“Please appear in my dreams…… always.”
There were many ways to interpret those words of Ipeurin’s. I looked at the boy while thinking.
“Ipari, aren’t you being bold?”
But Ihelreum spoke first. His voice was laced with laughter.
“No. That’s not it…… If I materialize the Professor in my head, wouldn’t I be able to beat that person too?”
“Materialize Deucalion? How do you get bolder the more you talk?”
“……Mage Ihelreum, why did you come here?”
Ipeurin glared at Ihelreum with narrowed eyes. Ihelreum shrugged.
“You were my reference, weren’t you? And to repay that—”
“That’s enough.”
I cut Ihelreum off.
“It’s quite a plausible method.”
Materializing Deucalion—that is, ‘me’—in Ipeurin’s subconscious. Not a bad method.
Not impossible, but it would take quite a long time.
Therefore, I was thinking of first establishing a ‘link of consciousness’ with the boy.
Planting an alarm in Ipeurin’s consciousness, so that if Dicailen were to appear, I could move into the boy’s consciousness as well.
“First, get inside this.”
“Yes.”
A magitek brainwave detector. Ipeurin hesitantly entered the cylindrical machine.
Shhhhhhh───
The door closed with a mechanical sound, and Ipeurin immediately fell asleep.
Then I placed my hand on the machine. If I closed my eyes in this state, the memories inside the brainwave detector would be transmitted to me.
……I saw Ipeurin.
A very young Ipeurin.
The boy, small in stature like an undergrown wild beast, stood blankly staring at a gravestone.
[Lerien Luna]
A mother who had left the world not long after giving birth.
But the child’s face was not sad. To the child, his mother was merely a stranger he had never once met.
Thud, thud—
However, at the ensuing footsteps, Ipeurin’s ears perked up.
A man who approached slowly placed his hand on Ipeurin’s small shoulder, and Ipeurin looked up at him.
—Dad!
No answer returned to the brightly smiling child. That silence and stillness hardened the child’s face.
Then a small teardrop fell. It plopped onto the top of the child’s head.
—……Dad, are you crying?
He did not answer. The child found his father’s sadness even sadder than the gravestone of the mother he had never known.
The child reached out his hand to his father.
—Because of you…….
The father’s voice did not reach well. No, the child did not hear it.
Ipeurin simply smiled brightly and embraced him. That ordinary moment of happiness reached me as well.
……The scene changed.
—Filthy and lowly thing.
Gilteon’s contemptuous gaze, as if looking at a bug.
The private soldiers of Elraid surrounded Luna’s mansion, and the torches they gripped flickered intensely.
—I’m not dirty! I’m not lowly!
—Think of it as the mistake of being born into a powerless family.
—What’s wrong with that!
Still small, Ipeurin faced Gilteon while protecting his grandfather and grandmother.
His face was full of fear and his eyes brimming with tears, but he would not back down for the sake of his family.
—I was going to burn all of you from the start…… Tch. It’s become bothersome. Hey!
“Yes!” The soldiers shouted robustly and threw torches into the mansion’s courtyard.
—Leave this mansion. It will be better for your well-being to live half-dead in the frontier.
The garden Ipeurin had tended with seeds his grandfather and grandmother had bought, the flower bed grown with clumsy but earnest care, the home of flowers and butterflies—all were engulfed by a conflagration.
—Don’t! You bad people, don’t! You bastaaaaards—!
Ipeurin bawled as he watched the flames. But the fire did not die down just because he cried.
The child quickly ran and splashed water on the garden.
One bucket, two buckets, three buckets.
But the stream of water was too futile against the huge inferno. Before the flames could spread to his small body, before he could be burned, his grandfather and grandmother stopped the child.
—It’s alright, Ipeurin. This much is enough…….
—Huuuuaaaaaang……. Huaaaaaaaaang…….
……With the child’s crying as the last, the scene changed.
This time it was fragmentary, full of cracks in the memory like a broken picture frame.
