Swallowing a World

"Don't give me that crap, you two-bit mage!"

Anon scattered mana in every direction, weaving the strands into bolts of lightning.

But the insight I had just grasped — the Principle — had already turned the board on its head. I slipped past some of the falling thunderbolts and forcibly bled the rest aside. At the same time, I began gathering wind mana at the tips of my feet.

I still couldn't truly fly. All I could manage was the pathetic business of stepping from one wind-forged foothold to the next. But if it was speed alone, I was no slower than any other mage in the air.

The instant the wind mana at my feet condensed to its limit, I stomped the ground without a shred of hesitation and rocketed into the sky. The blast of it roared through the air.

I came screaming toward him at tremendous speed, and alarm flashed across Anon's face. He clearly hadn't expected me to come flying at him like this.

"Well now — you're screaming for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me to kill you!"

But he recovered almost at once, treating my ascent as an opportunity instead, and scattered his mana once more. A blue-white radiance flared at his fingertips. The atmosphere itself screamed under the colossal flow of power, and black clouds came boiling in from every side.

The density of it was nothing like before. Even with the Principle of Water, there was only so much I could bleed off. And Anon had already watched me deflect his magic more than once. Whatever he was building this time, it was not a spell structured to be evaded.

A tension like the smell of burning metal hung in the air. Certainty settled over Anon's face. With that much mana behind the strike, the moment I was hit I would be run through. He smiled, convinced that this time I had no answer.

"You rushed your own death."

And then the sky split open.

The lightning came down like a starving beast, tearing the air in jagged, ravenous zigzags. With every plunge a thunderclap scorched a black wound through space. Like a spear forged in the heavens, a single shaft of pure white and gold ripped the world apart as it fell.

Beyond it, I could see Anon smiling. Of course I could. My body was flying straight into the spear of heaven.

And that was exactly why I had waited for this moment.

The edge of my hand stretched toward the spear. No matter how much mana had gone into its making, it was still magic. Cut the flow of mana, and any spell in existence could be undone.

My Third Eye pierced through the spear of heaven. The instant I found the center of its mana, my hand drove into that point without a flicker of hesitation.

My arm burned. Current shoved itself into my cells, intent on incinerating everything it touched. Even with Haneulseo on my hand, the lightning seared my flesh without mercy. But my fingers found the heart of the mana, sure and true.

A snap rang out at my fingertips.

The mana, robbed of anywhere to go, scattered with an ease that was almost pathetic. The shaft of light screamed like a living serpent and tore itself apart to either side. The roar split down the middle, the two halves shearing past each other, and the air itself recoiled as if it had exploded.

Beyond the wreckage, Anon's face hung slack with disbelief. It was the face of a man who could not, by any stretch of common sense, comprehend the figure that had just stepped through a bolt of lightning.

Anon had never once let his guard down. He had guessed I had a trick, and he had prepared a killing spell to match it. But this had blown past every variable he had accounted for. He had never imagined that a mere Neophyte could neutralize his finishing magic.

Ignorance is poison. And once that poison has spread, even a mage cannot stop it.

My hand was right in front of him. It was a ruin — burned down to almost nothing from forcing my way through his spell — but that was fine. It was enough to reach him.

My palm settled against his chest. Silence hung between us.

"Ha. Haha."

A hollow laugh began to work its way across his mouth. Anon lifted a hand, seized my wrist, and crushed down as if he meant to pulp the bone.

"Yeah? And what are you going to do now? You think your mana can punch through my shield?"

The gulf between a Neophyte and a Theoricus was vast. Even the same mana shield was, across that difference in rank, impenetrable. But none of that applied to me. Whether he was a Theoricus or something even higher — in the end, my hand would reach him.

To me, mana was not a force that pushed back. It was something I extinguished. Something I absorbed. And the life flame burning beyond it was no different.

Anon's flame was roaring. I closed my fist around it.

His mana stirred. He still had not noticed what was happening inside his own body, and he was already reaching for a spell. The scale of it was battlefield magic. I had dismantled too many of his casts — so he meant to simply erase me, at this range, with a spell built for war.

But the flame was already dying. I held it in a hand that had burned to nothing, and I erased it from this world.

A snap rang out.

It was the sound of the vast mana that had summoned those storm clouds being cut. The one who had been feeding it was Anon — a mage of bright and terrible promise who had reached Theoricus. The battlefield magic he had been so proud of would never fire. The man supplying it had already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠drawn his last breath.

Anon's body went slack. Then he fell.

