Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 151: Saying One Thing While the Heart Says Another
What did he mean by “it reminds me of you”?
Myss couldn’t help leaning closer to Salaar and sniffing his damp collar. There was still nothing particularly unusual about the smell. He turned to try the area outside the door, only for Salaar to hold him back.
“I don’t feel very good.” Salaar hesitated for a moment and answered vaguely.
Myss raised a brow. “What’s wrong with you? Ever since we got here, you’ve been all wilted. Don’t tell me the Dragon Fae infected you.”
Although Myss had little interest in praising Salaar, the man truly did deserve to be called calm, decisive, and swift in action.
But ever since they arrived at Emerald Cliff, Salaar had seemed somewhat distracted. Just now had been even worse. They had known each other for three hundred years, and Myss had never once seen Salaar speak vaguely when it came to serious matters.
Salaar might contain quite a lot of humanity, but it was difficult to call him a naturally born human. Dragon Fae were likewise humanoid creations. Maybe they could catch the same kind of illness. Salaar’s healing magic didn’t work on Tass, so presumably it wouldn’t work on himself either.
The more Myss thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. Unfortunately, Salaar didn’t have scales, so Myss couldn’t tell where exactly he might be turning black.
Salaar also seemed to have noticed his own abnormal condition. He lowered his eyes and rubbed his temple. “…I’m not in very good shape. Don’t worry about it.”
Myss gave a thoughtful hum. He raised an arm and casually touched Salaar’s forehead.
Warm, but not especially feverish. He was probably fine, right?
The moment Myss’s palm covered his forehead, Salaar’s body stiffened slightly. But he quickly moved away as though nothing had happened and returned to being his usual self.
“The fog is this thick, so it looks like we’ll have to spend the night here. I wonder whether Lady Marcela will provide food.”
Not far away, Kai finished contacting his “family” and came over to Myss and Salaar. “I remember there was a well outside the house. Hopefully the water is still usable…”
Only then did Myss realize that the syrup pie he had eaten not long ago had already been completely digested, and his stomach was beginning to grumble quietly.
They were currently in a somewhat awkward situation.
Leaving aside what Lady “Interesting” might be planning, her social abilities were, to put it mildly, worse than a parrot’s.
Forget tea or food for guests. Marcela hadn’t even arranged rooms for them to stay overnight. Every door in the living room was firmly locked. And so, six grown men were crammed into the modest sized living room.
Kalen volunteered. “I more or less remember where the well is. I’ll go draw some water.”
Salaar shook his head.
Throughout their journey, Kalen had always been the least susceptible to abnormal environments. But this time even Myss had become wary. There was no such thing as being too cautious.
The safest method would be to have Kai release one of his Divine Blood Puppets. But if he did that, Kai’s identity as a Stargazer…
Salaar casually glanced toward the awkward Earl and Lawler by the window.
Those two were somewhat troublesome. Perhaps he could deal with them using memory magic…
Clack! Clack!
The door Salaar had just closed suddenly began shaking violently. It was as though something outside were frantically twisting the handle, trying to break in.
Myss instinctively turned toward the door. He let Fork coil around his wrist, while tiny arrows of magic gathered, ready to fire. Salaar also tensed his back, hovering close beside Myss and preparing to attack at any moment.
Bang!
The door was violently smashed open.
But beyond it, there was nothing except rolling iron-gray night fog.
……
Bang!
Gentry slammed open the door of the experimental residence.
But inside, there was nothing except furniture covered in dust and draped with cloth.
This really was one of Archmage Marcela’s experimental residences. Yet now it stood completely empty, its owner nowhere to be found. Gentry crouched halfway down and ran a finger through the dust on the floor.
No traces of recent visitors—at least, none within the last month.
Damn it. Not again.
Gentry gritted his teeth.
He hurried into the house, using his right hand to push open one door after another while defensive magic gathered in his left, ready to activate.
It was nothing more than an ordinary two-story residence. The first floor contained the living room, kitchen, and bedroom. The second floor held the study and laboratory.
The bedding in the downstairs bedroom lay crooked and scattered, while the books and experimental equipment upstairs were arranged neatly.
No one.
An old acquaintance was still standing guard at the entrance. Big Nose Laird stood agape, having never witnessed a confrontation between two Archmages.
“I-I-I absolutely didn’t lie to you, Lord Gentry!”
Seeing Gentry patrol the place like an enraged bull elephant, sweat immediately broke out across Laird’s forehead.
“E-e-every time Lady Marcela comes to Emerald Cliff, I receive notice.”
