WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 264

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I folded my arms and watched the Chairman. Eyes gleamed beneath their white hair. I could feel the magical power in those eyes probing me as though to dissect me.

In the silence, I raised my teacup. A sweet fragrance spread through the air.

But I could not bring it to my lips. The moment I moved, magical power from the Chairman instantly wrapped around me. That overwhelming power constricted my throat, nearly choking me.

Still, the Chairman could not go beyond pressuring me like this. It was probably because of this. I smiled gently and shook my wrist.

The contract text engraved on my wrist scattered dense magical power. The month we had agreed upon had not yet passed, so the Chairman could not harm me.

Perhaps feeling the contract's resistance, the Chairman frowned and withdrew their magical power. My breathing eased, and I took a sip of tea. Perhaps because I had endured that harsh magical power, it tasted even sweeter.

I could understand why the Chairman reacted this way. If someone suddenly approached me and announced that they knew I was a reincarnator, I would have tried to burn their soul and silence them too.

It was only natural. Reincarnators had survived many dangers in their lives. Had I not often heard rumors of some becoming “elixirs”?

Yes, a reincarnator was itself an exceedingly valuable elixir. Their body, mind, and knowledge were all valuable.

But if I had to name the most precious thing, it would undoubtedly be the soul. A reincarnator's soul was everything they possessed.

Reincarnators were, by nature, people who had fallen from a place higher than the world we inhabited. Therefore, the souls they carried could not help but contain brilliantly shining power.

In that sense, they were somewhat like the treasures Professor Irian had collected. Many treasures had fallen into this world as well.

But treasures were extremely difficult to obtain. Had I not experienced their power myself while serving as a storehouse keeper? Anyone unworthy who approached them would surely be torn apart at once. Treasures possessed great power from the start.

Reincarnators, on the other hand, were different. No matter how exceptional their souls were, they needed much time to adapt to their newly born bodies. Moreover, they were stable enough to be reborn, making them easy to use.

A safe, effective elixir that offered almost no resistance. Who would simply pass up something so precious? That was why anyone unable to hide that they were a reincarnator had no choice but to die in this world steeped in brutality.

I quietly observed my soul. It held the same tranquil flow as an ordinary soul. The reason I had survived until now was also because my soul took such an ordinary form.

The Chairman must have sensed that soul and therefore doubted me. My soul could not be called that of a reincarnator.

Yet unlike its appearance, my soul was quite special. From the perspective of an elixir, it might be worth more than any reincarnator's. I gave a bitter smile as I felt countless fragments drifting through the gaps in my soul.

I was not one soul, but a colony formed from many fragments. That was why every puppet made to contain those fragments held something special. Perhaps that was also why I had talent for puppetry.

Then what would happen if a mage, rather than a puppet, devoured these fragments of my soul? The effect would surely be even greater than placing them in puppets. My existence itself was an endlessly renewable elixir.

It had truly chilled me when I first realized that. Naturally, I had no choice but to hide that I was a reincarnator. Well, most people would not believe me even if they examined my soul directly, as they did now.

Seeing the Chairman's suspicion, I rubbed my chin. It seemed I would need to reveal a deeper matter to persuade them. I leaned back against the sofa and closed my eyes.

In truth, I had not considered the Chairman a reincarnator from the beginning. Naturally, I could not peer into their soul.

I had approached the Chairman because I needed someone who could prevent the side effects caused by the Imperial Prince's magical power curse. I also wished to borrow the weight of their name. Tapping the table, I spoke.

“At first, while researching magical power curses, I thought they resembled contracts. That was why I took an interest in them as a means of solving the patchwork tree's problem.”

A contract was an inescapable shackle engraved upon the soul. Isabella, too, had once been caught in such a contract's trap. Bound by chains that even death could not escape, she had been forced to abandon even her soul.

That was why I had wanted to research magical power curses. If properly used, I believed a magical power curse could become not a shackle, but an anchor.

As I had expected, magical power curses worked rather effectively at overcoming the patchwork tree's resistance. Binding the tree with the Snake of Curses and mixing the curses' effects to bleach the canvas that formed the patchwork tree had been highly successful.

But in the end, it was only an imitation of curses. Magic made by copying only the structure visible on the surface was bound to be lacking somehow, and I remained far from reaching the realm I desired.

Then, in that situation, the Imperial Prince suddenly developed side effects as well.

