IRM Chapter 105

It was an exceptionally beautiful conch shell. The shell was a translucent, smooth ivory white color, without a single stripe on it. Both its appearance and texture resembled a flawless piece of jade—one could tell at a glance that it was precious.

Ji Chi didn’t immediately take it from him, but looked at Bard with confusion. “This is the equipment you’ve always wanted to craft?”

Bard fell silent for a moment. Shedding his usual boisterous facade, he revealed an expression of utter exhaustion. “That’s right. This is the result I’ve been chasing after for most of my life.”

Seeing his expression, Ji Chi knew the outcome wasn’t good. He accepted the conch with both hands and didn’t rush to leave, asking gently, “Can you tell me about it?”

Bard clenched his now-empty hands, his mouth full of bitterness. At this moment, he wasn’t willing to confide in anyone, only summarizing concisely, “It has no particular use. I found it in an ancient text long ago. According to the text, it can summon back the soul of the departed, to… see them one more time, that’s all.”

He seemed to have used all his strength just to say this sentence. As his words fell, a description also appeared above the conch in Ji Chi’s hands.

Name: [Conch of Mourning]

Quality: [Legendary]

Item Description: [Summons departed souls, bringing peace and rest to the living]

Ji Chi seemed to understand something. With a somewhat helpless expression on his face, he sighed and asked, “It didn’t summon Fitos’s soul?”

Bard didn’t speak. He turned around, hunching his shoulders as he busied himself at the counter. His movements looked busy, but he was merely mechanically fiddling with a set of tools that were already neatly arranged.

Ji Chi stood behind Bard, watching that head of graying short hair. “Perhaps he didn’t die?”

Bard’s movements paused for a moment, then he bent down again, saying stubbornly, “Then I’d rather his soul had dissipated completely.”

After a long while, he finally stopped tidying up. Looking at the toolbox that looked no different from before, he couldn’t help but laugh self-mockingly—wasn’t this just like his past hundred years? Going through life and death struggles, giving his heart and soul, only for everything to circle back to the starting point with nothing changed at all.

The immense disappointment left him feeling suffocated.

Lost in thought, Bard heard light footsteps behind him. Thinking Ji Chi had left, he breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the counter, the sadness and defeat in his expression flowing out without any attempt at concealment.

“I thought you weren’t coming. You’d better explain yourself properly,” Ji Chi surprisingly hadn’t left. From the sound of it, he was even speaking to someone else. “This joke of yours has gone too far.”

“So this is the image I have in your eyes.” Fitos tugged at the corner of his mouth. “However, choosing to leave wasn’t my joke… I’m sorry, Teacher.”

Bard froze in place. Behind him was an achingly familiar voice, one he had once fantasized about hearing again after crafting the conch. But how ridiculous—he did hear it, yet it had nothing to do with all his persistence.

Fitos didn’t speak either. His eyes held both nostalgia and guilt. Perhaps it was because he had lost his divine status, but he gradually came to realize he wasn’t as open-minded as he had imagined—he was no different from ordinary, mundane people.

Ji Chi stood to the side with his arms crossed, watching the two awkward dwarves, getting the distinct feeling of watching two children having a quarrel. He broke the cold war with his voice. “I’d advise you not to hide anything. If you want to keep deceiving him, you might as well not have appeared.”

Fitos was unusually nervous, his fingers ceaselessly pinching his palm. His gaze drifted to the side, not daring to look at Bard’s back, as he apologized again in a soft voice: “I’m sorry. The corpse from before was an equipment I crafted. I wasn’t killed by Anthony—it was just time for me to leave.”

Ji Chi: “…” This lousy guy’s emotional intelligence was far too low. This was worse than not explaining at all.

Ji Chi had thought Bard would fly into a rage and use a steel hammer to brutally smash Fitos’s head. He had even thought about how he would unobtrusively save Fitos—after all, having an ancient god meet his end by being hammered to death would be too tragic.

