Chapter – 24
Kalam Kastruna and Rezewyn glared at each other in silence.
That alone filled the air with a deep, firefly-like blue light, floating thickly in every corner.
Soon after, the long, resonant hum of mana spread through the laboratory.
Rezewyn and Kalam Kastruna were engaged in a battle of wills.
A chilling air rose along the cavern walls.
It was the sort of prelude often seen before mages clashed.
The strange standoff dragged on.
It was Kalam Kastruna who finally broke the silence.
“So it wasn’t just some rat sneaking in. Turns out it’s the Chief of the Phoenix Order. Quite the unexpected guest.”
“To hear myself called a rat by the thief who plundered another clan’s vault… it’s a very peculiar feeling.”
“No need to scowl like that. I didn’t know the one mage who hadn’t run away would lose control and start stitching that experiment’s limbs onto himself. No idea what he envied so much. I thought a bit of troll blood would fix him, but he just died. I’m heartbroken, truly. What do you think?”
Rezewyn didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he ordered Hyacinth and me to step back.
Hyacinth looked worried for his master, but followed the order quietly.
I didn’t go against his words either.
Only then did Kalam Kastruna’s gaze shift toward us.
Her pale skin and curved eyebrows twitched just slightly—
then an almost imperceptible hint of color touched her otherwise expressionless face.
I knew that expression.
The innocent look of a child who had thought a toy broken, only to discover it still worked.
“Oh, those little things are here too. Happy to see me?”
We’d definitely met before.
Just moments ago, in Remidia’s vault, to be precise.
I thought, somewhat annoyed, that this would be a problem—but didn’t show it.
I didn’t want to provoke her.
The woman simply smiled without any particular reaction.
A shiver crawled up my arms.
So she had taken interest.
Not a good sign.
“Hyacinth. Take the book and return to the Tower. Go straight to the Tower Master.”
“And you, Master?”
“I can’t simply let that thing roam free, not when she might try something with it.”
Rezewyn jerked his chin toward the ceiling.
Despite the green luminescence of the runes carved into the pillars supporting the cavern, the ceiling was pitch-black, letting not a hint of light through.
At a glance, it looked like nothing more than a black ceiling, but as recorded in the notes, it was actually an accumulation of the experimental subject’s negative consciousness—energy layered upon energy.
Extremely refined, and extremely dangerous if abused.
It was only natural Rezewyn had stayed.
I now understood why he hadn’t returned to report to the Tower Master immediately.
He must have felt uneasy.
If someone triggered a spell using that mass of power in the meantime… the consequences would be catastrophic.
And that was when Hyacinth and I had arrived.
Kalam Kastruna, who had been quietly watching all this, interjected.
“You won’t be leaving this place.”
Alive, that is.
Her calm voice uttered the words.
For the Chief of the Phoenix Order to speak that way to Rezewyn—a prodigy who had opened the eighth gate of mana at barely forty years old—was arrogance beyond measure.
But I knew.
It wasn’t arrogance.
She had every right to say it.
Though she wore the shell of a human woman barely past twenty, the being inside had survived this blood-soaked world for centuries. A monster among monsters.
And indeed, from the moment their contest of mana began, Rezewyn had not gained the slightest advantage.
This laboratory had no normal exit.
Rezewyn’s face, as he attempted to seize a chance to teleport Hyacinth and me away, was filled with shock.
Hyacinth gasped, preparing a spell, but I stopped him.
“You can’t. The whole cavern will collapse.”
“I can regulate my output! If we don’t do something—”
I shook my head again.
There was a reason those two weren’t manifesting spells despite wielding such overwhelming mana.
The ceiling.
It pulsed occasionally, as if proudly announcing I am dangerous.
If even a bit of its unstable structure was disturbed by stray magic, the massive explosion that followed would kill us all.
None of us wanted that.
Hyacinth realized this, lowering the hands he’d raised.
Then he looked at me.
His eyes were round, filled with a quiet, hopeful expectation.
He didn’t say it aloud, but the meaning was obvious.
He wanted me to solve this somehow.
But I loosened my grip on my scabbard.
This wasn’t the kind of opponent a sword would work on.
To put it plainly, the difference in rank was too great.
She was an enemy we couldn’t defeat.
I knew better than anyone how strong she was.
Nothing short of a Sword Saint would suffice.
