The Rebirth Of The Hero’S Party’S Archmage [EN]: Chapter 108

The first sensation to return was the cold. An unbearable, extreme cold.

So cold.

It was so, so cold.

I barely managed to pry my eyes open, a sharp pain shooting through me as the frost clinging to my eyelids cracked.

‘Where… am I?’

I tried to push myself up from the snow, to get a look around, but I couldn’t. A blizzard raged, the gale tearing at my exposed skin.

“Ugh, ugh….”

Then, I heard a rough, gasping breath right beside me.

Even in this blinding snow, the light purple hair, a clear inheritance from the progenitor of magic, was unmistakable. Kasena Page.

And above her, Pipi was buried in the snow, only her legs sticking out. I urgently needed to create a fire.

The magic circle took the form of two overlapping triangles.

The runes inscribed were Sustain and Expand.

Imbuing the fire-attribute magic with the qualities of Sustain (to maintain it for a long time) and Expand (to spread it widely)… soon, the flames bloomed like a curtain, pushing back the bitter cold.

“……?”

I felt no strain on my core as I constructed the magic circle. I had clearly exhausted almost all of my mana… yet, a powerfully concentrated energy throbbed within me.

‘How many days have I been out? No, if it had been that long, I would have frozen to death already.’

Judging by the state of the wounds on my body, it couldn’t have been more than an hour. Before I could fully process that, the surreal scene from before flashed through my mind.

– You sometimes call me the Void, and other times you call me Truth? Strictly speaking, both are wrong.

The unknown situation disconcerted me, but I couldn’t deny the strange pounding in my heart.

I had met the creator of magic… one of the Ones That Came, the Black Sun Karenden.

And at that moment of encounter, my mana had been completely restored by the Black Yang Fleece, which emitted a dazzling light.

– The reason I brought you to this era in the first place wasn’t to stop that destruction. It was to record and convey the light of the final era.

It seemed Karenden was the one who reincarnated my soul, which had died 300 years ago, into this body. But the reason was significant. To convey the light of the final era—what did that even mean?

No, this wasn’t the time to get lost in thought.

I carefully lifted Kasena onto my back and tucked Pipi inside my blouse, hoping my body heat would warm her. Both of them were ice cold.

‘The cold isn’t the only problem….’

The concentration of madness floating in the atmosphere here, or rather, dominating it, was… not as intense as in the Papal State, but still at a dangerously high level.

There was no way an ordinary person, or Kasena, could endure it. Without magic control skills, it was hard even to breathe.

As an emergency measure, I decided to use Bell Querious. Holding Kasena in my arms instead of on my back (so that she was within my sight), I directly controlled the mana flowing through her body.

How long did I trudge through the snow like that? As I feared, Kasena coughed up blood, a dark, almost black blood.

‘Could it be….’

I pushed through the blizzard, running for my life across the ice field where the snow reached my thighs.

But as if mocking my efforts, the swirling blizzard obscured my direction, making it impossible to tell if I was even moving forward.

The only reminder of the passage of time was Kasena’s increasingly rapid, shallow breathing, signaling her approaching end.

‘I was going to find a place to avoid the blizzard, but…’

It was clear I didn’t have that luxury.

I expanded the flame barrier from a circle to an oval, created a plank with earth magic, and gently laid Kasena on it, my eyes filled with dread.

The skin on her neck had turned a dark blue, and the encroaching discoloration had already spread across her chin and cheeks.

‘Dark poison….’

Originally, I was going to unbutton her blouse to check her abdomen, but if the situation was this dire, it was obvious what her upper and lower body would look like without even looking.

In short, Kasena was dying.

If I left her like this….

The only pessimistic option flashed desperately in my mind.

‘Do I have to use it…?’

Was that why, even in this brutal cold, I could clearly feel the warmth of the cold sweat that had formed on my forehead and frozen in place?

‘…Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban [Great Art of Dormant Preservation].’

I think, panting for breath. I am neither a witch nor a priest, so I don’t know how to undo the dark poison that has invaded Kasena’s body.

The only method I know is to force her into a dormant state through Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban and then try to recover her.

But isn’t Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban, strictly speaking, an incomplete magic? In fact, it hasn’t been fully recovered even after 300 years.

‘But right now… there’s no choice.’

After a painful hesitation, I finally spread my palm, and lines of light intricately intertwined, slowly forming a high-level magic circle.

1-star, 2-star, 3-star….

Wiping the cold sweat from my face, I spoke, though she wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“Miss, from now on, you’re going to fall into a bit, a bit of a long sleep.”

Click.

The anxiety that comes from not knowing the future, the impatience that comes from heading towards an uncertain future, the fear that comes from only being able to choose such a future.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there to watch over you when you wake up.”

Click, click.

I think I understand a little now.

When my body was covered in the ice of Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban, I wondered what my fellow party members were thinking as they watched me.

I feel this way for Kasena, who I can’t even say I’m close to, so what about those guys who I spent 5 years with….

– Let’s go see the world together, all four of us… okay…? I’ll be waiting by your side until you wake up.

And finally, 5-star….

Numerous mathematical formulas began to unfold between the dazzlingly rotating rings of light, and frost fragments scattered from Kasena’s toes, soon clumping together into ice.

Click, click, click….

At that moment when I had to concentrate to the extreme, I felt a new fear and looked around as if I had been thrown.

Something is there.

In this blizzard, something is there.

I thought I had been hearing an annoying sound for a while, but it’s getting closer and closer. Now I can hear it clearly.

‘It’s really hard to use multi-calculations while using 5-star magic….’

Even as I thought that, a 2-star fire magic was already unfolding on my other palm.

