NOVEL NEXT Chapter 6
006.
“A…”
The pungent smell stung his nose.
The pain in his chest where his heart lay.
Kalen cautiously opened his eyes.
“Oh.”
The haze in his mind cleared for but a brief moment when a strange voice spoke from beside him.
Turning his head toward the direction of the unfamiliar voice, he saw an old man whose expression showed surprise. It was neither Sinat nor Blamia.
The last thing Kalen could remember clearly was using the second-tier combat attribute magic, “Explosion,” on himself.
After that, things were hazy.
It was a barely understood magic under Blamia’s supervision that he had foolishly tried to wield. Could it be that magic of such magnitude was simply beyond his ability to survive?
This place felt similar to the description of heaven that he had heard from the church elders during his days as a beggar.
Anyway, his life had been a gift from his master. It wasn’t as if it were something he truly cherished, but still, he hoped that Sinat was alive.
“Hmph… Just as they said, you’re not in your right mind. Hey, you ungrateful brat, how dare you treat someone who saved your life like you’re already in the next world.”
“…What?”
“Tsk tsk… You’re not all there, are you…”
The old man stood up, clicking his tongue repeatedly. Kalen’s mind was still foggy, and he couldn’t fully understand the situation.
When the old man left, and Kalen was alone in the room, something finally became clear.
“My room…”
There’s a saying that after death, one feels nothing. If that were true, then maybe he wasn’t dead. He could still feel the foul smell from the bandages wrapped around his body, and that something beyond mere throbbing emanated from his heart.
And the place where he was lying down—this was Kalen’s room. It was the familiar room that Blamia had given him, where he’d spent over two years.
Had that old man saved him just now? With that absurd thought came a small smile, imagining his debt of life owed entirely to the old man.
“Kalen!!”
Suddenly, the door flew open. Beautiful silvery-blue hair danced in the air. The fresh, youthful scent of a girl replaced the foul smell that had previously overwhelmed his nose.
“Sniff… Sniff…”
For the first time ever, the forehead pressed against the chest that always felt only the hair at the back touched it.
Two figures came in after.
On one side was a familiar teacher; on the other, the strange old man he had seen moments ago.
“Look at that. Grinning already, aren’t you? I thought I said you’ve gone mad.”
“How am I supposed to believe that there exists a lunatic who would use a second-tier combat magic on his own body? In our days, we didn’t even have people like that.”
“Master…”
Master Blamia asked Kalen with her usual disapproving tone.
“How’s the body?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m not that great at healing magic, so I had a friend help me. He might be strange, but his skills are solid, so your scars won’t remain.”
Blamia pointed at Kalen’s heart as she continued.
“But that one can’t be healed.”
Before Kalen could ask what that was referring to—
“What did I teach you? What about spirits?”
“…That they only exist in form and cannot themselves deliver physical harm.”
“Exactly. I taught you that because it’s true. But the impossible has happened.”
Whenever teaching magic, Blamia had several habitual phrases. One of them was that everything is built on flow. The flow changes, and you must ride its changes to stay ahead.
Blamia was getting at that point now.
“At least, this is the case now. Even in my prime, spirits were never known to do that. To explain what happened to you… well, we need to go way back in time.”
Blamia’s gaze seemed lost in reminiscence.
“The creature that Sinat contracted with is something ancient, something even I’ve never seen. It comes from long before the era when practical magic faded, and the magic of decorum started to gain prominence.”
“Contract?”
“Look at Sinat’s wrist.”
Beyond Sinat, whose face was still pressed against Kalen’s chest, Kalen carefully inspected her wrist. Though not pitch-black as it had once been, a dark, intricate, and dignified-looking mark was carved into it.
“Did Sinat make a contract with that monster?”
“For now, that’s how we should see it. I don’t know much yet, so I need to find out more. But before that—”
Blamia approached Kalen, gently untangling Sinat, and then unwrapped his bandages.
“Can you see it?”
What was revealed wasn’t something pleasing to see. The area around Kalen’s heart was stained a rotten black, with broken, jagged lines spreading across his entire body like cracks on a broken mirror.
If that wasn’t enough, Blamia immediately probed Kalen’s mana.
Kalen had no mana. As the moment flashed back in Kalen’s mind, the inevitable vision of his dark world unfolded.
“—”
“—”
Silence fell upon them all. The old man, who had earlier been clicking his tongue, now looked gravely at Kalen’s inner world.
Kalen’s world was dark. It was far from beautiful or magnificent. That alone was unsettling enough, but now, something more—
It was terrifying.
“Remember that I said one’s spiritual world is a world of a mage’s own and the vessel that holds the heart? Do you remember?”
“…Yes.”
“Tell me, describe what you see.”
