Chapter 4

For a witch’s blessing or curse to be perfectly enacted, three conditions must be met.

First, the witch must know the target’s true name. In this world, I was called simply “Yuan,” without a surname. But Yekarina was the one who taught me the common tongue, so she knew my real name—Han Yuan.

Second, the witch and the target must be physically connected. They must be holding hands, or at the very least, touching fingertip to fingertip, for the blessing or curse to manifest.

Third, the witch must be capable of bearing the backlash of the blessing or curse. For example, no matter how long a witch has lived, granting someone immortality is impossible. The witch cannot withstand the recoil such a blessing or curse would produce.

Only when all these conditions are fulfilled can a witch bless or curse someone.

Because of this, the number of witches who actually bestow blessings or curses is extremely small. This is also why ordinary people do not persecute witches—unlike mages—despite witches having powers beyond magic. The truth is, blessings and curses almost never fully manifest.

“I don’t need that kind of blessing. My goal is to die in perfect health, at my peak. Immortality is the kind of thing only someone like Qin Shi Huang would want…”
“Yuan.”
“Just because you saved me… or because you’re my teacher doesn’t give you the right to keep me alive. Understood?”
“I want to entrust my children to you.”

Since childhood, I’d been practical and calculating, so I’d never once dreamed of eternal life.

Even during my school days, my fantasy was to earn a lot of money, fly to Switzerland, and receive euthanasia precisely when I wanted—not to live forever without aging or dying. I was not the material for a Qin Shi Huang.

But I couldn’t refuse Yekarina’s final blessing.

She was entrusting her children to me—how could I heartlessly say no? At that time, she had only two descendants, both daughters, and if they stayed in the palace, they would inevitably die the same way she would—worn down and sick.

That bastard Emperor was only thinking about how to mold the two daughters born between him and Yekarina into efficient witches he could exploit just like her. Execution? I should’ve displayed his head on the city gate with the warmth and sincerity befitting the Korean spirit of vengeance.

But back then, I had not yet earned the title of Great Sage, and my magic was laughable compared to what it is now. As I’ve said, I’m not a genius—I’m a prodigy. My preheating time is long.

If it were the present me, I could simply fire off a few dozen lightning strikes and change the regime in an instant, but the only thing the old me could do was risk my life deceiving the Emperor so Yekarina’s daughters could escape the palace and grow into independent witches.

“You truly are the worst witch, Yekarina.”
“But also the best witch, right?”
“…Annoying.”
“When my children grow up to become Emperor, you’ll be free too.”
“Is this a contract?”
“No. This is a blessing for you.”

Blessing, my ass.
It was an immortality curse.

I spent about 300 years thinking over how an impossible immortality curse could have succeeded, but I still don’t know.

Maybe it was Yekarina’s fierce will to ensure her daughters would live as independent witches.
Maybe the guilt I felt toward her affected the witch’s curse.

Yekarina was a powerful witch, but she had overused her magic for that bastard Emperor, and by the time she was near death, she was incredibly weakened.

And yet she succeeded in granting the immortality found only in legends and fairy tales—bestowed by witches on the brink of death.

Life truly is unpredictable. Deathbed blessings and curses are special, yes, but even Yekarina would never have imagined that such a broken, cheat-like blessing would work.
Thanks to her, I died and came to this world… only to then be unable to die here either.

If she had the power to grant immortality, she should’ve used it on herself. She really was a foolish witch.

After becoming unable to die, I lived for about fifty years solely for Yekarina’s sake—doing everything in my power to ensure her daughters could grow up safely as proper witches.

Despite my efforts, one of her daughters eventually married a normal human. The other did manage to live a decent life as a witch before dying.

Unfortunately, neither daughter became Emperor of the Robein Empire.

If they had only wanted it, I would’ve gladly cut off the Emperor’s head for them. But like mother, like daughters—they were only interested in strange things and had zero ambition for the throne.

Even after them, Yekarina’s granddaughters, great-granddaughters… every distant descendant had no interest in the throne.

Of course. Witches fell ill the moment they lived among humans.

It was astonishing that only daughters were born each generation. More astonishing still that one or two always fell in love with humans, had descendants, and died. None ever thought of becoming Emperor—making my continued existence the strangest miracle of all.

