A Mindscape Too Vast to Contain
Ssssaaaah—.
The sound of waves washed over him.
It felt like drifting through thick, impenetrable ink. No—was drifting even the right word? Feeling the weightless buoyancy of floating on water, he opened his eyes calmly.
……Where is this?
A sky stained black spread out above him.
Dark.
That was the only thing he could sense. A bleak, sunless void, utterly devoid of even a single cloud, stretched vast and high overhead.
He looked around. An endless, boundless ocean in every direction—and he was lying on its surface.
……
He knew this scene.
—This is…….
Yeongcheon materialized beside him as a faint spiritual form.
—This shouldn't be possible. A mindscape of this— of such an impossibly massive size?
„Mindscape?‟
Yeongcheon's eyes trembled as she gazed up at the sky.
—You're aware, of course, that upon reaching Transcendence, one can inscribe one's own law upon the world?
„Yeah.‟
—That's actually a bit of a distortion, to be honest. More precisely, it's closer to manifesting your own world *within* the world. And we call that a mindscape.
She spoke with unsteady eyes.
—A warrior who builds a lifetime upon the martial path sublimates their personal mindscape *through* that path. That's why so many warriors' powers obey laws. Mages and shamans, on the other hand, specialize in warping the laws around them. So a warrior's mindscape tends to be small, and a mage's tends to be large, but…….
Yeongcheon looked at him.
—Yours, Master Seoha, is so, *so* absurdly bloated. Even the ones they call geniuses struggle to claim a single patch of ground for themselves, and yet…….
„Is that so?‟
He lifted his head.
The towering black heavens. The black sea stretching on forever. Nothing but desolation, as far as the eye could see.
Why this scene, of all things.
He gazed at the dark vista through shadowed eyes. Because this place was a fragment of the world that would one day perish.
The scar left behind when a being from beyond the outer planes warped reality and swallowed whole continents beneath the sea.
Not that he was fighting this hard precisely so that it would never come to that.
He turned to Yeongcheon.
"So, does this mean I've reached Transcendence now?"
—……No. Transcendence will likely be *very* difficult for you, Master Seoha.
"……Why?"
—Your mindscape isn't just large. It's too large. That's the problem, actually. If you ever released this into the world…….
Yeongcheon deliberated for a moment before continuing.
—It would cause a catastrophe beyond imagining—and the strain on you would grow unbearable…….
But—she added—
—even the mightiest Transcendents wouldn't be able to bring their strength to bear against you. At this level.
The words were spoken with utter conviction.
He gave a calm nod.
"So how do I get out of here?"
—Just think that you want to leave. By now you should have absorbed all of the rank the Black Dragon accumulated.
At her words, he thought of leaving. At once, a sensation like his spirit rising to the surface washed through him, and his consciousness returned.
……This is.
His body had changed.
Not Yeokcheon—something else had grown stronger.
Rank.
The force that divided all beings living in this world had deepened within him. It was as if his existence had been carved a little further into the world itself.
For now, it amounted to nothing more than a heavier presence and a greater pressure brought to bear against others—but the moment he achieved the Rank of Transcendence, even this rank would evolve another step.
And yet.
And I've only just reached the far edge of the Middle Rank.
He was certain of it.
He stood at the very threshold of the Middle Rank's end.
Beep.
Just as he was getting carried away by the strange sense of accomplishment, his phone went off.
……?
He powered it on and reflexively checked the battery—and froze. The indicator was blinking red.
He checked the time.
"Hmm……."
Well, that was a problem.
It looked like he was going to be late for the event.
Erciel had a rotten personality.
She was more forgiving of herself than anyone alive, and held everyone else to a merciless standard.
She had grown up in exactly the environment that bred it. A born winner at human relationships, raised in constant victory—crushing opponents too tedious to deserve the word "rival"—and elevated to the most revered member of her house.
At fifteen, upon reaching the Middle Rank, she had risen to a station more exalted than even her own family head.
He's late.
Erciel frowned. She was waiting for one man, and that man had not come.
For her—the next head of Merhen, Merhen incarnate—to be kept waiting like this. It was unthinkable.
"Seoha hasn't been around since a couple of days ago."
"……He's been completely gone since yesterday, actually."
Lee Seoha was missing.
And that was a serious problem. Cynthia of Divine Academy—the most brilliant prodigy they had.
He had crossed blades with her and, in a single exchange, caught her head in his hand and slammed her down. One victory, seized clean.
The world was saying plenty, but it had all come down to *Cynthia let her guard down* and *the opponent was simply too strong*.
Korea Hero Academy's circles were just as noisy—because Cynthia was a monster in her own right. To contain her, Erciel herself would have to step onto the field.
Well, this arrangement isn't bad either.
Weighing return against risk, it was acceptable. The story going out to the world would be that Korea Hero Academy had won without even needing the boy who felled Cynthia in one blow.
"Everyone, it's nearly time. Begin your final checks."
"Professor, is it really all right without Lee Seoha?"
"Seoha is strong. No question, he carries an enormous share of our school's power—but all of you are strong as well. There is more than a fair chance of victory even without him."