But despite thinking of many possibilities, he found that Bard was very calm. He was so calm that he didn’t even want to turn his head, just kept his back to them, his voice hoarse: “It’s good that you’re alright. Live well from now on…”

He walked toward the back of the shop as he spoke. His tone was even, betraying no emotional changes, but the fact that he never turned around was already a very ominous sign.

Fitos nervously exchanged glances with Ji Chi. Under Ji Chi’s look of ‘you’re done for, you’re completely finished’, he suddenly stepped forward, his face showing a trace of determination. “There’s one more thing I’ve been hiding from you. This is also why I left… Actually, my real name is Hephaestus. The legendary gloves I gave you before—I personally crafted them myself.”

“I admit, at first, choosing to become your student was just something interesting I found to do in my long life.” Fitos raised his eyes, seriously tracing Bard’s aged silhouette. “But in the end, I truly came to admire you, which is why I didn’t want to put you in danger…”

Fitos smiled bitterly. “I’m sure you’ve experienced it too—being too close to the gods is not a good thing.”

Ji Chi silently glanced at Fitos, then lowered his eyes to look at his own hands.

“Then why did you come back?” Bard finally slowly turned around, gazing with complex emotions at the face that was identical to the one in his memory. According to Fitos’s age, he should already be an old man over a hundred years old, yet his current appearance remained youthful, as if forgotten by the rules of the world.

Fitos gave him a helpless smile. “Because I’m no longer a god. I have nothing now. Teacher, would you be willing to take me in once more?”

When he smiled, fine wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. The god had stepped down from his lonely divine throne, abandoning supreme glory to embrace the fervent emotions of the mortal world.

Bard opened his mouth. His fingers trembled slightly as emotions leaked out bit by bit from their protective shell. Shock, anger, and heartache mingled in his eyes—for a moment, he didn’t know how to react.

Seeing that his heartache was about to gain the upper hand, Ji Chi couldn’t believe that Fitos’s terrible behavior would just be forgiven like this. He couldn’t stand it anyway, and coldly reminded him, “How could you possibly have nothing? You still have quite a few books you wrote yourself. Do you want me to return them all to you?”

Fitos was very familiar with Bard’s expression and knew he had escaped calamity. Relieved, he waved his hand casually. “No need, no need. I wrote those for fun, to tease those inflexible unfortunate souls. The expressions on their faces when they see the last page are just too entertaining, haha…”

Ji Chi glanced at Bard’s face, which had suddenly darkened considerably, and silently quirked the corner of his mouth. “Alright then. I’ll be going first. You two take your time catching up.”

Without a shred of guilt, he walked out onto the street, leaving behind the roaring curses and wailing pleas for mercy that suddenly erupted from the shop—

Well, offending a god was also not a good thing.

Ji Chi still had a Magic Academy class that afternoon. This class was exceptionally long, because the final year’s midterm training was approaching.

Joseph spent the entire afternoon explaining the training content to them. The final year’s training was extraordinarily difficult—even in an elite institution like the Magic Academy, they had to carefully face the suddenly elevated casualty rate.

However, despite facing soaring casualty rates, no students complained that the academy was too strict, because they would always have to face bloodshed and death. One more measure of danger now meant one less mistake in the future.

That afternoon, even the most arrogant young mages listened earnestly to Joseph’s warnings.

Their training location this time was near the Elven Forest. The place sounded peaceful, but they would need to face intelligent sprites—far more difficult to deal with than ordinary monsters.

Brandon patiently listened to Joseph’s nagging all afternoon. When the end-of-class bell rang, he finally couldn’t hold back anymore. He sidled up to his companions and said mysteriously, “I heard we can’t form teams for this training, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll bring a few extra personal teleportation scrolls. Then we can ‘coincidentally’ gather together—that wouldn’t count as breaking the rules, right?”

Coralie and Evan didn’t speak.

