By Zephyria 
“Cough, cough!”
“Lennox…!”
The sensation of being teleported was no longer unfamiliar. So, it was no surprise that the scenery suddenly changed before my eyes. What surprised me once again, after I thought nothing could surprise me anymore until I died, was Lennox, who slumped down powerlessly as soon as the teleportation was complete, coughing up clumps of dark red blood.
“Hah…, I was trying to show off for once, but this is my limit. Forgive me.”
Normally, Lennox would have easily dealt with the foreign substances on his body by flicking his fingers, but now, he couldn’t even think of wiping his mouth, let alone using magic, and just repeated shallow coughs. Cough, cough, clumps of blood were constantly visible along with the weak sounds.
The place he had brought me to was like a poorly organized warehouse. Judging by the clock tower in the center of the capital visible through the small window on the opposite wall, it didn’t seem to be far from the mansion.
I first looked around, found a stubby candle and matches, and secured my vision. It seemed Lennox wouldn’t be able to rely on magic for the time being. Whether my guess was correct or not, he didn’t stop me and just watched what I was doing. Was it just my imagination, or did his confident eyes, which always seemed brazen, look subtly dejected?
I found a fairly large and seemingly sturdy box in one corner. I put one of Lennox’s arms over my shoulder, intending to support him, and took a deep breath, when a dumbfounded voice came from above my head.
“…What are you doing now? I’m worried you might be having some delusional dream of trying to lift me up with those frail arms and legs.”
“If you know, stop flapping your tongue and give your body some strength. Still, you seem like a patient, so I can’t just leave you sprawled out on the dusty floor.”
“Hahahaha. If you insist, shall I accept your help? I’m sorry, but I really don’t have the luxury to save face right now. Cough, cough.”No room for error my ass.” If he just saved the energy he used to talk, he’d be in better condition than he is now. I took another deep breath and gave my whole body strength, “Hmph!” I firmly supported the floor with both feet and tried to push myself up…, tried to get up…
“Hmph…!”
“…….”
“Huuuuh…!”
Wow. It didn’t budge, no matter what. No matter how much I groaned, trying to straighten my back with all the strength I could muster, the result was the same. I had forgotten because I had a strong image of him as a great magician from the beginning, but the other person was just a handyman in the trading company who used to lift heavy objects with ease until only 1 or 2 years ago. Even if he wasn’t systematically trained like Kyle, he was much heavier than he looked, with his whole body seemingly packed with muscles.
I was internally thinking of all sorts of negative exclamations and struggling so hard that my face was flushed, when suddenly I heard a snort.
“Are you laughing?”
“Puhuhu, Keuk, cough, cough… Ah, I’m sorry. I tried to hold it in, but I just couldn’t.”
“Either cough up blood or laugh, just do one.”
“I’ll gratefully accept your concern, Benefactor. If you really want to help, could you just bring me one thing? If you go to the right corner, there’s a black three-drawer dresser, and you can bring me any of the potions on the top floor.”
“You should have said so sooner…”
“You’re showing me how hard you’re working for me, so how could I presume to tell you to stop?”
That’s it. It was ridiculous to keep dealing with this smooth-talking guy. I immediately removed Lennox’s arm from my shoulder and brought him the potion. His hands were trembling so much that he couldn’t even open the lid of the potion, so I opened the lid and held it to his mouth so he could drink it. I don’t know what ingredients were in it, but it smelled terrible from the moment I opened the lid. But Lennox swallowed the potion without even frowning.
As he took sip after sip of the potion, his condition stabilized. The trembling in his hands gradually stopped, and the blood vessels around his mouth dried up. But it seemed that not all of his abilities had been restored, even though his body had recovered. He looked at his dirty clothes and flicked his fingers a few times, then frowned as if he was in trouble, and brushed off his collar as he got up from his seat.
“Huu…, I showed you a shameful sight. I thought I could make it to the lab, but this is all I could do.”
“Where is this?”
“Hmm…, you won’t hate me, will you?”
I didn’t have the energy to argue, so I roughly nodded. It meant I didn’t care, so just tell me honestly.
“Haha…, well, you see, actually…”
He smiled shyly, saying that he had bought an empty space in the shopping district physically closest to our mansion in order to monitor me more efficiently, and hadn’t had time to organize it yet. He was planning to pretend it was a branch of the magic tower when he was done organizing it, but he never thought he would reveal it like this.
“I really didn’t know that all I would do is run away in such an unsightly manner. Those annoying energies that have been swirling around you since before…, I didn’t know they would be this strong…”
And the fact that the source of that power was Allen himself… He muttered in a weak voice, half dissatisfied and half self-deprecating. I just found his self-deprecation and reflection funny. No matter how great a magician he is, he’s still just a human. The opponent was ‘God,’ not figuratively, but as a direct instruction. Just piercing God’s weakness and running away for a moment was an immeasurable achievement, but what else did he expect?
“Stop with the excessive self-blame. This is a sufficiently inhuman achievement against that opponent.”
“Ah, do you know his identity?”
“Yeah. He’s a god.”
I spoke in a calm tone, as if pointing and saying, “This is an apple.”
“…A god? So, the one worshiped in the temple…, the one who gives Blessings to Alphas and Omegas, that god?”
“Yeah. That god. As far as I know, there are no other gods. For now, he’s probably the only god left in this world.”
The conversation with the Spirit, which had been completely forgotten due to that damned god’s intervention, had already vividly resurfaced. I thought the idea of a god was just a childish trick to attach the omegaverse keyword to sell a lousy game, but it was beyond my imagination. What grudge does he have against me that he grabbed my ankle, who was living well, and threw me into this world? Why is he holding me back from leaving this world?
