Chapter 411 Possible

"Good night, my dear."

The sound preceded the arrival of the person. Along with the night wind, a few leaves swirled into the house from nowhere, accompanied by a strange and wonderful smell of burning spices. Magnus, still dressed as a bard, suddenly appeared behind the white gauze curtains that were blown by the wind.

Although he was an adult man and was wearing a hat with towering feathers and an exaggeratedly large and wide shape, the bard still squatted steadily on the narrow window sill of the professor's room, as if he were really a large parrot with bright colors and towering crest feathers.

Magnus took off his hat and gave a lazily awkward salute. "What brings you back to your loyal prophet, my Ghost Pavilion, after all this time? Oh."

He suddenly shut his mouth and, in a manner that could be considered offensive, carefully examined the black-haired young man's emotionless face. The other person was completely shrouded in moonlight, his face pale, and his shadow was stretched out behind him, becoming increasingly transparent due to his weakness.

"My Goddess of Fortune, sweetheart! What has happened?" Magnus cried in a panic. "Poisonous sorrow and despair are soaking your soul. You look so—haggard!"

Before the other party could answer, he said, "No, no, no, don't speak yet. Please let me guess--"

The bard leaped lightly from the windowsill, his fingertips casually plucking the broken, soundless strings of the lyre. He spoke solemnly in a sing-song, rhythmic tone: "I saw a child paddling a boat without oars alone in the lake. I saw him trying to touch his reflection with his hands, which disappeared with the flowing water... Meanwhile, an aging companion star was quietly fading."

"So it's an irrevocable farewell, sir?" the bard declared with rare solemnity, holding his lyre. "A person is leaving you completely, just as winter is about to take away the last dead leaf, and the long night is about to swallow up the last ray of sunlight?"

"...You already knew about Dels Rabelais's illness in advance, so why bother to fool me with the so-called 'prophecy'?" The black-haired young man raised his eyes coldly, and the bard's expression, which was covered by oil paint, froze almost imperceptibly.

Since he was looking for a healer under the Ghost's personal name, this information shouldn't be difficult to obtain. The professor didn't believe that Magnus, with his abilities, wouldn't know anything about this—so why was this guy acting so pretentiously in front of him... Did he suddenly lose his mind? Or was there something else going on?

"Oh, sorry, my occupational disease has come on." The bard touched his nose awkwardly and gave people a very smooth and ingratiating smile.

"By the way, where's Lord Azuka?" He stood up straight as if nothing had happened, pacing around the room, looking around, muttering to himself, "It's really strange that Lord Azuka would actually let you and me be alone together..."

"You can try to attack me." The professor narrowed his eyes slightly and stared calmly at the bard who seemed to be trying to change the subject. "Then you will understand why he is 'reassured'."

"Oh, you're really wronging me!" Magnus immediately raised his hands in surrender. "I still want to live a few more years. How dare I have any improper thoughts in front of you and that gentleman?"

The bard leaned closer tentatively and quipped in a sly, gossipy tone, "But with all due respect, your beautiful, formidable, and extremely difficult lover is a bit...jealous."

"First of all, we are lovers," the professor said coldly. "Secondly, I will tell him this as it is."

"No, sir! Please don't! You're not cute at all!" The bard suddenly jumped away exaggeratedly, his eyes wide open and wailing, as if he had been burned by a pair of tongs. However, the professor did not see any real fear on his face, but rather a kind of excitement like playing with fire.

"That's enough," the black-haired young man said gloomily. "Enough of this roundabout nonsense."

At this moment, he really wasn't in the mood to play tricks on others.

"Well, well, what an impatient Majesty..." the bard muttered quickly and quietly. He stepped back, holding his lyre, and asked seriously, "So what do you want to know by summoning me here?"

"Regarding Lionel Money's attempt to 'resurrect' Victoria Money," the professor said calmly.

The exaggerated smile on Magnus's face remained unchanged, but his acid green eyes suddenly took on an exceptionally cold and captivating glow at certain angles.

"I saw a similar example again in the North, except that the people of Ferros chose to replace direct blood relations through 'devouring'." The professor began to briefly introduce what he saw and heard in the North with an expressionless face.

As he spoke, he carefully observed the subtle changes in expression on the bard's face - the cracked and stiff oil paint had affected his judgment to some extent. The professor was not sure whether the bard deliberately made his face look like this in order to resist the tyrant's terrible observation ability as seen in the prophecy.

"Your Excellency, I can tell you very clearly," the bard replied decisively, "Those foolish and arrogant fellows will only be 'awake' for a very brief moment in another body before dying completely in unimaginable fear and pain."