So said the professor. And it was true. Lee Seoha was undeniably one of the great pillars of the academy's strength, but every other student was formidable in their own right.
Erciel, next head of the Merhen family. Kim Ara, hovering in the low two-hundreds in the rankings yet undeniably one of the strongest among them.
And, standing half in Lee Seoha's shadow, a student every bit his equal.
Kim Seohyun—the mysterious youth who studied magic under the Transcendent known as the Wizard of a Thousand and wielded the Primordial Force of the martial path.
"That's right. There's no problem at all."
Hong Yuhwa declared it in a voice brimming with confidence. Lee Seoha was absent. Her rival—the only boy who could ever stand toe to toe with her—was gone, but Hong Yuhwa was certain.
We can win even without Lee Seoha.
Watching her, Erciel narrowed her eyes and slowly shook her head.
The only one I can trust is myself.
A chance to earn points, then.
Kim Ara, whose progress had been stalled at the airport thanks to Erciel, quietly took stock of her Primordial Force.
Park Unhyeok thought:
It falls to me alone.
He was the one who had to lead them. They were the same age, but Lee Seoha—whose achievements were nothing short of abnormal—was the man Park Unhyeok looked up to.
They were both men, but if Lee Seoha intended to stand above him, Park Unhyeok was confident he could bow his head beneath that standing.
He pretended it was all very composed, but he knew better than anyone how towering Lee Seoha's will truly was.
He had felled the demon Tak Yoonil. And when he came face to face with the being called Magongnyeo, he had been ready to lay down his own life. That spirit deserved to be emulated.
Ever since, Park Unhyeok had studied him. Because he wanted to become even a little like that man.
"Command falls to me, obviously."
"You? The guy who stares at Lee Seoha like a stalker every time he walks past?"
"Hong Yuhwa. Then how about *you* stop collecting photos of Lee Seoha and pasting them all over your room? You're the worse criminal here."
"Please stop fighting, both of you. And you're both committing crimes, so neither of you is in a position to lecture anyone."
As Erciel broke up the quarrel between Hong Yuhwa and Park Unhyeok, she thought:
The only one I can rely on is me. No—there's still one more…….
"If Seoha's not here, I honestly don't even feel like fighting……."
Hearing Kim Seohyun mutter under his breath, Erciel made up her mind.
I can trust only myself.
Day three.
Divine Academy had prepared three mock battles for the exchange.
Day one was the individual matches. Then, after a one-day buffer to guard against injuries, the team battle would be held on the third day.
The team battle was the crown jewel of the exchange.
With numbers came scale: a vast arena, priests standing by in case of injury, and every weapon blunted into practice-safe variants.
We're at a brutal disadvantage.
Individual matches always went to Korea—because Korea Hero Academy's creed was that a single exceptional individual was worth hundreds of ordinary ones.
America, conversely, always took the team battle.
The reason was simple.
The more they gathered, the stronger they became.
America didn't have five Transcendents the way Korea did—but from corporate CEOs down to the janitor sweeping the park, every single one of them channeled divine power.
And divine power, the more of it pooled together, unleashed monstrous force.
I knew this would happen.
Erciel sighed.
The Korea Hero Academy students who had utterly dominated Divine Academy in the individual matches were being pushed back in the team battle.
Still, it was manageable. Not noticeably yet—other students were raging across the field everywhere she looked.
"Everyone, get clear!"
So declared Hong Yuhwa, the Crown of the Crimson Lotus wreathed above her head. And above that crown—a sun hung suspended.
An extreme point, condensed into a single mote of light yet holding so much mana that it looked for all the world like a second sun—
Solar Laser.
The instant the spell word left her lips, a beam of light fired from the sun. The power it carried was so overwhelming that even Erciel broke into a cold sweat.
"Truly absurd people, the lot of them."
A low murmur drifted through the air. Full plate armor encasing her from head to toe, and a greatsword of impossible size.
Cynthia—felled by Lee Seoha in a single blow, yet someone no one could afford to scorn—stepped forward.
"O Light!"
Light gathered and condensed into her greatsword. Dozens of divine blessings began to coalesce along its blade.
In America, each devotee typically served a single god.
The vessel that received a god's power was rarely large enough for more.
But Cynthia was different.
She was a great vessel—one that could hold a hundred gods. She had bloomed her talent and widened that vessel with her own hands.
Thirty-eight divinities swirled into her greatsword. Dazzling radiance split the sky.
"……Huh?"
A single black speck appeared from nowhere—and sheared the radiance apart. As if to deny the light itself, the speck split it into dozens of shards and hurled them straight at Cynthia.
BOOOOM!
The roar of an exploding bomb thundered out, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.
Hong Yuhwa wheeled around in an instant. As the sunlight-laden laser carved through the dust cloud, the shape of a boy—and his voice—emerged from within.
"Sorry."
Flat, matter-of-fact. The black speck that had split the radiance apart was none other than Lee Seoha, sheepishly scratching his cheek as he made his entrance.
With one foot planted squarely on the head of the fallen Cynthia—as if to echo the very first day.