14. Back to It’s Original Place

Enzo teleported the knight to where the Emperor was.

As he swiftly advanced, he searched for the faint energy of the spirit. If someone had witnessed his appearances here and there through teleportation, they would have been shocked. This was because there were no other wizards in existence who were known to use teleportation so freely.

Given the scarcity of wizards in existence to begin with, it was even more astonishing.

He heard the sound of knights rushing from afar but paid it no mind since he knew he wouldn’t be defeated even if hundreds of them charged at him.

It was more urgent for him to locate the spirit’s energy.

“That’s him!”

As the distant cry reached his ears, Enzo identified the floor with the strongest energy of the spirit and immediately cast a spell.

Crash—

The floor on which he stood shattered and crumbled, yet he stood tall in the air, seemingly unaffected. Enzo laughed as he looked down at the approaching knights.

“How dare people like you think you can face me?”

“…Duke?”

The commander of the knights recognized Lucian but hesitated to approach him rashly. As a knight, how could he not sense the intimidation? Therefore, he immediately recognized the discomfort in the Duke.

“I told you to tell the Emperor. Tsk, tsk…”

Leaving only those words, Enzo descended into the gaping space.

“You have hidden it deep, Spencer.”

The gritting sound reverberated eerily.

Enzo briefly recalled the memory from that time. The memory of being enraged by the fact that the healing potion his companion had handed him was actually a paralyzing poison. The memory of not being able to keep the promise to his beloved woman.

He was fine with risking his life.

He might have closed his eyes in peace after sharing his final story, that even if he had to give up his life, it would be good as long as he could lie down beside her. However, his body was sealed away deep within the Imperial Palace, separated from her, and his soul was left to wander.

The Leonis family that he watched as he wandered was disgusting.

The memories that floated by seemed to make Enzo’s complexion turn blue, like a person strangled by memories. Soon, his feet touched the ground. Just from the sound of his steps sticking to the floor, he could tell how damp and gloomy the place was.

“Performing such despicable acts, and yet the spirits do not appear.”

He was well aware that the nobility increasingly failed to produce elementalists. It was so amusing to see the nobles wandering around, clueless about the reason, unlike him, who easily grasped the cause.

“An elementalist should first possess a pure heart and love for nature, but when they use the gains of their own family, it is only natural that they will disappear.”

With their hypocritical nature, pointing fingers at him for turning into a dark wizard was truly despicable.

“So, is that why the spirit of darkness has appeared?”

Perhaps the last elementalist had summoned the strange spirit known as the spirit of darkness. He hadn’t anticipated that someone born far from the palace, with no connection to the accumulated deeds, would be the one to inherit it, though it wasn’t incomprehensible.

“Is this what they call a sealing stone?”

Enzo discovered a thick, worn sealing stone that looked like a door and chuckled.

The aged sealing stone seemed no longer capable of sustaining life, with only a faint trace of the energy of the spirit remaining. He easily shattered it, watching as the sealing stone turned to dust and dispersed into the air, then swiftly moved his steps without hesitation.

In the vast space, there was only one old coffin. The magic emanating from the coffin bore traces of an elementalist, while the aura wafting from it belonged to him.

“It amassed quite a lot.”

He approached the gathered energy near his body.

Before completely losing his senses, he engraved the life-saving magic circle into his heart. Although it was a response after roughly understanding what they were going to do, the noble who witnessed it noisily proclaimed that the Archwizard Enzo had turned into a dark wizard.

Well, it was true that the dark magic circle forcibly entrapped the power emanating from the surroundings into his heart.

If he had engraved such a magic circle on his living body, he might have heard remarks like, ‘Do you want to commit suicide.’ But now, the body he encountered after a considerable time had passed was not exactly impressive, yet it seemed somewhat familiar.

“Looks somewhat similar.”

Observing Lucian’s growth by his side while wandering around, Enzo realized that his original face and Lucian’s face were quite similar. It was a somewhat strange feeling, and he got lost in thought for a while.

In the meanwhile, the startled Emperor hastily ran inside. He discovered Lucian standing boldly inside after breaking the sealing stone and immediately started to shout in anger.

“What in the world is this audacious behavior!”

