Rebirth of the 8th-Circle Mage - Chapter 348: Clue (1)

It had been half a year since then.

Half a year—for some, it was a long time, and for others, it was short.

For those living in the present, the past six months had been quite turbulent, with many things changing in the blink of an eye.

At the center of the turbulence was the newly founded nation of Morris, made up of the remnants of humanity.

The nation had been named after Henry. The once ordinary surname Morris had become the name of a great dynasty that dominated the new era.

When Henry became the king of Morris, he promised the people peace by declaring the establishment of the kingdom. And within half a year, that promise became a reality.

With Monsieur as its capital, the Kingdom of Morris began a new era, unifying people from all over the continent, people with different cultures and religions. Bringing them together had been surprisingly simple.

By taking care of the people’s problems, including food shortages and combating crime with a decent level of security, everyone complied with the policies of Morris.

Of course, not everything was perfect from the start. Some people had been skeptical at first, but Henry’s quick accomplishments had ultimately managed to bring together the rest of humanity as one.

The people gained a sense of stability after the king guaranteed them food and security.

Morris was initially filled with chaos and uncertainty, but once famine and crime were dealt with, people naturally started to develop, with the intellectual class igniting the spark of evolution.

Monsieur had many bright minds.

The artisans of various disciplines who already lived in Monsieur, along with the minstrels and historians who had joined the refugees, served as prime examples.

As soon as their worries about food, clothing, and shelter were resolved, they immediately returned to their original professions and generously shared their knowledge and talents with ordinary people.

The era of cultural development had arrived, and with that, everyone in Morris was convinced that they were living in a time of peace. The people immersed themselves in the golden era and promoted the development of Morris in order to inscribe their names in the history of the kingdom.

It seemed like the happy ending of any good novel.

That was the case for everyone except Henry. He was the sole figure of authority in the Kingdom of Morris, the only person with power, but he hadn’t shown his face much to the people.

After solving the problem of food shortage, he locked himself away in the Snow Spire with a handful of wizards, claiming he had work to do.

From that point on, the wizards’ official spire was also moved to Morris because Henry had decreed that the spire should be among the people for their convenience. They called it the Leaning Spire, and they picked that name because the spire was meant to be a place of comfort, something that the people of Morris could lean on.

Henry kept two of the three teams in the Leaning Spire and only allowed his own research team to enter the Snow Spire. He hadn’t moved the laboratory to the Leaning Spire.

For half a year, Henry and his wizards fought one of the most silent and fierce battles in the world, desperately trying to find a way to turn the blind believers back to the way they had been.

The scent of blood never left the Snow Spire.

Given that all the wizards that weren’t in Henry’s team had moved to the Leaning Spire, Henry expanded the laboratory with the blind believers. Previously confined to a single floor, the laboratory now encompassed the entire Snow Spire.

***

Henry’s voice rang in the lab.

“Next.”

The smell of searing flesh caused Henry’s nose to sting. Every time an experiment failed, the test subject was incinerated right away.

They had just burnt another blind believer, but Henry’s expression remained impassive. He merely scanned the numerous formulas that were spread out in the air and prepared for the next experiment.

Soon, a new blind believer emerged from the underground prison. He didn’t move at all, as though time had stopped for him alone, and he didn’t groan either.

Henry had taken steps to ensure that the test subjects couldn’t move or make any noise. The reason for that was simple—even though the blind believers wouldn’t move or make enough noise to hinder the experiment itself, their acting human would take a toll on the sanity of Henry and his colleagues.

Thus, Henry transformed the blind believers into the ideal test subjects, a bunch of lifeless puppets, aiming to preserve his mental well-being.

“Start.”

Next and start—their conversations were limited to those two words.

At Henry’s command, a ray of light burst from around the lifeless blind believer.

This energy was different from the strange light he had seen earlier in the experiments. The light was so bright and overwhelming that it would force anyone to squint, but Henry didn’t blink an eye.

His unwavering gaze was fixed on his test subject. Perhaps this one would…

The same acrid smell filled his nostrils. This time, the head didn’t explode. It merely ignited and burned until it was completely charred.

It was another failure.

“Next.”

Scribble, scribble.

Henry’s command was followed by the sound of something being written down. The experiment was being recorded in the lab journal. By this point, they had filled hundreds of sheets of paper.

Along with his command, Henry erased some of the writing in the air with his hand because there was no reason to leave a failed formula behind.

“We’ve run out of test subjects, Your Majesty.”

It was Lore.

Ever since the Kingdom of Morris had been founded, everyone started addressing Henry as their king. Of course, Henry preferred to be addressed with “Archmage”, but Lore insisted. He felt that he would forget that Henry was his king if he didn’t address him accordingly.

Lore informed Henry that the underground prison had run out of blind believers.

“…Let’s stop here for today,” said Henry.

“Then we’ll leave for today, Your Majesty.”

Now that they had run out of test subjects, they could no longer perform any more experiments for the day. With that, Lore and his team quickly left.