He hit the earth with a heavy, final sound, and lay there on the ground he himself had scorched. The mage who only moments ago had worn such overwhelming presence was dead — hollowly, almost absurdly so. He had not even realized he was dying. The only thought in his head had been to blow that paltry two-bit mage away with battlefield magic one more time.

The flame I had extinguished came flowing in along my grip. And with it, my body began to change. New flesh sprouted over the ruin of my arm, knitting itself whole. More mana than I had spent came flooding in behind it.

In my inner world, a bolt of lightning struck. Lightning that had never been there before roared like a thunder dragon.

At the same time, a fragment of another world flashed across my sight. A mage racing freely through the lightning, laughing with his whole chest — until he came face to face with something, and the laugh tore into a scream of raw terror.

Then the vision cut, and I was back.

Raindrops fallen ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from the sky struck my face and slid away. The storm clouds Anon had gathered had become rain clouds. In the downpour, an unnameable sense of accomplishment swept through my entire body. Separate from that, a hardened face looked down at my own hand.

The scene I had just witnessed. That had been Anon's world — I was sure of it. In all the times I had taken life from people and from monsters, I had never seen anything like that. Which meant it was a vision that showed itself only through a mage.

Did I swallow Anon's world?

A world a mage had spent his entire life pursuing. I had swallowed it whole. The thought sat awkwardly in my chest.

The Third Eye — the dragon's eye belonging to the progenitor mage. What even was it? Not that asking would have done any good. The eye would never answer. It simply remained quietly closed.

I descended slowly through the rain. I had made this much noise. The mages in Grandheim might already have noticed. So I stepped down the wind footholds to the ground and collected Anon's corpse.

Thanks to his life force, my body had recovered. I left the Sword-crown Forest as fast as I could and ran for a long time. I erased the traces of mana as I went, so there should be no trail to follow. Other mages would not come after me. They had sent Anon after the Dawn Constellation in the first place. With most of the mana signature being his, they would assume he was still in the thick of a hard fight.

The downside was that I would have to take the long way around to Grandheim. Before I knew it, the day had begun to fade. I would have no choice but to head back when dawn broke tomorrow. More importantly, I needed to go through Anon's belongings before I went anywhere. He had been hunting the Dawn Constellation. There might be a clue.

After running for a long while, a house on the edge of collapse came into view. No sign of anyone inside. Judging by how old and worn it was, the people who had lived here had been gone a long time. A house this far out — most likely they had fled from monsters.

I pushed open the half-broken door and walked in. The signs were everywhere: no one had used this place in years. I dropped onto the dusty floor. My body had recovered, but the fight had wrung out my mind, and the fatigue only hit me once I was sitting.

There was still work to do, though. I sat before Anon's corpse again and bowed my head.

"I apologize for the discourtesy I am about to show you, senior."

Fighting him had been purely a matter of opposing purposes. I had learned from him, and so I offered a fellow mage the respect that was his due. Whoever the victor, Anon had been an outstanding mage. That much was fact.

The apology done, I went through his belongings. From his clothes came a pendant, a compass, and a small crystal vial.

Inside the vial was a liquid — or something that looked like one. Even when I tilted the bottle, the contents did not flow like water. Thin, silk-like layers folded over one another, sliding in a strangely fluid motion. The center was a deep indigo-violet, but toward the edges a moonlight silver and the blue of a dawn sky seeped through by turns. I could not have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠said what it was. I could feel mana in it, though. I decided to keep it for now.

Nothing else was particularly remarkable. The pendant opened, and inside it was a picture — a woman's face. Whether she had been a fiancée, a wife, or family, I could not tell. I returned the pendant to his chest.

That left the compass. Why would a mage carry something like that? A mage's senses were nothing like a human's. He should not have needed directions. Then I realized the needle was pointing steadily, unwaveringly, in a single direction. It was not built to tell north from south. It was built to point at something specific.

Don't tell me.

With this, the Dawn Constellation—

The thought had barely formed when my Third Eye snapped open. At the same instant my head whipped around. A dark pocket of the house. My gaze settled there, quietly.

A shadow of darkness swayed slowly with the wind. Then the shadow gathered itself into a shape, and rose to its feet. It was an extremely bizarre thing to watch.

Facing the darkness, I opened my mouth.

"...Dawn Constellation?"

An opponent who had appeared without even a whisper of mana. Without the Third Eye, I would never have noticed him either.

"Haren."

A voice came from beyond the dark. The moment I heard it, my eyes went wide. It was a voice scraped raw, like metal dragged over metal — but it was a voice I knew. A voice I had heard to death for months in Laoren.

"Master Dreygan."

The director of the Laoren monster-hunter training center. Dreygan. It was his voice.