Chapter 71
Chapter 71
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Law of Causality
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Karnel stood before the bed where Adel lay.
Her lips pressed tight, she raised her hand.
“…….”
Swish…
Glistening mana infused with starlight spread from her fingertips, sweeping over Adel’s body.
It was when that mana reached the area around his head.
Sss…
A jet-black wisp of smoke rose, dragging something out from the crevice of his mind.
“…Mind magic?”
The smoke rising around his head… It was too bizarre in its flow to dismiss as mere mana residue.
“You’re saying he was hit with mind magic?”
“Yes… And a fairly advanced level at that….”
It wasn’t something you could simply call magic.
This went beyond stirring emotions or memories.
It tampered with the very structure of the mind, twisting and overlaying it…
Burrowing into the root of existence, disrupting identity… corroding the self itself.
“…Violet.”
“Yeah?”
“Could you step out for a bit?”
“Uh…? Sure.”
Violet made a puzzled face but obediently left the room soon after.
Click.
As the door closed, silence settled over the room…
And Karnel’s mana spread out.
Formless starlight enveloped the space.
“Ugh… I hate mind magic.”
She despised magic that interfered with the mind.
The act of peering into someone’s thoughts and manipulating them… was repulsive.
No matter how justified the reason, it triggered an instinctive revulsion in her.
Srrk…
Even so… she had to do it.
She had no choice.
An intricate magic circle woven from mana formed, with Adel at its center.
Light rippled, and the space shimmered.
“…Ugh.”
The mana vibrated as Karnel’s consciousness approached the depths of Adel’s mind.
She knocked on the door of his consciousness.
Beyond it, she reached into the sea of the unconscious.
But…
“…Huh?”
She had clearly knocked… yet there was no response from within.
It was as if no one existed beyond the door at all.
“…It’s not there.”
What her fingertips touched was an empty shell.
It was hollow.
Like staring into the abyss, only silence without even an echo returned.
…Something that should have been there.
The ‘mind’ of the human known as Adel… was not present in that place.
“Where the hell is it?”
A human’s mind doesn’t just vanish in a matter of days.
Which meant… it had been dragged away by someone, she concluded.
“Damn it…….”
Karnel clenched her jaw and ground her teeth, pouring even more mana in.
Memories, emotions, instincts.
She scoured every deep crevice of Adel’s mind.
Searching for traces of the world where he was trapped.
“…….”
And…
She finally found it.
Pitch-black darkness.
The far side of consciousness, untouched even by light.
A place that could only be described as the ‘inside.’
Where the essence called the core of soul, mind, and self resides.
But that place…
“What….”
Was torn, crumpled, and distorted.
Whether this was a trace of being dragged to another world…
Or if Adel’s mind had always been this unstable…
Karnel couldn’t tell.
She simply believed.
Clinging firmly to the belief that it was a trace of being taken, she knocked on the door to that world.
Whoooosh.
Her consciousness crumbled.
Awareness twisted, senses faded.
The next moment…
Karnel was suddenly standing in Adel’s room.
“……?”
The scenery before her eyes was so familiar, yet filled with dissonance.
Unknowingly, Karnel dropped the sword made of starlight she held in her hand.
- Clang!
The sword struck the floor, ringing out loudly.
Then…
“Are you okay?”
…A voice she should never have been able to hear.
But she did.
Karnel slowly turned her head.
There… stood Adel, with an oddly awkward expression.
“……….”
In that instant, Karnel’s consciousness felt a dizzying pull toward the far reaches of the universe.
What should have been on Adel’s face… was gone.
The mask that had familiarly enveloped him.
The symbol that defined the existence of ‘Adel’ more than anything else…
Something so ever-present it was more familiar than his face itself… had vanished.
And in its place, golden eyes gleamed vividly, gazing at Karnel.
“…Hic, hic.”
Words failed her.
Her voice, trying to part her lips, burst out unintentionally as a hiccup.
