Chapter 174 – Ep.11 – The Warlock and the World Tree (6)
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“Why are you going to the World Tree?”
Chi-Chi’s wand is aimed at Altricia’s back of the head. The tip of it glared at Altricia as it glowed with a pure blue light, and in the end, Altricia walked silently and answered quietly.
“Tell me!”
“I’m just going to remove the magic I put on. Follow me quietly.”
“Three, on the World Tree? So, you mean the World Tree was enchanted?”
“I tried to kill you because you didn’t lend me your power.”
“Why…?”
“You talk a lot and have a lot of questions. Human witch.”
This time, Helen takes over her conversation and asks Altricia.
“If you’re Altricia-sama, how come you’re still alive? Why are you still awake, unable to close your eyes?”
“…”
Altricia doesn’t answer. Maybe she, she can’t answer.
Her gait feels lonely. Seeing Altricia’s shabby back, Helen and Chichi diligently follow her.
“What you said to that woman, tell me. What do you mean you crossed the line?”
This time, Chi-Chi asks Helen while they are walking together. She asks about the conversation between Helen and Altricia earlier.
“What do you know? And, what are you hiding?”
“I just said it for granted. She committed a taboo, so she deserves the punishment she deserves. The corrupted Mana, who escaped her death, has returned to her former self… Wouldn’t it be inevitable now? .”
“…Yeah, you mean something like that?”
Chi-Chi’s eyebrows rise. She is struggling to the point of breaking into a cold sweat, but she manages to open her mouth again to pour out all the words she has in her arms.
“Taboo…! Altricia, do you know what you’ve done? People all over the world still dream of hearing your name, dreaming of becoming a hero like you and going on an adventure!”
Chichi puts off her cramped feelings for Helen for a while and shouts at Altricia, who is gradually crumbling. Her voice fills the empty space.
“A being like that, being a lich, dealing with ashen mana and being ugly and disgusting? Are you insane?”
“He’s sane.”
“No, you’re just crazy. It’s a good thing you’re still looking. That I taught a human like you to be a pioneer in magic! Ha! You’re a wizard, but I still respect you on a side. You know?”
“Okay.”
“What do you know! When everyone pointed at me as a teacher of you, as much as I taught students while studying the magic you left behind. As much as I…!”
Chi-Chi takes her anger out on her like she’s mad at herself. Chichi cannot bear to forgive Atricia, who shows an ugly side. Her Chi-Chi can neither understand nor forgive her once admired her.
Becoming a lich and spreading curses and pestilence is, in itself, the most disgusting and degrading thing that is taboo in all magical societies. Those who learn magic must conform to the laws of the world, and that is why they must remain aloof in the face of death.
It should be…
Looking at the shabby back of her walking in front of her, Chi-Chi’s head raced. To think that she, the greatest wizard in her legend, has become her lich in front of her own.
“…I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it either…”
Altricia said, putting a little more strength into her hand gripping her necklace. As if making excuses.
“You don’t understand. I once thought like you. I too…”
“No, you’ve always been that way. I don’t even want to hear it.”
“Chi-Chi, why are you suddenly like this? If you stimulate me too much…”
“You be quiet too. I don’t know what you’re hiding, but I don’t trust you either.”
Chi-Chi, who sees her own ugly side in Al Trisha, asks her for her answer.
“Why on earth! You have it all. You have the reputation, the magic…! The mana too! An elf that everyone would envy… Why did you end up like that…”
Chichi’s words poured out as if in despair are mixed with tears. Chi-Chi can’t accept the reality that a great woman who has walked ahead of herself is living in this situation.
The appearance of a great wizard coupled with her own pessimistic predicament angers Chi-Chi.
“…I don’t know if I can tell you.”
Altricia stops for a moment at Chi-Chi’s screams, and she sits down slowly as she speaks.
“You wouldn’t know even if I told you. That’s how the world is. Witch. You don’t know. Have you ever tried love? What everyone sings like a daily routine makes us crazy at one time and gives us happiness that seems to last forever. But it never lasts forever. Life is short. Love, which changes from time to time within, comes at any time, gives an unbearable ordeal, and runs away. In the end, all that remains is a few dreamy songs and a whispered voice, but in the end, even those things leave my ears. “
Altricia glares at Chichi with her bare eyes. In her gaze filled with her evil and anger, her own longing and sorrow permeate and eventually fall as a drop of her tear.
