The Hero’s Brother Is Bound To Be Depressed

46 – Lawton the Mad Scholar

After all the classes, I immediately met Modist and checked the information I had purchased.

The only person currently conducting research on stone thorn disease was a sorcerer named Lawton.

It is known that he is nicknamed Mad Scholar Lawton, that he once heard the genius of the Green Magic Tower, and that he currently resides in a town called Turning, 30 minutes away by carriage from the capital.

Fortunately, because I was wearing a Transcendence school uniform, I was lucky enough to ride a carriage through Turning Village for free.

When I reached the village, I grabbed a random villager and asked if he knew where Lawton lived.

“Excuse me. Do you know where a magician named Lawton lives?”

“Mad Scholar Lawton? If you go to the outskirts of town, you will recognize it at a glance.”

Let’s go to the outskirts of town, puzzled by that answer. I immediately understood why he gave such an answer.

The house that looked like an abandoned house covered in huge plants stood out from afar.

I cautiously approached the house and knocked on what I assumed was the door, but there was no answer as if no one was there. After knocking for a while, a lady came out of the house across the street, probably because the sound was loud.

“What is it?”

At the slightly irritated question, I bent down and asked politely.

“Oh, by any chance, I came to see the owner of the house. Where did you go?”

“I am not at home at this time. It’s time to be in the mountains every day.”

I nodded in gratitude for her answer, and as if telling her not to make any more noise, she quickly turned around and went home.

Since I went out from the academy, there was only about an hour left when I counted the time to return.

I climbed the mountain recklessly with the idea of finding Lawton within an hour of coming here. The sun started to set even before he climbed the mountain, so he took out the lantern he had put in the space storage and went around the mountain.

I walked around the mountain for a while, but it was difficult to even see other people in the darkened mountain as the sun went down.

When you sigh and try to descend from the mountain. In the distance, magic exploded and a green light could be seen. I hurriedly ran towards it, wondering if it might be the Lawton I was looking for.

I ran to the place holding a lantern, and there were stone statues of all shapes and sizes placed haphazardly, neglected for a long time.

As we passed by vines, fallen leaves, and stone statues buried in the soil, the statues gradually became cleaner as we entered.

Let’s walk along the path made by stone statues for a while. Now, the stone statues seen around them were elaborate, as if they would come to life at any moment.

As I passed by a stone statue of a monster with big one-eyed eyes whose name I couldn’t remember seeing in biology class, I heard a sound at the end of the road and ran towards it.

I put a lantern in the space storage because fluorescent green butterflies roam around the road and stone statues, lighting up the darkness.

Among the crowded stone statues. An old man with gray hair in a shabby outfit and a wild boar slowly turning into a stone statue caught my eye.

“Queueek-!”

All four legs have already turned to stone and cannot move, but the wild boar desperately wants to live while shaking its head desperately with a mournful cry.

However, the petrification spreads as if it were getting wet from the stone bridge, and in an instant, the living wild boar was transformed into an elaborately designed stone statue.

I thought that he was conducting an experiment on stone prickly disease, so I realized that I had come to the right place and took a step closer.

“Hey….”

When I opened my mouth with anticipation, the old man turned around. He suddenly noticed that vines began to grow out of the ground to a size larger than a man.

“Sleep, hold on!”

The vines that grew despite my cry stretched out towards my legs, as if trying to grab me.

Without a second thought, I took out the Spear of Destruction from the space storage and cut off the fast-approaching vines.

I thought that I couldn’t avoid the vines stretching from all directions, so I hurriedly made a dimensional entrance behind my back and came out through the dimensional exit in front of the old man.

“Huh? What kind of magic is that?”

As if he had discovered something interesting, he hurriedly waved his hand at the old man who was about to swing his cane and shouted.

“Sleep, hold on!!! I’m not here to fight. I came to see the sorcerer Mr. Lawton!”

At those words, the old man stopped the cane he was about to wield and looked at me and asked.

“Yes, I am Lawton. Why did you come to see me?”

I answered with a dry saliva at Lawton’s look at me with a suspicious look, ready to wield his cane at any time.

“I am interested in stone thorn disease.”

“Really? Are you interested in my research….”

I nodded my head at Lawton’s curious eyes.

“My name is Ross and I am attending Transcendence Academy. I was doing research on stone thorn disease, and I heard that Lawton, a sorcerer, was doing research on stone thorn disease, so I came here.”

“Really? If it’s Transcendence Academy, you’re my junior.”

Fortunately, I was persuaded, and I let out a sigh of relief when I saw Lawton lowering his staff with a smile.

Lawton, who was watching me, raised one corner of his mouth and smiled mockingly.

“Is that so…. You’re still a kid.”

As the tip of the lowered staff fired a green flash toward the ground, in an instant, vines grew and bound my body.

There was no time to resist, and the vines squeezed his entire body so hard that even breathing was difficult.

“It has good magic, but if the user is a kid, it’s like a pearl necklace around a pig’s neck.”

As I said that, Lawton’s act of slapping my cheek with his cane made me scream in anger.

“What are you doing! I just want to chat… !”

“Why do I have to talk to you?”

Rather, Lawton looked at me as if I was strange, and I thought that I was a crazy person, just like my nickname.

“It’s a strange magic I’ve never seen before. Magic that seems to create a small portal. What is the true nature of that magic?”

I shouted at Lawton, who was interrogating me, threatening me with a cane.

“It’s a magic notarized by Principal Nelson!”

At that, Lawton moved the wand away from my face and said, Ha! I let out a sound.

“You said you were notarized by Vice Principal Nelson? Just an academy student? You know me as an idiot!”