-Ah…….
What was visible in that dark and sharp space was a person trapped in a coffin.
The boy’s father returned as a corpse.
Ipeurin stared at the corpse with empty eyes. The father he had never doubted would return someday and revive the family, now in a miserable state with a cord wrapped around his neck…….
“…….”
I opened my eyes. The magitek brainwave detector had shown me Ipeurin’s subconscious.
At this level, I would be able to embed a magic circle in the boy’s consciousness.
I permeated the waves of mana into Ipeurin’s brain.
This [Magitek Brainwave Detector] could do more than detect brainwaves; it could manipulate them.
I had made it that way with *The Hand of Midas*.
I engraved a magic circle into Ipeurin’s brain.
*Link*, an advanced-tier auxiliary spell. Support magic wasn’t my specialized field, but if Ipeurin did not resist, it was an easy task.
Stitch by stitch, I carved the magic circle with painstaking effort. The work took nearly an hour.
“Hmm…….”
The expended mana was 3,000, excluding *The Hand of Midas*.
I checked that it was working properly, then opened the brainwave detector.
Shhhhhh—!
The cylinder’s door opened, and Ipeurin, awakened from sleep, blankly looked up at the sky.
“Ugh!”
He furrowed his brow in pain. Ugh—rubbing his temples, he asked me.
“Professor. Is this finished……?”
“It is finished.”
Now, if Dicailen were to appear in Ipeurin’s subconscious, I would know.
Of course, the best method would be for Ipeurin to truly materialize a ‘copy of Deucalion’ as the guardian of his subconscious, but that would take quite a long time.
Until then, I would have to step in directly.
“Don’t neglect your mental strength training in the future either.”
“……Yes.”
“And.”
I handed him a wooden steel sword.
This wooden steel was the only object that resonated with me. Perhaps it knew me better than any human in this world, so it would be helpful for training mental strength.
“Use this to recall me. A medium will be of great help in constructing a guardian.”
“……Thank you.”
Ipeurin received the steel awkwardly.
Then, the door quietly opened and a small voice flowed in.
“Is…… it all done?”
It was Yeriel. Ihelreum smirked upon seeing Yeriel.
“Wow. The most competent acting lord in the world. It’s an honor to meet you after so long?”
“……What are you on about.”
“That Marik underground passage. I went there once too. It was nice.”
“Hmph. It is nice. You’d be shocked crazy if you knew how much the monthly revenue is.”
Yeriel pouted. I handed the boy a book.
“Take this.”
“……What is this?”
Yeriel looked at the book’s cover.
*Yukrain Second Thesis: Advanced*.
It was the sequel to the *Yukrain Thesis* that I had written previously.
“It’s a finished thesis. I don’t plan to publish it, so study with this. The works of strange professors will only hinder you instead.”
“……Okay.”
Yeriel accepted my book with a rather shy face.
* * *
After Deucalion left.
Ipeurin looked at the steel and inspected his mind.
It felt like something had settled into his brain.
However, it was not that powerful a spell.
One of the great principles of magic—‘Direct interference with humans requires enormous mana.’
Therefore, Deucalion’s interference was at a level that could be dismantled if Ipeurin himself put in effort.
But he didn’t particularly want to. Nor was there any need to.
Slam-
Then the guest room door opened.
It was Sylvia. She, with a sulky face for some reason, glared at Ipeurin and said.
“Cheeky Ipeurin.”
“……What now?”
Ipeurin was dumbfounded. But he was also a little glad.
Picking a fight out of nowhere—she’s still the same.
“What did you do with him.”
“Huh? Ah~ Professor Deucalion?”
She must have seen Deucalion outside. Ipeurin wiggled his eyebrows mischievously.
Jutting left and right like seagull wings—up and down, up and down—
“You~ are you sulking because I didn’t call you~?”
“Why would I—”
“You like the Professor, don’t you.”
