Chapter 143 : The Master’s Judgment
After Sally and Rudy left, Aracila approached Damian, who had tactfully lingered at a distance to give her space.
“Kept you waiting, didn’t I?” she said.
“Not at all. Did your talk go well?” Damian asked.
“Yes, thanks to you.”
Aracila nodded, her expression lighter, as if a weight had been lifted. The guilt she’d carried for not supporting her juniors had finally eased. Seeing her unburdened face, Damian’s own expression softened with quiet satisfaction.
Side by side, they walked toward their carriage, their steps in sync. The crowd that had gathered to watch the trial was so large that their carriage was parked quite a distance away. They could have summoned it to come closer, but, as if by unspoken agreement, neither did. They simply wanted to walk together.
As they strolled at a leisurely pace, Aracila broke the silence. “Thank you, Damian. I couldn’t have navigated this trial so smoothly without you. I’m truly grateful you were by my side.”
“I’m glad I could be of help,” Damian replied, his voice carrying a tender warmth on the breeze.
Aracila glanced up at him. He was smiling.
From the moment the verdict was announced, Damian had been as elated as if he himself had been exonerated. Though he didn’t show it overtly, Aracila, standing close by his side, could feel his joy radiating. A sudden shyness crept over her, and she narrowed her eyes playfully, teasing, “You must be thrilled your strategy worked so well. You look happier than I do.”
“No,” Damian said, his tone unexpectedly earnest. “I’m happy because you’ve found your smile again.”
Caught off guard by the sincerity of his response, Aracila flinched. Damian paused, turning to face her. At a loss for words, she tried to keep the playful tone alive. “You’re that happy just because I’m smiling again?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied, this time with a hint of a smile in his voice.
His usually sharp gaze softened, his eyes curving like crescent moons. The hard edges of his features melted into something gentle. His lips formed a graceful arc, and the lemon-hued sunlight illuminated his striking face.
In that moment, as their eyes met, Aracila’s heart fluttered. She could feel her blood racing, a rush of warmth surging from her feet, her heart pounding wildly.
What’s happening to me? she thought, instinctively clutching her chest. Her heart was beating twice as fast as usual, refusing to calm.
She’d felt this way around Damian before, fleetingly, but never this intensely. This overwhelming sensation—her heart racing, heat spreading through her body—was entirely new.
“My lady?” Damian’s voice was laced with concern as he noticed her expression stiffen. “You don’t look well. What’s wrong?”
His large hand reached out to touch her forehead. At that slight contact, Aracila felt a flush of heat rise to her face. “You seem to have a fever,” he said, frowning. “Have you been overworking yourself? Could that be affecting your health?”
“N-no, it’s not that,” she stammered. “My legs are just a bit sore. I want to get to the carriage quickly.”
“Alright, let’s hurry then,” Damian said, taking her hasty excuse at face value and quickening his pace, though he carefully matched his stride to hers.
As the carriage drew closer, the fluttering in Aracila’s chest showed no sign of subsiding. She stole a glance at Damian’s sharp profile, her hand tightening on her collarbone.
Suddenly, she was consumed with curiosity about the source of this trembling. Why did her heart race so uncontrollably the more she looked at him?
She wanted to know.
It was only natural that an emergency council meeting was convened at the Magic Tower following the trial’s conclusion. The atmosphere in the meeting room was somber. News of the trial’s outcome and details had already spread through special editions of the papers, reaching even those mages who hadn’t attended.
Travis and Fernando, summoned as the guilty parties, sat in silence alongside the others. Philip broke the quiet with a low, resonant voice that carried more weight than any other sound in the room.
“When did the Magic Tower become so swayed by deceitful tongues?”
The mages held their breath. It had been a long time since Philip, known for his mild and leisurely demeanor, exuded such a sharp, commanding presence.
“I am ashamed of you all,” he said, his gaze sweeping over each mage with deliberate clarity. “I’m ashamed of your pathetic, foolish, and petty behavior. Those who actively participated in this disgrace, those who stood by and watched, and even myself for failing to stop you—I can hardly bear the embarrassment.”
No one dared to argue. They knew their actions were shameful. All they could do was bow their heads, unlike Aracila, who had sat tall and unyielding even during the meeting that sealed her expulsion.
In the stifling silence, Philip delivered his judgment as Master of the Tower. “By my authority as Master, I order the expulsion of every mage who attended today’s trial. Travis and Fernando are to be permanently banished.”
It was a punishment that repaid their petty crimes in kind.
The faces of the expelled mages turned ashen, but none paled as much as Fernando’s. The realization that his name would be erased from the Magic Tower’s history struck him like a blow. It was as if the decades he had spent building his life as a mage had been wiped away in an instant.
“This is absurd! I’ve been wronged!” Fernando shouted, slamming the table and leaping to his feet.
Philip regarded him with calm, steady eyes. “What exactly is unjust about this?”
