Sage 2

There are three unspoken rules when it comes to book transmigration and isekai trips.

1. Even if you’ve never learned the language, you’ll be able to communicate.
2. There’s no discrimination against the black hair and black eyes of Koreans.
3. At least one character you know will appear as soon as you transmigrate.

I don’t know who transmigrated me into <The Book of Irkus>, but they have absolutely no sense of these unspoken rules. It’s hard to be missing all three of these rules, but this person has managed to be evenly devoid of all of them.

Not long after I fell into this world, I realized that this was the world inside <The Book of Irkus>.

At first, it was difficult to distinguish whether it was possession or dimensional shift. Even though I was a person of the 21st century, I wasn’t very familiar with fantasy novels, so I wasn’t able to properly distinguish the terminology.

If it was possession, I should have entered someone else’s body, but I was still Han Yoo-an’s original body, and if it was a dimensional shift, although I had only read the first volume, this place was too similar to the world described in <The Book of Irkus>. After about three days in this place, I gave up on distinguishing between possession, dimensional shift, or isekai trip.

Like fantasy novels of that era, there were three moons in the sky of the Iffenheim Continent, where I had fallen.

No matter how much I tried to deny reality, there is no place on Earth where you can observe a sky with three moons. Since I was a gifted student, I quickly accepted that the place I opened my eyes after being hit by a truck was not modern-day South Korea. What else could I do? There were three moons in the sky before my eyes.

Of course, even after realizing that this was inside <The Book of Irkus>, I was incredibly flustered.

Since I was on my way to take the college entrance exam, I was wearing a school uniform when I suddenly fell into a lake in the middle of the imperial garden. If anyone wouldn’t be flustered by that, then they would truly be an extraordinary person.

If it were me now, well past 400 years old, I would have just raised my middle finger to the sky and said, “Ah… don’t you know how to respect your elders? You should have dropped me off gently…” But the 19-year-old me had no idea what to do.

It makes sense. I had spent a third of my life in all-boys middle and high schools filled with black hair and black eyes, but the people of this world, aside from not being able to communicate, had hair and eyes that were too colorful.

Living with such a variety of colors, it’s only natural to be surprised to see plain black hair. In a situation where I couldn’t even communicate, I, who had fallen in the middle of the imperial garden, was immediately captured by the soldiers.

At the time, I didn’t know why they were arresting me, but looking back now, it was because I had trespassed into the imperial palace, so it was understandable that I was captured. Yes. When a person falls from the sky, it’s natural to arrest them.

The memory of being dragged before the emperor less than a day after being transmigrated into <The Book of Irkus> is relatively vivid compared to other memories. It’s hard to say exactly how I felt at the time, but I was definitely cursing up a storm in my head.

Other people live comfortably and are treated as adults when they transmigrate into a novel they only partially read. I should have known my luck was bad from the moment I was hit by a truck on the day of the college entrance exam.

I was presented with two options before the emperor, who looked like a tyrant no matter how you looked at him.

1. Be neatly executed for trespassing in the imperial palace.
2. As a rare pet human with black hair and black eyes, cheer up the currently depressed empress, Yekarina.

It was a choice in name only, a Hamlet-esque dilemma of whether to live or die.

Do you want to die here, or do you want to die after cheering up my empress? It’s a very difficult question. More difficult than the last short-answer question on the CSAT math section.

The blond emperor was a stunningly handsome man. However, having already studied King Yeonsangun in Korean history, I could only see that handsome emperor as a crazy bastard.

He’s not King Yeonsangun, but he looks a lot like King Yeonsangun. The most Korean thing is indeed the most otherworldly. The crazy emperor, who looked like the reincarnation of King Yeonsangun, offered me a choice with a benevolent expression.

Of course, at the time, I was in a state of “What the hell is this crazy bastard saying?” so I just picked option 2. There was a high probability that option 1 was the wrong answer.

As a result, I didn’t die, but I was reduced to being the empress’s pet human, complete with a leash around my neck.

High school students who are transported to another world are supposed to be thugs… I was a slave from the start.

* * *

[Yoo-an. Someone has come.]

“Ha… which bastard is it this time?”

[What do you mean, which bastard… The last time someone came was five years ago, after that mage who made a fuss about wanting to be accepted as a
disciple.]

“You mean it’s only been five years. How did they get into the forest? Normal people can’t get in.”

[They broke through the entrance barrier.]

“With magic?”

[No. Their mana reserve is immense, but they’re not a proper mage yet. It seems like they used magic instinctively.]

“Is that some kind of bullshit like saying it’s an oak tree, but not just any tree?”

I was about to go back to sleep after using restoration magic to make the bed new again. But as soon as I lay down, Gilbert, the oak tree spirit, sent a signal about an intruder.

This is why humans should die quickly so they don’t have to deal with bothersome things. Even if a person lives for only 100 years, they make a ton of enemies. Having lived for 400 years, I have more enemies than I can count on two hands.

That useless oak tree spirit said it wasn’t because of my age but because of my personality, but I disagreed.

