Chapter 287
Chapter 287
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 287
Chapter Title: Your Story (2)
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◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Raniel van Trias.
This mage, now called the Sage, has never really understood other people. She had no desire to comprehend those who quickly gave up on themselves and others.
I have to stand up.
Even if it's hard, I have to stand up again.
If I don't keep moving forward, won't all the ground I've covered so far feel meaningless? Wouldn't it be a shame to dismantle with my own hands the value of the path I've walked? Don't I have to prove it by walking to the very end?
Raniel had always thought that way.
She thought it, and she lived it.
Raniel lived like that. Even when it was tough, she stood up and pressed on. She walked endlessly without stopping. Once she started down a path, Raniel never wanted to give it up.
She walked and walked.
And then, when she absentmindedly looked around...
No one was left by her side. She was walking the path alone. When she turned back, there were old comrades standing still, gazing at this place.
"I can't be like you."
"What the hell are you, Raniel?"
There were comrades she once thought shared the same dream, walked the same road. But the way they looked at her wasn't the gaze one gives another human. It was like they were staring at some other kind of being.
"You and I don't match."
"I can't walk with you anymore."
In the end, their paths diverged.
Raniel feels loneliness. A bitter sense of betrayal too. But Raniel never stops. Even without anyone to walk beside her, she keeps going. She moves forward alone.
"You see, Raniel..."
Then one day, Raniel turns to look beside her.
There lies a road in utter ruins. The one walking it is just as ragged as the path itself.
"It seems I've already achieved my dream."
He smiled at Raniel.
In that moment, Raniel realizes for the first time that someone is standing by her side. That fact makes her happy.
A comrade has appeared.
A true comrade, walking the same path.
That truth brings joy, but also relief. It proves that someone can follow her. Perhaps it's just pathetic self-justification. Maybe the stubbornness of a child refusing to admit her way is wrong.
But that's fine.
Someone can follow me, right?
Someone will walk with me, right?
Just knowing such a person exists comforts Raniel's heart. It gives her a chance to look around, free from the bitter betrayal she felt toward Kyle. As Raniel reflects on her own life...
Galrahal, who had been walking beside her, died.
His path ended there.
Even if he accomplished a great feat in his final moments, even if his life shone brilliantly... the undeniable fact is that his life is over.
'I don't know.'
Beneath Galrahal's death, Raniel agonizes.
She affirms his life, yet questions whether a life cut short holds meaning. Contradictory emotions churn in her mind.
In the midst of that, Raniel reads a letter.
"My story ends here."
"I hope you all will carry it on from here."
Those are Galrahal's words.
Engraved as the final line of the epilogue, they could well be called his last will and testament.
"My life is over."
Raniel chews over the testament.
"Now, it's your turn."
She chews it over and over.
Muttering the words, Raniel idly flips through the manuscript pages. The unfinished novel has gaps here and there, but some sections are densely packed with text.
[Sage, Raniel van Trias.]
The page with Raniel's name is like that.
The moment she reads the first sentence of that page, Raniel's tightly closed lips part. A dry laugh escapes through the crack.
"...Ah."
The first sentence, the opening words.
Raniel sees the playfully scrawled text there.
"Concerning the great Sage and one of my few true friends, Raniel van Trias."
A conversation they once shared in jest.
If you write about me someday, be sure to call me 'great,' she'd joked. Galrahal had kept that playful promise after all.
"For real."
Raniel grips the manuscript tightly.
The edges crumple.
"For real, ah..."
She bows her head.
Her lips open and close repeatedly. For the past ten days, Raniel hadn't truly accepted Galrahal's death—the situation felt so unreal.
No longer.
The dam she'd held for ten days finally breaks.
Raniel's bowed shoulders tremble faintly.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ 2.
Time passed.
The exhibition, originally planned to honor the kingdom's hundred greatest heroes, transformed into one spotlighting Galrahal. Word had spread that he'd visited just before his death and left a signature.
As crowds flocked to see that signature and pay respects to the hero's end, Raniel walked through the heart of the capital.
Step.
After nearly ten sleepless days, exhaustion had felled her like a collapsing tree. When she opened her eyes, two days had passed. This was her first outing in those two days.
Raniel wandered aimlessly.
The hero's death, the void it left behind.
The capital buzzed with such talk. She let the voices flow in one ear and out the other, just kept walking. Toward where?
"......"
When she came to her senses, she was at the gateway to Aphria. Why had she come here? Raniel looked up at Aphria's main gate. She had meant to meet someone here...
"Ah."
Chloe.
She needed to see that girl.
Raniel had thought she was at the Black Mage Tower, but according to Yetual, she was staying at Aphria.
"Something's changed about that kid."
"Hard to pin down exactly what, but something's different. Go see for yourself."
Raniel walked through Aphria's campus.
Still on break, the academy was quiet. Soon, she reached the central academic building where Chloe was staying.
But Chloe wasn't there.
"Lady Chloe isn't here."
Then where? The maid shook her head, saying she didn't know. Only that she left early in the morning and returned late in the evening.
As she set off to search for the elusive Chloe, Raniel thought.
Chloe must have taken a huge mental blow too.
After all, Galrahal sacrificed himself to save her. Given the girl's nature, she'd feel guilt and self-loathing. Raniel couldn't predict how that would manifest.
'I need to say something to her.'
As her teacher, she should offer words, show her a path... but nothing came to mind right now.
'And anyway, I'm hardly in a normal state myself.'
Raniel gave a hollow laugh and kept walking.
She checked the library, strolled the gardens, but no sign of Chloe. How long had she been wandering Aphria?
