Sage 5

Living an eternal life wasn’t all that bad. Because I was immortal, I didn’t age or get sick.

If I got cut, I regenerated like a lizard, and my eyesight didn’t deteriorate or my teeth didn’t decay. This was really nice. It was truly a blessing to not have your body deteriorate even if you lived carelessly. Most of the rich and powerful were extremely envious of my condition.

Except for the times when I was extremely bored, I used my immortality well and lived well. It was sometimes fun to watch the world change.

Like watching a fire from across the river, I sometimes watched other countries’ fights for the throne while sipping wine.

But even that became less interesting after living for 400 years.

I had been an imperial mage, contracted as a mercenary and fought in wars… I even did magic experiments for decades at the begging of the Magic Tower.

I obtained the title of Great Sage at the age of 200, and I explored uncharted territories with non-humans. I saw with my own eyes the main religion of the continent change after a 100-year religious cold war.

The people I could call friends all died within a few decades of meeting them, and the emperors of the empire were either old or replaced by someone else every time I saw them. In the meantime, the main religion of the continent changed, so I saw temples being demolished and rebuilt dozens of times.

After seeing a place that was a grassland 200 years ago turn into a desert, I didn’t have much attachment to the world and didn’t feel like doing anything. Like an immortal, I became tired of everything.

So, at some point, I just built an atelier in the Southern Forest and stayed there. To live as an immortal, you had to know how to waste time and emotions. If you misused those two things, you could easily become a madman.

In fact, there were a few times during my 400 years of life when I really thought I was going crazy. Living a long time means witnessing all the filth of the world.

I wanted to grab Yekarina, who was buried in a coffin and must have been nothing but bones by now, and shout, ‘Why do your daughters only give birth to daughters? Stop being witches!’ But the dead don’t speak. Unless I went against the laws of nature and developed necromancy, it was impossible to complain to Yekarina.

Then I should go to the living.

I left the atelier and took twenty-nine steps east to meet Irkus, Yekarina’s descendant, the protagonist of this world, and very likely the next emperor of the Robain Empire. I hummed to myself as I walked that short distance. Whoever it is, please kill me like a protagonist should.

When I approached the spot Gilbert mentioned, killing my footsteps, there was indeed a stunningly beautiful boy there. Wow… he really is the protagonist of a fantasy novel, he’s got a different aura.

A blond, beautiful boy with messy clothes, blood matted in his hair, and a fierce expression looked back at me.

“Irkus?”

“…….”

Unlike his shabby appearance, his eyes, which looked like they were carved entirely out of amethyst, stared straight at me.

He will surely grow up to be a very handsome young man in about 10 years. I held out my right hand to Irkus, who was trapped by Dane and unable to move.

“Who are you?”

“…….”

“Why are you helping me?”

He had quite a bold personality, just like a protagonist. If you’re a child, just act like a child and grab an adult’s hand while saying, “Oh, thank you for saving me!”

I quickly became tired, but I tried to smile so as not to show my annoyance. My facial muscles, which had been resting for several years, screamed in protest.

That guy is the protagonist. If you get on the protagonist’s bad side, you’ll become a villain. In a fantasy novel like this, becoming a villain could lead to even more troublesome incidents than the ones I had experienced in the past 400 years of my life.

“I don’t do charity work, so don’t worry and take my hand. Do you want to die here? European ash trees show no mercy to humans.”

Of course, even if I didn’t help him, this guy would survive and return to the imperial palace.

Because Irkus is the protagonist. Even though he’s only twelve years old, he’s a descendant of a powerful witch, and even though he can’t properly use magic, his innate mana level is so high that he instinctively broke through the barrier I, the Great Sage, set up and entered the forest.

Seeing him naturally do something that even most mid-level mages can’t do, it was hard to say he was an ordinary human no matter how you looked at it. To define him in terms of the modern-day South Korea I lived in, he was an ‘OP character.’

The reason why Dane, who is the most militant and hates humans the most in the Southern Forest, didn’t directly attack him but instead blocked the path and held Irkus back must be because of that.

Dane must have known that even if he attacked this guy, it wouldn’t work or he would be counterattacked. Even for Dane, being counterattacked by a twelve-year-old who wasn’t even a mage yet would be embarrassing.

I quickly racked my brain to recall what kind of personality the protagonist Irkus had in <The Book of Irkus>.

However, I could only vaguely remember the serious and boring writing style, not the detailed settings or personalities of the characters.

Well, it hasn’t been long since I remembered a really important sentence, so it’s no wonder I can’t remember the other things properly. Uselessly, I sometimes remembered English words that appeared on the CSAT prep books. Indeed, the brain doesn’t do what I want it to do.