“It’s real! Why would you lie?”

“Then show me the proof!”

“That, that….”

The proof that it was notarized was for Bella, so there was no way for me to prove that it was notarized by Nelson.

“Look, you can’t talk. He was a liar too. You stole the Transcendence Academy uniform and approached me to get research materials, right?”

“No!”

At my cry, Lawton strode forward, pointed his staff at my forehead, and shouted.

“Prove it!”

I desperately shook my head at the momentum of Lawton, who seemed to blow my head off at any moment, and said to Lawton.

“I am the head of the club where Principal Nelson is the professor.”

“Ha, kid, your excuses were so stupid. Anyone who knew Nelson would know that he wasn’t the kind of person to do such a chore at all.”

I desperately explained to Lawton, who snorted.

“You just put your name on the professor in charge! I can prove it!”

“How!”

Looking at Lawton’s gray eyes, I answered in a low voice.

“Check out the badge on the chest of my school uniform.”

There was silence for a moment.

Lawton, who was looking at me, swung his staff, part of the vines that gripped his chest opened.

Lawton, who touched the messiah club badge on his school uniform with the tip of his cane, looked at me with an expression that seemed insignificant to see if the confirmation was over.

“Yes, the magic of sympathy is definitely imprinted on it.”

Patting his chin, Lawton grumbled.

“But your charges haven’t been fully cleared yet.”

“You proved it!”

As soon as I answered, Lawton smiled meanly.

“Yes, I have proved that you are a Transcendence student. But I haven’t proven that I’m the one who needs to tell you about stone prickly disease.”

Lawton snarled, placing his wand at the nape of my neck.

“I just need to prove that you are useful.”

As Lawton swung his staff, the roots of the vines were cut off and I rolled across the ground, bound to them.

“Wake up!”

With Lawton holding his cane to my back to keep me from rebelling, he has no choice but to follow orders.

“Walk as I said.”

Following Lawton’s words, with his upper body bound to the vines, he struggled to move his legs and headed deep into the mountain as Lawton said.

Fluorescent green butterflies flew all around us, making even the deepest mountains look green and bright.

“I have arrived.”

According to Lawton’s instructions, we arrived at the bottomless cliff.

“With the magic you showed me, I can easily bring flowers, right?”

As he said that, Lawton pointed his wand somewhere on the cliff, and a green butterfly flew down the cliff and gave off light.

At the place where the butterfly arrived, there was a flower that absorbed green light and emitted blue light.

“That is Platinum Flower. It is one of the plants that are considered to be the cause of stone prickly disease.”

Lawton took out something like a small trowel from his pocket and threw it in front of me.

“You know what will happen if you get stabbed by a thorn, right? If you bring it to me without damaging a single root, I will answer you sincerely. “

When Lawton looked bewildered at his patronizing speech, Lawton swung his staff and freed the vines that were binding him.

“If you don’t like that, do you fall and die?”

I picked up the trowel with a sigh at the sight of Lawton making a nonchalant expression as he pushed his chest away with his cane.

It wasn’t a difficult request for me. It was because all I had to do was use my ability to move my hands and pluck flowers.

“Are you keeping your promise?”

“Can a man say two things with one mouth?”

He sighed at the nasty look of Lawton tapping his mouth with a cane and immediately recognized the spatial coordinates of the platinum flower blooming on the cliff.

Since it was not possible to move a thing standing still, a dimensional exit was made right where the flowers could reach.

I held the flower carefully so as not to be pierced by the thorns and dug out the area around it with a trowel. Thanks to Nelson’s improvement, the duration was longer, but when avoiding vines, the existing space magic was used to consume mana, so the duration was short, so he had to act quickly.

Pick up the soil with a trowel to a size that could have roots, and take the Platinum Flower out to the entrance of the dimension along with the soil.

I almost missed the flower by mistake due to the sudden cheers from behind.

“Whoa! It’s crazy magic. After all, Principal Nelson is crazy. To notarize this kind of magic to a student?”

I put the flower down with a careful hand and asked what I had been curious about.

“Why do you keep calling Principal Nelson the assistant principal?”

“Yeah, because Nelson was the principal when I was in the academy.”

With Lawton’s words, the question was finally resolved. Come to think of it, Lawton is also an old man, so if he went to the academy he would have been a few decades ago.

“Rather than that, are you like Nelson’s apprentice?”

I replied immediately, rubbing his hands and feeling Lawton’s burdensome gaze as he looked at me with a strangely greedy look.

“No.”

From nob le mt l dot com

Nelson’s apprentice was Ely, the future archmage, not me struggling with no magic. At my answer, Lawton raised one eyebrow and pointed at me as if pointing.

“Then… You’re the head of the Ministry of Magic! Or the Faculty of Magic? It looks gloomy, but it has the feeling of the pension department.”

“… I’m a fighter?”

“What?”

I answered kindly again to Lawton, who looked as if he didn’t understand what he had just heard.

“It’s a combat unit.”

“What a crazy bastard! Why do you go to such a trashy place like a combat club when you have such great magic! Nelson, why did you leave this crazy rapport alone!!!”

The reason was simple. Even with special admission, I was assigned to the combat department because I, who have below-average magic power, couldn’t keep up with the classes in the Magic, Alchemy, and Magic departments.

But I thought I wouldn’t have to say this at Lawton’s self-heating figure, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Wait, then… Don’t you have a magic master?”

As he said that, he instinctively felt fear at Lawton’s ominous smile that he had only seen at Nelson before replying.

“That… That’s right… ?”

I couldn’t help but swallow my dry saliva, getting more nervous when I saw Lawton smiling at my answer.