor kept seeping up from the Black Lake below, so she added another layer of Barrier enveloping the entire lake.
Then she summoned a wind to ventilate the air with magic.
‘Oh, right—I need to clean up that bird too.’
The grotesque creature that had crashed into her Barrier moments ago vanished without a trace at the smallest gesture of her hand.
Liriope’s Magic had become incomparably more refined and precise than a year before—the result of effort carved from her very bones.
Fortune had blessed her with abundant time, and she’d had a stern master right beside her to drill her relentlessly, day and night.
Though, to be truthful, not all the credit belonged solely to Ode.
Ode would never admit it, but in truth Liriope’s Magic had been deeply influenced by someone else.
Whoosh.
As Liriope’s Ventilation Magic swept through the surrounding air, it also caught her hair and her clothes, and swept across something beneath her as well, making it flutter visibly.
A Black Cloak spread across the thick branch.
Liriope’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
‘What… When did I leave this here?’
But she didn’t need to puzzle out who had visited while she slept.
There was only one person in the Outer Estate who could pass through Liriope’s Barriers without a sound.

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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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