Touch My Brother and You Die - Chapter 22

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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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#Side Story: Sage Oswald Desires a Revolution

When I came to my senses, I was standing at the Riverbank.
To my left lay forest, and to my right, more forest. Ahead, a village sprawled before me, flames rising from its heart.
I had no idea why I was here, where here even was. More pressingly—who was I?
I strained desperately to recall my identity, but found not a single clue. Scattered faces that seemed familiar drifted through my mind, nothing more. I appeared to know a sharp-tongued woman with a monocle and a morally bankrupt woman wearing a mask, though the thought of them made my head ache.
I abandoned the effort to remember those women.
Having given up on thinking, I caught sight of my reflection in the river’s surface and drew closer to the water’s edge. What first seized my attention was the root-like scar that covered half my body. At first glance it resembled a tattoo, but upon closer inspection, it was clearly an ancient wound.
It began at the left corner of my face, traced down across my shoulder, and extended along my entire arm—no ordinary injury could have produced such a pattern. It looked as though I had been struck by lightning itself.
As for other distinguishing features, I wore fine clothing, appeared to be in my early fifties, and was, frankly, devastatingly handsome.
I had initially mistaken the scar for a tattoo because the marks were so beautifully rendered, spreading with such elegant precision, and harmonized so perfectly with my handsome features that I assumed they had been deliberately inscribed. Combined with my already striking face, the mysterious allure created an almost breathtaking impression.
To look this handsome at my age—how extraordinarily beautiful must I have been in my youth? While the lack of memory meant I felt no particular loss, the inability to recall my own youthful visage was genuinely frustrating.
“Help! Someone save me!”
Not merely handsome, but intellectually so—could I have been a teacher or professor?
As I pondered this, a small child came running from across the river. The girl was crying, and rough-looking men pursued her. It was obvious the child was in grave danger, and those men chasing her were clearly villains. Without hesitation, I shifted my mana.
Wait. Shifted my mana? What does that even—oh, it works?
Having channeled my mana through the proper method, I pointed my fingers at the men to designate their range, then spoke the spell I intended to cast.
“Power reduction. Transmutation triple-layer.”
With a crackling sound and a flash of light, the three men chasing the child burned to death.
Wait, I deliberately reduced the power and only meant to scare them a little. How did they die?
Standing before the charred corpses that reeked of burnt flesh, I kept my eyes on the child. She had initially feared me, but soon grasped my clothing and began pleading desperately.
“Mage sir, please save my mom and dad!”
Ah, so I was a mage. The problem was, while I seemed quite skilled at killing people, I was apparently terrible at saving them. I tried to explain this to the child, but she squeezed out every tear and tried to drag me along.
I couldn’t simply abandon her.
Reluctantly dragged along by the child’s hand, I encountered men plundering and setting fire to the innocent village. Several villagers already lay dead, and one brute was dragging a woman by her hair.
No—one should never grab someone by the hair like that. Where did such manners come from?
This required no grand technique. I pointed my finger at him to designate his range and brought down lightning.
The man died without even a cry, his body consumed by flames. All eyes turned toward me. Before the armed men could draw their blades and charge, I checked every last one with my finger and converted my mana into lightning.
“Continuous spell, annihilation.”
Thunder and lightning rained down from the sky with thunderous crashes, and I felt my mana draining rapidly. Once this was over, I wouldn’t be able to cast magic for some time.
After eliminating even the last fleeing man, the village fell silent. Ah, it had been so long since I unleashed something that powerful—my entire body felt sore.
As I patted my shoulders, the child who had been crying beside me stopped abruptly and hiccupped. Her parents rushed over, tore her from my side, and held her close. The man, his complexion deathly pale, trembled as he forced out words of gratitude.
“Th-thank you. I don’t know how to repay such a debt….”
At least he had the sense to offer repayment. Let me count on my fingers what I needed immediately. The man’s eyes went wide with terror, and he fell backward onto his rear. He must have thought I was about to cast another spell.
“House. Food. Money.”
I held up three fingers and demanded he provide these things at once. I didn’t know who I was, where I was, had no money, and was hungry—surely these basic provisions were reasonable to ask for.
And so I came to settle in this Village.

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With my presence established in the Village, the burned settlement was rapidly reconstructed. The bandits dared not show their faces while I remained, and when the tax collectors arrived, I drove them all away—leaving the Village with no money to pay out, and thus it flourished.
Those wretched noble bastards took everything without lifting a finger to help. One day, when a group calling themselves the Baron’s Private Army came swarming in, I thrashed them thoroughly and warned them never to show their faces here again. They promised to return for vengeance, but I felt not the slightest fear. I even waited for them to come back, yet no word has arrived to this day.
As for the little girl who first brought me to this place—Diana—she kept bringing me information about bandits hiding in the Mountain, and I hunted them all down. My purse grew quite heavy from the spoils.
When rumors spread that a mage living here protected the Village from bandit raids and shielded them from the nobles’ extortionate taxes, people began to flock here, and the Village grew steadily. Perhaps because of this, the people began calling me their leader out of respect.
Though the title sounded rough, it was also a form of elevation, and I found the sentiment not entirely disagreeable. Thus I became the leader of this Village.
“Leader! Now that we have gathered enough people, let us strike against the Baron! That wretch deserves a thorough beating!”
“Because of his relentless taxation, my child starved to death, Leader! Please avenge us!”
What madness—extorting money from innocent people is already a crime that heaven and earth condemn together, yet he squeezed them until their children starved?! Filthy nobles!
I could not remain idle. I decided to march on the Baron’s Mansion. Besides, I was already irritated that those Private Army dogs kept saying they would visit but never showed up. This was the perfect opportunity.
In a fight, the first strike is everything.
I emptied my coffers to purchase a large quantity of mana crystals, then instructed the villagers to scatter them in a wide circle around the Baron’s Mansion.
This way, the spell’s power would amplify, the area of effect would be perfectly defined in one go, and there would be no unfortunate incidents of lightning bolts striking outside the Mansion.

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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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