Sage 9

Is this child, Irkus, being slow in getting the change, or are they minting it at the mint?

In the end, I had to go find Irkus, who hadn’t returned after several minutes since he went to pay for the groceries.

I can’t use tracking magic or communication magic in a crowded downtown area like this.

The bad thing about magic is that you can’t act stealthily. No matter how carefully you try to use magic, because magic uses the mana scattered around the area, if someone nearby can sense mana, they will quickly find out what kind of magic you used.

This applies to both mages and witches. Because of this, it was usually impossible to directly assassinate someone with magic. You could indirectly assassinate someone by creating a magic tool with a similar function or by making a cursed object, but if you tried to act directly, there was a high probability that you would be discovered before you could execute it.

Of course, a Great Sage like me could just kill everyone before being detected and walk out. Not that I would…

It’s not like mages would look around every time they sensed the use of mana from minor magic, but Irkus and I were beings who had nothing to gain from being noticed.

Even if it was minor magic by my standards, it was often a great magic for ordinary mages, and the fact that the two of us used space movement magic without even going through a lengthy magic formula was enough to attract the attention of curious mages.

Irkus is currently a fugitive on the run because of the imperial palace’s infighting. And I am the Great Sage, whom the imperial palace, the Magic Tower, and even the temple are desperately chasing after, begging me to meet them just once.

It’s equally troublesome for both of us to be noticed. I could just use space movement and return to the atelier in the Southern Forest, but the guys chasing me are all equally crazy, so sometimes they don’t know when to give up and come all the way into the Southern Forest.

Gilbert wouldn’t care, but I could clearly see Dane throwing a tantrum and shouting that he hated humans. It was really annoying for about three days when I made Irkus my disciple and brought him into the atelier.

“Ir. Why is it taking you so long to just pay?”

In the end, I went inside the store to find the counter. When I was putting tomatoes in the basket outside, I didn’t know, but the inside of the store was too quiet.

I had a bad feeling. It was a sign similar to my knees aching the day before it rained.

Come to think of it, wasn’t this grocery store an intelligence guild 20 years ago?

A faint image of a red-haired girl who had said she would establish an intelligence guild flashed through my mind. Memories that I had forgotten because of my lack of brain capacity came back to me. Ah, that happened back then.

Bad premonitions are usually never wrong.

Positive thoughts like, “Something good will happen today,” have a low accuracy rate because sometimes nothing happens, but negative thoughts like, “Something bad will happen today,” usually have a high accuracy rate because something bad really does happen.

As soon as I found a man grabbing Irkus by the collar in front of the counter, I… instinctively used an attack spell.

All that talk about not using tracking or communication magic because it would be better not to be noticed was completely useless.

But how can a person make a calm judgment when they see an adult male grabbing a twelve-year-old child by the collar? Especially when I’m the guardian of that twelve-year-old.

“What are you?”

It was good that I used an attack spell without realizing it, but of all things, that attack spell had to be a highly destructive lightning bolt. Maybe it was because the Pikachu I saw in an animation when I was young was so impressive, but whenever I unconsciously use an attack spell, it always starts with lightning.

As I poked the man who had fainted after being struck by lightning once with my toe, Irkus looked up at me with a bewildered face.

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Then why did he suddenly grab your collar? Ridiculous.”

He must be a terrible human being to bully a child he doesn’t know.

I dropped another lightning bolt on the already unconscious man. They say the probability of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is higher than the probability of winning the lottery. He’s been struck twice, so he can buy a lottery ticket now.

“Don’t do that. He might die.”

“Humans all die eventually.”

“Yoo-an.”

“And child abusers deserve to die.”

Irkus seemed displeased that I was retaliating for him even though he was the one who got his collar grabbed first.

Indeed, he is kind, like a protagonist from a fantasy novel of that era. I kicked the child abuser, by my standards, once more, whether Irkus pulled the end of my robe or not. It’s so hard to raise a child safely in this world. It’s really the end of the world.

Not long after I cast a million volts on the unconscious man, the wall behind the counter opened from the inside.

