After Meliya asked that question, Lian fled from her side.
Even though what had happened was already an undeniable reality, his mind still refused to comprehend any of it.
Just one night’s sleep, and he had crossed sixteen years of time.
The wife he had shared a bed with only yesterday had become a noblewoman almost unrecognizable today.
And as if that wasn’t enough, a daughter who looked exactly like his wife had suddenly appeared.
But it didn’t end there… Even he himself had turned into a woman.
Could fate really play such a cruel joke?
As these thoughts spun in his mind, the acid churning in his stomach forcibly dragged him out of his drunken stupor and back to this nightmare reality.
He slowly opened his eyes, realizing that he was lying slumped on the back of a person wearing a white hooded cloak.
“Ugh…”
After turning into a girl, Lian’s body was a size smaller than before.
But the person carrying him like a bundle was actually even more petite than he was.
Because of this, his boots were dragging on the ground.
“Hey, who are you?” Lian struggled a bit and easily slipped off the person’s back.
Because the hands gripping his arms were particularly soft, Lian guessed that the person might be a girl.
“……”
The hooded figure stopped walking, turned around, and looked at him.
Only then did Lian realize that they were in a dim, narrow alley between buildings, with no sign of people in either direction.
Lian became alert, mana surging through his body, and the aftereffects of alcohol quickly faded away.
Even though his body had changed, fortunately, Brave’s Power remained the same.
If this person had ill intentions, he had no intention of letting her have her way.
“…Eh? Sephy, is that you?”
The person lowered her hood, revealing long, pale green hair that filled him with nostalgia.
Her hair was a different color from her eyes, which were deep and distant like emeralds, with countless mysterious and intricate patterns flowing within them.
For Lian, the person with these eyes was more than just an acquaintance—they were companions who had entrusted each other with their lives and braved death together.
Sephy Claudias.
An ageless immortal, standing at the peak among countless arcane seekers and magic users on the continent of Aitixila, the one and only Sage.
She was a member of the Brave’s Party, and one of Lian’s closest friends.
Even when her name was called, Sephy’s expression didn’t change at all.
She raised her hand, the patterns in her eyes spinning like gears, then locking into the shape of a magic array.
A violet light burst from her eyes, splitting space in front of them and forming a portal.
“Come with me.”
After leaving those words behind, she walked straight into the portal.
Lian hesitated for a moment, then followed her in.
Inside the dim violet corridor of space, Sephy remained silent.
Sensing the subtle discord and unfamiliarity, Lian suddenly understood.
This Sephy was probably not her true self.
Back when he adventured with her, she had developed magic for creating clones and mirror images.
But as far as he knew, neither spell had ever reached the level where even he, the Brave, couldn’t tell real from fake.
At the exit of the corridor was a hexagonal hall, lit as bright as day by blue arcane flames.
Looking at the jade-like walls and the seemingly endless spiral crystal staircase, Lian felt a wave of exhaustion.
He had been here many times—the Sage’s Tower.
Hidden in the far eastern mountain range of the continent, atop a peak shrouded in blizzards year-round, known by none, the Sage’s dwelling.
“Counting this time, this should be the seventh time I’ve climbed these stairs… sigh.”
Lian sighed as he stepped onto the stairs, only to notice that Sephy (?) had stopped in place, gazing at him with a look of puzzled indifference.
“What are you doing?”
“Climbing the stairs. Isn’t this the only way to get to your room?”
“No need. There’s an elevator here.”
“An elevator?!”
As she spoke, Sephy (?) pressed a crystalline prism protruding from the white wall, and a creaking sound came from above.
In no time, a frame woven from white wood emerged from the wall and settled on the ground.
While Lian was still staring in shock, she stepped into the frame first.
“I was just making a casual suggestion… and she actually made it happen?”
Lian inspected the elevator and found the entire frame engraved with extremely complex arcane runes.
On the side panel, there were even crystal-relief buttons for each floor.
He had no idea what form of magic Sephy had used to bring the technology of modern electrical engineering into this world.
The elevator in this other world was surprisingly fast, and since it was constructed like a birdcage, it felt just like taking a sightseeing elevator in a department store.
Thanks to advanced spatial-folding magic, the tower could extend infinitely in either direction, so how tall it was depended entirely on Sephy’s mood—but she always set her room at the top.
“Creak, creak.”
The elevator slowly stopped.
Before Lian appeared a floor he remembered fondly.
In this space, countless huge bookshelves reached up to the ceiling, every shelf packed to the brim.
In the aisle between two rows of bookshelves in the center, a petite figure in a white hood was pulling books from the shelves.
Though there was nothing under her feet, she seemed to be walking on invisible steps, moving freely at different heights.
After hearing the elevator arrive, she returned the book in her hand to the shelf and turned around.
“…Sephy.”
Lian almost cried out her name.
Unlike the clone who had stayed by his side, the Sephy before him was undoubtedly the real one.
Her eternally youthful face and the dark circles under her eyes were exactly the same as a day ago… or perhaps sixteen years ago—unchanged in the slightest.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
Sephy’s suspicious gaze nearly made Lian faint.
But thinking it over, his current appearance really was easy to mistake—wait, didn’t she have the Sage’s Eye, able to see through all things and cast spells without a staff?
“I-I’m Lian! I don’t know why my body turned out like this, but with your abilities you should be able to see it, right?”
“…?” Sephy tilted her head, the arrays and patterns in her emerald eyes spinning rapidly.
Lian knew that at this moment, her eyes were likely running more than ten types of spells at once.
“You’re saying you’re Lian? That’s not funny,” Sephy slowly floated down from the air to land before Lian, the arrays in her eyes stopping their rotation.
“The Lian I know is a man. Besides, your body’s age doesn’t match his either.”
“No way? Even you can’t tell?” Sephy’s response left Lian on the verge of tears.
If his body had been affected by some spell or illusion, there was no way it could have escaped Sephy’s eyes.
“But now that you mention it, you do look a bit like Lian. Could you be his illegitimate daughter?”
“I’m not!”
Recalling the look in Meliya’s eyes before their parting, Lian felt another dizzy spell wash over him.