51. Memory (3)
It was said that the great altar used for the purification ritual of Morfran Forest stood inside the very forest where Duke Isaac Morf had gone berserk ten years ago.
‘Needlessly grand.’
In order to perform the purification ritual, one had to wear ceremonial robes.
This special robe, which covered the whole body, had been made by the Holy Federation, and it was said to have superior protection against dark mana thanks to its unique enchantments.
Twelve ritualists, six barrier mages, two archmages, and three thought-mages followed behind Hong Biyeon with grave expressions.
The road leading to the great altar had been paved in white marble, and Hong Biyeon found the Holy Federation’s rigid way of thinking laughable—that if they just painted everything white, then it would somehow become pure.
‘Blue is much cleaner.’
Since Hong Biyeon was especially fond of blue, she found the white robe striped with red anything but pleasing.
Red and white were the two colors she hated most.
‘Still…’
Hong Biyeon glanced sideways.
Walking beside her in ceremonial robes, just like her, was Sayeran Orkan, following along with that same pale complexion.
‘What is she thinking?’
Sayeran’s expression was always the same, like that of a doll.
But after seeing her so often, Hong Biyeon had become capable of reading her expression changes to some extent.
Sayeran Orkan was in an extremely bad mood right now.
Of course, there was no need to care about Sayeran’s mood, but to let that gloomy pressure show so openly on her face meant that she truly disliked this situation itself.
‘What do I care.’
It was pointless to waste attention on Sayeran, so Hong Biyeon turned and spoke to Taeribeon.
“Priest, there’s something I’d like to ask.”
Even forcing herself to be polite made revulsion rise all the way to her throat.
“Yes, Princess. Please speak.”
“I understand that I’m the one who has to activate the royal family’s Flame Spirit Formation. But I don’t understand why. The Flame Spirit Formation is a magic more specialized in blocking than in sealing.”
At that, Taeribeon narrowed his slit-like eyes and answered her.
“Yes… I see. Then Your Highness is still lacking one condition before taking part in the ritual.”
“…What do you mean by that?”
Stop.
The moment Taeribeon halted, the mages following behind them also froze in place like statues.
Hong Biyeon tensed her body and slowly glared at them.
“Princess. In order to participate in the purification ritual of Morfran Forest, there is one condition. This is a matter decided by Her Majesty the Queen, and even royalty is no exception.”
As he said that, Taeribeon tilted his head.
From behind him, two white-robed mages appeared, carrying a large, thin wooden box.
In that instant, Sayeran’s expression visibly stiffened.
Hong Biyeon could already sense what was coming, but she did not bother to say it aloud.
Click.
Taeribeon opened the box and took out a scroll, unfurling it with a rustle.
“It is a Geas. Whatever you see, hear, or feel inside, Princess, you must never reveal it outside.”
“…I see.”
She had expected that much.
Hong Biyeon already knew that every noble who participated in the purification ritual of Morfran Forest was forcibly placed under a Geas.
“Give it to me. I’ll do it myself.”
This Geas document had been created using royal-family magic.
That meant if there had been any hidden scheme embedded inside it, she would notice immediately.
Hong Biyeon carefully reverse-engineered the Geas scroll.
‘Adolevit’s legacy.’
It was unquestionably the magic of Queen Hong Seryu.
No matter how much Taeribeon had once been chief royal mage, even he could not dare tamper with the royal family’s magic.
And more decisively—
‘Who said I’d just let them cast this on me as-is?’
She had practiced for just this moment, altering the formulas of royal magic circles.
It had been a scroll made by Hong Seryu, an 8-Class mage, and yet with that monstrous brain of hers, Hong Biyeon was able to distort, if only slightly, magical formulas four dimensions beyond her own level.
A delicate magic like a Geas would twist in its very essence with even the slightest distortion.
If she allowed such a warped magic to enter her body, there was no way of knowing what sort of side effects might appear.
Still, Hong Biyeon judged that a direct-bloodline magic would never inflict truly fatal harm on her, and so she chose to gamble.
The moment she poured mana into the scroll, it was engulfed in flames and began to burn.
Then a scarlet magic circle formed in the air.
It instantly wrapped around Hong Biyeon’s body and was absorbed into her.
The whole process had taken barely a second.
To everyone watching, it had been far too brief for some 4-Class brat of a mage to possibly tamper with anything, and Taeribeon nodded as if satisfied.
And yet…
the chief mage had no idea.
He did not know that Hong Biyeon had understood the essence of the magic from a single glance, reverse-engineered it, and within that single fleeting second distorted it just enough to neutralize it.
