VAP - Chapter 51
Chapter 51: The Supreme Sage Hopelessly Obsessed with Beauty (10)
When the person sent by the dean came rushing to summon him, Leo was sitting in the instructor's office in a daze, like a dejected, wandering lion that had been driven from its territory with a maimed hind leg.
For over a decade, he would sit there blankly for a while on every academy enrollment day.
Watching the energetic youths coming and going downstairs and recalling the exhilarating thrill of his past battles, he couldn't help but be overcome by sorrow, feeling deeply tormented.
Leo had originally thought this melancholy would repeat for another twenty-odd years, until he grew so weak he could no longer even hold his position as an instructor, until the very flame of his life was unwillingly extinguished.
But, it seemed a turning point had appeared—today, at this very moment.
Leo thought as he was led to the dean's office, his heart pounding like a drum as a sliver of hope involuntarily rose within him.
He had his reasons for thinking this way; given the current situation, it would have been more surprising if he hadn't felt a glimmer of hope.
After all, the person standing before Leo was the strongest mage known to humanity, the master of the magical dragon entrenched in the west of the Empire, the invisible power behind the royal family—Nai Yin Galor.
Leo bowed as calmly as he could, lowering his head deeply. "Your Excellency."
Nai Yin was accompanying Yue Du in looking at the paintings on the dean's office wall. She casually turned her head at his words.
"The Empire's God of War, Leo?"
"I once was," Leo said with a bitter smile. He suddenly remembered something and added hastily, "Of course, once—it was only an empty title. In your presence, who would dare call themselves the God of War!"
Anyone could hear the desperate will to survive in this unlucky lion's voice. It seemed Lady Nai Yin's fearsome reputation could not only stop children from crying at night but also intimidate the youth.
Compared to her age of several hundred years, wasn't Leo just a young man?
Nai Yin glanced at him, her eyes sweeping over his messy, dry golden hair and disheveled clothes with considerable disdain.
Then she turned to look at Yue Du, using the beauty of her cute little white rose to cleanse her eyes. She instantly felt refreshed and cheerful.
Yue Du: "..." She kind of wanted to turn away.
After composing herself, Nai Yin said to Leo, "Are you planning to stay this dejected and hole up in the academy teaching apprentices for the rest of your life?"
Leo: "Of course not! But there's nothing I can do. The curse on my body, my constitution..."
Nai Yin: "That's simple. Just tell me if you want to return to the battlefield."
For a moment, Leo couldn't grasp the great lady's meaning. He stared blankly without answering, looking rather foolish.
The silver-haired Dharma Saint grew impatient. "Tsk. Do you want to stay in the academy and cultivate the flowers of the Empire, or do you want to go back to the border and kill magical beasts? Pick one."
"Of course I want to go back! I dream of it!"
"Then that settles it," Nai Yin said nonchalantly. "I can help you."
"But... didn't your disciple say before that you had no way to remove the curse either?" Leo asked cautiously.
"..." Nai Yin fell silent.
She seemed to recall it now. Over a decade ago, when he had first been afflicted by the curse, the man had indeed come to her mage fortress for help. But Nai Yin couldn't be bothered with such matters, so she had left it all for Tina to handle.
In truth, while the Abyss Beast's curse was difficult to break, it wasn't impossible. The First Dharma Saint had the Empire's best healers under her command. If even she had no solution, then the curse would truly be a heaven-defying one.
It was just that the Lion God of War was a straightforward person. Had it been someone more shrewd, they would have guessed by now that Tina's previous explanation was merely a perfunctory excuse and would have pretended not to know, letting the matter drop.
However, he was as dense as an elephant's leg, which was why he had blurted out such a foolish question.
The scene became awkward, and a wordless silence fell.
Yue Du roughly guessed the situation and could only sigh. "It's rather unfortunate, but our chief healer only advanced in rank last month."
So that was it. After advancing, the healer had found a way to remove the curse, and that was why Lady Galor had rushed here to tell him the good news?
Leo's eyes instantly filled with gratitude. "I am deeply grateful for Your Excellency's kindness! To think you've remembered all this time... what have I done to deserve this—"
Nai Yin declared, "I didn't remember. You should thank Yue. She admires your deeds, which is why she asked me to research the Abyss Beast's curse."
The object of the Lion God of War's gratitude shifted. "And this is?"
"Yue, the other master of Galor Castle. I am her suitor," Nai Yin said, perking up and seizing every opportunity to introduce her beloved.
Leo had a sudden realization. "Ah, so it is your esteemed wife. Forgive my disrespect."
The "esteemed wife" Yue Du: Could you please distinguish between 'the one I love' and 'my lover'?!
Nai Yin glimpsed the cute blush rising at the base of her ears, and a hint of a smile flashed in her eyes. Suddenly, even the messy-haired lion looked much more pleasing to the eye.
What happened next followed as a matter of course.
The former God of War eagerly resigned, bid farewell to the old dean, and was tossed by Nai Yin into a spatial storage that could hold living things to be brought back to the mage fortress. There was no other way; the white magical dragon refused to carry a third person, and Nai Yin clearly had no desire to bring along a third wheel during a romantic flight.
"Break his curse, and I'll increase your research funding," Nai Yin told her chief healer.
This healer was also Madam Milan's mentor and lover, a water-type mage obsessed with researching poisons and curses, completely unlike his kind and gentle wife.
The moment he heard about the funding, he patted his chest and declared that it could be cured, but it would require three Holy Days of continuous treatment.
"You all move to the manor outside the castle," Nai Yin said without a second thought. "I refuse to have creatures that don't meet my aesthetic standards appearing in my castle."
The healer said, "No problem, Your Excellency. Everything you say is right. So, could you perhaps provide a few more experimental subjects? The Archmage-level kind. I've recently been researching the Bone-Rotting Poison Curse..."
