The Rebirth Of The Hero’S Party’S Archmage [EN]: Chapter 51

The ant nest incident concluded with the belated intervention of the ‘Golden Children’ and the Magic Authority Special Task Force.

The five Thieves Guilds that dominated the Empire suffered devastating damage and scattered in all directions. The estimated death toll was over two thousand.

The lord of was transferred to the Holy See by the ‘Golden Children’ on charges of neglecting such a massive black market.

—Wasn’t this whole thing orchestrated by the Holy See?

—Exactly. They were trying to wipe out the Thieves Guilds all at once.

The decisive reason such rumors circulated was that the unidentified individual who committed this massacre had completely disappeared.

The suspicion was further amplified by the fact that the victims were limited to members of the Thieves Guilds and those who illegally participated in the black market.

As the days passed, the blood and flesh stuck to the floor rotted, and maggots swarmed.

Amidst this field of maggots, a figure with a strong stomach was taking bites out of an apple, surveying the ownerless stalls one by one.

Doran Slade, the head of the Magic Authority Special Task Force.

‘Hmm, they must have taken most of it with them.’

A woman with a haggard look and bloodshot eyes approached Doran, yawning.

“Hey! We need to confirm things. All that’s left are worthless items.”

“Tyrinted, the basics of investigation are ‘why’ and ‘how come.’ It’s worth looking into.”

The crows attacked this place faster than Doran expected… Why?

Was it to retrieve something?

If so, they could have quietly retrieved the item and left, so why cause such a mess? Was it simply to draw attention? And if so, why draw attention?

“Anyway, the ant nest is finished now. The Holy See will wipe it out completely.”

“Will they really?”

“Of course, they will. What do you mean, ‘will they’?”

“The Mad Dragon [a figurehead of the Holy See] has been very intelligently controlling humanity. You can see that just by the fact that they knew about the existence of this ant nest and continued to leave it alone.”

Doran picked up a maggot wriggling in the flesh of the blood puddle. He placed it on the stall and covered it with a wooden frame.

“Now, here’s a maggot. What happens if we leave it trapped like this?”

“Why are you asking a riddle that’s not even a riddle? It’ll starve to death.”

“Or perhaps it will awaken a new power, break the wooden frame, escape, and cause harm to the human world.”

Tyrinted glared at Doran with a look that said, ‘Have I ever seen such a crazy person?’

Doran chuckled, opened the wooden frame, spat the apple he was chewing next to it, and closed the frame again.

“The maggot can now eat this apple waste and survive. This is the human world right now.”

“What?”

“A world controlled in a very sophisticated way so that it doesn’t die or explode… In other words, so that the status quo can be maintained.”

Cruel and inhumane entertainment, forbidden by the gods through the scriptures and codified as taboo by the Holy See, is popular all over the world.

The Mad Dragon Haraderiman, who is said to have the power to look down on all things, obviously knows this but leaves it alone.

‘I don’t know what he’s waiting for, focusing on maintenance rather than improvement….’

Tyrinted, having understood Doran’s analogy, scratched her head in annoyance. There are no fools in the Special Task Force.

“If they’re deliberately leaving it alone to prevent something strange from happening… then a second ant nest will appear somewhere else. And the Holy See will leave it alone.”

“Exactly. You’re a good subordinate.”

“Hey! Who’s your subordinate!”

As Doran dodged Tyrinted’s sharp punch, the mustachioed magician Lunen approached.

“Chief.”

“Yes?”

“Take a look at this.”

He picked up a page from a thick file and handed it over.

It was a list of the adventurers who were deployed for the security of this , obtained with the cooperation of the Alliance (Adventurers’ Guild).

Of course, no punishment will be given to them. The Magic Authority had no intention of creating an uncomfortable relationship with the Alliance. I don’t know about the Holy See, though.

“You were almost in big trouble. The Disaster Prodigy really came and went.”

Doran’s eyes, usually closed with a constant smile, opened slightly.

[Rain Ludwig.]

