Chapter 40
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 40
Chapter Title: The Sorcerer Awaits
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‘So it has come to this.’
In the stillness, I could see the students struggling to stay on their feet.
Their eyes pleaded for me to step in and cleave that monster down in one stroke.
‘That wouldn’t be difficult.’
But just because something wasn’t difficult didn’t mean I had to do it.
At least, not for me. I had no justification for dealing with it.
Should I intervene just because people were dying?
I would save lives.
Just not theirs.
I would save far more than those buried in bones over there.
Tens of thousands, even.
“Elin, this is the situation.”
“Are you seriously saying that so casually right now!? Over there…….”
Elin went pale as a ghost, starting to say something, but froze the moment she saw my face.
“…Professor, you don’t feel a thing when you see others dying, do you?”
“Are you questioning my morals? I do feel deep regret for their misfortune. It’s just like the deepest depths to spawn such bizarre monsters.”
“That’s what you call it……!”
I stayed silent, as if inviting her to keep going as she bristled.
Paradoxically, as her excitement peaked, Elin seemed to lose her words entirely.
She just glared at me, chilled to the bone.
“Elin, hold this place.”
“Huh?”
My words caught her off guard, and she let out a dumbstruck noise.
“What, did you think I’d just stand by and watch?”
“You don’t feel anything…….”
“Not feeling and standing by are different things. I’m just not as sensitive as you.”
I paused a beat, then rose to my feet.
“…You’re safe in the interior, so death isn’t familiar. You’ll get used to it in time.”
“…Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about, Professor.”
You’ll wear out if you see it too often, I muttered with a wry smile, shaking my head.
This game was a hardcore single-action game.
No telling how much players cared, but those grand cutscenes everyone called pretty—the great wars, the massive battles—came with countless casualties.
Mostly because it wasn’t real.
That’s what let people appreciate the beauty of it as a game…
‘But what if it were?’
A great siege with all sorts of war machines.
To build a scenario where countless异種 wiped out old grudges to war with demons, how many people would have to die?
Players just had to find units to fight on the field, loving the grandeur without a thought, but everything has its underside.
At least Aiden was a character true to that underside.
The countless deaths he’d witnessed until reaching Master had overstimulated his life.
The moment he was posted safely to the capital as a Master, ennui and disgust with all life set in.
‘I get it now that I’ve become one.’
With so much death around him, nothing felt precious anymore. No attachments formed.
All that remained were the scars of a fierce life, pushing forward through muddied, magic-tainted earth.
That’s why this place felt so comfortably familiar.
“If you can’t understand, that’s fine. Reality doesn’t ask for understanding anyway.”
Reality just comes at you.
Whether you get swept away or stand against it is your choice.
At least I respected that choice.
“Slicing that thing won’t kill it. You have to kill the sorcerer.”
“Have you seen one before?”
“Something similar. A while back.”
I tossed a word to the students, who looked anxious now that I was actually leaving, no matter how much they’d wanted me to handle the giant.
“It’ll be fine. The Magic Tower mages aren’t the type to go down easily.”
What’s more, the Tower Lord was there.
Knowing students were behind them, they’d hold out somehow, whether I was there or not.
The important thing……
I turned my head.
“Radia. Come with me.”
To save tens of thousands, my job was always the same.
“Me?”
Radia flinched.
“Yes, I need your ability for a bit. Or are you scared?”
If she was scared, she didn’t have to come.
That’d be her choice.
As I started walking, Radia bit her lip and hurried after me.
“Good decision.”
I flashed her a grin.
Radia kept chasing after Aiden’s back.
‘Good decision…….’
She had no idea what made it good.
But she could tell the professor was glad she was coming.
Heart pounding, she took each step.
The crunch of dirt underfoot felt strange.
Maybe she just wanted it to feel strange.
Aiden said nothing as they walked, so Radia’s gaze naturally drifted to the sides or behind.
New monsters spreading by using devoured beasts as hosts.
Her legs shook like she was witnessing an apocalyptic scene from some fantasy.
“What are those?”
“A hive.”
The monsters weren’t just that giant.
Bizarre beasts emerging one after another from the ground.
They moved as one hive mind, like their bodies were multiple.
Huge tumors on their heads connected by thin, umbilical-like tubes.
As Aiden said, it was one network.
A means to turn different beast species into a hive.
The sight of countless monsters intertwining arms into clusters was grotesque.
“Why are they like that?”
“Ever seen a snake with five heads?”
Radia stared at Aiden.
A snake with five heads.
A malformed beast thrashing, its tail knotted like a noose.
He asked calmly, even knowing she’d faced it.
‘The professor can’t know what I encountered.’
Like how he’d nailed the contamination core with the tower mage before, it felt like he had some method.
Radia recalled it at his words.
Just imagining it chilled her.
When she first saw it, disgust rose before questions.
Like stumbling on some cult’s unholy ritual.
