The Sword Genius of the Magic Empire - Chapter 25
Only Noblemtl
Leopolis Magistrate Oscar hurried through the dark hallways of the mansion.
‘Something is wrong.’
There has been no contact from the Vendetta Ten since a while ago.
If Enoch had been dealt with, he would have been reported immediately.
The fact that it hadn’t happened until now meant that something was wrong somewhere.
“…no way.”
An impatient muttering escaped his lips.
All of the Vendetta fighters stationed at this facility are level 15 or higher with actual combat experience. They are said to have sufficient actual combat experience.
Of course, it makes no sense that it would take this much time to deal with just one non-wizard.
bang.
He opened the door and entered the study.
This location serves as a staging area for Vendetta personnel to establish contact points in case of emergency.
At least we need to find out what happened, so we can plan our next move… .
“ah.”
And the next moment.
At the sight before his eyes, Oscar stopped moving.
A black-haired boy sitting askew on a desk chair in a dark study.
In the pitch-black darkness of the night, his dark blue eyes stared at him with the silver moonlight behind them.
“Oh, Enoch… … .”
Toouk.
Enoch silently tossed something in front of him.
Oscar looked at the object with a blank expression.
The cleanly severed head of the test subject rolled in front of him, making a slimy sound.
The administrator, who had been staring at it in silence for a while, finally broke his silence.
“…how?”
Enoch tilted his head slightly.
“well.”
Enoch leaned back in his chair and opened his mouth calmly.
“Now you will know.”
“…!”
The moment he met Enoch’s dark blue eyes, Oscar knew something was seriously wrong.
Whirlwind.
He lifted the staff he was holding.
The engraved magic stone at the end of the horse’s back reacted to his mana and shone brightly.
The magic circles rotating in the air began to draw elaborate patterns.
At the same time, Enoch kicked the sword he had placed next to the desk, spun it around, and rushed at him.
Taang!
Type 1. Explosive sword.
Mana spread throughout his body, triggering from each part according to his will.
The distance between us was shortened in an instant by the recoil that enveloped my entire body.
Enoch swung his sword at the administrator’s bewildered eyes.
Crunch.
A line across the void created by the bastard’s mana, reflected in Enoch’s eyes.
The magical lifeline was cut off by a dark blue sword strike.
Crispy!
The magic circle of the administrator who lost his power source shatters into pieces and is canceled.
Oscar’s eyes filled with shock as he watched the sight clearly.
‘What just happened… .’
But he wasn’t stupid enough to just be surprised.
Action takes precedence over thought.
To counter Enoch who had approached closely, Oscar arranged a magic circle boasting the fastest construction speed.
The magic circle, completed with a dazzling halo of light, rotates and activates.
Immediately, a giant spear of ice fell from the air at a catastrophic speed, targeting Enoch.
Percussion!
As soon as Enoch saw it, he ran straight ahead, kicked the pillar, spun around and dodged.
With a dull sound, the ice spear missed its target and only pierced through the floor of the study.
However, Enoch was unable to completely dodge the suddenly dropped ice spear, and a little blood oozed out from his waist.
Looking at it, Oscar’s mouth corners wrinkled.
Before becoming an administrator, he himself was a battle mage who once belonged to the Elseid clan.
He was proud of his ability to reach the 13th level.
Many of the majors he established there were not just for show.
Besides, even if a greenhorn like this uses some tricks, he’s still just a direct descendant who can’t even lead a single family.
Woof.
The administrator had already activated a second magic circle towards Enoch, who was running towards him.
The magic circle constructed from the array of mana was quickly completed and began to rotate according to his will.
Peeing!
Dozens of small ice bullets slammed into Enoch head-on, trailing long tails.
However, Enoch was already one step ahead of the ice fragments that flew through the air at a speed comparable to the speed of sound.
Sharp ice bullets slid past Enoch’s cheeks as he ran quickly.
For a moment, Oscar felt a chill run down his spine.
‘You’re saying that you’re not even using basic defensive magic, but instead, you’re trying to evade and attack by taking advantage of an opening?’
A guy who clearly digs in but doesn’t even use a single basic defensive spell.
Even though it is a restraint magic, it is basically an attack of ice bullets flying at a speed that a bare body can never withstand. It is magic that is enough to rip skin and shatter bones.
But to completely evade an attack flying at that speed with just your bare body, and at the same time to think of attacking back towards me.
