Chapter 5
“Oh hoh!”
“Ah, up already?”
The waking old man nervously and tensely stood up from the bed.
I guess it’s natural.
It would be strange if he’s not disoriented.
I lightly raised my hand in greeting to the old man.
“How’s your condition? Gramps?”
“What in the world happened?! I’m supposed to be dead!”
As soon as he noticed me, gramps changed his countenance and begun to come near me.
“I know how you feel, but calm down”
Even I think that what I did was insane, I’ve no clue how I am supposed to make things easier to accept.
I gently patted his shoulders.
Slightly calming down, the old man took a deep breath and huffed down to sit on the bed.
There’s probably nothing to worry about if he’s this energetic.
Anyway, that unbelievable magic seems to have properly succeeded.
I opened my mouth as I waited for him to get his bearings.
“I’ve brought you back, so what do you think?”
“No, even if you say that…”
The moment the old man realized the situation, he froze up with his mouth wide open.
“Wha-? Did you say you revived the dead? How did you cast such an outrageous magic…..?”
“We~ll, it was really easy you know? I simply did this and that.”
In truth, I may be really tired but the negotation itself went pretty smoothly.
Viva super magic.
Money also makes h.e.l.l go round, it seems. How that fact feels melancholic.
“What do you mean ‘simply did this and that’….. you would have had to take out an enormous amount of Mana”
“Ah–….. well I don’t think it required that much?”
When I said this, gramps jaw gradually fell.
“There’s no way that’s true! Where did you get that much magic from?….. Don’t tell me you’ve committed a ma.s.sacre!? What a mess! To think that I’ve given my magic to such a person…..! I thought I finally found someone capable!”
The old man who plopped down seems to have made some gargantuan misunderstanding.
Even I would undoubtedly feel unsettled in the face of such a misunderstanding, so let’s set things straight.
“….. don’t suddenly slander a person. All of it were mine, ya know.”
“…..wha-?”
“I said everything was mine. There’s simply no way I’d do such a reckless thing.”
I didn’t lie in what I said but he’s still in disbelief after all.
But in the mean time, reason finally returned to his blank face. This time he spread his arms wide and reb.u.t.ted in a scandalized tone.
Apparently the situation turned into a joke.
“Wah, wah wah! Stupid tale. a.s.suming that I believe you.
Why are you not dried up and dead? Magical depletion means ‘death’. Even if you have my Mana, it would still be far from enough.”
“Then it’s most likely because I have Mana to spare”
We~ll, I know that it’s hard to accept but I wish you’d believe the truth.
Gramps let out a dry laugh, so I responded with a ‘whatever’ dead pan expression.
Then the old man gulped down his throat, and cautiously asked me,
“……By the way, just how much does your magic measure?”
“8,001,000. But I think the 1000 is from you”
“…….!”
Gramp’s head unsteadily shook.
If you’re that surprised, I’d wonder if I should give it more importance.
The collapsed old man somehow turned to charcoal.
“…..my five hundred years means nothing.”
“Oh no, don’t praise me that much~”
“I didn’t praise! E ei quite a personality! Hey wait! It’s hard to move! There’s something wrong with my body!? Did you fail!?”
“Is that so? as I thought?”
“….as you thought?”
Not knowing what’s that meaning of the thing he heard, the old man had hardened his eyes.
I averted my gaze and faced towards the future.
Of course, if you ask me, it would be odd if there was nothing weird about the body.
What should do? Earlier, I couldn’t help but procrastinate for a bit…..
All right, in the end I swallowed my saliva and decided to just be honest and own up to it.
“A-….. how should I put it? The magic to revive the dead needed a vessel no matter what. Then I picked one up right around here.”
“……so you murdered someone after all? …..what a piece of work! Without blood or tears!”
“You say that again. Bad listener. Let me rephrase, I caught it around here. I felt quite sorry for it.”
“……you caught it, you say?”
“Un. Although the results are a bit unexpected…. but it’s that, I’d call us quits since you kindnapped me….. somehow”
The old man was surprised with my ambiguous statement.
“What are you talking about?”
“A-, here’s a mirror! ……. don’t get too mad okay?”
I flippantly took out the mirror that I prepared beforehand.
The old man peered inside the mirror and was indeed surprised, his previously circular eyes bulged out some more.
Vivid emerald green skin, shiny and l.u.s.truous.
Froggy cheecks bulging out like balloons.
But for some reason, the chin has a long, pure-white beard.
“Nna-……!”
“Even though it looks like this, I did my best…..”
No matter how you look at it, the mirror’s reflection shows a huge frog.
But it’s bipedal.
“My, as expected it’s bad, I aimlessly downloaded various [Body Modification] magics while you were sleeping…. but it’s still ended up as a frog. Ah! Your beard grew, see! You could also freely move your four limbs right? I also tried my best to make your walking style bipedal! ……isn’t it great that it’s an animal with hands and feet?”
Though I was chuckling and laughing, cold sweat ran down my back.
Full disclosure, I did some really weird things so that this strange organism could be born.
I thought it was fine when I was doing it, but this is the result.
The old man just solidified from staring at the mirror too long.
As expected it was wrong, I tried to say some comforting words but….
“OH MY G.o.d!”
The big frog dramatically flipped, I panicked.
“A, this is, so you really turned into a frog…..”
“Shut up!”
That day, the man who was hailed as the greatest magician in the world was reborn as a frog.