Chapter 117
Chapter 117
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 117
Chapter Title: Body and Mind
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* * *
"Now... what are you doing right now!"
The girl finally regained her senses and shouted. But did her voice reach her ears?
It was like screaming into emptiness—her cry echoed back with no response. Soon, the girl realized she could no longer hear her own voice.
Silence. A voice pierced the utter stillness. Naturally, it wasn't hers, but an emotionless one.
"You can only roll around helplessly now. No, there's one more thing. This time, I'll take your mouth."
Roca no longer had a mouth. Without one, she couldn't scream.
Her sounds, her screams—none could pass beyond her throat. They merely reverberated inside. Roca glared at the blue light with venomous eyes. And soon, her vision went dark.
"This time, I crushed your eyes to pieces, child. Still don't understand?"
Darkness. Silence. Quiet. A world unknown to those born able to see light.
Those blind from birth did not fear it, but she did. All she had built crumbled like a sandcastle before a self-taught swordmaster.
To the now sightless girl, the voice whispered.
"Everything you thought was yours... wasn't."
*'What... bullshit...!'*
She had no mouth to protest, no eyes to glare.
And now, the voice itself fell silent. Stillness. Absolute silence enveloped Roca—more terrifying than any threat.
*Heron? Heron?*
Terrified, the girl desperately sought the voice that had reduced her to this. Unable to open her mouth, she cried out in her mind.
*Child.*
Her mind answered. Like another self whispering within, a response came.
*I've taken everything from you. But one thing remains.*
*What remains...?*
*Yes. Something purely your own. No one can take that. If you still don't see it, think.*
The voice went silent again. Self-realization versus being told the answer.
The two might seem to yield the same result at a glance, but they didn't. True enlightenment had to be wholly one's own to hold power. Enlightenment handed down could never achieve that.
*Roca... doesn't know stuff like that.*
She thrashed about—or tried to.
She couldn't tell if her body was actually twitching. She could only hope.
*Hurry and send me back. I have to protect Master!*
*...Do you think your own body belongs to you?*
But time wasn't infinite. Even now, Roca was dying bit by bit. She ignored the chance for enlightenment he'd painstakingly given her. What choice was there but to guide her with hints?
The voice continued calmly. It was as if two selves in Roca's mind were conversing. Dizzy, she still responded.
*No. It's Master's.*
*No matter whose, it's merely borrowed. No one owns it. Just rented from the world. Child, you received your body from the world at birth and must leave it behind at death. It's not yours. It's transient.*
What nonsense is this?
Bewildered by the cryptic words, Roca scrunched up her face—or so she imagined. Whether her actual body reflected that, she had no way to know.
*The mana you wield is ultimately the universe's power. Borrowed from the cosmos while alive, returned upon death. Can you call that your strength?*
*......*
My mana isn't my power? Then whose is it?
What does that even mean? Roca understood nothing.
*So my body and mana aren't mine?*
*Yes. You merely think they are. In life, there's only one thing you can truly claim as yours.*
*What is it?*
*The one thing left to you now.*
What remains to me? What do I have now?
No eyes, no arms, no legs. Finding the answer wasn't hard. Unthinkingly, Roca murmured it.
*Mind.*
*Yes. In this vast world, the mind is the only thing you can truly call your own.*
Built by oneself alone—not returned to the world at death, but perishing together. That could only be the mind.
*Child, refine mana with your mind. If mana is water, the mind is the vessel. Water takes the vessel's shape. Without mana circuits, you should be able to move mana with mind alone—at the very least to be second-rate.*
Suddenly, Roca's eyes snapped open. She saw her own body lying on the scorched earth.
She could see her charred black form too. She tried to move, but no strength came. Her body's mana circuits lay in ruins.
A healthy body houses a healthy mind. A sick body sickens the mind as well.
Just as one grows inexplicably depressed living in a damp, moldy basement, a weary body wearies the mind. A dying body dooms the mind too.
Defying this natural order—inverting the relationship—that was the mark of a first-rate practitioner. Heron's philosophy held that the true self was the mind, the flesh mere appendage.
If the mind lived while the body died, it wasn't truly dead. The flesh could even revive through the mind's grace. An unhealthy body could house a healthy spirit and be revived.
If body could influence mind, the reverse was natural too.
Whether flesh burned or rent by blades, a first-rate mind stood self-sustaining on purity alone.
He had imparted this enlightenment now in hopes she'd internalize even a fragment and survive—enough to advance her from second-rate to first.
*Can you draw mana with your mind to reconstruct your body?*
Roca's mind couldn't yet detach and self-sustain from flesh, but repairing its "house" held promise. Even if the body died, an undying soul could borrow mana to rebuild.
Fully reconstructing the body with pure mind alone—making the self's ideal form its flesh—was still distant for her.
Thus, massive mana was essential now for reconstruction. Such a feat demanded that much driving force.
"Ah, it won't work..."
Roca groaned. A voice emerged, but it was the death-rattle of one nearly gone. She felt life ebbing from every limb.
*Don't try to draw mana deliberately. Humble yourself utterly. Like all rivers flowing to the sea—if you become the sea, mana will gather naturally.*
"That's why... it won't."
*Then there's no helping it. This is the end.*
Somehow, she seemed to hear a sigh.
Not seemed—a sigh it was.
*Haa... As expected. Enlightenment given by another only points the way—it can't make you leap ahead in one go. What can be done? You were given the chance but couldn't seize it.*
"Heron...?"
*Sorry, child. I'm just a remnant thought. With the main body, I might have helped somehow, but this mere remnant is spent. You won't see me again.*
"Don't... abandon me..."
Roca cried out with a whimper. She thought it loud, but it came out a faint squeak, like a mouse's chirp. Her body lacked even the energy for sound.
No reply came. The remnant thought within her, meant to elevate her at the crisis, had exhausted its power and vanished.
It hadn't been large to begin with. Attacking the Phoenix directly had been beyond expectations.
After creating the mental space and granting enlightenment's chance, it could linger no longer.
*'Dying... like this? Like my sisters?'*
Her hard-won clarity muddled again. Death, briefly repelled, closed in once more. Regret swelled, and now she feared it.
One could charge death fearlessly for a moment. But facing it this long, anyone would naturally fear it. Any living thing fears death.
Madness might avert eyes briefly, or resignation claim it.
But after so long confronting it, the human will to live surges anew. Thus are people like reeds.
Slurp.
Then, into the mouth of the girl whose eyes had closed from exhaustion, something flowed. A cold liquid slid down her throat. The instant it touched her tongue, Roca's eyes flew open unbidden.
A taste she'd never known. Not salty, not spicy. Far from meaty savoriness. Sour? Never. To her, it was utterly new.
*'Delicious.'*
Like a baby nursing at its mother's breast, she instinctively gulped it down. Tongue-tingling sweetness assaulted her taste buds. To a girl who'd never sensed sweetness and thus never craved it, this was a new world. Her first taste of sugar.
The crushed Firefly Crystal Fruit entered, not a drop of final juice spared.
Only then did Kyle exhale deeply and gaze at the girl in his arms.
"Never do anything this dangerous again."
She truly had no idea how frightened he'd been.
* * *