Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 433

Antares looked down at the fallen Amila with an expressionless face before releasing his grip. Ignoring the sound of her body hitting the ground, he turned his gaze towards the bloody cephalopod that was still watching the scene.

Antares’s expressionless face changed, as if a screen had switched, into a gentle smile.

“Kamrodel, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

[…How could I be fine? The wound you inflicted back then is still behind my head, tormenting me.]

Kamrodel replied slowly.

[But because of the pain from that wound, I was able to forget my madness for a while and dedicate myself to the Order… For that, I will express my gratitude…]

“That was certainly my mistake.”

Antares chuckled softly.

“I was too hasty, thinking I was short on time. I learned late that if I failed to kill an Apostle, it would only increase the Order’s power.”

[I know you’ve been wandering around the continent doing similar things… What you want is not simply to hinder the Order’s aspirations.]

Antares did not respond to Kamrodel’s sharp remark.

He simply smiled gently.

Even after killing over a dozen living beings with a single gesture, his expression remained unchanged.

He understood how far those who served the Ends of the Outer Sea, reaching the positions of priests and bishops, had distanced themselves from humanity.

Even as everyone struggled for a better outcome, the unique nature of the Order was a variable that could not be overlooked.

They might have the form of humans, but their contents were already monsters, not human at all.

And at the pinnacle of that, the ultimate power of the Order, serving the cult leader, was none other than the existence of the Apostles.

The blood gushing from the fallen priest’s heart was weakening, and the mental network that Amila had connected was also fading.

Lowering his head towards the slowly collapsing form of the cephalopod, Antares spoke.

“Next time we meet, it won’t end like this.”

[Enough with the meaningless bluster. Before that, let me ask you one thing.]

The cephalopod glanced at the fallen Amila and asked.

[What did you say to Amila? There is hardly any information that doesn’t reach my ears, but the conversation you two just had was not translated in my head.]

“…I see. So you still can’t hear it.”

Antares nodded.

“That’s enough. Actually, that was the last thing I wanted to ask.”

[…What?]

Crack!

There was no further answer.

The moment Antares lifted his boot and slammed it down, the entire cave collapsed.

Thud!

In the meantime, the bodies of the priests scattered around were also buried between the rocks, losing their shape and turning into a pool of blood.

Antares, who had already escaped outside the cave, looked down at the scene he had created for a while before turning his head.

On a certain day when all the logic and truth he knew had lost their meaning and collapsed.

Antares had risked everything to glimpse the future, and in return, he had also determined his own end.

Prophecy and omniscience were by no means omnipotent powers, and even after paying a huge price to glimpse the future, there were things that could not be known.

Even now, having observed and confirmed his own end and demise, he could not give up as long as there was still a future he could change.

If he lost his balance even slightly among the countless branching points of the future, Antares’s very existence would shatter.

Knowing this, Antares was struggling to change the process leading to his end, even by a little.

“Camilla? It’s me. Tell Evan, one of your clients, that things have been resolved.”

Antares, taking out his phone from his pocket, turned towards the city and made a call.

“Yes. Tell him there’s no need to worry about this matter. And tell him I won’t be taking any payment for this. You can take the credit instead.”

A faint smile had spread across Antares’s lips.

“Do I know him? Well… I guess so. But it’s not important. Let’s leave it as a pleasure for later.”

There are things that cannot be known even if you lift the veil and glimpse the future.

At some point, Antares had come to welcome ignorance more than understanding, and he believed that there was hope in the unknown rather than in what he already knew.

The end he had observed and understood was a tragedy that was harsh not only for himself but for everyone.

He could endure any pain to stop the mistake that had begun with a moment of foolishness.

For Antares, bearing the burden of karma meant exactly that.

Antares’s figure slowly faded away amidst the dust rising from the collapsed cave.

Only a cold silence remained on the undeveloped highlands where his footsteps had disappeared.

* * *

[It’s really rare for the commander to step in personally, so you should consider yourself lucky.]

Lenok chuckled at Mila’s slightly boastful voice.

“I see.”

[Maybe he had something to take care of separately because of the Order’s involvement. I wish I could say I used my power a bit…]

Mila chuckled awkwardly over the phone.

[But our boss isn’t someone who remembers favors for long.]

“…I understand. Please convey my thanks to him.”

[Okay. But then it seems like we have to refund the commission you paid. Strictly speaking, we handled the matter on our own, so there was an order not to receive payment.]

“Was that Antares?”

Lenok chuckled and shook his head.

