CH 11

Alister's mind had gone blank. At a loss and bewildered, panic and countless emotions swirled in his fragile body, transforming into a whirlwind that battered his delicate soul.

The aftertaste of extreme fear and joy lingered in the body of the red-haired mage, much like the lingering resonance of taut strings on a harp after a player's fingers had left.

Alister wanted to run away almost instinctively—away from here, away from Evan Reeves, who was already nothing like what he’d envisioned him to be. However, his legs felt as weak as overcooked pasta.

For a moment, Alister clearly felt the exact same urge — Evan used to scream and growl non-stop when awakened, and now Alister wanted to do the same.

His innards seemed to be all twisted up, torn between his instinct to survive and his unnatural obsession.

"Ugh..."

Alister groaned with difficulty.

He shabbily moved toward the door of the stone chamber before falling limply to the ground once again.

A sense of exhaustion had overtaken his body. In reality, it had been a long time since Alister had truly indulged himself after he had left the dirty and indecent aristocratic circle to become a mage apprentice.

The muscles on Alister’s thighs were still twitching uncontrollably.

His breathed rapidly. Only after a long time did he muster the courage to look up at Evan. That type of fear lingered in his soul, but beyond that, there was something else — a hunger just as strong as his fear.

Yet Alister was ultimately an excellent mage apprentice (and, had it not been for the current accident, he was destined to become an outstanding supreme mage in the future), and he managed to maintain some semblance of sanity despite his inner turmoil.

Any person with a modicum of reason could perceive the bizarreness and twistedness of the scene that had just unfolded.

"What exactly is going on...?"

He asked, hearing the tremor lingering in his words.

Then, he hesitantly struggled to look at Evan, no longer trying to evade.

The abnormality of Evan's body had completely disappeared.

His hands and feet were still bound by iron chains, and the bit remained in his mouth. There were no traces or lines of swimming on his skin.

He looked...

He looked like a human being.

"Um..."

The mage apprentice stared at Alister with a pale face. He whimpered, as if wanting to say something, but in the end, only a muffled moan emerged.

He still possessed that unsettling allure, but the charm and repulsiveness as strong as sulfuric acid seemed to have dissipated so thoroughly that Alister almost doubted that his gaffe was caused by a nightmare in the midst of all the chaos.

Alister gasped for breath. It was a sound that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, and all the muscles in his body relaxed. The cramping of his thigh muscles were almost apparent to the naked eye.

Beneath his damp mage robes, his muscles twitched.

Only then did Alister realize that his body had been so tense that everything started aching after he relaxed.

But Alister did not relax just yet.

He leaned against the wall and gazed at Evan for a long time, trying to calm his emotions and clear his mind while gathering what remained of his strength.

A long time passed like this before Alister slowly moved toward Evan.

He had tried his best to maintain a façade of calm, though from Evan's perspective, he appeared extremely tense, as if he was approaching not Evan, but a raging demon. Only a short while had passed, yet Alister seemed to have aged quite a bit — as if he had been fortunate enough to be drained of his youth, blood, and essence by an incubus in this small world where magic dissipating.

His cheekbones had turned razor-sharp and his eyes were bloodshot. The blood vessels on his temples bulged beneath his skin like earthworms. When he moved, his body would sway involuntarily, as if he his muscles were too weak to support his well-formed frame.

If this had been back when everything was normal, Evan probably couldn't have helped but worry about the haggard Alister, but as he was right now, Evan could not even take care of himself.

His head throbbed, and every single blood vessel and nerve in his body seemed to scream in protest. Though the stone chamber was dimly lit, the dim yellow light from the sole magical lamp used for illumination was still blindingly bright to Evan.

This was due to his pupils expanding and absorbing an excessive amount of light. Unfortunately, Evan knew nothing of this at that moment.

He only felt ill — though, of course, he had also sensed the abnormalities that had nearly made Alister urinate in fright.

But Evan would only feel worse than Alister.

He had been forcibly awakened, though he didn’t know how the mage tower had managed this. In other words, Evan had been caught off guard and was wrenched from the starry skies.

This had inflicted upon him some kind of invisible yet grievous injury, one that affected his very soul.

Because, back then, he had been "melting."

Until now, Evan hadn't figured out how to describe the state he was in, nor could he understand what it signified. All he knew was that he had been melting, and that his soul had lost its shape.

When he had been yanked forcibly from the "room," Evan had been akin to a blob of agar dropped into a bowl of syrup, melding with “Him”. A portion of Evan had remained eternally within that unspeakable evil and darkness, and similarly, a part of “His” existence had gradually merged into Evan's soul—albeit miniscule.

Thus, Evan's world was vastly different from Alister's.

He could see curly black tentacles on Alister's back, fluttering in mid-air like wind-whipped banners, their tips coiled into small circles reminiscent of devil's ferns.

Alister had claimed not to have consumed the fruit of the magical plants whose branches and leaves had begun to mutate—but perhaps he had only recalled incorrectly.

Evan intuitively knew (perhaps this was a remnant of information left by “Him”) that those tentacles were the new seedlings of those fruits.

Unknown to Alister himself, his body was exuding a faint metallic odor.

Evan’s had an excruciating headache.

He felt like he had seen some things stirring beneath Alister's skin. Behind the red-haired mage, there were other things wriggling within the shadows.

“Ugh...”

He wanted to caution Alister, but no words came out.

God, Evan truly wished he could go mad, utterly mad, rather than remain trapped on the precipice between madness and clarity as he was then.

However, what had been astonishing was that Alister had, in a sense, understood Evan's murmurs.

"You... you are still Evan, right?"

Evan had heard the quaver in Alister’s voice.

He was crouching near Evan, yet he had not truly closed the gap.

"Mm..."

Evan nodded.

Alister swallowed his saliva and his Adam’s apple moved.

The tentacles on the back of the red-haired mage became even more translucent when exposed to the light. Initially, they appeared to have vanished, but Evan was aware that they remained where they had always been — on Alister's back. They would merely conceal themselves in the shadow realm when there was light.

Ah, the shadow realm.

In truth, Evan had never encountered this term before, nor had he ever come into contact with anything associated with it. Nevertheless, peculiar events unfolded. When he thought about the shadow realm (this term lingered in his mind, spoken in a strange language with a strange intonation), his perspective suddenly shifted.

The space beneath him was cloaked in dingy, somber hues. The passage of time left mottled traces on the stone walls. Large patches of mold in all colors crawled across the entirety of the floor and ceiling. 

The smell of metal was so strong in the air that it seemed as if it could condense into droplets of dark gray liquid metal, yet Alister... Alister manifested solely as a cluster of hollow shadows within this space.

Evan let out a muffled shriek.

Here, “His” presence was so potent that it nearly prompted Evan to believe he had returned to the starry skies once more.

Thud... thud...

Evan even felt that he could hear “His” calling.

It was dark, malevolent, and brimming with fervor and yearning.

Evan's heartstrings resonated with elation in response to that voice.

He was on the verge of responding to "Him", but perhaps the dying Goddess of Magic in the nether realm had bestowed upon him the last droplet of the sweet wine of fortune.

Back in reality, Alister nudged Evan.