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When mentioning mages, most people would think about mage towers that reached the clouds, orderly libraries, wondrous automatic magical tools, elegant mage robes, long beards that represented wisdom, and, of course, eyeglasses.

Actually, I’ve never seen any mage that could do all of the above—no—I should say that I’ve seen incredibly few mages who could keep their places clean and tidy.

In fact, most mages’ laboratories were chaotically messy, with books haphazardly stacked everywhere and unwashed experimental test tubes letting off a disgusting stink. If there were some that weren’t cleaned for far too long, then it was even considered normal to see some magical beasts or slimes as well.

“Aren’t there self-moving brooms or puppets that can automatically clean the bookshelves?”

“If those devices are the rechargeable type, daily maintenance will require a great deal of mana, not to mention they’re all really expensive. And if it’s a one-time-use device, when you add in the cost for the materials, it’s even more expensive. Those toys are only things that the Mage Country shows off to others in public in order to improve their reputation, but anyone who’s ever used one knows the truth.”

“But since they’re wise mages, it shouldn’t be that difficult for them to clean their own rooms. If they’re really that bad at it, they could always hire a servant to clean it for them.”

“Many objects are very dangerous for those who lack magical knowledge, and the mages can’t rest assured having fellow mages touch them. Cleaning their own rooms? I’d love to use 26 hours per day instead of 24 to focus on research if I could; I have no free time at all. That’s why I’m going to leave everything up to you—that’s right—remember to water the southern garden once every day; you don’t need to personally do the watering, you only need to go to the center and turn on the watering device… Oh, right—when you have time, find another gardener for me. He stopped showing up three days ago after entering my garden. I bet he ran off with the salary I paid him. I really should stop paying salaries in advance, he’s the twentieth already.”

From a certain standpoint, the mage school from back in the day was very similar to modern-day academic institutions. Apprentices would learn from their masters, as well as act as their masters’ personal servants. Since the mages found it inconvenient to hire outsiders to do their chores, it was the most normal thing of all to have their apprentices do the chores instead.

Long ago, when I first began researching under Senior Amelia as an acolyte, I hadn’t had any contact with doing chores yet. The first task that she gave me utterly turned my impression of mages upside-down.

“Mage robes? Those aren’t convenient to move around in, so I don’t use those at home. Easy to retrieve and use magical ingredients in? Heh heh, when you reach my level, that’s not necessary.”

If the gentle-seeming Senior from back in the day had only upended my common sense despite appearing to be surprisingly nice, then the research laboratory cleaning task afterward had almost got me killed.

Don’t even think about some nice scenes, like the beautiful teacher accidentally revealing some skin or asking me to draw a picture of her; her personal clothing, which took up two full rooms was so tiring for me to clean, but the task that gave me the greatest “joyous surprise” was actually watering her garden.

That daily task made me utterly abandon my beautiful fantasy about Amelia and see her true nature.

Probably everyone understands by now.

Back then, Amelia wasn’t so vicious to the point of planting her Seven Virtues in her own backyard. But I first “enjoyed” the attempts of Piranha Plants to hunt me and the tangling of Black Forest Vines around me, playing a stimulating biohazard survival game in her garden. If it weren’t for the fact that I already had a decent power rank back then, I probably would have died off without even knowing it, just like all her previous gardeners.

And my studies under her afterwards were all similar experiences. I finally understood why this Senior with such a good reputation always needed new acolytes…

I angrily roared from the bottom of my soul as I swung my sword to slice through one of those familiar distorted Piranha Plants.

“Being an acolyte under her will be impossible to survive without at least a Sword Saint’s strength!”

“Why are you suddenly shouting! I’m going deaf!”

Alright then, I wasn’t careful and accidentally roared out loud to vent my accumulated anger. That chaotic mess back in the day wasn’t entirely my fault. Perhaps she didn’t have evil intentions back then, but even for me who had a Sword Saint’s strength at that time, I was on the brink of life and death in her garden. Who would I blame, if not her?