“I made the request, and you carried it out, so I won’t accept a refund. Consider it payment for conveying my thanks to Antares.”

[Hey, wait a minute, but we’re talking about our Priscilla, and you’re just taking the credit for a job done without payment…]

Click!

Lenok, who had roughly ended the call with Mila, stood up and sighed softly.

“Antares, huh…”

Leaning against the sunlit window of the laboratory, Lenok frowned as he watched the faces of the undergraduate students passing by.

‘It can’t be a coincidence.’

When he had faced Antares just before heading to the Infinite Labyrinth, hadn’t he heard to some extent about the secret he held?

A monster who had fixed his own time in place as a price for seeing the future.

He didn’t know how much of the future he had observed and returned from, or how it was possible.

But if it was enough to determine the fate of an 8th-level transcendent, then the result must have been considerable.

The fact that Antares had intervened at this particular time was proof that Amila Bainzer was a considerable threat.

How far into the future had Antares observed and returned from? Who were the people who survived at the end of that future?

Was Lenok’s face among them?

“…”

It was a concern that he couldn’t find an answer to on his own anyway.

But Lenok couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though he knew it.

If Antares’s unusually kind attitude from the first time they met stemmed from the secret he held, then there was room for speculation.

If Antares’s principle of action came from the possibilities of the future he had observed, then the possibilities that could be considered when looking at his attitude towards Lenok were two.

‘Either he was with him at the end of the future Antares saw, or if not…’

He didn’t exist at all.

“…Since he’s back in the city, I might be able to meet him soon.”

He had no intention of moving rashly at this point, when his reputation for resilience had soared after defeating Madrich Onion, but meeting Antares was a different story.

He hadn’t realized it at the time, but the words he had let slip just before leaving for the Infinite Labyrinth had accurately pierced the secret that Jintun was hiding.

Antares, too, must have been aware of the desperate truth that there was no next time, albeit in a different way from Jintun.

Thinking about that, he needed to meet him again and have a proper conversation.

Why was Antares, who clearly held a fragment of omniscience, still wandering around the continent with a superhuman group in the form of a mercenary band?

Now that he had obtained a new magic system, he might be able to hear the reason directly.

Lenok thought he had gained the minimum qualifications to provide a new answer.

[Master, if you don’t come back to your seat soon, I’m going to erase the letters you were writing one by one.]

Davie, who was coiled up on the keyboard, complained from behind Lenok’s back.

[Why are you lost in thought when you’re using me as a keyboard voice recognition device?]

“…I had something to think about.”

Lenok cleared his throat and obediently returned to his seat as Davie had said.

The laptop was in the corner of the lab, and Davie was diligently typing on it instead of Lenok.

Every time she pressed the keyboard with her thick front paws, several keys were pressed at once, blurring the letters, but the electrical signals she transmitted accurately recognized the letters and output the correct ones on the screen.

Instead of Lenok, who was tired of typing on the keyboard for a long time, he had been entrusting the typing to the digital spirit.

[So, what are you trying to write that you’ve been organizing all the things related to magic theory?]

“The second paper. I made a promise with the dean. Considering the expo in two months, I should start now.”

Lenok said, stroking Davie’s thick, three-pronged tail.

Considering the spirit’s recent obsession with her bond with Lenok, he had to cherish Davie a lot, just in case.

[…The second paper?]

“I had a good idea about the entropy that Amila Bainzer mentioned. It will be something that will have a much greater impact on the academic world than the substitution theory I wrote first.”

Beyond simply presenting groundbreaking theories or discoveries to the academic world, it could also allow those who understood it to deduce the end of the world in their own way.

Lenok was planning to reveal the truth about the end, which had been shrouded in a thick veil until now, to those who recognized it under the name of Evan.

Even if they were people who had not yet heard the truth, if they could perfectly understand this second paper.

They would also be able to understand that the end was near.

However, that was not the only thing Lenok was aiming for.

“This way, it will reach the Sinclair Magic Tower even if I don’t contact them directly.”

He didn’t expect much. Even if he couldn’t meet them directly, it would be enough if this could reach them and let them know that he was doing well.

As Lenok turned his gaze, thinking of the blonde mage who was still immersed in research at this moment, Davie flicked her tail and sighed.

[I’ll just find their contact information and send them a message right now. I’m going to write a new paper. Isn’t this one sentence enough?]

“…”

That day, Lenok temporarily put aside the writing of his second paper and focused on the tail stimulation response experiment to evolve Davie into a nine-tailed fox.

The result was a beautiful failure.

