WolfWrites

The Undying Magician - Book 2 - Chapter 24 - Freedom (Patreon)

Published:

2022-12-21 06:30:21

Imported:

2023-02

Content

Nathan
Year 2849 | Month 10 | Day 22

Surprisingly, I don’t find the bastard on the other side of the door. In fact, I don’t even find the miasma that used to be coating the walls and floors.

Did the skeleton withdraw all of his miasma after getting free? And how did he even get free in the first place?

I frown as question after question pops into my head, but before long I decide to make sure that he didn’t mess with my terminal. But the moment I touch it, making it begin booting up, I realize that he somehow turned it off. Which is something I could never do.

Interesting. I’m in half a mind to ask him how to do that before eventually finding a way to seal him back up.

Stupid death magicians and their stupid immortality.

Not that I’m one to talk.

I can’t help but notice that the raging hunger has abated slightly after leaving the presence of the corpse, so that’s a plus. But the idea of being hungry for dead flesh in the first place, much less living flesh is… rather… what?

My thoughts trail off as I find a portal appearing in front of me the instant my terminal finished booting up, making me stop walking. Then the doctor steps out of the portal with a scowl on his usually emotionless face.

That can’t be good.

To make matters worse, I hear the skeleton’s voice reverberating through the halls before he even arrives just seconds later, “Who dares break into my abode?!”

Oh. Right. The doctor was spying on me through my terminal, and probably wasn’t very happy to have someone else messing with his experiment.

My eyes widen at this before a faint smile appears on my face at the thought of him avenging my loss of humanity for me, only for it to be wiped away the instant the doctor’s smell enters my nose, making me have an urge to bite him. One that leaves me feeling disgusted just at the thought of it.

The doctor seems to notice my change in expressions, only to then be startled by the physical changes to my appearance and the black veins going down my face from the bloodlust I’m settling into right now.

I grit my teeth to help hold myself back from doing anything I’d regret right as the doctor turns to look at the skeleton with a look I haven’t seen before since the first time he found out about my immortality.

One that makes my stomach drop in fright.

“Are you the one who did this to my subject?” the doctor asks in an equally authoritative and interested tone to the skeleton without answering the death magician’s question. Which seems to piss the skeleton off for a moment, only for the anger to dissipate from his gaze once he notices the doctor’s direct manipulation of the space mana around us and realizes his Class.

Why doesn’t the doctor appear surprised that the skeleton exists? Or does he not know who he is?

The skeleton responds without using the power I felt earlier in his voice, “Correct, but you have it wrong. He was my test subject.”

And just like that, the interest in the doctor’s face turns cold again as he manipulates the spatial mana in the surroundings to grow wild, slicing things apart at random. Including me.

I grunt while falling to my knees as small blades of purple mana cut straight through me over and over before I slowly drag myself away from the two. But just a couple of seconds later, a thick aura of death mana – which is the first I’ve seen of it outside of those vials – spreads out to combat the spatial mana. And the death mana surprisingly begins to heal me even faster than my immortality, making me question what the hell is going on.

I’m also not the only one to notice this, as the two Class S magicians stop glaring at each other to look at me with curiosity in their eyes. But they quickly turn back to each other as the skeleton says, “My experiments on the child were a success. But how did yours turn out?”

The doctor actually winces at that, apparently having been cut pretty deep by his words.

He has a point.

Wait, I shouldn’t be agreeing with either of them. Just let me out of this hellhole, pleeeaase!!!

The doctor says something in response to the skeleton, but I stop paying attention at this point and continue crawling down the hall until I can walk again and quickly break into a sprint. I rush out of the hallway and don’t even bother with the stairs, just jumping straight down to the ground below where I actually manage to land on my feet, albeit with a little bit of pain and a faint creaking sound from my bones that heals rather quickly.

Huh. Guess this strength is coming in handy after all.

Right before I open the door to leave, I hear the skeleton’s voice echoing in my ear rather quietly, “Take this as a reward for freeing me from my cage.”

My eyes widen at that, both in fear and curiosity, but I slam the doors open and begin rushing away from the large tree with abandon, not bothering with understanding what he meant by that. At least not until nearly half an hour later, when I finally come to a stop and realize that something’s missing.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit!

The terminal is gone… the skeleton must have destroyed the terminal entirely when he used that death mana!

Did… did the skeleton just free me from the doctor? Mostly, that is. Considering that he still has my parents.

Wait, there’s still the storage device…

I reach out to grab it, only to find that it looks different from before. And when I activate it, I find that it’s been set to a different set of coordinates entirely, albeit still in the fire plane.

Did he change this out with another device? Or did he rewrite the script himself?

I don’t… what… huh? Is that skeleton not a complete jerk after all?

And he even moved everything I had in the storage to this new one… including the star diagram that I took from him.

Is this his attempt at paying me back for experimenting on me without my permission? Or is…

His last words to me replay in my mind.

So he was repaying me for saving him, not for experimenting on me? That’s…

I blankly stare at the storage device for several seconds trying to think of something, anything, that would fit my thoughts on the matter. But nothing comes to mind.

And out of nowhere, I find the illusion around me of the dead forest suddenly shattering, following which I end up standing in the middle of a clearing. One with actual greenery.

Did he just kick me out of his illusion trap? Also, is this really still the Kingdom of the Dead? Because it doesn’t look very dead to me…

Question after question after question continues to fill my mind, but I ignore them all to focus on the here and now. And on the irritating sensation of thirst that I’ve been feeling for over a month now.

I want water.

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