Chapter 68
“Hey… at this point, isn’t this just straight-up abuse…? You’re actually learning anything from this, right?”
I don’t know. Don’t ask me.
That’s what I wanted to say, but as the one under supervision, I kept my mouth shut. Then I answered.
“…More or less. It’s manageable.”
“Manageable…? It doesn’t look manageable at all.”
To be honest, I hadn’t really gained anything over the past few days. At first, the old man got angry, saying he’d never seen someone like me and asking if I was doing it on purpose. But at some point, he started marveling that someone with talent scraping the absolute bottom like mine might actually be unique.
It wasn’t real admiration, though. It was the same kind of “admiration” the narrator gives.
—
[If you’re stupid, then just accept that you’re stupid and live with it!]
—
That kind of thing.
Getting double that kind of “event” every day, I was starting to lose track of whether my head felt dizzy from getting hit or from the verbal abuse.
The next day was the same. I held the light in my hand and got beaten until I couldn’t think of anything at all. At some point, just closing my eyes made my mind go blank.
Like some kind of Pavlov’s dog.
Close my eyes → hold a sphere of light → think nothing.
That formula got engraved into my head.
Without thinking, I held the light in my hand. I didn’t even look at it. Since Leon Wolf wasn’t speaking, even sound began to feel distant.
Amid that, I felt a subtle movement.
A flicker.
The flicker of the sphere.
Something around it kept flowing inward… flickering, gathering.
What kind of force was this?
The moment that question formed, the pot-lid-sized hand I expected to come flying at me… didn’t move.
Instead, something else moved.
The clump of light, the forces gathering around it, began to assert themselves more clearly, concentrating into the light.
I felt it.
I felt them gathering into the sphere of light.
The surrounding sounds and sense of space faded further and further away.
Instead, something else grew closer.
Movements within space itself… things that moved and didn’t move within it.
‘This is…’
The force that makes up magic. What they call mana here.
No… it feels even closer to the source than that…
“Stop!”
At that moment, my shoulder was seized with force, and my concentration was shattered.
I had just begun to grasp it.
Why?
Why now?
As irritation and displeasure surged up, I realized something.
I couldn’t see.
“You insane fool! Didn’t you even read in that tiny book what happens if you synchronize that deeply?!”
Mana sensitivity. Feeling mana, moving it.
They said if you push it to the extreme, some people cross a wall… but others reach not a wall, but a state of ‘nothingness.’
That state of ‘nothingness’ is simple:
Your body disintegrates. Completely disappears without a trace. Transforms into the same nature as mana.
It’s something mages must consciously regulate.
Raise it enough to use magic, but pushing it to the absolute extreme is always something to attempt later.
In the pitch-black void, I dropped something.
The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
I was probably coughing up blood.
Pain had faded.
All I could feel were touch, hearing, taste, and smell.
The stench of blood was everywhere.
“You’ve truly lost your mind! You really…!”
Behind the old man shouting, I heard medics rushing in.
They began spouting incomprehensible medical terms like mad, but among them, I caught fragments I understood:
A temporary state of unity with mana.
But since my form was still intact, stabilize the condition first and suppressed all senses to prevent further mana interaction.
Perhaps somewhere beyond my unseen vision, the narrator was laughing hysterically.
‘Even this is the limit of your talent.’
This wasn’t because I was so talented that I fused with mana.
It was because I lacked control.
Because I was worse at separating myself from mana.
That’s why…
‘It hurts so much to be untalented.’
They administered a stabilizer.
And I sank into sleep.
The shouting voices faded further and further away.
***
When I opened my eyes briefly, my vision had somewhat recovered.
And I saw one thing.
—
[You have learned the path to magic.]
[However, it is not enough to bloom into anything yet. You must continue striving…….]
—
That window.
Anyway, I could see, hear, and feel pain again.
Because my whole body felt like it had been beaten senseless.
‘At least I got something.’
I had been worried I might have burned everything again and gained nothing like last time.
Then I saw this:
—
[Stacked Injuries]
Before your existing injuries could heal, your body was subjected to extreme strain!
Life is not something to be spent in advance!
The fruits of your efforts have disappeared…… Was that cheap for the price of your life?
Strength level has decreased by 1.
—
My strength level dropped by 1.
Ha… after all that grinding to raise it…
Though honestly, I wasn’t in a position to complain. Surviving at all was already fortunate.
As I let out a small breath, I suddenly felt a piercing gaze and turned my head.
“You’re awake?”
The moment I met those glowing eyes in the darkness, I honestly wanted to close mine again.
“Why do you go that far?”
Leon Wolf sat there, posture straight, arms crossed, without his usual cranky demeanor.
Not as a grumpy old man… but as a battle-hardened veteran.
He asked me.
“Why do you push yourself that far? To survive? Yes, survival matters to everyone. But you…”
Leon Wolf stared at me quietly.
“You’re not just trying to survive. If you valued your life properly, you wouldn’t act so recklessly.”
“……”
“Speak. What is your ridiculous goal?”
My goal?
It wasn’t anything grand.
As always, my goal was just one thing.
To return.
Back to my tiny one-room apartment, the place filled with the graves of all my failures.
To do that, I had to survive this apocalypse somehow.
No, not just survive.
‘Without Sa Jaeheon knowing.’
I had to become the strongest.
For that, anything… absolutely anything.
“I’ll reach it.”
Leon Wolf looked at me.
“And then… I’ll turn it back.”
Everything.
Back to where it was.
Back to the beginning.
The old man stared at me.
A warrior who had wandered countless battlefields as if each were his final destination looked at me.
Eyes that had never dulled locked onto me.
For a moment, I thought… my entire life might not even amount to a single moment in his.
“I know someone who had eyes like yours.”
The warrior said.
“Someone with a goal. A goal they would achieve even at the cost of death. Your eyes look just like his.”
A brief silence passed.
“But only your eyes are similar. That one had far greater talent than you. His very bloodline was talent. A lineage that gave him a body like steel and the ability to wield magic as easily as breathing. And he was incredibly intelligent. Like all children burdened with the fate of the world, he knew from a young age what he had to do.”
The warrior was speaking of someone.
And it gave me an instinctive realization.
The person Leon Wolf wanted.
The one he was talking about… “He achieved it. He built everything. Though it felt sinful to place everything on those small shoulders… we did it anyway. We made him carry it all.”
“…”
“He carried too much. We knew it, but we assumed he would endure. He was too accustomed to bearing burdens. Even if he had said he couldn’t, we would’ve made him carry it anyway.”
Because no one in our world shone as brightly as he.
—
“Hero of our world? Of course, we had one. Curious? Are you asking because if you turn back time like that, you might be able to save our world’s hero, too?”
—
Johanna had once answered Sa Jaeheon like that.
—
“Yes. If you meet him, tell him this.”
—
The one who bore a name in Hermadion.
—
“Whatever you do, don’t let the cause consume you. Just live. If you could just live… that would be enough. Come back, and let’s eat the soup you like. Leave the apocalypse behind and live an ordinary day, even just for one day.”
—
Johanna’s husband.
—
“We weren’t afraid of losing the world… we were afraid of losing you.”
—
Leon’s godson.
His disciple.
Ludwig Herrmann.
“The Arbiter of the Glacier.”
One who had received a title in this world.
“Turn it back? You mean to undo this apocalypse as if it never happened?”
At the warrior’s question, I didn’t look away.
With blazing eyes, he said:
“That grand ‘cause’ swallowed even him. You, who aren’t even remarkable… do you dare think you have the right to speak of that cause?”
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Ouch, that too harsh grandpa ( ；∀；)