After restraining Anthony, the Old Mage didn’t directly probe him.
Instead, he started with the attendant beside him.
“My Lord, please step back for now, and have someone surround this area.”
“Right, right, I’ll do that at once!”
The middle-aged man hurried toward the gate, his fat jiggling, looking rather comical.
The Old Mage withdrew his gaze and turned to the attendant beside Anthony.
Like Anthony, he had a vacant, dull expression.
“What kind of curse produces this effect?”
The Old Mage furrowed his brow, searching his memory for known curses.
But he only knew a fraction of the world’s countless curses, and none matched what he understood.
Curses were usually a form of contamination achieved through some evil power. Whether acting on the body or the soul, they always had a clear direction, allowing one to trace the source of the contamination to a specific powerful entity.
To remove a curse, one had to understand its nature. Alternatively, one could use “holy” power to cleanse it. The clerics of the Goddess Church possessed this ability to forcibly break curses; it could even be said to be the authority of Goddess Milaya.
In the Northern Lands, the elves’ Holy Water could also serve as a tool to dispel curses, but that substance was virtually priceless and unavailable on the market.
So the only method left was to touch the curse, understand it, find its source, and sever the connection between Anthony and that origin.
The portly middle-aged lord had already returned, accompanied by the captain of his personal Knight Squad—a pale-faced man who looked somewhat weak.
The knight walked over and greeted the Old Mage.
They would be colleagues from now on, so maintaining a good relationship was necessary. But the Old Mage seemed uninterested—he only nodded slightly at the knight’s smile.
This made the knight lose face. He snorted quietly and stepped aside, hands behind his back, casually surveying the decorations.
The lord looked anxious as he watched the Old Mage pondering deeply. He asked, “Sir, do you really have a way?”
“Hmph, of course I do. Now go call a servant over…”
The Old Mage appeared extremely confident, yet he was by no means lacking caution—otherwise, he wouldn’t have become an Old Mage.
Once the servant was summoned, the Old Mage ordered him to touch the attendant. Nothing happened.
Then the Old Mage told the servant to use his spirit power to probe into the attendant’s body.
With his faint Spirit Power, the servant strained to pierce into the attendant’s body. Inside, he saw nothing but a boundless chaos with a blazing sun suspended in the midst.
The blazing sun was the Fourth-Rank core of the attendant; the rest of the chaos was his soul itself. That meant his soul was currently muddled and indistinct—a clear sign of contamination from a curse.
The Old Mage glanced at the servant’s eyes and found they hadn’t turned vacant. After a moment’s thought, he had another person look directly into the attendant’s eyes. Again, nothing happened.
This back-and-forth experimentation made the waiting lord increasingly anxious. Though he had many sons and didn’t care much about losing one, if he could save him, he would.
“Sir, what’s the situation now?”
“Patience.”
The Old Mage remained calm and made a deliberate judgment.
This curse had weak contamination. As long as the connection to the unknown entity was severed, the curse that muddled the mind should be lifted. Then Anthony would be restored to normal.
With that conclusion, the lord finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The lord sat on a nearby sofa and wiped the fine beads of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he frowned deeply, looked up at the Old Mage who was pondering how to break the curse, and voiced a doubt in his mind.
“Sir, who do you think placed this curse on my youngest son?”
“Heh, My Lord, where was your son’s last stop today? I hope you’ll send someone to investigate.”
Hearing that question, the Old Mage immediately responded. Even a fool could catch his implication. The lord rose from the sofa, his face flushed with anger.
“Someone come!”
At the lord’s shout, a butler hurried in. The handsome young butler bowed low, his posture servile and fawning.
The lord lifted his round head and asked, “Where did Anthony go today? Where was his last stop?”
“The Young Master went to the Snow Moon Pavilion run by the Tea Rose Chamber of Commerce this morning, drank with Lord Penrose of the Tea Rose Chamber, then headed to the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce. After staying there a while, he returned. Young Master… Young Master was like this when he came back!”
The young butler spoke nervously, listing Anthony’s entire itinerary, keeping his head down the whole time.
The lord’s eyes widened slightly as he muttered a name.
“Penrose?”
“My Lord, it’s the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce.”
The Old Mage suddenly interrupted the lord and butler’s conversation, his tone forceful, emphasizing “Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce.” This was a strong hint.
The lord’s eyes bulged.
At that moment, the young butler, as if finding a scapegoat, quickly followed the Old Mage’s lead.
“A woman named Einfel came to the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce and took it over. Rumor has it she’s very beautiful. When the Young Master heard, he wanted to go see her!”
