The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health – Chapter 177

Author: Asternkm

“Then what did you come here wanting to know?”

“How to get healthy.”

“……?”

The baby elephant flapped its ears and tilted its head.

There was a long story behind it, but it wasn’t something I was about to explain to a baby elephant I’d only met twice.

I’m shy and bad with strangers, okay.

So what I really wanted to know was—

“I want to know how to raise my rank.”

“Be reborn.”

“…….”

When I clenched my fist, the baby elephant shouted about opposing violence and fled far away.

“Why! I’m serious! Ordinary living beings can’t escape the rank they’re given at birth. So if you want to raise your rank, the only way is to transcend it entirely and obtain a new one!”

“Like how Sword Masters live longer?”

“Huh? Yeah. You know a lot?”

So in the end, the answer really was becoming a Sword Master.

Was Pession actually right all this time, dragging me around insisting I exercise?

‘No, I don’t have talent for swordsmanship.’

If I had even half of Pession’s talent, I might’ve tried. But as things stood, it felt like I’d drop dead mid-training.

With the orthodox path blocked, all that remained were shortcuts.

“Do you have elixir recipes here?”

“Elixirs?”

I asked just in case—and astonishingly, they did.

One hundred and twenty million elixir recipes confiscated by Halbern over hundreds of years!

“Like these? Is this what you’re looking for?”

I gaped at the overwhelming number of books, then flipped through the two closest recipes and frowned.

“Wait. Why are these two different?”

“Hold on, let me see.”

Every time I opened a recipe, both the method and effects were different.

“Ah, I see. Looks like alchemists trying to recreate the ‘true elixir’ just slapped the name on anything with similar effects.”

“So there’s no real elixir recipe?”

I knew there wasn’t one in the novel, but when you’re terminally ill, desperation kicks in.

“Hm. Yeah. Everything here is either fake or a derivative confiscated by Halbern.”

“Damn it.”

“The real one’s probably in the Mage Tower. That’s where the knowledge originated, after all.”

“Ah, the Mage Tower……”

The Mage Tower again.

And how exactly was I supposed to get in there?

“But even with this many books, the archive’s really well organized.”

“Ahem.”

Mac puffed up proudly.

Dream Fairy or not, he just looked like a cute baby elephant to me.

“This place…… is useless to me.”

From ancient times to the present, the truth behind every incident and disaster in the Albrecht Empire was displayed here.

Some of it would immediately shake public sentiment if released.

Events known as natural disasters that were actually runaway ability incidents, for example.

Next came an archive containing the histories, information, and weaknesses of every noble registered with the Albrecht imperial family and the House of Peers.

After that was an archive listing ability users, their powers, and methods to counter them.

Some archives couldn’t be entered at all.

“This one’s restricted to the family head!”

“Ah. I see.”

Even so, I could roughly guess what was inside.

“Knowledge of the Old World”—so it wasn’t only secretly passed down in temples and the Mage Tower?

“The Old World means that, right? The world before the gods died?”

“Oh, you know?!”

Mac’s black eyes sparkled with surprise.

“Hmph. Theology is basic education for nobles.”

I’d learned all this thanks to being forcibly dragged into lessons next to Pession.

The so-called Age of Divinity.

A time when all continents were connected like Pangaea, every city worshipped a god, gods issued oracles directly, descended in person, and passed down knowledge and technology.

To someone who came from a world without gods, it sounded like pure fantasy.

For some reason, the gods went to war—like Ragnarok—and perished, and the reborn world was now called the Twilight Age.

‘I remember being surprised that all the gods were dead.’

In fantasy worlds, gods were usually the ultimate authority.

“Then does that mean those archives contain information from ruins and forbidden zones?”

“Probably?”

Humans of the Twilight Age had never even glimpsed a god, yet still believed in them because of the countless remnants of the Age of Divinity.

The Holy State of Lemren, headquarters of the Temple, overflowing with divine power even in this age without divinity.

The World Tree said to protect the fae.

The Blessed Lands of the Southern Empire and the divine beasts worshipped by beastfolk.

The ruins of gnomes and dwarves, once prosperous but now vanished.

