The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health Chapter 254

The Southern Mage Tower was a mess. As soon as we passed the entrance, the bloodstains left behind told me exactly what had happened inside.

“Judging by the traces, it hasn’t been long since the incident.”

Thinking someone might still be here, we searched every corner starting from the lower floors, but no one was there.

“A…rel……”

Except for Jemello, who had been maintaining the barrier that covered the entire city, activated by the Southern Mage Tower.

“Jemello!”

Since the city’s barrier was still intact even now, I’d assumed Jemello would be fine—but seeing him in person, his condition was horrific.

“What on earth happened?”

Leaning against a pillar with one arm gone, Jemello was using self-healing magic. He opened his mouth to answer, but only coughed repeatedly.

“Cough, cough!”

“Take it slow.”

When I stayed close and cast healing magic, Jemello’s expression relaxed a little.

Jemello warned me.

“This place is dangerous. Run away, right now.”

“Where to?”

“…Ah.”

Jemello’s face darkened.

“Outside the city… that’d be hard, wouldn’t it?”

“I think so.”

Maybe it hurt to talk—Jemello frowned.

“What exactly happened?”

“To be honest, I don’t know everything. The mages of the Southern Mage Tower who had collapsed from exhaustion suddenly went mad and attacked.”

“What about the mages who were attacked?”

“They were all dragged somewhere. Don’t know where… damn it.”

Jemello was the only one left in the tower. Even he wasn’t in good condition.

“Don’t talk. Your wounds keep reopening and bleeding.”

“It’s fine. This is enough.”

“What do you mean, enough? You look like you’ll need months to recover.”

“I’m really fine. You don’t need to try so hard to save me.”

I froze at those words while casting healing magic.

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

When I glared at him, Jemello shook his head as our eyes met.

“I’m going to seal this city.”

“…!”

Even with his body in ruins, Jemello calmly gripped his staff with his remaining arm.

“Until the ruins are dealt with, no one will be able to go in or out. At least the Mage Tower is still intact—lucky, right? If not, I’d be suffering through this alone.”

It didn’t sound like a joke.

I took a deep breath and looked straight into Jemello’s eyes.

“Seal it…?”

“I’ve been inside the Mage Tower, but I can clearly feel the city’s sense of wrongness. The eruption of the ruins is only the beginning. If the ruins’ territory spreads outside the city, even the continent won’t be safe.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. Jemello nodded as if he understood.

“The biggest problem is that we don’t know what’s inside the ruins. The eruption is already this bad—what if there’s something in there we can’t handle? If we seal it, at least we can prevent more people from going in.”

“…I know that, but.”

Jemello was right. What he planned to do made sense.

“But then, Jemello……”

He’d be trapped here, along with the city.

Calling it “trapped” was generous—there was no guarantee he could survive the aftereffects of a sealing spell in his current condition.

It was basically the same as sealing it and dying.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Becoming a star is every mage’s dream.”

How could he joke at a moment like this?

“No one will ever know about this sacrifice.”

“You will.”

“I’m the only one.”

“That’s fine. The stars will know.”

As if responding to those words, Jemello’s body faintly glowed. The blessing of the stars wrapped around him more strongly than ever.

“If the stars know, it’s the same as the world knowing.”

“That’s just wordplay.”

“I’ve lived long enough. Twice as long as most people. I couldn’t uncover the secrets of the world, but if I can save others, isn’t that an achievement in its own way?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to. You’re still a kid.”

“I’m an adult.”

“You’re still young.”

Jemello patted my head.

On any other day, I would’ve slapped his hand away, but today, I quietly let him.

“And you’re not the only one I want to save.”

Jemello spoke with a face full of longing and regret, saying his sibling’s grandchildren lived out there.

“You’re going to the ruins, right?”

“Yes.”

“Right. That’s the only place left that holds the secret now.”

Jemello wished me luck to the very end, wearing a playful smile.

“May the stars guide the path you walk.”

 

 

 

****

 

 

The road from the Mage Tower to the ruins.

A city that, until yesterday, had regained its vitality with the coming of morning remained eerily quiet.

“Arellin.”

In front of the ruins’ entrance.