Fortunately, his name was not on the list of the dead… If something had happened, I would never have been able to face Senior Caveon for the rest of my life.

Who would have imagined that giving a sixteen-year-old noble a few clues would lead him to find the black market through the Alliance?

When they hear that they have to find a book in the black market, the young masters who have grown up in mansions get scared and give up or send an agent.

‘Ha, he’s really something.’

Doran, who was chuckling in vain, paused.

But why is he so obsessed with Toureina’s book? Is it just a sense of responsibility for the lost book? Or is there something else….

* * *

“What is Rain’s condition?”

Outside , a woman with her face covered by a hood walked into this place, where countless shacks were densely packed like a maze.

On a hastily prepared bed, a black-haired boy was lying down, breathing heavily. Even when he heard a familiar voice, he could only pant painfully.

Sammy, a plump young man sitting next to him, replacing the handkerchief on his forehead, shook his head.

“He doesn’t show any signs of waking up. Judging by his heavy muttering, he seems to be in a lot of pain.”

When the woman pushed back her hood, the elegant features of a noble appeared under the candlelight. It was Hirpien Dialle.

“Can’t the priest heal him?”

“The dark poison has already been removed. But the pain that corroded him will remain… This is not something I can heal.”

Only comfortable rest will be the answer. Hirpien smiled bitterly.

“We need to get out of the city before the investigation spreads further. I have to leave here now. Can you tell Rain that we are all very grateful?”

“Of course.”

“This is the payment, and this is what Rain left with me.”

Hirpien placed a money bag full of gold coins on the side table. It was five times the usual payment.

But what surprised Sammy was not the amount of the payment, but the title of the book next to it.

A book about Toureina… which the ‘Golden Children’ are confiscating as soon as they see it all over the continent.

“Goodbye, Rain… Thank you so much. Let’s meet again later with healthy faces. If you come to the archipelago, I’ll treat you with the utmost hospitality.”

Hirpien suddenly kissed Rain lightly on the cheek.

Eh…?

As Sammy stared blankly at it, she kissed Sammy on the cheek this time and smiled brightly.

“We islanders always kiss each other on the cheek when expressing gratitude to the opposite sex. You could say it’s the highest level of gratitude.”

* * *

In the old temple, the stronghold of the Black Church, the ancient sinister aura swirled like myrrh incense, and the incoming light was strangely refracted and twisted.

Flap.

As a crow made of magic flew in, the magic wriggled in the empty upper seat, and one or two figures appeared.

“Numbers 3 and 6 have been defeated.”

As the man standing in front of the steps of the high throne opened his mouth, the human figures wriggling with magical haze each reacted.

[Ribeni? Who is he?]

[It wouldn’t be strange if he died anytime, but it’s hard to believe that Milleke is dead.]

[What, you bastard?]

There were a total of eight upper seats in the temple. Since Ribeni and Milleke were dead, the third and sixth upper seats were empty.

The most violently agitated was number 2, and the only one who didn’t say a word was number 1.

The man spoke again.

“Fortunately, before number 6 died, he sent a crow and was able to obtain some rough information about the opponent.”

[What does it say?]

“Rain, dangerous magic, urgent removal.”

Dangerous magic……. If Milleke, who judges everything calmly, judged it to be dangerous, it must be incredibly dangerous.

While everyone was agitated in their own emotions, number 5 opened his mouth.

[There are a total of thirteen magicians registered with the Alliance under the name Rain, four of them are already dead and five are mediocre.]

Her consciousness is now in the temple, but her actual body is in the Alliance branch in a border city where fifty people are slaughtered and lying on the ground.

To be exact, she is using telekinesis to examine hundreds of documents at once from the piles of documents in the office.

“But the remaining four are not people that Milleke would mark as dangerous?”

[Then is there some secret code hidden in the word Rain?]

“Wait, there is one exception.”

As number 5, who was rummaging through the documents, flicked his hand, one of the pieces of paper that had just passed by flew out and flew in front of his eyes.