Lore had left so swiftly because, at some point, Henry had stopped making conversation or even smiling. The continuous experiments had taken a toll on his mind.

Lore was aware of that, so he was trying to be considerate of Henry. Before leaving for Morris, he watched Henry stare at him with a dull gaze and remembered the first head of the spire.

His name was also Henry Morris.

Just like this Henry, he had also abstained from any unnecessary conversation and always suppressed his emotions when immersed in his experiments.

After he arrived at Morris, Lore turned toward the direction of the Snow Spire and heaved a sigh.

‘If only you’d let us carry some of the burden…’

Whenever they ran out of blind believers to use as test subjects, they could just go out and bring in some more, since there were plenty of them out there.

But at some point, Henry had stopped asking the wizards to bring them because he felt that it would take a toll on their mental health.

Of course, the wizards insisted that they were okay with it, but Henry remained firm. They then realized that following Henry’s orders would take some of the pressure off of him, so they complied.

After the team disappeared, Henry looked at the spot where his colleagues had been and muttered to himself, “Is today another day of failure?”

It had already been half a year.

Henry had done as he had said and founded a new kingdom, worked out the laws that would be used to govern it, and solved the famine and security issues.

As a result, without having to decide a new state religion, Henry was the sole god that the people of Morris worshiped.

One could safely say that the era of peace had begun. But even so, Henry felt no peace, and he couldn’t so much as smile.

He had accomplished most of what he had planned, but he hadn’t solved the most important problem of all—the blind believers.

“Klever.”

– Yes, Master.

“Take care of it today as well.”

– Understood.

By this point, Klever had finished evolving; he had been reborn into a new being.

He was still a Mimic, and he maintained the characteristics of one, but he was the first demonic beast to eat a Demon King, namely Brillente.

Furthermore, servants were affected by their master’s mana, so in terms of overall power—both in mana and physical strength—Klever had grown far more powerful than Brillente.

But despite evolving into such a powerful being, Klever hadn’t turned against Henry. In fact, the thought had never even crossed his mind. Despite his tremendous evolution, Henry was still leagues above him in terms of power.

Henry asked Klever to bring him more blind believers. It was already mentally exhausting for him to perform human experiments all day long, so to also bring in the blind believers by himself would be too much.

Following Lore, Klever disappeared, and Henry slumped in the soft chair he had set aside in the lab. He realized it was night already.

Considering that he usually didn’t finish work until almost midnight, he had finished early that day. He closed his eyes and sank into his chair like melted butter.

In truth, he wasn’t physically tired. Henry’s stamina had reached its peak ever since he had taken up swordsmanship. Besides, the only physical activity he did during the day was standing around and distributing his mana.

The real problem was in his head.

He had started from scratch, pursuing his goals and experimenting on the blind believers without a clear plan, trying every method he could think of.

There was nothing wrong with his approach. Experiments were more or less conducted the same way regardless of what the research was about, but as they accumulated more data, Henry was getting progressively more anxious.

‘Am I hoping for something that’s impossible to begin with?’

Doubts had been creeping up in his mind recently.

One couldn’t afford to have negative thoughts when conducting experiments. A wizard who didn’t believe in themselves would never make any great discoveries.

But as the data piled up, Henry couldn’t dispel his pessimism, and it was all because of the blind believers.

Henry’s experiments were about restoring their emotions, their humanity, which had been forcefully removed, stolen from them. In other words, he was trying to make something that was missing come back. Or rather, he was trying to create something out of nothing.

It was a most difficult task, much different from inventing something by synthesizing or destroying it.

However, Henry had no choice but to succeed. After all, failure meant killing every single blind believer on the continent.

So, Henry analyzed the blind believers as closely and as meticulously as he could. But no matter how carefully he analyzed their brains, he couldn’t find any lesions or magic formulas.

There was nothing to trace back to their previous state. It was as though the blind believers had been born that way.

Thus, it was only natural for Henry to be disheartened.

There was no sign of magic formulas, divine power, or even the slightest hint of a medical procedure having been done on these blind believers, so Henry wasn’t even sure if his current method of experimentation was the right one.

“Ha…”

He had a lot on his mind.

He had perfectly handled everything, from the burial of his old allies who had died at Arthus’ hands, to the new kingdom and the future of humanity. He had done everything except for one thing—he still hadn’t found a way to save those pitiful blind believers, which gave him a headache every day.

Henry shook his head and glanced again at the numerous runes he had left in the air. There were many formulas he had yet to use.

He didn’t know if any of them would give him the answer he was looking for, but uncertainty wasn’t an excuse to stop the experiments.

If he could, he wanted to summon that sadistic monster, Dracan, and question him as to how he had created the blind believers.

But at that moment, a light bulb went off in Henry’s head.

“…Dracan himself?”

He jumped from his chair as the thought flashed through his mind. He smiled as though he had just made a great discovery.

It was the first time in months that his lips curled into a smile.

“Right. I can do that.”

Henry felt like he finally had a lead.