“Ah, a god. This has become troublesome.”
Right. Even a crazy magician with a swollen liver would naturally feel troubled if he knew he had incurred the wrath of a god…
“The Crown Prince and the Little Duke were already powerful competitors, but even a god is after you? The day I make a god my rival, should I call this an honor…”
…….
“But I’ll somehow show you, so don’t worry. I might be able to find a way to deal with him somehow.”
Lennox said all sorts of ridiculous things and smiled brightly. Then he walked confidently between the complicated piles of objects and boxes. It seemed to me that they were just piled up randomly without any standard, but he seemed to have some standard of his own.
Let’s see, it was somewhere around here… He mumbled for a long time in a voice that didn’t sound trustworthy at all, then took out a round bead buried in musty dust and threw it towards me. I caught it absentmindedly. Then, surprisingly, my vision cleared up in an instant. The System’s notification windows and status bars that had been occupying the periphery of my vision disappeared as if by magic. Even when communication with the System was cut off, a message saying that the Communication protocol was blocked was displayed, and there had never been a complete disconnection like this before.
“Hmm. As expected. The annoying things have disappeared completely.”
“What is this…? How did you do it?”
Whether I was in shock at the light freedom I was experiencing for the first time or not, Lennox just kept smiling refreshingly.
“Don’t worry. Would I dare do anything that would harm you? I guarantee it. As long as that relic is there, even a god won’t be able to invade you.”
It was a confident attitude befitting a great magician who had brought about a revolution.
“Unbelievable…, how, how could this happen…”
With Lennox, who was proudly puffing out his chest, in front of me, I muttered in amazement. I couldn’t believe it, but I had to believe it. It wasn’t just that my vision had cleared up. I could definitely feel it. Something sticky that had been binding me…, had ‘fallen off.’
My whole body felt light. My mind became clear. Just like when I was standing in Bartolo’s Sanctuary protected by the Spirit.
“I have researched countless nights what that power around you, which cannot be seen as magic, is. I have inquired about all the legends and myths passed down not only in this country but also among Seooe’s Minority Tribes.”
Lennox revealed that after gathering information as much as possible, such as the ruins where traces of a Spirit that had died out hundreds of years ago remained, and the mysterious powers passed down to the nobles of the old Dartmouth Kingdom, he had reached one conclusion.
“All those things that cannot be explained by current technology or magic are ultimately connected to the Ancient God, who is only left in legends. Isn’t it interesting?”
“Ancient God?”
“Yes. It’s a name I made up to distinguish him from the god that humans believe in now. They say that Ancient God created this world. They say that the current god is a demon who inherited his authority after that god died. Well, even though he has become the only god now, the fact that the god they worship has roots in a demon is something the temple would desperately try to prevent. Thanks to that, it is said that almost no one knows that the god has changed, except for a few high-ranking priests.”
You don’t know how much blood of how many people was needed to find this out. But you don’t need to know. He added.
“Really… It was so hard, I didn’t even have time to go see you.”
For someone who said it was hard, the voice that continued to explain was excessively cheerful and joyful, but I didn’t point it out. I focused on his words, straining my nerves so as not to miss a single syllable.
“So, at first, I thought that the evil thing clinging to you was the ghost of a god who had already died. So, I scraped together all the relics related to that god, or that had even a slight amount of power left. The problem was that all I could find was this one stone, even after searching and rummaging from the end of the eastern sea to the end of the western sea. But when I thought about it, if he was really an Ancient God, he wouldn’t be afraid of things containing his power, would he?”
“So.”
“So, well… I was thinking that it would be better to find another way to drive out the god, when something like today happened. Hmm. Anyway, he was a god, so my hypothesis was only half right. By the way, my guess that the power of the current god and the Ancient God would repel each other was exactly right. It’s a pretty good result.”
He’s really cunning and really awful… His personality is awful, but his abilities are amazing. I can’t deny it. As a test, no matter how hard I concentrated while looking at Lennox’s head, the favorability window didn’t appear. The results were the same even if I checked the various items I had. The semi-transparent pop-up windows that had been introducing the cumbersome additional options and effects were all silent, like a television with the power turned off.
The fact that the Spirit said he could help must have been because he received power from the Ancient God. Then Allen, no, Carlisle, who broke free from the God’s brainwashing with his own power…?
“Can I ask you just one thing?”
It was around the time when I was lost in various thoughts. Lennox, who had been busy talking and talking, completely absorbed in the fun of answering rather than asking, suddenly asked. I thought it wouldn’t be ethical to pretend not to know after receiving so much helpful information, so I quickly nodded.
“Why on earth was the God attached to the young master?” From what I heard, that Allen is just a shell of the God. Not only surrounding and monitoring you so closely, but even using a shell, what do they want from you? And, since when have they been attached?”
“How would I know why? As for when… well, they’ve just been attached since I was young. What can I do when I suddenly woke up one day and they were there?”
If I left out the past lives and repeated Iterations, it wasn’t a lie that I suddenly remembered my past life and the System appeared when I was riding on someone’s back around the age of ten. It wasn’t a lie, but it was an excessively insignificant answer compared to the information I had received. However, Lennox nodded his head greatly with an expression mixed with admiration, as if he was satisfied with just that.
“Indeed…! My patron is indeed special…!”
Ugh, headache. That’s the kind of human you shouldn’t associate with, that one.
As I frowned, touching my temple, Lennox chuckled and abruptly offered to call a carriage for me.
“What do you mean, you’ll call a carriage…? Are you telling me to go back? To where Allen is standing guard?”
“No, your destination is already decided. It’s Graham.”