“Rain Ludwig.”

The moment that name was recited, the eyebrows of number 1, who had been quietly closing his eyes in meditation, trembled slightly.

“His growth is amazing. He’s a bronze rank in less than a month since he registered.”

[Bronze rank? He’s a little less trashy than trash. Are you kidding me right now, aah? Would Ribeni have been defeated by such a guy?]

[Ludwig, is that the Genius Prodigy?]

“He was called that, but he took the top student spot in this Golden Generation?”

Then number 7 chuckled with interest.

[Heh, did he hide his strength when he was young? That kid read too many novels.]

Number 2, who had been listening to the story while holding back, once again burst into anger.

[Hey, hey, no matter how good he is, do you think Ribeni would have been defeated by such a freshman rat? Think about it, you stupid things.]

Then number 1, who had been silent until now, opened his mouth quietly.

[Given Ribeni’s personality, it’s not impossible that he died carelessly. Above all, he was too reckless. Maybe he received divine punishment.]

[What?]

Number 1 was on such bad terms with the radicals who enjoyed killing like numbers 2 and 3 that they were practically hostile. Before a fight broke out between the two, number 5 quickly said.

“I can catch the rest and torture them, but this Rain Ludwig is a problem. Kidnapping the heir of the Magic House from is no easy task.”

[No, change your thinking. Since we have number 1 at the school, wouldn’t things be much easier?]

It was number 4 who said that. She was a woman with a particularly playful voice.

[Valensidis, even if that guy is really the master Milleke was talking about, he’s no match for you. Kill him disguised as an accident.]

Then everyone’s eyes turned to number 1.

The eyes of the woman sitting on the throne too.

Her expression was not visible because she was covered by an old, deeply pressed bamboo hat, but her overwhelming aura was so powerful that even a child could recognize it.

“Eliminate anything that could be a hindrance, Valen.”

Number 1, who had been facing that overwhelming energy for a long time, finally bowed his head to show his obedience.

[……I will watch carefully and quietly dispose of him if he is confirmed to be someone who has been to , Master.]

As the woman blew smoke from her pipe to signal the end of the meeting, the figures shook one by one and disappeared.

‘Ribeni… the child I created through human transmutation.’

I had been guiding him since he was a baby until he became a witch, but strangely, I didn’t feel any emotion.

Was it because I didn’t give him affection in the first place? No, because I must never cry no matter what happens. It’s been a long time since I cut out the emotion of sadness from my heart.

The woman did not cry. Not once since the day she parted with that person on the day before the end of the unbearably harsh summer 300 years ago.

It’s not because she was a disciple of the fire dragon’s shamaness Friede, and it’s not because she herself once held the noble position of shamaness.

– Master, please take me with you. I’ll fight with you too. Please just let me go with you, please…….

Only, just only, because of the words that person left behind when he put your bamboo hat on your head while crying and begging like that.

– Wizards don’t cry. People will look down on you.

He added that he would be back soon, so wait with Pipi, and then her master left.

And he never came back.

Even today, 300 years later.

The bamboo hat he put on her became a memento.

Not a single day has passed that she has not lived for him. If he still can’t wake up, then something must be wrong with the magic…….

After studying both magic and sorcery for two hundred years, she came to the truth of complementing the shortcomings of the main reversal of the elements.

– Impossible.

But the Dragon race denied her research results. Haraderiman, the leader of the Holy See, the Mad Dragon, immediately expressed his disapproval.

– Even if you can melt the ice that has captured the body, you will not be able to melt the cold that holds the soul, for this is the realm of the gods.

Wouldn’t we know if we tried? If the soul is trapped inside and we don’t take it out, if it’s still wandering in the cold…….

The woman put the pipe she inherited from her master Friede in her mouth and filled her mouth with the smoke.

And she stroked her master’s bamboo hat gloomily and exhaled it for a long time towards the night sky where the star clusters were spreading beyond the cracks in the ceiling.

‘It won’t be long now. Now, it really won’t be long now.’