“Why did I do any of this? Because your favoritism unfairly tipped the scales for the next Master of the Tower!” Fernando retorted, brazenly ignoring the fact that Travis had already exposed his malice toward Philip in court, choosing instead to deflect blame onto him.
“I was only trying to protect my protégé from being unfairly pushed out!” Fernando huffed, his voice thick with indignation as his emotions surged.
He genuinely believed Philip had favored Aracila, allowing her to unfairly amass accolades and glide down an easy path. His own sense of inferiority and resentment at being passed over for Master of the Tower had been projected onto his disciple.
“But why should I face permanent expulsion…?” he protested.
“A mistake?” Philip cut him off, his voice cold as steel. “No one died in the lamp explosion, but many were injured. Do you call harming others a mere mistake?”
Fernando flinched under the piercing glint in Philip’s heavy-lidded eyes. Struggling to respond, he opened his mouth, but Philip pressed on, unyielding.
“A mistake, Fernando, requires no malicious intent. You and Travis don’t meet that standard. Your actions were driven by motives so base and vile they can only be called crimes.”
“But you can’t do this to me!” Fernando cried. “After all the years I’ve devoted to the Tower! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this position!”
To Fernando, his outburst made him feel like a petulant child, but he couldn’t shake the conviction that his life would have been perfect without Philip. His victimhood clung to him—he was in this mess because of Philip’s presence.
Philip let out a soft sigh. “How long will you keep blaming others, Fernando? You say I favored Aracila? Tell me, how exactly did I favor her?”
“Whenever something happened to her, you always took her side!” Fernando sneered. “The moment we so much as challenged her, you’d leap to her defense!”
Philip didn’t flinch, calmly affirming the accusation. “Yes, I did. I always stood by Aracila.”
“Exactly—!”
“But have you ever stopped to consider why?” Philip interjected. “Aracila isn’t my only disciple in the Tower. So why do you think I protected her so fiercely?”
Though Aracila was indeed his last disciple, Philip had other students who had carved out their own places in the Tower. He punished their missteps and rewarded their successes just as he did for others. So why was Aracila an exception? Fernando, who had spoken without reflecting deeply, hesitated before answering.
“Because… she was the frontrunner to become the next Master, wasn’t she? You wanted to secure your influence through her.”
“I don’t care whether my disciple becomes Master or not,” Philip said. “Their futures are theirs to decide. But I couldn’t stand by and watch you dismiss and discriminate against a young female mage. So yes, I lent her my support to level the field.”
Without Philip’s backing, Aracila would have been treated as unfairly as others. He had only tilted the scales slightly to balance the odds. Yet even that hadn’t been enough to prevent things from escalating to this point.
“Were you so resentful when I overruled your objections to a female mage taking the forefront after defeating a beast, claiming it would shame the Tower? Did it burn you so much that I allowed Aracila a mere three days’ delay in presenting her research when you’d stall others’ work for a year?”
Philip’s words cut like a blade, exposing their shameful pettiness. The guilt of refusing to acknowledge a far younger colleague stabbed at their consciences.
“Before accusing me of favoritism, look at yourselves. Have you ever considered how you discriminated against Aracila? Why, at your age, can you not reflect on your own actions?”
The reproach, laced with a sigh, left them speechless. Philip turned to Fernando, who still wore a defiant expression.
“And Fernando, before trying to make your disciple Master, you should have taught him to be a decent human being. No—you should have become one first.”
The previous Master had seen through Fernando’s greed and selfishness, ultimately rejecting him as a candidate. Had he possessed true integrity, the outcome might have been different. But Fernando would never accept that truth, no matter how plainly it was laid before him.
“So don’t talk to me about injustice,” Philip said.
“…”
“This is all of your own making, the result of your own failings. Accept it humbly.”
The words Fernando had once thrown at Aracila to provoke her now returned like a dagger. He gasped, his throat tight as if choked by stone, unable to utter another word.
A heavy silence descended on the meeting room. Philip’s gaze swept over the cowed mages before he spoke again. “Whether you leave the Tower or stay, I want you to understand one thing clearly: the ones who made you this pathetic and wretched today are yourselves.”
This was the final piece of advice Philip, as Master, could offer them.
“Your prejudices—that a woman can’t succeed, that a married woman can’t, that someone young can’t—have stunted your growth, left you stagnant, and let you rot. Remember that.”
With those words, the meeting ended.
The next day, Fernando and six other senior mages left the Magic Tower. Travis followed suit. Since Frederick had abandoned his efforts to cover up the lamp explosion, Travis now faced investigation for crimes including harm to royalty.
At least he wouldn’t walk that path alone—Fernando, the mentor who had driven him to such depths, was by his side.
Thanks to that, the journey wouldn’t be lonely.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ✧: *. ꕥ .* :✧ﾟ. ───
buy me a coffee here to support the translation 🤗🤗🤗
