Chapter 328 : Chapter 328
Chapter 328. The Gardener’s Past
The last embers in the brazier faded, and deep darkness settled in.
Radel waited in silence for the old man’s next words.
- Why is he dragging this out so much?!
Even the Spirit of the Library grumbled, though he too was waiting for the story to continue.
The old man leaned deeply back into his worn chair and remained silent for a long while.
His gaze was not on Radel, but on the distant stars scattered across the magically crafted night sky.
Within those deep eyes, decades of time seemed to flow like a river.
At last, a single sentence fell from his lips, cutting through the still night air.
“My first disciple was truly…… like my own flesh and blood.”
Bitterness and an undeniable affection were thickly woven into his voice.
“He was a newborn abandoned by the roadside. It was a day when the rain poured down in sheets. On my way back to the Mage Tower after work, I found a little basket with something wriggling inside.”
The old man recalled that day as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
The mana he had sensed from the infant.
The immense power that raged like a storm, still unmanifested.
At a glance, he knew the child had not been born to an ordinary fate.
So he took him in.
Was it curiosity about such overwhelming mana?
Or simple pity for a tiny life soaked by rain?
Now, he could no longer say. But in any case, that was how he took in his very first disciple.
The old man slowly turned his head and looked at Radel sitting before him.
Even in the pitch-black darkness, Radel’s eyes glimmered faintly.
Yet the mana Radel possessed was not even a hundredth of what his first disciple had carried as an infant. Truly insignificant.
In his younger days, he would not even have spoken to a greenhorn like this.
Back then, he judged people solely by the quantity and quality of their mana.
Those with weak mana, he believed, had no value. That was the law of the Mage Tower—the only truth of the world he had lived in.
‘How arrogant I was.’
The old man gave a bitter smile to himself and lifted his gaze once more to the night sky.
The perfect heavens he had personally shaped with magic spread out above him.
All his life, he had pursued magic.
He had been intoxicated by the authority of an absolute being, able to summon rain or move the stars at will.
The old man’s name was Helio Valerian.
The strongest mage the Mage Tower had ever known.
And now, an unnamed gardener tending a small vegetable patch in the Abandoned Collection Area.
When he entered the Mage Tower, he had severed all ties with the outside world.
He believed that was the destiny of a great mage.
Family had no place in his life.
He had sworn to devote his entire existence solely to the study of magic.
Yet there was a presence that melted even that icy conviction.
“And the youngest one…….”
His voice grew faintly hoarse.
“He was my child. One I could never love too much.”
Helio hazily slipped into memories of the past.
***
“Master, that child is……?”
Twenty-five-year-old Aaron could not believe his eyes.
In the arms of Helio Valerian—his master, the strictest and coldest being in the entire Mage Tower—was a child.
The sight of his master cradling a small figure wrapped in a thin blanket was utterly unfamiliar, something Aaron had never seen in his life.
“He was sent by the Stein family. They couldn’t control his mana. He was caught in the rain on the way here, it seems.”
The Stein family.
One of the most prestigious noble houses in the empire.
For even such a family to be unable to handle his mana……
Aaron carefully examined the child in his master’s arms.
Dark brown hair still damp with moisture, and large eyes opened wide in fear—clear, deep blue like a lake.
Delicate features befitting a noble child, yet his pale cheeks and trembling lips revealed the confusion and terror he must have endured.
A child of the Stein family.
Eleven-year-old Armandy Stein.
“Surely you don’t intend to take him as a disciple? He’s too old for that.”
Aaron’s voice sharpened.
At eleven, a child already knew much of the world.
The fact that he had spent so long in his parents’ care was already a problem.
And as a noble’s child, no less—raised amid luxuries, attended by servants from birth.
For such a child to adapt to the Mage Tower’s harsh environment, where one had to renounce everything but the pursuit of magic, would be nearly impossible.
“Look at his mana.”
Helio spoke quietly, as if seeing straight through Aaron’s thoughts.
Reluctantly, Aaron closed his eyes and focused on the flow of mana emanating from the child.
And then, he froze.
“!”
It was outstanding.
Unbelievably so for a child with no formal magical education—the purity of his mana was exceptional, and its quantity immense.
Like a finely refined gemstone, he possessed perfect potential in its raw state.
Perhaps even greater than Aaron’s own had been at that age……
Aaron’s heart dropped.
A vague sense of crisis rose like mist, but he forced it down. He was only an eleven-year-old child. Far too young and immature to be a threat to him.
At that moment, the child clutched Helio’s collar tightly and pointed at Aaron, who was staring at him, and asked in a clear, childish voice yet to break.
“Grandpa, who is that person?”
Grandpa?
Aaron’s expression hardened instantly.
To address a being whom everyone in the Mage Tower revered as “Master” or “Lord of the Mage Tower” so casually as “Grandpa”—the child was utterly fearless.