“Even if you can hold on to wind, time, light and space, you can’t hold on to love alone. A once-in-a-lifetime curse curses a broken heart, and only emptiness fills a torn heart.”
Helen and Chichi also sit quietly in front of Altricia. On her final journey, only purple mana and a sad voice remain.
“Witch, do you know love too?”
“…”
“Witch, have you ever loved her man?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll soon find out. Because all those who deal with magic know it. The world is full of sorrow. Only sorrow. After all, being filled with sadness is the essence of the world, witch, do you know?”
“…”
“Love is sad, just as the world is sad. Sorrow always follows love. That is the truth. The world is full of sadness, and all things are filled with sadness.”
“…No.”
Altricia, who speaks as if blaming the world for her, doesn’t take Helen’s words out easily, but her chichi speaks against her against her.
Since her chichi already has a keen sense of mana, her words shake and tremble shallowly without even being sure, but she refutes Altricia’s words nonetheless.
And, towards Chichi, Altricia’s deep resentment and sadness are finally spit out…
“Witch, the world turns to sadness. Yet we instinctively long for love. Love… In this sadness, we cling to love as we cling to a small miracle that may be the only thing that can make us forget it…”
As Altricia puts her hand to her own heart, she pulls something out.
Helen, who has always been silent at that incomprehensible behavior, is quite embarrassed, but in the end, the thing that she pulls out of her hand…
“The truth of the world is cold sadness, but we sing love stained with red blood. Witches. We all…”
Mana of purple light.
It resembles the Milky Way, and it is so beautiful that it is difficult to express it in words.
Even so, the purple mana dyed in a faint gray color is slowly losing its power.
Seeing her dying mana, Altricia continues her words.
“I can’t live without love. Born into this pitiful world, all of us suffer, pray for a miracle… Always waiting for love… That’s the tragedy. Clinging to a love that has no substance and nothing, and we’re all hung up on it. … No, maybe we can live without love, but all beings who set foot in love end up longing for it for the rest of their lives.”
Altricia stretches out her hand and unfolds her necklace, then she carefully scatters her mana over it.
“We loved everyone. We were good colleagues. We never quarreled, we always had fun… We always stayed together as a group of five. Yes, I would be lying if I said I loved everyone equally, but I really loved all of them. I did. ..”
There was a small picture in it.
In that little necklace, which she cherishes like a treasure, not her own face,
There was only a small picture engraved as if to remember everyone.
“It’s the story of the warriors.”
“…The first hero. How many were there?”
A widely known Hero legend.
The story of its protagonists.
Four warriors set out on the road,
They moved forward building friendship and love for each other.
They are perfect without even a hint of flaw,
It ended as a hero whose name was widely known throughout the continent.
To be such a hero,
Returned in gold to the country boy who was waiting for the three warriors, and made a pact of marriage…
The elf who met them and became their best friend,
After building a relationship with the boy, they get married and end up living together as five people.
That’s the end of all stories.
After that, no one wonders.
A happy ending that ended happily
That’s it.
There is no need to wonder what happened after that.
But Altricia, who was one of them, says.
“Everyone died before me. Because the human body was close to its limits many times, they couldn’t live long. Still… Even when they died, they left with a smile. They must have been happy.”
“Everyone became a legend, and then, a star.”
“Yes, everyone deserves that respect. They were good people.”
Altricia murmurs as she carefully caresses her picture. Chichi and Helen could barely hear…
“I don’t know if it would have ended well if I had died at the same time.”
“I heard that everyone got married and lived happily together, right?”
“Sadness is rampant in the world. We too were just stained by the world in our long lives. As we left one by one, his strength waned. He couldn’t live as before. I embraced him more than everyone else’s love, but he It seems you haven’t forgotten everyone else’s love…”
After her faint voice stopped for a moment and longing lingered in the silent silence,
Altricia brings her words out again.
