Chapter 1: The Daydreamer

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Chapter 1: The Daydreamer

This was the age of magic, an era filled with imagination.

The old gods made their awkward exit from the stage, while new faiths were born from those strange and magnificent forms of magic.

One day, fate cast down a pinecone.

And so, a new story began.

— The Magic Almanac: Chapter of the Morning Star

“Hey, Charlie!”

A cheerful voice rang through the streets. A pair of deerskin boots hurried after the setting sun along the cobblestones, then easily leaped over a puddle just before stepping into it. The brown-haired boy carrying a bag of long loaves looked toward the figure sitting on the steps by the street and called his name enthusiastically.

Charlie was sighing, his chin propped in both hands. His long golden hair, loosely tied with a thin linen cord, had slipped over his shoulders, glowing with a rose-colored halo in the setting sun.

The brown-haired boy glanced from side to side before bending down and lowering his voice. “I heard you spent another ten copper coins today to buy a magic book from the guru?”

Only then did Charlie look up. His pale green eyes seemed to hold an innate melancholy. “You know, Jeffrey, I want to become a mage.”

“Ah, who doesn’t want to become an esteemed mage?” Jeffrey’s voice was full of envy, too. He himself had shown a tiny spark of magic talent, but with so many brothers and sisters in his family, they couldn’t afford the expensive tuition. That pitiful scrap of talent was of little use to him, so he could only apprentice himself to the eccentric old shoemaker, with no idea when he might finally make something of himself.

But then he lowered his voice again. “Still, you were definitely scammed. The old shoemaker always says that these local gurus, especially the ones hanging around the market telling fortunes and reading faces, are nine and a half out of ten frauds. And the remaining half is just a fraud with slightly more of a conscience! A conscience smaller than a gray-furred rat’s eye. At best, when you pray to become a mage, they might bless you with one or two lousy magic tricks!”

Perhaps his analogy was funny enough, or perhaps the disdainful expression on his youthful face was simply too vivid. Charlie’s lips curved into a smile, and half the melancholy in his eyes disappeared.

But just as he was about to speak, a burst of laughter and shouting came from across the street.

Several children were pulling faces at them, sticking out their tongues as they called in exaggerated voices, “Oh, poor Charlie! Oh, melancholy Charlie…”

“Hey!” Jeffrey shouted, planting his hands on his hips. The children immediately scattered with laughter.

“Don’t mind them, Jeffrey. I’m not angry.” Charlie called him back, seemingly used to it. Jeffrey had never understood that. Didn’t Charlie get angry at being mocked and ridiculed?

A month ago, when Charlie had first moved to Gray Hat Street, Jeffrey had thought he was a nobleman. Just look at that slightly wavy golden hair and those pale green eyes. He looked just like one of the noble lords who lived in Marguerite Gardens!

But what would a nobleman be doing on Gray Hat Street? Even if it did have the best honey bread in all of Magipo City.

The people on the street had been curious about him, but later events seemed to prove that Charlie really wasn’t a nobleman. Even if he was, he had already fallen on hard times. After all, what nobleman’s son could reach sixteen without ever formally coming into contact with magic, only to be rejected by the Higher Academy of Magic for being overage?

And what nobleman’s son, after being rejected by the Higher Academy of Magic, would go from mage tower to mage tower seeking instruction, only to be rejected again and again for lacking talent?

Oh, poor Charlie.

Oh, melancholy Charlie.

Everyone knew Charlie wanted to become a mage. But he couldn’t. Even the children on the street knew Charlie was a daydreamer.

Jeffrey, however, thought Charlie was different.

His gaze drifted to the strange, dilapidated tower behind Charlie. Some said someone had died inside and that it was an unlucky haunted house, which was why it had been abandoned. Others claimed it was the secret workshop of brownies and leprechauns, because strange lights occasionally flashed behind its windows. The old shoemaker, meanwhile, said it was a witch’s tower that had once been inhabited by a witch, a place frequented by mysterious and evil beings. In truth, though, it was only a little larger than the chimney of Old John’s smithy, nowhere near as grand, towering, or mysterious as those imposing mage towers.

Mischievous children were always forbidden from exploring inside, and Charlie’s string of failures over the past month had also been blamed on the strange tower.

How unlucky. The old folks thought he ought to knock on wood for good fortune, but not the pine tree behind the tower. Pine trees were often used for mourning, after all.

