"Yaaawn~! Smack..."
A campfire blazed brightly.
A man sat in front of it, arms crossed, blinking sleepily.
Around him, other rchants and rcenaries were sleeping in small groups. He was on night watch, so he had to fight off the overwhelming drowsiness.
"Fuck, I'm tired."
He stood up.
He was going to wake the next watch.
It was still way too early, but Kavas was the newest guy in the rcenary band, and that made him fair ga.
If he complained, he'd just kick his ass. He was chuckling to himself, already picturing it, when—
FLASH!
Suddenly, a burst of light exploded behind him.
For a brief mont, the entire plain was lit up.
He spun around, startled, and the others, now awake from the light, scrambled up groggily, looking around in confusion.
"What the hell?!"
Everyone’s eyes quickly focused on one spot.
In the middle of their caravan stood a man.
A sword in one hand, a golden halo glowing behind him, cutting through the darkness.
The holy sight had everyone standing there, dumbfounded, staring at him.
"......?"
The man—was Karl.
Karl, looking around in confusion, quickly grasped the situation.
‘Doesn't seem like bandits... A rchant caravan?’
rchants and rcenaries, from the looks of it.
Apparently, the teleport drop had landed him right in the middle of so group camping outside Magen City. Talk about insane luck.
'Well, whatever. I'm alive. This actually works out.'
Karl took a breath, then addressed them.
"I have no intention of harming any of you, so relax. I'd like to talk. Who's in charge here?"
A middle-aged man cautiously stepped forward from among the rchants.
"Th-that would be ..."
He’d just been snoring, and now he had no idea what the hell was going on.
"You look like a rchant caravan. Were you headed to Magen City?"
"Y-yes. That’s right. We left Keramic to sell so wheat there."
The middle-aged man replied, still wary but sincerely.
Just as Karl expected.
He glanced at the horses tied nearby and spoke.
"Would you be willing to sell just one of those horses? I’ll pay you well."
He handed over a hefty handful of gold coins, making the man’s eyes go wide.
No reason to say no with that kind of money.
They were already nearly at Magen City, and losing one horse wouldn’t be a problem for the little distance they had left.
'...Huh?'
As Karl was taking the reins, he noticed a rusty sword lying at his feet and picked it up.
'The hell? Why’s this here?'
The sword the old man had thrown at him, the one that got stuck in his barrier—it must’ve gotten teleported with him.
He could practically picture the old man now, losing his mind over not just missing his chance to kill Karl, but losing the sword too.
Karl chuckled and tucked the rusty sword into his inventory.
He didn’t know what it was, but no harm in keeping it.
"Oh, and one more small favor."
Karl flipped another gold coin to the middle-aged man.
"When you get to Magen City, go straight to the Sparrow Inn and find a woman with purple hair and eyes. Tell her I had to head back first for unavoidable reasons, so she shouldn't wait and should return imdiately."
The man nodded but hesitated, then cautiously asked:
"Um... if I may... Are you a Saint, sir?"
It wasn’t a strange thing to think.
That golden halo glowing behind him.
Against the dark of night, Karl really did look like so divine ssenger descended to the mortal realm.
Karl just smiled faintly and didn’t answer.
He tucked the holy sword back into his inventory, mounted the horse, and gave one last word:
"Forget everything you just saw. If you talk about it, you might anger the god I serve."
As Karl rode off into the night, the people left behind murmured among themselves.
Those who’d just woken up from all the noise joined in, trying to make sense of what happened.
"I swear, there was this flash of light, and then he just appeared out of nowhere!"
"No shit... Really? Is that so kind of power Saints have?"
"Man, I’m wide awake now. What the hell was that?"
"Idiot, you just had a once-in-a-lifeti experience and you're whining about sleep?"
"Yeah, true. I got a new story to tell at the tavern, at least."
"What part of 'don’t talk about this' didn’t you hear? He said we'd piss off his god."
"Was he on so secret mission from a church or sothing?"
"Whatever. Just don’t run your mouth and drag into it. I'm going to heaven when I die."
"Still on that crap, Hans? You think you're getting into heaven 'cause you dropped a few coins into the offering plate? Hahaha..."
* * *
After returning to Keramic, Karl went straight to Fluren’s shop.
"Oh, Karl!"
Barrett, crouched in a corner of the shop bottling potions, lit up when she saw him.
Karl got straight to the point.
"How’s Fluren doing?"
"He’s the sa as usual. Did you get all the ingredients?"
Karl nodded.
"I’m going to make the cure now, so I’ll need your help."
"Ah, right!"
They moved into the potion lab at the back of the shop, and Karl laid out the ingredients on the table.
The Blueleaf was the main ingredient, and everything else—herbs, magic stone powder, all the miscellaneous stuff—he’d already prepared before going to the auction.
"Hmm..."
Karl crossed his arms, deep in thought.
He’d sohow managed to gather all the ingredients, but now the real challenge began.
'...What’s the right ratio?'