It’s a fighting style that cannot be considered sane.
‘Ordinary body strengthening magic… This is far beyond the level. Is this a unique magic that strengthens even the body’s vision?’
A fierce fighting style that even battle magicians with sufficient combat experience have difficulty mastering.
I clearly thought it was just a young kid, but it turned out that I was being pushed back by an unexpectedly strong force.
But there was no time to be surprised any longer.
His instincts were warning him as he saw the sharp blade reaching right before his eyes.
If you don’t deal with it right away, you’ll die by that sword.
He immediately deployed a magic circle and fired arrows made of ice forward.
Peeing!
Enoch turns his body while running to dodge the arrow.
But from the beginning, the place the magic was targeting was the huge bookshelf in the study on his side.
A large bookshelf that immediately begins to tilt due to a strong impact.
The books pouring out before Enoch’s eyes took away his vision.
Percussion!
Enoch immediately stepped aside, kicking the corner of the falling bookshelf with his foot to stop it.
A bookshelf fell down with a loud noise in front of Enoch, who had momentarily distanced himself from the administrator.
Kuuuung!
The books on the shelf flew into the air, shattering the stones on the floor.
Enoch’s dark eyes glanced at it.
If I had been crushed there, I would have been crushed to the bone and would have been unable to fight immediately.
But avoiding it isn’t everything.
The administrator had already completed the magic circle during the short time he was hesitating.
A smile of satisfaction soon appeared on his lips as the magic circle’s halo of light shone through.
As originally intended, he used terrain to block Enoch’s approach, successfully buying time to activate his magic.
When Enoch noticed this, Oscar’s magic circle was completed.
“It’s over!”
As his magic circle rotated, a cold air blew from all directions, and in an instant, countless pillars of ice rose from the ground, surrounding Enoch.
Paddudududuk!
Sharp ice pillars rose from all sides of Enoch, rapidly closing in on him like the jaws of a monster made of ice.
This is inevitable.
Oscar was sure of that.
The ice pillars that rushed around the enemy blocked all his escape routes and evasions. No matter how quickly he moved, he could not evade them.
One of the elemental magics, a magic that freely manipulates ‘Cryo’.
Although it is a type of elemental magic that is the most basic type of battle magic, its power varies greatly depending on the user.
Moreover, cold magic is his main magic that he boasts of having reached the 13th level threshold. Its power has never betrayed him even once.
With just this one spell, countless enemies have fallen to his hands.
The same goes for that guy who came here alone without even knowing his place.
Percussion!
But Enoch paid no attention and instead ran towards the ice pillar, kicking off the ground with his feet and lifting himself into the air.
It attacks from all directions and is also fast.
It was an attack that was absolutely impossible to dodge.
but….
‘For attacks that cannot be blocked, just attack faster and stronger.’
Binggle.
Type 2, wheel.
Enoch’s dark blue blade drew its first circle, shattering the pillar of ice rising from the darkness.
Countless broken ice crystals scattered in all directions, shining beautifully like jewels.
“this…!”
Oscar belatedly showed a look of shock on his face, as if he had not expected that his most powerful ice magic would be destroyed with a single slash.
The administrator’s distorted expression was reflected in tens of thousands of rays by countless ice crystals flying through the air.
And then, Enoch’s second strike split the air.
Kagakak!
Oscar unconsciously reached forward with the staff he had been holding in defense, but soon his hand, still holding the staff, was cut in two by Enoch’s sword.
And then the third strike that followed immediately sent one of his legs rolling on the floor, spurting blood.
“Khaaaaak!”
The administrator’s agonized groan, bursting from his lungs, echoed through the empty study.
Enoch slowly walked towards Oscar, who was lying on the floor groaning.
And then, as he writhed in pain, he threw a bundle of documents on the table in front of him.
The blood spreading on the floor dyed the papers red.
On the paper, the words “Death of Enoch Elseid” written in the administrator’s handwriting were spread out, mixed with Oscar’s blood.
“I guess you’ve heard the word ‘handyman’.”
At Enoch’s words, the bastard looked up, his eyes whites rolling in pain and anger.
But Enoch continued speaking calmly, not caring about the cold.
“By the way, I have a question.”
He took out a few letters from his bosom.
It was a letter from the children that I had found together in the safe in the study before.