Sylvia was at a loss for words for a moment. But she soon puffed up like a blowfish and said.
“You stupid moron, Ipeurin. I should be saying that. You hate Deucalion. Did you forget that too?”
“…….”
Ipeurin gave a bitter smile.
It was true.
Sylvia liked Deucalion, but he himself had terribly hated Deucalion. He had, during the first semester.
“I know. But you know…… hatred isn’t an exclusive emotion.”
“…….”
“I tried to hate him. To resent him…… but it doesn’t work out so well through effort alone, does it?”
Sylvia pressed her lips tightly. It was something she could relate to, to some extent.
To some extent.
“What should I say. It’s somehow like clapping, isn’t it? You can’t clap with one hand. Even if I want to hate him, even if I say I want to hate him, if that person actually says he understands everything, that he repents…….”
“So you like that professor.”
Sylvia asked. Ipeurin immediately waved his hands. Goosebumps sprouted like bamboo shoots after a spring rain up and down his back.
“Are you crazy? How could I like him. Of course I don’t like him. I still hate him. I might even hate him forever. Because he’s the professor who drove my father to his death…… Even so.”
Ipeurin paused for a moment and looked at the steel in his hand. Then he whispered with a faint smile.
“I just think that the Professor apologized first, is all.”
“…….”
Sylvia didn’t like that soft side of Ipeurin. After watching silently, she suddenly—! reached for Deucalion’s steel.
“Ah!”
Ipeurin quickly pulled the steel back, but Sylvia’s grip was strong. She swiped at the steel with both arms several times as if trying to scratch it, then stood up from her seat.
“Y-you, what are you doing!”
“…….”
And without a word, she jumped up and left the room.
Ipeurin watched her back with a rather speechless face.
“Are you jealous or what…….”
* * *
……The next day.
Yulli went to work at the Frenheim Knight Order. Perhaps because of what happened at dawn yesterday, his body felt a bit chilly, but as the commander, there was too much work to rest.
Yulli organized the ledgers, wrote the training schedule, and assigned missions to the members. Even that paperwork alone took two hours in a flash.
“Phew…….”
At the moment he was stretching proudly.
Boom──!
The commander office’s door opened violently. It was an impact that almost seemed to break it.
Yulli reflexively stood up. Vice-Commander Rokpel, who had entered urgently, shouted with a sweat-soaked face.
“Commander! It’s a big problem!”
“Rokpel. What…….”
Then, several agents in suits entered.
“Now, now. Vice-Commander, please wait outside.”
“Let go!”
“Ah-ah. If you don’t comply, it’s obstruction of official duties.”
“…….”
After pushing Rokpel outside, they looked around the commander office interior. For some reason, they looked disappointed at the crude interior.
“What is the meaning of this.”
Yulli asked with a growl. One of the agents smirked and presented his identification.
“I am Russo of the Knight Order Special Audit Team. It’s private knight order audit season these days, so here we are, I suppose.”
“Huh. An audit? Our knight order?”
“Yes. There was a tip-off.”
“A tiiiip-off?”
Yulli was exasperated.
He hadn’t done a single thing worthy of an audit. He prided himself that there was no knight order as clean as Frenheim…….
“That’s right, a tip-off. There was a tip-off. So…… hey! What are you doing? Take everything.”
“““Yes!”””
At Russo’s words, the agents put the office’s ledgers, official mission documents, and almost all paperwork into boxes. Yulli bit his lip.
“Our Frenheim has no problems at all! There must be a mista—”
“Well, that sort of thing comes out when you look for it. Just stay still if there’s no problem. If there’s no problem, we’ll give you a commendation.”
“Such…….”
Yulli was about to retort, but suddenly.
He recalled Deucalion’s words from some time ago.
—Do as you please, whatever happens. But be prepared. You will surely regret it.
“Could it be……”
“Now, now. There’s plenty more places to hit besides here! Everyone get moving, quickly!”