When taking that into consideration, making her suffer right before I left was actually committing a good deed. At the very least, there would be a lot fewer victims in the future, such as all her missing gardeners and acolytes.

“Oh my, how exaggerated this all is.”

As for why I was bringing up those things from the past, it was because the scene before me was all too familiar. I was witnessing an overgrown forest, and not only that, Piranha Plants and other similar vicious plants were just as common as weeds here. Toxic pollen spread throughout the air, and tremendous mushrooms of thirty meters in radius actually inhaled this pollen. The most ridiculous part was that there were pumpkin carriages being pulled around everywhere by humongous rats. At any rate, this was a definite dangerous territory where various vicious plant species lived and acted as they pleased.

When I returned to Karo and heard that Amelia actually hadn’t left with the others, I already guessed what was going on.

“This is the most perfect location to do as she pleases, after all. Back in our country, there are officers of the law and a board of regulators. She can do every type of rule-breaking experiment she wants here.”

Should I say that everything before me was expected? When I arrived at where she was temporarily residing in the Earth Elemental Plane, I actually witnessed such a scene. It was obvious that unless she was intending to write a several-tens-of-thousands-of-words-long report, she had gone overboard playing around again.

“I think we should turn around and leave. Since Amelia herself hasn’t come out yet, she’s probably gotten trapped inside. If even a single one of her ‘Virtues’ goes berserk, it’s a painful experience that nobody will enjoy.”

At the time, I unhesitatingly turned around and began walking off.

What? Worry about Amelia? If the standard for calamities was that they could live for a thousand years, then Amelia could easily live for a minimum of ten thousand years. For her, no matter how overboard she had gone with playing around, it was still just playing for her—she could still take care of it afterwards.

“Didn’t you say that you were going to invite her to participate in your birthday party? No matter what, she recently helped you out so much. Isn’t this too cold of you?”

That silly cat—I suppose I should call her a silly loli now—was tugging at my clothes and not allowing me to leave. It seemed that she was dissatisfied.

I was getting a bit of a headache now. Ever since Harloys had regained her life, she had become much more emotional than before. At least she was cuter when she was a cat, since at the very least she was mostly uninterested in anything that didn’t have to do with her. Now, she was basically like a curious child whose emotions changed quickly. Not to mention that she was getting more and more skilled at transforming her teeth into something sharp. If I wasn’t careful, my head would end up getting injured.

“Would I bite you if you didn’t anger me? Stop guessing at how I knew even though you didn’t say it—anyone would understand from your expression. Right, why is it that you’re inviting so many guests to your birthday party? And why did you want to have one in the first place? You don’t seem like the type to celebrate something like a birthday at all.”

“In your eyes, am I someone who should have a serious expression all day while secretly plotting behind the scenes with a minimum of three backup plans? And then plan out a series of underhanded plots for every single thing I do?”

Alright then, this fake loli actually dared to energetically nod in response to my question. Just wait for my revenge upon you! Hmph! Starting from next week, there’s no breakfast, lunch, or dinner for you; either you can go outside together with me to do that Food God series of achievements together, or you can go ahead and eat Amelia’s experimental products… it seems that the latter can also do those damned Food God achievements.

“Lorci is dead now. Since one of the major figures on your list had died, you should be a bit happier.”

Harloys nodded lightly at hearing this. On her list of targets to take revenge on that she had given me, True God Lorci of the Elven Gods had been ranked in the top three.

“Anyways, you’re among the living again…”

“If you want to convince me to abandon my revenge, don’t even think about it. Even if I’m not alive, that will never cancel out my past grudges!”

“Don’t get so excited… I’m not foolish enough to attempt to convince you to let go of your grudges. I just want you to look forward to the future and live more for yourself. That doesn’t clash with seeking revenge at all.”

Some words had been in the bottom of my heart for a long time already, and I hesitated quite long about it, but I finally said them out loud.