* * *

Click…

Light spread out from the giant lens rotating in front of him.

The light that permeated his retina slowly seeped into his pupils, and the light intensity began to change to closely observe their condition.

Lenok tried not to close his eyes, attempting to face his own pupils reflected in the light.

[The biological response is normal. You can take your eyes off it.]

At the same time as Oliviera’s voice echoed, the heavy machinery that had been right in front of him slowly retreated.

A bizarre shape that looked like a giant telescope with a head.

Oliviera, who had flicked the telescope’s head that seemed to be shaking its head to one side, sat down on a chair in the lab and said.

[The stabilization process has been successfully completed. Considering how recklessly you used your magic eye, it’s a miracle, so thank the heavens.]

“It was unavoidable if I wanted to resolve Madrich’s matter quickly.”

Lenok rubbed his eyes and replied.

“Of course, I used it while calculating the consequences.”

If he hadn’t found Madrich’s hideout at that point and had been dragged around, he wouldn’t have been able to solve the problem yet.

Thanks to imitating the magic eye ability of the Seven-Colored Treasure [a powerful artifact], with his right eye, he had found Madrich’s memorial tower and collected all of its military orders and power.

[Do you know how delicate the human eye is? Forcing an ability into it from the point where you’ve established the basic foundation is nothing short of madness. You should be grateful that you haven’t gone blind.]

Under Oliviera’s guidance, he had built a foundation for opening up his ability in his right eye, but suddenly imitating the magic eye of the Seven-Colored Treasure was nothing short of madness.

Not just any magic eye, but a top-tier causality-altering type of magic eye that directly projected her mental image.

To Oliviera, who didn’t know about Lenok’s talent or senses, it wouldn’t have been strange to see him throw away his own eyes.

“Strictly speaking, I didn’t properly imitate your magic eye. It’s only to the extent of fixing the physical state of the point of view.”

Lenok chuckled at Oliviera’s indifferent reply.

“To be honest, I still don’t really understand what it means to deal with causality in terms of ability.”

The reason why Lenok was able to do something similar, even though he had almost no time to properly study the magic eye of the Seven-Colored Treasure, was not because he fully understood the meaning of causality fixation.

It was possible because he had memorized all the flows of the magic eye she had shown and projected them with magic power.

Of course, he had not been able to imitate the ability of the magic eye that used seven types of magic power in combination, let alone causality observation and fixation.

But Oliviera scoffed at Lenok’s words.

[You don’t know what it means that the first ability your magic eye chose when it opened is related to reality observation. Do you think the magic eye of the Seven-Colored Treasure was completed with this power and ability from the beginning?]

“…”

[Even if it’s an ability that relies heavily on innate talent, it’s only natural that it can be shaped in different directions depending on one’s own efforts and adjustments.]

Oliviera muttered, staring at Lenok’s right eye.

[As your power and rank grow, the ability of your magic eye will also extend in different directions. That is the function granted to those who project their mental image into both magic eyes.]

“…You already knew?”

As Lenok smiled and touched his right eye, Oliviera sneered as if to say, ‘Did you think I wouldn’t know?’

[It would be strange if I hadn’t recognized its mystery… The reason why you tried to imitate my magic eye’s ability, even in a degraded form, must be because of that.]

Her voice was still cold, but there was a blatant hint of being dumbfounded.

[Are you planning to use the fixation of causality observation, which I chose as my destination, as a starting point to aim for something more? It’s reckless… The arrogance of your ideas is sky-high.]

“You’re not wrong.”

Lenok smiled bitterly instead of refuting.

“But it was necessary.”

It didn’t end with finishing one fight and enjoying the victory.

He had to constantly create stepping stones and opportunities for growth, and move forward based on the experience of countless battles.

Not just relying on his own talent, but using everything he could to the limit and finding possibilities.

Studying and opening his magic eye to infuse it with new abilities was also part of that effort.

The ability engraved in his newly opened right magic eye was closer to fixing the reality point of view, which was a degraded ability of causality fixation, but that was enough.

Lenok was planning to use the magic eye’s ability to directly fix the Uroboros magic system in his right eye and use it.

Oliviera’s words did not end there.

[Furthermore, now that you’ve succeeded in distributing the output through your right magic eye, the magic eye you originally opened must have also grown.]

A rainbow-colored light obliquely illuminated Lenok’s face.

The left magic eye, which had been covered with cracks like broken glass, had been completely restored and was now revealing a smooth pupil.

[That purple magic eye, you must have already started to see something new?]