However, I wasn’t in a position to be picky. It was the first time in almost 400 years that I had met a descendant of Yekarina who was ‘not a witch’ and ‘close to the throne.’ Moreover, he was a prince, so he had no reason to rebel even if I offered to make him emperor. I was really moved.

Who is your mother? Which witch fell in love with an ordinary human and had you so admirably? I was at the point where I should ask him this like a nosy neighbor.

Never mind that, let’s go for the coronation at the age of twelve. You become emperor in just one volume, not 17, and let’s go for a scenario where I die at the age of 400.

I stared intently at Irkus’s small head, who was still looking at my hand suspiciously.

Just grab it. Actually, even though it might seem a bit pathetic, I was so desperate that I wanted to cling to him and say, “I’m the Great Sage who helped your mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother, so please drop the suspicion.”

“The Great Sage of the Southern Forest…”

Just before I could cling to him and say that I knew all his ancestors, his lips, which were neatly arranged on his small face, mumbled softly.

It was strange to hear my title from someone else’s mouth. It was also strange that a mere twelve-year-old knew who I was.

I thought my fame had died down a lot since I had been holed up in the Southern Forest for a long time, but maybe that wasn’t the case. Well, an immortal human is always a hot topic among humans who want to live long.

Irkus hesitantly grabbed the hand I held out. It was larger than that of a child his age, but of course, it was smaller than mine.

I pulled Irkus into my arms with force. The boy’s body, which had not yet fully grown, resisted for a moment, then soon fell into my arms.

“Yes, I am the Great Sage. Descendant of Yekarina.”

* * *

Around the age of forty, I was quite kind to children. Around that time, I just found children cute. My appearance hadn’t changed much from when I was nineteen, so in the eyes of others, it must have looked like a child being fond of a child.

After I turned one hundred, I became briefly engrossed in volunteer work and worked as a mercenary for a kingdom that was being invaded by foreign forces. It was really charity work. I didn’t do it for a reward, but because I felt sorry for the children who were being exploited because of the war.

That kingdom is now the Kingdom of Kaman. I participated in the war and strengthened their national power, but these guys, without missing a beat, used their strengthened power to invade other small kingdoms next to them under the pretext of territorial expansion and strengthening national power.

The worst part was that these Kaman guys made a magic contract with me when I was still naive because I was young.

When a great mage came to work as a mercenary, they should have respectfully welcomed me, but they demanded that we build a relationship of trust first if I wanted to participate in the war. Looking back, they were very cunning.

‘The Great Sage Yoo-an cannot attack or kill the Kaman royal family. He cannot take any action that threatens the lives of the royal family.’

This was the content of the first magic contract I made in my life.

They were really meticulous and cunning bastards. To make a contract that benefits them with a human who is willing to help children in a war.

From that time on, the higher-ups of Kaman were all trash. Even in the midst of war, they lived in luxury among themselves. I should have punched their faces, which were shiny with grease, a few times before the contract.

If a witch can cast blessings and curses, a mage can execute magic contracts.

Mages decipher the formula of the magic contract, draw the magic circle, and negotiate the desired terms of the contract with the other party.

The contract is easily established when the contracting parties place their hands on the magic circle. Indeed, it is less powerful than a witch, but it is said that it is more cost-effective, and there is a reason for that.

Magic contracts have no special execution conditions, and if one party unilaterally breaks the contract, they suffer unpredictable penalties, so there was quite a demand among those who hired or partnered with mages.

Actually, including me, mages didn’t like it because there were many magic restriction contracts that put a shackle on them… At the time, I still had a sense of justice, so I made a magic contract with the Kaman guys with the mission of ending the war quickly.

If I had left them alone, let alone destroying a kingdom, corpses would have flooded the entire continent. I can’t die, but if humanity perishes, that would be a problem. Non-humans use different languages, so if humans go extinct, I’ll have to study languages all over again.

Of course, if I had known that the Kaman guys would start another war as soon as this one ended, I would never have made such a contract. Indeed, you should never trust humans.

Once the Kaman guys did this, after the war ended, people from all over came to me asking me to work as a mercenary, presenting magic contracts.

They were all thieves at heart. They thought that if it was a small country, I would help them, and there were many who used the elderly or children to appeal to my emotions. At that time, I had the experience of losing all my love for humanity in one fell swoop.

After this problem repeated itself, I completely quit charity work. The children I had saved from the war grew up to be adults who were set in their ways and asked for my help again.

I was the child you helped back then, and I grew up to be a corrupt official… I want to conquer the country next door, are you willing to help if I declare war? Looking back, they were all ungrateful bastards.

So, when I was over 300 years old, I just got completely tired of humans. I thought it would be better to just hole up somewhere and study magic. Even that, after a few decades, became boring because it was all the same.

The point is this.

I may be human by nature, but humans are really quite terrible.