As bewildering as it was when Enoch first discovered it, it was quite different from the hypothesis he had thought to be the whole story of this incident.
“To Oscar, who always takes care of us”
The handwriting of children, crooked but written with care and care. Letters decorated with clumsy drawings.
Oscar would carefully organize those time-worn letters every year and put them deep in his safe.
It was an incredibly strange thing.
If Oscar had intended to use these letters as an excuse or cover, he could have done so, but instead, he kept them carefully stored deep in his safe.
Vendetta’s contract to use children as test subjects.
A clumsy letter filled with children’s sincerity and devotion.
Oscar kept both of them in a safe to avoid being caught.
Enoch wanted to ask about the duplicity of that strange guy at least once.
“Surprisingly, it turns out that what you said about caring for your children wasn’t a lie. For years now, you’ve been putting letters and gifts from your children in your safe, and you’ve personally written replies to each and every one of them. You even paid for their additional education out of your own pocket if they wanted it.”
In addition, the backstory of the documents could not be seen in-game.
After looking into it all closely, I found some pretty interesting content.
In the game, Oscar Wise was thought of as a simple villain supporting character, a pawn in a vendetta.
The corrupt administrator of Leopolis, who appeared briefly in the sub-quest, did not initially build the orphanage for Tantalus’ human experiments.
Rather, it was the orphanage for non-magicians that Oscar had established and run well that Tantalus later came to visit with his eyes on it.
The order that people commonly assumed was completely reversed.
“And yet, you suddenly cooperated with Tantalus, the Vendetta slayer known for conducting human experiments, and offered up the children of the orphanage. I couldn’t understand it.”
And since Oscar has been working with them, he ends up converting the basement of the original mansion into a laboratory for them.
This is the story of the incident where human experiments were attempted at a daycare center.
Oscar, who truly cared for the children at the orphanage.
He personally sacrifices children as test subjects.
How could such diametrically opposed actions occur simultaneously?
They say that no matter how much you peel a human being, they are like an onion.
“Based on the circumstances, it doesn’t seem like you were threatened by Vendetta or Tantalus.”
Even from what I heard through the surveillance lens last time, it didn’t feel like he was being threatened by a vendetta at all.
That’s why I couldn’t know anything about Oscar, who could be said to be the mastermind behind this incident.
Although he didn’t know the other things, Enoch sincerely wanted to ask him this one thing.
“What is a vendetta?”
It was for this very reason that I deliberately did not accompany Lien.
“What does that name mean to you?”
“Vendetta”
In the original, it was a secret society with many members throughout the empire.
One of the main villain forces that opposes the Empire, the Zhou clan, and numerous wizards.
But now, the world we thought was just a game has become reality.
There was a need to delve deeper into why these guys were doing these things.
For example, what kind of motivation would there be for Administrator Oscar, who truly loved children to the point of keeping all of their letters, to voluntarily cooperate with Vendetta and hand over the children as test subjects?
An extension of such questions.
“… … .”
But the administrator remained silent for a while.
Enoch slowly raised his sword above his head as if he had expected it.
Just as he was about to raise his sword, Oscar opened his lips, suppressed by the pain.
“… You don’t know!”
Oscar said, spitting out dead blood.
“For those kids who aren’t magicians, it’s better that way!”
***
Of course, the world is unfair.
There have always been people, everywhere, at all times, who have had to painfully realize this fact since they were mere lumps of flesh.
The Atlas Empire, where anyone with exceptional talent as a wizard can succeed, is no exception.
This is because many magical talents are often inherited through bloodlines.
For example, if a parent is a wizard of level 15 or higher, their child is often born with the talent to reach level 15 or higher.
Oscar was the same.
In the Empire, one of the children whose value is guaranteed to a certain extent from birth.
Children born with the blood of a famous magician family.
Children of those who were not descendants of the main clan, but of those who were active as magicians or of famous clans. Or those who inherited their blessed and powerful blood.
Oscar was one of the latter.
He was a child who inherited the talents of a great wizard.
However, he did not know from the beginning that he had magical talent.
Oscar Wise, “The Abandoned Illegitimate Child.”
It was around the age of ten that he fully understood the unfair label he had been given.
My mother, who was in poor health, died of an illness at an age I can hardly remember.
Of course, he had never once seen the face of the author, who was his father.
He was an illegitimate child and an orphan from birth, and as he grew older, he naturally began to wander the streets.
