Sage 19

Before I was hit by a truck and died on the day of the college entrance exam, the shows I watched the most were morning dramas.

It wasn’t that I chose to watch them, but my mom always turned on the morning drama in the living room when I was washing up and getting ready for school. I was basically forced to watch them.

I don’t know exactly how many morning dramas I’ve seen, but most of them shared similar characters and repertoires. Forbidden love, secrets of birth, terminal illness, amnesia, and so on.

My capacity was too small to understand the charm of the morning dramas that I watched in 10-minute increments before going to school. I secretly thought it was inexplicable why most Koreans, including my mom, were so enthusiastic about morning dramas where people were always slapping each other and pulling each other’s hair out.

Anyway, the subject of the secret of one’s birth has always been overly stimulating to people’s interest. That’s probably why everyone watches them with interest even though they curse them as trashy.

“He’s an illegitimate child?”

I took a deep breath so as not to spit out the tea I was drinking like a character in a morning drama who spits out their orange juice when they hear about someone’s secret of birth.

Fortunately, I didn’t spit out what I was eating. Instead, I choked and coughed for a while. How could this fact be revealed right after I thought there was no problem with his bloodline?

This is not mentioned in the first volume of <The Book of Irkus>. No matter how much I forgot Ra-whatever’s full name while memorizing English words, the information ‘illegitimate child’ was so valuable that if I had seen it even once, I wouldn’t have forgotten it easily. In the first volume, it was only stated that Irkus’s position in the imperial palace was weak because he was the third prince.

I should have guessed it when the writing style was so dry, but whoever wrote that fantasy novel was definitely not a very kind narrator.

Please put important information like this kind of secret of birth at the front. For people like me who only read the first volume and fall into this world, put the important information at the front.

Teriz, who was quietly watching my reaction as I was having a mental breakdown, clicked her tongue. Beside her, Adelaide was badmouthing me to Teriz, saying, ‘And that thing calls itself the Great Sage…’ I could see it, but I didn’t have the energy to say anything back.

“You didn’t even know that when you took the child in? It’s common knowledge among nobles and royalty, even if commoners don’t know. You were an imperial mage 200 years ago.”

“Why are you bringing up something that happened two centuries ago? And my nationality is not of Robain Empire.”

“Then where is it from?”

“South Korea.”

“What?”

“It’s a place.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

I did dream of immigrating to Canada for a very short time. If I became successful in the future, I was going to give up my Korean nationality and write a global success story. I was an ambitious high school senior.

But that ambition was shattered on the day of the college entrance exam, so I was still Korean. Although this is also not a normal nationality in that no one understands my nationality.

“I’m unaffiliated. I don’t have a nationality here anymore.”

“Good for you. You’re so proud of it. I feel sorry for Irkus. I really don’t understand why he’s following you around when you’re such a terrible guardian. It would be better if I took him in as my grandson and raised him.”

“Do you want to?”

“Oh, no. Grandma, don’t say that. I don’t want to be siblings with that guy, even on paper.”

For six months after I healed Teriz’s rotten right foot, Irkus and I left the Southern Forest and spent time in Carabel, the capital of the Kingdom of Kaman.

I tried to freeload at the headquarters of Night Fellow, the intelligence guild run by Teriz, but Teriz immediately kicked me out. In the end, I had to find the bag of gallons I had stashed somewhere in the atelier and rent a room with my own money.

Gilbert and Dane, as well as the other tree spirits, didn’t seem to care that Irkus and I would be gone for a few years. Instead, they even saw us off, saying to have a good trip. I thought Gilbert, who had lived the longest, would be a little sad, but he even packed our bags, telling us to get lost quickly.

Perhaps it was because life in the Southern Forest was quite boring for Irkus as well, but Irkus followed my words without complaint when I said we should spend about half a year in Carabel before entering the imperial palace.

Well, unless you’re going to meditate in a temple, the Southern Forest, where tree spirits are swarming, wouldn’t be very fun.

It’s not that I can say much when I chose to hole up in the Southern Forest to live peacefully, but there weren’t any particular incidents because humans were afraid of the tree spirits and didn’t come into the forest much. In other words, it was a place where there were only threats to life and no suitable entertainment for children.

If we were going to behead the emperor right away, we could just go right in, but if we were going to find our place step by step, we needed some preparation.

The number of gallon bags I found after turning the atelier upside down was more than I thought, so I had enough initial funds, but I didn’t have enough information about the Empire.

I needed to know exactly what kind of guy Ra-whatever was, and I needed to find out how many generations had passed since the 13th emperor I had killed. They say that if you know your enemy and know yourself, you will win a hundred battles, but I didn’t know anything, so it looked like I would lose a hundred battles.

Even if we went in without knowing anything, force would solve most things, but I was worried that I might lose control and kill everyone again.

I decided to refrain from using attack magic on humans until Irkus became emperor. I was worried that if I killed people for no reason, it would have a bad effect on Irkus’s education, and he might grow up to be a lunatic emperor. If Irkus was a lunatic from the beginning, I would just leave him alone, but I couldn’t let such a good and innocent child be corrupted.

I had been holed up in the Southern Forest for too long, so I was out of touch with the world, and Irkus had been trapped in the imperial palace all his life, so he didn’t know anything about life outside the palace. Unfortunately, Irkus didn’t know much about the political situation inside the palace either.

At first, I thought it was because he was only good at magic and had no talent for politics, but after learning that he was an illegitimate child, it was natural that he didn’t know. He had no choice but to be ignorant since he didn’t have any close associates to tell him the news or do politics for him.

