Chapter 644: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Sorcery - 3
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 644: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Sorcery - 3
Missionary Casas was glaring at me with a terrifying expression, as if looking at his mortal enemy. What did I even do?
“Well, it’s because Father captured the priest, locked him up, and taught the child black magic…?”
“That’s not right. Hilde, you were the one who personally captured and locked him up.”
“You ordered me to! You’re the ringleader, so of course he hates you!”
“What’s this? One moment you’re saying you did the hard work because you were on the front lines, and the next you’re pushing all the responsibility onto me.”
How unreasonable. I really should have taken that bath alone.
“Glory Road Celsius!”
Temperus didn't stand idly by at the priest's intrusion. He swung his staff in a wide arc. A massive, hemispherical wall of ice materialized along its trajectory, enveloping the missionary and me.
To create an ice sculpture of this size with such a short chant? As long as he's within the family's domain, I’ll have to consider Temperus no different from a Unique Magic user. No, perhaps he's an even trickier opponent for me, since I can't steal his Unique Magic.
“Stop right there!”
The prison of ice was erected. Sharp icicles, like teeth, closed in to devour Missionary Casas. But only for a moment. A flash of light erupted, and he once again infused it with time. The ice began to melt away from the point of contact.
Magic and time clashed. Water melted and refroze repeatedly, and a territorial battle between ice and water erupted, like the glaciers of the North Sea. Freezing, shattering, clumping, and scattering, the ice fragments glittered like starlight.
“Deliver us from evil, deliver us from evil…”
Missionary Casas was at a disadvantage. This was the heart of the Celsius family’s domain. If he were alone, he could have managed to protect himself, but his power was woefully insufficient to protect Richard and the twenty others from the Unranked District.
Clutching his rosary tightly, he flipped through the pages of his bible with one hand.
“O Saint, O Saintess, O Holy Spirit! In the beginning, there was light. Watch over the innocent!”
Light exploded from the closed pages. A radiant light. The Call Light that any cleric could use. But the missionary’s light was so bright and hot that it melted the magically created ice.
The vaporized mist slowly dissipated. Missionary Casas’s entire body was frozen blue, but his bible still shone with a holy radiance.
The essence of holy power is the power to deny the abnormal. A restorative force that returns the twisted to its natural state. In terms of defense, nothing could match holy power. Temperus showed his irritation.
“The moment that child used black mana, he became a black mage! A mere dog of the Sanctum dares to attack a mage to protect a black mage?”
“The child is not to blame. If there is any sin, it lies with me for failing to teach him of evil beforehand, and with this land for failing to stop it.”
Yeah, that’s right. How could a child who doesn't even know if black magic is good or bad be at fault? It's not the child who's wicked, but this world…
“Of course, the most detestable one is that man!”
“Huh? But my intentions were purely benevolent.”
“If it were benevolence, it should have led to a good outcome! If this is what you call benevolence, then a demon's whispers in a human's ear could also be called benevolent!”
He had a point. No matter how good your intentions were, if you don't take responsibility when things go wrong, it's just malice.
But still.
“Then what should I have done? Should I have been like you and just let the child die, slowly sinking in the Unranked District? Mercifully?”
Holy power is the power to reject the ideal. A power that forces one to give up and conform. A religion that preaches endurance of worldly suffering for happiness in the afterlife is well-suited to protecting the established system.
“Should I have pushed him into a place where a promised obsolescence awaits, crushing his hope of looking up? Should I have whispered only of happiness in the next life while locking the child in a cold prison? Would Richard have been satisfied with that life?”
I already knew the answer to that question. The answer was no. There was no need to even ask.
“If that were the case, Richard would never have come looking for me. He wouldn't have struggled to climb higher. Isn't that right?”
I looked up at Missionary Casas and asked. He, of all people, would know what I meant.
Because it was Missionary Casas who told Richard, back in the Unranked District, about a brilliant mage from the Floating Castle… in other words, about me.
Missionary Casas’s radiance wavered for a moment. But only for a moment. He shouted at me, as if I were the most insolent person alive.
“How shameless, to spread a sin like black magic! Could you not have helped him through proper means, instead of such a wicked path!”
“That's sophistry. The structure we see now is the result of 'proper methods' piling up over time. This is the outcome. It's an order solidified over a long period of righteousness, irrespective of good or evil.”
It just turned out that way. It was a shame. The people who first created this order must have imagined a future where everyone was happy and hopeful. But the world doesn't work the way you want it to.
So, should I hold them responsible? That would be unreasonable, too. Does anyone live in this world alone? Did a single person create the world? An era is the creation of all the humans who lived through it.
“I’m not saying the order is evil. Nor am I pursuing good. I don’t care about such things. I won’t shift the blame to anyone, either. Because this is the result of everyone’s struggles.”
Humans are nothing but beasts. Foolish, lowly beasts. Even if they try to pin sin and virtue on a select few, the creature known as human lacks the capacity for it.