Ironically, although he was born with great talent as a wizard, his childhood was no different from that of a non-wizard.
The world’s injustice showed its cruel teeth to him as well.
He was of noble blood and inherited blood with magical talents, but before he could even think about manifesting magic, he had to search through trash cans to avoid starving to death.
My hands were frozen and my stomach was ruined by spoiled food.
The winter of his childhood, when he was unable to manifest his magic, suffocated him cruelly.
Yet no one passing by on the street paid any attention to the dying child.
Because no one in the empire would take interest in an obvious child, an abandoned non-magician.
So, he was in a shady corner of the street, finally collapsing from cold and hunger, on the verge of death. A non-magician boy in the same situation reached out to help.
A boy a year older than him who doesn’t even have a name.
He too was an abandoned child living in the shadows of the streets.
After that, they wandered the streets in the winter, relying on each other.
Those who had no one in society to rely on had no choice but to rely on each other as brothers.
The two slept in a sewer on the street and ate food they found in trash cans.
In this way, they lived as parasites in the shadow of the empire.
And then one last winter, on the day of Oscar’s tenth birthday.
When he returned to the sewer with his food as usual, the boy who was like a brother was dead on a pile of garbage at the street corner.
He was falsely accused of being a non-magician and stealing, and died with his entire body torn to pieces by the magic of the evil magicians who were acting as problem solvers.
Even though the culprit was later identified, his body was left in a pile of garbage in an alley.
Oscar, who was only ten years old at the time, knelt before the corpse day and night.
The boy’s blood, spread endlessly along with the food waste on the pure white snow, engraved an unforgettable memory on Oscar’s retina.
The nameless boy’s body was thrown into an incinerator and burned all at once, like a pile of garbage thrown on the street.
Until the very end, non-magicians were not even treated as human beings.
Oscar thought as he stared blankly at the corpse of the non-magician boy engulfed in flames in the trash heap.
[I would rather die than live as a talentless non-magician in the Empire.]
The powerless and the despised, far from being protected within the confines of imperial society, wither away in contempt.
The corpses of the non-magicians who die like that are treated as waste and incinerated on a garbage heap.
And that very day.
Winter at the end of childhood.
In the middle of the night, when the cold chill seemed to seep into his bones and freeze everything, Oscar ‘realized’ the magic that flowed in his blood.
He slowly stretched his hand forward.
A clear mana, as if holding a cold chill, was arranged in geometric shapes before my eyes.
Pat pat pat.
Oscar froze the roaring flames of the incinerator into a cold pile of ice, then dug up the boy’s body from the garbage heap and buried it in the ground.
He dug into the frozen ground with his torn hands and buried the body, and he looked back at the alley where the nameless boy had died and made a promise.
– Let us ascend to the imperial office.
To create a society where non-magicians can be treated well someday.
I was willing to do anything for it.
As soon as he awakened his magic, his life changed.
People no longer despised him.
Before he knew it, he had regained a family and a position he had never thought was his own.
His father’s family, the Wise family, who had abandoned him, had no legitimate successor.
Although he was an illegitimate child, they heard rumors of Oscar becoming a wizard and took him in.
Luckily, thanks to his wizarding abilities, he managed to escape from that hell, albeit late.
However, the perception and treatment of non-magicians in the empire was still at its worst.
So, I wanted to break that deep-rooted bad habit.
The crematorium flames of that winter day that burned the body of the boy who was not a wizard.
It still burned in his heart, never to be forgotten for even a moment.
However, when he entered politics, the world that unfolded before his eyes was too cruel to pursue that ideal.
The non-magicians of the empire are thoroughly despised and marginalized, and the Ain (亞人) race, who are unable to manifest magic or have only weak talents, or who are ostracized for various reasons, are on the verge of extinction.
This reality, in which most non-magician foreigners could not even set foot in the Empire, was absolutely not something that could be changed by an individual.
It was natural.
The Atlas Magic Empire has been such a nation since its birth.
A gigantic airship that cuts across the empire’s skies. On the ground where the shadow of that magical engineering crystal falls, Oscar realizes the infinitely cold reality and has no choice but to give up in vain.
Eventually, his achievements were recognized and he was given the official position he had longed for, but there was nothing he could actually do.
Because Imperial society has been blinded by the omnipotence of magic for hundreds of years.
