Chapter 475
Chapter 475
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: Last Parade (6)
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The letter trembled atop the giant hand like a compass.
Tick, tick, tick.
“...It’s not flying.”
“Aaah, just as I thought...”
That was it. The letter atop the giant hand didn’t budge an inch.
Disappointment clouded the face of the old wind mage who had been brimming with anticipation, and I felt the same letdown.
The dejected mage took the letter from my hand this time, but I didn’t stop him. The elderly wind mage stroked the letter with his fingers, pressed his staff against it, muttered a few spells, then let out a deep sigh.
“As expected, there’s no trace of any magic imbued in it.”
“I clearly saw it shake in response to the activation word.”
“Probably just your breath. It’s fine. I’ve had plenty of times myself where I thought, ‘Ah, now that I’ve seen it move from my breath, that’s enough!’ Hmm... This must be a letter Astraad sent to a personal acquaintance. To Hyde, the Empress’s knight?”
“I believe they met during the Imperial War.”
“Ah, that war. There are records of Astraad forming bonds with a few knights. He was the type who’d do anything to protect the Home.”
The mage quickly pulled himself together and returned to his usual demeanor. He’d probably planned all along to take the letter under the pretense of explaining it vaguely, without actually yielding any breakthroughs. I could sense him subtly gathering mana for an escape.
His intentions were transparent, but my mind was already occupied with far more pressing matters than this scheming wind mage.
‘...Why isn’t anything happening?’
Before arriving here—no, even before descending into the basin—I hadn’t held high hopes. Astraad was dead, so I’d planned to swing by his grave as a courtesy, say something like, “Astraad, I’m off to die,” and steel my resolve.
But the closer I got to the center of this sunken nest, the closer to the saltwater lake shimmering with water as blue as his eyes, the more I felt something—an indescribable sense of wrongness.
‘Why wasn’t Astraad part of my preparations?’
The people I’d reunited with in this life, the ones who’d awakened my memories across multiple lives and whom I’d asked for help, all shared something in common.
They were beings who could live that long.
It made sense. With no idea when the Professor would arrive or how many lives I’d have to wait, I had no choice but to ask long-lived species who retained memories from centuries past.
Otman was a magical construct recreated in the world through his Last Spell and Notum’s ritual. As long as he didn’t exhaust his inherent power, he could exist for 2,000 years, not just 200.
Aldarshaqs? A dragon. It could outlive my memories until they wore away.
Aldrich? A near-demigod straddling life and death, right?
‘Then Astraad must be included.’
Astraad was human.
Yet a genius who’d become an archmage at a young age. Archmages, classified from the 7th circle onward, had bodies composed more of attribute mana than human elements, becoming immortal unless something extraordinary happened—which was why most archmages died by suicide.
‘Though their methods differed, every archmage in history ended their lives by suicide. Some scattered like dust, others turned a dormant volcano active and lay within it, and one even used their own remains to cast an archmage spell, creating a homeland for mages. None were murdered or died naturally.’
Archmages were closer to magical phenomena than humans, so their remains were anything but ordinary. If Astraad had died, he would have become the wind in some form, and the wind mages wouldn’t have missed it.
‘Astraad devoted everything to protecting the Home. Unlike other archmages who turned nihilistic and nature-like in their later years, he had a reason to live.’
There was no chance he’d deliberately left no traces at his end.
“Um... about this letter, since we’re already here, mind if I investigate it a bit...”
Something was off. Deeply wrong.
“People curse us for disturbing the place where an archmage entered eternal rest, but there’s a reason why facilities like these are scattered everywhere willy-nilly...”
What was it? What had I overlooked? What discovery was nagging at me like this?
As I sank deeper into thought, the old wind mage dragged over some strange contraption with grunts and set it before me.
“This is my personal magic research gear. As you know, even the Home can’t hold us here forever, so visiting wind mages study for a few months before inevitably leaving. That’s why this basin is littered with all sorts of research facilities in disarray. Some get used by other mages who come by, but ones too specialized rust and gather dust. It’s a way to leave a mark that you stayed here after the Home vanished—”
Clack!
“That’s it!”
In that instant, I forgot my stoic Mute persona and shouted.
“Mage! Wind mages!”
“W-what?”
“You lot! You’re still here!”
The mages’ research equipment cluttered around the saltwater lake like a junkyard. From crude setups to lavishly funded ones, as many varied and inventive devices as there were mages—and what that clearly meant was:
“Not using what others left behind, but staying long enough to build research facilities tailored to your own knowledge and magic! You wind mages, cursed to wander!”
“W-well... of course? This is our Home. Our one true homeland...”
“Now a vanished homeland. Felix Home, Astraad, and the traces of that immense archmage relic—all gone so perfectly that countless wind mages can’t sense them.”
The old mage’s face shifted from confusion to panic, then horror.
“You lot. How long can you stay in a place that’s not the Home?”
“G-gritting our teeth, about a month...”
“And those who stayed here researching?”
“They were all fired up to reclaim the Home and Master— the shortest was five months... Uh-oh!”
“Exactly. Felix Drickciel’s archmage spell, Felix Home, left no traces, but it’s still functioning.”
“N-no way... But we...”
“To you, it was natural. Storm Hill, Felix Home, homeland, Home—all the same meaning.”
When people return home, they don’t think of dry labels like [Neighborhood, Street Number, Floor, Unit].
