The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health Chapter 298

“Ahem. This body has arrived.”

Back at the Sky Tower, Arellin unpacked the large bundle of bread she had brought with her.

“Everyone, please help yourselves.”

The mages had no idea about the tear-jerking story behind it—how she had gone out just to kill time, gotten kidnapped, and ended up dragged all the way to the imperial palace.

This bread was her compensation, wrung out of Sirua in exchange for being abducted.

“Ohhh, this is delicious!”

“I’ve never tried bread like this before.”

“What’s this bread called?”

“Heh heh heh.”

She had been waiting for this moment.

“Ah, that is called pizza bread.”

“Pizza bread?!”

This was the work of Emma, who had returned to being a maid of Halbern once again.

Emma had recreated the bread after hearing Arellin talk nostalgically about wanting to eat it. The fact that she had perfectly reproduced pizza bread based on memory alone was honestly terrifying.

It went on sale as a new product at Emma’s bakery.

‘Releasing pizza bread into a fantasy world…’

Once you tasted this, there was no going back to the past.

The moment she first took a bite, Arellin wondered if she had committed a terrible sin and felt sorry for the people of this world.

But she had already released automobiles, so what did it matter?

Eat and enjoy.

“With so many toppings, this alone is enough for a meal. Not bad at all.”

“In my time, there weren’t shops selling things like this. The outside world is changing quickly.”

“Right. Maybe we should go down more often?”

No matter how obsessed mages were with magic and research, taste still mattered.

Everyone praised her pizza bread.

As expected, delicious food was always right.

“Please eat lots and buy lots~ This is <Very Well Done Bakery>~”

She seized the chance to properly advertise Emma’s bakery, then wandered around looking for her master. Her wandering came to an end when she ran into the mage Pao, who was eating pizza bread.

“The Grand Master is still in the Infinite Archive.”

“Still?”

What was he preparing that required this much buildup?

“I just wanted to discuss Sir Zylo Gremwat.”

Beside her, Halli—who was also eating bread—suddenly spoke as if remembering something.

“Oh! Right, Arel. You asked about Robert’s whereabouts, didn’t you? We got in touch with him, but it’s hard to explain.”

“Robert?”

Who was that again?

“Ah.”

She tilted her head, then belatedly remembered—he was Chloe’s mentor, the female lead’s teacher.

Come to think of it, she had asked about him before, curious about the heroine’s whereabouts.

“I heard he’s in Shugra. Anyway, he should be returning to the Sky Tower soon, so you’ll probably be able to meet him.”

“Shugra? The Fairy Empire?”

Why would he be there…?

That was when she turned her head and met a pair of hollow eyes with dark circles.

“…?”

Wasn’t that Luka?

“Lady Arellin!”

The moment Luka saw her, he came running over as if he had found his savior.

“Please save me!”

 

 

****

 

 

 

Luka was a newbie at the Sky Tower.

The high-rank mages welcomed his arrival with unusual enthusiasm, usually for reasons like these.

“Hahaha. Yes. This is what a newbie should be like!”

“Ahh, so fresh.”

“See? Arellin was the weird one. A newbie should be like this!”

Watching Luka, who didn’t know much, couldn’t do much, and kept making mistakes, the high-rank mages looked pleased instead.

Luka was overwhelmed by this endless babying.

“Lady Arellin, please save me! These people are weird!”

“Calm down. High-rank mages being weird is normal. They lock themselves in rooms staring at magic circles all day—how could they be normal? But what happened?”

Luka began venting.

“C-cough—! They said they’d teach me the basics of high-level magic, and then they gave me this!”

Oh. A basic magic tome.

It was a book she had torn apart long ago without ever opening.

With a gaunt face, Luka held out the book.

“It’s too hard.”

Why was this hard?

“The entire system is completely different from the magic I’ve been using! And on top of that! Do you know how many languages this book uses? Fifty-two!”

Ah.

“This isn’t even a temple, so why are there ancient divine languages?! And why do I have to learn different divine languages and tongues by era? Sobeurian, Dohit, Ancient Sellon, San Mordello, and—whatever this one is! Why do we even learn these languages?! Aren’t mages supposed to just master Sellon, the language of magic?!”