So I longed for Yekarina for a very long time. For the first hundred years after her death, I even resented her enough to wish I could revive her just to kill her again. For the next two hundred, I forgot her entirely.

Witch Yekarina.
And her… finally, a biological male descendant—someone who might actually be capable of claiming the throne, since he could not become a witch.

One sentence kept resurfacing in my mind, looping back across four centuries. A single line from the early pages of The Book of Irkus:
Irkus Robein, protagonist of the novel, is “a descendant of a witch.”

And only now did I remember it. Truly, I am the champion of stupidity. This is why prodigies are never geniuses.

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

“Where is the intruder?”
[Not far from your atelier. From the moment you step outside and look straight ahead—twenty-nine steps east.]
“Will he die if we leave him alone?”
[No. Considering how much trouble Dane is having, he’ll probably survive and find his way out just fine.]
“Bloodline never lies.”

For the first time in ages, I pulled on my robe.

Black hair and black eyes remained an omen of misfortune in the Robein Empire even after four centuries. In a world where humans could use magic, judging people by hair or eye color was painfully narrow-minded.

“That kid—he’s blonde, right?”
[How did you know?]
“In fantasy worlds, protagonists are usually black-haired or blonde. Occasionally red-haired.”

Gilbert let my words pass in one figurative ear and out the other. I’m not even sure tree spirits have ears. He didn’t question my use of the term “protagonist” at all.

He definitely thought I was spouting nonsense again. Truly ungrateful, these tree spirits.

Because Yekarina’s daughters had zero interest in the throne, I’d spent centuries searching for someone else who might kill me—humans, non-humans, anything remotely unusual. Whenever I found a strong creature, I asked them politely, “Would you try killing me?”
Despite all my efforts, they almost always died before I did.

The last creature I asked—a dragon who was roughly my age—was killed in its sleep by a dragon slayer barely twenty years old.

When I heard the dragon was dead, I felt deeply wronged.
So that thing dies, but I can’t? Dragons have slayers—why isn’t there a Great Sage Slayer? How is this fair?

After years of contemplating how to die beautifully, I came to this conclusion:

If, someday, a descendant of Yekarina who was not a witch were to be born… I would die at his hand.
It might take time, but her daughters always had that “falls-in-love-too-easily” trait, and one or two would always leave descendants.

Surely, one would be born who dreamed of becoming Emperor.
Then I could raise him swiftly to the throne and politely request death.

It was a completely hopeless death plan. But I genuinely had no other option.

I had asked Yekarina’s daughters over two hundred times,
“Would you please try killing me?”
but I didn’t die. I even tried forcing them onto the throne, but they refused every attempt.

Their reasons were all over the place:
“I can’t marry the enemy prince if I become Emperor,”
or
“I’m a witch—why should I live among humans?”
All understandable, but maddening.

They were stubborn witches, making it almost impossible to force them.

I didn’t want to be cruel to Yekarina’s descendants either, but fundamentally, none of them listened to me.

Forcing them onto the throne reminded me too much of Yekarina, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Asking didn’t work. Persuasion didn’t work.

It drove me insane. Watching witches who rejected power so completely… it felt like witnessing a pure Buddhist doctrine of non-possession.

What does a contract with my ancestor have to do with me?
That was the default witch attitude. One descendant even said she would exterminate humanity if she became Emperor, so I told her not to do it at all.

My mental state deteriorated steadily. To survive immortality, one must stay sane—but sanity, like all things, wears thin in an endless life.

Eventually, I chose the final option:
Forget thinking. Seclude myself. Sleep until a new generation rises and a potential Emperor appears, then wake up and deal with it.

If even that failed… then accept immortality. Surely if I lived to around a thousand, I’d think of some revolutionary way to die.

That was five years before I met Irkus.

And then suddenly, the protagonist of this world—Irkus—rolled straight into the Southern Forest on my four-hundredth birthday, without even a decorative ribbon.

A descendant of Yekarina, the protagonist, destined to become Emperor no matter what…
He didn’t scream, “I’ve come to kill you!” but he still rolled right to my doorstep.

Even dragons—the longest-lived beings in this world—usually died before reaching five hundred.
Clearly, the world was trying its best to kill me before I turned five hundred.