"Many throughout history have attempted to conquer death," Magnus warned seriously, noticing the man's thoughtful expression. "But no one has ever succeeded—no one, sir, not even the best of them, including the gods."

...What exactly does the tyrant want to do?

Magnus stared at the black-haired young man, whose thoughts were completely unrecognizable, and his heart began to beat wildly and uncontrollably.

He was obviously a saint and the other party was an ordinary person, but from an angle invisible to others, cold sweat was creeping up the back of the future god of destiny. He also felt that the world was becoming shaky again, and the heavy weight of fate was weighing on his tongue.

What if this world's tyrant, in order to prolong his teacher's life, or even to resurrect him, was willing to follow the old path of the gods...

If it really came to this...

——Then he should try his best to kill him at this moment, at any cost.

"But the gods won't accept this." The professor stared at him expressionlessly. "They'll risk everything and try to find every possible opportunity to resurrect."

"Yes, they'll go all out," Magnus repeated automatically.

"If that's the case," the black-haired young man said word by word, his voice frighteningly soft, "then my teacher's sudden contraction of 'rot' is also the work of the gods?"

"—in order to force me to align with them?"

…

Magnus left without answering the fatal question, and left with a very complicated expression that the professor could not interpret for a moment.

The black-haired young man sat back on the bed, staring silently into the void, like a lifeless sculpture in the moonlight.

I don't know how much time passed, until the sky was faintly turning pale, the birds started chirping, and a figure quietly pushed open the door with an almost inaudible creaking sound. The scent of night dew and evening breeze blew in his face. The professor seemed to be awakened by a trance, his eyes moved slightly, and he looked at the person who came.

The man was taking off his coat and hanging it on the hanger. When he met those empty, smoky-gray eyes, he paused slightly, then approached him, lowered his head, cupped his face, and kissed his pale, cold forehead.

...For a moment, Nova felt himself being pulled back to the world by that moist and cool kiss, softer than snowflakes.

"Didn't sleep all night?" Azuka, who had just returned from Baita University, sighed knowingly.

Before anyone could speak, he replied in a low voice: "It is true that Mr. Rabelais is not in good health... but it is not too bad."

"I've also arranged things for Baita University." The savior pulled the person into his arms, patting his back intermittently. "I'm here, don't worry."

"...How long will it take?" the professor asked in a low voice.

The other person's voice was very soft, as if afraid of startling something: "About a year at most."

This is on the premise that he regularly uses his divine power to restore the injuries of diseased organs - but at least there is a time buffer, which is much better than the sudden arrival of bad news.

The professor was silent for a moment, then slowly buried his cheek in his lover's shoulder, giving him his weight. "...I hope you'll have a hard time in the future."

"You don't have to tell me this." Azuka hugged him tighter.

He touched his lover's cold neck with a distressed look, thought for a moment, and whispered, "It's still a while before dawn, I'll hold you and let you sleep for a while, okay?"

“…”

No answer, that was tacit consent. Azuka held the person and lay down, holding him tightly in his arms. His fingers dug into the person's hair, and he gently massaged the person to relieve the pain caused by the sleepless night.

After a long time, just when he thought the other person had fallen asleep, the person in his arms suddenly said, "Magnus was here."

The savior, who had already sensed the unusual magical fluctuations and recognized who it belonged to, responded calmly, his fingers moving non-stop.

"He said bad things about you," the black-haired young man said expressionlessly, as if to lighten the mood or prove to him that "I'm fine," "I threatened him that I would complain to you."

Azuka chuckled cooperatively, "Remember, I'll beat him up next time we meet."

There was silence again, and the Savior waited very patiently.

Finally, the other party whispered: "...I'm scared."

Azuka paused, hugged the man tighter, and listened quietly as he poured out the things that had been tormenting him from the beginning. "Intellectually, I understand that if everything is really as I think, then the gods are the culprits of all the misfortune... or rather, this is already a fait accompli."

"They destroyed you, destroyed the me that I once was, destroyed Aure and Marshilin, and destroyed so many innocent people..." His voice gradually faded. "Or perhaps this tragedy has happened countless times, and the sacrifices aren't just you and me, or the people around us, or my teacher or your mother."

"Don't worry, I won't collapse, nor will I lose control." The tyrant's tone was remarkably calm, with a hint of cold indifference and bloodiness: "I will not be stopped by the sins of the wicked. I will keep going, I will triumph, and I will kill them all."

"...But sometimes, I still can't help but think about the teacher's illness over and over again. There's another possibility that I meanly don't want to and dare not prove, but it still exists, and that's because 'I care about him.'"