But perhaps the backlash had been too great.
Unable to fully withstand the shock, Hong Biyeon staggered and stumbled backward.
“Princess, are you all right?”
“Yes…”
When Taeribeon came closer, as if he intended to support her, Hong Biyeon quickly raised a hand and waved him off.
No matter how hard it was, she had no intention of collapsing in front of that old man.
Nor of letting him support her.
A queasy dizziness, as if the whole world were spinning, and a weakness so severe it felt like her legs might give out at any second gripped her whole body, but she endured it through sheer willpower.
It was truly superhuman mental strength.
“…Let’s go.”
Even though the backlash had been so severe that an ordinary mage would have already collapsed unconscious, Hong Biyeon forcibly moved her sweat-soaked body forward.
Watching her, Sayeran seemed to sense that something was wrong and opened her mouth.
“Priest. The activation of the magic was—”
“Yes. Young Lady.”
Then, after looking once more at Hong Biyeon’s state, she shook her head.
“No. It’s nothing.”
“Mm? Very well. In any case, Princess, it seems the backlash from the Geas is significant. That is unusual… If Your Highness is unwell, we may delay things a little.”
“No. It’s fine to proceed right now.”
It probably looked like she was being stubborn, but there was no helping it.
Receiving pity from Taeribeon would have been worse than death.
‘Hoo…’
She drew in a deep breath.
Focus. Then focus again.
‘Meditate.’
Mana seeped into her body, and slowly her mind began to clear and sharpen.
Meditating while walking was by no means easy, but for Hong Biyeon, it was possible.
Repetition. Memorization.
The things she was most confident in.
Her headache began to fade.
Strength returned to the muscles in her legs that had nearly given out, and the cold sweat evaporated in the wake of mana as color returned to her face and her red cheeks regained their life.
She had not known.
Until before entering Stella Academy, she had never known that meditation could feel this good.
‘…How had I first learned it, again?’
Within the current of her meditative thoughts, Hong Biyeon suddenly wandered through her memories.
At the beginning of summer break.
When she had traveled together with Flame and Eizel—girls with different personalities, different origins, and different attributes—in order to uncover Baek Yuseol’s past.
One night, while camping in the forest.
They had all been huddled together, blankly staring at the campfire, and Eizel alone had been sitting off to the side with her eyes closed, meditating.
Hong Biyeon had asked her why she was doing that.
At first, she had thought it was stupid.
But after hearing the answer, she had no choice but to completely revise that opinion.
—Meditation? Ah, um… Baek Yuseol told me I should do this. So I just started doing it from then on.
That had been the beginning.
The very reason Hong Biyeon herself had unconsciously started trying meditation.
Even without taking any formal meditation classes, she searched out meditation manuals on her own, read them, and secretly practiced alone in her dorm.
And as a result, she felt the tremendous flood of mana amplifying inside her own body.
As if the ocean-like mana she had been born with were not enough already, now meditation had been added on top of it.
The synergy was practically infinite.
By the time she reached the great altar, while not fully restored, she had at least recovered enough of her senses.
More than enough to use the Flame Spirit Formation.
Standing atop the great altar, Hong Biyeon drew in a steady breath.
Ordinarily, it was basic sense to rehearse a ritual at least once beforehand.
But those people had not even given Hong Biyeon that chance.
Their intention to humiliate her openly had been obvious…
but that did not matter.
She was confident that even without practice, she could be perfect from the start.
‘…But what is this?’
Only after stepping onto the great altar did Hong Biyeon realize that the altar itself had been built like one enormous box.
There were no fewer than five layers of canopy barrier set around it, as if to confine something, and one more enormous barrier had been cast outside all of that.
‘Are they really trying to purify something at all?’
The purification ritual began quietly, without any signal.
Standing opposite Hong Biyeon, Priest Taeribeon opened a lawbook and began inscribing rune words into the air one by one.
At the twelve fixed points, the mages raised both arms high and drew a magic circle up into the air.
At that exact timing, Hong Biyeon began spinning her staff.
“O flame.”
Whoosh!!
Fire flared up and wrapped itself around the altar.
The unrefined, pure crystallization of flame.
Hong Biyeon moved her staff with fluid grace and controlled the fire.
“Protect it.”
And then, spread vast and wide, a red barrier took the shape of a giant dome.
Ordinarily, shield magic was known to be incapable of taking a perfectly curved form.
But a very tiny number of ultimate barriers, developed to the absolute limit, shattered even that notion and formed complete spheres.