Most non-human races with natural lifespans of hundreds of years end up getting killed by someone with a knife. Just look at dragons. Dragon slayers always come and cowardly kill dragons sleeping in their lairs.

[The intruder is a child. They look about twelve years old in human age.]

“Did their parents abandon them?”

[I’m not sure. There’s no other sign of anyone else besides the child.]

“Then just leave them alone. If they wander around for ten days, they’ll either find their way out or starve to death here.”

The nineteen-year-old me would have gladly rushed out and found an orphanage, but I was 400 years old. Even to a hundred-year-old, one can say, “You young whippersnapper…” So, a twelve-year-old child? Unmanageable.

Besides, the Southern Forest I was holed up in wasn’t a place a normal child could access.

The forest’s name was simply ‘Southern Forest.’ This forest, which serves as the border between the Robain Empire and the Kingdom of Kaman, is a colony of stubborn tree spirits who reject humans.

Tree spirits, including Gilbert, mostly disliked humans. No, they didn’t just dislike them, they loathed them.

Most non-human races dislike humans, but tree spirits are especially wary of them. Well, I guess I would also dislike those who cut down trees, devastate forests, and set fires all the time.

Fortunately, although tree spirits are a bit eccentric, they are not militant enough to shout, “Exterminate humans! Annihilate humanity!”

Instead of directly attacking intruders, tree spirits prefer to work together to make the forest a maze and starve them to death. They say they get more nutrients from the corpse that way than just killing them.

According to Dane, a European ash tree spirit, humans are basically a nuisance by their very existence. I’m human too, but he’s right.

Gilbert, who is relatively mild-mannered compared to other trees, has also helped drive out numerous stragglers who wandered into the Southern Forest using all sorts of methods, for the simple reason that I found them annoying.

Perhaps it’s because humans have a conscience after all the logging they’ve done, but although they fought over the Southern Forest for centuries, claiming it as their own, they never crossed through it. No one wanted to die in the forest due to bad luck.

But a child came into the Southern Forest alone without parents or guardians? And they broke through all my barriers? Whether they knew or not, it was a perfect place to die in the middle of the forest.

So, I was just going to ignore this person who was hoping to die. What can I do if they want to die on their own?

It’s not like I’m killing them, they came in on their own and are dying on their own, so it’s not my responsibility. I was planning to sleep more, and if I woke up in the middle of it, Gilbert and I would go out to the city for the first time in a while to celebrate my 400th birthday.

But Gilbert’s reaction, who would normally say, “Yeah, just ignore such a low-level intruder,” was strange.

Gilbert is a thoughtful oak tree, but he’s still a tree spirit, so he doesn’t like humans very much. This means he wouldn’t tell me to save and bring in any human who entered the forest.

[Yoo-an, I think… it would be best to help that child.]

“Help them?”

In all the decades I’ve been holed up in the Southern Forest, a tree spirit has never once told me to help a human who entered the forest.

From this point on, I could guess that the intruder who had invaded the forest was no ordinary person. Tree spirits are many times more sensitive than humans.

“Why? I got sick of volunteering about 150 years ago.”

[Dane said that child is a descendant of a witch.]

Dane was one of the younger tree spirits here. Also, unlike most calm European ash tree spirits, he was the first to run out and tie up humans with his roots or block their path when they entered the Southern Forest. Maybe it’s because he’s young, but it seems like it’s because he’s naturally vicious…

Anyway, it was strange that such a guy would bother to tell Gilbert the identity of the young intruder. Usually, he just reported that he had trapped and starved someone to death, and then buried the body to use as fertilizer for the forest.

[He didn’t say anything other than that they’re a descendant of a witch, so I think it would be best if you went and saw for yourself.]

In this world, witches and mages are not particularly ostracized.

In modern society, they’re like mathematicians or scientists, so ordinary people think of witches and mages like this: they’re sometimes annoying but smart and convenient. Clever people who develop useful everyday magic if left alone.

Strictly speaking, mages and witches are rarer than ordinary people. Even in modern society, there aren’t that many mathematicians and scientists.

However, there were more mages and witches than people with black hair and black eyes. It was indeed the worldview of a fantasy novel written by a Korean.

Of course, witches are even rarer than mages, but there was no way the meticulous and militant Dane would turn a blind eye to the intrusion of a human just because they were rare.

When Dane first saw me, the only Great Sage on the entire continent, he suggested killing me first. If all tree spirits were like Dane, humanity would have been extinct long ago.

“A descendant of Yekarina?”

So, if Dane is telling Gilbert to come and see the intruder’s identity for himself, it must mean that they’re not just an ordinary witch’s descendant. At the very least, it must mean that they are either a descendant of the bloodline of Yekarina, the empress who kept me as a pet, or the protagonist of this world.

Gilbert’s branches swayed slightly up and down. It was a sign of affirmation. It was a moment that brought vitality to my boring life.

A descendant of Yekarina, but not a witch? This was the first time in all these long years that I had seen a ‘descendant of Yekarina who was not a witch.’

My 400th birthday present had walked right into my dwelling. Oh God, have you finally decided to let me die? Thank you.