60 – BAD END: The Sorcerer (1)
Sorcerers are inherently suspicious beings.
Suspicion implies having many doubts and thoughts, which directly relates to a sorcerer’s pursuit of knowledge.
So, an exceptional sorcerer is also connected to being highly suspicious.
Why does the sun move?
Why is fire so hot?
Why do those blue particles floating in the air understand our words?
Is what we see truly what it seems?
These doubts, these suspicions, accumulate one by one, creating the specialized profession known as a sorcerer.
In simpler terms, it forms qualities that can be called “Sorcerer’s Traits.”
And with a similar viewpoint.
Natural geniuses tend to rely too much on their intuition. Their intuition is exceptionally sharp compared to ordinary people, and they are well aware of it.
Naturally, they come to rely on their intuition.
What others discover through deliberation and contemplation, geniuses find by saying, “Oh, it just works when I do it.”
That was mostly thanks to her intuition. It was as if she had a third hand and a third eye that others didn’t possess.
Geniuses enable many things that others find difficult to do, relatively quickly.
It was so convenient that geniuses sometimes had blind faith in their intuition.
You could say they had a “talent freak” trait.
And Lily was a person who fit both the “magician freak” and “talent freak” categories.
From birth, she had a lot of curiosity, and she often solved things with her innate intuition and gut feeling.
Thanks to that, she quickly became a high-level magician, and many people started to follow her from behind.
Being adored became a daily occurrence, and living in expensive places became natural.
Perhaps her unique lack of manners and emotional personality were formed during that time.
However, with those two characteristics, a very small problem arose… and that was a contradiction.
A magician who doubts and investigates everything in the world, but blindly believes in her own intuition.
It was endlessly contradictory.
If her intuition were distorted by “something,” she would easily be deceived more than anyone else.
Even if she realized that fact late. It was already long overdue.
*
“hehehe…”
There is a woman here who is crying and sniffling loudly.
Surprisingly, just a few hours ago, she was arguing fiercely with herself. Her name is Lily Spencer Beatrice.
She is a prodigy who will become the youngest grand magician and, if we judge her as an impudent person, she is the top among the party members.
And now, this person was crying and apologizing to herself.
Thanks to that, Luke couldn’t help but feel confused.
“What is this?”
Could it be that he had been lingering longer than he thought? Perhaps time had passed so much that she had also had time to reflect.
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No, even so, it’s too much to linger like this. Isn’t it too much to dwell on it?
Or maybe, he had been brainwashed by the cult in some way. That’s why he’s behaving like this, trying to unravel himself in any way possible.
Even that doesn’t make sense, but her attitude doesn’t make sense either.
“Hmm… It definitely seems more plausible this way.”
Wait, does that mean the cultist came here?
When Luke was seriously contemplating the sudden situation.
There was one person who understood the situation in an instant.
Yuris von Yugrasia.
Her eyes were trembling uncontrollably right now.
Because it was the situation she was most worried about. The fact that one of the party members had returned to the past meant that the worst situation had occurred in the future.
The hero died once again, and she also met a tragic end.
“Hey, Lily, can I talk to you for a moment?”
That’s why Yuris decided to take Lily somewhere else for now. They needed to talk among those who knew the secret.
So Yuris grabbed Lily and disappeared somewhere. Fortunately, Luke was too deep in thought to catch them.
As they were left alone in a secluded place, Yuris asked.
“Well, tell me. What exactly happened?
…Or should I go first?”
At first, I was a bit perplexed about where and how to start explaining. Judging by Lily’s demeanor, it was clear that she had returned to the past, and in order to hear the details, I had to explain my own perspective first.
So, I was a bit puzzled about where and how to start explaining… However, fortunately, it didn’t seem necessary to explain everything in detail.
“You, you…”
Lily was the first to realize.
“So, it was you… Huh, sniff… You must have gone through a lot. I’m sorry for not knowing and causing trouble…”
At that moment, Ulysses realized one thing.
Come to think of it, Lily must have seen the player log. If so, among those countless scenes, she might have noticed his changed attitude. After all, he had been quite clingy to her lately.
Although the person involved didn’t know, it was an attitude change that anyone who knew the whole story could easily recognize.
Ulysses sighed.
“Well, it’s fine… Your curse as a hero must be quite annoying. That can happen. Can you explain what happened?”
Anyway, there was no need to bother explaining this anymore.
Ulysses decided to get straight to the point.
When she asked, Lily opened her mouth, controlling her emotions.
“Sniff… That… happened…”
And so, the story began.
Another story filled only with tragedy.
*
Among the Four Heavenly Kings, if you were to choose the strongest, there were countless candidates. But if you were to choose the most feared Heavenly King, there was only one.
The Puppeteer, Neth.
Among the Four Heavenly Kings, he was considered a veteran. He was the one who invaded the human world the most frequently, and every time he appeared, the history of humanity was stained with blood.
However, because the creature’s lifespan was long, the gaps in its history were also incredibly long… People sometimes forget about the true fear.
“…Annoying!”
