Chapter 5

Living an immortal life wasn’t entirely the worst. Because I was imperishable, I didn’t age or fall ill.
If something got cut off, it regenerated like a lizard’s tail. My eyesight never worsened, my teeth never decayed. That part, at least, was delightful. It was a blessing to live carelessly without my body falling apart. Rich men and people of power constantly envied my condition.

Except for the moments when a crushing boredom hit me like madness, I made good use of my inability to die and lived comfortably. Watching the world change was, at times, amusing.
I’d sit across a river, sipping wine, leisurely observing other nations’ struggles for the throne as if they were fireworks.

But after about four hundred years, even that lost its charm.

I had served as a palace mage, contracted myself as a mercenary in wars… I’d even spent several decades conducting magical experiments because the Tower brats begged and groveled.
I earned the title of Great Sage at two hundred, explored uncharted lands with non-human tribes, and watched the continent’s dominant religion shift after a hundred-year-long cold war.

Anyone who might’ve been called a “friend” died after a few decades at most. Every time I saw an Emperor of the Robein Empire, he was either withered like an old tree or replaced by someone new.
And because of religious shifts, temples were torn down and rebuilt dozens upon dozens of times.

Two hundred years ago, a vast grassland transformed into a desert.
After witnessing that, I grew detached from the world, and desire itself gradually evaporated. Like a proper immortal, everything became bothersome.

So at some point, I built an atelier in the Southern Forest and shut myself away.
To survive as an immortal, one must master the art of wasting time and emotions. Used carelessly, either could easily turn you into a lunatic.

Honestly, on several occasions during my 400-year life, I thought I was truly losing my mind.
Living long means witnessing every filth the world has to offer.

If I could’ve, I would’ve dug up Yekarina’s coffin—now probably nothing but dust—and shouted, “Why did your daughters only ever give birth to daughters? Stop the witch-multiplying!”
But the dead do not speak. Unless I turned to necromancy—which would violate nature to an obscene degree—complaining to her was impossible.

So I had to find the living.

To meet Irkus—the protagonist of this world, descendant of Yekarina, and the one most likely to become the next Emperor of the Robein Empire—I left the atelier and walked twenty-nine steps east.
Just those few steps put me in such a good mood that I hummed under my breath. Whoever he was, I hoped he’d hurry up and kill me like the protagonist he was.

When I approached the spot Gilbert mentioned, softening my footsteps, I found—indeed—a breathtakingly beautiful boy.
Ah… as expected, protagonists in fantasy novels carried an unmistakable aura.

Wearing shabby clothes, dried blood matting his hair, a fierce expression twisting his face—the blonde boy turned to look at me.

“Irkus?”
“……”

Despite his ragged state, two eyes—like whole amethysts carved to perfection—stared into mine.

In ten years, he’d grow into a devastatingly beautiful young man.
I extended my right hand toward Irkus, who was pinned helplessly by Dane.

“Who are you?”
“……”
“Why are you helping me?”

He truly had the protagonist’s temperament—sharp and brash.
A child his age ought to exclaim, Oh! You saved me! Thank you so much! and cling to an adult’s hand.

I was exhausted already, but I forced a smile so as not to reveal my irritation.
My facial muscles, unused for years, screamed in protest.

He’s the protagonist.
Offending a protagonist in a fantasy world only demotes you to villain status. And villains suffer far more than any annoyance I’d endured in the last 400 years.

“I’m not doing charity, so don’t worry about it. Take my hand. Do you want to die here? Ash trees show no mercy to humans.”

Of course, even if I didn’t help, he would survive and return to the palace.

Because Irkus was the protagonist.
Even at twelve, he was a powerful witch’s descendant. Whether he knew magic or not, the sheer amount of mana in him was immense. He’d even instinctively broken through the barrier I—a Great Sage—had cast over the forest.

Not even mid-ranking mages could do that easily.
By every definition of the modern Korean term, he was a “munchkin”—overpowered beyond reason.

The only reason Dane, the most hostile of the tree spirits and infamous for hating humans, hadn’t directly attacked him and was instead just blocking his path was simple:
Even Dane knew an attack might not work. Worse, he might get counterattacked.
Imagine being a centuries-old tree spirit and losing to a twelve-year-old boy—you’d die of humiliation before injury.

I quickly tried to remember what Irkus was like in The Book of Irkus.
But all I recalled was the stiff, humorless prose. The intricacies of his personality were long gone from my memory.