Luka’s face was pale. He seemed crushed by the level of knowledge demanded by the book—far beyond anything he had known.

“Hm. I see.”

Unfortunately, he had chosen the wrong person to complain to. She was maxed out in languages, so this hardship meant nothing to her.

“But you can’t help it. If you want to use high-level magic, you need all of that. Different types and attributes of magic require different languages. That’s just how it is.”

“Why does it all have to be necessary?!”

“Well, magic originated from dragon speech. Unless you can use true word magic like my master, you have to rely on formulas and magic circles. And since all magic is made of ‘sentences,’ high-level magic always uses multiple languages.”

There was a reason high-rank mages spent all day researching magic.

Realizing the truth, Luka fell into despair.

“You can’t help it. If you want to use high-level magic, you have to know all of it.”

She herself had once asked her master why magic circles needed so many languages.

At the time, he had said this:

“These languages borrow the power of their original owners.”

Magic was the power to impose one’s will upon the world.

Inevitably, it interfered with the existing rules that upheld reality. The methods, attributes, and forms branched endlessly, but the foundation was the same.

‘And once you reach a certain level, you can imbue power into your own words rather than borrowed ones.’

She was an exception, though.

A prodigy who had cleared every stage at lightning speed the moment she learned magic couldn’t understand the suffering of ordinary people.

“Why is this hard?”

No wonder the high-rank mages had been driven to despair by her.

“Ugh… ughhh…?”

She looked at the dazed Luka with pity.

“Cheer up! Luka. They say if you study for about thirty years, you’ll be able to do everything.”

“Thirty years…?”

Just as she was energetically encouraging the broken newbie—

[Arellin.]

Her master’s voice echoed in her mind.

[Come here.]

 

 

 

***

 

 

The place her master summoned her to was the Sky Tower’s pride—the Archive of All Things, commonly called the Infinite Archive.

The Infinite Archive looked like an endless universe, and every star-like sparkle was knowledge.

‘Every time I come here, it feels like Halbern’s secret archive.’

It was a place created by partially connecting the Akashic Records, said to contain everything recorded since the creation of the world.

Perhaps because of that, the moment she entered, her dead status window reacted.

[Syncing……]

Even though both were omniscient systems, Laplace’s Demon and the Akashic Records were fundamentally different, so there shouldn’t have been anything to sync.

She was staring at the status window when—

[You’re here.]

“Master…”

The Infinite Archive felt different today. And her master looked different too.

‘That appearance…’

She had often thought he was amazing, but she had never felt that he was a fundamentally different being from herself.

With his eyes closed, starlight from an unknown source shattered across Mercedes’s face, scattering into white brilliance.

Humm—.

The gaze of countless stars, sensing the great archmage’s overwhelming authority, gathered in one place.

[A darkly burning star……]

[Fortune’s 777……]

[Knowledge and……]

⋮

She was used to the stars’ attention, but this level of scrutiny was something she hadn’t felt since she first cast magic.

Back then, the stars had swarmed to bless her, but afterward, they only appeared when truly interested.

Her master opened his eyes.

In his always starlike golden pupils, fragments of star-gold light shimmered.

An overwhelming presence completely unlike usual. Yet strangely, the air merely felt heavy—it wasn’t frightening, nor did it inspire worship.

[Arellin.]

“Yes, Master. I hear you.”

[You went through things you should not have had to endure.]

Did he mean what happened in Gairen?

“But my dad was there. I didn’t really have a choice.”

[That is not what I mean.]

Sparkling starlight fell toward her.

Emotions that words could not convey flowed to her through that light.

Fear. Guilt. Pain. Loneliness.

And—

A very faint hope.

Courage that looked ready to shatter.

The starlight faded. Her master, returned to his familiar appearance, spoke with a firm expression.

“I will tell you everything.”

Everything…?

As she wondered, he began.

“This world is destined for destruction.”

…That’s something I already know, though.