“Hic… Hic, hic….”
Karnel covered her flushed face with both hands.
Her mind went ‘boom,’ turning blank, heat surging as if steam would pour out.
It was too lethal.
Adel without his mask.
Facing his true face head-on… exceeded Karnel’s defenses.
“M-M-M-Mask….”
Why was it gone?
Why had that mask disappeared?
Why was Adel standing before her so naturally without it?
“President―”
Adel cautiously opened his mouth as if to call her.
But… Karnel couldn’t bear it.
“D-Don’t talk…!!”
She shrieked.
Whipping her head away, she barely secured her vision through her fingers, desperately trying not to hear more.
It was impossible.
If she heard that voice too…
If that maskless face and seductive voice came at her together… she couldn’t withstand it.
***
As a stopgap, Karnel grabbed a brown paper bag.
She punched eye holes in it and placed it over Adel’s face.
“…President.”
“…!”
But…
Every time Adel spoke, Karnel’s body twitched uncontrollably, and there was no fixing that.
Only then did Karnel compose herself.
This was Adel’s mental world… the reverse world created by the disaster.
She had to get Adel out of here before it was too late.
Karnel cautiously opened her mouth.
But…
“…….”
No words, no sounds… emerged.
Not even her fingers moved.
‘…Why?’
It was as if interfering in this world… was not permitted… her body wouldn’t move.
Then, where was the sovereignty of this world?
Karnel looked up at Adel.
‘The only way out of this world is….’
This was Adel’s mind.
This world was a space created by his consciousness and the disaster’s power.
So… opening and closing the door…
Depended solely on Adel’s will.
But…
‘Ugh……!’
Karnel didn’t care about that and tried to draw out her mana.
Even knowing it was reckless, she couldn’t just give up and sit idle.
Yet, not a single drop of her mana rose.
Not even a bead of sweat.
Regardless of her will, her bodily senses were sealed shut.
‘Damn…….’
Cursing inwardly nonstop, Karnel severed the mental link with Adel.
Her consciousness shook.
A brief sense of floating…
And the next moment, Karnel was back in real space.
Standing in the familiar room.
Before her eyes, Adel still lay on the bed, masked.
“Interference from within is impossible….”
Within, meaning inside Adel’s mind, interference was not allowed.
Casual conversation or emotional contact was fine, but…
The moment she tried to connect to the outside world from within his mind… all will was blocked.
Before she could cast magic, before she could even speak, her actions were halted.
“Then….”
What she could attempt was not攻略 from within, but approach from without.
But…
“…….”
What exactly could she do from the outside?
…Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
She, right now, in this moment…
Could do nothing at all.
Karnel clenched her fist tight.
“No….”
All these phenomena ultimately stemmed from mana, the source of energy.
To her, blessed with mana…
Blessed with time…
The impossible did not exist.
Fsssh…!
Brilliant light spread languidly from her fingertips.
The chain linking cause and effect.
The causality connecting existence to existence.
“…Every phenomenon has a cause, and that cause creates results in turn.”
At the forefront of the collapsed consciousness, the origin of the severed memories.
If she could trace back that clue…
There was a path.
***
“President?”
I kept calling out to Karnel.
She had suddenly shoved a paper bag over my face and then said nothing.
Was she feeling unwell or something?
But…
Karnel hung her head for a moment, then lifted it again as if nothing had happened.
“…Hm? Why are you calling me?”
“…It’s nothing.”
“I see!”
She picked up the sparkling sword that had fallen on the room’s floor.
“Then I’ll be off to practice my swordsmanship!”
With those words, her figure vanished behind the door.
I stared blankly at her retreating form.
“…Something’s off.”
I muttered while removing the paper bag from my face.
An inexplicable sense of wrongness lingered at my fingertips.
More than that…
‘Sword?’
Karnel and a sword… the two didn’t match at all.
A familiarity that felt unfamiliar.