He knew he had to grind the herbs together, throw them in a pot, and boil it all down.
The problem was the proportions.
Back in the ga, ingredient ratios were shown as simple ‘x1’, ‘x2’ type stuff. Even that was a bit hazy now. And he had no idea how much water to use.
'Well, I’ve got plenty of ingredients, at least.'
He figured if he just kept trying, he’d figure it out sohow.
Karl, relying on fragnted mories, began the brewing process.
He eyeballed the ratios, ground the herbs finely, and transferred them into a small cauldron.
"This much... I think we’ll need about this much water to get the mixture right."
"Ohh."
With Barrett’s help, he managed to get the water amount about right.
Bubble bubble.
Soon, the thick green liquid started to boil, and Karl stirred it constantly for a long while.
Gradually, the green color shifted to a pale blue, glowing faintly.
Seeing the change he hadn’t dared hope for, Karl’s face lit up.
"...It worked!"
Whether by luck or chance, he succeeded on the first try.
And then, a notification appeared in his mind.
[You have crafted: Elixir of Halladein.]
Completely eradicates all residual mana within the body, including every trace absorbed into the flesh.
Just as the description said, Halladein was an elixir that thoroughly wiped out the mana inside a person.
It had a similar effect to the Sanma Toxin used by the old man from Aranhel, but Halladein didn’t just erase the mana accumulated through circling. It also reset the very body itself, which had adapted over ti and optimized for mana usage.
In short, it reverted a mage’s body to the state it was in when they first learned magic.
Ancient mages had supposedly used this elixir to erase their existing circling and relearn new ones.
To a regular mage with no such intention, it was practically poison. But for erasing the deeply rooted mana of a grand mage like Fluren, there was no other choice but to have him drink this.
"...He’ll have to rebuild his circles from scratch?"
Karl had explained that part to Barrett in advance.
Of course, she didn’t care in the slightest.
"If he can just co back to himself, who cares about the circles? Mana can always be built up again."
So they began feeding the Halladein elixir to Fluren.
The effects weren’t imdiate, so they had to give it to him steadily, several tis a day, over the course of a few days.
And on the fourth day...
"...Barrett?"
Fluren’s once-vacant eyes suddenly showed life, and a clear voice erged from his lips.
Clatter.
Startled, Barrett dropped the bowl.
She stared in disbelief at her master, who was no longer staring into empty space but directly at her.
"M-Master...!!"
Over half a year.
At last, he had co back to his senses.
Tears burst from Barrett’s eyes as she threw herself into Fluren’s arms.
Though his face was still clouded with confusion, Fluren gently patted his disciple’s back.
Karl quietly left the room, giving them so space.
Just then, Scarlett returned and heard the news.
"Oh, that’s great. Now you can finally achieve what you ca here for."
Karl looked at the closed door and muttered.
"That remains to be seen."
* * *
A day later, Karl was finally able to face Fluren in his fully recovered state.
The man seed to have gathered his thoughts and was now completely lucid.
"Thank you, truly. If not for you, who knows how much longer Barrett would have had to suffer..."
"You don’t rember anything from that ti?"
"So things co back in fragnts. But... how should I put it... for most of that ti, I was lost in mories I couldn’t even understand."
Those foreign mories likely belonged to the grand mage who had created the Fragnt of Dinsion.
Karl took the fragnt out and showed it to him.
"You’ve been studying this magic artifact for a long ti, haven’t you?"
"Ah... yes, that’s right."
He had discovered it in an old antique shop, felt sothing unusual about it, and had studied it for over ten years.
"The thing that clouded your mind all this ti was the consciousness of the mage who created this artifact."
Karl explained it just as he had told Barrett, and Fluren nodded grimly.
"I could feel it more and more as I went on with my research. Sothing... gnawing at my mind little by little. Then at so point, everything just went dark, and when I woke up again, I was like this."
"Could you tell what you saw in the grand mage’s mories?"
Now ca ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ the real point.
Fluren’s brow furrowed.
He seed to be searching his mories, then slowly began to speak.
"I’m sorry, but... I honestly don’t rember well. It’s all hazy, like a dream. Foggy and distant."
"That’s fine. Even if it’s just sothing small, anything you rember, please tell . It’s very important to ."
After a mont of silence, Fluren continued in a slow voice.
"I think... I saw a world completely different from ours. Unbelievably tall buildings, these tal things with wheels moving around without being pulled by horses... And the people looked strange too. Most of them had black hair and black eyes."
Karl’s fist clenched tightly.
What Fluren was describing was without a doubt Earth.
The mage who created the Fragnt of Dinsion—he had to be soone from Earth, just like Karl.
"What else? Is there anything else?"
"Ah, there’s one more thing. But this wasn’t like the scenery I just described."
"......?"
"It was that grand mage’s feelings. His thoughts. A powerful, overwhelming emotion about that world I saw. Yes, I rember this clearly."
Fluren looked up at the ceiling, murmuring.
"He called it... his beloved ho."
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