The Flame Spirit Formation was one of the greatest barrier techniques in the world, counted among the top ten on the entire continent.
Created long ago by the ancestor Adolevit, it could not be replicated by modern magic…
but it could be reproduced by a talented mage of the direct bloodline.
“Ohh…”
The purification mages, Taeribeon included, looked at Hong Biyeon with slightly startled eyes.
Even an Adolevit could not ordinarily perform direct-bloodline magic at the age of seventeen, and yet she had just received a Geas and still unfolded it flawlessly.
Even though they had deliberately tried to lead her into failure.
A few of the noble mages looked away with expressions of obvious displeasure.
If only Hong Biyeon had failed, they could have kept Princess Hong Si-hwa’s secret protected.
In contrast, Taeribeon did not seem troubled by the situation at all, instead gazing at Hong Biyeon with the pure curiosity of a mage.
‘So that is the true Adolevit.’
Taeribeon half-lidded his eyes and stared at her.
In his eyes, the sight of something like a red soul rippling behind her reflected with perfect clarity.
‘Disgusting bitch…’
Unaware of the way he was looking at her, Hong Biyeon focused on her magic, cold sweat running down her body.
A question gnawed at her.
‘Why are they using such a great magic for this?’
What exactly was this ritual for?
Was it truly for the purification of dark mana?
If it really was, then why was there any need to raise an ultimate barrier at all?
“Hup!”
Sweeping away her endless questions, Hong Biyeon slammed her staff against the ground.
Thud!
At that instant, the dome-shaped magic circle enclosed the altar, and the floor began to split apart with a cracking sound.
‘Ugh?!’
She nearly lost her balance for a moment, but somehow managed not to falter.
Kugugugung…!!
And then.
The enormous altar split in two, revealing what lay inside.
“Ah…”
A gasp slipped from Hong Biyeon without her meaning to, and only then did Taeribeon finally curl his lips upward and speak.
“Princess. What do you think?”
A chill drifted up from below.
Enduring that freezing cold, cold enough to seem as though it would freeze her down to the marrow, Hong Biyeon stared directly at the thing sealed beneath the altar.
“This can’t be…”
Isaac Morf.
The very man who was said to have gone mad under dark power ten years ago and been subdued by Hong Si-hwa Adolevit…
his body was sealed beneath the altar.
As if he were still alive, giving off that icy cold.
But that was not what shocked Hong Biyeon most.
If a dark mage left behind this much force even after death, then it should unquestionably have been dark mana.
And yet this frigid cold…
was unmistakably blue mana.
Which meant that after death, he had returned to being human again.
“How…?”
“Did you ask how? I expected Your Highness would have such a question.”
Taeribeon stepped closer to Hong Biyeon as he spoke.
“It is for Princess Hong Si-hwa.”
“What…?”
“In order to protect the Princess, we made this choice. We seal Isaac Morf, who tries to awaken every year, and put him back to sleep.”
“You madmen…!”
“Madmen? Perhaps so.”
The old man let out a thin laugh.
“But what can be done? No matter what madness we commit, there is nothing Your Highness can do. All that remains is for you, in place of the busy Princess Hong Si-hwa… to complete the seal.”
Hong Biyeon hurriedly turned her head and met the eyes of Sayeran Orkan.
Eyes as cold as ice.
Yes.
She had known from the beginning, no doubt.
The secret sleeping in this place.
‘This… this is…’
Suddenly everything made her sick.
Nausea surged up from deep inside her, but she forced herself to swallow it down.
But still.
Still.
She simply could not endure it.
‘This is Adolevit…?’
No matter that she was a political enemy—her own elder sister, sharing the same bloodline, had committed something this monstrous…
and the Queen of Adolevit had buried the truth in secrecy.
She could not believe it.
She could not bear it.
And so Hong Biyeon could not stop the tears that welled up in her eyes.
“My, Princess seems to have suffered quite a shock. Sayeran? Please escort Her Highness below—”
“No. No. I’m fine.”
Biting her lip hard, Hong Biyeon glared at Taeribeon with bloodshot eyes and spoke.
“I will… see the ritual through to the end.”
“…Will you?”
Taeribeon looked at Hong Biyeon with cold eyes, then nodded to the mages.
“If that is truly Your Highness’s will, I shall not stop you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and cooled her head.
‘Get a hold of yourself. This isn’t over yet.’
Hong Biyeon touched the Memory Compass hidden in her clothes and anchored herself.
It was not enough merely to learn that Isaac Morf’s body slept here.
‘I’ll go back to the past…
and uncover the entire truth.’
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