Chapter 94
Ancient Documents Found at the Southern Fortress… Confirmed as Ancient Magic Records
Scholars Cheer at Discovery, Is the Owner Princess Abner?
After a Century of Stagnant Excavations, the Abner Family Brings It to Completion
I set the newspaper down on the lab table and hummed a little tune.
Owen pushed a piece of chocolate toward me.
“Congratulations, my student. The entire empire is buzzing about this.”
“This is nothing,” I said lightly.
We were finally able to talk in the Abner family’s underground research lab, something we hadn’t done in a while.
“But I do feel happy about it,” I admitted.
“Of course you do. You’ve always wanted to see those documents in your past life, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
As expected, the ancient documents contained information about various old magic, particularly regression magic.
In my previous life, I had wanted to see this information but never could—but this time, it was right in my hands.
“So, I heard the documents were handed over straight to the Mage Tower Master?”
“Yes. Because I’m the lead researcher!”
“Tch. I’m the co-chair of the scholarly society, yet it feels like my rank got pushed aside. Of course, I already skimmed through it anyway,” Owen grumbled.
I ignored him and started sipping my chocolate.
‘Owen can sulk all he wants, I can’t help it.’
In my past life, Theo had written a thesis on regression magic based on these documents.
So as soon as I reviewed them, I gave them to him.
There were parts that were difficult for me to understand.
‘Regression… I get that it consumes huge amounts of magical power, which is why it was forbidden even in ancient times.’
But I didn’t fully understand the part about “a temporal rift occurs in the target when activated.”
Just to be sure, I asked Theo about the “temporal rift,” but his answer was vague.
“The temporal rift is like a void that forms when the timeline gets distorted,” he said.
“A void?”
“Yes. Literally a space of nothingness.”
According to Theo, regression was a type of destructive magic that forcibly twisted the timeline.
Because of that, one had to wait a long time for a stable timeline to regenerate after regression.
During that time, the target wandered through the rift…
‘A dark, endless void where you can’t see even an inch ahead,’ he had said.
Just hearing about it sent shivers down my spine.
To drift through an empty black space for hundreds of years…
“So how would the Mage Tower Master even know about that?” I asked.
“…It was a guess. Based on the information he already knew.”
I nodded, accepting it.
And wondering if Theo might discover more, I handed the documents to him.
He gladly took them, saying he would investigate further.
I stirred my chocolate with a teaspoon and muttered:
“But… why didn’t I have a rift?”
The rift that should have come with my regression didn’t appear at all.
I had just drunk some cold coffee, my heart had stopped, and when I opened my eyes, I was back in the orphanage as a four-year-old.
‘Guess I should count that as a good thing.’
Who knows, but being trapped in the void for so long must be painful.
Then Owen spoke up.
“Didn’t someone intervene in your regression?”
Owen, folding a paper airplane with a bored expression, continued:
“High-level magic creates a pocket dimension the instant it activates. If someone can enter it, they could move the coordinates of the rift around.”
He was right. Theoretically, inside a magically-created space, one could drag the rift here and there.
“If that happened, it explains why you didn’t notice a rift. It simply bypassed you.”
“Oh…”
“Of course, from your perspective, you never entered a rift, so you wouldn’t feel the long passage of time within it.”
Owen placed the finished paper airplane in front of me, then crossed his arms and added one last thing.
“But… wait. That doesn’t fit the conditions.”
I repeated that in my mind and nodded.
“Yeah. The document said rifts have strong pulling force,” I said.
“And that they only slowly disappear with a medium.”
In other words, someone must endure the rift for a period of time; otherwise, the regression wouldn’t complete perfectly.
“Strange. Could it be that I went through it but just don’t remember?”
“Well… maybe.”
But neither Owen nor I could resolve the mystery.
As we both pondered in the quiet lab, a soft knock came from the door.
“Come in!” I called.
Miel appeared immediately.
“Oh, Miel?”
But her expression wasn’t good.
“My… young lady…”
“Huh?”
Miel approached calmly.
“You… need to go now.”
Even Owen stared at her, wondering what was happening.
Miel spoke in a tiny, hesitant voice.
“L-Lord Jayden… has… found… the late Lady Isabel’s daughter.”
Isabel’s daughter?
If it was Isabel’s daughter, she was the grandmother’s granddaughter.
The cocoa cup slipped from my hand.
Quick as always, Owen caught it before it spilled, but there was no time to feel relieved.
“Ah… I see,” I said calmly.
I stood up.
“Let’s go.”
I stepped out of the lab, feeling Owen and Miel’s anxious gazes on me.
The usually locked and seldom-used grand meeting hall was crowded with countless people.
I pushed through the gathered crowd and finally entered.
Everyone here was a vassal or branch family of the Abners who had come from far away.
“I-I’m scared. Sena wants to go home…”
A small, timid voice came from the crowd.
Soon, disheveled silver hair appeared.
A girl about my height stood in the middle of the hall, looking around nervously.
Someone opposite her asked:
“Seniana. Tell this person what you told me. Now.”
“S-Sena…”
The frightened girl’s gaze drifted somewhere.
Reflexively, I followed her eyes and saw my grandmother.
Seniana’s lips trembled as she spoke:
“At the forest house in Otium, I lived with my father…”
“And what about your mother?” someone asked.
“She… she died shortly after giving birth to me…”
“Right. She has a keepsake from her late mother,” someone said.
The people stirred.
I could feel Miel’s hand grip tighter.
Seniana reached under her small cape and pulled something out.
“That is…!”
Some of the vassals rushed forward to see it.
The ladies covered their mouths in surprise.
But I fixed my gaze on my grandmother, not them.
Her violet eyes, always calm, now trembled like reeds in a storm.
“My mother treasured this letter… She said it was from someone dear and that she had to reply one day… My father told me a few months ago, but… snif, sob!”
Seniana dropped the letters, which fluttered to the floor.
I stepped forward, almost in a trance.
I could feel my grandmother and Jayden, whom I had never properly spoken to before, watching me.
I picked up the letters with my small hands.
It’s time to come back, Isabel.
I apologize for being cold to you. I tried to overprotect you, but the timing was bad.
Someday, when you have children of your own, you will understand a mother’s heart. Please, come back.
It was my grandmother’s handwritten letter, written shortly after I had left the mansion.
