Mastery
Blink───
"Where... is this?"
When I opened my eyes, what greeted me was a mountain meadow that looked as if it had been painted in the most clichéd strokes imaginable. At the same time, surveying surroundings that seemed somehow washed of color, I carefully pieced together everything that had happened just moments before.
"I definitely threw myself into the crater and grabbed the Fire Elemental Stone..."
Guided by the gut certainty that only the Fire Elemental Stone could unlock this crisis, I had flung my body into the crater and seized it. Immediately after, light so blinding I had no choice but to shut my eyes washed over me—and when I opened them again, I was here.
"...I haven't died, have I?"
Could it be that I had thrown myself into the crater, claimed the Fire Elemental Stone, and paid for it with my life? If that truly had been the case, the sheer absurdity would have made me want to die all over again—but thankfully, that didn't seem to be it. When I touched my body here and there, the sensations came through clearly. From that, I understood that this place was not the afterlife, but a space wrought by some form of magic.
In that case, whose magic, and what kind of magic, had created this place? And even as the question formed, I remembered the volcano that should already have erupted—and then some—during the brief span I had spent here, and my face twisted in belated horror.
"Damn it...! I should have stopped that somehow...! I have to get back from here as soon as—"
"...?!"
A voice answered me as I clutched my head and cried out. Startled, I turned toward the sound—and there, approaching, was a figure. A woman whose translucent body made it plain she was not of this world. Lavender hair, and eyes that seemed to hold an entire rainbow. Before beauty even registered, the first impression that struck me was pure mystery.
"...Who are you?"
The figure drew near. Reflexively I asked, and she answered with quiet composure.
"You're... Adria, the Mother of Magic?"
I had half expected it. The mystery that radiated from her appearance, and the way she spoke as the former master of the Ego Staff I wielded, both pointed to the same truth: she possessed attunement to all six elements. And throughout history, only one person besides myself had ever held that gift. Expecting it and hearing the confirmation from her own lips, however, were two different things. I couldn't stop the words that spilled out, and at them Adria offered a faint smile.
"Are you truly Adria? No—how is any of this even possible...?"
Her words had to be the truth. There was no reason to lie about something like this. Still, I had never imagined I would open my eyes in a place like this and meet Adria, so I couldn't help letting out soft sounds of wonder again and again. After a moment of that irrepressible awe, I realized the cause of my arrival: seizing the Fire Elemental Stone. I asked her.
"Did I come here because of your magic? A spell that activates upon obtaining the Fire Elemental Stone? Did you place something like that on the staff?"
"How could a magic engraved on a staff survive unbroken for hundreds of years...?"
Even the strongest workings scatter and fade with the passage of centuries. Yet this one had not only endured intact for more than hundreds of years, but had gone unnoticed by me while I used the staff—and had not been destroyed even in the midst of battle. I let out a hollow laugh at a situation that defied every law of magic I knew. Watching me, Adria spoke again.
"The heart of the matter? What do you mean?"
"Enlightenment...?"
I tilted my head, puzzled. In answer, Adria raised an illusory flame above her palm.
Fwoosh───
"Yes, of course."
"Meaning? What do you—"
Her words still felt elusive. Yet even at my confusion she continued, as if she had not finished what she meant to say.
"Ah—that passage. I know it as well."
They were the words Adria, called the Mother of Magic, had always kept on her lips. Naturally, recorded in countless histories, they still rang in the ears of mages from childhood until the words themselves grew callused. Of course, since they were regarded more as Adria's habitual saying than as clear doctrine, one rarely encountered them outside fairy tales or biographies of her life. With my head still tilted in quiet doubt, Adria regarded me and spoke once more.
"...What?"
At the word last, I was about to echo the question back—when I closed my eyes once and opened them again. Adria's figure, which had stood before me an instant earlier, had vanished without a trace.
"Huh?"
She was gone as if she had never been there at all. Yet the words she had spoken remained vivid in my mind. Staring blankly for a moment at the empty space she had left, I absently turned over the final question she had cast my way.
"For what do I live, huh..."
The reason I was alive. I had never clearly considered it. Most people simply breathed and moved because they had been born; I had been no different. But Adria would not have left such a question without meaning. And surely every person carried at least one reason for living. Taking the chance, I resolved to think it through properly and sank into thought.
"For what do I live?"
I closed my eyes and asked myself. What rose was not the self of my previous life. What rose was the self of this life—because the life I lived now was the present, not the past. I sank deeper into the question of why I lived.
"The reason I live... right now, I'm living to regain my original power."
Fwoosh—a sensation of an ember kindling stirred near my heart. At that warmth, which seemed almost to affirm my words, I let out a small hum. Yet it seemed I had not yet found the true answer. Living to reclaim my power was correct, but a faint sense told me it was not enough. So I went deeper still.
"Then why am I trying to regain that power?"
Not the goal itself, but the reason for pursuing it. Why did I seek my original strength? I could have been content with a moderate life. After dying once and receiving a new existence, I could simply have enjoyed the standing of the family into which I had been born and learned only the magic those around me taught. Why, then, had I refused that path?
Because the time invested in my previous life felt wasted? Because I wanted to hold that strength again and wield it? Because I wanted to stand above others, befitting the talent I had been born with? I shook my head at every question I threw myself. No. None of those was the reason. And once I denied them all, familiar faces rose in their place—the bright faces of the family who had raised me, who had lived beside me.
"...To protect my family."
Beings who had never existed for the me of my previous life. From a family whose meaning I had not even known, I had received happiness beyond any price. Because they had become so precious I could not bear to lose them, I had set out on a journey—a journey to reclaim my original power, so that in this world my family would never be threatened by anyone.
Fwooooosh───!!!
The ember that had kindled in my heart swelled. As if the words were the answer, the warmth that had been gentle expanded until it seared through my body. And within that flame that burned me from within, I finally understood what Adria had meant earlier.
"This... this was the reason I live."
Fire is purpose. A lighthouse that shows the direction a human being must face while living. The flame in the heart takes form as one of the substances of the human body and always shines ahead. The moment one loses life's purpose, the flame in the heart goes out. To lose fire is to lose the reason one lives. Conversely, so long as fire remains, a reason to keep living still exists. Even the fire born of nature lives with its own purpose—so should not the fire seated in a human heart burn with a purpose even stronger? And once one has grasped the purpose held by the fire within, what flame existing in nature could possibly remain beyond one's grasp?
The state of the Fire Element changes from Activated to Mastery.
Understanding of the Fire Element has reached 100%!
The understanding of the Fire Element that had lingered at 99% finally reached 100%. Not the hollow 100% I had once attained as a mere game, but a 100% I had reached myself, in reality. The presence of it, the weight of it, was utterly different. Within my body I felt a perfect command of fire that bore no comparison to anything before.
Watching the faded surroundings catch and burn away in the flame that had risen from me, I slowly lifted the eyelids I had closed.
"Now... shall we go stop that volcano?"
Unlike before, I was certain. This time, I would not fall short.