Before stepping out the door, the old man paused and looked back, slowly scanning the entire room as if his eyes could still see. The hearth fire was dying once more; in the gathering gloom, his glintstone staff leaned against the wall, its tip emitting a faint, spectral blue light.
Sellen moved to retrieve the staff for him, but Lusat held her back. "That is not what I am looking for. Let us go."
Outside, a bitter wind swept through the silent streets. Sellen turned back, gathered the blanket from the bed to drape over her shoulder, and locked the door.
"I am not cold," Lusat said.
"I am," Sellen replied, a smile flashing across her face before vanishing.
She considered summoning puppet soldiers to carry him, but the old man had already started down the street. Every few steps, he was forced to stop and rest, yet his back remained as straight as a spear.
The sentries questioned Sellen briefly, but they dared not defy the demands of a formal sorcerer and raised the city gates. One soldier slipped away from the back of the line—likely to report to someone—but Raven gave it only a passing glance.
Passing through the gates, they descended the path to the left of the Gate Town Bridge. In the opposite direction lay the site where Astel had fallen; the deep crater was now filled with lake water, and countless new saplings were sprouting beside the fallen trees.
They walked along the lakeshore, moonlight pooling on the path while myriad glintstone fireflies danced among the trees.
After an unknown amount of time, Lusat stopped beneath a great cypress tree—or rather, he signaled Sellen to stop. During the latter half of the journey, his legs had begun to tremble like reeds in the wind, and he had been entirely dependent on Sellen's support to move.
He slumped down onto the gnarled roots of the cypress, leaning his back against the trunk. Sellen spread the blanket over his lap.
Raven sat down nearby. A breeze blew from the west, sending ripples across the mirror-like surface of the lake as the leaves rustled overhead.
"Do you remember? Our first meeting was also under a cypress tree by the side of the road," Lusat said.
"I don't remember."
"Indeed, you were too young then... Your home was in Caelid. Before I found you by the road, I passed through a village that had just been burned to ash. On every identifiable remains of the villagers, there lingered the scent of Sellian Night Sorcery. You came from that village."
"Why tell me this now?"
"I didn't tell you before because I feared you would recklessly return for revenge. But I cannot take this secret to my grave; you have a right to the truth. There must have been a sorcerer hiding in that village researching the Primeval Current, which drew the Sellian assassins. They view Primeval Sorcery as taboo and will eliminate anyone who might have come into contact with it—even innocent villagers. Your parents likely..."
"My parents weren't villagers. They were the ones researching the Primeval Current, and it was they who drew the Sellian assassins. I was small then, but a child remembers much," Sellen interrupted.
She remembered everything. She remembered that somber afternoon when the sorcerer-assassins stormed the village, reaping lives with invisible magic. Her mother had taken her through the back door to flee while her father stayed behind to hold off the pursuers. The entire house had collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke.
The assassins gave chase, killing everyone in their path. Her mother was struck in the back by a sneak attack of Glintstone Pebbles. In the chaos, a flock of goats escaped their pen and surged through the village. With the last of her strength, her mother hoisted her onto a goat's back.
"Live, Sellen. Live," her mother had whispered in her ear, her voice thick with the scent of blood.
Far from the village, the goat had rolled over and bucked her off before running to catch up with the herd. She had wandered through the woods until she reached the road, thirsty and starving, before finally collapsing.
When she woke, she found herself before a small campfire. A tall old man stood with his back to her, pushing the corpses of two sorcerer-assassins into a pit. He then swung a shovel, filling the hole with earth.
After leveling the mound, the old man turned and saw she was awake. He introduced himself as Lusat, a Grand Master of the Academy, and asked if she would go with him. She agreed, and thus, she and Lusat began their journey.
At that time, Lusat was already old and blind, yet he was as lean and hardy as iron. He walked with a vigorous stride, guided by the direction of an invisible, spiritual tortoise. He spoke little, ate less, and slept even less than that, his expression always as calm as an ancient well.
When Sellen first saw the faint glow of the sorcerer's staff, her heart was filled with both longing and awe, but she soon realized it was nothing more than a stick to help him walk. They traveled across plains and hills, staying in villages or sleeping in the wild, no different from common, impoverished tinkers or peddlers.
Lusat never taught or used a single spell. Along the way, he would instruct Sellen on how to gather herbs, using them to trade with villagers for dry rations and a place to sleep—most often a stable lined with straw.
"Master, why do you not use sorcery?" Sellen finally asked one day, after they had been driven away by a miller who set his dogs on them.
"I know of no spell that can conjure a place to sleep."
"That's not what I mean. If you had simply revealed your magic just now, that family wouldn't have dared to set their dogs on us. They would have invited us in with the utmost respect."
"That is true," the old man chuckled. "But magic should not be used for such things."
They continued their walk, and after a while, the old man spoke again.
"Magic is actually quite narrow. A Grand Master who is proficient in sorcery but ignorant of all else would likely starve to death in the wilderness. Of course, most people believe magic is everything—that it can accomplish anything. They exhaust their minds researching spells to trade for power and authority, surrounding themselves with crowds so that every task is performed by apprentices and guards."
