Chapter 6

“Kid, how about becoming my disciple?”

I was speechless. I was about to ask her to teach me magic while she was here, but she was the one who made the offer first. Not just teaching me, she offered to be my master.

“Eh?”

“Hm? What? Cat got your tongue?”

“No, I mean… I was just about to ask you to teach me magic, Lady Elara. I just didn’t expect you to offer to take me as your disciple first.”

“Is that so? Well, that’s good then. So, you will?”

“Of course! Actually, please take me as your disciple!”

Lady Elara giggled for a bit.

“Alright, then. We can start tomorrow.”

Lady Elara glanced at my father, who sat to my right.

“We can, right?”

Ahem.

I could hear my father clearing his throat. He somehow looked a bit awkward.

Did he eavesdrop on our conversation?

“Hm, of course it’s fine. Lady Elara has helped Hwi and can teach him how to use his power properly with minimal risk. It will be safer for Hwi to know how to use that power so what happened last time will not happen again.”

My father kept brushing his beard with his hand. I know that gesture. Even though my father always looked calm on the outside, whenever he felt awkward, he would start brushing his beard.

“Right, after you healed Hwi, you said that you have business with our clan? You have questions you want to ask and also ask for our cooperation?”

“Hm, I’m searching for someone.”

“A missing person?”

“Not just a missing person. He’s a dangerous criminal who escaped from the West.”

“How dangerous?”

Lady Elara kept quiet for a bit before continuing.

“…It’s not an overstatement to say that he is a danger to the world.”

The way her expression changed when she said that, from all smiles to cold, gave me chills.

“What do you mean?”

My father asked her, not quite understanding what she meant. Lady Elara started to explain more.

“Now that you have decided to be my disciple, you better know this too, kid.”

“There are several types of magic. Classic Magic, Spirit Magic, Divine Magic. I won’t get into the details about each of them for now. All you need to know is that Classic Magic is what I use and what you will learn under me, Spirit Magic is a magic you can only use if you can communicate with spirits, and Divine Magic is a type of magic used by clerics and priests, a power that comes from faith in God.”

“Most people only know these three types of magic, and most magic users fall under these three types. But there’s a fourth type of magic that has been kept secret because of the danger it will bring.”

“Dark Magic.”

Lady Elara turned her eyes to her wine cup, poured some rice wine into it, and took a sip.

“Dark Magic is a type of magic that can only be used after you make a contract with beings from a different world.”

“We call those beings ‘Demons’.”

“By making a contract with a Demon, a magician will have access to the power of the Demon they contracted with. What kind of power it is depends on the Demon, but in general, it’s several times more powerful than normal magic.”

She stared at the wine cup in her hand as she swirled the rice wine inside it.

“What makes Dark Magic dangerous is that to make a contract with a Demon, the contractor must sacrifice human lives. How many humans need to be sacrificed depends on the Demon, but the more powerful the Demon is, the more people need to be sacrificed.”

She took another sip of the rice wine and poured more into her wine cup.

“But that’s not all. The scary part is what happens after the contract period ends.”

“Once the contract ends, the Demon will take over the body of its contractor and appear in this world.”

“If the Demon is weak, it will be one thing, but the Dark Mage I’m chasing right now did not just make a contract with a weak Demon.”

“He made a contract with one of the seven strongest Demons in the Demon World, known as the Seven Kings of Hell.”

During her explanation, my father and I could only listen and keep quiet. Now we know what Dark Magic is, and how it requires human sacrifices is already bad enough, but now Lady Elara said that one of the Dark Mages she chased all the way to China made a contract with one of the seven strongest Demons in existence.

My father, who had kept quiet until then, began to speak.

“What kind of Demons are those Seven Kings of Hell? How strong are they?”

“How strong, huh?”

“Let’s put it this way. One of them has enough strength to wipe out China and its surrounding countries.”

“Wha—!”

A surprised look appeared on my face. Even my father, who always kept a calm composure, opened his eyes wide and went speechless.

One of those beings can destroy the whole of China and the surrounding countries.

It doesn’t feel real. How can one being have that much power?

But there’s no reason for Lady Elara to lie about this either.

“Wait, Lady Elara. So you’re saying someone who made a contract with one of those Kings of Hell is here?”

My father asked her, his face turning serious.

“He might be here. I found him in Baghdad over a year ago and fought him, but he managed to escape after sustaining serious injuries. The other mages and I who were sent to subjugate him were not in a condition to give chase because our injuries were also very bad. But from the traces we later found, he escaped to this country.”

“I see. So the thing you need from us is…”

“That’s right.”

Lady Elara took out a parchment with a person’s face drawn on it. The picture was very detailed and not just an ink painting. It looked very realistic and even colored, so we could see the color of his eyes, hair, and skin.

“The man’s name is Edmund Blackwell. He’s probably using an alias now. He’s 56 years old and a very skilled mage.”

“The question I want to ask you is, have you ever seen this man, Patriarch Cheon?”

My father took a look at the parchment seriously.

“No, I’ve never seen him.”

“I see. Then, can I ask for your clan’s assistance in tracking this man?”

“Of course, Lady Elara. Putting aside the debt we owe to you, if this man is as much of a threat as you have said, then this is not only your problem. Now there is a chance that he might hide in this country. This is as much our problem as it is yours.”

“Thank you, Patriarch Cheon.”

Lady Elara bowed a little bit and then turned her attention to me again.

“By the way, kid. There’s something I want to ask you too.”

I tilted my head, wondering what she wanted to ask me.

“How can you accumulate mana without even knowing what it is?”

Hearing her question, I went quiet. I was thinking about how to answer it.

“Hmm… For the last couple of years, whenever I was training my inner energy circulation and meditating to grow my dantian, I always felt something else starting to accumulate in my heart.”

“At first it felt fuzzy, but as I went on, I started to be able to feel the energy more clearly. Then, the more of that energy I absorbed, the more accumulated in my heart.”

Lady Elara looked like she was thinking about something while making a hmm… sound. Then, after a while, she started to speak again.

“There’s something I want to try.”

“Hm?”

I could only tilt my head at her, not knowing what she wanted to try.

Then she opened her palm.

“I just released a ball of mana in the air. It’s too thin to be perceived with the eye. Can you tell me where the ball is?”

I see. She wanted to test if I could actually feel that mana or not.

Just like when I meditate and train my inner energy circulation, I closed my eyes and began to sense my surroundings.

I moved my right hand and pointed at where I felt the ball of mana was.

“Here.”

“How about this then? Can you feel how the ball of mana just moved?”

“It moved from here, turning this way and stopped here.”

I answered her, pointing at the path the ball of mana took before it stopped.

There was no response from her for a while. When I opened my eyes, I could see a wide grin on Lady Elara’s face.

Her face, which normally looked beautiful and had a mystical feeling, was gone, replaced by the face of someone who had just won a lot of money in a dice game.

“I HIT THE JACKPOT!!”

What the hell is wrong with this woman?