But back to the story. The sealed-off strange tower had finally opened its doors, and Charlie, who had moved into it one ordinary afternoon with a key, determined to become a mage, had become synonymous with mystery in Jeffrey’s mind.

Jeffrey always felt that Charlie would be different. Look at him. A whole month had passed, and despite all those rejections and all the humiliation, he still hadn’t given up!

What admirable dedication to such a dream!

If Charlie knew what Jeffrey was thinking, he would probably sigh again.

Because this Charlie was not that Charlie. The Charlie who had been determined to become a mage had died from excessive drinking five days ago. When he woke again, the soul inhabiting this body was Ji Bai, a soul from the twenty-first century.

Before transmigrating, Ji Bai had been a fourth-year student at an art academy. He had been carrying a backpack on his way to a scenic location to paint when he encountered a landslide. When he woke again, he was lying on the carpet in a room inside the strange tower.

The window was half open. A reddish-brown squirrel stood on the sill, squeaking as it hurled pinecone after pinecone at Ji Bai. The last one hit him squarely in the forehead, jolting him awake.

The squirrel fled with a shriek, leaving Ji Bai, a soul that had drifted over from the twenty-first century, to face the bizarre reality of transmigration.

Fortunately, after transmigrating, he had received the original host’s memories. Growing up in an orphanage had shaped his calmness in the face of unexpected situations, so he managed not to make a fool of himself.

Charlie Blaze, adopted son of Lord Lully of the Southern Capital Prefecture of the Garland Empire.

Lord Lully had more than twenty adopted children. According to him, he had merely taken in these homeless, unfortunate children and let them grow up alongside his own equally unfortunate, sickly child. Once his biological child had grown up and celebrated a grand coming-of-age ceremony, the lord dismissed all his adopted children and set them free.

Charlie reclaimed his surname, “Blaze,” and had just turned sixteen.

He received a severance payment from the lord: a sum of money and a property at No. 16 Gray Hat Street in Magipo City, central Garland Empire. The steward handling the arrangements told him that Lord Lully knew he wanted to become a mage. This ownerless mage tower was the lord’s final gift to him.

Magipo City was not the royal capital, nor was it anywhere near Lord Lully’s home in the Southern Capital Prefecture, but it was the holy city of magic of the Garland Empire.

This was an age of unprecedented magic prosperity. The architecture and clothing still carried hints of medieval style, but the flourishing of magic seemed to have dispelled the heaviness and gloom characteristic of that era. No witches were burned at the stake, necromancers could openly walk the streets, and elves, dwarves, and other non-human races were no longer fictional characters from fantasy novels, but part of reality.

“Dong—dong—dong—”

The deep tolling of a bell drifted from afar. Jeffrey and Ji Bai both looked toward the city. A white sacred bell hung inside the towering bell tower, its spire reaching into the clouds. The sacred bell had rung. Dusk had come. The great radiant golden sun was about to return to its throne and spend the entire night in that legendary, magnificent palace.

The followers of the Moon took to the streets. They always wore crescent-shaped brooches made of luminous white gemstones, beginning their daily prayers as the moon prepared to rise.

Sometimes the Sun and Moon shone together, and their followers maintained a certain balance between them. But there were always exceptions.

On the night Ji Bai transmigrated, when he first looked out the window at this other world, those followers were already fighting. Apparently, some nobleman’s ship had capsized at sea. The royal family of the Garland Empire bore the surname Kornweiss, and the name Kornweiss was said to represent “royal power and the Horn of the Sun.” As a result, most of Garland’s nobles were devout followers of the Sun.

Unfortunately, the Moon ruled the tides and was the lord of water. Somehow, the dispute eventually turned into a religious war, even spilling into Gray Hat Street.

The knight order that hurried over suppressed the disturbance, while the soul from another world hid behind the window and watched everything unfold.

“Oh, I should get home. If I’m late again, I’ll get yelled at.” Jeffrey waved to Ji Bai before hurrying home.

Ji Bai watched him go, then slowly rose to his feet.

The evening breeze swept through Gray Hat Street, where flowers bloomed beneath the setting sun. Pure white or brightly colored daisies filled the flowerbeds and chipped clay pots outside every home. The little flowers grew in thick clusters, lending a touch of beauty to the shabby street and the red bricks exposed where the walls had crumbled.