That was when I realized I could not find the answer I wanted by merely continuing my research. So I called for the Chairman and sought to engrave the curse directly upon my own body.

I wanted to learn what lay at the end of a curse. One by one, the curses coiled around my soul and twisted it. And I died dozens of times.

Yet even while dying, I was satisfied. Dying once and accepting a curse deep into my soul was worth more than a month of research.

When I finally understood one curse down to its roots and became able to correct other people's trees, I realized that this curse could not simply be called a contract.

Why were magical power curses suddenly engraved? Why could they be engraved on anyone? Why did magical power curses reject magical power?

By feeling that unknowable flow directly through my soul, I learned the answer. This was not a contract, but a law of the world.

Where magical power gathered, there also had to be places where magical power was absent. This world wove those empty spaces into the form of magical power curses and scattered them throughout the world.

As long as magical power existed in this world, someone would inevitably bear a curse. Perhaps they could be called a kind of sacrifice.

The more complicated the world became, and the stronger magical power grew, the more extensively the opposing curses had to spread.

“The Profound Covenant. I suppose that is what it could be called.”

I murmured the words without thinking. Yes, a promise rooted deep and far beyond reach. A fate that no one living in this world could reject. That was what a magical power curse was.

As I blankly sank into thought, the Chairman tapped the table and brought me back. Their eyes twitched, revealing suspicion.

“Where did you hear that? It should be knowledge not permitted at the university.”

I tilted my head slightly at those words. What had I said? I searched my memory for a moment. But I could not recall at all what I had just said. Seeing that, the Chairman narrowed their eyes slightly and continued.

“Don't tell me you tampered with the Imperial magic circle engraved on Beral's soul?”

As they said that, the Chairman leaned back a little. They seemed somehow uncomfortable. I quietly shook my head.

“Of course not. I only touched a portion of Beral's soul. I transplanted only the curse from it, so even the Lumina Empress would not have taken an interest this far.”

I puffed out my chest and smiled. At my confident attitude, the Chairman let out a deep sigh and nodded.

“True. If she had seen a madman like you planting curses in his soul, she would have dragged you away and wanted to preserve you as a specimen. Since you are still alive and well, it seems you have avoided her attention.”

A madman? I had merely done the best I could. But something troubled me more than that complaint.

Preserve me as a specimen. I swallowed hard. What a terrible thing to say. In truth, examining the Imperial Prince had made me quite interested in the Emperor's bloodline.

It was only natural. Anyone would surely be fascinated by examining that powerful bloodline. I had even considered negotiating with the Imperial Prince to obtain more of his soul.

But after hearing that, an inexplicable chill seemed to pass through my chest. It seemed I should not grow any greedier. The Emperor might take an interest in me as a reincarnator.

I only needed to be careful from now on. Thinking that, I folded my arms and looked at the Chairman. Since the Emperor had come up, I intended to explain how I had come to take an interest in the Chairman.

“The reason I first suspected that you might be a reincarnator was the Imperial Prince's soul. His soul contained only the Imperial bloodline.”

I had first discovered that characteristic in the Imperial Prince's soul when I transferred him into a body containing the Snake of Curses.

A new life was practically a creation made when two souls joined together. Therefore, it naturally contained the traits of both souls. Yet only traces of the Imperial family remained in Prince Beral.

At the time, I had not questioned the form of his soul too deeply. The magical power curse was so powerful that I concluded everything but the Imperial bloodline had failed to endure and melted away.

That was, after all, the bleaching effect I had sought to obtain through magical power curses. And I continued to believe that until I engraved a magical power curse upon myself.

But after engraving the curse, dying countless times, and recognizing it as a law of the world, I realized something was strange. It concerned the side effects suffered by the Imperial Prince.

The Imperial Prince's side effects were that the patchwork tree and magical power curse formed a cycle and grew without end. Without the Chairman's help, I surely could not have solved it.

But now that I thought about it, the very appearance of those side effects was strange. I glanced at Isabella. The Imperial Prince was not the only specimen I had used for the patchwork tree.

“You may not know this, Chairman, but the Imperial Prince is not the only one with a patchwork tree. Ms. Isabella's tree is also wrapped in the Snake of Curses.”

At my words, the Chairman's brows twitched, and they looked at Isabella as though they could not believe it. I could understand that expression. The Chairman, too, had directly witnessed the patchwork tree's resistance while examining the Imperial Prince.

