Chapter 491

LTBE – Chapter 491: The One Who Manages the Calamities

Jewel Magic was a broad term on the Sia Continent, such that even Rosaian soldiers who invoked spells through the gemstones embedded on their equipment were considered to be users of Jewel Magic too. However, that was a loose classification for what Jewel Magic truly comprised.

In the first place, it was two different matters to invoke Jewel Magic and invoke spells embedded in jewels. To use an analogy, the former was the chef preparing the dish whereas the latter was the waiter serving it. If the latter category was excluded from the classification, the number of Jewel Magic users would be very few indeed.

In fact, they consisted solely of the Sorofyas, the descendants of the old Sofya Kingdom.

Jewel Magic was an entire branch of magic inherited from the ancient High Elves. Human transcendents had generally deemed it to be a highly impractical form of magic for a simple reason—it was too expensive.

While it wasn’t uncommon for spells to require an invocation medium, few were as exorbitant as Jewel Magic, which demanded gemstones that were deemed precious in human civilization.

Just imagine getting into a prolonged battle with a powerful enemy. Even if you managed to defeat your enemy, the chances were that you would have gone bankrupt by the end of which. Needless to say, that wasn’t an acceptable outcome to most.

In fact, the High Elves only used jewels as a medium because they weren’t viewed to be valuable back in the ancient era when legendary beings roamed the lands. What was truly valuable back then were gods’ bestowments and the carcasses of powerful demonic beasts.

Not to mention, the High Elves were blessed with a keen insight for fortune and intrinsic talent in divination. Amassing secular wealth and jewels was an easy feat to them. It only made sense for them to use easily acquired resources as their weapon.

With the prowess of Jewel Magic, High Elves eventually shot to prosperity, becoming one of the Three Great Races alongside the Angels and the Dragons in the ancient era.

In the present era, the lofty High Elves had been reduced to stories occasionally mentioned in the annals of history. The Jewel Magic inherited by the Sorofyas no longer shone with the same brilliance as that of their ancestors.

Only one person of the entire Sorofya House could be said to be a true user of Jewel Magic—Charlotte Sorofya.

In a spacious bedroom, Roel was quietly staring at the golden fluid that flowed around Charlotte. In his hands was a book detailing the history of Jewel Magic, flipped to its very last page.

He had a rough idea of where to work toward based on the clues he had gathered thus far, but he needed to gather more information to come up with a rational conjecture. Thus, after Charlotte fell asleep, he immediately ordered Grace and the others to aid him in his investigation.

He didn’t mind accompanying Charlotte for life—if anything, he hoped that they could continue staying together with each other for their entire lifetime—but that shouldn’t be at the expense of her health.

His presence did curb the affliction to a certain degree, but it couldn’t eliminate it. Instead, the affliction was steadily growing stronger despite being suppressed, as shown by the severe rebound Charlotte suffered shortly after parting ways. What was inside her was a ticking time bomb, and it had to be resolved as soon as possible.

After browsing through the Sorofyas’ records, he was able to come up with some deductions.

Amongst the doctors attending to Charlotte were the specialists who had been dealing with Bruce’s curse over the years, but there were some anomalies about Charlotte’s condition that they were unable to make sense of.

Why was Charlotte’s condition even worse than Bruce’s?

If the cause of Charlotte’s affliction was indeed a curse, there should have been a natural progression of severity. Considering that Bruce had caught the curse many years ahead of her, her condition should have been much lighter. Yet, the situation told a different story.

“Lord Bruce has been afflicted with the curse for many years now. He has been suppressing it with his strength thus far, and it was only in recent years that he started to cave in. It doesn’t make sense for the young miss’ condition to deteriorate that quickly…” said Grace.

“Could that be due to Charlotte being weaker as a transcendent?” asked Roel.

“That’s unlikely to be the case, Lord Roel. Our young miss hasn’t said a word about it, but she has already reached Origin Level 3 prior to the International Crisis Management Symposium,” replied Grace.

Roel was surprised to hear that.

As one of the heroines in Eyes of the Chronicler, Charlotte’s progress hadn’t slowed in the least even though the two of them hadn’t met for a year now. It should have been good news that she had become much stronger, but Roel’s face only further darkened.

Charlotte had probably consciously concealed the news before him because she didn’t want to stress him, especially since she knew that he was desperately trying to grow stronger. However, it was another thing for Roel not to have noticed her breakthrough when they had been together for half a month now.

This showed that Charlotte’s condition was worse than he had expected. That pained him even more.

The only silver lining was that he had uncovered a plausible reason behind her affliction. To throw out the conclusion, he believed that her condition was related to the Six Calamities.

According to Grace’s record, it was a year ago that Charlotte first felt unwell. It was around the same period of time that he journeyed to the eastern border to help Nora with her Seraphication. Everything was still peaceful back then… or, at least, that was the case on the surface.

Roel knew that Shrouding Fog was already approaching Tark Stronghold at that juncture, heralding the shocking tragedy that would shake humankind at its core. It should be safe to say that that had been a period of high activity for the Six Calamities, meaning that one of them could have been behind Charlotte’s affliction.

As for why the Six Calamities would target the Sorofyas, he had his own guesses too.

Seven hundred years ago, Isabella Sofya had sealed off Glacier Creator using the Golden Soul. During the Witness State, when Roel was shivering from having used Glacier Creator’s powers, Charlotte had been the one to alleviate his severe side effects.

These suggested that the High Elves’ Jewel Magic had the power to suppress the Six Calamities to some extent.