The nobles of Marguerite Gardens adored all kinds of rare and expensive flowers. The royal banner of Garland was embroidered with golden-red Garland flowers, blazing like flames. But the humble daisies never held back their beauty for anyone. They simply bloomed and bloomed.

In the last second before the sun disappeared below the horizon, Ji Bai turned and headed back to the strange tower.

The strange tower actually had its own name: Pinecone Tower. Over the past five days, Ji Bai had carefully studied the culture of the continent and discovered something rather interesting.

Pinecones symbolized “resurrection.” Pinecone Tower, then, meant “Tower of Resurrection.”

Ji Bai climbed the winding staircase to the third-floor bedroom. Pinecone Tower had five floors and an attic, but the tower itself was small, so none of the floors had much space.

The first floor held a kitchen and a tiny linen closet for storing odds and ends. The second seemed to be a place for receiving guests. The third contained the bedroom and washroom. The doors to the fourth floor and above remained locked.

Ji Bai sat at the vanity and opened the magic book he had bought for ten copper coins.

Books were expensive in the medieval era, and this world was no exception. It was common knowledge that magic spells had to be written on cowhide or parchment to have their proper effect. Of course, that wasn’t necessary if they were merely being recorded.

In short, proper magic books were expensive and hard to find. The one Ji Bai had bought, however, was made from the more widely available papyrus. It felt rough to the touch, its pages threatened to come loose whenever he turned them, and it even smelled moldy, with obvious patches of mildew.

This thing must have changed hands countless times before someone finally knocked the price down to ten copper coins.

He glanced at the contents.

The Magic Guide

Author: Aye.

Chapter One: Become a Mage in One Hundred Days.

Chapter Two: How to Learn Forbidden Spells.

Chapter Three: How to Slay a Dragon.

“Smack.” Ji Bai closed the book. He felt another sigh coming on.

Did he really not know this cheap magic booklet, so full of the flavor of web novels, was a pirated copy? Ten copper coins could buy two perfectly decent honey buns. Yet the guru at the market, dressed in a patched mage robe, had been so enthusiastic in promoting it that Ji Bai bought it anyway. Partly to maintain his persona, and partly because…

Ji Bai closed his eyes and went over Charlie’s memories again.

Charlie had genuinely wanted to become a mage. Over the past month, he had tried every possible method.

The Higher Academy of Magic had a rule that anyone sixteen or older would not be admitted. Those who genuinely had hope of learning magic displayed impressive magic talent from a young age. The older they became, the slimmer their chances were, and the lower their future achievements would be. The magic academy simply wasn’t willing to spend time and effort on such people.

Mage towers were comparable to private schools or research institutes. The distinguished Mages who owned them each had their own standards for taking on apprentices, but their reasons for rejecting Charlie had been much the same.

First, his age. Second, his talent.

What made the situation strange was that Charlie wasn’t completely without talent. His elemental perception rose like a slow, steady curve. If an ordinary person’s perception was 0, then when he interviewed at the Higher Academy of Magic, his perception was 0.5. By the time he sought instruction at the first mage tower, it had risen to 1.

By the time he moved on to the next mage tower, it had increased again.

Had Charlie simply been a late bloomer, with his talent only awakening at sixteen? No.

When Charlie, clinging to his last hope, knocked on the door of the final mage tower, the Grand Mage reputed to have the worst temper and be the most difficult to please finally let him in. Perhaps he simply hadn’t managed to find any students.

Before that, Charlie hadn’t even been able to enter the other mage towers. He had been screened out at the very first hurdle—the crystal-ball test.

He had been ecstatic. Little did he know that this was only the beginning of the nightmare.

The Grand Mage took one look at him, and his expression turned strange. Then, as if he had suddenly thought of something, he strode forward and seized Charlie by the wrist. After examining him several times, the Grand Mage, an expert in spellcraft, told Charlie the truth.

Someone had placed a curse on Charlie. He wasn’t without talent; his talent had been stolen. The curse had only begun to lose its effect once he turned sixteen and came of age.

“My talent can recover, right? It can recover. I can feel it!” Charlie desperately and anxiously sought confirmation, excitement and fear squeezing his heart so tightly that he could barely breathe.

The only answer he received was the mage tower’s doors closing tightly once again.

The story of a gifted child fading into obscurity could happen anywhere.

