The First Trial (3)
A brief silence descended upon the small cabin.
A sudden, sharp gleam flashed across Sage's faded eyes.
"Why did you think that?"
"Pardon?"
He pressed the flustered Edwin once more.
"I asked why you came to that conclusion. You are a prince of this empire, are you not? So why on earth do you believe you're truly just 'anyone'—no different from anyone else?"
Edwin hesitated, mulling over the old sage's question for a moment before carefully parting his lips.
"I followed Leo around earlier today and met the villagers." His voice was quiet and subdued as he continued. "None of them were any different from the people outside the plague village."
"Not different?"
"Everyone had something they could do, and they were all doing what they had to do."
The young prince's expression darkened by degrees.
"Yet there wasn't a single thing I could do. Not that I've ever had anything I was supposed to do, anyway."
A presence unwelcome wherever he went. A nuisance prince. A useless pawn on the imperial chessboard. Fated to die a nameless prince without ever carving the name given by his parents into the world.
A host of bitter epithets attached to Edwin's existence surfaced in my mind.
"And when I faced that magic beast, it hit me even clearer." Edwin clenched his small fists, knuckles whitening. "That I'm nothing more than a powerless, ordinary child who can't do anything at all."
Sage remained silent for a long while after hearing the boy's answer. He merely sat there, studying Edwin in absolute stillness.
"Hey. What did you say your name was?" breaking the quiet, he asked abruptly.
"Edwin Anaxinian Ventrum... sir."
"Edwin. Meaning 'conqueror,' does it?" Sage rolled the name over his tongue, then let out a hearty laugh. "Haha! For such a goofy-looking runt, you certainly got yourself a grand name!"
Neither a clear compliment nor an outright insult, the remark had Edwin rolling his eyes in awkward bewilderment. Sage chuckled, thoroughly amused by the boy's reaction.
"Not bad for a wet-behind-the-ears squirt."
"Not... bad?"
"Aye. Very few people ever realize they are nothing more than ordinary folk, just like everyone else. It's rare even among dried-up old fossils with one foot in the grave." Sage grinned, baring his teeth. "That's why I've taken a liking to you, Prince."
Absurd as it seemed, the young prince's answer had struck just the right chord with the eccentric scholar.
"My little Imperial Prince, there's another question I'd like to ask." Sage's expression softened considerably. "Do you know what kind of man I am?"
Edwin nodded.
"I heard from Leo. He told me you're an incredible man who developed a cure for Scale Disease."
"What? That brat blabbed about that, too?" Sage massaged the bridge of his nose, looking utterly weary. "Not that it matters. My name was forgotten by the outside world long ago. It's already been more than ten years since I went into hiding in this village."
The old sage muttered to himself, steeped in bitter remorse. Then, he turned his gaze back to Edwin.
"Right. You said you saw the villagers on your way here, and that you thought yourself no different from them."
"Yes."
"Did nothing else cross your mind?"
Edwin seemed to deliberate for another brief moment before answering slowly.
"I felt... a little sad."
"And why is that?"
The boy hesitated, then spoke in a small but distinct voice.
"Those people are just sick through no fault of their own, but they say that when they die, they'll vanish without leaving anything behind."
What could he be thinking?
I quietly studied Edwin's profile, tinged with an inexplicable sorrow.
"Because leaving nothing behind, with no one to remember you... that's sad. Being forgotten is a heartbreaking thing."
Hearing Edwin's answer, Sage fell silent for a long stretch before slowly pushing himself up from his seat.
"Aye. I once thought the very same thing. That was why I struggled so desperately until the bitter end."
Was he recalling his past, hunted by assassins? Sage let out a self-derisive chuckle.
"Well, in the end, I wound up in this pitiful state myself."
The Great Sage, Sage Lill. He was a man so brilliant that he had no choice but to spend his life hiding in a forsaken village like this.
"I should have kept the fact that I made that medicine to myself back then."
"You mean the medicine for Scale Disease?"
"Aye. The medicine that cures Scale Disease completely."
The mere recollection seemed to leave a foul taste in Sage's mouth.
"It's already been more than ten years since I first developed the cure. Time truly flies." He cast his eyes downward, lost in regret.
Watching him, memories from around that time surfaced unbidden in my mind. The vivid image of Sage yelling at the top of his lungs at me—the assassin sent to slit his throat—still lingered clearly before my eyes.
'I can save the world! Why on earth should I have to die?! Don't you think this is utterly absurd?!'
It certainly had been absurd. After all, Sage had faced death threats solely because he had developed a cure for Scale Disease.
"Why?" Edwin blurted out, his brows knit in utter confusion. "If you made a cure for Scale Disease, that's incredible! Isn't it, Rachel?"
"It is incredible. And that was precisely why he made so many enemies."
