Wealth and glory. To the disciples of Jade Ilisian, who had never held anything remotely similar in their lives, these were concepts that didn’t resonate much. Jade showed them a picture. It was a familiar picture to Iris and Elijah.
The necklace they had failed to seize from Leo Artes several years ago. Though it had been a fake, they still vividly remembered the shape of the pendant with the water drop-shaped blue jewel embedded in it.
Especially for Elijah, who had experienced a long separation from Rose due to that day’s mission, it was a necklace he couldn’t forget even if he tried. A chill suddenly wrapped around Elijah’s hand. Elijah, who saw Rose interlacing fingers with him, smiled faintly.
“The holy relic we need to find is this necklace.”
He turned his head again to look at Master.
“This necklace is called the ‘Dew of the World Tree,’ and is the most powerful and mysterious of the ancient holy relics. We absolutely cannot let such a dangerous object remain in their hands.”
Iris raised her hand to ask a question.
“Which of the Four Directional Magic Towers is that necklace in?”
“I don’t know yet. So that means a very long battle will begin from now on.”
The faces of those slowly nodding didn’t actually hold as much determination as Jade’s. They would simply follow unconditionally because it was what Master wanted to do.
“We plan to leave when the rainy season ends, so prepare thoroughly for camping in the meantime, but don’t use that as an excuse to neglect your training.”
“Yes, Master.”
The unanimous answer of fewer than twenty young people echoed through the backyard.
“Clover, have you ever seen Holy Hall mages outside during this time?”
Among the disciples scattered in groups of three and five, Iris, who had been lost in thought alone, asked Clover beside her.
“No. Of course I haven’t. Aren’t those high-ranking people only inside the royal palace?”
“Doesn’t it seem a bit strange?”
“What does?”
“That such great people don’t even know the magic towers have been occupied. Master said so, didn’t he? That the Royal Palace Holy Hall is where the greatest mages gather.”
“We must be better than those people.”
“But……”
Iris still had an unconvinced expression.
“But we were originally beggars, weren’t we? And Master coincidentally discovered us and brought us here…… He took in Rose even though he has no magic power, for no reason at all.”
She looked at Clover and shook her head.
“How could we possibly be better than those high-ranking palace mages?”
“……Master didn’t bring us coincidentally, Iris.”
Then Igrit, who had been silent, spoke quietly. A few of the peers who had been subtly listening to their conversation nearby looked at him.
“It’s all because there’s a use for us.”
“What use?”
“You don’t need to know.”
Igrit’s gaze reached Rose, who was with Elijah far away.
“……Nothing that enters this monastery is meaningless.”
* * *
Jade Ilisian was by far the most promising talent in the royal palace. However, the reason this statement had somehow become past tense was because he no longer had any magic power remaining.
He exhausted his magic power in his fifties, which could be called the prime of life for a mage. He couldn’t tell anyone. He learned for the first time that magic power wasn’t infinite but would eventually be exhausted. It was unprecedented.
Jade was the most excellent healing mage in the royal palace, and he healed countless sick people and researched various treatment methods. His peer Leo Artes used to laugh, saying that at this rate he’d someday even revive the dead, and Jade hoped it wouldn’t end as a joke.
As a Grand Mage, he wanted to enjoy eternal life more than anyone. In this country, the king was merely symbolic; all real power was held by the Grand Mage.
He would someday become the Grand Mage. However, ironically, when that time came, he wouldn’t have many days left to live. How futile it was to struggle all one’s life to reach that position only to enjoy five or ten years of wealth and glory before it ended.
Being obsessed with immortality, he couldn’t see anything else. The world’s praise that Jade would be the next master of the Holy Hall, the Grand Mage’s unlimited trust in the most excellent mage—all felt futile before achieving eternal life.
He who yearned for eternity eventually reached the limit of magic power that no one had ever reached before. Though people didn’t notice this fact due to his accumulated reputation, for Jade, each day was agonizing.
Continuing the duties of a royal palace mage while hiding the fact that he had no magic power was very precarious. If this fact became known, not only would he be expelled from the royal palace, but everything he had built up would turn to nothing.