Nai Yin paused, glanced inconspicuously at Yue Du, then turned back and said coldly, "I suppose you don't want the funding anymore."
The healer backed down instantly. "I'm sorry."
"And remember, you just advanced last month."
"But I already did two years ago—"
"It was last month," Nai Yin said, enunciating each word.
"...Alright." The boss is always right.
This plot point was thus avoided.
The protagonist couldn't possibly come looking for the Dharma Saint's castle; it was the final map of the Ayers Continent, far beyond his current reach.
And once Leo's curse was broken and he returned to his peak, he would go back to the border battlefield to continue resisting the attacks of the magical beasts.
Even if he happened to encounter the protagonist, he would be too obsessed with killing magical beasts to have any interest in taking on a disciple, let alone providing experience and resources for Abio.
Another future plot point was also erased at the same time.
—The painting in the dean's office.
It was actually the painstaking work of an ancient mage, capable of sending talented juniors into the spiritual world within the painting to be tempered, bestowing various treasures upon them in the process.
Yue Du had a deep impression of this event because the scene depicted in the painting was terrifying.
She remembered how the film crew had tried their best to recreate the bizarre scenes described in the original novel, scaring the actress playing the little maid, Xia Liang, half to death. In the end, it hadn't even passed censorship—it was deemed too horrifying and harmful to the mental health of adolescents.
Nai Yin took the painting with her, leaving the old dean a rare crystal suitable for his cultivation as an exchange.
It was a pretty good deal for him. The painting was useless to an Archmage; it had only been hanging there because it looked nice.
"Look how happy the old man is," Nai Yin said to Yue Du.
Yue Du: "..." Don't forget you're over a hundred years older than the dean. How can you call him an 'old man' with a straight face?
"What are you talking about? I just turned eighteen," said Nai Yin.
Fine, you're eternally eighteen.
Yue Du shook her head, not wanting to speak with a Lady Nai Yin who had lived for several hundred years, looked eighteen, but had the mental age of an eight-year-old.
Meanwhile, at the Imperial Royal Academy.
It was already evening. In a few more minutes, enrollment would be over.
The young man with black hair and blue eyes stood before the long table of the admissions office, a heavy aura around him.
"Congratulations on meeting the admission standards. Welcome to the Warrior's Institute," said the staff member in charge of assessments. He stamped the youth's application form and gave a satisfied smile.
Abio lowered his eyes, turned, and walked away without a word.
What on earth was going on?
Instructor Leo, who should have appeared at the admissions office this morning, hadn't shown up at all.
Abio had waited for most of the day. He waited and waited until dusk, until the preliminary assessment staff were about to pack up the application forms, and still, there was no sign of Leo!
"What are you so angry about? You didn't register all day and only handed in your form right at the end. Were you trying to make a grand finale?" the Dharma Saint's soul asked, baffled.
Abio sighed and said calmly, "You wouldn't understand."
The Dharma Saint's soul was deeply saddened. "...I guess I really am getting old. There's a generation gap between me and you kids."
Abio, who possessed memories of the next hundred years, sighed again and didn't feel like talking.
As a Dharma Saint himself, he naturally had far more experience than Instructor Leo and no longer needed his guidance.
But what about resources?
He did have many treasures he could use to enhance his strength, but unfortunately, they were all in the future. The current Rand Abio was still a poor and destitute little apprentice.
To grow stronger, one needed aptitude, experience, and resources rich in magical power—not one could be missing. He had the first two, but he lacked the last.
Without his instructor's strong support, the speed of his advancement as a warrior might not even be as fast as it was in his previous life.
At this thought, Abio frowned.
Although things had deviated from his past experience, there was always a way to make up for it. At worst, he could just visit Instructor Leo later.
If that didn't work, he would just have to seek out the ownerless treasures from his memory. With those, he wouldn't end up too badly off.
Having made up his mind, Abio walked toward the inn where he was staying.
On the way, he brushed past two upperclassmen wearing the standard warrior uniforms of the Royal Academy.
"I heard Instructor Leo resigned."
"Isn't that great? Maybe Instructor Weili'er will teach our class instead."
"That's true. Those long legs of Weili'er's, heh!"
Abio's footsteps halted.
"Excuse me, seniors," he said in an earnest voice.
The two upperclassmen stopped. One of them replied, "A freshman taking the Royal Academy exam this year?"
"Yes, yes. I'm a warrior."
"Oh... what is it?"
"Well, I've always greatly admired Lord Leo, so I was a little disappointed not to see him at the admissions office today. I heard you say he resigned. Could I ask what happened?"
"Of course, it's not a secret." Despite saying that, the upperclassman leaned in mysteriously and whispered, "You know Leo was only staying at our academy because of the curse, right?"
Abio: "I know. Could it be..."
"Right! Someone said they would help him break the curse, and Leo left with them without a second thought."
In his last life, it was he who had found the Sea Tribe priest to break Instructor Leo's curse. How could this have happened?
"Who was it? Isn't that curse almost impossible to break?"
The upperclassman: "Ai, how could it really be unbreakable? It's just that people of a lower skill level can't do it. Do you know who it was?"
Abio feigned ignorance. "I don't know."
At the same time, his mind was racing. Had the Sea Tribe priest come ashore, or was it the Saintess of the Church of Light? It couldn't possibly be the Abyss Beast King itself venturing deep into the Empire, could it?
"It was the one and only First Dharma Saint, Nai Yin Galor!"
Abio said, "Oh, so it was Galo—"
His eyes slowly widened.
Wait, Galor?!
Doesn't that woman always stay in the west of the Empire, almost never leaving her castle?!
Why would she suddenly help Leo break his curse?
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