And finally, the abilities remaining in some humans.

People believed all of these were relics of the Mythic Age.

“Why does Halbern hide all this information?”

I’d always wondered.

Why gather secrets, only to conceal them?

A question I thought I’d ponder for life was answered surprisingly easily.

“To protect humans.”

The Dream Fairy, who looked like he knew nothing, grinned as he spoke.

“Too much information breaks human will and ruins lives, you know~?”

“What counts as ‘too much’?”

“Hmm, for example……”

Soap bubbles floated up, transforming into various visions.

“That the Central Continent of the Albrecht Empire could shatter today.”

“…….”

“Or that the moon might fall to the ground tomorrow?”

Watching visions of the continent breaking apart and the moon crashing into the land made my stomach churn.

“This… is that real?”

Seeing my anxious expression, the baby elephant burst out laughing.

“Halbern hides information like this behind the scenes because it’s the kind of knowledge ‘ordinary people don’t need to know—and are endangered by knowing.’ But someone does need to know, and someone has to bear the weight of that truth. So they willingly became its guardians.”

“You sound like you know that awfully well.”

“That’s what the first Halbern who contracted with me said.”

The baby elephant trumpeted proudly.

Just from his eyes, I could tell how much trust and affection he had—it gave me a glimpse of why he’d quietly served as the archive’s librarian for over a thousand years.

“Humans with something to protect grow strong!”

“Really?”

“That’s why I decided to watch until the very end.”

Dream Fairy Mac smiled shyly.

“So take care of me, Heir of Halbern.”

“……Okay.”

As I shook his stubby hand, a strangely profound feeling settled in my chest.

“So? What do you want to know next?!”

*****

The archive I had crossed into belonged to Sion Siguria Halbern.

I’d come on the off chance I might learn something.

“…This place is different too.”

Unlike mine, which looked like a modern library, Sion’s archive was made up of faded white pillars and pale stone, like some ancient secret library.

It felt like the shelves would be lined not with paper or parchment, but with books carved from stone.

The space was open on all sides, light seeping in, and half of it looked collapsed—so old it seemed to predate memory itself.

“Why does this place look like this?”

“I don’t know.”

They said the form of an archive was influenced by the owner’s disposition or inner image, but apparently even that had its limits.

Maybe it was just my mom’s taste.

“You know what? Sion’s books are a total mess too, just like yours.”

Mac, who had seemed so dependable earlier, suddenly started fuming.

“This part up to here is fine, okay? But from here on, it’s a disaster. Look at this!”

From her childhood up through her marriage, there were no issues—but past a certain point, the letters on the pages scattered and dissolved.

It looked as though bookworms had eaten through them, and I frowned.

“And after this, it’s completely blank. Not as bad as yours, but still.”

The book Mac handed me contained only the story of the moment when Sion gave birth to me.

「An unexpected child. When she decided to give birth to the child who came like a gift, Sion realized something. In order to save this child, she would ultimately have to die herself.」

Seeing a moment of the past I had already witnessed, now written in clean, orderly sentences, felt entirely different.

「She was going to die anyway—so wouldn’t it be wonderful, if it were for the sake of the two people she loved most? Sion chose to die willingly.」

It struck me anew—how my mother had thought of me.

I stared blankly at the countless white pages that followed the story of my birth when Mac muttered something strange.

“Normally, when a person dies, the pages end right there. But this is really weird.”

“?”

“Did something go wrong with my authority? Lately, all the Halbern family archives are like this. Morden, was it? The previous head of Halbern—I can tell he’s dead, but his final volume is filled with nothing but blank pages too, just like Sion’s.”

As Mac continued grumbling, he shot me another glare—like all these blank pages were somehow my fault.

That’s unfair.

“But the strangest one of all is the current head of the family.”

“Dad? What about him?”

Mac scrunched up his face, then let out a long sigh.

“See for yourself.”

Grabbing my hand, Mac formed a door and dragged me into another archive.

Valer Sirun Halbern.

This was probably my father’s archive…

“Whoa.”

For a moment, I was stunned by the sheer size of it—larger than any archive I’d seen so far.

And then I froze, staring at the scenery inside.