The agents bustled about chaotically, and Yulli stared blankly at them. Countless thoughts surfaced in her burning head.
Something was going wrong.
* * *
The Grand Hall, where all the ministers and chancellors of the Empire gathered.
Today, Sopien had involved herself in state affairs personally for the first time in a very long while. In fact, even inside the Snowglobe, she had made decisions on crucial matters through her incarnation—a cat—but she had avoided the Grand Hall in particular because dealing with her subjects was too troublesome.
“Your Majesty. Recently, the resistance of the Jeokgwe has crossed the line. I believe more fundamental subjugation and suppression are necessary.”
“Your Majesty. The ills of Marik have reached unspeakable levels. There are too many ruffian adventurers. Even now, abolishing the opening of Marik—”
“Your Majesty. The merchants of the Empire……”
Sopien hated facing these damnable people.
Three-tenths schemed only for their own advancement rather than considering the imperial subjects. One-tenth were brainwashed by the Cult. Another four-tenths knew nothing and only followed their own factions, and merely two-tenths were sincere about running the state.
“A petition has come up from the provinces of the Empire. Please receive it.”
“Hand it over.”
Sopien received the petition with a displeased expression.
Its contents said that the Jeokgwe, born with demonic power, had pillaged a village, and that many knights had died resisting them……
In short, it was “Please kill the Jeokgwe for us.”
“Also, there is much concern these days about the rapidly rising prices.”
“Ah, excellent! You spoke well! As a countermeasure against the prices, I shall directly control the Empire’s magic stone supply from the Imperial Household, and I shall raise the interest rates.”
Raising interest rates causes a decline in liquidity within the Empire. The subjects will buy fewer goods and deposit their money in banks, and the merchants will have no choice but to lower the prices of goods that won’t sell.
Currently, Sopien’s greatest weapon is not the Emperor’s authority or power, but the “key currency” and “magic stones” of the nation called the “Empire,” the largest on the continent. The power of interest rates, too, ultimately stems from the key currency.
“Your Majesty! Please show mercy! A sudden interest rate hike—”
“I do not take back words once spoken.”
Moreover, Sopien is planning a war against the Cult. Therefore, weapons and such that become unsellable due to the interest rate hike will be purchased directly by the Imperial Household.
“Your Majesty. At least a warning—”
“A warning? For whose benefit!”
Sopien’s next policy is a bank account real-name system.
A plan to execute lowlifes of uncertain identity and to screw over corrupt officials. An operation so brilliant that she herself had thought it up and thought, oh, this is good.
However, information about this absolutely must not leak, so she plans to discuss it with Dekyulrein once Keiron returns and cut it down in one stroke.
“I shall remember the name of you who prattles about warnings. What would you do if I gave you a warning? Try to profit from that information?”
All the officials were rendered speechless. Sopien spoke solemnly.
“I know well how the previous Emperor treated you all. It was said to be a politics where Emperor and officials achieved harmony together. However, succession means that an era changes. Now the present is not Krevaim’s but Sopien’s, and in my era, officials are merely tools of the Emperor.”
“……”
Sopien pressed the silent officials.
“Ask why.”
“……Why is that so, Your Majesty.”
“It is because I am hundreds of times more excellent than you all. In the politics of a superhuman, ordinary humans are far more useful when used as tools.”
Silence descended upon the Grand Hall. Her boundless self-confidence, as well as the pressure of her magical power, weighed down upon the entire hall.
“But regarding the Jeokgwe alone, I share your thoughts. I do not like the Jeokgwe very much. Therefore, regarding the Jeokgwe hideout discovered this time.”
Sopien paused briefly in her speech.
As time passed quietly, when the eyes and ears of the officials were focused on her.
“I shall dispatch Dekyulrein.”
Sopien declared.
The seventh strongest mage in the Empire. Moreover, an evil Nachal who surpassed even the Hohwanmama, at whose mere name the Jeokgwe trembled.
