-Bruno
The moment I entered the magical space, my heart naturally grew at ease.
A space where everything was provided, a space lacking nothing. Whenever I entered this place, I could enjoy absolute peace.
It was a place of my own, where I could escape the noise of the world and devote myself entirely to training.
Then, a question suddenly occurred to me.
‘Wait. Can other people enter this space too? Or is it a place only I can enter?’
I had never tested it, so there was no way to know.
Until now, I had never thought of letting anyone into the magical space. That was why I had assumed it was a place solely for me.
But once I thought that Gil also needed training, I suddenly became curious as to whether others could enter this place.
[Oudin, you’re here?]
[Why did you leave us here and go outside by yourself?]
[We’re going outside too.]
[We’re curious about how the world is turning.]
The crows seemed to fly in from the garden, but after barely greeting me, they fluttered right past me.
Then they slipped through the portal I had just come in from and vanished.
“What? The crows could just come and go?”
Only then did the thought occur to me.
If the crows could come and go, there seemed to be no reason humans could not do the same.
When the time was right, I wanted to show Gil and Cheon Danbi the magical space as well. But not yet.
Even I still did not know everything about this space. It was my space, but in truth, I was not the one controlling it.
“Let’s see. Has our mysterious caretaker stocked the fridge properly?”
I glanced around the mansion, muttering to myself, and headed toward the refrigerator in the kitchen.
When I opened it, it was exactly as expected. Inside, fresh fruit, juice, and cooked dishes were neatly stacked.
It looked as if someone had just stopped by.
But time probably was not an issue. After all, this was a space created by magic. Maintaining the freshness of food would be nothing.
Perhaps it was not a person, but the magic itself that maintained all the order within the mansion. But was such a thing possible?
‘Magic by itself? Then that would mean the mage set the magic up that way from the beginning. And I did that?’
If that were true, it would require an incredible level of magical skill. But with my current magical ability, it felt impossible.
Magic that could continuously enable so many functions was hard even to imagine.
Moreover, there was no memory in Oudin’s mind of creating this magical space.
Wouldn’t the existence of a mysterious caretaker be the more plausible explanation?
‘Who could it be?’
I took out a glass of cool juice, went out onto the veranda, and sat in a chair.
As I drank the juice, I looked out over the garden. Birds and plants brimming with mana chirped and swayed as though welcoming me.
I set the glass of juice down on the table and devoted myself to training. I drew in the mana of the space with deep breaths and stored it within my body.
I focused my mind, catching even the faintest chaos in the mana waves and arranging it according to my will.
After training like that for quite some time, I opened my eyes.
The world before me had become much brighter. The golden vision of my right eye was clear, as if a light had been lit.
In that state, I could have continued training in spell activation, but I simply stopped and headed back inside the house.
“Shall I search the mansion thoroughly today?”
There might be traces left behind that would reveal the secret of the magical space. This time, I decided to search in earnest.
Last time, I had explored the area outside the mansion. Curious about how far the space extended, I had gone quite far out.
To my surprise, I had never reached the end of the space. All I had encountered was the mystery of its vastness.
Today, I intended to examine the interior of the mansion.
While looking through the study on the second floor, I gained an unexpected harvest.
“Hmm. This should be helpful to Gil.”
It was a book about magical training. In particular, it contained useful information for a mage who had just awakened.
I flipped through the pages and skimmed it.
What was strange was that even though the grimoire was written in ancient characters, I could read it without any difficulty.
Until not long ago, I had been completely unable to read the grimoire I found in my rooftop room.
It seemed to mean that Oudin’s memories had settled inside me, and the time I had spent training in the magical space had permeated me.
“But will Gil be able to read this book?”
It would be impossible. There was no way Gil had received that kind of education.
The only people who could read ancient characters were specialists in the field or mages from mage families.
And if it was an esoteric script, it would have been written in a language passed down only to a very small number of people.
Just in case, I tried casting translation magic on the book.
I did not know whether this would be possible, but I raised my intent and executed the magic.
‘Translate the ancient characters into modern Korean.’
I slowly infused mana into the book.
The waves seeped in. Then the letters written in the grimoire began to shift their shapes smoothly.
“This actually works.”
The sight of the ancient characters giving off a yellowish glow as they changed into Hangul was rather captivating. I watched the scene as if entranced.
Before long, the translation ended, and the book quietly withdrew its light.
I set the grimoire aside and turned around.
I searched the study thoroughly. There were quite a few grimoires in the study, and objects that appeared to be magic tools were placed here and there.
