The Laziest God Mortal Reincarnation

( Theoran Vale’s POV )

Four months had passed since I began searching for the Mirage Hermit.

For most men, four months would have been an unreasonable amount of time to spend pursuing someone who clearly had no desire to be found.

I did not consider it unreasonable.

In eighty-one years of life, I had learned that the difficulty of reaching a person often reflected the value of what they possessed.

The Mirage Hermit had spent decades ensuring that kings, generals, noble houses, and ambitious mages could not locate him whenever they pleased.

Considering the number of people who wanted something from him, I could hardly blame him.

That did not make the search any less irritating.

I had followed rumors through entire kingdom.

A nameless traveler who appeared in villages and vanished before morning.

An isolated forest where hunters regularly lost their sense of direction despite knowing the region since childhood.

A mountain pass that supposedly changed location every few years.

A lake that did not appear on any map but had been described independently by six different adventuring parties.

Most reports proved useless.

A few were deliberate false trails.

Two were illusions sophisticated enough that I only realized I had been walking in circles after examining the position of the sun.

That had been particularly offensive.

Eventually, however, patterns emerged.

They always did.

The Hermit could deceive sight, sound, mana perception, direction, distance, and perhaps memory itself.

But even illusions left consequences.

Travelers avoided certain regions.

Magical beasts behaved strangely around others.

Old roads disappeared from local use without anyone remembering precisely why.

A man could hide himself.

Hiding the effects of his presence was considerably harder.

That was how I found him.

Or, at least, how I believed I had found him.

I stood beneath the shadow of an ancient forest, facing a waterfall that descended from a cliff high enough for its upper edge to disappear behind drifting mist.

The place was beautiful.

Suspiciously beautiful.

Crystal water poured into a deep blue basin surrounded by moss-covered stone. Flowers grew naturally along the riverbank in colors that somehow complemented one another without appearing arranged. Birds moved through the canopy overhead, their calls spaced irregularly enough to sound natural.

Even the wind behaved properly.

It carried the scent of wet stone, tree bark, flowers, and cold water.

Nothing repeated.

Nothing flickered.

Nothing felt misplaced.

That was precisely why I distrusted everything.

I extended my mana sense again.

Water.

Stone.

Trees.

Animals.

Ambient mana.

Everything existed exactly where my eyes told me it did.

I had examined the river when I arrived.

The water had soaked my fingers.

It had possessed weight, temperature, taste, and movement.

By every method available to me, it was real.

Yet I knew the Mirage Hermit.

If the reports surrounding him were even half accurate, trusting one’s senses in his territory was foolish.

The problem was that knowing something was an illusion and proving it were not the same thing.

I found that distinction increasingly uncomfortable.

At the center of the waterfall sat a man.

A flat stone protruded from beneath the falling water, and he rested upon it as though occupying a chair beside a fireplace rather than sitting beneath a torrent powerful enough to crush an ordinary person.

The water divided around him.

No barrier shimmered over his body.

No spell formation appeared beneath him.

Mana did not visibly move.

The waterfall simply refused to touch him.

His appearance was equally unhelpful.

Long black hair fell loosely past his shoulders. He wore a plain grey robe with no crest, insignia, jewelry, or visible artifact. His face belonged to a man somewhere in his thirties, perhaps approaching forty.

That part irritated me more than it should have.

The Mirage Hermit had already been famous when I was young.

He was older than I was by enough years that nobody seemed certain of the exact difference.

Yet I had white hair, wrinkles, and the appearance expected of an eighty-one-year-old man.

He looked younger than several professors I had hired last year.

Some aspects of reaching an SSS core were deeply unfair.

His eyes remained closed.

I waited.

There was value in allowing another person to speak first.

Five minutes passed.

He did not.

Apparently he had more experience with silence than I did.

"You have made yourself inconvenient to locate," I finally said.

The waterfall continued.

His breathing did not change.

"Four months."

Nothing.

I rested both hands on my cane.

"Considering the distance I traveled, acknowledgment would be polite."

One of his eyes opened.

Pale grey.

Almost silver.

It settled upon me for only a moment.

Then closed again.

"You’ve become old, child."

I had spent decades negotiating between kingdoms, resolving disputes between powerful mages, and managing generations of talented adolescents.

Patience had become one of my better-developed qualities.

It was unfortunate that a single word could still test it.

"I am eighty-one."

"I know."

There was a pause.

"You’re aging well."

I looked at his face.

He still appeared approximately thirty-five.

There were insults delivered deliberately.

Then there were insults made worse because the speaker did not consider them insults at all.

"Do not call me child."

This time, both eyes opened.

There was faint amusement in them.

"You were a child when I first heard of you."

"And considerable time has passed since then."

"Not enough."

"For you, perhaps."

That seemed to amuse him further.

He glanced at my cane.

"Do you need that?"

"No."

"Then why carry it?"

"People frequently underestimate old men who require assistance walking."

He considered the answer.

"Useful."

"Occasionally."

"People underestimate young men too."