At those words, that she would mobilize the so-called “Demon of the Jeokgwe,” the officials hurriedly bowed.
“““Your Grace is boundless……”””
* * *
Rattle, rattle— rattle, rattle—
The frontier of the Empire’s northeast. The road leading to the Jeokgwe hideout. I was conducting various experiments on the authority of 「Cheollin」.
Kalla’s authority was quite amazing.
First, the authority fused with 「Cheollin」 was spreading into other traits. Indeed, traits such as 「Naked Eye」, 「Artistic Sense」, and 「Midas’s Hand」 had been strengthened to a certain degree by the “authority.”
Furthermore—
“We will arrive soon.”
The knight in the driver’s seat spoke. I looked in the rearview mirror and nodded.
Today, I was dressed in a uniform rather than a suit. Medals hung in clusters all over the clothes.
This uniform signified the Emperor’s Imperial Guard. The overall commander who had received the mission to annihilate the Jeokgwe.
Screech—
The car stopped. Knights outside hurriedly approached and opened the door. I stepped onto the pavement, placed my hand on the brim of my hat, and looked into the distance.
One of the Imperial Guards standing beside me spoke.
“……It appears the Jeokgwe bastards had secretly built a village and lived there. The exterior is a normal village, but underground is the Jeokgwe hideout.”
A scenery of flames burning and smoke billowing.
Countless knights and soldiers had occupied this entire wide village.
“Also, that one is their leader.”
The Imperial Guard dragged a man over and forced him to kneel on the pavement.
“……Kuh!”
I looked at the bastard’s face. The bastard glared back into my eyes.
A desert race. He was one with quite obvious Jeokgwe features.
“Where do you think you are! How dare you glare at his face like that!”
One of the Imperial Guards slapped the bastard’s cheek. A common display of excessive loyalty.
Smack—! With his lip split and his head snapped to the side, the bastard simply hung his head.
I spoke.
“He’ll need interrogation. Send him to Rohallak.”
“……!”
In that moment, the bastard opened his mouth wide. He intended to bite his tongue and commit suicide.
Chomp!
However, the bastard’s mouth could not close. It was because I had applied 「Yeomdong」 to his teeth.
I looked down at the bastard and twisted the corner of my mouth.
“……Stay alive.”
Boom—! An explosion occurred in the distance.
Whether it was magic or a sword strike. Amidst it, I stared into the man’s face.
“If you stay alive, an opportunity will come someday. However, if you die, I will have no choice but to kill everyone in that village, will I not?”
Having said that, I released the 「Yeomdong」.
The bastard gritted his teeth but did not attempt suicide. He merely shed tears and mumbled something with his torn lips.
“Send him to Rohallak.”
“Yes sir!”
Loyalty! With that salute, the man was escorted away.
Boom—!
Then, another explosion.
I watched blankly as gunpowder smoke and embers spread throughout the village.
My head was a bit complicated.
As a modern Earthling, it felt like memories that were difficult to shake off were being revived.
“Professor! Intelligence. We found out through interrogation that there is a tunnel nearby.”
Some rat-like bastard ran up and said it. I narrowed my brows and asked back.
“Tunnel?”
“Yes! It’s a tunnel made for emergency escape. Deploy troops there—”
“Do we really need to commit troops? If we thin out our forces for nothing and a gap forms in the encirclement, it will be a serious problem.”
“Ah, as expected! That must be so! As expected of the Professor!”
The man named Duren agreed blindly to my words without much thought or concern. He looked ready to commit a suicide bombing if told to do so.
“I’ll go to that tunnel alone.”
“……Professor, alone? Will you be alright? Even a few Imperial Knights—”
“Enough. What need have I for knights to dispose of trash. Spit out the coordinates.”
“Ah, yes. Here is the map.”
I received the map from Duren. I commanded the knights who tried to follow not to move from the front lines, and set off alone.
Toward the place marked “Tunnel”……