The Mind Interprets
The body’s recovery demanded patience over long stretches of time. Rood disliked wasting those stretches, so he attempted meditation whenever he found a spare moment. Sitting cross-legged and focusing solely on the rhythm of his breath, he found his mind gradually clearing. He had read in a book that meditation aided the manifestation of aura and was putting the theory into practice.
Aura was the primordial force inherent to humanity. It emerged when body, mind, and spirit reached a certain threshold, carrying the property of assimilation—the power to make whatever it touched become one with it. The phenomena caused by aura’s assimilation were as follows: first, the air surrounding the body took on the color of the aura; second, objects near the body transformed to resemble the aura; third, the attributes of aura differed from person to person.
Many had studied aura in hopes of extracting common traits, yet all had failed. The third phenomenon was the reason. Aura did not merely harden or sharpen; it could also soften or make things sticky. It could bind things together or reduce them to dust. This unknown power was commonly classified as one of the Four Superpowers.
The Four Superpowers referred to the extraordinary forces derived from the divinity the Creator God Od had bestowed upon all things and from the mana born when the Divine Dragon descended. Long before the Empire existed, the great nation of Gang had called the power dwelling in all things qi. One method of handling qi had been lost, while the other survived under the name of sorcery. The Four Superpowers known to the present day were mana, holy power, sorcery, and aura.
Scholars had divided the primordial reasons these powers arose according to the kind of people in whom they most often manifested. Mana was the power of those who sought to understand. Holy power was the power of those who sought to devote themselves. Sorcery was the power of those who sought to empathize. Aura was the power of those who sought to act.
The common way to strengthen any of these four was through internalization—absorbing objects, thoughts, sensations, emotions, and experiences into oneself. That was also why one learned proper meditation before attempting to wield aura. Because aura sprang from the desire to turn thought into action, body, mind, and spirit had to become one, and there could be no falsehood in that unity.
“Mmm……”
Rood was stuck at the most basic stage of clearing stray thoughts. If trying to erase stray thoughts is itself a stray thought, how am I supposed to erase it? Every time the idea of clearing his mind arose, three or four related thoughts would follow. Rood doubted whether aura could truly be awakened through something as simple as meditation, yet he did not stop.
If I don’t know, I’ll just keep doing it until it works.
One thing Rood had learned on the battlefield was that even if mistakes or failures led to death, one must never fear them. Humans die anyway. Whether one lived a stable life while betraying one’s own will, or lived a somewhat dangerous life while staying true to it—life was nothing more than a continuous series of such choices. In reality life was far more complicated than that distinction, but Rood preferred to see things simply. That was why his methods had worked rather well in practice. It was also why he had repeatedly volunteered for operations the other soldiers had declared impossible.
Trials are like a blacksmith’s hammer: they break a person down only to make them stronger.
Rood believed he would grow stronger through hardship. That was why, even though he had yet to grasp the proper form of meditation, he continued to imitate it as best he could.
As expected, it’s still too difficult.
When Rood opened his eyes, the sky was already painted with sunset hues.
“Awake at last?”
Startled by the voice, Rood flinched and turned to see Isabelle sitting beside him, sipping tea.
“When did you arrive, my lady?”
“Not long ago. Perhaps ten minutes.”
Imagining Isabelle watching him meditate while enjoying tea and cookies, Rood dragged both hands down his face.
“Is this meditation practice for handling aura?”
Rood nodded at her question.
“Here. It’s a tart made with the Voenac family’s own recipe jam. Try it.”
Rood took a bite and his eyes widened. He gave Isabelle a thumbs-up and happily chewed the tart of jam and crisp crust. The fresh scent of herbs blended exquisitely with the flavors of peach and strawberry.
“Does it suit your taste?”
“Yes, it’s delicious.”
At his answer, Isabelle smiled brightly. In the orange glow of sunset, her eyes seemed even more beautiful than usual. Her chestnut hair, braided on both sides, caught the light and lent her a serene air.
“My lady, there is one thing I have been wondering. Why do you not wear dresses like other ladies?”
Isabelle’s attire was always a shirt and tie beneath a vest, with trousers instead of a skirt.
“There is no one to go out and meet, so why would I need an expensive dress? It only gets in the way when I work, so I have dressed like this for several years now.”
Isabelle spoke while covering her mouth with a small hand to hide the cookie crumbs.
“Surely you do not wish to see me in a dress?”
“What would I gain from seeing it? Nothing.”
At the curt reply, Isabelle chuckled.
“Have you made any progress with manifesting aura?”
“No. I still cannot seem to get a feel for it.”