The only reason the Imperial Prince could overcome the patchwork tree's resistance was the bloodline contained in his body. But Isabella was merely an ordinary puppet without such a bloodline.

The Chairman surely could not have imagined that I had planted a patchwork tree in Isabella, nor that she possessed a mind extraordinary enough to control one.

Knowing that, I did not explain Isabella in detail to the Chairman.

Naturally, the Chairman might take an interest in Isabella. I had already dealt with Domitian once. That was enough of others trying to take what was mine.

And because I had concealed Isabella, I was able to grow suspicious. Isabella was a specimen I watched carefully, so the same Snake of Curses resided within her.

The Snake of Curses that had dwelled in Isabella before was merely a fake, but the new magic I had engraved after personally experiencing curses was like a real curse. No, in some ways, it could be called even more powerful.

So if the magical power curse was the problem, Isabella should naturally have developed a similar issue. She also possessed a patchwork tree.

Yet Isabella showed no such problem at all. The specimens had produced opposing results. Then I had to find the cause of that difference.

But I could not reveal this fact to the Chairman. The Imperial Prince was surely the one with the problem. Perhaps that was what the Chairman wished to hide.

That was why I wanted to plant the Imperial Prince's curse directly in my own soul. And after dying several times, I realized that the curse he bore could not be lifted.

It was only natural, as it was a massive mass woven from countless magical power curses. To lift it, I would have to separate every curse and undo them one by one.

Once I learned that, I could understand the Imperial Prince's side effects as well.

I had divided Prince Beral into two parts. A domain of magical power based on the patchwork tree, and a domain of curses based on the magical power curse. It could be called a single world.

But the patchwork tree was the result of joining countless mages' tree branches into one. In a sense, it contained innumerable souls.

A magical power curse was a law of the world. Therefore, when the patchwork tree endlessly grew based on the body's talent, the opposing magical power curse also grew in scale.

If it had contained only a few curses, as Isabella did, that would have been impossible. But Prince Beral's magical power curse was a mass woven from more curses than the patchwork tree had souls.

That was why the magical power curse and patchwork tree endlessly grew based on each other. They had succeeded in creating a cycle.

But once I understood that cycle, I found another strange point.

If the Imperial Prince's magical power curse was a collection of countless curses, then the Chairman must have deliberately created it. The Chairman was Prince Beral's father and attending physician.

I did not know what purpose the Chairman had in doing such a thing, but I understood well what they wanted. They must have wished to keep placing magical power curses into the Imperial Prince's body.

Then the Chairman must have tried to control those curses from the moment the Imperial Prince was born. They surely had put great effort into avoiding engraving even the smallest flaw.

Yet in Prince Beral's soul, I could find nothing but the Imperial bloodline. There was no trace of the Chairman.

When a parent's trace engraved on a soul disappeared like this, it meant there was an empty space in that soul. Whatever the Chairman wanted from the Imperial Prince, it meant they could not perfectly complete the experiment they intended.

Moreover, from what I had felt directly, the Imperial Prince's soul was utterly perfect. Though it was bound up in magical power curses, I could not sense a single flaw.

So I changed my thinking. Until then, I had assumed that the Imperial Prince's soul had been damaged when the magical power curse was engraved upon it.

But what if that was not the case? What if, even before the magical power curse was engraved, the soul had carried only one trace? That was a story very familiar to me. I quietly closed my eyes and spoke.

“They say reincarnated souls cannot have children.”

At my words, the Chairman let out a low groan.

Reincarnators were valuable elixirs. Therefore, attempts to breed them happened frequently as well. Making them bear children was among the most basic attempts.

But all such attempts ended in failure. It was because of the difference in height between the two souls.

A reincarnator's soul had fallen from a lofty world. In contrast, the souls of this world existed at the bottom. Therefore, the two could not blend together.

Even if they had a child, the only traces engraved upon that soul would come from the soul of this world. That was why plans to breed reincarnators had failed.

And Prince Beral displayed that very trait perfectly. He was proof that the Chairman was a reincarnator.

When I understood all this, I realized that I had taken hold of the Chairman's throat. If I revealed everything, the Chairman would have no choice but to be controlled by me even after our contract ended.

I rummaged through my clothes and took a transparent jewel from my spatial pouch. Clean magical power flowed from the enormous gem, which was as large as my head.

It was the Mountain's Heart the Imperial Prince had kept. When I said I wanted a small “favor” from the Chairman, he readily handed it to me. I tapped the jewel and smiled at the Chairman.

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