“Actually, I’m the same as well. I’m tangled up in things from the past. No, I should say that we can’t let go of the past. With all these years having passed, I can still remember the Mist Kingdom being destroyed in my nightmares. This is so not fun.”

I paused for a while. Since I had bottled things up within me for too long, I didn’t even know how to express myself anymore.

“I won’t tell you to let go of the past, nor will I tell you some useless words like ‘revenge is meaningless.’ After all, that would be nothing more than an insult to people like us who live for revenge. But just like how Lorci’s death will make you feel more relaxed, the Mist Kingdom’s revival is also a type of release for me.”

By now, I was feeling rather awkward, but it seemed like stopping here would be even more awkward, so I steeled myself and continued.

“If you can’t forget the past, then just look more at the future. Anyways, we’re no longer alone in our path of revenge, and we sort of count as family now. If there’s anything troublesome, then we can toss the burden to others to share. At the very least, I plan to use my time to enjoy what I missed in the past before, even if I fail in the end.”

Alright, after saying all that, I could even feel my face turning red.

“So, finding a few friends to help me throw a small birthday party is something quite normal. How was I supposed to know that they would make such a big deal out of the celebration?”

“Don’t Elisa and the others know that it’s your birthday?”

“Kelly probably forgot about it already as it’s been several hundred years; who could possibly remember? As for Elisa… we didn’t celebrate our birthdays in Sulfur Mountain City. We had our own celebratory holidays, one that I invented.”

“Then what did you celebrate?”

“Since we were undead, and the day we died was the new beginning, we all celebrated our ‘deathday,’ and I happened to have several deathdays, so I was too lazy to celebrate them. It’s normal that they don’t know.”

Harloys was rendered speechless upon hearing this. Roland dared to say that he didn’t know how to enjoy life before? When she was still in Xiluo, she had never even heard of the concept of undead celebrating their deathdays. Those Sulfur Mountain City undead really knew how to have fun.

“Wait a moment! Didn’t all those high-level undead in your army die on the same day? Wouldn’t they all celebrate together, then?”

“Yep, which was why we called that day the ‘day of annihilation.’ We would have a grand celebration and parade through the entire city, causing a huge ruckus. And in order to not scare others, we would put funny makeup on ourselves, and sometimes parade as a roaming circus. At other times, we would act out an epic story’s play, and sometimes we even went out naked. At that time, we even had performances and floats for the whole city. Slowly, as time went by, the living got accustomed to it and viewed it as a strange undead festival, and it became the main holiday tourist attraction of Sulfur Mountain City—the day of the dead.”

When talking about the past, it was unavoidable for people to become nostalgic. As I was reminiscing about memories long past, Harloys also nodded in seeming realization.

“You do have a plot after all. Can’t you just say things directly out loud?”

“You saw through me?”

“I’ve been listening to you, and it’s so obvious! How could I not see through you? Perhaps those hunting hounds of yours have realized it as well.”

“Yep, even if I don’t say it, they’ll understand. In this generation, since the Mist Kingdom has already revived, celebrating something like the ‘day of the dead’ or the ‘day of annihilation’ on the day of the kingdom’s fall is too pitiful. In the future, there’s only going to be this ‘day of peace’ celebration that I’ve set up, which represents victory as well as peace. Since I myself intend to walk out from the shadows of my past and look towards the future, then I would obviously hope that they could be the same as well.”

“…You are so willful and selfish.”

I shrugged without denying it, as I knew it to be true.

“Every year’s celebration is slightly different, but I believe that since my intention has been transmitted already, my knights definitely won’t disappoint me. Bastian’s ball-rolling performance is always the main event of every celebration. Now, here’s the big question… Cough, my beautiful Princess Harloys, are you willing to accompany the selfish me at this celebration party? It should be a joyous occasion.”

The loli blonde princess bent her knees slightly as she lifted her skirt and smiled a pure smile at me. She gave me an ancient ceremonial curtsy.

“Of course, my respected Prince Roland. It’s my honor to be able to become your celebration’s companion.”