The Master of Language - T.M.L Chapter 28 (Part 1):

The boy’s thick eyelashes fluttered with each blink. His long hair touched the floor as he crouched down.

Though there were hints of masculine features here and there, one would have to look closely to notice.

At a glance, he could easily be mistaken for a girl.

The child was huddled in a corner of the hallway, intently watching the floor.

To be more precise, he was watching a crack in the marble.

Even more precisely, he was observing the insects moving in and out of that crack.

Various kinds of beetles.

“Oh my! Young Master Fabre!”

The maid who had followed behind me approached the child and sat down next to him.

The child called Young Master Fabre didn’t react at all and continued to silently observe the insects.

The maid moved closer to him.

“Young Master, you should be in your room. You shouldn’t be out in the hallway.”

Despite her continued words, Fabre showed no reaction.

But the maid seemed accustomed to this and kept talking to him.

He must be either deaf or mentally ill, one of the two.

“Are you watching the insects again? We can bring them into your room for you. So, will you go back to your room?”

At those words, Fabre suddenly stood up.

Then he turned and looked at me. His gaze focused on the staff I was holding.

“Are you a mage?”

Thud.

At that moment, the maid fell on her backside.

Her face had turned pale.

“Y-Young Master! Did you just… speak?”

Fabre looked at the maid with indifferent eyes.

As if she had seen a ghost, the maid’s face turned completely white.

She covered her mouth, took a few steps back, and then ran away down the hallway.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Well, something like that.”

As an apprentice, I’m somewhere in between.

At those words, Fabre’s eyes widened.

And suddenly he scurried over to me. He reached out his hand towards the staff, then glanced at me.

“Can I touch it once?”

“Oh, sure.”

If it were a magic book, I wouldn’t have allowed it.

The child swallowed once, took a deep breath, and then, as if resolved, gently stroked the staff.

“I’ve never seen a mage before. It’s amazing…”

His eyes were sparkling so brightly that it seemed tears might fall at any moment.

“It’s amazing for me too. Since you’re seeing me for the first time, you probably don’t have a master, but I can sense magic. Quite refined magic at that.”

“I do have a master. The beetles taught me.”

“Is that so?”

I guess he naturally learned while playing with the beetles.

Fabre reluctantly took his hand off the staff. Then he looked up at me, hesitated for a moment, and spoke.

“Would you like to come into my room?”

If there’s the oldest law in this world, it’s the custom of hospitality. The absolute rule that guests and hosts do not harm each other.

As an ancient tradition, it carries powerful magic, and even the most powerful mages cannot ignore it.

“Alright. I’ll be your guest.”

As if light had filled him, Fabre’s face brightened.

At the same time, the beetles he had been watching began to move in a single file along one side of the hallway.

It was as if they were making a path.

Grab.

Fabre took my left hand and led the way.

How should I put it, there was a cute roughness in his touch.

“You seem to like beetles, don’t you?”

“‘Like’ isn’t enough to describe it.”

“Love?”

“That too, a little. Because I don’t want to live in a world without beetles.”

After walking a few steps, he opened a door on one side.

No sunlight entered the room at all, and only dozens of candles dimly lit the interior.

I followed Fabre inside. And at that moment, I felt as if I was entering a new world.

Because everything was made up entirely of beetles.

Not only the walls, but also the ceiling and floor, every direction was made of glass, and inside were hundreds of thousands of different beetles.

As if they were taxidermied.

But I couldn’t sense any thoughts from them.

“They’re all alive, aren’t they?”

Fabre stopped walking and turned to look at me.

“As expected, you noticed right away. Most people think they’re all dead.”

“Well, they’re being held by your psychokinesis.”

“Psychokinesis?”

“It’s a physical force created by your will. You’re probably using it unconsciously.”

Fabre furrowed his brows for a moment and then made a sad face.

“Then, am I forcibly holding these children against their will? I thought they were all here because they wanted to be…”

As if there are any insects that stay still because they want to.

But there’s no need to shatter his innocence and fantasies. After all, it’s directly connected to magic power.

“There’s no difference.”

“Pardon?”

I looked at the crestfallen Fabre with a faint smile.

“There’s no difference between you forcibly holding them with psychokinesis and making them stay still because they want to.”

Fabre made a strange expression and then nodded once.

“I see.”

He understood this in one go?

A child who looks about eight years old?

Fabre walked to the center of the room. There was a desk large enough to sleep on, and on top of it were about twenty more beetles.

They were all lying still on their backs, but if you looked closely, you could see their legs trembling slightly.

“Mr. Mage. Come over here and take a look. These are new ones. But for some reason, I’m having trouble adding them to my collection.”

“Trouble adding them to your collection?”

“Ah, yes, that thing you just mentioned. Um, psychokinesis? It’s not working well. Even if I put them in the glass, they escape after a day or two.”

“…”

“Can you help me? You’re a mage, after all.”

Seeing his expression full of pure expectation, I felt an overwhelming desire to help him right away.

It was the same feeling I had with Psyche and Speria. The power to move hearts with just a word. It’s a characteristic of mages who can transmit their will to the outside world.

Hmm.

I wonder if my words carry such energy too?

“I haven’t studied much about living things, so I can’t promise anything, but I’ll take a look.”

I went to the chair and sat down. Fabre scurried over to my side and looked back and forth between me and the beetles with even more expectant eyes.

This is suddenly becoming too much pressure.

I scanned the beetles on the desk.

And I tried sending out some psychokinesis.

Sending psychokinesis to the beetles felt different from sending it to natural objects or corpses.

It felt like injecting my will while breaking their individual wills and intentions, despite them having their own.

It’s difficult to do just by thinking about it for the first time.

I took out the staff I was holding in my right hand and brought it close to the beetles.

Then, one by one, the beetles who were lying on their backs flipped over with a tap.

“Wow! As expected!”

Fabre clasped his hands together in delight.

I turned my gaze to scan the beetles fixed behind the glass walls.

The beetles on the desk certainly had a much stronger will.

“They possess magic.”

“Pardon?”

“The beetles you can’t add to your collection possess magic. They’re not ordinary beetles.”

At those words, Fabre’s eyes widened like full moons once again.

“Really?”

“Just as there are mages like me among humans, there are also extremely rare beetles with magic.”

“S-so that’s why!”

The child scurried off to one side.

Then he came back, struggling to carry a book almost as big as himself, and opened it on the floor right next to me.

350,000 species of beetles.

He frantically flipped through the pages, then pointed to one side.

“Look here. This one. It’s a Unicorn Beetle with fire wings! But this one!”

He jumped up from his seat and pointed to a beetle on the desk.

“This one has two horns. No matter how much I search the book, there’s no species like this. And there’s no other species with horns growing vertically in pairs like this.”

Now that he mentions it, I can sense particularly strong magic from the horns.

“Hmm, I can’t say for certain, but it’s not a different species. An extra horn probably grew due to magic. It must have some mysterious power, right? That’s what magic is.”

Dangun

I'm currently Translating the following novel: "The Master of Language" If you want to support me and read more chapters please subscribe to my Patreon!

•