Yet astonishingly, Helio’s face bloomed not with anger, but with a warm smile.
A smile he had never once shown before his disciples.
A genuine smile, softening the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“Haha. He’s someone who will become your senior brother. You may call him Senior Brother Aaron.”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
Aaron could endure no longer. He deliberately adopted a stern tone to correct the child’s mistake.
“Not Grandpa. You should call him Master.”
“B-but……”
Startled by Aaron’s fierce expression and oppressive mana, tears welled up in Armandy’s blue eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
The frightened child whimpered and burrowed deeper into Helio’s arms. Seeing this, Helio stopped Aaron.
“That’s enough. He’ll learn in time. He’s just been separated from his parents—how hard it must be for him. Leave him be for now.”
“……Understood, Master.”
Aaron bowed reluctantly, but within his heart, strange emotions churned.
He knew his master cherished those with strong mana.
Hadn’t he himself earned his master’s favor because of it?
Being the first disciple of the strongest mage in the Mage Tower had been Aaron’s pride.
His master had always valued him the most.
But……
What if a disciple with even greater mana appeared?
Aaron met the blue gaze of Armandy, who peered at him from Helio’s arms.
A foreboding chill gripped his heart.
And that premonition would prove true.
***
“Senior Brother! Look at this!”
The voice of thirteen-year-old Armandy echoed through the uppermost level.
Aaron was twenty-seven.
Reluctantly responding to Armandy’s call—the first time in two months that the boy had emerged from his research—he headed toward his room.
And the moment he opened the door—
He doubted his eyes.
The room was gone.
Instead, an endless black cosmos stretched before him.
At his feet, a blue-tinged planet rotated slowly, while far away, a galaxy scattered like a flowing river of light.
A comet streaked past his vision, and a mysterious harmony, as if planets themselves were moving, resonated in his ears.
Armandy sat atop a massive planet, smiling brightly, like a child who owned the world.
“I tried what Master taught me, and it worked out pretty well! He’ll be really happy when he sees this spell, right?”
Worked out pretty well?
It was absurd.
To create such a flawless illusion magic at thirteen—one that rewrote the entire surrounding space—was anything but simple.
The moment Aaron entered, he even felt his body lighten, as if gravity itself had vanished.
Sight, sound, touch—Armandy’s magic perfectly deceived every human sense. He had already reached the realm of a true mage.
‘I couldn’t have done this at thirteen.’
Even more frightening was Armandy’s monstrous concentration.
Once he locked himself into research, he would remain shut away for months until completion—far beyond what one would expect of a boy his age.
Meals and cleaning were handled by laborers, but for a thirteen-year-old to cut himself off from the outside world and devote himself solely to magic required extraordinary endurance.
Aaron himself had been the same.
As a child, he had suppressed his desire to go outside and locked himself in his room to meet his master’s expectations. For him, those days had been an unbroken chain of suffering and endurance.
But Armandy was different.
He was enjoying it.
He loved magic itself.
It was ominous.
Aaron swallowed the anxiety rising in his throat once more.
“Two months without showing your face, and this is what you’ve been working on? Hahaha!”
Helio arrived late, his face overflowing with pride and joy as he gazed upon the universe Armandy had created.
“You truly are my disciple! Isn’t that right, Aaron?”
“……Yes. You’re right, Master.”
In stark contrast to the shadow falling over Aaron’s face, Armandy’s smile shone like sunlight.
“I’ll become a great mage just like you someday, Master!”
“Yes, yes! Hahaha!”
Helio was laughing from the heart.
A laugh Aaron had never heard before.
A grandfather’s laughter, watching his grandchild’s antics.
At that sight, a tiny crack formed in Aaron’s heart.
The foremost disciple of his master was supposed to be him.
……It had to be.
***
Radel listened to the story in silence.
The old man had not told him everything, but it was enough to grasp what kind of mage he had once been.
The Spirit of the Library scoffed.
- Hmph. Obvious, isn’t it? This old man must be the Mage Tower Master. So he was bedridden, yet here he is, slyly farming and loafing around!
But Radel’s focus lay elsewhere.
‘Two disciples.’
The Mage Tower Master’s two disciples.
By age and seniority alone, the first disciple would surely be one of the Mage Tower’s true powers.
Anyone would assume the eldest disciple to be the successor.
‘But still…….’
Radel already knew who the Mage Tower Master’s true successor was.
A phrase from Armandy’s Status Window flashed through his mind.
‘Heir of the Ivory Tower.’
Then there was no need to ask who the youngest disciple was.
The youngest disciple, more talented than even the tower’s most powerful figures.
‘Armandy is in danger.’
Radel’s gaze darkened.
At that moment, the old man looked straight at Radel and spoke.
“If you’re willing… I have a favor to ask of you.”