In fact, now that he thought about it, back in the Witness State where he was brought to Leinster four hundred years ago, he had received a container from the Saints Convocation containing the egg of the Tempest Caller. The outward appearance of the container resembled a tool imitating the application of Jewel Magic.

Perhaps, the reason the High Elves towered over the other races together with the Angels and the Dragons might not have just been due to their superior strength but also their ability to suppress the Six Calamities too. As for why they were in possession of such an ability…

Roel still remembered the reason traitors of the Sofya House joined the Saints Convocation to oppose Isabella. They worshiped the Mother Goddess as their ancestors did, and their allegiance was further deepened by the nature of their Loyal Origin Attribute.

Assuming that their claims were true, could it be possible that, back in the ancient era when the Mother Goddess was still active, the High Elves had been the ones managing the Six Calamities for her?

If that was truly the case, it made perfect sense why the Sorofyas’ Jewel Magic had the power to suppress the Six Calamities. That would also explain why the curse on Charlotte was much more potent than the one on Bruce.

After all, it was Charlotte, who had inherited the Primordial High Elf Bloodline and the true Jewel Magic, who posed a much greater threat to the Six Calamities than Bruce.

Roel became even more certain of his guesses when he met with Wandering Academic Andrew Mara, one of Bruce’s close aides. The latter had once offered him great help, which was why he would always pay Andrew a visit whenever he passed by Rosa City.

Several years ago, when Roel had just escaped from the Witness State and was severely weakened by his abilities’ side effects, it was Andrew who had diagnosed his condition and confirmed it to be a case of declining life force. Thanks to that, he was able to receive treatment from Alicia and fully recover… though he did go through one hell of a cat fight as a result.

Nevertheless, Andrew could still be considered as his savior.

Andrew had been Bruce’s personal doctor for many years now, so he naturally had a deep understanding about his curse. According to him, Bruce first came into contact with the curse at an ancient ruin. Rosa later sent a huge army to the ancient ruin in hopes of dispelling the curse, but they weren’t able to find anything.

Andrew guessed that it might have been a problem with the personnel.

“A problem with the personnel?”

“Yes. Most ancient ruins were designed to trigger differently depending on the people present. It’ll be hard to re-enact Bruce’s encounter with the curse without bringing the same team over,” Andrew replied with a stroke of his beard.

Roel nodded comprehendingly, but he quickly posed a new question.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t you attempt to enter the ancient ruin with the same expedition team again? It might be risky, but that’s the most plausible way to save Uncle Bruce from the curse, right?

“We did consider that, but you have to understand that Bruce’s curse started out mild. It took us several years to realize that it was a threat to his life. By then, many of the original expedition team members had already grown significantly.

“You see, there are some traps in ancient ruins that grow increasingly potent depending on the strength of those present, and we were worried that the curse might be one of them. Should that be the case, the expedition would be extremely dangerous to Bruce. In view of the risks, we decided that to be our final resort,” Andrew explained.

“I see,” replied Roel.

The two of them agreed that Charlotte’s condition couldn’t wait any longer—they had to deal with her curse right away. On one hand, it was infeasible for Roel and Charlotte to be together all the time given their respective responsibilities. On the other hand, there was no telling how much longer Roel’s presence could suppress the curse for.

They had to deal with the curse once and for all, as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Rosa had already spent many years preparing for that.

While Roel’s Soulcalming Lamp did alleviate Bruce’s condition, the Sorofyas understood that it wasn’t a permanent solution. They would have to eventually return to the ancient ruin to resolve his curse, just that they had chosen to delay it since Bruce had been in a stable condition.

Right now, they were just bringing forward their plans.

Roel and Andrew agreed that the curse was unlikely to have come directly from the Six Calamities themselves—the Six Calamities would have killed them outright instead of simply planting a curse. It was likelier that the culprit was something harnessing a portion of the Six Calamities’ power. That should still be within the means of the Rosaian elites to deal with.

What Roel had to do till then was to stay by Charlotte’s side, use his Crown’s Stones to aid her Golden Soul in maintaining her condition, and await the arrival of good news.

After deciding on what they had to do, Roel and the others wasted no time dilly-dallying. Upon receiving an urgent approval from Bruce, Andrew gathered the members of Bruce’s old expedition team to execute the plan they had carefully refined over many years.

…

Half a month later, in Rosa City’s Hundred Birds Gallery.

At the crack of dawn, Roel woke up to the melodic chirping of the birds outside. He sat up on the spacious bed he had slept in and dazedly blinked his eyes. It took a brief moment before his golden eyes regained their usual clarity.

It was already mid-autumn. The weather had turned cold, and nights had become much longer. Roel often woke up before the sun was completely up yet, though the ill young woman beside him remained in deep sleep.

Roel looked at the sleeping Charlotte with gentle eyes as he discreetly released a stream of mana to inspect her physical condition. He let out a sigh of relief when he confirmed she was still in a stable condition.

He would usually wake up at the same time as Charlotte so as to match her schedule, but on this very day, he got out of bed at an earlier hour than usual. It was not due to insomnia or some coincidence.

He turned his eyes toward an envelope on the table that hadn’t been there when they fell asleep the previous night. He wasn’t surprised to see it though, for he was the one who requested Grace to discreetly place any letters from Andrew there in the middle of the night.

He didn’t want to risk Charlotte overhearing any negative news. That could affect her condition.

It was possible that they were making a mountain out of a molehill, but as this matter concerned Charlotte’s health, they were determined to take all precautions possible. That was how much the two of them cared about Charlotte.

Roel quietly got off the bed, headed to the table, and opened the envelope. Barely a few sentences into the letter, his eyes had already narrowed.