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Chapter 5
Magic power, violent enough to be savage and razor-sharp, mercilessly stabbed and tore into the soft, fragile bodies of the young children.
“AAAAAGH!”
“It hurts! Hng, ngh… It hurts so much….”
“P-please, save me! AAAAAAH…!”
Pitiful screams that were almost unbearable to hear rang out from all around.
In truth, this was no different from torture.
The transfer of magical power during the banquet ceremony was meant to forcibly increase one’s sensitivity to mana and create a core inside the body.
Normally, no proper Magic Tower would ever conduct a banquet ceremony like this.
For an ordinary person with the aptitude to become a magician, it usually took anywhere from as little as a month to more than half a year for a magic core to properly settle within the body.
It was an extremely dangerous process. If something went wrong, the magic power entering the body could take the wrong path, damaging the organs throughout the body and potentially killing the person. Therefore, the proper method of transferring magic power was for a high-ranking magician to carefully and consistently help the subject build up their adaptability.
For that reason, the Northern Magic Tower’s method of immediately transferring magic power was practically an unspoken taboo within magician society.
“Urgh, kuh…!”
A child standing right beside Liliope collapsed forward, blood pouring from his body. He convulsed for a moment before losing consciousness completely.
Liliope wasn’t doing well either.
An enormous amount of magic power, far too much for her still-developing body to withstand, boiled through her veins like molten metal, churning violently inside her.
The agony was so intense that it felt as though her mind was about to break, and her entire body was soon drenched in cold sweat.
Even when she clenched her teeth, strange sounds mixed with moans and sobs escaped her throat on their own.
“Ugh, hng… Ah… ahhk….”
A thick metallic smell of blood filled her throat. Her vision repeatedly flashed white as though fireworks were exploding right before her eyes, only to grow hazy before plunging into complete darkness.
[Stay conscious!]
Just as Liliope could endure no more and her body began to slump helplessly forward, a harsh shout seemed to seize her by the back of her neck.
[If you lose consciousness now, everything is over. Do you want to spend the rest of your life being called a halfwit and living as a cripple again?]
Despite having already experienced this once before, Liliope could never become accustomed to such unbearable pain. She bit down on her tongue and barely managed to cling to consciousness.
[I will open a path for you, so focus! Hurry! If you let yourself be swept away now, all you’ll get is a life spent being trampled by others until the day you die. Did you really return to the past just to meet an ending as pathetic as this?]
Like someone desperately clinging to a piece of straw they had barely found in the middle of the water, Liliope latched onto those words and struggled desperately to control the magic power raging inside her body.
“Ugh, hng… Ah… AAAAAH…!”
Of course, it did not go easily.
Naturally.
If everything could be resolved in an instant simply by making up one’s mind, then why would she have lived such a miserable life all the way up to this day?
Memories from before the regression flashed dimly before her eyes.
She had barely managed to survive day after day in the Magic Tower, where only the strong were acknowledged and allowed to live, while being treated worse than a dog.
Without even realizing how shameful that pathetic struggle for survival was, she had desperately tried to remain in the Northern Magic Tower together with her sister.
But after realizing that even that was a futile endeavor, she had instead lived quietly, doing everything she could to avoid attracting the attention of others.
She had lived a life in which she accomplished nothing, protected nothing, and remained so powerless and wretched that she had come to despise even herself.
And in the end, she had helplessly lost the one precious thing she had left right before her eyes.
That was why she couldn’t let things become the same this time.
This time… she absolutely could not walk the same path again…!
Liliope trembled as though her entire body were convulsing, gritted her teeth with all her might, and endured the agonizing passage of time.
She didn’t know how long she had rolled around on the floor, screaming.
Several of the fingernails she had scraped against the floor in agony had already broken, and tears and saliva streamed down her face, leaving it completely soaked.
No, her entire body was already drenched in sweat pouring down like rain, making it meaningless to distinguish one from the other.
Whenever she struggled desperately until she could endure no more and wanted to give up, there was a voice in her head that harshly whipped her back to consciousness.
Yet unlike its merciless voice, the intangible force guiding her magic power toward the area around her heart, where the core was supposed to form, was astonishingly delicate and persistent.
The time continued to pass endlessly, endlessly, as though this moment would last forever.
Flash!
“…!”
Then, at some point—
Like a sky clearing after dark clouds had dispersed, or a lake becoming still after its mist had settled, Liliope’s hazy mind suddenly brightened.
A clarity like filling her lungs with the crisp, clean air of midwinter cleared her vision.
And then something strange happened before her eyes.
“Ah….”
At first, she thought black and blue snowflakes were falling inside the room.
Within her blurry vision, beautiful, glittering particles danced slowly through the weightless air.
They drifted leisurely around Liliope as though time itself had stopped, then, in an instant, they became a powerful storm, swirling violently like a dam that had finally burst.
The magic power that had previously done nothing but wander aimlessly through her body, painfully gnawing at her insides, finally found its own path and began settling into her chest.
As the magic power poured into it and filled it to the brim, a sense of liberation and something resembling omnipotence—something Liliope had never felt before—rose within her.
Her body trembled endlessly, now for an entirely different reason than before.
What paralyzed Liliope’s entire body in that moment was a clear thrill resembling ecstatic exhilaration.
The violent pain that had felt as though it were smashing apart her entire body vanished at some point as though it had never existed.
If her clothes had not been completely soaked with tears, sweat, and blood, she might have thought that everything that had happened to her had been nothing but a lie.
The light slowly returned to her violet eyes, which had remained hazy as though she were wandering through a dream.
Only then did Liliope realize that the light of the magic circle that had covered the entire ceiling had gone out.
“Hm. This time, sixteen out of fifty survived, and only about four managed to endure without losing consciousness? That’s a better result than in previous years.”
The children’s sobs and groans, born of fear, anxiety, confusion, and pain, lingered throughout the room together with the nauseating stench of blood.
Most of the children had died because they could not withstand the sudden torrent of magic power. Quite a few others were still barely breathing, yet lay collapsed on the floor, their bodies convulsing in a gruesome state.
Even the very small number of children who remained conscious, including Liliope, bore unmistakable signs of having struggled through excruciating pain.
Among them, the red-haired boy sat blankly on the floor with his blood-covered body, as though he had lost his mind. Then, suddenly, he looked around with bloodshot eyes.
But after seeing the fate of the boys who had called him their boss, he let out a beast-like cry and glared at the magician in charge of the banquet ceremony as though he intended to kill him.
It was around then that Liliope realized someone had been holding her tightly enough to hurt her for some time.
“Ah… ngh….”
Only then did she realize that the person was making choking sounds, unable even to scream.
Liliope raised her head.
In her eyes appeared Caliona, blood-red liquid streaming down her body.
“S-Sister…?”
Liliope was horrified.
[This girl you call your sister… I had a feeling she might be like this from the moment I first saw her, but as expected, she’s a broken vessel.]
Perhaps because it had fought alongside Liliope through that fierce struggle, the voice in her head sounded noticeably more exhausted than before as it clicked its tongue softly.
[Her natural talent as a magician is practically at rock bottom. Her insides are a complete mess even now, yet somehow she’s still holding on.]
Liliope couldn’t understand what kind of nonsense it was talking about.
Caliona’s talent as a magician was at rock bottom?
That was impossible.
Caliona was a genius recognized by everyone.