Even those who dazzled in their youth could eventually fade into the crowd under the erosion of time. And what of someone whose talent had been stolen from childhood? Even after the curse ceased to work, how much could he possibly reclaim?

He was sixteen. He was already an adult. In short, he was practically ruined.

Who was behind it?

Lord Lully?

How many secrets were still hidden in that distant little town, buried beneath the story of Charlie’s adoption and dismissal? Charlie had believed Magipo City would be the beginning of his new life. He had even been grateful to Lord Lully and looked forward to repaying him someday.

But had all of it been a lie?

Boundless malice and grief tore Charlie apart, crushing the heart that had already suffered blow after blow over the past month.

In the end, on a dark night when no one knew what had happened, Charlie fell into a deep sleep clutching a bottle of wine. He never woke up.

For Ji Bai, there were still countless unanswered questions surrounding Charlie.

If Lord Lully was the culprit, and he had stolen Charlie’s talent under the guise of adoption, why had he sent him to Magipo City after the curse began to lose its effect? Was he simply that cruel? Had ruining his future not been enough? Did he also want to destroy the fragile heart of this young man?

And if it wasn’t him, would the real culprit, upon learning that Charlie had come to the holy city of magic, fear that the truth would be exposed and strike again?

Everything remained unknown, like a water monster lurking beneath a silent lake, fascinating yet frightening.

If Ji Bai had transmigrated as Jeffrey, the shoemaker’s apprentice, perhaps he could have put down roots in this foreign land like an inconspicuous little daisy. Returning to his old profession and becoming a painter wouldn’t have been bad, either. But he had become Charlie. Facing the unknown, perhaps he needed a sword to slay the water monster, or perhaps a wand.

Before slaying the water monster, however, Ji Bai felt that he should fill his stomach first.

He set down the book and went downstairs to the kitchen. Taking out the ingredients he had bought at the market that afternoon, he began preparing dinner. Tonight’s menu was bacon-and-cilantro-wrapped roast beef, sweet-and-sour pan-fried fish fillets, and golden soup.

Since he was cooking for one, there was no need to make an elaborate meal. But Ji Bai had his own standards when it came to food. Take the stock needed for the golden soup, for example. He could have bought some at the market, but he chose to make it himself.

The chicken stock he had started before leaving the house was nearly done. He had also been intrigued by the all-purpose savory sauce at the market, so he had bought some and planned to use it tomorrow.

If there was one thing to watch out for when cooking in another world, it was spices. Spices, spices, and more spices.

Fennel powder, marjoram powder, galangal powder, saffron powder, perilla powder… Oh, and cardamom, cinnamon, and plenty more. All right. He had everything.

A satisfied smile finally appeared on Ji Bai’s lips. Once everything was prepared, he turned to the cupboard and took out a glass and the bottle of Hibo wine he had just bought that day.

Whatever else could be said about Lord Lully, he had certainly done a good job of keeping up appearances. He had given Charlie a full three hundred gold coins.

As for Hibo wine, it was the same kind of spiced grape wine Charlie had been drinking before his death. In this place, where people drank alcohol as casually as any other beverage and were passionately fond of spices, it was extremely popular.

What kind of wine could actually kill someone? Ji Bai wanted to try it himself.

So, on this melancholy spring day, Ji Bai poured himself a glass of wine and settled into the walnut rocking chair in the kitchen. He breathed in the aroma of roasting meat drifting from the hearth and took a sip.

After a while, he lowered his pale green eyes. Like a wronged ghost returning through another’s body, he spoke slowly in a voice steeped in dead air. “It’s really awful. Nothing I suffered in my previous life was ever this bitter, and yet it’s somehow so… rich and fragrant.”

The moment he finished speaking, a string of silvery laughter rang through the tower.

The sound seemed to come from above, yet somehow filled the entire space, as if it were surrounding him from every direction. It was soft, and impossible to tell whether it was male or female. But there was no one else in Pinecone Tower. At least, not that Ji Bai had seen.

In the five days since his transmigration, he had never seen another person here.

Ji Bai’s fingers tightened slightly around the wineglass, but his expression remained unchanged. Slowly, he looked up. In the corner of his vision was the window facing the back street.

Outside stood a tall pine tree.

Its dense needles swayed in the wind, casting a shadow across the window like a devil from hell, its claws reaching through the darkness.

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