“I just spoke with her today! This afternoon, my nephew brought people to meet her… My nephew grew up here. There’s no way he could have gone to the wrong place!”
As he spoke, he seemed to think of something, and his words came faster and faster.
“They must have gone somewhere else. Yes, yes, that has to be it.”
“I’ll arrange lodging for you right now. When my nephew comes back tomorrow morning, I’ll ask him…”
“No need.”
The amiable expression vanished from Gentry’s face, leaving only frightening seriousness.
You’d better pray your nephew comes back alive.
He kept the sentence inside his heart and didn’t say it aloud.
Yes, Gentry had seen a scene like this before. More precisely, he had seen it more than twenty years ago.
Gentry placed his hand on the dusty fireplace. There was no firewood inside. It sat hollow and empty within the viscous darkness of night, resembling a rotting mouth.
Marcela never actively socialized with anyone. She only passively maintained existing connections. Even if she received a letter, she wouldn’t write a reply.
Gentry could only speak with her directly or visit her face-to-face. Even then, he had to be the one to initiate things, and six or seven times out of ten, he would fail.
That was exactly why, the last time he contacted Marcela, Gentry had failed to notice that something was wrong with her.
Gentry would never forget that conversation. For once, Marcela had taken the initiative to make a request.
“The children under you. Geniuses,” she had said in her characteristic Marcela-like way. “I want to… interact with them.”
At the time, Gentry had been under thirty and had only recently received the title of Kingdom Archmage. Most of his students were energetic teenagers. There were geniuses among them, but not many.
When he heard Marcela’s request, Gentry was delighted. In his heart, Marcela had always counted as half a teacher.
Perhaps his teacher had finally been moved by him and was preparing to gradually interact with outsiders, teaching more talented young people.
Gentry carefully selected seven students. They weren’t all geniuses, and their grades weren’t among the absolute best. But they were intelligent enough, with exceptionally high emotional intelligence. They absolutely wouldn’t make Marcela unhappy.
Once Marcela became accustomed to interacting with several people at once, he could bring over the ones with more difficult personalities…
With absolute trust in Gentry, the seven children stepped into Marcela’s experimental residence with reverence.
…And then they never came out again.
Several days later, once Gentry realized something was wrong, he personally came to the house. The only person he found was Marcela, wearing a strangely twisted smile.
Seven bright, lively boys and girls had simply vanished from the face of the earth. Not even a strand of hair or a fragment of fingernail remained. Gentry searched everywhere like a madman, but even after using every archaeological technique he had kept in reserve, he couldn’t find a single trace of those children.
Marcela merely smiled.
“Gone. Left. Not here.”
“Useless. Discarded.”
No matter how Gentry appealed to emotion or reason, Marcela simply kept wearing that smile that didn’t quite look like hers.
The way she looked at him was almost contemptuous, as though she were watching a child throwing a tantrum after losing a toy.
“Gone. Left. Not here.”
“Useless. Discarded.”
She repeated the words over and over with endless patience, until even Gentry could no longer tell whether they were an answer or mockery.
That was the first time he realized just how cloudy and cold Marcela’s eyes had become.
By the end, Gentry had nearly torn the experimental residence apart but still came away empty-handed.
The children were only “missing,” after all. Even if Marcela had killed them and drunk their blood, as long as Aufon wanted to keep her tied to the kingdom, they would have no choice but to endure it.
In the end, the matter simply faded away.
Whatever half-formed teacher-student bond had existed between them was completely shattered by that “incident.”
Overnight, a rift formed between Gentry and Marcela and they ceased all personal contact.
After that, Gentry became exceptionally obsessed with the principle that if someone was alive, he wanted to see the person, and if they were dead, he wanted to see the body.
Other Archmages had asked him about the matter before, but Gentry could only give a bitter smile. With nothing but pale words, it was difficult to describe the subtle unease he had felt back then.
Damp air. Dust. Marcela smiling, suddenly unfamiliar.
As Gentry forced himself to search and investigate, he constantly felt as though a wild beast were staring at him. That inexplicable gaze made every hair on his body stand upright.
At the time, Gentry had only recently become a Kingdom Archmage and had been a famous genius who looked down on everyone around him since childhood.
He carried an incomparably flamboyant sharpness in his bones. Yet that time, he had felt tiny, as though something were squeezing him until he could no longer breathe.
A human shouldn’t have been able to make him feel that way. Something about this world was wrong.
Gentry searched places he had already checked again and again, until his fingertips were covered in tiny cuts. Blood from his fingers stained the tabletop red and seeped into the grain of the wood.
