Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 71

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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 71
Cameron turned away coldly, leaving the children to their various anxieties.
“Everyone follow me. I don’t care if you act recklessly, but you’ll bear the consequences of your own actions.”
He led the now-silent children somewhere else.
“Girls use the right entrance, boys use the left. You have ten minutes. Wash yourselves clean—I don’t want dirt and grime running everywhere.”
The children bathed in something that could finally be called a proper bathhouse for the first time in ages.
Of course, back at the Outer Estate they’d been able to clean themselves using Cleanliness Magic Stones and Magic, but scrubbing away the grime with lukewarm water—washing it away with their own hands—felt entirely different.
The fresh clothes handed to them afterward were nothing to boast about: cheap undergarments and a featureless black tunic and trousers.
Only Liriope retrieved her original Black Cloak and draped it back over her shoulders.
Cameron regarded her with displeasure for a moment, but said nothing.
Yet as she fastened the cloak, she couldn’t help but conjure the face of the boy who had visited last night.
In that moment, Liriope’s lips twisted slightly.
‘He kept changing his hair color and eye color with Magic, so it seemed he wanted to hide his identity. I pretended not to notice on purpose.’
But when she recalled Velkius—how he’d been speaking as though Liriope had deliberately ignored him all this time—her chest tightened with an inexplicable frustration.
“Eat within ten minutes.”
The children were led past the communal bathhouse into a room with an old wooden table.
The rations were meager: a hard loaf of bread, milk that smelled faintly sour, and a withered apple.
“What? This is worse than what we got at the Outer Estate.”
“Right. Weren’t we supposed to have it good once we made it to the Inner Estate?”
Though they all looked disappointed and lost their appetite, they recognized this as the complaints of the well-fed and soon began eating without further grumbling.
Another ten minutes vanished in an instant.
“Follow me. We’re beginning today’s training.”
A short while later, they arrived at an empty room after passing through a dark corridor.
Cameron made the children sit on the bare floor, then delivered his verdict coldly.
“Listen carefully, all of you. One week from now, you’ll be deployed as a search team to Zone 7 on the outskirts of the Contaminated Holy Ground.”
A shock rippled through the room instantly.
“We’re going to the Contaminated Holy Ground? And in just a week?”
“Wait, you’re telling us to go to the Contaminated Holy Ground just like that? What do you mean?”
Cameron paid no attention to their panic and continued with cold precision.
“Fools. Wasn’t it your own will that brought you to the Northern Magic Tower in the first place? Yet you raise a commotion over something this trivial? Don’t tell me you’re about to claim you didn’t know what Mages do?”
“But… we’re not official Mages yet, are we? We haven’t learned anything…”
“Silence! You haven’t learned anything? Then what of all the things you saw, heard, and learned firsthand at the Outer Estate?”
His sharp rebuke cracked like a whip across their ears, and the children flinched, closing their mouths.
“The environment you lived in at the Outer Estate was equivalent to Zone 9—the outermost boundary of the Contaminated Holy Ground.”
“The Outer Estate was… Zone 9 of the Contaminated Holy Ground?”
“That’s right. Though it was the easiest difficulty level, you survived it on your own. That makes you official Mages already. So now you must advance to the next stage.”
The children seemed bewildered, unable to believe it.
They appeared startled by the revelation that they—however barely—had survived an environment comparable to the Contaminated Holy Ground through their own strength.
Yet simultaneously, their expressions showed a trace of disappointment: the hardships they’d endured were merely the gentlest level of what awaited them.
‘This is rather amusing. The environment they survived over the past year must be quite different from the Outer Estate as that man knew it.’
Liriope silently shared Ode’s wry amusement.
Since ancient times, the Contaminated Holy Ground had been divided into the “outer reaches” and the “heart.”
By degree of contamination, it was further stratified into Zones 1 through 9, each managed by the Mages of the Three Magic Towers.
Zone 1 lay at the very center of the Holy Ground, where the contamination was thickest.
Taking that point as a baseline, the zone numbers increased as contamination grew lighter.
This was why the Outer Estate of Belegoat had been calibrated to Zone 9 difficulty—the lightest contamination—so that even children newly awakened to Mana could survive if they tried.
But over the past year, the danger level at the Outer Estate had risen abnormally and sharply.
So in reality, it had likely reached the hazard level of Zone 6 or 7.
But the children, ignorant of this fact, shrank before Cameron’s words.
“Still… isn’t Zone 7 too much of a sudden jump? You said the Outer Estate was Zone 9…”
“No—if you train properly under me for just one week, it’ll be entirely possible. Make it possible!”
The fierce determination in Cameron’s eyes made it clear he intended to drill them mercilessly.
“Since you’ve chosen to live as Mages, there’s no escaping the mission of entering the Contaminated Holy Ground. So if you want to survive even one day longer, you either change the Holy Ground—or change yourselves.”
As Cameron said, purifying the Contaminated Holy Ground—which spread like a plague each year—was the sacred duty of Mages.
No wonder people called it “the Mage’s grave” and “the cradle of calamity.”
Yet it was harder than it sounded.
The cause was the Shadow that emanated from the core at the very center of the Contaminated Holy Ground.
That mysterious creature of black, formless matter spewed toxins and relentlessly stained everything it touched black, ultimately dragging all toward death.
Especially when the irregular Flood Periods came and the Shadow overflowed outward, the devastation intensified.
The lands that Mages had labored to purify would be smothered again in black poison, rendering all their effort worthless.
Thus, without utterly destroying the core that birthed the Shadow, true restoration of the land would remain forever distant.
“But Belegoat is merciful to brave warriors who fear no death.”
Cameron’s tone and momentum shifted somewhere in the middle of his speech.
“From now on, within the Inner Estate, you will be treated with differential regard according to each of your individual abilities.”
Cameron was clearly no stranger to teaching new recruits.
Having first driven the children with the whip of confusion and anxiety, he now dangled the carrot before them.
“Soft beds and fluffy blankets, comfortable sleeping quarters, delicacies so exquisite your tongue will melt with delight, clean and elegant new clothes, and all manner of luxury items you’ve spent your entire lives dreaming of—all of it can be yours.”
The children, accustomed to want, soon found themselves mesmerized by his impossible words.
“Everything can belong to you.”
Cameron fixed each child with an intense stare, as though branding them with his will.
“You are this year’s first Inner Estate graduates—promising indeed. So if you wish it, hunger for it! Seize it with naked greed! Belegoat will champion every one of your desires. Only the strong survive, and only the survivors deserve to possess everything. Burn these words into your hearts!”
Bright, gleaming eyes fixed upon Cameron like daggers.
Whether from his carrot-and-whip strategy or something else, desperation and greed now flickered across some of the children’s faces—emotions they’d never worn before.
Only Liriope’s expression remained lukewarm.
‘This man… he’s weaving Vitality Magic, Mental Awakening Magic, and Effect Amplification Magic into his speech. The individual magics are hardly remarkable, yet the application is so exquisite it’s breathtaking.’
At Ode’s silent marvel, Liriope’s lips twisted slightly.
Indeed, the title of overseer was not given lightly. Cameron knew how to hold these ignorant children in the palm of his hand and bend them to his will.
Cameron then spread his Mana before their eager eyes, and something materialized before the children: a Black Cube.
“Now, this is something you’ll need to become familiar with, so take a good look.”

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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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