While trying to somehow scoop up the now crumbled sealing stone with his hands, his appearance was rather pitiful. Enzo looked down at the Emperor as if he were an insignificant bug and murmured.

“You believed that you could stop me with such apathetic sealing stone. That’s where your mistake lies.”

“…What is that!”

“Did you say it was audacious? How dare you say such stupid things?”

The Emperor finally noticed Lucian emanating an aura completely different from his usual self and trembled. It wasn’t the indifferent gaze but fiercely glinting eyes that weren’t the Lucian he knew.

“Who, who are you—!”

As the thought of possession came to mind, he screamed. His already intimated eyes couldn’t easily meet Enzo’s.

Even that aspect of him was repulsive and hateful.

If the Leonis hadn’t betrayed him, by now, he might have been spending dreamlike moments sleeping next to her…

No matter how much he thought and contemplated, he could only think of one reason for their betrayal. Selfish ambition to survive alone by forsaking righteousness. He didn’t fail to recognize that, in the end, he wanted to live despite setting up an escape route supposedly for his child.

Enzo grabbed his own body with a mocking look. Feeling the stony texture, he remembered the despair he had felt at that time.

Finally, the moment he had been waiting for had arrived.

The opportunity to obliterate this empire with the magic bomb he had stored up in his heart had come. How long had he waited for this? The only one occupying his mind at that moment was one person.

“Selena… I can finally go to your side.”

At that long-awaited moment, he felt the thrill surging from his toes. The Emperor, realizing who the possessor with Lucian’s face was, got up.

“No, no way!”

Although he was determined to stop it by any means, he couldn’t reach Enzo with a mere light gesture.

On the other hand, Enzo brought his hand to his chest to activate the magic bomb he had implanted in his body. Feeling the rough texture, his body trembled with the power of the magic. In the gust, a necklace hidden inside his clothes came loose.

A necklace, shaped like a blue crystal on a silver string.

He had personally crafted it during the times when everyone was impoverished due to the war. He had intended to propose to her while handing her a necklace identical to this one, wanting to spend the rest of his life with her after she completed her duties as a saint.

Why did this necklace catch his eye at this very moment?

…He missed her.

She, like him, had died a long time ago… yet nothing could stop his longing to see her.

Lucian’s body began to shed hot tears as if representing his emotions.

Enzo, unaware that he was shedding tears, plucked the necklace off and held it in his hand. The blackened crystal seemed unable to hold anything anymore.

“There’s no way it’s going to work.”

It was the necklace that he hadn’t even been able to give to her in the first place. The other half, made as a pair, would be somewhere in the Duchy or might have been discarded already.

“They were supposed to die anyway, so we should be grateful that they are dead now, right, Selena?”

Murmuring like a will, he let the magic flow through his palm.

Despite the fact that the hand on his chest felt alive and warm, he tried to pretend not to notice. Just as he was about to close his eyes, feeling relieved after completing his mission, something sparkling caught his eye.

It was too brilliant to ignore as something impossible.

“….”

He couldn’t utter a word. His chest swelled as if it would burst, and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

The brilliant white light shining brightly within the deep blue crystal was designed to react only to the saint’s divine power. When they both wore the necklace, she would radiate white light, and he would emit golden light, confirming each other’s existence.

It was designed to immediately confirm each other’s well-being during the war, not knowing when and how they might lose their lives.

Why was the necklace…

Why now…

How was it emitting light?

“Aah―”

Enzo looked up at the ceiling with a face full of joy as if he had gained a great realization. If she had possessed just like he had possessed? What if they had simply been unaware of each other’s existence, and her soul was also wandering without finding rest?

“Hoho…”

If that was the case, shouldn’t he propose to her now?

He was sorry to his descendant, but he had never promised to return the body, so it should be fine to use the body as is. After all, he liked his face, which resembled his own, so Selena probably wouldn’t dislike it either.

After concluding his thoughts, Enzo withdrew the magic he had been channeling into his heart and spread his magic widely.

After a while, he slowly lifted his eyelids that had been closed, and he suddenly disappeared with his own body.

It was because he had found the place where the necklace was responding.

Unaware of this, the Emperor lay soaked in sweat on the floor. His heart, suppressed by fear, did not calm easily and still remained anxious.

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