Chapter 75: The fallen man.
Roger’s exhausted frame fell like a tattered rag beneath the dim, faded light of the streetlamp.
Standing amidst the chatter of the children and the clamor of the parents gathered around Cain, Amelia remained frozen in her tracks. Her small eyes locked onto that body lying face down on the pavement.
She did not know what feelings possessed her at that moment—was it shock? Or merely curiosity? Yet she felt an overwhelming, strange, and inexplicable urge to draw closer to him, to know how and why he had come to this place in such a wretched state.
In the depths of her soul, Amelia bitterly despised Roger. How could she not, when he was the one who had betrayed her in her past life, siding with the rest of her rebellious disciples? She remembered those thrusts of icy spears that had shattered her pride as a mentor.
But now, as she gazed at his mangled form, it was clear as day that Roger had endured an extremely harsh and harrowing ordeal that had nearly claimed his life before he ultimately collapsed at her feet.
She could have easily ignored it. She could have turned her head and walked away with Cain; he was, after all, a traitor, and the history of mages taught everyone that traitors deserve neither pity nor concern.
But curiosity was too powerful to suppress.
’She was able to read his lips... he clearly said "My Master" before he collapsed. He realized she was his master. That wasn’t the issue, because Amelia had expected something like this. But does the destruction and wounding he suffered have any connection to his discovery of the truth about my body?’
Amelia closed her eyes for a moment, desperately trying to curb the flood of thoughts in her small mind: ’Stop thinking, Amelia! He is just a damned traitor... do not fall into the trap again.’
In the end, despite the anxiety and turmoil gnawing at her chest regarding this situation, she did not want to appear a fool. He had betrayed her before, and belated apologies now—no matter how dramatic they seemed—were useless and could not mend the rifts left by treachery. Even in this era, things had not changed; was he not the very same person who arrogantly claimed ownership of those unique magical theories he had originally stolen from her?
Was this not absolute proof that he was still that despicable traitor who fed on the achievements of others?
There was no room for doubt regarding his baseness and vileness. The optimal, most logical choice was to ignore him completely, as if he were a forgotten memory. This was the just fate for traitors; in the end, he ought to thank his Lord that she would not take any retaliatory action against him in this new life, having decided to leave the heavy burdens of the past behind her.
Her train of thought was severed by the voice of the young boy standing beside her—the lad who had asked her to take the cup of ice cream she had rejected. The boy looked with pity at Roger sprawled on the ground, then turned to Amelia and said in a low voice:
"Oh... miss, are you looking at this beggar? It seems truly pitiful how he fell so suddenly... He looks to be in a very difficult physical state. Shall we go help him?"
Amelia replied with dry coldness, without turning to the boy: "Do not concern yourself with him. Just leave him be, and he will stand on his own feet again once he regains consciousness."
Yet her cold reply did not seem to convince the young boy, whose face showed signs of confusion and wonder. He knit his brows and said with pure innocence: "But... aren’t we supposed to help everyone, miss? I know he might just be a vagrant, but my grandmother always told me that helping those in need is a duty upon everyone..."
Amelia felt the absurdity and surrealism of the situation. Roger—who sat at the peak of authority as an influential minister of noble lineage and prestige in this Empire—now appeared in the eyes of passing children as a threadbare, pitiful vagrant!
Suddenly, a dark thought flashed in Amelia’s mind. Since this entire event had amounted to nothing more than a quiet collapse, without hearing the roar of a violent clash between elite mages, could this entire scene be nothing but a cheap act? Was acting, feigning weakness, and begging for pity not the preferred weapon of traitors like Roger to regain the trust of their victims?
To cut through doubt with certainty, and to expose his plan if this was indeed a cliché act, Amelia decided to play her trump cards.
She mustered her internal magical energy and activated her legendary eyes: [Eyes of the Thousand Souls].
Her pupils shifted with a subtle gleam invisible to ordinary humans, and she directed her piercing spiritual gaze toward Roger’s body lying weakly beneath the lamplight, while people passed by him, ignoring his existence.
She expected to easily pierce his aura and uncover the reality of the mana flowing through his veins... but she was shocked.
The moment she attempted to pry into Roger’s body, she blinked in utter bewilderment. Her intrusion had been completely repelled! It was as if her power had slammed into a solid wall of magical steel.
"What?! This is impossible!" she muttered to herself, unable to believe what was happening.
She tried again, with higher concentration, pushing with all the spiritual foresight she possessed through her legendary eyes... but the result was the same: absolute rejection, a total block of any attempt to read his body or soul.
Amelia took a step back, her heart racing in genuine shock.
Only mages and combatants belonging to the [Prince Level] or above were capable of repelling and blocking the intrusion of the [Eyes of the Thousand Souls] at its current stage!
And here lay the terrifying dilemma that nearly drove her mad: she had been able to spy on Roger and scan his energy level with these very eyes just three hours ago! And at that time, he was clearly and firmly standing in the [Noble Level]!
How could any living being—no matter their genius or the forbidden techniques they employed—leap from the depths of the "Noble Level" to the "Prince Level" in the span of only three hours?!
This was not merely rapid development; this was a fantasy, a magical absurdity that no mind could accept!
Amelia drifted into terrifying questions that gnawed at her mind:
What had happened to this man in these three hours? And how had he transformed into this terrifying entity, so close to death yet so powerful at the same time?
If a violent battle between two individuals of the "Prince Level" had indeed occurred in the vicinity of the capital, shouldn’t the entire city center have shaken from the sheer magical pressure? Shouldn’t the imperial knights and police forces have been mobilized? How did all this destruction happen to Roger in absolute silence without anyone noticing?
Moreover, another even stranger and more suspicious detail began to float to the surface...
Roger was not a nobody; he was the current Minister of State, a public figure enjoying overwhelming popularity whose face was known to everyone in the capital, Homer.
Even with his torn clothes, his exhausted body, and his face smeared with dirt and blood... why did not a single passerby—even by mere coincidence—recognize his features or scream the name of Minister Roger? Why was everyone treating him as an anonymous vagrant collapsing in a corner of the street?
To Amelia, all these indicators and clues were utterly illogical, as if there were a hidden force manipulating the perception of those around him, or as if existence itself refused to acknowledge the identity of this fallen man beneath the shadows of the lamp!