Chapter 200: Wolf, Alexander, Mobius (6)

“Grandfather. Grandfather. It’s time to wake up. The sun is already high in the sky.”

Merilda. You must have been about seven years old. You chattered away like a chirping chick, tugging at my blanket.

“Grandfather. Grandfather. Mother says you need to get up quickly. She said you have to eat breakfast and go to work, so hurry and wake up.”

If I didn’t get up, you’d climb onto the bed and bounce around on my stomach. Even though you were only seven, you were so heavy. I’d have to grunt as I lifted you up. You grew bigger every day, until it was hard to hold you with just one hand.

I still remember it. The day your mother showed you to me. You were wrapped in a swaddling cloth, squirming as you tightly gripped my finger. I spent days researching magic, but the feel of your touch lingered on my fingertips.

You couldn’t believe your mother had a time like that, too. You didn’t understand that she, like you, got scolded by me for spilling magic reagents and got yelled at for not listening.

You didn’t accept the fact that your mother had a mother, and that mother was your grandmother. You said it was strange, asking why your grandmother was your mother, and we laughed at your silly words again.

Do you remember? Sometimes we’d gather and laugh heartily, reminiscing about your childhood stories. You’d laugh sheepishly when we talked about how you ran around the living room after playing in the mud, without even washing up. When we mentioned how you used the dyes for magic potions to do art study, drawing all over the walls, you pretended not to remember.

Those dyes were incredibly expensive. As someone who started studying magic, it must have been a memory you wanted to forget.

Now I’m the master of the Magic Tower, but even now, my hands tremble whenever I see the price of those dyes. I hope you can forgive me now for scolding you back then.

When I write like this, forgotten memories keep surfacing. It feels like floating on a lake filled with countless puzzle pieces, and fragments of memories I didn’t even know existed keep swirling around me.

When I pick up and assemble these strange, unfamiliar pieces, your face appears on the lake’s surface before vanishing with the morning sun. It happened every night. Ever since you died, I’ve been adrift on that lake every night, frantically gathering puzzle pieces.

I’d pick them up, desperate not to miss even the smallest detail, and then cling to other happy memories, crying over and over.

This relentless puzzle-solving forces pieces before my eyes even when I don’t want it to. While organizing documents, I saw the bookmark you put in, and I couldn’t continue my research that day. When I saw the heart drawn in colored pencil with the words ‘Loving Grandfather,’ I couldn’t think at all. Closing my eyes, the memory of you gifting me that bookmark would surface.

Merilda.

When I write, calling your name, I inevitably end up confronting memories I can’t forget.

I should have stopped you when you said you wanted to study magic.

I should have blocked you when you said you were going into the Magic Tower.

I should have won that debate that day.

Merilda. Do you remember?

I was sitting at home, drinking tea that day. After losing the debate, I hadn’t gone out for days. When you said you were going to the Magic Tower, I heard the door close through the crack. You bowed even though you knew I couldn’t see you, and left. I didn’t like you studying that magic theory, but there was nothing I could do.

Everything happened then. It was 2:53 PM by my clock at home. A blue explosion erupted from the Magic Tower visible through my house window. It happened in the laboratory where you were helping with research. A man in a robe dangled from the railing before falling with a scream, while mages cast protective spells to shield the pedestrians below.

The smoke billowed thick and blue, then spewed red flames, engulfing the entire laboratory. Immediately, a wall made of magic power erupted, spewing fire like a dragon breathing flames, sealing the hole in the building.

People stopped dead in their tracks, stunned by the tremendous roar. Their faces held endless questions demanding an understanding of the situation. Inside the barrier, falling stones and fireballs seemed like mere parts of an entertaining show.

In that frozen moment of awe, I was the only old man moving. Leaning on my staff, I rushed towards the scene. I remember pushing past the guards controlling the situation, forcing my way into the Magic Tower somehow.

And there you were.

You lay there, looking as if you were asleep. Shrapnel had pierced your heart, and you died right there. As the lab staff were carried away one by one, only the priest assigned to you shook his head with a grim expression.

Merilda.

The reason you died was an error in a magic experiment. The researcher explained the cause of your accident with a pale face. The ‘theory’ chosen as a major research project for the Magic Tower had a critical flaw, and it overloaded precisely at the moment you were helping with the experiment.

As he explained, he seemed terrified that I might go mad right then and blow up the entire Magic Tower. And that mage I debated with? He never showed his face while I was at the Magic Tower.

Merilda.

Today, I am wandering the lake again, searching for your memories. But whenever I close my eyes, your final moments flash before them, preventing me from sleeping.

Merilda.

I told you it felt like time had stopped at that place, didn’t I? I’m still running within it. Holding handfuls of the good memories we shared, I am running away from your corpse.

“Merilda.”

Mobius called Merilda’s name. Mobius once believed the superstition that calling the name of the dead would summon ghosts. Unable to sleep late into the night, he’d stare out the window, repeatedly calling her name, only to end up weeping from sorrow.

Merilda had, before he knew it, become someone whose name alone left scars on him. Mobius closed his eyes tightly and gripped his pendant. Beside him lay stacks of papers attacking the dangers and unethical nature of his research.

On another pile were reports from the kingdom arguing for a reduction in the Magic Tower’s budget. The reports warned that it would be more desirable for the Mobius Magic Tower to seek a path of coexistence with other magic towers, rather than continuing its current self-righteous research direction.

Yet another stack of documents contained scathing criticisms of why Mobius refused to disclose his research findings to the public. Absurd conspiracy theories, like him taking bribes for a life of luxury or gathering his own faction to plot a rebellion, dirtied his desk.

And then there were documents from the North. Orland, a newly established noble in the North, had sent a warning demanding that Mobius cease the act of ‘liberating’ mentally infirm slaves in the North.

There was no time.

He was still living the same life, like a hamster on a wheel, yet the world was changing so rapidly, bringing so many things. Wolf’s faction, which had promised solid support for years, was heading towards ruin, and Alexander was facing political crisis.

The North, which he had conveniently used, sent a warning that further atrocities would not be tolerated.

And the research was still not in its final stages.

Whenever Mobius closed his eyes, his granddaughter’s death still surfaced. It flashed before his eyes like lightning before disappearing, and in his dreams, she appeared, hurling words of resentment.

So, he decided to think about other things instead of his granddaughter. He recalled the things he had done so far to scrape together the Magic Tower’s budget.

When he discovered research or theories with potential profit in smaller magic towers, he’d confiscate them under his name.

While recruiting skilled mages, he asked Wolf to reduce the budgets of other large magic towers.

He cut the wages of the production workers laboring on the first floor and in the basement, and banished anyone who protested.

The more he thought about it, the more sordid stories emerged.

But still, it wasn’t enough.

If he could just conduct a little more experimentation, he felt he’d find a lead, but he lacked the funds.

What on earth should he do?

What should he do?

“Ah, e-excuse me.”

A researcher working at the Magic Tower bowed subserviently to Mobius. Mobius stroked his beard and asked, “What is it?”

“There’s someone here who wishes to see you, Mobius-nim.”

Mobius frowned. He wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone right now.

“Tell them I’m not available.”

“B-but, if you say it’s an Elf, they’ll know who it is……”

Mobius stood up without a word.

Even if he wasn’t in the mood to meet someone, there were always exceptions who had to be seen when they came calling.