Pession called out to me as I still couldn’t take my eyes off the Mage Tower.

“Pession……”

Pession didn’t say things like it’ll be fine or nothing will happen.

“I’m here with you.”

He simply tightened his grip on my hand.

“Jemello……”

Pession quietly shook his head.

I knew it, logically. That I should respect Jemello’s choice… and that I ought to pay proper respect to a mage who chose to die as a mage should.

But still.

“I guess I haven’t grown up enough yet.”

I wished no one would die, that everyone would stay by my side.

I didn’t want to lose anyone.

“Pession, you’ll never leave me, right?”

Pession looked at me in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected me to say that—then smiled.

“Even if you tell me to leave, I won’t.”

 

 

 

****

 

 

After confirming that the two figures disappeared in the direction of the ruins, Jemello let out a dry cough.

“Cough……”

He hadn’t told Arellin, but Jemello knew very well that he wasn’t in a normal state.

‘…The corruption is severe.’

Because he alone was maintaining the barrier enveloping the massive city, the backlash from the constant drain of mana caused corruption to accumulate exponentially.

Especially after spending two nights like this.

That was one of the many reasons Jemello decided to seal Gairen.

“Hyung, if you become a mage, you’ll be able to save Mom and Dad, right?”

His vision blurred.
As children, the siblings had lost their parents in an accident, then been betrayed by the village chief, losing all their possessions and ending up wandering the streets.

Throughout it all, their longing for their pitifully deceased parents only grew stronger. Even after Jemello became a mage, his younger sibling would say things like that half-jokingly.

“There’s no magic that can bring the dead back to life.”

But the human heart doesn’t give up so easily. Even as he told his sibling it was impossible, Jemello desperately wished for it himself.

Dreaming that if he researched immortality, perhaps even resurrection—considered the domain of the gods—might be within reach of magic.

Time passed, and the two who had seemed like they’d be children forever became adults.

While Jemello devoted himself to magic, his sibling married and started a family. And one day, he said this—

“Hyung, I’ve been so happy lately. When we were young, things were so hard I couldn’t imagine how I’d go on living. But not anymore. I miss Mom and Dad, but now I can go see them someday, so I’m okay.”

The sibling who had always been younger than him had, before he realized it, grown older than Jemello himself.
Unlike Jemello, whose biological time had slowed thanks to mana, his sibling had become an old man, smiling brightly with a wrinkled face.

“I hope the rest of your life is nothing but happiness, hyung.”

After his sibling died, Jemello disappeared from the sight of the family he left behind. That was easier than breathing. He had long since become a high-ranking mage, and by principle, he was meant to live only in the Sky Tower. If he didn’t wish to be seen, they would never see him again.

Still, like a thorn stuck in his throat, it weighed on him—so he secretly looked in on his sibling’s family.

They had overcome his sibling’s death and were living incredibly happy lives.

Unlike himself, who was still stuck in the days when his parents died and he wandered the streets with his sibling, only to become a mage by sheer luck.

“Dying isn’t scary.”

The hand gripping his staff trembled faintly.

Maybe it was scary.

Fear of death was something any living being felt.

But—

“It’s better than dying without doing anything……”

Jemello recalled it.

The sinister man from the previous night, who had offered to grant his wish and held out his hand.

How close he’d come to giving in to that temptation.

“Do what you can. What you want.”

Before setting out, Jemello remembered the advice the Archmage had once given him—and smiled.

Arellin had called this a sacrifice, but this wasn’t sacrifice.

It was the finest thing he could do with what he had.

Wooooong—

Jemello’s mana wrapped around the Mage Tower, altering the nature of the barrier surrounding the city. The magic that enveloped the massive city stilled it into silence.’

 

 

****

 

 

 

Only Jemello’s stars, floating high in the sky, bore witness to that magnificent sight.

As we passed through the entrance of the ruins, like the gaping maw of an abyss, an unfamiliar air wrapped around us.

Tense, unsure of what might happen, I froze when the darkness at the entrance gave way to an unexpected view.

“What is this?”

An open sky, a vast grassland, and an unidentified structure visible in the distance.
A landscape completely unlike anything we’d imagined greeted us.