Hummm.
For a moment, the ambient mana trembled.
Raniel turned toward the source of the vibration. It was the spell training room. She headed there.
Thud, thumm.
The closer she got, the stronger the shaking.
At the training room door, Raniel flung it open. Residual mana rushed out at her with a whoosh.
Raniel's eyes narrowed.
The spell training room was lined with resistance stones.
Its floor was cracked badly, training dummies and golems piled in heaps. At the center sat a single girl.
She was drawing circuits on the floor.
She drew one, then activated it immediately.
The circuit couldn't withstand her mana and warped. She grabbed the twisting circuit barehanded, controlled it, then drew a new one.
Then refined it.
Bit by bit, she perfected the circuits.
Once one was complete, on to the next. She repeated this endlessly.
"Chloe."
Raniel called, but the girl didn't respond.
Chloe poured all her focus into the circuit in her grasp. In her eyes as she stared at it, Raniel saw none of the worry she'd feared.
No self-loathing, no guilt.
What dwelled in Chloe's eyes was ambition.
The eyes of one gazing upward endlessly, challenging without cease. Raniel felt a familiarity there. A resemblance.
Galrahal's eyes.
Raniel leaned against the wall and watched Chloe for a time. After a while, she closed her eyes, then opened them.
No comfort was needed. Never had been.
In the end, answers come from within, and Chloe had already found hers. Unlike Raniel, still groping in the dark.
"...Anyway."
They say teaching isn't one-way.
Sometimes, the teacher must learn from the student. Indeed, it was so. Raniel smiled wryly and took a step forward. She extended her hand lightly and pulled.
Crackle!
Chloe's warping circuit in midair dismantled in an instant. Only then did Chloe turn around, and Raniel reached toward the broken circuit.
"Watch closely."
She touched the circuit.
"This is how you handle a circuit."
It would be shameful for a teacher to only receive teachings from her student. She had to give some in return. Raniel lightly tapped Chloe's head.
3.
As they exchanged lessons, Raniel observed Chloe's starlight. The starlight within Chloe had changed from before. Even its nature.
It wasn't mere flowing light.
The flowing light gathered at Chloe's will. Still immature, but in that starlight, Raniel saw Galrahal's light.
'In his final moment, the light passed to Chloe.'
What Chloe possessed wasn't just her own starlight.
Galrahal's starlight, from his days as the hero, dwelled in her soul as well. Watching her wield it, a phrase suddenly came to mind.
Something she'd seen in the northern tower long ago.
What the great sage had muttered like a habit.
And what she herself had been doing.
Humans, living but a fleeting moment, pass their will onward. Some create disciples, others leave legacies for the next generation. Thus, purpose endures.
'To the next, and the next after.'
In the girl before her, Raniel sees Galrahal.
In this girl just starting to stand and walk, she sees traces of the man who completed his life.
Thud.
After completing one circuit, Chloe leaned against the wall. Raniel sat beside her. Sunlight filtered through the training room window.
The long winter had ended, spring arrived.
The season of new beginnings. Bathed in the incoming spring sun, Raniel spoke.
"Chloe."
"Yes, Professor."
"Are you okay?"
A question without context.
Chloe answered without hesitation.
"I have to be."
She looked at her hands.
"...Because my life isn't just mine anymore."
She bore a responsibility.
The value of spilled blood, of another's sacrifice—it's up to the one who receives it to decide. Chloe felt the weight on her shoulders.
Heavy, but meaningful because of it.
"I want to become a perfect hero."
Chloe said.
"I'm still immature, still not a symbol... but I have to become a symbol like Galrahal."
Chloe looked at Raniel.
Gazing at the woman whose identity she now knew, who resembled Galrahal, Chloe asked.
"This is right, isn't it?"
"Who knows."
Raniel let out a short breath.
"In the old days, I'd have been certain it was. But now, I can't be sure anymore. Answers are too hard to find. I can't say which path is right, or swear that any direction is absolutely correct."
She didn't know right from wrong.
Even if she dreamed it, it might not come true. She might not achieve her desires at the path's end. Everything was unknown.
"So."
Raniel smiled softly.
"Walk the path you think is right."
In the end, the one walking is yourself.
"When you look back on the road you've traveled, if you can say you lived well, that you achieved your dreams—walk that path. That's enough. That's..."
Muttering thus, Raniel chuckled.
"But Galrahal would say this."
Chloe, you can do it.
As Raniel murmured that, Chloe bowed her head deeply. In her mind surfaced the few short months learning under Galrahal.
She hadn't believed in herself.
Doubt bred more doubt.
To such a her, Galrahal had said it again and again.
You can do it. Walk the path you think is right. If you do, I'll be glad. Chloe remembered those words.
And also.
"It's fine."
"You're alive, aren't you?"
Even in death's throes, the relieved expression as he looked at her. The way he reached out in his final moment, pointing to her... Chloe would never forget.
"I'll do my best."
In the end, that's all she could vow now.
"Really, I'll give it everything."
Chloe swallowed her tears and said.
"So I won't embarrass him. So I can stand proudly before others and say I'm the one Galrahal gave his life to save... that I'll take his place."
Wiping her tears, Chloe stood.
"So, please help me."
She looked at Raniel.
"Lady Raniel."
Eyes filled with resolve.
Meeting that gaze, Raniel laughed and rose. She patted Chloe's head.
"Sure."
Raniel stepped past Chloe to the center.
She clapped once, and dozens of circuits floated around her.
"Let's see how far we can go."
The one who had stopped now moves forward again.
To continue the ended tale.
To complete her own story.
With the child following behind, she walks.
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