Understandable, though. I’d only just recalled the key line describing him as a witch’s descendant. My brain preferred remembering stray English words from CSAT prep books instead. Truly unreliable.

But I didn’t have the luxury of choosing.
For the first time in nearly 400 years, I had encountered an heir of Yekarina who was not a witch and was close to the throne.
And not only that—he was already a prince. A person with zero reason to resist becoming Emperor.

I was genuinely moved.

Who was your mother, dear child?
Which witch fell for a random human and miraculously produced you?
I was one step away from turning into a nosy neighborhood grandma.

Forget all that—let’s just make you Emperor at twelve.
You become Emperor in one volume, not seventeen, and I die at 400. Perfect plan.

I stared pointedly at his small head as he doubted my outstretched hand.

Just grab it.
I wanted to whine: Look, I helped your mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother. You can trust me, really.

“Great Sage of the Southern Forest…”

Before I could embarrass myself, the boy’s neatly shaped lips whispered the title.

Hearing someone else say my title felt strange.
Even stranger was hearing it from a twelve-year-old.
I thought my fame had faded after centuries of seclusion, but apparently not.
Immortals do tend to stay the talk of the continent among people desperate to live long.

Irkus timidly reached out and took my hand. It was large for his age, but still much smaller than mine.

I yanked him into my arms with a firm pull.
His young, still-growing body resisted for a moment before tumbling into me.

“Yes, I am the Great Sage. Descendant of Yekarina.”

????????????

By forty, I was quite kind to children. At that age, I found them genuinely cute.
Since my appearance hadn’t changed much from when I was nineteen, people probably thought a child was doting on another child.

When I passed a hundred, I even became obsessed with volunteerism. I fought as a mercenary for a kingdom invaded by foreign forces—true charity. I expected nothing in return; I simply wanted to save the children who were being crushed by war.

That kingdom is the present-day Kaman Kingdom.

After I strengthened their national power and returned home, the bastards couldn’t keep themselves in check. They immediately used their newfound strength to invade neighboring small kingdoms under the excuse of “territorial expansion” and “national pride.”

The worst part?
These Kaman brats tricked me into signing a magical contract when I was still naïve.

When a powerful mage arrives to help as a mercenary, you should bow politely and say, “Welcome, honored one.”
Instead, they demanded trust-building before I could even join the war.
Even now, the memory disgusts me.

“Great Sage Yuan shall not attack or kill any member of Kaman’s royal family. He shall not commit any act that endangers their lives.”

That was the clause in my very first magical contract.

Incredibly cunning bastards.
They exploited a mage who only wanted to help children and bound me with terms favorable only to themselves.

Kaman’s ruling class had always been garbage. I should’ve punched their shiny, well-fed faces a few times before signing anything.

If witches can cast blessings and curses, mages can execute magical contracts.

Mages decode the contract’s formula, draw a magic circle, and negotiate the terms.
Once both parties place their hands on the circle, the contract is sealed.

Witches are stronger overall, but mages have better cost efficiency—that reputation didn’t exist for nothing.

A magical contract needed no special conditions to execute, and breaking it incurred unpredictable penalties.
So many people wanted mages for partnerships or employment.

But mages hated receiving contract requests that shackled them. I hated it too.
Still, back then I still possessed something resembling “justice,” so I signed the contract with Kaman out of a sense of duty—war had to end quickly.

Left unchecked, that war would have destroyed the kingdom and flooded the continent with corpses.
And while I couldn’t die, the extinction of humanity would be a problem.
Non-human species spoke different languages—I’d have to learn an entirely new one again.

If I’d known those Kaman bastards would start another war as soon as the first one ended, I would never have signed.

Humans should never be trusted.

Once Kaman succeeded in tricking me, countless others began approaching me after the war, brandishing magical contracts and begging me to act as their mercenary.

All thieves at heart.
Weak nations thought I’d help them simply because they were weak, and some even used the elderly or children to emotionally manipulate me.
In that short period, my faith in humanity evaporated completely.

After seeing this cycle repeat, I quit charity entirely.
The children I saved grew up to be complacent adults, only to come crawling back later.

“I’m that child you saved… I’ve grown into a corrupt official. I want to conquer a neighboring nation—will you help if we declare war?”

Ungrateful scum, every one of them.

By the time I reached three hundred, I was completely sick of humans.
Living reclusively and studying magic sounded far preferable.
Of course, even that became tedious after a few decades.

The point is this:

I may be human, but humans are truly awful.