I hadn’t noticed it at all, but it seemed to be a kind of secret passage device. An elderly woman with white hair appeared from the end of the long passage beyond the open door.

“I had a feeling, but it’s really the Great Sage?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? I’m the boss of the guy you’re beating up.”

“This place wasn’t an ordinary grocery store after all. But why are you pretending to be a grocery store? It confuses humans.”

“Are you a human?”

“No, I’m the Great Sage.”

I knew who that woman was: Teriz Perlburn.

We weren’t close, but she was someone I had helped a few times a long time ago. To be precise, it wasn’t that I helped her, but that Teriz pestered me and extorted my help.

“By the way, Teriz, you’re still alive? You’re living longer than I expected.”

“When did you have a child? I thought you would never get married.”

“How did you get so old? You weren’t an old woman the last time I saw you.”

“Your rude way of speaking is still the same.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

The red-haired girl who had boldly said she would start a revolution and behead all the Kaman royals had become an old woman.

Time really flies… I don’t know where the revolution went, but why is she coming out of a secret room in a grocery store?

* * *

“I’m sorry my guild member was violent. Even so, how can you electrocute a person like that? Not all humans are immortal like you. You seem to forget that sometimes.”

“I didn’t forget. I just thought that child abusers deserve to die.”

At the words “child abuse,” Teriz let out a dry laugh. The way she was sharpening her gaze, as if to say she was going to make us out to be human trash, was very familiar. Even though she’s aged, her short temper hasn’t subsided.

“A bounty for a living walked in on its own, only an idiot wouldn’t try to catch it.”

“Is there a bounty on him?”

“It’s technically a missing person flyer, but the bounty on that third prince is enormous. Just finding him and bringing him in would be enough to live in luxury in the capital for a few years.”

“You’re so set in your ways. It’s scary how time flies, isn’t it? The little girl who was so passionate about revolution has become such a materialist.”

“Why don’t you say I’ve compromised with the world.”

Fifty years ago, Teriz was a human with the red blood of revolution flowing through her.

Because the corruption of the Kaman royals was so deep-rooted, there were always many people who wanted to behead the royals, but Teriz Perlburn was particularly passionate among them. Should I say she was an activist rebel?

To what extent, you ask? To the extent that when she saw me, who had just come to Carabel, the capital of Kaman, to buy some magic research materials at the time, she immediately approached me and said, ‘You’re the Great Sage, right? Then let’s start a revolution together.’

When she made this proposal to me, Teriz was only in her late teens. I don’t really know what Teriz did after that. As soon as I heard that proposal, I immediately refused because I thought it would be troublesome.

No matter how immortal you are, you won’t see good results if you get involved in politics or national affairs. I wouldn’t die even if my head was cut off, but I didn’t want to experience having my body and head separated more than twice. Reattaching it is terrible in its own way, and regenerating is about 20 times more disgusting than reattaching.

Even though I firmly refused, Teriz lingered around me, saying she wanted advice from a Great Sage who had lived long enough.

She was so persistent. If she didn’t have the ability to break through the barrier of the Southern Forest, she should have given up and gone back, but she wandered around in front of it for over ten days. Dane was so irritable back then… Looking back, it’s a really terrible memory.

I was worried that she would get caught by the tree spirits and die without being able to do anything, so I dealt with the young Teriz, and that was the problem.

At the time, I laughed it off as a child’s immature plan and casually suggested that she start by taking over an intelligence guild, but a few years later, she actually took over a well-run intelligence guild.

This is why humans with good execution are scary. She took my casual words as advice for life and put them into action, so I couldn’t even say anything unnecessary next to her. You should be careful even when drinking cold water in front of children, and that saying was true.

Of course, Teriz now would filter out any nonsense I say, unlike when she was young, but Teriz at the time was a bit overwhelming.

Before I turned 200, I thought people like Teriz were good, but as I got older, I found it easier to deal with people who were obviously materialistic.

This is because people who have compromised with reality do not deviate much from my expectations. They rarely make unexpected decisions because they act in pursuit of profit. Like Teriz Perlburn now, who has eaten enough age.