Chapter 638: Teaching Black Magic at a Church
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 638: Teaching Black Magic at a Church
The northern sky is vast and desolate. That is, unless the Floating Castle descends.
When the cold earth traps the moisture, both clouds and fog settle quietly. Weather is the whim of the Sky God, but in a land this cold, even he loses the will to be fickle. It seems the Sky God, being a man, also shrinks a bit when it gets cold.
However, in place of the rare blizzards and storms, an artificial phenomenon known as the Floating Castle descends. It is the tyranny of a magician, occupying the sacred space of the sky for nearly a month.
And the masses tend to cheer for such outrages against stuffy authority. Where the heart of the Celsius Domain and the Floating Castle met, this year’s landing site was bustling with energy.
However.
Far from there, in a land where the Floating Castle seemed as distant as the moon, none of that mattered.
“Housekeeper. Is this the Unregistered District?”
“Yes. It's where that child headed. It's also the place I had to travel back and forth to, suffering all the way.”
The housekeeper answered, grumbling. I couldn't care less about her mood, but I had to admit she'd gone through a lot of trouble.
The Kelvin River, which cuts across the Celsius Domain. Thanks to the domain's characteristic freezing point, the river's surface was frozen solid, no different from the land itself. But since the ground was ice, a chill rose from below, and in the summer, the snow would melt, making it impossible to build permanent homes. It was a terrible place to settle.
On this inhospitable ice, the unregistered people built mobile huts, surviving day by day by ice fishing.
Over two hundred huts were visible. Along the riverbank stood hundreds of igloos, built from blocks of cut ice.
This was the home of the unregistered, who survived by adapting to their circumstances without knowledge of magic or any decent magical tools.
“Lead the way.”
“To where?”
“To the child's home.”
“How would I know that?”
“What? You followed him but didn't ascertain his residence, family situation, or his condition? What kind of work do you even do?”
“What am I, a stalker?! Why would I need to ascertain all that?!”
Aren't you, though?... Hmm.
The housekeeper whipped her head around and stomped ahead.
“I'm just a housekeeper running an errand!”
“You said you returned his shoes.”
“I left them with someone who would know! Follow me. I'll take you to the person I entrusted them to.”
The now-spiteful housekeeper led me toward a building with a large cross hanging on it.
It was a church befitting the North. Transparent ice served as windows instead of glass, and a towering cross brilliantly shattered the clear northern sunlight.
“We have visitors.”
As we opened the door and entered, a missionary in a black priest's cassock greeted us with a smile.
“Ah, you're the kind-hearted person who brought Richard's shoes the other day. Richard was grateful, too.”
“Was he really?”
“He didn't say it in words, but I'm sure he was grateful deep in his heart.”
The priest continued his conversation with the housekeeper, his face kind. As befitting a priest in charge of such a remote place, he seemed detached and frugal.
After finishing his talk with the housekeeper, the priest turned to me and showed his recognition.
“So you're the one. The magician from the Floating Castle who has come down to teach the children. To bestow your teachings even while busy plumbing the arcane secrets of magic... the Sky God will surely bless your path.”
It seems word of me has spread this far.
“My name is Hughes. And you are?”
“I am Casas, a missionary of the Celsius parish, belonging to the Eastern Missionary Society.”
The missionary said, placing a hand on his closed Bible.
Missionaries. Members of the Eastern Missionary Society, believers who venture into the savage lands to bestow knowledge and teachings, to ‘civilize’ them. Those who willingly go to places completely cut off from the world, who drive themselves into constant hardship….
They are, in a word, madmen.
It's a distant, savage land. One can't even guess what dangers might lie there. Most people are wary of outsiders, and they're bound to be annoyed if that outsider suddenly starts meddling and nagging them. The rulers of such lands would feel fear and apprehension toward a missionary preaching an unfamiliar civilization.
Such feelings can turn to hostility at any moment, claiming the missionary's life. Their homeland is far away, with no one to help. One wrong move and they could be annihilated, vanishing without a single line in the history books. Other than an 'x' marked next to their name on an old plaque at the Eastern Missionary Society, there is nothing to commemorate their deaths.
That madman, who had willingly thrown himself into endless hardship, spoke amicably with a kind smile.
“You said some harsh things to Richard, I hear. It was difficult consoling the crying child all night.”
“I don't think I was particularly harsh.”
“I told him the same thing. No matter how harsh the words, how can they compare to cold reality? Informing him of that reality beforehand—that, too, was a kindness on your part, Sir Hughes.”
Kindness? I just stated the facts.
“‘Knowledge is a curse that drives man into endless suffering, while ignorance is a sweet slumber that peacefully envelops us. We call them life and death, respectively. I told him that it was your wish, Sir Hughes, for Richard to continue living in the world of knowledge.’”
“Oh…”
As I faced him, I realized it. This missionary was truly insane. How could he find goodwill in such cold words? It would be easier to pan for gold in the river.
“And that fact was proven by your coming here, Sir Hughes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because if you were a heartless man, those words wouldn't have weighed on your mind enough for you to come here.”
He's a good person, that's for sure. It's probably because he's that kind of person that he became a missionary, teaching letters and knowledge to the unregistered of the Celsius Domain.
