The First Test (3)
A short silence fell over the small cabin.
A sudden spark of interest flickered in Sage’s faded eyes.
“Why do you think that?”
“Pardon?”
He repeated the question to the flustered Edwin.
“I asked why you had that thought. You’re a prince of this empire, aren’t you? So tell me—what makes you believe you’re nothing more than an ordinary ‘nobody’ like everyone else?”
Edwin considered the sage’s question for a moment, then spoke carefully.
“While I was following Leo around the village today, I met the villagers.”
His voice remained calm as he continued.
“They weren’t any different from the people living outside the plague village.”
“Not different?”
“Everyone had work they could do, and they were doing what needed to be done.”
The young prince’s face gradually darkened.
“But I didn’t have a single thing I could do. Not that I’ve ever had anything I was supposed to do before now, either.”
An unwelcome presence wherever he went. The troublesome prince. A useless chess piece.
Doomed to die as a nameless prince, never leaving behind even the name his parents had given him.
Countless epithets for Edwin rose in my mind.
“And I realized it even more clearly when I faced that monster.”
Edwin’s small hands clenched into fists.
“That I’m nothing but a powerless, ordinary child who can’t do anything at all.”
Sage remained silent for a long time after hearing the answer. He simply stared at the boy.
“Hey, what did you say your name was again?”
The old man, who had been quiet, suddenly asked for his name.
“Edwin Anaxinian Ventrum.”
“Edwin, is it? Conqueror.”
Sage rolled the name on his tongue, then burst into cheerful laughter.
“Haha! For someone with such a dumb-looking face, you’ve been given quite the impressive name!”
The remark was neither compliment nor insult. Edwin awkwardly averted his eyes.
Sage chuckled, clearly amused by the boy’s reaction.
“Not bad for a little bloodsucker.”
“Not bad?”
“That’s right. Very few people truly understand that they’re ordinary and no different from anyone else. It’s rare even among those dried-up old fossils.”
Sage grinned, showing his teeth.
“That’s why I like you, Prince.”
Somehow, the young prince’s answer had struck exactly the right chord with the eccentric old sage.
“Young Prince, I have one more question for you.”
Sage’s expression softened considerably.
“Do you know what sort of man I am?”
Edwin nodded.
“Leo told me. That you’re the brilliant person who created the cure for scale disease.”
“What? That brat even told you that much?”
Sage rubbed the space between his brows like an exhausted man.
“Even so, my name must have been forgotten long ago outside this place. It’s already been more than ten years since I went into hiding here.”
The old sage muttered to himself, his voice heavy with regret.
Then he turned the conversation back to Edwin.
“So you saw the villagers on your way here and thought you were no different from them.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t any other thoughts occur to you?”
Edwin paused to think again before answering slowly.
“It made me… a little sad.”
“Why?”
The boy hesitated, then spoke in a small but clear voice.
“Those people are simply sick. But they say they’ll die without leaving anything behind, without anyone remembering them.”
What could he be thinking about?
I quietly studied the side of Edwin’s face, which somehow looked sorrowful.
“Not leaving anything behind, not being remembered by anyone—that’s sad. Being forgotten is a sad thing.”
Sage listened to Edwin’s answer in silence for a long time, then rose from his seat.
“Yes, I once thought the same. That’s why I fought desperately until the very end.”
Perhaps memories of being hunted by assassins had resurfaced.
A self-mocking smile crossed Sage’s lips.
“Well, in the end I too ended up in this pathetic state.”
The Great Sage, Sage Lil.
He had been so extraordinary that he was forced to hide away in a village like this.
“I should have kept the fact that I created that cure a secret.”
“You mean the scale disease medicine?”
“Yes. The one that completely cures scale disease.”
Merely recalling it seemed to leave a bitter taste in his mouth.
“It’s already been over ten years since I first developed the cure. How time flies.”
He lowered his gaze, lost in bitter recollection.
Watching him, a memory from that time surfaced in my mind.
The image of Sage desperately shouting at me when I had come to kill him was still vivid.
I can save the world! Why must I die? Doesn’t it seem absurd even to you?
It had been absurd.
Sage had simply created a cure for scale disease, yet that was enough to mark him for death.
“Why? Creating a cure for scale disease is an incredible achievement! Isn’t it, Rachel?”
“It is incredible. That’s precisely why it created so many enemies.”
“What? Why?”