But to him like that,
A very serendipitous opportunity came.
[With proper experimentation, it is possible to find a way to turn non-wizards into wizards.]
A genius researcher affiliated with Vendetta and a level 10 wizard who casually spouts out such miraculous words.
Tantalus.
He revealed that he was a member of an organization called Vendetta and showed Oscar his ‘achievements’ and made him an offer.
If you provide yourself with enough facilities and subjects, you can create a way to turn non-magicians into magicians.
Even if it requires the sacrifice of children now, it will surely happen someday.
[I can grant you that wish while conducting the experiments I want. After all, what I need is a source of non-magical children who are valuable as test subjects.]
A man engulfed in green cigar smoke said so.
That simple suggestion brought new hope to Oscar, who had been faced with the wall of the empire.
A twisted smile appeared once again on the frustrated administrator’s lips.
“…the empire is mad.”
Oscar opened his mouth slowly, smiling twistedly as he did then.
“The Atlas Empire is so crazy that I can’t even imagine someone like you growing up in a corner of the house of the Lord of the Household. And the thing that I couldn’t stand the most was….”
He spoke quietly, chewing through the pain.
“There are those who are born to be despised.”
Non-magicians.
The weak who are marginalized in the empire.
That was the cold, harsh reality Oscar saw in his childhood.
All the imperial people he had seen naturally despised non-magicians.
“Don’t you get it? In this damned empire, blinded by the omnipotence of magic, they give wizards the justification to look down on those who weren’t born with magical talent from the start!”
In any world, in any era, there is talent that is sought after.
And other talents, other than that, talents that everyone has, tend to be discarded.
The same goes for the Magic Empire.
Those who cannot even receive fair treatment simply because they are incompetent at magic.
Oscar raised his head to Enoch, who was looking down at him, and opened his sparkling eyes.
“You asked me earlier what a vendetta was.”
Oscar smiled crookedly and shouted at Enoch.
“Answer me. Vendetta is the vengeance of the weak to put an end to the madness of the Empire. It is the only unity of all beings who are unjustly marginalized and despised!”
Enoch nodded vaguely.
The true identity of Vendetta, which had been shrouded in mystery, was roughly like that.
Enoch tilted his head slightly toward the administrator who was shouting with zeal and asked back.
“It’s madness. But isn’t using children as human experimentation materials madness?”
“As expected, you still don’t understand even if I tell you! This is better for those kids who can’t do anything. Even if it means making some sacrifices, this is a hundred times better for the non-magicians who are incompetent and will be abandoned by society!”
Oscar spoke as if he was vomiting, suppressing his pain.
And then, the next moment, Enoch’s emotionless voice pierced his ears.
“… An incompetent non-magician.”
At that moment, a certain fact suddenly flashed through Oscar’s mind, which was filled with excruciating pain.
Since I started fighting that boy, there’s one thing I’ve never dared to think about.
Enoch Elseid.
A non-magician who is a stock price inquiry figure.
Wasn’t he a direct descendant who was soon to be expelled?
– That boy must have been a non-magician too.
Just like young Oscar, he was despised by the imperial society and his very existence was denied by his family.
Enoch must also have been an extremely weak and incompetent race.
A boy who should have been abandoned and died without any value.
That guy, he defeated himself, a wizard.
What does that fact really mean?
Swish.
Only then did Oscar slowly raise his head with a dumbfounded expression.
Above him, dark blue eyes were looking down at me, burning coldly in the darkness.
“… What the heck, you…”
And at that moment, as he was repeating that, he realized it himself.
Those are not the eyes of a boy, a child of only seventeen.
Oscar was unconsciously overwhelmed by those cold eyes.
“Open your eyes.”
The next moment, Enoch’s cool blade entered Oscar’s neck.
Enoch spoke softly, looking at Oscar’s expression reflected in the pale blade.
“You’re going to die to that incompetent non-magician.”
Soon, in the darkness, the sword drew a deadly straight line.
The groans of pain that had been echoing through the study died down.
Enoch retrieved his sword and looked out the window of the study.
Before I knew it, the curtain of night had lifted, and the colors of dawn were beginning to appear in the distance in the sky.
Dawn comes, signaling the success of the second mission.
Enoch walked, carrying a bag of cloth around his neck.
It’ll get busier from now on.
Now, the story of living as Enoch is finally on track.