Chapter 4: Time Has Passed, Atop the Tower
“Mmgh, mmgh… I think I understand what you’re saying now.”
After a brief moment, Lian and Sephy sat together at an elegant tea table.
Although this floor was mainly a library, it actually included Sephy’s private living quarters and space for receiving guests.
She chewed on a cookie she took from a floating snack tray beside her as she looked at Lian and said,
“So, basically, that scoundrel Lian taught you all those lines just to shirk responsibility, right? If Vera heard this, she’d definitely chop your dad’s head off and use it as a ball.”
“You totally don’t get it at all! I am Lian—the real deal!”
Lian smacked the table in exasperation.
“Just joking. My doppelganger in the city couldn’t possibly overlook your infamous drinking habits and your one-of-a-kind way of going on a drunken rampage. Ah, but Vera really did say she’d use your head as a ball, you know.”
“That woman is just as terrifying as ever!”
Sword Saint Vera.
If it was that woman who despised evil and couldn’t get along with him in the slightest, saying something like that wouldn’t be the least bit surprising.
Explaining things to her later would be another excruciating headache.
But seeing the gentle look in Sephy’s eyes, Lian finally breathed a sigh of relief.
She believed him.
Even though it sounded utterly absurd, she just believed.
“So basically, you were inexplicably sent back to your original world and then summoned back again in the same day, but sixteen years have actually passed? And you’ve turned into a woman—in fact, not even the most shameless jerk who abandons his family could come up with an excuse like that.”
“Who are you trying to insult here?”
“Anyway, I don’t see any traces of spells on you. Besides, the only one who could hit you with a Malicious Transformation Spell would be the Demon King, right?”
Lian fell silent.
As a Hero with exceptional magic resistance, there were very few casters in this world who could affect him with spells.
One of them was Sephy, sitting right before him… but she obviously had no reason to do this.
The other with such ability, and who would have delighted in seeing him in such a pitiful state, had already been defeated by his own hand and erased from this world.
“If it were Illusion or perception-interfering Magic, I could easily see through it. So you really have turned into a woman. Congratulations to you. Clap clap clap.”
Sephy clapped her hands in gloating amusement, her nearby doppelganger echoing her gestures.
“Set your twisted sense of humor aside for now! What on earth happened, and how did Meliya end up as the Duchess of the Northern Provinces?”
“After you abandoned— cough, mysteriously disappeared, the Empire was going to grant you a reward— namely, the Northern Provinces. But Meliya inherited the land in your stead. She’s been governing for sixteen years now, of course she’s the Duchess.”
“Duchess… Ha, haha. I have no idea how I’m supposed to face her now…”
Lian rolled his eyes and gave a silly laugh.
“It’s simple. Just stand in front of her and tell her you’re Lian.”
“Who would believe that! Even you didn’t believe me!”
“Are you saying I’m not normal? That hurts, you know.”
“Who cares about you! And besides, I already met her! She suspects I’m my own daughter, just like you said! Hurry and figure out a way to turn me back!”
“All right, all right. Let me try.”
With that, Sephy patted Lian’s head like she was humoring a whining child.
As the patterns in her eyes shifted and rearranged, a buzzing sound like bees filled the air around the tea table.
With an incantation, she offered prayers to the Elementals and Spirits, then soaked the colorless Magic in the air with her own Soul Color, twisting the rules of reality to bring forth all sorts of complex, ever-changing phenomena— this was the arcane power of this world, known as Magic.
Lian was familiar with the buzzing sound, as it meant Sephy was compressing lengthy incantations into short syllables and chanting at tremendous speed.
That wasn’t something just any mage could do.
In fact, Sephy was the only human in all of Aitixila capable of such a feat.
She was the one who had stolen the power of Magic—originally an innate ability of the demon races, dragons, and fae—and rendered it into something humans could learn, decompose, and perform as a ritual.
The one and only Sage in the world.
In her eyes, spells that ordinary people couldn’t master in a lifetime and the convoluted incantations to wield them were like clay dolls in a child’s hands, ready to be molded at her whim—
“Hmm. It’s no use.”
“Huh?”
Sephy closed her eyes, flopped back in her chair, and threw up her hands.
Lian, who’d just been marveling at her magical prowess, was left dumbstruck.
“No use? What do you mean no use?”
“It’s odd. I just used twenty-four types of Body Reconstruction Spell and thirty-eight Malicious Transformation Spells on your body, and not one had any effect. After that, I tried at least eighty different Illusions to alter your appearance, but even the simplest Refraction Illusion that could make people see you differently didn’t work at all…”
“Wait, wait… I’m not as knowledgeable about Magic as you. Can you just give me the conclusion?”
“The conclusion is I’m out of options for now. Whether I try to change the essence of your body or just alter your appearance in others’ eyes—there’s nothing I can do.”
“Huh? H-how can that be? Can’t you try again?”
Lian panicked.
What kind of force was at work that even the Sage was powerless against?
And if even she couldn’t help, did that mean he’d have to live like this for the rest of his life?
“This is the first time I’ve cast so many spells without a single one working. It’s really discouraging. Let me rest a bit.”
Sephy rubbed her eyes and rolled her neck from side to side.
Apparently, even for her, unleashing over a hundred spells at once was tiring.
Her doppelganger had the sense to come forward and knead her shoulders and back, coaxing her into humming contentedly.
Lian could only wait patiently for Sephy to recover.
But even after she’d rested and the two of them had tried every spell recorded in the books on the whole floor, he still couldn’t change back to his original self.
In the end, he could only collapse, dejected, amid the spellbooks strewn across the floor, looking utterly miserable.
“How am I supposed to face Meliya like this?”
“I think you’d be better off not seeing her at all.”
Sephy, now resting, floated beside him in a reclining pose.
She had another doppelganger helping with her eye exercises—of course, that routine was something Lian had taught her in the past.
“What are you talking about? She’s my wife—am I supposed to avoid her for the rest of my life? And with all this misunderstanding, I have to set things straight—”
“That’s exactly why I think you shouldn’t see her. To you, it might feel like just a day, but to Meliya, it’s been sixteen years without you by her side.”
“That’s…”
Lian started to protest, but soon realized Sephy’s words made perfect sense.
In Meliya’s eyes, what kind of person was he, suddenly vanishing for sixteen years?
“You’re right. To her, I probably seem no better than the sort of jerk you described, abandoning his family. After all these years… she’s probably found a good husband. Her child is already so grown.”
“What are you talking about?” Sephy rolled her eyes in exasperation. “She never remarried. And that girl Milin—you do realize she’s your daughter, right?”
“Huh?”
He’d already been thunderstruck several times today, but nothing hit him like this.
He stared at the crystal chandelier on the ceiling, mouth agape and speechless.
“Hey, hey, are you okay? You can’t just deny your own deeds, you know.”
Sephy drifted lazily above his head and waved her hand in front of his lifeless eyes.
“Well… someone all decked in gold did seem to say something about proposing to her at the tavern. I do vaguely recall being urged to drink more at last night’s wedding… But I’m a Hero, I wouldn’t lose control just from drinking, right? I remember going to bed…”
Lian strained to recall what had happened that night.
But his so-called ‘modest drinking’ ended up as a drunken stupor, his memories of what happened afterward in complete disarray.
“…I’m never touching alcohol again in my life.”
After a certain embarrassingly vivid scene faded from his mind, Lian made a silent vow to the ceiling.