Edwin frowned, unable to comprehend.
It was not I who answered him, but Sage.
“I had no intention of selling the cure I created. I planned to distribute it for free to those afflicted by the disease. That was the source of all the trouble.”
As soon as word spread that Sage had developed the cure, a swarm of merchants had descended upon him.
“They were all heads of the empire’s most powerful trading companies. They demanded the formula, each promising to pay a higher price than the others.”
But he had rejected their offers outright.
Because he had wanted to remain true to his principles.
“It seems one of them leaked the information to the Holy Kingdom. By the time I went to His Majesty the Emperor to urge that the cure be distributed freely at the national level, the Holy Kingdom had already begun applying pressure.”
The Holy Kingdom had threatened that if the empire manufactured the scale disease cure, they would cease sending high-ranking priests in the future.
“That wasn’t all. They declared they would halt all diplomacy and that the Holy Emperor would never attend any imperial celebrations or funerals.”
Just as other kingdoms on the continent did, the empire always invited the Holy Emperor for major national events.
It was a longstanding custom that God’s blessing was required for matters of state.
“Why would they do that? If there’s a cure for scale disease, the priests wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. Why? Why would the Holy Kingdom—?”
“There was only one reason.”
Blasphemy.
Before those four letters, Sage’s ambitious plan to overcome scale disease had collapsed completely.
“How is that blasphemy! Blasphemy means insulting God!”
Perhaps because of his anger, all trace of formal speech had vanished from Edwin’s tone.
“I don’t understand it at all!”
His face flushed red as he pressed the issue.
“How can saving people’s lives be considered blasphemy?”
“It wounded their pride that an ordinary human had created a potion to cure a disease that could only be healed through divine power.”
Edwin was at a loss for words.
“For that reason, His Majesty the Emperor rejected my proposal, and after that it became hell.”
As if that weren’t enough, the Holy Kingdom secretly dispatched paladins to hunt him down.
On top of that, the empire’s resentful merchant lords had sent assassins after him as well.
To add a note, one of those assassins had been me—Kyla Angel.
“So I ran and ran. Then I grew so tired I tried to end my own life. If it hadn’t been for the deal some wench offered me at the moment I was ready to give up on everything.”
Sage’s gaze seemed to flick toward me for a moment, but I ignored it.
Meanwhile, Edwin appeared intensely curious about this “deal” between Sage and me.
The boy’s eyes suddenly sparkled as he latched onto Sage.
“What kind of deal was it?”
“In exchange for helping me escape safely from those who were chasing me, she said she would come to collect the price for my life later. I had no other choice. I wanted to survive by any means necessary.”
Before long, Sage had regained the same bold, energetic demeanor he’d shown when we first met.
“Damn it, now that I think about it, I got the short end of the stick! She said she’d save me if I paid more than the other side’s commission fee, so I ended up handing over thousands of gold coins!”
“If you hadn’t been so greedy about announcing the cure under your own name, you wouldn’t have ended up trapped in a place like this.”
“That’s right! It was because I was greedy! I wanted to become a great sage remembered throughout history! The great sage who defeated the ‘devil’s curse’ known as scale disease! How cool does that sound!”
Sage grumbled in an irritated tone.
“Clearly that was the deal we agreed upon, and yet…”
He stopped mid-sentence and suddenly turned to look at me.
“So where the hell is that wench Kyla, and what is she doing these days?”
“Pardon?”
I barely managed to suppress a hiccup of surprise.
“She ran out earlier while we were talking about that very subject. Kyla—that girl who didn’t even die—what the hell is she doing with her life? Still going around committing human butchery?”
Who was this old man calling a human butcher?
I hid my displeasure and replied coldly.
“What sort of vulgar language is that in front of His Highness?”
“So picky. I only spoke the truth.”
Sage lifted his chin as though he had never uttered a single wrong word in his life.
“Killing people for money—what’s so impressive about that? Isn’t it the most vulgar thing under the sun?”
The moment I heard those words, heat flooded my face.
The presence of Edwin standing beside me suddenly felt overwhelmingly conspicuous. I couldn’t understand why.
“She really is a pitiful thing, that girl.”
This wasn’t a case of giving medicine after poison—what was he suddenly going on about?
I stared at Sage intently.
Surprisingly, his face was genuinely filled with pity.
“If only she hadn’t fallen down that path, she could have lived more happily than anyone else.”