Coralie tacitly agreed with the young master’s proposal and was too lazy to respond. Evan, meanwhile, hadn’t yet emerged from his guilt over deceiving his companions. He was being extraordinarily well-behaved now—whatever they said was fine with him.

Only Ji Chi suddenly spoke up, “I won’t be participating in this training.”

“???” Several companions froze in bewilderment, turning to look at him in confusion.

Ji Chi didn’t explain too much. Some things weren’t suitable for them to know. “I need to go somewhere else to complete something very important.”

“What is it?” Brandon couldn’t help asking. “Can’t you do it after training? We can help too.”

Evan didn’t dare speak, only nodding vigorously from the side to express his position.

Ji Chi shook his head, not answering his first question, saying vaguely, “It’s better to resolve it sooner.”

“Ah…” Brandon struggled for a moment. “What exactly is it? Will it be dangerous? If not, I won’t go to training and will go with you instead. Besides, my scores from both academies added together are enough to get into the Combat Academy anyway.”

Evan opened his mouth, then lowered his head somewhat dejectedly. He only had the mage profession—if he didn’t participate in this training, he wouldn’t have a chance to advance to the Combat Academy.

Ji Chi smiled and declined, “No need. You all should train properly. There’s no danger, and I’ll protect myself well.”

Brandon wanted to say more, but was immediately interrupted by Coralie, “That’s enough. Just prepare for your own training. Ji Chi going alone isn’t dangerous, but taking you along might make it so.”

The former saintess was being quite devilish today. The young master’s lungs had been punctured, and his face was full of unwillingness yet unable to say anything, his expression wrinkling up in distress.

A glimmer of amusement flashed through Coralie’s red eyes, but she quickly restrained it, saying to Ji Chi, “If you don’t want to talk about it, then don’t. I trust you can handle it on your own. But if you need help, don’t hesitate either—we’ll always be here.”

Evan held it in, but finally couldn’t help asking carefully with a hint of grievance. “Why aren’t you angry when he’s keeping things from you…”

Coralie sneered coldly, giving him a cool look. “Because he’s not stupid, unlike a certain someone whose head is filled with who knows what, always thinking about sacrificing himself to save everyone. Right, Saint Evan?”

Evan’s face turned red from her words. Regretting it, he clamped his mouth shut and didn’t make another sound.

Ji Chi watched them bicker and smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back very soon.”

After saying goodbye to his companions, Ji Chi didn’t immediately go home. He came to the corridor where the headmaster’s office was located. What others saw as a blank corridor appeared in his vision as the office buried by the god in time, which he could effortlessly perceive.

Today, the headmaster’s office was in a different location than usual, squeezed into a corner of the corridor. Ji Chi walked straight up to it without looking elsewhere and politely knocked.

Soon, he heard Harvey complaining from inside. “Give me a break—I’m trying to avoid trouble, and here comes the most troublesome person!”

Ji Chi pursed his lips and unceremoniously pushed the door open.

Harvey was still sitting behind the massive desk, which was piled high with magic correspondence and parchment scrolls.

Before the training period each year, Harvey would be busy to the point of distraction. To protect his precious hair, he had deliberately moved his office to a different location today, so that no one could find him—except for a certain someone who couldn’t really be considered human anymore.

Harvey irritably ruffled the owl’s abundant feathers. The poor owl was pressed under his palm, twisting its body and squawking loudly. “Speak! What do you want this time!”

“Oh, I just came to tell you I won’t be participating in this training.” Ji Chi ignored his unfriendly tone and stated directly.

Harvey frowned, knowing he wouldn’t skip training for a trivial matter, and became serious. “Where are you going?”

Ji Chi didn’t hide it from him. “The Northland Snowfield.”

Upon hearing this, Harvey immediately stood up, even knocking over the chair behind him without noticing. His frown deepened. “Why would you suddenly want to go there… It’s not time yet.”

“If I wait any longer, it will be too late.” Ji Chi said flatly. “Once the fortress is destroyed, the Northland Wolf King will be beyond saving.”