But those were not what I was looking for. Rather, I was searching for personal traces, something like the touch of a mysterious caretaker.
Nothing stood out. I also examined the various bedrooms in the mansion.
The bedrooms were simply neatly arranged, with nothing particularly noteworthy in sight.
As I wandered around the house like that, I found a space beneath the roof at the top of a dead-end stairwell, accessible by a folding ladder.
“An attic?”
It was the dead-end stairwell on the very top floor of the mansion, so I had not thought there would be anywhere else above it.
I climbed up the folding ladder and pushed hard against the ceiling. As expected, there was a hidden door there.
The door seemed not to have been opened in a very long time and was extremely stiff, but in the end, it creaked open.
When I went inside, it was an attic slanted according to the shape of the pitched roof.
Unlike the other rooms in the mansion, this place seemed not to be maintained at all, and old dust was piled thickly everywhere. When I moved even a little, gray dust scattered into the air.
“Looks like this place has been completely abandoned.”
I coughed lightly and muttered.
I saw a window set into the slanted roof. I quickly went over and opened it. Only then could I breathe comfortably.
“An abandoned space? A hidden space? Let’s see what comes out.”
The attic seemed to have been used as a storage room, as it was piled full of things.
If any personal traces remained in this mansion, I had a feeling they would be stored right here in this attic.
Carefully brushing away the dust, I began to search slowly.
The large objects were mostly weapons and magic tools. The very old-looking ones seemed to be from ancient or medieval times.
In another area, clothes, shoes, hats, and coats were piled up. They all belonged to an adult man, and their style resembled the attire of an ancient mage.
There were also several splendid suits, but they had grown faded with age and were moth-eaten.
“What is all this? Whose belongings are these?”
They were the personal items I had wanted to find. It was clear they were not Oudin’s belongings.
I did not know who their owner was, but it did not seem as though they had been well maintained. Perhaps the owner of these things had already died long ago.
But as I examined the items, Father Bruno suddenly came to mind.
I did not know why. Even though there was no reason these things would belong to Father Bruno, I naturally thought of him.
‘Father Bruno? Why?’
At that very moment, I remembered that Bruno existed in this world too.
Of course, it was Oudin’s memory. But it was a fact I had not recalled even once until now.
A part of my memory that had seemed shrouded in mist suddenly revealed itself anew, as if light had shone upon it.
Bruno. In this world, he was not a priest, but a divine mage.
Once I remembered him, Oudin’s past, as I had known it until now, was newly recalled.
When Oudin was young, his mother took him by the hand and sent him to Bruno.
I had thought he had been abandoned by his mother, but that was not the case.
Unable to handle the special magical ability Oudin manifested as a child, his mother had gone to a divine mage and entrusted her son to him.
Until he entered the Hall of Magic at the age of twelve, Oudin lived with the divine mage Bruno and grew as a mage.
‘Why couldn’t I remember this until now?’
For some reason, I felt numb.
Father Bruno, who had been a special connection to me in my previous world, was the same in this parallel world as well.
Father Bruno was the person who took me in and helped me become a proper human being after I ran away from the Samir religious community and lived on the streets in despair.
And in this world, the divine mage Bruno was the person who raised Oudin, who possessed mana that raged like a wild horse, into a proper mage.
Several memories came back clearly, but the memories of those many years did not return in full detail.
There were still holes everywhere. But now I could understand why Oudin had wanted to find his mother.
He had not been abandoned. He had been entrusted to someone for the sake of his growth.
‘Did Bruno perhaps create this magical space? Is he the one managing it?’
It seemed like a plausible guess. But the items piled up in this attic had origins even older than Bruno.
I decided to search for more traces.
After pushing through clumps of dust and cobwebs, I noticed some chests placed in a corner.
Whether because they had rusted, the lids of the chests were stuck fast and would not open easily.
I could also see blue mold spreading across them. Perhaps some chemical reaction had taken place as well, because the hinges were half corroded and fused together.
It did not seem as though brute force alone would work, so I activated magic.
Only after lifting the chest lid with telekinetic magic could I finally look inside.
It was disappointing. Inside the chests were old clothes and books that looked ready to decay and crumble. The stench of mold was overpowering.
But when I opened the chest in the very corner, there was an unexpected gain.
The moment I opened the lid, a bright light dazzled my eyes. The outside of the chest looked just as rotten as the others, but inside, it was filled to the brim with shining things.
“What is all this? Hmm… I’ve hit the jackpot.”
It was treasure. Yellow-gleaming gold and colorful jewels whose names I did not know filled the chest completely.