Sage 20

“Ir, I bought lunch.”

I left the headquarters of Night Fellow and walked slowly to the house where Irkus was patiently waiting.

On the way, I even thoughtfully bought some skewers from a street vendor for lunch, but Irkus, who should have been waiting patiently inside the house, was nowhere to be seen.

At first, I wasn’t too flustered that he wasn’t in the house. Irkus was quite curious, and although he tried to act mature, children always want to go out and see new things for themselves. So, I thought he had gone out to look around a nearby store.

“Where did this kid go again?”

On the other hand, I was annoyed that he had gone out again even though I had warned him not to wander around alone if possible.

As befitting a capital city with a developed commercial district, Carabel had good public order. But that was only good for ordinary people, not for the Third Prince, whom the Robain Empire was desperately searching for.

Just as I was about to use tracking magic to find Irkus’s location, even if it meant attracting the attention of mages, I noticed a faint bloodstain on the living room floor. The moment I discovered that bloodstain, a chill ran down my spine.

I threw the carefully wrapped skewers on the floor and bent down to examine the bloodstain.

Judging from the fact that it wasn’t dark red and congealed, it was a recent stain. Moreover, there were clear signs that someone had tried to erase it. I hadn’t noticed any signs of anyone lurking around the house, but it seemed that an uninvited guest had visited while I was briefly visiting Teriz.

This was one of the most inconvenient things about leaving the Southern Forest. There was no Gilbert to inform me of intruders.

I stood up, feeling utterly disgusted. It was annoying that the peaceful feeling I had after meeting Teriz and Adelaide didn’t even last a few hours.

I didn’t even think about being careful about any mages nearby. I immediately cast a tracking spell. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but the tracking spell I had placed on him as a precaution against him getting lost was finally coming in handy.

I don’t know how many people attacked Irkus, but the fact that they tried to erase the bloodstain meant that the confrontation was quite relaxed.

I took a deep breath. I had just decided not to use attack magic on humans until Irkus was enthroned, but it looks like that’s all for naught. I’m sure my New Year’s resolution to “be more moderate with magic…” will last longer than this.

I marked the coordinates for spatial movement as indicated by the tracking spell. It would be like advertising that there was a Great Sage here, but I didn’t care.

He’s the protagonist, so he won’t die now.

But humans, except for me, can die even from a small cut. I need Irkus to die, but if some idiots who are blinded by the throne kill Irkus, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself. What if I end up destroying the continent?

It didn’t take me more than a few minutes to mark the coordinates and use the magic to move.

I moved to a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of Carabel. They must have been quick to take the child to the outskirts, whoever they were.

“Irkus.”

But the more I moved inside the sewage treatment plant, the more strange things I noticed. I could sense Irkus’s presence, but I couldn’t sense anyone else’s.

My mind, which had naturally assumed that Irkus had been kidnapped, gradually cleared.

Come to think of it, Irkus Robain was not a twelve-year-old to be kidnapped. There was no way that such a magical genius would be dragged away by adults weaker than him, leaving only a small bloodstain.

Irkus was standing idly near the sewage treatment plant pump. There were splatters of blood on his face, hands, and even the clothes I had bought him. I thought it was Irkus’s blood, but upon closer inspection, it was entirely someone else’s blood.

“Yoo-an.”

“What are you doing?”

The child who had told me not to kill people had just killed someone. And not just one person, but several.

I asked him why, but it was obvious that he was standing there like that because he couldn’t get over the shock of his first kill.

I hurried over to Irkus and took off my robe to cover him. I knew I should hear the details of what happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to push Irkus, who was clearly in shock.

“I couldn’t control it. I’m sure I calculated it correctly…”

“Did they try to kill you?”

“Not me, you…”

I held Irkus, who buried his face in my arms and mumbled. Irkus had grown taller in the past six months, so now I had to hold him up with both arms.

Whoever attacked Irkus, they were great fools. Trying to kill me? Where in the world are there humans who try to kill an immortal? Only idiots, not humans, do that.

“Calm down, it was just an accident.”

“…I was just trying to scare them.”

“I know. I did that at first, too.”

Why do you think there are restrictions on the use of attack magic by mages belonging to the Magic Tower, unless it’s during a war?

Irkus, who had only dealt with magic theoretically, wouldn’t have been able to control his attack magic precisely in a real-life situation. Even I can’t do that sometimes.

“You’re a particularly powerful mage. It’ll get better when you learn to control it.”