He imagined countless methods of destroying corpses and eliminating evidence: Strong acid, fire, magic powerful enough to blast flesh into particles finer than dust. But every single method would inevitably leave traces.
Yet he found nothing. Nothing anywhere.
It was as though those children who had once happily called him “Professor” had never existed at all.
Before him was only an unknown so vast it bordered on despair.
…Something about this world was wrong.
Gentry’s willingness to accept the Stargazers Society’s “apocalypse theory,” and his desire to question this supposedly “perfect” magic system, were both influenced by that nightmare.
Now, that nightmare had returned. Gentry slowly clenched his fingers, his palms slick with sweat.
“I’m staying here to continue investigating. It’s too late. You should go back,” Gentry told Big Nose.
Big Nose Laird’s eyes darted around, and he still wanted to try.
“Lord Gentry, it really is very late. Let’s go back together. Lady Marcela isn’t here, and what you’re doing is a little… uh…”
“I know a very famous merchant from Aufon! He once sold jewelry to Lady Avril. He would absolutely be willing to provide you with the finest accommodations…”
“Leave.” Gentry threw back the single word, cold and curt.
Laird turned and ran.
Watching the man stumble and scramble into the night, Gentry finally let out a breath. He snapped his fingers. The silent fireplace ignited out of nowhere, making the room slightly brighter.
The flames flickered, stretching his shadow long across the room.
“Kairos, you absolutely cannot let anything happen to you.” Gentry pinched the bridge of his nose hard. “I really don’t want to deal with that damn father of yours…”
If the child of an ordinary noble disappeared under the supervision of a Kingdom Archmage, there truly was nothing anyone could do.
But if the son of one Kingdom Archmage disappeared under the hands of another Kingdom Archmage, it would absolutely unleash a bloody storm.
Still, with the two chosen of unknown gods, Kai shouldn’t run into trouble that easily.
…He could only hope those two divine favorites had a little more mercy.
Gentry stared into the flames, silently moving his lips.
……
“Why did the fireplace suddenly light up?” Kai sucked in a breath.
“Maybe it’s some mechanism belonging to the Archmage.” Earl swallowed.
“Still, that door is a little more… uh…”
Kai: “…”
He had clearly sensed no magical fluctuations from any ignition spell. Still, in this eerie atmosphere, self-deception was better than nothing.
But that door suddenly flying open really couldn’t be explained away as some kind of mechanism. The door stood wide open, and the fog churned even more violently.
Salaar gently patted Myss, then cautiously stepped forward one pace at a time and closed the door again.
As the door moved, the fog was pushed aside and wavered. Its edge swept through the gap, brushing over the back of Salaar’s hand like a cold, damp tongue.
Moisture settled onto his skin, and another wave of pressure swelled inside Salaar’s head.
He still couldn’t see anything wrong with the fog. But could all of this really be coincidence?
Ever since arriving here, his mind had felt faintly clouded, and his emotions had become harder to control. He had originally thought it was an aftereffect of leaving “home.”
Now it seemed things weren’t that simple.
For now, he needed to remain calm. He couldn’t make the others uneasy…
“What’s wrong with you now?”
Myss acted as though he had installed a spying spell inside Salaar’s head. He thrust his face in front of Salaar and frowned as he studied him.
“I’m fine,” Salaar replied instinctively.
Myss didn’t even bother asking again. He bared his teeth in an expression that clearly said, Who are you trying to fool? Then he turned toward the door, his scarlet eyes following the movement of the fog.
His gaze moved back and forth several times between the crack in the door and Salaar’s face. In the end, Myss stepped forward and quickly brushed a fingertip across the gap.
First, he rubbed the moisture between his fingertips. Then he lightly licked it with the tip of his tongue. Finally, an enormous question mark seemed to appear across his face.
Salaar was obviously being affected by the fog. Yet no matter how Myss tested it, the fog had absolutely no effect on him.
Myss looked slightly frustrated. “This time, stay behind me. Stop charging forward for no reason.”
“I’m going to drag that old woman out right now and see what exactly is wrong with her…”
It was bad enough that the Dragon Fae was half-dead. Now Salaar had become half-dead too. Myss didn’t want to spend another second in this accursed place.
Since there was clearly something wrong with Marcela, he might as well find an excuse to attack and test what she was capable of.
Indeed, dragging things out would accomplish nothing. Salaar wasn’t in good condition. Having the hot-tempered Myss take action really was a reasonable way to probe her…
Fine.
Salaar opened his mouth.
“No,” Salaar’s tongue said.
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