Silence, stillness.

My dry saliva briefly went down, a silence as short as a heartbeat. The stillness before battle. And the next moment, ‘they’ appeared through the blizzard.

Chaeaeeng─── Hwareureureuk!

No sooner had I grabbed the magic circle with my palm than the flames flew like snakes, wrapping around their bodies and adding immense heat.

Even Rain couldn’t help but be shocked.

Screaming and being swallowed by the flames, they were neither humans nor fairies nor demi-humans, nor were they monsters that are commonly preyed upon by adventurers on the Arkrad continent.

“What the hell….”

What on earth should I call this grotesque appearance that seemed to have jumped out of a nightmare?

The main body was clearly human. To be exact, it was a cursed being with a mixture of animal and human physical characteristics, a beastman (Werebeast).

But no beastman has ribs protruding from their rotten skin, and they don’t crawl on the ground like spiders with those 24 ribs.

‘I’ve seen it in a book before….’

Those characteristics are said to be the characteristics of the dead ruled by one of the Forgotten Kings, the Spider Lord. A dead beastman, then this place is….

“KIIEEEEEHHHH───!”

I thought it was just a desperate cry, but that was also a misjudgment made in an extreme situation.

As if resonating with that cry, the sound of ribs crawling across the frozen land of death exploded from all directions, clicking… clacking… clattering… clunking….

So much cold sweat flowed out that I couldn’t understand it myself. I looked down at Kasena’s condition in dismay.

‘Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban has only reached her thighs….’

I couldn’t keep activating Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban when I needed to use all my power for battle.

But if I cancel Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban here, Kasena will be consumed by the dark poison and will definitely die.

The only magic I can use is 2-star magic, and the situation would have been a little better if at least Pipi had been conscious….

Hwareureureuk─────!

I was going to spread the flames widely like a barrier to buy time until Ju Yeo So Gye Dae Ban was fully deployed, but this also failed.

Before the flames could fully spread in a semicircle, a dozen or so undead crawled through the gap and charged fiercely.

They are drawn to strong life and crave weak life….

The moment I hurriedly converted the barrier’s flames into intercepting bullets, the moment I felt a sharp pain as one of their fangs sank into my forearm, the moment of crisis when two of them sank their teeth into Kasena’s neck and heart.

「Dra(Dragon).

Kyu(Vomit).

veny(Violently).

Tos(Flame).」

Just as I thought I heard a noble language in my ear, the warmth of life swirled and caressed my cheek.

The light of life shining in this frozen world of death was none other than fire.

With a deafening roar, the transcendent flames melted the blizzard and surged in.

The storm of flames not only devoured all the undead that touched it, but also burned them to ashes without even giving them a chance to scream.

It’s unbelievable every time I see that such overwhelming power doesn’t harm humans at all.

“Ha, hahaha….”

I was so happy that I could only laugh blankly. I’ve seen this overwhelming flame often, 300 years ago.

The authority of fire annihilation (火滅) [Hwa Myeol – lit. Fire Extinction/Annihilation], emitted by the Dragon Legion created by the Black Sun Karenden after being ordered to ‘annihilate the abyss’ and for that purpose.

Unlike the Light Dragon created for ‘order’ and the Water Dragon created for ‘stability’, the flames of the fierce power emitted by the fire dragon’s kin, created solely for war, are completely different in their creative meaning.

‘And this much power… it goes without saying that it’s at the level of a True Dragon (眞龍) [Jin Ryong] like Yoshhar.’

Silence fell under the flames that had instantly annihilated all the undead in the area, and the owner of that silence approached this way with heavy footsteps.

「Do bal ru shi…… Who are you?」

When the blizzard that had been melted by the flames began to scatter again, what appeared before my eyes was a dragon race in which the power of ancient times was embodied in the form of fire.

The scales covering his entire body were burning like flames, and his grotesquely twisted and torn huge wings… it was truly an overwhelming sense of an absolute life form.

「This place is a forbidden area (禁域) [Geum Yeok], a land of madness where children of light should not enter.」

The emotion I felt at that time was a sense of relief that I was alive, but the red dragon squinted, thinking that it felt uneasy seeing me slump down.

「Are you feeling fear in this form? Humans are still pitifully weak.」

The dragon’s large body was suddenly engulfed in brilliant flames, and the figure of a beautiful woman appeared from the sparks that scattered and dissipated.

Beneath the red hair that was more radiant than any flame in the world, my eyes met the golden dragon eyes (龍眼) [Yong An] with pupils that were vertically torn long.

She was wearing red scales like armor on the curvy body of an adult woman, but strangely, she was carrying a large basket on her back like a bag.

“……?”

Before I could even ask what it was, the red dragon, hearing Kasena’s desperate groan, slightly opened Kasena’s lips and breathed into them.

A miracle bloomed from that red breath.

Kasena’s condition, which had been gradually losing breath in the abyss’s encroachment, rapidly stabilized.

The energy of the abyss that had risen to her eyes was eaten away by the flames flowing down, illuminating her blood vessels in red, and gradually began to be chased downwards.

Friede once explained this miracle to me like this.

It is the authority of purification (淨化) [Jeong Hwa] that only true dragons who have received the mission of world management can perform, which no human shaman or fairy priest can imitate.

As I stared blankly at it, the red dragon lightly picked up Kasena and gestured with its chin.

「Other undead will soon gather. Follow me.」

Looking back, this was the starting point of that sad relationship. It could also be said to be the end of the relationship, or the beginning of another relationship.

In any case, the relationship that would lead me to meet ‘that child’ began without any warning like this.

Thus began my hundred-year journey.