"What? But why?!"
Edwin frowned, completely unable to comprehend. The one who answered his question was not me, but Sage.
"Because I had no intention of selling the cure I made. I meant to distribute it freely to everyone afflicted with the sickness. And that was where the trouble began."
The moment news broke that Sage had developed a cure, it was a ravenous swarm of merchants who descended upon him first.
"They were the heads of the empire's greatest merchant guilds. Each clamored to outbid the next, demanding I hand over the formulation."
Yet he had flatly rejected every single offer, choosing to stand by his convictions.
"Someone among them must have leaked the news to the Holy Kingdom. By the time I went before His Imperial Majesty to petition for the medicine to be distributed nationwide at state expense, the Holy Kingdom had already brought immense pressure to bear."
The Holy Kingdom had threatened that if the empire manufactured a cure for Scale Disease, they would never again dispatch high-ranking priests to imperial lands.
"That wasn't all. They vowed to sever diplomatic ties, and proclaimed the Pope would never again attend imperial ceremonies or rites of state."
Just as the other kingdoms across the continent did, the empire always invited the Pope whenever grand affairs of state took place. It was imperial custom that momentous national milestones required divine blessing.
"Why would they do that?" Edwin protested, his voice rising in distress. "If there's a cure for Scale Disease, the priests wouldn't have to suffer anymore either! Why? Why would the Holy Kingdom do that?!"
"There was only one reason."
Blasphemy.
Before that single word, Sage's ambitious dream of conquering Scale Disease collapsed like a house of cards.
"How could that possibly be blasphemy?! Blasphemy... that's insulting God!"
Overwhelmed by indignation, every shred of formal deference vanished from Edwin's speech.
"It makes no sense!" The boy argued vehemently, his cheeks flushing crimson. "How could saving people's lives ever be blasphemy?!"
"Their pride was wounded by the thought that an affliction curable only by divine power could be remedied by a potion concocted by a mere mortal."
Edwin was struck speechless.
"For that reason, His Imperial Majesty rejected my petition. And from that moment on, it was pure hell."
To make matters worse, the Holy Kingdom covertly dispatched paladins to hunt Sage down. And to top it off, the vindictive guild masters of the empire dispatched assassins of their own.
To add a minor detail—one of the assassins sent by those merchants happened to be me: Kyla Angel.
"So I ran and ran. Exhausted, I was on the verge of ending my own life. Right at the very brink of giving up on everything... if not for the bargain struck by a certain slip of a girl."
Sage's gaze seemed to flicker briefly in my direction, but I paid it no heed.
Meanwhile, Edwin was burning with curiosity over the terms of the bargain between Sage and that mysterious girl. His eyes sparkling, the boy suddenly leaned in close to the old man.
"What kind of bargain was it?"
"She said that in exchange for helping me escape my pursuers unharmed, she would come back one day to collect her life debt. I had no other choice. I wanted to survive, no matter what it took."
Before long, Sage had returned to the same boastful bluster he had displayed when we first met.
"Damn it all, thinking back on it now, I got swindled! Back then, she told me she'd spare my neck if I paid more than the client's bounty, and I handed over thousands of gold coins!"
"If you hadn't been so greedy to announce the cure under your own name, you wouldn't be living trapped in a place like this," I countered smoothly.
"Aye! So what if I was greedy?! I wanted to be the Great Sage whose name would echo through history! The Great Sage who vanquished the 'Devil's Curse,' Scale Disease! How magnificent does that sound?!" Sage grumbled in an irritated huff. "We definitely made that deal, and yet..."
He trailed off mid-sentence and abruptly snapped his head toward me.
"So where the devil is that girl Kyla now, and what is she up to?"
"Pardon?"
Caught entirely off guard, I barely swallowed the hiccup rising in my throat.
"You ran off earlier right in the middle of talking about her! That Kyla wench isn't dead, so how the hell is she living? Is she still running around playing human butcher?"
Who is this old fossil calling a human butcher?
Concealing my irritation, I retorted in an icy tone.
"A human butcher? How vulgar of you to utter such crude language in front of His Highness."
"Touchy, aren't we? It's the plain truth, isn't it?" Sage tilted his chin up, as if it were utterly impossible for him to ever speak an inaccurate word. "What's so grand about killing people for coin? If that's not the most vulgar trade under the heavens, what is?"
The moment I heard those words, a sudden rush of heat surged into my face. For reasons I couldn't comprehend, I suddenly became acutely conscious of Edwin standing right beside me.
"A truly pitiable creature, that girl."
First he insults me, and now he sympathizes? What is this nonsense?
I stared intently at Sage. To my surprise, his wrinkled face was genuinely laden with sorrow.
"If only she hadn't strayed down such a path, she would have lived happier than anyone."