“I delayed death. Me too, his death. Even the aging that ate him. Everyone thought it was impossible, but I did it. I did it in the end. I solved everything before he died…”
“Have you solved it…?”
Helen asks quietly, staring at her. And, to that quiet question, Altricia also quietly answers.
“…He left me out of nowhere. One day after he came back from home for a while, he and I drenched his bed with red. He didn’t even let me hear his pretty voice and left me coldly. It’s such a nasty thing to do with your heart. No matter how much you love me. If you don’t love me that much, it will end in tragedy…”
Chichi pulls his own knees up to his chest, buries his face a little there and stares into the empty darkness.
Ever since she came into her world, she keeps feeling like something is broken.
Everything she learned, what she realized herself,
Even the things she believed to be true, even the things she believed to be immutable…
“…”
There is only emptiness in the darkness of staring at it. In the dark, where there is no wind, she sits quietly, trying to control her emotions with a few tears hanging from her eyes.
“Keep my story in mind. Witch. You too will soon…”
However, in the inexperienced witch who has not mastered emotions, something tingling arises. Chichi doesn’t know its name. Even so, she is so candid in her eyes and voice that she tries to reveal them again and again.
“You’ll end up like me. That’s how love ends. Being good at magic is just a curse. Understanding mana is…”
“…I’m different from you.”
Chichi tells Altricia. Chi-Chi’s eyes are full of sadness, but only the opposite words come out of her mouth.
“The world is not sad. I know. I know. Don’t you dare argue about the truth. No matter how great you are, you’re just a lich ghost…”
“…Witch.”
Altricia pauses for a moment before speaking. A voice lower than the darkness speaks…
“Love and life fall apart. In the end, everything crumble… All that remains is sadness.”
“It doesn’t crumble. There are things that hold up.”
“No, I’m just mistaken like that.”
“It’s not an illusion. The world isn’t just sad. The world is strict, dull, full of envy and envy, and it’s not just dark.”
With her reddened cheeks in her eyes, she brushed against her tears against her own soft glove. Her wails permeate her chi-chi voice, which she barely lets out.
“The world doesn’t only have blue mana. It’s not just the moon floating in the sky that is beautiful. The world is full of blue mana, but…”
“No. Only sadness remains in the storms of time.”
“Sadness will remain, but not only sadness. In this world, there is no only sadness. In my, in my world, there is not a single moon.”
Contrary to her emotions, which were already filled with sadness and sorrow,
Chichi screams desperately.
“It’s a world full of sorrow, but I love Delrin more than all the sorrow. The moon above my head is beautiful, but I love Delrin’s face smiling right in front of me. Even though there is sadness in the world, there is as much love in my world as there is sadness in it. .In my world…”
Chichi’s blue mana shimmers. The blue mana that assimilated into her sadness shimmered cautiously and involuntarily emitted light in a steady stream.
“I don’t need your story. It’s just your story of what you’ve been through. This is my story. I’m not curious about your story at all. It’s my story…”
Altricia’s story ended like that. She accepted Chi-Chi’s sincerity, and she said nothing more, only smiling bitterly.
Altricia couldn’t open her mouth to the young witch’s honest heart that resembled her, and her pure love that was no different from the one she had before.
Chichi,
I do not forget the only love I found in a blue world with nothing, and the meaning of all the emotions he awakened.
The troubles, the inferiority complex, and the small desire to occupy him alone after meeting Delrin,
Chi-Chi speaks with the hope that he will look at her, and the heart that she truly wants the two of them to be happy together.
“Go to the world tree quickly. I don’t need to hear more about you. I don’t care what you did with your boyfriend, and I don’t care what you tried to do when you became a lich and warlock. Yes, you mentioned black magic and the world tree. If you look at it, you must have been desperately trying to bring your dead husband back to life. But I don’t care.”
Like Altricia’s purple mana leaking out,
Chi-Chi’s vivid blue mana begins to turn purple little by little.
“My story, I don’t need your story… I have to go find Delrin first, so take the lead.”
The great man who realized the truth and repented of his love becomes the soft starlight in the red love mixed with the blue sadness, leaving a purple aftertaste.