No idea why it was like that, her mind rejected it.
Reviling.
“…Why that snake?”
“If a five-headed snake fused not just tails but bodies, who do you think would hold decision-making power?”
“The strongest one?”
“No. The answer is no one. At all.”
No one? Then who?
Aiden continued.
“The moment they fuse, it’s a new species. Even inheriting memories and taking control, you can’t be sure it’s the old self. It’d just be a new personality.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means hive creature. Beings that can’t exist as separate individuals.”
So that……
Aiden added,
“That’s the same context. It weaves other monsters into hive creatures. Why form a hive? Because it’s advantageous for survival.”
“Advantageous?”
“Stronger.”
For saying that, Aiden brushed off the monsters effortlessly.
One swing of his hand, and limbs tore like ash in the wind, scattering.
Not even chunks of flesh left, as if they’d never been there.
The leftover fluids and blood didn’t pool; the purple earth sucked them in.
In the end, no trace remained where they’d passed.
Radia eyed the scene in horror without thinking.
The ground absorbing blood evoked a massive hellscape, a living entity waiting for deaths.
Over there, mages fiercely opposed the giant.
Having tasted blood, perhaps—their tempers flared, power amped up.
A storm like an avalanche raged.
Ice spears pierced the giant’s body, frost clung, sharp ice shards scattered in the air.
Among them, a massive pillar shoved the giant back—the crowning achievement.
─Grraaaaaaaaahhh
The black-bodied giant slowly yielded.
At its center stood the Tower Lord, blood trickling from her forehead.
Peering through skeletal trees, Radia chased Aiden’s back again.
“Can we really move so leisurely? Shouldn’t we run now?”
“No need.”
Without looking back, he kept walking forward.
No running, no urgency. As if her panic was the weird part, Aiden strolled at ease.
If not for the weight in his steps, Radia would’ve asked a dozen times.
Radia chewed her dry lower lip.
Chapped and swollen everywhere.
Since arriving at the tower, endless ordeals had even drawn blood midway.
Radia’s gaze turned to Aiden’s profile.
He never watched behind, so to see his face, she had to walk beside.
Monsters kept lunging in grotesque forms ahead.
By their auras, fierce fights seemed due, yet it felt too idle.
One person handling hordes should be unnerving……
‘He’ll never lose.’
She couldn’t picture the professor defeated.
Nothing like the slacker impression she’d had.
White feathers fluttered.
A pure hue spread.
Not pushing aside the purple earth like frost or snow—it seeped in, intertwining.
Not blindingly bright, but a deep ivory glow.
A multifaceted white, impossible to call merely white, scattering in feather form.
When it touched monsters, forms shattered, crumbling to the ground.
Normally, seeing a swordmaster’s aura would teach something, but this was too advanced—dizzying, incomprehensible.
‘…Gorgeous variations.’
Unpredictable shifts, illusions wrapping feathers, proved the condensed aura’s quality.
Master, Radia thought, glancing at Aiden.
The man who’d stood arms crossed at the back during training.
Seemed apathetic since entering……
But that characteristic boredom had quietly faded.
“Curious how that giant’s made?”
He must’ve taken her stare that way and asked.
Not her intent, but perfect timing for her question, so she nodded silently.
“Look at the body. Precisely, the core. All your answers are there. Recall what I said about hives.”
Radia glanced at the giant.
A mashed lump of meat.
Root-like things from the core formed limbs.
‘No way……!’
Radia shook her head.
She didn’t want to understand.
But against her will, her mind sought answers.
Individuals crumpled indifferently, clumping into the core.
The hives, cores she’d seen before.
“That’s…….”
“A flesh golem.”
A loathsome thing powered by living monsters.
The Holy See would surely condemn it.
Blasphemy against life right there.
Facing the truth, Radia shrank back.
Reflexively scanning the giant again, it now seemed utterly grotesque and terrifying, unlike before.
Clutching monsters stripped of basic instincts, roaring, long arms dangling to smash the ground.
“Made from living monsters?! That’s.”
“Humans would be taboo, sure. Even with monsters, it’s heretical enough for an inquisition.”
Inquisition came when mages breached ethics, probed as heretical sorcerers.
Like the Holy See’s religious trials… most ended in execution.
Radia clutched her face desperately.
Never prayed in her life, but now she yearned for a god.
A monster denying life’s dignity head-on.
Such things shouldn’t exist—despair like that, but gods were just ears that heard.
No answers came.
Faith crumbling, Radia looked up.
No heaven to lean on? Then only people like her.
But was that possible?
“Where did it.”
Where did it all go wrong.
Doubting humanity’s depths, Aiden added,
“And it only activates with the sorcerer nearby.”
“What does that…….”
Tracing the cause, Radia’s gaze landed on a figure.
A demon.
“I’ve been waiting, Professor Aiden.”
A chilling voice echoed across the area.