Jade, who desperately pondered solutions, eventually dabbled in black magic.
If the total amount of magic power allocated to one person was set, wouldn’t it also be possible to steal that magic power and make it one’s own? If many people’s magic power accumulated and accumulated, he would eventually have infinite magic power.
Jade thus left the royal palace and went into hiding. The reason the world regarded black magic as wicked was because its foundation started with plundering others’ magic power.
They stole holy relics or magical tools used by mages and borrowed the magic power contained within to deceive people as if it were their own, but Jade didn’t want to stop at merely borrowing.
How to completely make others’ magic power his own, how to become an immortal body with that infinite magic power……
While Jade consumed time with futile research, the master of the Holy Hall changed twice, and his peer Leo Artes had become a white-haired old veteran.
“I’ll complete this before I die.”
He was the only friend Jade interacted with even after going into hiding and the person he trusted most.
“Haven’t you written research papers on vampires before, Leo? Everyone tried to dissuade you, saying you chose a truly useless and difficult research topic with youthful rashness……”
Jade chuckled as he examined his research journal. However, Leo Artes didn’t laugh.
“Vampires are real, Jade.”
He set something down in front of Jade. The gray eyes looking at the red liquid in the small glass test tube furrowed thinly.
“What is this?”
“Vampire blood.”
At the absurd words, Jade scoffed.
“You must be senile already.”
“I can’t help it if you don’t believe me.”
Leo Artes’s story was this:
He and his disciples discovered an undamaged vampire corpse at an ancient site in the north. Whether because it was buried deep in the snowfield or because of the immortal power possessed by vampires, the corpse was as vivid as if alive.
Leo Artes moved that corpse to his laboratory. However, before full-scale research could even begin, the corpse crumbled into mere ashes not long after. They had only drawn blood a few times.
“Nothing special was detected from the ashes.”
Thus, all that remained were about a dozen test tubes containing blood.
“I think it would be good to separate the serum and use it for treatment research. Naturally, directly injecting it into humans as is would be dangerous.”
He rolled up his sleeve to show. Jade’s eyes widened at the sight of the blackly necrotic arm. Leo shrugged and smiled.
“What can I do when there’s no suitable test subject? I’ve lived long enough, so it’s no loss either way, right?”
“How do you even know that was a vampire corpse? It could have just been a human corpse perfectly preserved by being buried in snow. Then you’d be an idiot who injected some random person’s serum into your body.”
“It had an effect, though very briefly.”
Leo raised his index finger and drew a straight line across his arm.
“I made a cut here, you see.”
“……”
“Of course, as you can see, there’s not a single wound now.”
For Jade, who had lost everything through his obsession with eternity, these were words he couldn’t help but hope for. Even if the probability of it being a vain hope was high, to a drowning person even a single straw stretched to land is desperate.
To Jade, it was a very tempting straw. He held the small glass vial and asked.
“Is this the only blood sample you collected?”
“No, I stored the rest separately.”
“……Where?”
Jade cut ties with his old friend that very day. The blood he stole from his laboratory had no suitable test subject, so he could only keep it preciously stored.
Looking at Leo’s research journal, theoretically it seemed definitely possible, but seeing his arm already necrotic from side effects, he didn’t dare experiment on his own body.
He afterward wandered the slums looking for young children with magic power. Those easy to control as he wished, born with magic power but unable to afford to learn magic, buds of talent not yet discovered by the royal palace either.
Thus Igrit became Jade’s first disciple. Next came Elijah, and after that countless unnamed children held his hand and entered the monastery.
To make their magic power his own, he needed the power of ancient holy relics, and Jade, who didn’t have the strength to obtain those relics alone, taught magic to use the children as his hands and feet.
One day while laying the foundation for his ambitions, he finally discovered a suitable test subject.
A child from the slums who possessed traits similar to vampire blood structure, and because of that was fated not to live long.
In people’s eyes, he must have looked like just a pitiful child with no parents and suffering from an incurable disease, but to Jade, he was the child most similar to a vampire among humans.