A plain darkness would have been better. But now, his spiritual world was riddled with cracks as if a pane of glass had shattered, and it was entirely engulfed in flames.
It was hell.
“The flame is likely from the “Explosion” magic that you cast. The cracks, it seems, are from the spirit that pierced your heart. But not your heart—it was your spirit that was pierced.”
Something felt off to Kalen, and he looked at Blamia’s face. The face that, until moments ago, had merely shown disapproval, was now drenched in anger.
“So tell me, how am I supposed to accept this? I know Sinat’s intentions were good, but I almost lost everything dear to me in the blink of an eye—the granddaughter who is practically my entire world, and even the student who I raised like a son.”
“…”
“Why did you do such a reckless thing? Casting a second-tier magic on yourself, and now your spiritual world is damaged because of some mysterious creature!”
At that moment, Kalen felt nothing. Instead, his previously foggy mind seemed to clear up.
Why had he done such a reckless thing?
It seemed there was a ready answer.
“Blood.”
“Blood?”
“Sinat was bleeding, Master.”
Kalen’s memories from after using magic on himself were hazy.
There was one thing he was certain of, though: neither Blamia, nor even Sinat herself, would have realized what had truly happened then.
“I had the reason for attempting the second-tier magic, as you said. Time passed after Sinat attempted her contract magic.”
Sinat herself was tangled in the spirit world. He didn’t know what he looked like at that moment.
“Sweat was pouring out of my body as if it were raining, blood streamed out from my nose and mouth. You said spirits are pure beings, and yet a sinister aura I had never felt before swirled around me.”
Kalen, for his young age, remained unusually calm. Both his reaching the point of attempting to save Sinat and his current calm, steady recounting of the incident to Blamia was due to this disposition.
“At that moment, I realized that I was about to die. Thinking about it, I remembered I don’t have mana like others, and my spiritual world is unique. Therefore, I decided that the best way to stop Sinat’s magic was to intervene directly.”
“You…”
“I haven’t yet learned how to stimulate the mana and access the spirit from you, Master, so I used magic on myself.”
“Did you not think you’d die doing that?”
“Of course, I did. The image of being buried kept flashing in my mind.”
By now, there was no discernible emotion in Blamia’s expression. Neither the disapproval that was characteristic of her nor the anger she had expressed earlier. She simply asked,
“You regard me as more than just a benefactor, and I understand that. But humans, by nature, always prioritize their own lives. Even if Sinat were my granddaughter, your own life was on the line, so why…?”
“I don’t know.”
Kalen, too, could read no emotions from Blamia’s expression. He had always thought his master’s natural demeanor was curt and calm, but now looking back, he found some softness in her expression that he hadn’t noticed before.
“Master. Rather, Elder, after you left, I discussed something with the young lady.”
Kalen turned his head to look at Sinat, whose tears were still streaming down her face.
“Why did I have to go? I just wanted to continue your mission, but a strange thought crossed my mind—that I didn’t know why I had to leave.”
“…”
“So I said it out loud—I didn’t know why. Even if I must leave, it was because things have simply come to that point, just as you originally found me with no reason.”
Blamia had brought Kalen in. In fact, she had intended to give Sinat a friend. She would never have considered bringing a street beggar home to serve as a servant if that hadn’t been the case.
She is a great mage.
A famous great mage who would have no reason to bring in a street beggar, let alone one who lacks formal education.
Though she never told him this intent.
Whatever the intent behind it,
To Kalen, Blamia was simply the benefactor who provided him with a place to eat and sleep, for no reason.
“Even deciding to save Miss Sinat—there was no grand purpose behind it. Just like how you took me in without a reason before, I thought it was only natural to save her.”
“Huh… Hmph…”
“Perhaps there’s gratitude toward you in that natural feeling. And toward Miss Sinat…”
“Don’t call her Miss.”
The voice that interrupted was Sinat’s.
Sinat had begun moving again, heading toward Kalen’s chest. She touched her forehead to the area close to his darkened heart.
“Perhaps there’s gratitude toward Sinat as well in this naturalness. But reflecting now… maybe I just didn’t want to see her in pain.”
Kalen’s awkward confession hadn’t changed since the day he was first brought in. Blamia couldn’t speak, frozen where she stood.
Why shouldn’t she?
If Sinat were the world, then she had been criticizing the person who saved her granddaughter instead of expressing gratitude.
Now, she must admit it—how she tried to distance herself from Kalen due to the fear of seeing her own past failures reflected in him, and also how Kalen, this young boy, had unknowingly carved out a significant place in her heart.
Though her granddaughter was her whole world, loneliness hadn’t fully vanished.
Blamia had to acknowledge that Kalen, in his own clumsy way, had somewhat filled that void.
***