The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health – Chapter 181

Author: Asternkm

Valer’s eyes wandered through empty space, filled with confusion.

Had he suddenly gone mad? Hallucinations, of all things.

Arellin’s body was glowing. So was his own—the body holding her.

More precisely, the light flowing out of Arellin was being absorbed into Valer.

“What is this…?”

It was an aura of special power so faint that he would have missed it entirely if he hadn’t been on edge.

“Ah.”

A throbbing ache shot through his head, followed by a sudden headache. Valer bit down on his lip.

Memories from his dreams came crashing in like waves.

As if they had been waiting for this very moment.

Shrrrrk—

Somewhere, he heard the sound of pages turning, and memories sealed deep within his subconscious began to surface one by one.

“Did I fail again?”

“How am I supposed to do this…?”

Moments he had dismissed as mere dreams.

Faced with the vividness of the memories, Valer swallowed a groan.

“I have to turn back time…”

“…This time, for sure.”

Fragmented memories swirled together, fitting into place and taking shape.

Valer had suspected, at least faintly, that the countless dreams he’d had might not be mere dreams.

What had kept him from being certain was the possibility that they were just side effects of the many special powers he possessed.

But to think that even those powers were things he had obtained through regression.

“No wonder…”

The starting point had always been the same.

A hollow laugh slipped through Valer’s teeth.

Now he knew for sure.

He had regressed.

I don’t know what method I used, but…

The purpose of those repeated regressions was singular.

Arellin’s survival.

“……”

He had no idea how many lives he had repeated.

There were simply too many memories flooding in to count.

Valer covered his face with both hands—then suddenly froze.

This wasn’t supposed to be the point where his memories returned. The trigger had always been Arellin’s death—the moment he realized he’d failed.

He turned his head to the side.

Surely not…

Carefully, Valer checked Arellin’s condition. Soft, faint, but steady breathing.

Only then did the tension drain from his body.

His complicated gaze lingered on Arellin’s cheek before falling away.

*****

The sun stood high in the sky. The Sky Tower.

The nocturnal mages—who normally worked when the stars were out—scratched their heads as they looked at the man who had barged in at what was, by their standards, the crack of dawn.

“Where’s the Tower Master?”

Meanwhile, Valer calmly occupied the reception room.

The mages, their faces gaunt and dark circles hanging below their chins, exchanged glances.

Did you bring him?
Are you insane? Why would I?
Then how the hell did he get in?

Access to the Sky Tower was strictly controlled.

Only high-ranking mages who had been “chosen by the stars” were allowed to come and go freely.

So how had Valer—who wasn’t even a mage—entered without permission?

Did the master give him special approval?

As the mages spiraled into confusion, Valer smiled inwardly.

The reason he could stroll through the Sky Tower like it was his own home was entirely thanks to his special power.

Mages didn’t possess inner worlds, so they didn’t know—but the Sky Tower was fundamentally similar to one.

An inner world.

And one with an owner.

The owner of this ‘domain’ is probably the Archmage who leads the Mage Tower.

Which meant that the only one who could throw Valer out right now was the Archmage himself.

“I believe I just asked where the Tower Master is.”

“Ah—uh—well, sir. The master hasn’t returned yet…”

“I see.”

That was what he’d expected.

The man was perpetually busy.

“He’s probably gone into the Infinite Archive again, hasn’t he?”

“There’s really nowhere else he’d go.”

“And he didn’t leave any instructions.”

In truth, this was the first life in which Valer had tried to meet the Archmage directly. The man was that shrouded in mystery.

Valer recalled what he knew of him.

An elf—already famous as a long-lived race…

And according to Valer’s memories, the Archmage was an immortal.

I don’t know his exact epithet, but…

An immortal.

One of the secrets this world—guarded by Halbern—held, and a term encompassing higher beings whose very existence most humans didn’t even know.

Some, like dragons, were entire races of immortals. Others were singular beings, like Sloth slumbering beneath the imperial palace, or the Archmage secluded within the Sky Tower.

Their races, authorities, and origins differed—but there was a simple reason they were all called immortals.

Because they don’t die.

In a world where even gods were said to have died and been reborn, the title of “one who does not die” was the highest form of reverence for the strongest beings.

Was that why…

Valer recalled the Archmage’s offhand remark from a past visit—when he’d come to ask about singularities.

“You should probably stop that.”

“…?”

It had come out of nowhere.

“You’ve wandered through too many places for too long. Your soul and body are in tatters. You’ll reach your limit soon.”

“You probably won’t last much longer.”

At the time, Valer had thought it nonsense.

But now—

Had he seen through the regressions?

Valer clenched and unclenched his hand. One of the mages cautiously asked,

“Are you here to see the master?”

“No.”

Valer got straight to the point.

“I don’t understand the report.”

As the mages instinctively backed away, unwilling to deal with him, one person stepped forward instead—Hilla, a high-ranking mage who had made outstanding contributions to the “Coalition for Arellin’s Recovery.”

“Which part…? I mean, we really did our best. We didn’t have much data, and healing isn’t even my specialty—my field is immortality…”

“Start with the conclusion that Arellin isn’t sick.”

“Oh—that!”

Hilla’s eyes lit up.

The moment the conversation shifted to her area of interest, the peculiar fervor of a mage took hold.

“Your Grace, do you happen to know anything about Miss Arellin’s special power?!”

“Why are you suddenly talking about special powers?”

“Well… it seems like that might be the cause.”

To mages, special powers were always an unknown force.

Yet they couldn’t exactly kidnap ability-users for research, so little had been uncovered. Magic and special powers didn’t have good compatibility to begin with.

And the very nature of special powers—forces that couldn’t be clearly defined—made research difficult. Unlike magic, which manifested through mana or stellar energy via spells and formulas, special powers lacked a visible process.

That absence of “process” was also why ability-users often overpowered mages.

“Mages absorb only as much power as their bodies can handle through the process of sensing and converting mana. But special powers are different, aren’t they? They’re something you’re born with…”

Hilla was about to launch into a long-winded explanation.

“Just the point.”

“Well, basically…”

After hesitating, Hilla snapped her fingers.

A balloon appeared in midair.

As Valer frowned at the balloon, swollen to the point of bursting, Hilla continued.

“In magical theory, the body is a vessel, and mana is the air that fills it. Stellar energy is likened to a more viscous liquid—that’s why contamination occurs.”

“And how does that relate to Arellin’s condition?”

“It’s likely that special powers look more like this.”

The air drained from the balloon, and square wooden boxes—large and small—stacked neatly inside it. The balloon wobbled precariously, but for a different reason now.

“If one of those boxes were to grow larger, what do you think would happen?”

“The balloon would burst.”

“Exactly. Miss Arellin’s body is suffering because the ‘something’ she possesses is simply too powerful for her physical vessel to handle.”

The wooden box inside the balloon grew larger and larger.

“And there’s a high chance that ‘something’ is a special power.”

The reasoning was sound.

Purification was an upper-tier special power.

A field that even high-ranking mages had studied for centuries without producing results.

“So, we believe that researching Miss Arellin’s special power is the only way to find a path toward treatment.”

Perhaps it was because true masters among mages had worked together—

For such a short time, the results were astonishing.

Valer’s gaze darkened.