Rood briefly explained the problem he was facing.
“If the issue is that thoughts will not stop, would it not be better to let them flow away instead of trying to block them with more thoughts?”
“Would that not make the thoughts continue endlessly?”
“Thoughts may seem infinite, yet they are also the resource that depletes the fastest. When a person clings to one problem for too long, do they not eventually wish to escape it?”
Rood nodded reflexively, then realized how strange that was. If thoughts truly never stopped, why was it so difficult and painful to find the answer to a problem? And why did one conjure other thoughts in order to escape an unsolved situation?
“Uniting body and mind is no simple matter, but in the end, the mind is an interpreting existence. Rather than trying to interpret, it may help to simply accept what is.”
At Isabelle’s words, Rood felt as though one eye that had been closed his entire life had finally opened. He immediately closed his own eyes and began meditating again, determined to apply her advice. He let thoughts flow without attempting to understand anything until only the sound of steady breathing remained.
Where is ‘I’?
If interpretation was set aside, ‘I’ existed merely as an object. The weight felt when the eyes were closed, the sensation of air filling and leaving the lungs, the lingering taste of jam in the mouth—those sensations, and the entire world perceived through them, were ‘I’.
Rood opened his eyes. Isabelle was no longer in front of him. Looking out the window, he saw that the sunset had already faded; only stars and the moon blinked in the sky like someone’s breath.
A state of complete immersion through meditation.
Once he realized what he had experienced, goosebumps rose on his skin at Isabelle’s power. With only a few words she had enabled something he had not even attempted for an entire week. Rood had never thought of Isabelle as merely a clever woman—she possessed the talent of a genius who had risen to the rank of Chief Strategist at such a young age through exceptional strategy and command. Yet witnessing her ability to grasp the essence through such extraordinary thinking left him once again unable to hide his astonishment.
Suddenly curious, Rood wondered, Isabelle, what does the world look like through your eyes?
Under the starlight, he turned the page he had been stuck on and continued reading. By the time he finished the book, he looked up at the pitch-black sky outside the window. The twinkling gaze of the stars felt both terrifying and rapturous—like the eyes of a monster that saw through everything.
***
Once Rood regained his mobility, Isabelle summoned him to her office.
“Are you no longer inconvenienced by movement?”
Rood rolled his shoulders—something he had thought would remain stiff for years—and answered.
“I’m fine. In fact, they feel better than before.”
His shoulders felt as light as clouds. During the war, one naturally developed an eye for judging the severity of injuries; betting on hospitalization periods based on wound condition had been a common pastime. Rood had expected his treatment to take at least three weeks. Yet thanks to Moneck’s various treatments, his body was recovering at an abnormal speed.
“That is fortunate. Do you know why I called you today?”
“Was it not to eat delicious pastries again?”
Over the past week Rood had realized Isabelle only visited during tea time.
“Ahaha, if you say that, people will think I am a dessert-obsessed woman who only uses you to eat sweets~”
That is what I thought.
When Rood simply stared at her in silence, Isabelle waved her hands.
“N-no, that is not it. Remember the promise we made last time?”
Promise? Isabelle continued.
“I said I would let you take one item you liked from the Voenac family’s treasury, did I not?”
Rood finally recalled that one of the reasons she treated him as a guest was her desire to reward him, according to family custom, for saving her life.
“Today is that day! Choose one carefully and take it with you.”
Rood scratched the back of his head.
“I am sorry, but there is nothing I particularly want.”
“Even though there is a famous sword of which only ten exist on the continent?”
“Then I will gratefully accept it.”
Isabelle giggled.
“However! I will not tell you what kind of sword it is. The same goes for the other treasures. You may take only what your intuition and reasoning lead you to.”
“Is there any need to make the choice so troublesome?”
“Is it not far more fun this way? It is also a rule of the family code, so there is justification for following it. You have ten minutes! Now, begin!”
Despite Isabelle’s cry, Rood remained standing blankly.
“W-why are you not going?”
“How would I know where the treasury is?”
“Ah, now that you mention it, that is true.”
Her speech pattern had changed again. Rood nearly laughed at hearing her natural tone instead of the usual archaic one, but managed to hold it in.
“W-well, Pete will guide you.”
In the end, the rule was changed so that Pete would count the ten minutes from the moment Rood entered the treasury. The family code had been altered so easily.
In that case, would it not be fine to just tell me where the famous sword is?
Thinking it would become bothersome otherwise, Rood pushed open the treasury doors with both hands.
This is impossible.
The moment he opened the first door, an unbelievable treasure caught Rood’s eye.