Something kept nagging at me somewhere in my mind.
[ ! ]
[ Hurry and equip 【Mask of Silence】! ]
Once again, the square thing blinked at the edge of my vision.
It had been chatty lately.
“Not tired yet?”
I reached out toward the square thing out of habit.
Planning to shove it far away.
But at that moment…
Drip…
Something warm trickled from the corner of my mouth.
“…Huh?”
Blood.
Not just a drop or two.
Blood trailing down my cheek… splattered onto the floor.
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】! ]
The familiar square popped up.
……It’s this guy.
It’s this guy again.
I figured even the blood flowing from my body was because of this square thing.
And at the same time…
[ Your body can’t hold out! ]
The square layered over my vision multiple times.
My mind reeled.
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】 immediately! ]
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】 immediately! ]
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】 immediately! ]
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】 immediately! ]
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】 immediately! ]
“Pfft…”
I couldn’t hold back and vomited blood.
My insides churned.
My guts twisted, lungs crushed.
…Familiar. Too familiar.
Why was this sensation so familiar?
Like it repeated every time, like pain I’d endured countless times.
Yet I couldn’t grasp it.
Didn’t want to.
I was just sick of it.
“Why do you keep screwing around….”
I staggered and dropped to my knees.
One hand braced against the ground, the other clamped over my mouth.
Pain that made my mind drift hazily away.
Even then, the square blinked once more before my eyes.
[ You cannot bear the end. ]
[ Equip 【Mask of Silence】. ]
“So… what the hell even is that mask….”
I dragged my reeling body to the mirror.
In my distorted vision, a stranger’s face stared back from the glass.
A blood-smeared face.
Golden eyes gleaming vividly within.
But… something was missing.
Something that should have been there wasn’t.
I couldn’t put it into words, but…
That empty space was consuming me.
[ … … … ]
[ All of you. ]
That’s what the square said.
“…All of me?”
I scowled.
The idea that some stupid mask was my ‘everything’… was laughable.
To begin with, what did this square know about me…
[ Everything. ]
…It answered as if peering into my soul.
“…Now you’re reading my thoughts too?”
Even then, I vomited blood.
Wiping my mouth with my hand out of habit.
“…Who the hell are you anyway.”
I didn’t even know what this square thing was.
It floated in the corner of my vision as if it were natural, forcing me to wear some incomprehensible mask.
“…I don’t even know what happens if I put it on.”
I didn’t know.
Really didn’t.
But… strangely, for some reason…
It wouldn’t leave my mind, as if I’d naturally worn that mask every day.
“Who… the hell are you.”
[ … … … ]
The square said nothing.
…As expected.
“…Figures.”
I let out a short sigh and swatted it away with my hand.
But…
[ All phenomena of the world. ]
…The square popped up again.
[ Cause and effect. ]
Overlapping letters.
Flickering afterimages.
“…….”
All phenomena of the world.
It was too broad, too vague, too nauseating a phrase.
Cause and effect.
Causes exist, producing results, and results become new causes in turn.
In that chain of causality, I was vomiting blood right now.
Why?
What was the cause, and what ‘result’ was I?
[ Result and cause. ]
Result and cause.
I was the result of pain, and at the same time… the cause of pain.
So even this suffering now…
Was ultimately because my existence was that ‘cause’?
[ Law of Causality. ]
The square called itself the ‘Law of Causality.’
The before and after of all things.
The cause and result of every phenomenon.
“…You’re the Law of Causality?”
In other words… the invisible link binding the world’s flow.
Everything moves and flows along that link.
And I…
Was merely a pathetic, powerless dot caught in that rule… in that flow.
That’s why I sneered.
For a being that was just another ‘dot’ like me… to call itself a rule.
“…What a joke.”
If that square really was the link binding the world’s flow…
“…Ha.”
People called it collectively.
Sometimes ‘fate.’
Sometimes ‘god.’