The Royal Archmage's Gesture
"Helped me...?"
A hollow chuckle escaped through my lips. My vision flashed white.
"You helped me? You, who stayed by my side all this time, watching my blood and sweat, cheering me on... How could you do this to me...!!!!"
My voice cracked pathetically with rage and betrayal, shredding the forest's silence into ragged strips.
All the time I'd spent struggling my whole life, the joy I'd felt just moments ago like I owned the world—how laughable must that have looked in her eyes?
Her cheap pity—the one true salvation in my wretched life—sliced through my fragile pride more viciously than the sneers and contempt from those noble mages.
"I-I wasn't trying to deceive you! I just...!"
Cecilia burst into the tears she'd been holding back, screaming desperately in response to my fury.
"What was I supposed to do?! Your body can't even circulate mana! What am I supposed to do about you rolling around in this forest every day, breaking your bones in that talentless, empty shell?!"
The raw, cruel truth that burst from her lips stabbed into the center of my chest like a sharpened dagger.
"If things stay like this, if you can never use magic your whole life... because of that goddamn class divide, we'll never be together...! You get that, right?!"
Thick tears poured endlessly down her pale cheeks.
"I just like you the way you are! I hate seeing you despair and hurt every day... I just wanted to see you happy, even a little... That's all I was doing! Why won't you understand my real feelings?!"
Her tear-streaked face trembled as if she might collapse to the ground, spilling out a voice laced with resentment.
Her desperate cries utterly shattered the deep-seated inferiority complex and flimsy pride coiled inside me.
A body that couldn't circulate mana anyway. A hollow shell without talent. An insurmountable class divide.
Those brutal truths from her—the one who'd watched my efforts closer than anyone—choked the breath from my lungs mercilessly.
Her compassion, meant to comfort me, had dragged my very existence down to the very bottom.
I bit my trembling lips in hollow defeat, gazing down at her with eyes gone cold as I stared at the weeping girl collapsed on the ground.
"You should've just told me from the start... that you had mana."
My voice was dry and chilling, scraped bare from the depths of emotion.
"Then I wouldn't have felt this pathetic sense of betrayal from your pity. I wouldn't have stupidly mistaken you for a powerless weakling like me, felt that false kinship, and presumptuously stepped up to protect you."
"K-Kain... please, just hear me out...!"
Cecilia reached out with a hand toward my clothes, her face drained of color.
But I coldly swatted it away.
Her slender fingertips quivered pitifully in the air.
I no longer had the strength to face her.
The noble mana aura softly enveloping her was nothing but unbearable humiliation to me now.
"Don't... make me any more pathetic."
I spat those words like a thrust of a blade and left her there, collapsed on the dirt floor, sobbing heartbrokenly.
Her cries calling my name as she crumbled behind me filled the forest with despair, but I never once looked back.
I was running away.
From that massive wall erected by her overwhelming talent and my own incompetence—a weight heavier than this forest's vicious gravity crushing me down.
Enveloped in bitter betrayal and shame, I fled the Training Forest like a beast, gasping ragged breaths.
It was when I burst out of the Training Forest like a fleeing animal, panting like a beast as I entered the village.
The slum outskirts, usually dead silent as a grave, were in utter chaos.
Accompanied by the thunderous pounding of heavy hooves shaking the ground, a carriage so massive and ornate it defied belief rolled into the center of the Slum Village Square, kicking up clouds of dust.
The flag emblazoned with the royal golden crest fluttered arrogantly in the wind.
The entourage of the Royal Archmage.
They had detoured to this wretched backwater village on their way back to the capital.
For one reason alone.
They'd detected the massive, dense wave of mana surging from the Training Forest moments ago—power too immense to pass for ordinary natural mana.
I knew bone-deep that it was the aura Cecilia had unleashed.
The village chief and all the villagers abandoned their tasks, rushing into the square.
Even the haughty chief who'd always trampled me like a bug was trembling, forehead pressed to the cold dirt.
I clutched my ragged heart and hid at the very back of the crowd, watching the overwhelming scene.
The carriage door remained firmly shut, but a mage inquisitor in splendid robes emerged first, flanked by escort knights.
He pinched his nose as if he'd stepped in filth, looking down arrogantly at the prostrated villagers.
"From this garbage heap of a village... who is the owner of the mana that shook the forest just now."
