Chapter 200 – Wolf, Alexander, and Morbius (6)

“Grandfather. Grandfather. It’s time to wake up. The sun has already risen in the middle of the sky.”

It’s meryl You must have been 7 years old. He tugged at my blanket, chirping like a chick crying.

“Grandfather. Grandfather. Mom, wake up soon. She said she had to eat breakfast and go to work, she told me to get up early.”

If I didn’t get up, he would climb onto the bed and hop on my stomach. You’re only 7 years old, but it’s so heavy, I had to pick you up and carry you with a squeaking sound. You grew bigger day by day, making it difficult to hold you with one hand.

I still remember. When your mother showed you to me. Wrapped in swaddling clothes, you wriggled and grabbed my fingers tightly. While studying magic, the touch may have lingered on the tips of my fingers for several days.

You couldn’t believe your mother had a time like you. I didn’t understand that like you, I was scolded for spilling magic reagents and scolded for not listening to me.

Your mom has a mom too, and she didn’t want to accept that mom was her grandmother. You said it was strange why her grandmother was her mother, and we laughed again at the absurd story.

Do you remember Sometimes we got together and talked about your childhood and laughed. You laughed with an embarrassed expression at the story of how you messed up the living room by wandering around without washing while playing in the mud. When I told you that I was studying art with the dye used in magic potions and that I painted a lot of pictures on the wall, you said you couldn’t remember.

Because the dye was very expensive. You, who started studying magic, must have been memories you wanted to forget.

Now I’m the owner of the Mage’s Tower, but even now, whenever I see the price of the dye, my hands tremble. I want you to forgive me for scolding you then.

As I write this, the forgotten memories keep coming back to me. It feels like I am floating on a lake where many puzzle pieces are floating, and fragments of memories that I did not know keep swirling around me.

If you pick up strange and strange pieces and assemble them, your face will float on the lake before you know it and then disappear with the morning sun. It was like that every night. After you died, I floated on the lake every day, frantically collecting puzzle pieces.

Not wanting to miss even a single trivial story, I picked it up, grabbed another happy memory and cried over and over again.

This relentless jigsaw puzzle had pieces in front of my eyes even when I didn’t want to. When I was sorting through the papers, when I saw the bookmark you put in, I couldn’t do any more research that day. When I saw the heart drawn with colored pencils and the phrase ‘I love you,’ I couldn’t think of anything. When I close my eyes, the memory of the day you gave me a bookmark came to mind.

It’s meryl

When I write while calling your name, I end up facing unforgettable memories.

I should have stopped you when you said you wanted to study magic.

I should have stopped you when you said you were entering the Magic Tower.

I should have won the debate that day.

It’s meryl do you remember

I was sitting at home drinking tea that day. Since losing the debate, I’ve only been out for a few days. When you said you were going to the Mage’s Tower, you heard the door slam shut through the crack in the door. You nodded and left even though I couldn’t see you. I didn’t like the fact that you were studying the theory of magic, but there was nothing I could do.

All things happened then. It was 2:53 PM on my room clock. A blue explosion occurred in the magic tower that I could see through the window of my house. It was an explosion in the lab where you’re helping with research. A man in a robe hung from the railing and fell screaming, while wizards cast protection spells to protect passers-by below.

The smoke emitted a thick blue color, then spewed out red flames, dyeing the entire laboratory, and immediately a wall made of magical power blocked the hole in the building that spewed fire like a dragon spewing fire.

Everyone stopped when they heard a loud explosion. The face was loaded with endless questions demanding understanding of the situation. Inside the shield, falling stones and fireballs only looked like part of a fun show.

I was the only moving old man in the time stopped in sentiment. I was running to the crime scene with a cane. I remember pushing the guards who were controlling the situation and somehow forcibly entering the Mage Tower.

And there you lay

They said you were lying down as if you were sleeping, and a shrapnel pierced your heart and you died on the spot. The lab staff were being carried away one by one, but only the priest in charge of you was shaking his head with a sad expression on his face.

It’s meryl

The reason you died was a magic experiment error. The researcher explained the cause of your accident with a white face. There was a fatal flaw in the ‘theory’ that was selected as the main research subject of the Mage’s Tower, but it turned out that the moment you were helping the experiment, it was overloaded with errors.

Even as he explained, he was afraid that I would go crazy and blow up this mage tower. Also, the wizard I discussed never once showed his face while I was in the Mage Tower.

It’s meryl

Today, too, I am wandering around the lake in search of your memories. But when I close my eyes and open them, I can’t sleep because the last image of you always comes to mind.

It’s meryl

Didn’t I mention that time in that place seemed to have stopped? I’m still running in it I’m running away from your corpse with my hands full of the good memories I shared with you.

*****

“It’s Meryl.”

Mobius called Merilda by name. Mobius once believed in the superstition that ghosts would appear if you called the name of the dead. He remembers not being able to sleep until late at night, looking out the window and calling out her name over and over again, crying out of sadness.

Merilda had become an existence that left scars on him just by her name. Morbius closed his eyes tightly and grabbed the pendant. Papers attacking the dangers and unethical nature of research were piled up next to him.

On the other side, there was a report from the kingdom that the budget for the Mage Tower had to be reduced. The report also warned that it would be more desirable for the Mobius Mage Tower to find a way to coexist with other Mage Towers rather than continue conducting research in the self-righteous way it is now.

Another pile of papers contained articles denouncing why Mobius did not disclose its research to the public. Conspiracy theories, such as that he was living extravagantly by taking bribes and that he was gathering his own forces to plot a rebellion, etc., Littered the desk.

And there were also papers from the North. Orland, a newly settled aristocrat in the north, had sent a warning to the north to stop ‘liberating’ slaves who were mentally and physically weak.

There was no time.

He was still living in the same place like a treadmill, but the world was changing so many things so fast. Wolf’s forces, which he had promised to firmly support for several years, were heading toward catastrophe, and Alexander was facing a political crisis.

The north, which was conveniently used, sent a warning that it would not tolerate any more atrocities.

The study was still not in the final stage.

Morbius closed his eyes and still remembered his granddaughter’s death. He flashed before his eyes like a flash of lightning and then disappeared, appearing in his dreams and uttering resentful words.

So he decided to think of something other than his granddaughter. He remembered what he had done so far to scrape together the Mage Tower’s budget.

If they found research or theory that could make money in a small magic tower, they would press it with their name and confiscate it.

He took in talented mages and at the same time asked Wolf to reduce the budget of other large mages.

The salaries of the production workers on the first floor and the basement were reduced, and all those who rebelled were sent away.

The more I thought about it, the more obscene stories came out.

But still it was not enough.

I think I’ll get a clue if I experiment a little more in the future, but I didn’t have enough money.

What should I do?

What should I do?

“Oh, sir, excuse me.”

A researcher working at the Magic Tower bowed down to Mobius. Morbius said he himself, brushing his beard.

“What is going on?”

“Someone wants to meet Mobius-nim.”

Morbius frowned. He wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone right now.

“Tell me no.”

“Th, eh, if I tell them it’s an elf, they’ll know who it is…”

Mobius stood up from his seat without saying a word.

Even if you’re not in the mood to meet someone, there’s always an exception that you have to meet when you come.