The Magician’s Memorial - Chapter 66



Only Krnovel

Episode 66

There was a fishing rod in front of me.

He held the fishing rod and shook it gently, then stood up.

“why?”

The friend sitting next to me looks at me curiously.

“Long time no see.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. I saw you three days ago.”

Drich grumbled and turned his head away. The fishing rod was shaking.

“It’s here, it’s here!”

I took off my shirt after watching Drich being delighted. I also took off my shoes and placed them aside.

“Quil, what are you doing?”

“Just wait.”

I jumped straight into the river. I let out a deep breath and touched the riverbed.

He reached out to the fish, which was moving with its tail swung busily. It was a quick fish, but Quilbian’s hands were a little faster.

It’s as thick as two adult forearms put together. It’s plump and meaty, so you’ll probably be able to eat a lot.

“Take it.”

He got out of the water and threw the fish. Drich cheered as he watched the fish flopping on the bottom.

“Hey, look how big this is. I can eat it for two days.”

“Go eat with the kids.”

Drich lifted the fish.

“But aren’t you afraid of going into the water? Even though you like fishing.”

“I was scared.”

“Did you do it?”

Quilbian approached Drich and squeezed his shoulder.

“Live a good life. Be kind to your family. Gamble moderately.”

“Say something you’ve never said before. Does it hurt anywhere?”

“My head hurts. It hurts really bad.”

I took a deep breath after sitting back down on the chair. After going back and forth hundreds and thousands of times, I developed a knack for returning.

Hold your breath until you can’t hold it any longer, when you really feel like you’re going to die.

It’s one more time of patience.

“Hey, hey. What’s wrong with you?”

Drich came closer and shook his body. Drich, who had turned pale, appeared in my increasingly blurry vision.

“Hey! Breathe! Breathe! Quill, Quilbian!”

Don’t die, kid.

So stop hitting me in the face.

The world was dyed white and then regained its original colors.

Quilbian scratched his head and looked to his right. Winte was sitting there, staring blankly, holding an empty coffee cup.

“You keep coming and going without notice.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

My head was throbbing. Pressing my temples didn’t help.

“What happens to the remaining electricity in the ‘gap’?”

“I don’t know. If it is a general phase that is recognized, it loses its meaning the moment the observing subject disappears. It remains only as a possibility.”

“Will it be the same when I go?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“Try to find out.”

When I nagged him, Winte looked at me as if he was pathetic.

I stretched my stiff back.

“We need to come up with a plan.”

“Countermeasures?”

“If I get called out at an unwanted moment, my remaining body will just sit there dumbly, which is dangerous.”

“Is there anything left here that could be called a danger?”

Winte lifted his finger and spun it around in a circle.

“I have to prepare for when I go out. As Winte said. I am becoming an exception.”

“If you leave, the Nak you gained in the area of ​​the two sides will disappear. Probably. Your misaligned brain will also return to normal. Probably. So you won’t be called out through the gap. Probably.”

“Maybe, maybe. You’re good at teasing people, our Winte.”

“First of all, you can’t be called a human, and you’re not being made fun of. It’s a matter of probability.”

He snatched Winte’s coffee cup away with a snort.

“hot.”

“Yes, yes.”

“But why don’t you ask?”

“What are you not asking? I asked Winte all sorts of questions.”

“The female body you saw. You must be curious about its identity.”

That woman.

Just thinking about it for a moment brought back feelings of discomfort, disgust, and inescapable fear.

“Whatever you want to do with it. There’s nothing I’ll see you do in the future anyway.”

“Haven’t you ever thought about revenge or something like that?”

“Me? Why? I’m not a lunatic who would take it when it looks like I’m definitely going to die.”

“okay?”

“I know now. It’s like a natural disaster. A typhoon, an earthquake, an avalanche, something Twella summons. You curse the sky and swear revenge because your house was washed away by a torrential downpour? There’s no such person.”

Quilbian trudged down the stairs. For some reason, Winte followed him.

If I had known this would happen, I would have jumped from the rooftop. Winte started crying again, as if he really wanted to talk about ‘that woman’.

“What you saw was one of the first things you became aware of.”

“I told you I don’t want to know?”

I walked up the stairs, feeling like I was going to die.

Even as I reached the first floor and poured coffee, Winte’s persistent gaze did not leave.

Finally, I met his eyes and asked him again.

“Why, what? Whatever that woman did, it’s none of my business.”

“When erosion occurs, they will be at the forefront.”

“Please tell me so. It’s not something that will happen tomorrow, and you don’t know when it will happen, Winte.”

The dark brown coffee sloshed inside the cup. Perhaps because I was distracted by the conversation, the aroma was lacking. I should have pressed harder.

“Eat. It’s a little lacking, but it’s not my fault, so don’t complain.”

Winte received the glass.

“If you leave here, will you warn the intelligence outside?”

Without resistance, a laugh came out. Quilbian waved his hand and said.

“Winte-nim. Have you forgotten what I used to do outside? I was a slave, a slave. A slave who spends more time looking after pigs than people. Who would worry about such a person? It’s hard to even look after myself.”

“Is that so?”