Sellen walked ahead, annoyed, feeling she had been mocked by being grouped with "most people." That evening, as they used a net they carried to catch fish in a river, she asked, "You took me as your disciple; are you truly not going to teach me anything?"
"I am already teaching you."
"But I haven't learned a thing!"
"You have actually learned a great deal; you simply haven't noticed it yet," Lusat said. "Your talent is extraordinary. Learning spells will be no difficult task for you, which is precisely why you need more patience."
Sellen suppressed her impatience and feigned obedience, hoping Lusat would eventually teach her real sorcery.
They spent the entire summer crossing Caelid to reach Limgrave, then turned south. Throughout it all, Lusat still taught her no spells.
"Raya Lucaria is to the north," Sellen reminded him. They had traveled with a nomadic merchant for a while, who liked her enough to show her his prized map.
"I know. We are going to the Weeping Peninsula," Lusat replied.
She stopped in her tracks. Lusat sensed her thoughts. "You want to go to the Academy, don't you?"
Sellen didn't answer.
"Do not fret over it," the old man said with a faint smile. "If I saved you once, the work you have done for me during this time is compensation enough. Sellen, you need not be tied to my side. If you truly crave to learn sorcery so much, I will send you to the Academy. You can master any high sorcery there, for your talent far exceeds that of ordinary people—I hope it also exceeds your pride.
"Naturally, I would prefer you follow me. For what I have is exactly what you lack. But I will not keep you against your will. Now, the choice is yours: continue traveling with me, or go to the Academy?"
Sellen remained silent for a long time. Finally, she raised a crude staff she had carved herself from a yew branch and pointed it toward the distance.
Not far away, a tree as thick as a man's arm snapped as if struck by a massive force.
"An invisible spirit... oh, it's a Wiseman's Beast. I usually use it to guide my way; I didn't realize it could be so violent," the old man laughed.
"I watched you summon it often, so I learned," Sellen said. "Do you mind?"
"Of course not. However, I understand your choice now." The old man let out a long, melancholy sigh. "Do you need me to take you there?"
Sellen shook her head.
"Very well." The old man fell silent for a moment, then leaned down and ruffled her hair. "May the stars light your path, Sellen."
After parting with the old man, she headed north alone. On the beaches of Limgrave, she manipulated the invisible tortoise spirit to easily defeat a gang of demi-human brigands, confirming her power for the first time.
The merchant she rescued from the demi-humans was overflowing with gratitude. Taking the young girl for a sorceress proficient in transformation illusions, he insisted on giving her his horse as a reward.
She spent a whole morning figuring out how to tie herself to the horse and then rode north. By the second day, the skin on her legs was chafed raw; the friction between her wounds and her blood-soaked clothes felt like the cut of a knife. But when she saw Raya Lucaria appear like a dream on the horizon, her grogginess vanished, and she felt that everything had been worth it.
With her skill in summoning the Wiseman's Beast, she easily passed the entrance exam and was admitted as a disciple of Master Azur. No one ever knew the story of her past journey with another Master.
Beneath the cypress tree, the old man nodded slightly.
"So you knew all along... Is that why you research Primeval Sorcery? To inherit your parents' legacy? Or are you preparing for the day you can take revenge on the Sellian assassins?"
"No. It is because the Primeval Source is there."
Lusat froze for a moment, then burst into a rasping laugh that turned into a fit of violent coughing. It took a long time for him to recover.
"Looking at you is like looking at myself all those years ago. I was young then; the ancient sorceries of the Stargazers were mastered in an instant, and even the tattered scrolls left by the Carians posed no challenge. I thought I had mastered all the magical knowledge on this earth, and finally, I turned my gaze toward the starry sky, glimpsing the moment a great star cluster would be destroyed in the distant future...
"Losing my eyes was the most trivial of costs. Since then, I have never looked up again." An innocent, child-like expression appeared on the old man's face. "But after living such a long life and reaching its end, I believe I have shed my impulsiveness and arrogance. I am finally qualified to reclaim the original heart with which I first began learning magic."
He closed his eyes, looking toward the faint light of dawn in the east. His expression slowly shifted as if he were seeing something beyond imagination.
"The Black Star!" he cried out. "The Black Star has risen! The Lord of Stars! The struggle between the Black Star and the Gold... this struggle has not yet begun, yet it has already occurred at every moment: past, present, and future... Everything is trembling... the tributaries of time..."
He gripped Sellen's hand tightly, his chest wheezing like a bellows. His gaze pierced through her, through the starry sky, reaching an unknown place, before finally settling on Raven. The wheezing stopped abruptly. His expression froze in that moment—a mixture of terror and joy.
A deep blue, illusory figure rose from his body, vaguely resembling Lusat. Facing the direction of Liurnia's Minor Erdtree, he made a gesture of refusal, then let out what seemed like a sigh before dissolving into countless points of light that scattered into the air.
Sellen sat there silently, feeling the old man's hand grow cold. She pulled the blanket higher over him and discovered that in such a short time, the old man's body had already begun to transform into glintstone. His head was slowly being encased in a layer of deep blue crystal.
"Raven, help me bury him," she whispered.
Raven did not answer. He was staring intently back the way they had come. "Someone is coming."
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Elden Ring: The Unborn One's Journey Through Elden Ring(192 Chapter - Ongoing)
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