Chapter 169 (1/2)

Chapter 169: Fistfights and Friendship

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Eliard had been staying in his room all the time after coming back to the Mage Tower. He didn’t eat or drink. He just sat there staring at Elena’s body in a daze. No one knew what he was thinking about.

On the second day, Herrera searched Elena’s body and found three scrolls containing the detailed map of the internal layout of the Master Magicians’ Mage Towers.

Eliard looked on numbly throughout the entire process. He didn’t stop Herrera from her search, but neither did he speak to her or make any movements at all. He just sat there motionless like an inanimate sculpture.

No one disturbed him after the discovery of the scrolls, because they had caused an uproar throughout the entire academy.

Even prominent Magicians in the Master Magicians’ Mage Towers could be bought with gold coins, and it turned out that they had sold the secrets of three Mage Towers! The whole academy was shocked by this terrifying revelation.

The dean, Anthony was understandably furious when he got wind of this news. He was now afraid for the safety of the academy, which was why he presided over the operation to cleanse the academy of traitorous and corrupt Magicians once and for all. The Magicians who had sold the academy’s secrets were naturally stripped off their magic powers, their memories of the Mage Towers wiped out of their minds and they were cast out of the academy.

All the merchants involved in the plot suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. This wasn’t the academy’s doing, though, but was the work of the MI3. The East Cove Magic Academy was within the Norton Kingdom’s territory after all, when something terrible happened there, rumors said that the king himself had taken special interest in this matter.

After the purge, Anthony and the other members of the academy’s high council began to rectify the gaps in the security system of the academy and planned confidential measures to make sure that something like this could never happen again.

Link held no important position in the academy, so he had little to do with all these follow-up measures. Besides, he’d already received generous rewards from the dean, which was the pass to enter the dean’s Mage Tower anytime he wished. Plus, he was allowed to use the Level-6 Elemental Pool in the dean’s Mage Tower up to six hours per week and the permission to freely browse any books he liked in the dean’s library.

It was just what he needed right now.

Although the traitors in the academy had all been rooted out and it seemed that the dark forces had been thwarted, Link still felt an indescribable uneasiness in his mind. This type of unease always drove Link to forget everything else and focus on learning magic and advancing his level.

With this obsessive determination, Link had made immense progress in a short time, but it was still not good enough for him. Once Link began to learn a Level-6 spell, he realized that he had far underestimated the difficulty in becoming a Master Magician.

Link now knew what a nonsense fantasy it was to try to reach Level-8 in three months. It would be a miracle if he could even master a Level-7 spell well enough to know how to use it in a real battle in that time.

This discovery caused Link to become quite exasperated.

Still, Link’s true strength was in his unrelenting attitude towards something that he’d set out to do. No matter what kind of difficulties he faced, even if they seemed to be insuperable, he would never give up even though he might feel frustrated. He would just quickly adapt to the current situation then find the best solution in order to move on.

Thus, although he didn’t know if he could achieve his goal, he never stopped working hard to try to advance his level to the highest point that he could muster.

Link slept for six hours a day and didn’t drink or eat but depended on magic spells to maintain his body’s health. He would cast the spell, Elemental Cure on his body once in the morning and once before he went to sleep at night, and that was enough to let him go through the day.

That was how his days went by for the past week. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Link had completely immersed himself in the world of magic spells and had completely given up the joy of life.

Late one night after the tiring week, Link was walking back to Herrera’s Mage Tower in utter exhaustion from the Heaven’s Thorn. Just as he was approaching the Mage Tower’s entrance, he saw Eliard standing there waiting for him.

Within a week, the originally well-built Eliard had become emaciated and his dark blue eyes were now deep-set and dull. Even his skin had gotten grayish. He looked nothing like his former self.

“Eliard, why are you so…?” Link was at a loss for how to face this friend of his. Even with all things considered, Link was still the one to cause Elena’s death. There was no way for him to avoid this fact. Admittedly part of the reason why Link had been obsessively learning magic all this while was to avoid meeting Eliard.

A faint smile appeared on Eliard’s face. He looked at the tired face and bloodshot eyes of his friend’s and shook his head gently.

“You don’t have to blame yourself, Link,” he said. “You did the right thing. I don’t blame you for it at all.”

It had been a week now and Eliard had given it much thought. He had resented Link for a time, but it only lasted for a few hours. He understood well that Link had done what he should do to protect the safety of the academy. The one at fault wasn’t Link, it was Elena. Still, Eliard couldn’t bring himself to blame Elena either. She’s dead now anyway.

In the end, the only thing Eliard hated was his fate. He couldn’t understand why fate had to torture him so. Fate had brought him to a woman he loved, yet it also snatched her away so quickly. Nothing could be crueler than that!

Meanwhile, Link felt no sense of relief at all after hearing what Eliard just said. He grew even more worried instead and felt he had to say something.

“I…”

“I’ve decided to give up on magic,” said Eliard suddenly.

“What did you say?!” Link’s eyes opened wide in shock at Eliard’s words. This was the Magician whose level of genius was one that the world hadn’t seen in five hundred years! In the game when Link had reached the Legendary Pinnacle level and was about to fight against Nozama, Eliard had begun to prepare himself to ascend to the level of Archmage while he was only 36 years old!

But now this would-be earth-shattering genius was talking about giving up magic, all because of a woman? This is preposterous!

For what felt like hours, Link just stood there dumbstruck, hardly knowing what to do or how to respond.

Eliard then took out a pouch from his sleeve and used the Magician’s Hand to hand it over to Link.

“Here are the 1300 gold coins that I owe you,” said Eliard. “I’m paying it all back to you now. Thank you for your selfless help in the past, I…I’m very sorry!”

“…” Link stared at the coin pouch floating in front of him as all kinds of emotions began to stir up in him.

What was Eliard thinking? He’s giving up magic and paying off his debts to Link because he wanted to completely sever the friendship between them? All because of a woman from a dark cult? So now that Eliard was heartbroken he was just going to abandon magic just like that?

Anger started to rise up in Link as well. He flung the pouch violently to the ground then rushed up towards Eliard and grabbed his collar.

“You’re a coward, do you know that?” Link shouted in Eliard’s face. “You’re a motherf*cking coward!”

Eliard shoved Link away and his face turned stone cold.

“This is my decision; it’s got nothing to do with you!” said Eliard. “If I didn’t learn magic, then I wouldn’t have met Elena. If it wasn’t for magic, Elena wouldn’t have died! Magic killed her!”

Those words were the last straw for Link. He was now desperately learning and practicing magic so he could gain enough strength to fight against the Level-8 demon, and he was ready to sacrifice all the joys in his life to achieve that. Still, there was a thread of hope in him that had got him through all the hardships he faced so far, and that hope had sprung from the fact that he knew he wasn’t alone in this fight. He knew that apart from himself there was a genius Magician whose talents could one day save the world from the forces of darkness. He knew that once this young genius grew up and had developed his skills to its full potential, he would be a powerful ally who would fight against the Dark Army with him side-by-side.