After Luke and Lily had a fight, Lily felt upset.
Not only the argument with the hero, but the most unpleasant thing was that Ulysses pushed her aside instead of the hero.
Why? Why is he favoring the hero like this?
Lily couldn’t understand why Ulysses was so protective of the hero, even though the situation had become dangerous.
“I’m sorry. I just acted out of urgency to stop him.”
“Hmph, whatever.”
Because of that, Lily ignored Ulysses’ apology.
Instead of such an apology, it was necessary to quickly reveal the true identity of the hero. They couldn’t leave such a suspicious person in their party any longer.
Of course, she admitted that her own deductions were somewhat hasty.
Since the person was such a mystery, it was difficult to find even one piece of evidence. But her “intuition,” her “intuition” that had elevated her to the level of a master magician, warned her.
That person is dangerous.
As long as her intuition was sounding the alarm, she would not stop suspecting.
So, she gathered her magical power.
It wasn’t that she gathered her magical power to use magic.
When magic was used, it left behind a specific residue called magical residue, which sometimes followed the user like a scent.
It was a method often used by the royal pursuit unit.
As it was commonly used, it was easy to erase the residue, but fortunately, the hero hadn’t erased it separately.
Seeing the trail of blue magical power left behind by his run, it seemed that he was a suspicious person with blue magical power.
She silently followed the hero’s mana. Gradually, the hero’s mana, which had been heading towards the city center, suddenly extinguished downwards.
He had descended into an underground waterway.
“As expected! I knew there was something!”
She cheered inwardly.
If it was indeed an underground waterway, she would be able to avoid the eyes of others.
And since the party members were also engrossed in battle, they wouldn’t be paying attention.
It was a perfect space for setting up something.
Therefore, there must be some traces left behind.
Traces of contact with the Demon Army, or even the Demon Army itself.
Lily was confident as she continued to follow the traces.
As she expected, there were indeed traces.
However, they were slightly different from what she had anticipated.
A pungent scent of blood filled her nostrils. As she walked forward, the bodies of monsters increased one by one.
Among the curses that the hero possessed, there was a curse of inactivity. Simply put, it hid the hero’s active presence.
Perhaps that was why the battle had taken place in the underground waterway rather than on the surface.
However, there was an obvious flaw in this curse.
The result of dealing with it was not easy to get rid of. It was unlikely that all those corpses would simply disappear underground.
Likewise, they wouldn’t turn into dust and fly away.
Of course, in the case of the tableware monster, it did turn into dust and fly away… That guy, in the first place, had received the collective evil intentions and even the goddess’s punishment.
It was more than enough for him to turn into dust and disappear.
So, that guy is a special case.
Anyway, in conclusion, the corpses handled by the hero were preserved as they were.
And Lily witnessed it.
“Uh, uh…”
No matter how suspicious she was of the hero, there was a limit to distorting the truth.
“What on earth…”
Deep wounds were found all over the monsters’ bodies.
All of them were wounds inflicted by the hero. In other words, it meant that the hero had dealt with all these monsters alone.
No way, could that be true…? Despite thinking that, the sight before her denied her doubts.
Furthermore, there were astonishing faces at the core of those corpses.
The dark mage, Olek.
The face of that guy she had only seen in books was now lying on the ground as a corpse right in front of her. Lily approached him.
As she approached, she continued her deductions.
If the Demon Army had sent monsters in this direction, besides the castle walls…
The hero would have been the first to notice the abnormality and fought against these monsters. Alone.
If that’s the case, if he couldn’t stop all these monsters and even a few of them managed to get through…
No, even before that, if no one had noticed the abnormality…
Chills ran down her spine.
For a moment, a shiver ran down her back. Perhaps something terrible had happened in the city.
“No, wait, that can’t be true…”
Of course, she hesitated for a moment.
To think that she didn’t know about such a big incident. And the fact that a hero might have single-handedly stopped it.
If her deduction was correct, she had come here to vent her anger at the hero who had endured all that suffering.
Even if she didn’t like that fact, she tried to investigate.
At the very least, she wanted to find out something other than the fact that the hero had stopped it.
But, she couldn’t make much progress in that attempt.
Damn it!
It was because a magic circle had been activated.
It wasn’t the magic circle that Alek had activated. He had already died a long time ago.
Likewise, it wasn’t a magic circle activated by someone else.
There was no other living being here besides her.
The subject of the magic circle was a scroll.
Something that someone had drawn a long time ago, long before coming here.
A collection of magical techniques that took at least a year to draw the formula of the magic into it.
That magic had been activated.
The name of the magic was Transference.
A magic that moves the subject to another place.
As I mentioned earlier, if you were to choose the most feared of the Four Heavenly Kings, it would be the Monster Tamer. This is because of his cruel nature, not just controlling humans.
The Monster Tamer, Net.
The one who had been manipulating life since birth is skilled in deception and strategy. When he appeared, discord arose in the human world.
“Huh…?”
And just like that, in the next moment.
Snatched away!
Lily found herself transported to an unknown place.