Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 70

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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 70
[What are you two doing right now? It’s the middle of the night, and you’re not even wiping your feet before bed. Tsk, tsk.]
Ode mocked them both, as if unable to bear another moment of their childish banter.
‘I shouldn’t push this any further. If I provoke his temper, he’ll become insufferable.’
Liriope sensed that Velkius’s mood had genuinely soured compared to before, and she made a quick decision.
“Fine, then just sit there until you’re satisfied. I don’t care.”
She nodded as if granting a favor, then closed her eyes and lay down, settling back into sleep.
A piercing gaze found its way to Liriope’s profile.
The intensity of it was unmistakable even without looking, and her skin burned under the weight of his stare, but Liriope pretended not to notice.
The frost-sharp chill emanating from ahead cut so deeply that the warmth touching it seemed to plummet five degrees in an instant, leaving her body trembling with cold.
Liriope felt not quite threatened, but decidedly uncomfortable.
So, without thinking, she quietly drew the Black Cloak toward herself instead of the blanket, trying to shield herself from the biting cold and that relentless gaze.
It had an unexpected effect.
The moment his gaze caught on the familiar black cloak—one he felt he’d seen before—Velkius’s expression shifted.
His stare, still cold and piercing, quietly fixed on the small frame of the girl wrapped in his cloak.
And shortly after…….
The ferocious aura that had seemed ready to unleash spikes in all directions suddenly subsided as if it had never been.
“You really do exasperate me.”
Yet even as he spoke, his voice that followed held more than half of the chill it had carried moments before.
Creak.
When Velkius reached his arm over Liriope’s body and pressed against the bed, a grating sound shattered the night’s silence.
“Why I wanted to keep you in the Outer Estate from the beginning, and why—despite those feelings persisting—I let you out into the world…….”
The moment his low voice cut through the darkness, Liriope’s eyes snapped open.
“You act as though you see straight through me, never asking why, never wanting to know.”
The eyes that met hers again seemed to pierce her like an awl.
To Velkius, Liriope was both pitiful and laughable.
For the past year, even he hadn’t found the answer to his own contradictory and convoluted nature—so how could another person so easily grasp it?
From Velkius’s perspective, Liriope hadn’t even understood half of why he’d released her from the Outer Estate.
Where Liriope was concerned, Velkius’s emotion and reason always flowed illogically, and the thoughts and actions that resulted from this were nothing short of bizarre.
“Not once in the past year have you ever asked me anything first.”
He had always enjoyed mysteries and derived pleasure from unraveling them, making them his own, but with this girl before him, patience had become increasingly difficult.
“You’ve never even been curious about my name. I kept waiting, thinking that someday you’d ask first, but if I hadn’t finally broken and told you myself, it’s clear you would’ve never bothered to learn it.”
A cold smile, devoid of warmth, spread across Velkius’s lips.
Over the past year, time had been abundant, but Liriope had never truly opened her heart to him.
Though she seemed more familiar than before, she had never let the most essential part of herself slip through to him, not even a fragment.
As if she were dealing with someone she still needed to guard against and be cautious around, Liriope always maintained an invisible wall, keeping distance between them.
“I knew that you had only ever had your sister, but……. For me to matter less to you than even the men who merely passed through the Outer Estate—that’s too much.”
In truth, based on his nature alone, it made no sense for him to release Liriope from the Outer Estate.
He should have buried her deeper instead, hidden away so thoroughly that not a single strand of her hair could be seen.
But he had, for the first time, gone against his nature and suppressed the displeasure still churning within him, setting her free into the world.
For no reason other than that she wanted it—because even now she looked at him as though unable to comprehend him.
Because, to a degree he could scarcely believe, he didn’t want to be hated by her.
“If I disappeared from before you like this, you wouldn’t search for me, would you? You might not even worry, the way you did when others were missing—you might even feel relieved. I’m not so foolish as not to know even that much…….”
This girl, colder than anyone else in the world, likely had no idea of what he was capable of doing just to exist for even the briefest moment in her gaze.
“So it irritates me most that even though I’m this angry, I don’t feel even a speck of regret about meeting you instead.”
Velkius gazed at Liriope’s face with something closer to desolation than rage, then left her side abruptly, abandoning a fractured smile in his wake.
“Of course, feelings like mine mean nothing to you anyway.”
Because this inexplicable, destructive desire that had begun rummaging through his insides at some point was hard to suppress.
But not wanting her to glimpse this savage side of himself, he chose to hide it from her.
And Liriope, left alone, became rigid as ice, then exhaled a belated breath of confusion toward the empty space where Velkius had been.
“What…….”
Words that Velkius had long contained only within himself, erupting now without warning.
They lingered in the room with a resonance deeper than the fragrance of purple flowers.
In the end, that night, Liriope could not sleep again.
Contrary to Velkius’s assumption, this time it wasn’t her sister and the other children filling her mind—it was his.
She wished that the dawn’s light would carry away all her turmoil, but in the Underground where she lay, not a single ray of light penetrated, and there was no way to erase the ghost of the boy’s face that lingered in the darkness.
* * *
“Everyone, get up!”
The next morning, heavy footsteps sounded through the darkness, and then a violently intense light suddenly paralyzed her vision.
‘What? Is it morning already? I didn’t sleep a wink…….’
Liriope, who had been awake all night, forced her aching eyes open. Then a man with long bronze hair bound in a single braid came into focus against the glare.
It was Cameron, the supervisor of the lowest level of the Outer Estate, whom she’d met yesterday.
True to his word, with morning had come his arrival, waking the children from their fitful sleep.
“One minute. Get outside.”
Cameron opened the cell gate and issued a terse command to the children.
Liriope, pressing her temple throbbing from sleep deprivation, was the first to slip out of the cage.
The other children, hesitating for a moment, followed one by one, shuffling behind her.
“Time’s up. Incinerate it.”
“Yes, Cameron!”
Whoosh!
Exactly one minute later, the cell was engulfed in Black Flame.
The startled children gasped sharply.
“Pity. If even one of you had disobeyed and caused trouble, it would have made a fine lesson.”
Cameron twisted his mouth into a mocking smile as he looked at the frightened children.
“Last year, one Successful Candidate who stubbornly refused to listen had to learn the hard way before he came to his senses. You all seem fortunate enough, given that you left the room with all your limbs intact.”
At that moment, Liriope’s eyes twitched slightly.
‘A Successful Candidate from last year…….’
Was there another candidate besides the children she knew? Or could it be……?

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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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