Irkus had four half-siblings. Two older brothers, one older sister, and one younger sister.

Among them, one brother and the sister were dead, so that left only that Ra-whatever and the younger sister. The younger sister was of the same mother as Ra-whatever and was too young to be considered a rival. So, in practice, Irkus’s only rival was Ra-whatever.

It was amazing that he had survived while his two older siblings were killed, even though he was an illegitimate child with no external support. I wondered how he had survived without a teacher and without being able to use magic properly. Did he survive on the protagonist buff?

According to the information Teriz had obtained, Irkus was not a legitimate child born to an empress or concubine, but an illegitimate child born to a mysterious woman of unknown origin.

This ‘mysterious woman’ must be a descendant of Yekarina. Which witch lost her mind again and fell in love with the emperor? I inwardly shook my head at Yekarina’s terrible genes for easily falling in love. It was amazing that there was a witch who fell in love and had descendants even after countless generations.

Of course, I didn’t think that the witch who was Irkus’s mother would take root in the imperial palace like Yekarina, but I also didn’t expect her to just leave the child behind.

The emperor, perhaps because he felt some fatherly affection, gave Irkus the title of Third Prince, but it is not easy for a prince without any external support to gain a foothold in a hierarchical society where bloodline and status are strictly observed. It would be fortunate if he had lived without being abused.

As if to prove this, Irkus was a little clumsy in imperial etiquette for a prince. He got better quickly when I taught him, but at first, I was a little flustered. I thought the etiquette had changed with the times. After all, these etiquettes also have trends.

Irkus had a good physique by nature, but his nutritional status was not very good. I don’t know how many assassination attempts he had been subjected to, but I saw many small scars on his naked body a few times. I deliberately didn’t acknowledge them so as not to stimulate bad memories, but I should have asked him about them and healed them all if I had known this would happen.

I didn’t ask Irkus in detail what kind of hardships he had suffered, and based on the information I had gathered by being observant, I just said that the Great Sage knows everything… and didn’t ask anything. It’s almost a year since I took him in, and I just found out about Irkus’s secret of birth.

I mentally kicked out the past me who thought I had a talent for education, even for a moment. I shouldn’t be an educator.

“Why didn’t he tell me about his family?”

“You probably didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t ask. It’s weird to just go up to a kid and say, ‘You’re a prince, so why don’t you have any supporters? Are you an illegitimate child?'”

“Only at times like this, you’re so logical.”

Teriz threw a bundle of documents at me with a look of exasperation.

It was the document about the political structure of the Robain Empire that I had asked for the other day. I tried to appease her by saying that I would treat her rotten foot for free in exchange for information, but I was punched in the fist and almost got kicked out of the Night Fellow headquarters.

I could have found out for myself, but that was too much trouble. Why should I find out for myself when I’m right in front of an intelligence guild?

I took a closer look at the current political situation in the Robain Empire, which I had barely obtained after giving Teriz more money. The bundle of documents that Teriz handed over was so dense and thick that it seemed like it was trying to become an encyclopedia in the future.

“The emperor is already the 21st? They really change them as often as they breathe.”

“Because the nobles are gaining power. They replace them if they don’t like them.”

“Why are there so many factions?”

“Because it’s stagnant there, too. There are only two major factions. The emperor’s faction and the noble’s faction. It’s just that they’re divided into smaller groups within those.”

“It’s just like Joseon.”

The memory of studying Korean history flashed sharply through my mind. The memory of memorizing Noron, Soron, Namin, and Seoin while banging my head. They say that when a country is about to perish, the political situation becomes dirty, and the Robain Empire was exactly like that.

I killed and left the emperor as the 13th, and now it’s the 21st? I folded my fingers to count how many there were between the 13th and the 21st.

It was funny to think that there had been seven guys who had ascended to the position of emperor and then descended in two centuries. Darwin and the 13th ruled for a long time even though they were such lunatics, but the emperors these days seemed to have lives more precarious than a mayfly.

“I don’t know why everyone wants to be emperor when it’s just a figurehead position now. You just end up suffering if you get power.”

“You’re trying to make the child you’re taking care of the emperor, too.”

“I’m doing it so I can die.”

“Does that child want to be emperor?”

“He has to. What else can he do? He has to become emperor to eat well and live well. And kill me while he’s at it.”

Even if it’s not because of me, Irkus Robain must become emperor. Unless he kills that Ra-whatever, he will never be able to sleep with his feet stretched out.

“Irkus is the protagonist of this world. If he doesn’t become emperor, the Robain Empire will probably perish.”

“Oh, you’re so proud of the child you’re raising, saying he’s a genius.”

“Hey, honestly, is he only a genius in my eyes? Look at him. Objectively speaking, Irkus is a mage of the century.”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“Anyway, since I’m going to make him emperor, I can’t make him just a figurehead. The Great Sage is his teacher… I have my pride, too.”

“You really did the best thing in your life by not taking in disciples all this time. You’re so fussy.”

Teriz got up from her seat with a look of disgust.

Even though I had cast a wonderful healing spell on her, Teriz continued to use the cane as a support. No matter how much of a Great Sage I am and how amazing my healing magic is, it seemed that I couldn’t solve the problem of joint problems caused by aging.

I even gave a kind, eye-smile to Adelaide, who was looking at me as if I were pathetic and running to help Teriz.

The sight of Adelaide taking Teriz away with a look of disgust was, incongruously, peaceful.