Chapter 61: It’s Not a Miracle
When he entered the room, he saw her lying on the bed with her eyes closed, while the clan’s healer examined her with a serious expression.
He was one of the rare Holy Mages that existed within the clan. An elderly-looking man with heavily graying hair.
Her breathing was weak, and her face was somewhat pale, with a clear expression of pain.
"What happened?!" Priam practically roared.
He immediately panicked.
The clan’s Holy Mage turned toward him, took a deep breath, and gently shook his head.
"I can’t say for certain. She has all the symptoms of someone whose life force has been consumed, but I’ve already checked her blood, and her life force is normal for someone her age," the old man said slowly, making Priam’s heart pound. "I’ve also checked for poison and hidden internal injuries... but every test I know shows that she’s perfectly normal."
"H-how..." Priam stammered, stunned.
At that moment, his mind returned to the very beginning.
Right after awakening with his memories, he had noticed that his mother already had obvious signs of aging on her face despite being under thirty years old.
After that, Priam realized she was hiding something from him.
She also always became very emotional whenever she saw how much he had changed, and often said things with a melancholic expression.
Only now did Priam truly stop and think about it deeply.
Going back even further... to the memories of the "old" Priam.
He could remember that his mother had aged very quickly shortly before his father stopped coming back.
She came from a Bloodline of forest humanoids known for their beauty and nearly eternal youth.
Something was clearly wrong.
"Young Master, there’s no need to be so anxious," the old man’s voice pulled Priam from his daze. "I gave her a pill, and her body is absorbing it perfectly. She should wake up...?"
Halfway through his sentence, Seien’s eyes trembled slightly.
Priam rushed forward and grabbed her hand.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Priam’s completely distorted expression in front of her.
"Son..."
She murmured, clearly startled.
"Mom... what’s happening?" Priam couldn’t stop himself from asking directly.
What he was feeling now was something uncontrollable that he had never experienced before.
It was a devastating, unbearable pain that blanked his mind and filled him completely with despair.
Seien’s lips trembled slightly.
Her eyes became distant, and she took a deep breath, as if carefully considering her answer.
"Madam," the old man beside her interrupted gently, "I remember reading an old tale about—"
Her eyes sharpened as she looked at him.
The man immediately fell silent.
Priam looked between the doctor and his mother, stunned.
"What? What’s going on?! Tell me immediately!"
The doctor sighed lightly and nodded.
"This is a Bloodline disease, Young Master. As humanoid Bloodlines emerged through forced mutations, each with different and unique characteristics, many... problems appeared as well. There are diseases and conditions that only specific races possess. Usually, when a race like that has very few members and lives in isolation within forests... no cure is ever developed."
Priam’s eyes widened.
"What kind of disease do the Charming Elves have?"
"I don’t know exactly. There are only very old records of members of that race dying very young for no apparent reason. Since they live in isolation, only someone from that race who has witnessed it many times could properly research and discover the cause."
The old man spoke slowly, then snorted.
"As I said, she was simply weak for no apparent reason, but she’s stable now. It may just be a temporary issue that never happens again. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my leave."
The old man bowed slightly and then left through the door.
Priam was certain that he knew more than he was saying.
The look his mother gave him made that obvious.
His father had signed a strange contract with those Beasts of Primordial Chaos specifically to obtain rare treasures.
Everything was starting to fit together.
Priam turned toward his mother, thinking deeply.
He had his Synthesis. He could buy the best pills and create something capable of solving this.
He just needed to know what she had.
"Son..."
Seien’s voice interrupted his thoughts softly.
"You heard him. I’m fine. There’s no need to think so much about it. Actually, it’s very common for this to happen in my race when we stay away from the forest for too long. After I get some more rest, everything will return to normal."
Priam swallowed hard.
That was an obvious lie.
His father had clearly abandoned the family because he was trying to save her.
He took a deep breath and nodded slightly.
"Alright. Get as much rest as possible. I’ll ask Flora to stay with you all day."
She nodded with a faint smile, then slowly closed her eyes, as if she were extremely tired.
Priam took a deep breath.
He turned and walked toward the door.
Outside, Flora was standing there with an extremely worried expression.