Ignoring Hyacinth’s frustration, I instead asked Rezewyn:
“Can you hold on? I only need a moment.”
“That sounded suspiciously like you actually have a plan. I can’t hold out long.”
Even in that brief time, Rezewyn must have felt the difference between himself and Kalam Kastruna.
He was steadily losing the battle of mana—control and suppression, the foundation of a mage’s skill.
If she suppressed his mana entirely, she could kill him with mana itself.
It should have been horrifying, yet Rezewyn continued without panic.
His response wasn’t exactly a brilliant solution—but he was right.
There was a way.
I turned and walked toward the experimental subject.
Yes.
Toward the immortal being trapped in a cage-like cell.
The undead child sat motionless, just as it had when we first arrived, indifferent to everything happening nearby.
It merely stared blankly ahead, lips parted faintly, expression empty.
I approached leisurely and stood before the child.
I let my presence fill its eyes.
Like a camera lens snapping into focus, its wandering gaze converged onto me.
Clear, pale-blue eyes staring without even a blink.
I felt guilt.
A black stain pressed against my chest, constricting me.
I know this sounds absurd.
But I was the one who created this world.
The one who wrote its narrative.
The one who completed the “Immortal Experiment” episode—
Which also meant I was the one who made this child experience its countless deaths—deaths that weren’t even deaths.
All of it was my doing.
Now that I existed physically in this world, it was no longer just a story in a book.
I had realized this when I first arrived.
I was the one who had made this child suffer all those horrors.
Unintentional as it was, that didn’t change the fact.
Everything lay before me now.
I knew it was hypocritical.
I once said so myself:
Estalnisia is a world filled with suffering.
This case may be special, but if I took responsibility for every pain and death, then every snapped blade of grass, every slaughtered beast, every dying life would be my fault.
Because I created this world.
So what?
Would I feel moral guilt for every single occurrence?
Even the world’s destruction?
Wouldn’t comforting myself that way be hypocrisy?
My selfishness objected inside me.
I shook my head.
No.
This wasn’t about that.
My priority had always been, and still was, my own survival.
For that, I was willing to bear anything.
I was neither kind nor foolish enough to worry about every unseen misery.
But still—
There was one line I couldn’t dismiss.
I remembered every line written about the Immortal Experiment.
…No—
I remembered every line ever written in the Chronicles of Estalnisia.
My memory was good.
No—
it wasn’t a matter of memory.
If a writer cannot remember every line they wrote, how can they call themselves a writer?
Morning brings sunrise, night brings darkness,
water flows downward,
and those who put in effort are rewarded—
all as natural as breathing.
[The child did not lack understanding of pain.
It simply did not express it.
It simply could not.
Having existed for decades, centuries, with no ties to anything,
the child could not possibly possess the things people call “common sense.”
Even the natural impulse to express suffering had long been forgotten.]
I didn’t mean I could understand everything the child had endured.
That would indeed be hypocrisy.
Sympathy alone changes nothing.
[Kalam Kastruna slowly tamed the child.
She told it that everything done to it was natural,
and necessary for human interaction.
She told the child she needed it.
Ah. So that is what being needed feels like.
She told the child she loved it.
Ah. So that is what love is.
And after a long time, when all “common sense” had been instilled—
the child became a monster.]
But it wasn’t too late.
I could still change it.
There were still sentences I could rewrite.
I didn’t have a pen or paper—but I was, in this moment, a writer.
The creator of this world.
There was nothing I couldn’t revise.
This was my world.
With that resolve,
I simply believed.
[All was over.
With the sacrifice of the Phoenix Order’s Eight-Winged Chief.
The city was nearly annihilated.
The continent’s last remaining Mage Tower shattered and lost function.
A single incident should not have caused devastation of this scale.
Burdened by the countless deaths at its hands,
the child fell into hell,
to suffer eternally under the Reaper of the Black Coffin Gate.
And then…
The clock’s hand ticked forward,
toward destruction.]
This was…
A feeling that didn’t fit the word “atonement,”
and perhaps didn’t quite fit me—a man who had never raised a child nor even a niece or nephew.
A faint trace of paternal affection.
I stood before the child.
And drew my sword.
To complete the experiment that had once failed.
The starlight-colored blade shimmered white, resonating with my resolve.