Neither the capacity to shift it, nor the capacity to bear it.
I took out my cards and gave them a light shuffle.
“But if this order came to be out of necessity, wouldn't attempts to overcome that order also arise out of necessity?”
If humanity discovered magic to overcome a harsh environment…
Then it is also humanity’s job to overcome the order that magic created.
“Stop!” one of the guards said threateningly, aiming his spear at me. I gave him a wide grin.
I drew my cards. A Spade, and a Clover. Cards containing the Divine and magic were in my hands.
The Clover cards I used before were a type of mana grenade, with compressed mana. Since my own meager mana prevented me from using powerful magic, I had designed my own magic circles, filled them with mana extracted from Alchemic Gold, and used them as single-use magic bombs.
They were easy to use but not very powerful, and they had the fatal flaw of being disposable.
The Clover cards I had left now were mostly empty shells, their mana depleted. Duds, with only their damaged magic circles crudely repaired.
And into them…
“Set.”
I slammed mana into the card.
White mana? Black mana? The type doesn't really matter. Mana is scattered throughout all things in the world.
White magic chose crystals as a catalyst because their mana is stable.
Black magic chose the body as a catalyst because it’s my own body, so it’s convenient.
They were chosen for such reasons, but in truth, it wouldn't matter if I used a different kind of mana.
“I said stop!”
The guard thrust his spear. A mage’s bodyguard is their vanguard, a wall meant to create distance from the enemy while the mage prepares a spell.
The forked spear tip aimed for me. Instead of dodging, I raised my hand as if to catch it.
Of course, it was a useless gesture. My strength may have increased a little, but catching a blade with my bare hands was still a reckless act. If it was infused with blade qi, it would be an act beyond reckless, simply foolish.
My hand was deeply cut, and blood spurted out. The blood, which shot out like a fountain, seemed to coil in the air before returning to my right hand.
To be precise, to the Clover card held in my right hand.
“Whew.”
Vampires use blood magic. They manipulate blood energy with Bloodcraft, weaving that life force to complete their spells. It’s a great price that humans wouldn't dare attempt, but for a vampire with regenerative abilities, it’s a reasonable cost.
In other words, since I now have regenerative abilities thanks to the Divine, I too can use blood magic.
Life force stirred. This was mana woven from human blood. This blood mana specialized in life, flow, and domination. It had many disqualifying factors for wielding white magic and required a refining process, but…
“Lightning Spool.”
There is a magic circle within the human body.
A small magic circle of lightning, engraved in the body to move this vessel of blood, bone, and muscle according to one's will.
I wove the Lightning Spool to draw an overlapping magic circle.
A dizzying, sharp pain shot through my right hand. The purest form of agony, as if my very nerves were being crushed. As if using my body as a tool wasn't enough, modifying it for magical purposes triggered a terrible rejection. Pain and a sense of wrongness filled my right arm.
Even as this happened, Tyr’s Divine power was trying to restore me. Regeneration and destruction occurred simultaneously, delaying and postponing the end of this horrific pain. If it either healed completely or broke completely, the pain would cease.
Mana is generated when a structure collapses. With regeneration and destruction happening in succession, the mana in my arm was fuller than it had ever been.
I stacked two Clover cards. The 5 and 6. Wind, Condensation. It seized the atmosphere and solidified it, then shoved the entire space with wind.
“…! This is!”
The air solidified. The guard within it was like an insect trapped in amber. He quickly realized what had hit him.
This magic, which possessed a wide-ranging physical force, was one that Temperus often used.
“Farewell.”
With a light farewell, I struck the empty air with force. The impact spread throughout the solidified space, and with a cracking sound, fissures appeared. The guard, pushed away along with the space itself, was sent flying into the distance.
Temperus’s eyes widened. He too was a mage. There was no way he wouldn't know what I had done.
“Black mana…?”
Temperus was shocked and enraged. A visceral disgust welled up in him as he aimed his staff at me.
The reason wasn't that I had used black magic in the Mage Federation, a nation of white magic, nor was it because the black magic was surprisingly powerful.
“You copied my magic…?! And with something like black magic, of all things?! Impossible!”
It was because I had cast white magic with murky, filthy black mana.
My right arm had already healed. Shuffling the cards with my perfectly fine right hand, I spoke to Temperus.
“Now. You posed a question to those people earlier, didn't you? Let me do the same.”
Mine was Standard Magic, a form of black magic. A power rejected by the Mage Federation.
But the result it achieved was identical to Temperus’s magic.
“As you know, analyzing a spell is far easier than devising one. Just as it's easier to criticize than to create. So, you try and guess. Tell me what magic I just used.”
The Mage Federation has a rule. If you cannot prove what magic you were struck by, you cannot blame anyone.
A rule created to deny the horrific witch hunts of the distant past.
“If you can't, then it is you who is conducting a ‘witch hunt’.”