“There are many great gentlemen out there. Have you heard of the giant? It’s a giant block of iron that walks on two legs. Even goblins would be as weak as neighborhood dogs in front of that block of iron. And what about the great magicians?”

Designers, goblins, erosion, the structure of the world, whatever.

I nodded while listening. It was my only entertainment. The stories Winte told were all mythical, so I enjoyed listening to them as if I was listening to a fairy tale.

There are countless fairy tales that begin with ‘a long time ago’ and are far removed from reality.

But how should you react if that fairy tale whispers to you that it is real and something you must deal with?

Quillvian snorted again.

“As for me, once I escape this damn place, I’ll forget everything. I’ll erase everything about Winte and the goblins from my mind.”

Should I really engrave deep in my heart the years I spent chatting with the goblins and forgetting myself and time, tearing goblins to pieces?

You are most welcome.

It would have been wise to dismiss it as just a dream, a terrible nightmare, and forget about it.

Fight that woman?

Why me?

“Just enough magic or power to escape from here. If I could just get that, I could give it all up. A body that doesn’t age? A body that can recover after a few days of rest even though my whole body is aching? I don’t need any of that.”

Not here, not there.

I spent countless long hours in the gap.

An encounter becomes a blessing only when it is paired with a parting.

A world without separation is like hell. If there is a beginning, there must be an end.

That’s the only way people can live without going crazy.

“People have to die when it’s time to die. That’s the law and providence. The reason the designer gave us a limited life is because if we live long, we won’t see good things.”

“When I first met you, you were a monkey, but now you’ve become a philosopher.”

“I haven’t lived as long as you, Winte, but I don’t think there’s anyone among humans who has lived longer than me. Oh, while we’re on the subject, let me ask you one thing.”

Quilbian brought up a fact he had been trying to ignore.

“How much time has passed?”

“Time? In human terms?”

“Yes. I can’t even guess how many years have passed since I was brought here. I think it’s been about 25 years, but that’s also uncertain.”

I stopped putting up diagonal lines in the dorm rooms a long time ago. I had to calculate the time I would be dragged through the gaps, but that was impossible.

“I wonder if the town I lived in is still the same? Even if the owner is dead, I think his daughter is still alive.”

“What would you do if you were alive?”

“I just wanted to see his face. I don’t have any ill feelings towards him. On the contrary, he’s cute. When I think about the experiences I’ve had in the gap, what he showed me was just a cute prank.”

We have experienced countless wars in the gap.

Sometimes as a soldier of the victorious nation, sometimes as a general of the defeated nation, eating meals next to corpses was a daily routine.

No, the war was better.

Because it’s something I can handle.

The pain of seeing my family suffer and having to watch it happen was indescribable.

Of course, even that pain has now become dull.

He still laughs when he’s happy and cries when he’s sad, but Quilbian, who’s in the gap, has completely lost his enthusiasm.

We simply share various emotions through the relationships formed from it.

It was different in the past.

Despite his awareness that it was not reality, Quilbian was obsessed with living in the gap.

To serve, to love, and sometimes to cruelly kill others.

I focused on life. It was a world that would disappear when I woke up, a world I would never encounter again, but I didn’t waste a single moment.

However, Quilbian has proven over time that human willpower is not infinite.

The moment I realized there was a gap, I started to come back right away.

Meeting is definitely a pleasant thing.

But parting is even happier.

If I could forget everything, it would truly be a gift from God, a blessing.

“If he’s dead, I should go find his grave, spit on him, and leave him a flower. But he gave me a lot of delicious food.”

Winte smiled faintly. Winte’s smile was a rare phenomenon that could be seen only once a year.

“130 years.”

“……yes?”

“It’s been 130 years since you came here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, really. I’ve been out of my mind for a while, but not for that long.”

“I’ve said it every time, but I don’t feel the need to lie. If you don’t want to accept it, then don’t believe it. I just told you the truth, and you’re free to interpret it however you want.”

Winte disappeared from before my eyes.

It seemed like he had gone up to the rooftop.

Quillvian looked down at his coffee cup absentmindedly.

130 years.

There was an old woman in the village who was famous for her age. She was said to be 83 years old.

How long is 130 years?

It was so far away that I couldn’t even feel it.

Quilbian put down his glass and turned to the mirror. The interior of the dormitory remained unchanged, whether by Winte’s magic or by some unknown power.

Even the mirror with the corner torn off was still clean.

I stood in front of the mirror for the first time in a long time.

There was a man in front of me with strange colored hair. It looked like silver that would sparkle in the sun like fish scales, but when he moved slightly, it looked like a dark gray that would be dull even in the light.

He lifted his flowing hair.

A wrinkle-free face greeted me.

“130 years.”

The man in the mirror spoke of absurd times.

“They must all be dead, all of them.”

The owner who beat me up and paid me well, the owner’s daughter who made me do petty things with a smile, and the friends I grew up with in the alley.

ah.

Now even my family members have blurred faces.

It means that everyone is asleep under the ground, without leaving a single one behind.

Are you sad, depressed from the obvious loneliness, or something?

Quilbian stared blankly at the man in the mirror.

“Should I give it a new name?”

The terribly worn man simply shrugged his shoulders.

That’s just the extent of the regret.

That was it.

(Continued in next episode)