"Stay with her, and call me if anything changes."
Without waiting for a response, Priam turned around and quickly headed through the annex corridors.
First, he went to the training grounds.
There, Flaris, Shione, and Lumiere were waiting for him, surprised by how late he was.
"Priam, what happened?" Flaris asked, confused when she saw him.
He approached the three of them and spoke directly to her.
"I need your help. I want your demon family to look for something important for me."
Seeing how serious he was, Flaris replied,
"If it’s something very rare, other races usually sell those things through secret auctions. My family can keep an eye out. Most valuable items aren’t sold openly anyway."
Priam nodded.
The chances of finding what his father wanted were extremely low. But if it was found, it would certainly be sold through an auction.
Even if the odds were slim, he had no choice but to try.
Besides, he had heard from the Holy Mage that there were ancient stories about his mother’s race within the clan.
He would definitely investigate them and figure out what she had, then search for an alternative cure.
...
At the end of that day, after speaking with the Clan Leader, Priam received permission to access the highest level of the library and read anything he wanted.
He devoted himself to it almost without rest.
He didn’t even care about completing his daily missions anymore.
As James, he had a father and mother who had practically abandoned him in a hospital.
After reincarnating under a curse, he got a despicable mother who sold him and deeply traumatized him.
In this life, he had hit the jackpot.
His mother was the most precious thing he had.
If it were possible, he would split his lifespan in half and give part of it to her.
...
The next day, his mother left her room as if nothing had happened.
Priam went to see her and heard her insist that she was fine and that it would never happen again.
He was certain she would never tell him the truth, for some reason.
Flora would stay with her all day.
So Priam returned to his research.
After almost two days, he finally found something.
’During the era of the 810th Leader of the Ylisse Clan, the race known as the Cursed Forest Elves was granted the right to live on the planet Verdant Star.
Due to the deaths caused by their curse, they had many enemies and were being unjustly persecuted, nearly driven to extinction.
The Elders opposed the idea because it could bring trouble to their planet. However, the current Clan Leader stated that, according to ancestral records, this race was similar to the Vancularis and followed the same Fallen Goddess. Most likely, they had fallen into ruin after her disappearance as well.
As a sister race, they could not allow them to vanish without offering help.
Thus, the Elder Council decided to allow a small group of them to live secretly within the planet’s forests.
They could not live in cities or become powerful Mages, so as not to attract attention.
To avoid problems, they would also need to change the name of their race.
From that point onward, they became known as the Charming Elves.’
Priam read everything and finally discovered why the race’s name had been changed.
Cursed Forest Elves...
Where did the curse come from?
He searched through records predating the 810th generation of the clan, but the race’s name was never mentioned.
He spent another full day searching records after that period, but there was nothing else to read.
"Curse..."
Priam searched through the records for what Mages classified as a curse and quickly found an explanation.
A curse could be inflicted by the Laws of the World upon a mortal through the enforcement of their rules.
In that case, there was no cure, only delaying the inevitable end.
Or it could be created through the Ancestral Arts of certain races, as well as the Magical Arts of sinister Sorcerers from the divine plane.
Such curses were rarely used because, in most cases, both the victim and the caster ended up cursed with equal severity.
For the second type, the only cure was a pill made from materials that were nearly mythical even in the divine plane.
’My father... is he trying to create a cure for a curse? But... the materials he’s searching for, at least the two he asked Orlaith about, exist in the mortal plane.’
Priam took a deep breath.
At least now he had a direction.
At the same time, however, he could see an endless abyss ahead of him.
’Synthesis isn’t some absurd miracle. It isn’t about combining two mediocre pills or materials and creating a divine rune. Synthesis simply fuses two energies, producing something mutated and unusual from them. In other words... there’s almost no chance I’ll create something capable of curing a curse using random materials from the mortal plane. But my father has a plan.’
He snorted.
The only thing he could do was try to help his father obtain what he needed.
Fortunately, his mother was living normally again for now.
Maybe he still had time.
Maybe he would eventually find a solution.
Perhaps not within four years, but later, in the divine plane after joining a sect.
That was what he chose to believe.
Even so, deep inside, an instinctive sense of unease was beginning to take hold of his mind.