Familiar roads that spring to mind at a glance, memories lingering in every staircase and alley.
Wind mages who’d wandered the world for five to over ten years saw their homeland not as a building of white, streamlined pillars, but as the entire region etched into them. So to them, the rocky Storm Hill and the ‘Astraad’s Eye’ basin with its saltwater lake were one and the same home. That’s why they hadn’t realized this simple truth.
‘The subject of the magic is strictly the magical construct [Felix Home], not the region [Storm Hill].’
‘The Home’s effect allows wind mages to stay long within it. Even in the 3rd World, mages scattered everywhere at night all returned to the Home to sleep. The stay duration is limited to inside the magical structure.’
‘And the mages stationed here in the vanished Home basin for over five months.’
Whoosh! Whoosh!
I whipped my head around, taking in everything in my field of vision. The basin, clearly larger than the Felix Home I remembered. Research facilities lining the edges, density varying but reaching the rim. This place, resembling a giant eye from above, called ‘Astraad’s Eye.’
The fading sunlight cast shadows as diligent stars took their places in the sky, still tinged with lingering hues.
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‘But Master’s wind has already...’
‘That’s just the common sense of you atheistic mage heretics. In the Roharam Church, the dead always return to the stars. If Roharam said it, that’s how it is.’
‘Your master’s wind may have scattered, but his soul is somewhere in that sky.’
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“He’s here.”
“Felix Home, Astraad—they’re still here.”
Wind mages don’t favor unexpectedly high altitudes. Above the atmosphere, there are zones without wind.
Perhaps an outlier among mages, he’d be among those stars, honored by fellow mages or gazing longingly at the sky.
A mage’s eyes on the sky. What magical symbol could represent Astraad better?
“Astraad’s here? H-ha, but... We searched everywhere! We turned the ground upside down, drained the entire saltwater lake! This is where countless wind mages stayed, seeking his traces! They were all brilliant winds who couldn’t reach his level, but there’s no way they’d miss what was right in front of them—”
“Felix Drickciel was 8th circle. Astraad was 8th circle. They reached the same realm, and an archmage who’d studied only the legacy of past archmages for over a century could alter any magical structure.”
All the facts pointed to it. Felix Home was here.
Certainty gathered my scattered thoughts, condensed them, accelerated them.
‘Why. How. Where.’
‘Endlessly mounting burden. Magic on the verge of breaking. A homeland that must not vanish.’
Astraad’s personality, actions, speech, thought patterns surfaced in my mind, merging into one.
I became a living Astraad, mimicking him.
And found the answer.
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‘This is where undelivered letters gather. As you see, it’s a space separately created by the Home’s magic.’
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“...The letter.”
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‘Nothing in the world is infinite, right? The Home’s burden keeps growing endlessly, and one day it’ll hit its limit.’
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“Undelivered letters... Ownerless letters!”
Clunk!
I snatched the letter from the mage’s workbench. In my excitement, a nearby quill snapped and ink spilled over.
The front bore Astraad’s apology to Knight Hyde for not aiding him despite an old debt of gratitude.
The back was my test note: simply ‘To Archmage Astraad Dylan Delhast.’
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‘I’ll find a way. At least, I hope the house filled with memories of Father and me doesn’t disappear.’
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“The address was wrong.”
He’d sought to reduce the Home’s infinitely growing magical burden.
The place where young Astraad worked, where he stayed after the Professor left, where Archmage Astraad resided—all were a sub-space within the Home where ‘undelivered letters’ gathered.
To use the sub-space, clearly visualize and recall its contents.
The entrance was
Splash!
Placed atop the spilled ink,
[Astra■■ ■■ Hast]
A letter obviously misaddressed.
“...Send it on the wind.”
The letter, with the recipient’s name over half erased, dripped ink.
Letter magic conditions: Stay at the location for 3+ days, sender clearly visualizes recipient, recipient’s name.
The first two unmet meant no magic activation, but the final one—wrong name—triggered the sender’s magic, sending the letter to the Home where it—
...Humm.
Whiiirrr!
“I-it’s working! The magic, the letter magic!”
“Letters with the wrong recipient name become lost undelivered mail, left in the Home.”
Whiiirrr—
Pop!
“I-it vanished! Teacher Mute! The letter vanished!”
As the mage said, the letter rose on the wind, then with a pop! disappeared without a trace.
“It didn’t vanish.”
I extended my hand toward the saltwater lake’s horizon where the letter had gone.
“...It arrived. To where it belongs!”
Sloooosh!
My fingertips vanished into empty air, feeling a space utterly unlike the cool evening breeze.
And then.
‘Astraad. Felix Home.’
Pop!
“M-Mute Teacher? Where’d you go! Teacher Mute!!!”
Recalling the sub-space’s contents, I vanished like the letter, without a trace.
In the dimming evening, the twilight settling over ‘Astraad’s Eye’ rippled faintly atop the tiny rift.
“W-Wind, carry it! Carry it on the wind! Me, take me too! Me too! Teacher Mute! Lord Astraad!! Where are yooouuu!!!”
The old mage’s desperate cries echoed plaintively over the lonely saltwater lake.
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Flutter!
Flutterflutterflutter!
And the monster clutching an ink-soaked letter in one hand.
“Found you. Astraad.”
Faced a world made of paper, endless letters pouring forth.
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