"Nobody underestimates you once they know who you are."

"That is why I prefer they don’t."

A reasonable answer.

One of the few I expected to receive from him.

He looked toward the forest behind me.

I followed his gaze briefly.

Nothing moved.

When I looked back, he had closed his eyes again.

"The beastkin?"

The question came without interest.

"You assume that is why I’m here."

"It is the largest war your kingdom has fought in years."

"True."

"You’re Headmaster of its most important Academy."

"Also true."

"Powerful people become remarkably interested in recluses whenever armies start dying."

There was no bitterness in his voice.

Merely experience.

He had probably received similar requests many times.

"I’m not here to ask you to fight the beastkin."

His eyes opened again.

The faint amusement disappeared.

"No?"

"No."

"Then either the kingdom has improved considerably..."

He examined me for a moment.

"...or you’ve found a different problem."

The man was irritating.

He was not foolish.

"I want you to teach."

For the first time since my arrival, the environment changed.

Not dramatically.

No explosion of mana.

No visible spell.

The waterfall simply stopped producing sound.

Water continued falling.

Mist continued drifting.

The river continued moving.

But the sound vanished completely.

Birdsong vanished with it.

So did the rustling leaves.

The world became perfectly silent.

I did not move.

A moment later, sound returned.

The Hermit stared at me.

"No."

"I expected that."

"Then your journey could have been shorter."

"I did not travel four months expecting immediate cooperation."

"You should not expect eventual cooperation either."

"I rarely rely on expectations."

That earned a slight narrowing of his eyes.

Good.

At least he was listening.

"I don’t teach."

"I know."

"I don’t like Academies."

"I know."

"I dislike students."

"I suspected."

"I dislike crowds."

"That has been documented extensively."

"I dislike administrators."

"That seems unnecessarily specific."

"You are an administrator."

"I noticed."

A faint smile appeared.

Then disappeared.

"Find someone else."

"There is no one else."

"There is always someone else."

"Not for this."

His gaze settled on me more carefully.

I had reached the only part of this conversation capable of holding his attention.

"Zenith will admit five students with SSS potential this year."

He stared at me.

Nothing moved in his expression.

Then he said,

"No."

I had expected disbelief.

Not outright rejection of reality.

"Yes."

"No."

"They have all been confirmed."

"Then your confirmation methods are inadequate."

"They are not."

"Five?"

"Five."

"SSS?"

"Correct."

"In the same generation?"

"Yes."

His eyes hardened.

"That’s impossible."

"I stopped using that word decades ago."

"Then begin using it again."

I said nothing.

Certainty was easiest to challenge with evidence.

I reached into my storage ring and withdrew five copied reports.

Each contained identification records, Awakening verification, potential confirmation, and the relevant seals from recognized institutions.

I placed them on the stone beside me.

The papers vanished.

I did not see the Hermit move.

One moment they rested beside my hand.

The next they floated before him.

I made no effort to determine whether the papers themselves had moved or whether I was being shown an illusion of them moving.

That distinction had already become exhausting.

He read.

His expression changed very little.

But he read every page.

Twice.

When the last document lowered, the amusement that had remained around him since my arrival was gone.

"Five."

"Yes."

"All fifteen."

"Approximately."

"And all entering Zenith."

"In two months."

He looked at the reports again.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

That reaction was considerably more satisfying than disbelief.

"The last SSS-potential student entered Zenith ten years ago," I said. "Before him, more than fifty years passed."

"I know how rare they are."

"Then you understand why five concern me."

"They should concern everyone."

"They do."

"Not for the correct reason."

That caught my attention.

"What would you consider the correct reason?"

He did not answer.

Instead, he looked beyond me.

The waterfall.

The trees.

Or perhaps something that was not actually there.

I waited.

Old men who survived long enough learned when silence produced more than questioning.

His gaze remained distant.

Then he asked,

"When were they born?"

I gave him the years.

His expression changed.

Very slightly.

But enough.

I had spent forty-two years watching professors conceal mistakes from me and nobles conceal motives.

Small reactions were often more useful than words.

"You remembered something."

His eyes returned to mine.

"Perhaps."

"What?"

He did not answer immediately.

Then he rose.

The waterfall disappeared.

There was no transition.

No dissolution of light.

No distortion.

It simply ceased to exist.

So did the forest.

The river.

The birds.

The mist.

The flowers.

Everything.

I stood on a barren plateau.

Grey stone stretched toward distant mountains beneath an overcast sky. Wind carried dust across cracked ground.

No water existed anywhere nearby.

I looked at my sleeve.

It was still wet.

A drop of water ran across my wrist.

Then vanished.

I had known the waterfall was false.

I had known the forest was false.

Yet some part of my mind had still believed.

That concerned me more than I allowed my expression to show.

The Mirage Hermit stepped down from a stone that had apparently never stood beneath a waterfall.

Bare feet touched the cracked ground.

"Fifteen years ago," he said, "I felt something."

I focused completely on him.

"What?"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!