The inquisitor's haughty voice boomed through the square.
"Step forward now. If you waste any more of His Greatness the Royal Archmage's time, I'll burn this rat-infested village to the ground."
In a world where magic was god and law, the villagers couldn't even scream under the lethal pressure of mana radiating from his fingertips—they just slammed their faces into the dirt.
Before this ironclad gap in class and talent, I was once again swallowed by suffocating powerlessness, clenching my fists until blood dripped.
In the stifling silence crushing the square, the pathetic defiance coiled deep in my chest writhed.
I wanted to step forward before those arrogant royal mages and show them everything—the blood, sweat, and tears I'd poured into honing my body with shattered fists.
Not magic, perhaps, but proof of my desperate struggle, defiance against this cruel fate.
But I wasn't permitted even a scrap of mana.
Before those wielders of absolute miracles, muscle and fists were just the thrashing of meat.
All I could do was stand there, biting my lip in misery, fists clenched until blood soaked through.
That was when it happened.
Kyle, who had been huddled close to the chief, peeking nervously, suddenly strode forward with a smug, confident expression, shoving through the crowd.
"Great emissary of the royals! How could lowly wretches like us comprehend such sublime power?"
Wearing the same arrogant smirk he'd flashed while crushing me the night before, he raised both hands high.
"The aura that shook the forest must be the mana wave awakened within my humble self. Behold it clearly!"
With Kyle's short incantation, azure mana swirled into a fierce gust that whipped through the center of the square.
Dust spiraled wildly, villagers screamed and retreated—it was impressive and threatening wind magic by backwater standards.
Kyle lifted his chin smugly, intoxicated by his own talent, awaiting the inquisitor's praise.
But the inquisitor's face was coldly hardened.
"...Are you joking?"
The inquisitor sighed in irritation and flicked his finger lightly.
Just a single gesture.
Kyle's proud gale vanished into thin air without a trace, shredded from existence.
"Uwaaack!"
Kyle screamed and tumbled across the ground from the mana backlash as the wind dissipated.
The inquisitor glared down at the panting boy face-down in the dirt like he was vermin and barked.
"You think we stopped our carriage to watch parlor tricks from slum trash? How dare you waste mana before me. Get out of my sight."
Kyle's overconfident face drained white with terror and humiliation in an instant.
Even he—the village's top talent who'd trampled and lorded over me—was just another bug crawling in the dirt before true overwhelming power.
A thorough, merciless food chain.
As the inquisitor clicked his tongue and turned away—
Kkiiigik.
The heavy, ornate carriage door slowly creaked open.
In that instant, everyone's breath caught in the square.
With an overwhelming pressure that froze the very air, the Royal Archmage Izakar stepped out himself.
He descended, robes trailing magnificently, ignoring the groveling Kyle or chief entirely.
His cold, piercing gaze pierced straight through the crowd, locking precisely on the one anxious figure at the very back.
It was Cecilia, who had followed me from the forest to the square.
"...Hiding like a rat."
A chill sneer slipped from Izakar's lips.
"Harboring such tremendous mana yet cowering in this wretched hole."
He slowly extended his hand.
A casual gesture without even an incantation, but an invisible colossal force erupted from his fingertips, instantly binding Cecilia's body.
"Ahh...!"
Cecilia's slender frame floated up half a foot into the air, yanked like by an unseen cord.
She grimaced in pain, struggling to resist, but the archmage mercilessly dragged the dormant mana from deep within her.
Ku-gu-gu-gu-gung!
The earth screamed and shuddered.
Light bursting from Cecilia's small body swallowed the entire square in an instant.
This was no faint haze like the one I'd seen that morning in the forest, dancing around my fingertips and deceiving me.
A massive, iridescent cascade of pink mana poured from her body like a waterfall, vast enough to choke the entire village.
It was like facing a colossal sun head-on.
Swept by that blinding, overwhelming mana storm, even the prostrated villagers and escort knights gasped and staggered back.
I couldn't withstand the ferocious blast either—my knees buckled, and I had to brace both hands against the cold dirt.
At the heart of that immense pink tempest that could blind the eyes, Cecilia's clothes fluttered mysteriously.
It was the absolute light of talent—something I, who had crawled the gutters spitting blood my whole life, could never even dare to gaze upon. A brilliance only those touching the realm of gods could emit.