Like someone suffering from unbearable thirst, the thing that was not Ian but a monster continuously licked its lips and smiled.

“If I absorb you, I can imprison that bastard Ian’s soul and completely take over this body. The magical power flowing through your body seems quite useful, too.”

“Who… are you?”

“Me? What’s the point of knowing when you’re about to die, human?”

Black magical power began pouring like mist from the monster’s hand gripping her neck. A strange pattern resembling a lotus flower appeared over its vivid crimson eyes. Soon, Evelyn felt a searing pain near her heart, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. It felt as if someone was carving something into her heart with an invisible sharp pen tip.

“Ah. If only that bastard Ian hadn’t embedded useless magic circles in his body. I could have extracted your soul in one go.”

With incomprehensible muttering, it clicked its tongue irritably and looked up at Evelyn, who was growing increasingly pale, with an annoyed expression.

“Just bear with it a little longer. Once the black magic being engraved on your heart is complete, everything will be over.”

Even as she writhed in pain that felt like her heart was being burned whole, Evelyn muttered in a broken voice.

“…tory.”

“What?”

“Inventory.”

“What are you saying?”

A window invisible to those demonic eyes appeared, and she spotted a dagger she had received as a quest reward not long ago. At first, she hadn’t understood why they’d give such a deadly weapon like a paralytic poison-coated dagger as a reward. Now she realized it was a lifeline arranged by the system for this very moment.

With trembling arms, she barely managed to press the dagger with her fingertips, and the cold metal sensation caught in her grasp. The monster, focused on engraving the black magic circle on Evelyn’s heart, belatedly sensed something amiss and raised its head.

“This energy, could it be Helios… ARGH! F*ck!”

The dagger Evelyn swung with all her might grazed the shoulder of whatever had taken possession of Ian’s body. She had originally intended to stab it into the shoulder with full force, but with her magical power continuously draining without a moment’s pause, swinging it was all she could manage.

‘Please.’

She hadn’t endured until now, pushing her body to the breaking point, just to have her soul devoured by this monster in a place like this. It was fortunate amidst misfortune that she could avoid falling into a state of panic, perhaps thanks to the earrings protecting her mind.

Did her desperate prayer to the system work? The monstrous grip that had been roughly choking her suddenly lost its strength.

Staggering backward, the monster glared at her with bloodshot eyes. Even as it lost balance and collapsed onto the blood-stained floor, the monster never took its eyes off Evelyn, who was coughing painfully.

“When I wake up next, you’ll be the first I ki—”

With that unfinished savage threat, the monster’s head fell into a pool of blood. As Evelyn sat down, gasping for breath and clutching her chest, she heard hurried footsteps approaching. The closed iron door opened again, and a rather youthful-faced man, pale with shock, rushed inside.

“Master—! Oh? Could it be the Saintess? Why is the Saintess here… Saintess!”

Evelyn’s consciousness flickered out as she saw the face of the man in mage robes running toward her.

***

Tower Master Ian had been a magical prodigy since childhood. Born with magical power stronger than even the imperial family of Greyham, he was expected to potentially reach the level of Archmage.

He had manipulated magic as naturally as breathing since a childhood he could barely remember, and by the age of ten, he was already registered at the Magic Tower. The Tower Master of that time publicly declared that he, the third son of a Marquis family, would be his successor. The massive wall in his seemingly smooth-sailing life appeared right after he became Tower Master.

‘Why is there a limit to the attributes magicians can handle?’

Fire attribute magicians could only use fire magic, water attribute magicians could only use water magic. Though there were occasional geniuses who could handle two attributes simultaneously, such cases were extremely rare, and no magician existed who could handle all attributes.

He wanted to be the first to overcome that limitation. That desire to freely use magic regardless of attribute, unbound by any constraints, was perhaps the starting point of his original sin.

At that time, the empire was expanding its territory by waging wars with small kingdoms before becoming the current empire. Ian used this to make the king his patron. The king of that era, who wanted to establish the most powerful empire on the continent, supported him generously.

Even when he said he needed sacrifices for black magic, the king sent imperial death row inmates to the Magic Tower without a moment’s hesitation.

While researching ways to overcome attribute limitations and facing numerous failures, Ian learned about black magic. Black magic, forbidden throughout the entire continent, was the only magic without any limitations, as it required sacrificing numerous lives to activate.

Using black magic might allow him to transcend attribute limitations. At some point, his desire to become a great magician had transformed into obsession and madness, but at the time, he was too consumed by it to recognize his own transgressions.

“Ah. It’s been a while since I was summoned to the human realm, so I’m a bit excited.”

By the time he realized it, the terrifying existence known as a “demon” had already been summoned before his eyes. The aftermath created a massive rift connecting the human realm to the demon realm. It was all a disaster that began with his sins.

With the demon’s power, Ian became able to handle magic of all attributes, but in exchange, he had to live with a demonic parasite inside his body. He engraved multiple overlapping black magic circles on his body to bind the demon, which was constantly desperate to demonize the entire continent.

But as time passed, the power of the black magic circles engraved on his body weakened, and the frequency and duration of the demon taking over his body increased. Unable to die or age as he wished due to the demon dwelling within him, his biological clock completely stopped—it had been five hundred years now.

Recently, the demon had been taking over his body about once a week, forcing him to imprison himself at the top of the Magic Tower more frequently. Perhaps he had been careless in thinking he would be safe for a while since the demon had emerged right before the Founding Festival.

“Tower Master! Are you coming to your senses?”

“……”

He remembered sensing signs of the demon awakening during the Founding Festival and hurriedly returning to the Magic Tower. The lack of memory after that suggested his body had been taken over by the demon again. Looking up at the familiar ceiling of his bedroom with blurry eyes, he rubbed his face and asked.

“It would have been beyond your ability to stop it alone. Are you unharmed?”

“It seems you went berserk while I was briefly away at the imperial palace on business. And I wasn’t the one who stopped you. From the circumstances, it appears the Saintess did.”

Ian frowned at the mention of a person he never expected to hear about in this situation. Lime, the youngest Sage of the Magic Tower who had attained the position of Sage at the age of twenty-one, gestured with his chin toward Ian’s shoulder.

“It seems she swung a paralytic poison-coated dagger at you, Tower Master.”

“That creature wouldn’t be weak enough to succumb to mere paralytic poison.”

“It doesn’t seem to be ordinary paralytic poison. Even after applying potions, the healing process is slow. You might feel some numbness when using your arm for a while.”

“…And the Saintess?”

“I’ve moved her to the Tower’s infirmary for now. Seeing that she hasn’t regained consciousness yet, she seems to have experienced quite a shock. I’m not sure what we should tell the Saintess… Tower Master?”

Lime swallowed his words as the Tower Master disappeared after only hearing Evelyn’s location. If Evelyn hadn’t stopped the demon possessing Ian’s body yesterday, a bloodbath might have erupted on the first day of the Founding Festival.

As Lime shuddered at the grim thought and left Ian’s bedroom to report the situation to the other Sages…

Evelyn, who had just regained consciousness, was staring blankly at the infirmary ceiling. Judging by the darkness all around, it was still the middle of the night.

‘Where am I? Who am I?’

She wished this would turn into a plot where she’d conveniently lose her memory, but unfortunately, the sensation of something wearing the Tower Master’s skin forcibly engraving something onto her heart remained disturbingly vivid.