“It’s… her?”
The lord froze, looking uncertain.
Then the Old Mage stepped forward, slapped the lord’s shoulder, and said, “Very likely.”
“Uh, right, it must be that woman! She’s a witch!”
The young butler declared loudly, as if the matter was already settled.
Witches had a bad reputation on the Southern Continent. The term usually referred to beautiful women with extraordinary powers who lived apart from society. They were seen as servants of the Evil God, and all their actions were said to be for the Evil God’s amusement.
But in essence, it was a slander born of malice. Women with wealth and beauty but no protection were often labeled as witches, then killed and devoured by the “Crows” when they were at their most beautiful.
However, when one’s Order of Magic reached a certain level, the nature of the term “witch” changed completely.
Witches—female humans distinct from ordinary humans—possessed eternal life, never-fading beauty, and talents so enviably powerful that they seemed favored by the World.
Among them, the Ancient Witch was known to all. She was hailed as the living history book of witches!
Witch and witch were complete opposites.
The lord’s heart jolted at the mention of a witch. Now he understood what the Chamber of Commerce Union was up to.
He roared in anger, “It’s a witch! Must be a witch!”
“…”
The Old Mage stepped back silently, smirking inwardly.
The matter was settled. He might as well handle the current situation while he was at it. Selling the lord a favor here would be excellent.
With that thought, the Old Mage first erected a mental barrier on himself, then reached out and placed his hand on the attendant’s head.
The portly lord was getting excited. Thinking about the possible future of the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce, he could barely contain his exhilaration. He no longer cared about his son.
If his son died, he’d just make another—after all, there were plenty of women!
The lord glanced at the young, handsome butler with his head bowed. He snorted coldly and dismissed him.
He turned his gaze to the Old Mage, who had closed his eyes, fully concentrating on the flowing light around him.
Through the point of contact, the Old Mage’s Spirit Power probed into the attendant’s body. He explored the chaos but found no trace of anything.
That didn’t make sense!
If it were a curse, there should be traces left by the source of power.
The attendant’s body was like an egg whose yolk and white had been stirred together—or rather, a rotten, spoiled egg, stinking inside to the point of nausea.
“What’s going on…”
The Old Mage withdrew his Spirit Power, pulling free from that “stagnant water,” then turned to look at Anthony.
Seeing the attendant hadn’t recovered and the Old Mage’s expression seemed grave, the lord asked curiously, “Sir, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll try again.”
The Old Mage felt something was off. He probed into the attendant’s body once more, but again found nothing.
“This isn’t like damage from internal contamination by a curse. It’s more like… like the impact of an explosion. The surface is intact, but the internal organs are all shattered.”
The Old Mage muttered under his breath. He walked up to Anthony and was about to place his hand on Anthony’s head when he noticed Anthony’s hollow eyes staring at him.
Anthony suddenly grinned, revealing a vacant, lifeless sneer.
Though he made no sound, the Old Mage felt he heard a hoarse laughter. The sound didn’t come from his mouth—it came from those pitch-black, deep pupils.
“Damn it!”
The Old Mage reacted instantly, widening his mental defenses and avoiding direct eye contact.
But that raucous laughter didn’t stop. Instead, it grew clearer and louder in the Old Mage’s ears. Gradually, he made out the meaning within the chaotic whispers.
Just as he was about to use Magic to kill Anthony, the source of contamination, everything before him changed. He himself had changed too. Then he was kicked to the ground, surrounded by ragged people who rained punches and kicks on him, their piercing, mocking words filling his mind.
“Hey, what are you dreaming about? Ha! You think you can fight us?”
‘They’re dead, they’re already dead—I killed them with my own hands!’
“You? Hahaha, you’re just having a pipe dream!”
‘This is fake, this is all fake!’
The boy, his face swollen from the beating, struggled to open his eyes and look at these familiar faces. The pain in his body and the words in his ears all told him: he had just been having a beautiful dream.
In that dream, he had accidentally obtained the inheritance of a Magic User, successfully killed these bullies who tormented him daily, taken revenge on that rich young master, fled far away, and become a Sixth-Grade Grand Mage, his power awe-inspiring—even lords respected him!
But that seemed… just a delusion he’d dreamed while knocked unconscious. How could such a thing happen?
How could he ever escape this stinking quagmire of an abyss…
The old pain resurfaced, and the greatest Nightmare descended upon him. Even a Sixth-Rank Magic User couldn’t resist the contamination; all they could do was let the Nightmare burrow into their mind and gnaw at their soul.
Cackle cackle cackle~
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