It's good for me that he thinks so highly of me. It means he won't resist what I'm about to do.
I neither added nor subtracted a single word. I hung up my overcoat and looked around.
“May I borrow this place for a while?”
“Of course. The mission has always served as a place of education. It may be impious to say, but in the Celsius parish, education is the main activity, while worship takes a backseat. We teach them so they can learn the word of God, but they all just learn their letters and leave for other schools. Haha.”
I looked around. Long wooden pews were arranged at regular intervals, their backrests usable as desks for those sitting behind. They were covered in crooked, densely packed letters. The church was tidy, but traces of study were everywhere.
“He seemed to know how to read. So this is where he learned. Don't you teach magic?”
My question made the missionary let out a hearty laugh.
“Haha. You jest. How could a church teach magic?”
“Why not?”
“Are you truly asking because you don't know?”
Uh, why? Is it wrong not to know? Was it a mistake to ask? Did I sound too much like an ignoramus?
“…Then again, for someone as distinguished as yourself, Sir Hughes, the long-standing conflict between the Mage Federation and the Eastern Missionary Society is likely a topic of little interest.”
“Well, since I'm at the mission, I might as well learn.”
“That is also true. It is more important to share knowledge than to hoard it. I suppose my old knowledge was stored away for this very moment. Very well, I shall tell you.”
The missionary waited for the housekeeper and me to sit down before opening his Bible and speaking.
“Long ago, a group of refugees settled in this frigid northern land. Only a few indigenous people lived here, and in this harsh environment, cooperation was more vital for survival than conflict, so their settlement was peaceful. However, survival itself remained a challenge. With every passing winter, they had to send off those who had frozen to death.”
“Hearing of their plight, the Eastern Missionary Society dispatched missionaries over several occasions. The missionaries established missions throughout the North and provided proselytization and relief to the natives and refugees. Their most dedicated effort was in collecting and organizing methods of survival in the cold.”
“The natives had the know-how to survive in this land, but their knowledge was fragmented and instinctual, making it difficult to ascertain. The mission spent a long time interacting with them, writing down and organizing the ways to survive in this harsh land. The settlers would come to the mission to learn how to survive. The mission even built large buildings, renting out rooms for years at a time to teach them.”
So that's the history. I suppose the Mage Federation didn't use magic from the very beginning either… Wait a minute. This structure sounds familiar.
“It sounds as if the missions were the predecessors to the Magic Towers.”
At the question that pierced to the heart of the matter, the missionary closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again.
“…In those days, the mission's influence in this region was said to pierce the heavens. It was comparable to the Magic Towers of today. After all, the mission's help was essential to survive in this land. Not that the mission forgot its duty. It helped the natives and settlers assimilate, sharing knowledge with both. However, there was one piece of knowledge the mission did not share, but kept hidden.”
Well, given how this is going, there's only one thing it could be. The missionary said:
“That is ‘magic.’ The runic arts passed down in the deep North, the shamanism of the natives who burned animal fats, the prayer knots that bound souls. All this knowledge was woven together to create magic, but fearing its power, they hid it and shared it only among the missionaries.”
“The origin of magic was the mission?”
“According to our records, yes. Though the Mage Federation would not admit it.”
The missionary made the sign of the cross and continued.
“Until Saint Rene drew her maps, conflict arose between the mission and the magicians. But knowledge is like the wind; no matter how you try to contain it, it will leak out. Eventually, magic was revealed to the world, and people no longer needed to rely on the mission.”
I offered a short assessment.
“They got what they deserved.”
“I expected you to say that. And you're not wrong.”
The missionary nodded bitterly and continued.
“Magic is a powerful and equally dangerous force, but in a land as harsh as this, such power is necessary for survival. If more people can be saved through knowledge, then that, too, must be something the Saintess would look kindly upon.”
“For a priest, you have quite a progressive attitude.”
“Death is always the most terrible of tragedies. The more one encounters it, the more keenly one realizes this fact. What's more, what can a missionary in the Mage Federation afford to be picky about?”
“In any case, I understand. I'll keep it in mind.”
So magic originated from the missionaries. That's an unexpected fact. I didn't exactly study the history of magic in depth at the Floating Castle.
He's probably not lying, and the chance he's mistaken is low. It's a known fact that the Mage Federation was built on pioneered land, and between refugees and missionaries, it's obvious who was more erudite. The center of power and knowledge must have been the mission at first.
In the middle of our conversation, the church door opened. It was the unregistered boy who had snuck into the academy. He closed the door with a familiar air and walked inside, speaking.
“Father. You called for me?”
“Richard. Come in. We have an important guest who has come to see you.”
“…!”
The unregistered boy flinched in fear upon seeing me. Making such a fuss over a few harsh words. This level of verbal abuse is commonplace in the Military State, you know.
I let my robes flutter as I spoke to the boy.
“I've come to make an offer to you, the one who said he wanted to learn magic.”
Richard is a talented child. His environment has held him back from a proper education, but if a great magician were to take him in and teach him, I'm sure he could achieve great things.
The missionary watched, pleased. He was a man who did good work, a good person.
It's a shame I have to betray the expectations of such a person.
With pure goodwill, I extended a hand to the unregistered boy.
“Are you interested in learning Standard Magic?”