Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 8

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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 8
The other candidates hadn’t noticed, but the Illusion Magic that had deceived them all was not Evangelien’s work.
While the test was in full swing, a single black butterfly had been hovering irritatingly in front of her eyes the entire time.
It grated on her nerves so much that Evangelien had tried to burn the butterfly away.
But in that instant, as if the butterfly had been waiting for exactly that moment, it drove its body into the Hourglass before Evangelien’s eyes and vanished like smoke.
It left behind a strange ripple, like heat shimmer rising from pavement, that lingered only as an afterimage.
It had happened in the blink of an eye, and because the trace the butterfly left behind was so faint, no one but Evangelien had noticed anything amiss.
Of course it was galling to admit, but she didn’t currently possess the ability to weave an Illusion Magic so intricate it could deceive everyone in the room.
‘……Is that something the Four Pairs of Wings could manage? Of course, there’d be no reason to intentionally underreport one’s own abilities…….’
And then a strong doubt suddenly seized Evangelien.
‘Besides, why would he deliberately let me know it was Illusion Magic? Belkiers has always been inscrutable—it’s infuriating.’
Well, in any case, today was a great success just from seeing the slack-jawed face of that arrogant fool.
‘Moreover, if things go like this, I’ll be the Selector this time, so I’ll win the wager too.’
Only two people would pass today’s test.
Yet Belkiers had never shown interest in such trivial work as being a Selector.
So whatever Belkiers’s true intentions were, Evangelien felt refreshed and pleased.
“Anyway, I don’t know what you were thinking when you helped me. Belkiers, since you did this of your own accord, you can’t think this puts you in my debt…….”
“Not really. I just chose you because you seemed more convenient than Leo.”
But an unexpected answer came back.
A voice cool and dry, like late autumn tipping into early winter, settled upon the colorless corridor.
Evangelien’s brow furrowed in bewilderment.
“Huh? What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t have any friends.”
“What?”
“No sworn bonds, no master, no acquaintances even for show—you’re utterly alone, always, everywhere. The only shallow connection you have is with the Magic Tower Master, but that person has no interest in you whatsoever.”
“What—what are you saying?”
Evangelien, flustered, questioned her ears, but Belkiers continued impassively with what he had to say.
“You treat everyone equally with coldness and contempt, regarding all but the Magic Tower Master as inferior—so there’s no one who harbors any affection for you. Which means if you vanished this very moment, there wouldn’t be a single person looking for you.”
“Are you picking a fight with me right now?”
“No. You wondered why, so I’m telling you.”
Evangelien still couldn’t understand what the boy before her intended by spouting such things.
Suddenly confronted with her own character flaws, her mood darkened and her face twisted into a scowl.
Just then, a cloud outside the window covered the sun, and a faint shadow fell across the corridor where the two stood.
Belkiers’s eyes, like glass beads of gold, held not the warm glow of a living sun but the cold, inert sheen of burnished metal.
Looking into them for so long created an eerie, desolate sensation.
“Evangelien, you’ve harbored a deep inferiority complex toward me since long ago, yet you’ve been struggling desperately to hide it.”
For a moment, a powerful dissonance—strong enough to suppress her own displeasure—crawled up the back of her neck.
“So I judged that no matter what I did to you, it wouldn’t create any meaningful variable in your future actions.”
But when she instinctively took a step back in wariness, it was already too late.
“That’s why I chose you.”
“That’s……?”
“Though I’ll let you win that wager just now, so don’t feel too wronged.”
Before she could even mount a defense, her vision went black.
As if suddenly hurled into a frozen abyss or a pitch-black void, a primal terror descended upon her entire being.
A merciless gravitational force, as though it would squeeze every organ from her body, constricted her from all sides.
In that terrible threat of absolute annihilation—where she seemed destined to be crushed to dust and scattered as nothing into the void—Evangelien could only gasp for breath.
She clawed frantically at her throat with her nails, gasping and choking, until finally she drew her Mana to its absolute limit and detonated it.
At the same time, the formless force that had been constricting her like a net pierced through her skin.
Crack! Thwack-thwack-thwack……!
The next moment came a sound like soft fruit being sliced by something sharp.
The Mana that had been thickly blanketing everything like a night sky finally withdrew.
The smell of blood that lingered in the now-silent corridor was quickly swept away by the hollow wind.
-Belk……ia……s, you’re……m……a……d……won’t……forgive…….
A haggard whispered curse, infused with faint Mana, clung adhesively from behind.
But Belkiers, as if hearing nothing at all, calmly turned and walked down the corridor.
The unidentifiable fragments scattered in his wake soon began to writhe sluggishly, then crawled quietly into the shadows and disappeared.
* * *
Footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Belkiers Bellegoet stepped across the crimson carpet spread on the floor and set foot upon the endless stairs.
After a short while, he arrived at the end of the long gallery of the 80th Floor Corridor.
…….
There hung a gallery of portraits depicting the successive Official Successors of the Northern Magic Tower.
He had heard that on the 100th Floor, which he had not yet reached, portraits of all the past Magic Tower Masters were displayed.
Belkiers fixed his gaze upon the most familiar of the portraits arrayed chronologically before him.
A boy of weary countenance with black hair and golden eyes.
This was the portrait hung six years ago when Belkiers, at the mere age of eight, was recognized as an Official Successor of the Magic Tower.
Since that day, this painting had remained unchanged each time he passed through the 80th Floor corridor, nothing but a meaningless backdrop.
Yet that familiar scenery had abruptly changed without warning this very morning.
Beside Belkiers, who was very much alive, an unfamiliar girl’s portrait had suddenly appeared.
The meaning was unmistakable.
The tower’s chosen one—the ‘most suitable’.
Since the current Magic Tower Master had been away on personal business for some time, Belkiers alone had discovered it at this point in time.
The boy’s head turned in a smooth glide, and his hair—laden with dark shadows—swayed.
His unflinching gaze pierced through something beyond the thick wall.
Today was the day new lambs had entered the Outer Residence of the Northern Magic Tower.
The only possible source of this unexpected development was that.
Turning his head once more, Belkiers stared with relentless intensity at the unfamiliar face in the portrait, as if etching it upon his retina, and finally allowed his lips to curve into a smile.
“How amusing.”
Whoosh.
In the windless darkness, a deep blue robe embroidered with the Four Pairs of Wings fluttered slowly.
Like lightning striking through storm clouds down to the earth, black Mana erupted in a brilliant radiance and enveloped the boy.
From the very tips of his Black Luster hair, a gradual bleaching began.
His inorganic golden eyes too transformed to a red like molten metal.
Belkiers, transformed in an instant to a form similar to Evangelien’s, stepped without hesitation through the doorway opened in midair.
‘Then, shall I go before anyone discovers it?’
To find and eliminate the girl in the portrait before the tower’s master returned.
Such was the purpose of Belkiers Bellegoet.

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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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