Irkus didn’t cry. It was clear that my heart ached at the sight of Irkus, who was just standing there in a daze instead of crying even though it was his first time killing someone.

“I’d rather you cry.”

“…….”

“I’m not scared or wary of you because of this. You still can’t kill me, no matter what you do.”

I’m a gifted student, so I’m different from a genius like Irkus, but as time went on, I couldn’t control my magical abilities. To be precise, it was more like I had forgotten what ‘average strength’ was.

There’s a reason why humans live and die within a given lifespan, but as I defied the laws of nature and lived for hundreds of years, I became afraid of many things. For example, I was afraid that I might accidentally kill the person next to me.

I slowly patted Irkus’s back. Just as witches can’t mix with humans, beings born with more power than ordinary humans were bound to stand out.

Wolves cannot live peacefully among a flock of sheep. Irkus will probably kill many more people in the future. Irkus’s destiny was not that of a commoner, so he couldn’t live righteously without getting his hands dirty.

“It’ll all become familiar.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“No, you have to get used to it to become emperor.”

At my words, Irkus raised his head and met my eyes. The purple eyes flickering over his pale face, stained with the dried blood of others, stared straight at me.

“Even if I become numb to this… will you be okay?”

“…….”

“Even if I become this kind of person, will you be okay?”

I couldn’t easily answer Irkus’s question.

* * *

“You acted like you were going to storm the imperial palace any minute, so when are we going?”

It had been five years since Irkus had accidentally killed all the humans who had invaded the house because he couldn’t control his attack magic.

Irkus Robain was now seventeen years old, and I was 405 years old. Time passed like a racehorse, never looking back.

Every time I counted my age, I sighed. Am I going to be 500 years old soon? Not just half a century, or half a hundred years, but half a thousand years.

It was an unheard-of word. I was more miserable than happy about the fact that I could become the first primate to live longer than a reptile dragon. No! I don’t want to have the title of ‘the first’ anymore!

Teriz, who hadn’t changed much in the past five years, stuffed tobacco into her pipe and grumbled about when we would get lost to the imperial palace.

I wanted to march straight into the imperial palace, too, but Irkus’s puberty came earlier than expected, so I had no choice but to waste five years in Kaman. To be precise, it wasn’t puberty, but an adjustment period.

“How is Adel doing these days?”

“Why are you asking about a busy kid? She’s busy taking over the business these days.”

“It’s been a few months since I’ve seen her face, so I just asked. Why are you so worked up?”

“Mind your own business and take care of your own disciple. I haven’t seen him around lately. What the hell is he doing?”

While Adelaide was busy taking over the Night Fellow as a family business, Irkus was busy shedding his remaining humanity.

Even I thought Irkus had met the wrong teacher. It’s a separate matter to be good at something and to be good at teaching, and the problem was that I was too excited to meet a descendant of Yekarina and took him in as a disciple on the spot.

Of course, even if I went back in time, I would have proposed a magic contract first, but these days, I was slowly regretting not finding him a separate teacher.

It was a mystery how a good protagonist who tried to teach me not to kill people met a guy like me and was going through such mental hardship.

“I don’t know why he trusts and follows me so much. It’s incomprehensible that he acts like he’ll die if I tell him to.”

“Because you’re his teacher. And you’re the Great Sage. When I was young, I also thought your words were law, without knowing any better.”

“That’s because you were a fool. Irkus is a genius.”

“Of course, you would say that.”

While Teriz and I were having this conversation, we heard someone entering.

Since the Night Fellow headquarters was still disguised as a grocery store, there were only a few people who could enter through the secret passage.

So, the owner of those heavy footsteps was most likely Irkus.

“Yoo-an.”

He may be a prince, but he doesn’t act like a nobleman.

I slowly rose from my seat. Irkus, who had briefly exchanged glances with Teriz, strode towards me.

Embarrassingly, Irkus was only seventeen years old, but he was already almost eye-level with me. And I was taller than the average South Korean adult male.

“You smell like blood.”

“I washed up.”

“As if that would wash it away immediately. Where have you been this time?”

“Hunting. There was a problem on the Empire’s side.”

Irkus took my words to shed some of his humanity a little too seriously.

The face that awkwardly smiled at me, shaking his wet blond hair with his hand, still had a boyish look, but he wasn’t as naive as when I first saw him.

As punishment for not properly answering the question of whether I could be okay with him becoming numb, for the past five years, I had to watch with my own two eyes as my disciple ran off to work as a mercenary.