The Dead Man's Grimoire
"Huh…?"
Yanked automatically out of the mindscape by the old man's death, Kaisent blinked around in a daze, his expression blank and uncomprehending.
Crackle— crumble-crumble—
"Eek!"
At the same instant, Mingming—still impaled through the old man's throat—snapped back to Kaisent's nape. Time in the mindscape ran differently from reality; not even a full second had passed in the waking world.
The old man Mingming had struck began to crack apart like shattered porcelain. His skin fissured, then flaked away into dust. Once every last piece of him had crumbled, the fragments ground themselves into powder. If not for the empty robe left sprawled limply on the ground, Kaisent might have convinced himself the whole thing had been a nightmare.
"What… just happened…?"
He remembered being dragged into that strange space and nearly killed by the old man. After that, a surge of raw fury had hit him—and then the memory simply vanished. No matter how hard he tried to recall it, something seemed painted over the gap, blotting it out.
I don't really get it, but I don't think I need to worry about this anymore.
Ordinarily the sight of a man reduced to dust would have terrified him. Now it only left a vague discomfort. Unaware of the change in himself, Kaisent wiped the old man's death from his mind almost at once.
"Huh?"
Then he noticed the robe still jutting up at an angle. He ran his hands over it—thick fabric, stiff on the outside. Figuring he would need anything he could get to survive out here, he grabbed the robe, shook it open, and gave it a thorough thrashing.
What tumbled out from inside was a single thick book and one sharp dagger. He checked again, but that was everything.
This is…?
It was the book that snagged his curiosity. In the world he had grown up in, every document and volume was read conveniently on a bio-device; a physical book you actually opened with your hands was something he had never seen in his life.
Kaisent pocketed the dagger for self-defense, hugged the book to his chest, and left the spot. The racket just now was bound to draw beasts, he reasoned.
Once he judged he had reached somewhere reasonably safe, he checked the surroundings for any presence, then opened the book.
There's writing inside. Is this really a book?
Having never encountered anything so primitive, Kaisent turned the volume over in his hands with open fascination.
"I've never seen these characters before… but I can read them?"
The script was completely foreign, yet somehow he understood every word.
Magic Arrow. Move the mana circuits according to the formula written here. Mana circuits? Is that like a cultivation method?
Crack!
"!?"
He stretched out his hand exactly as the diagrams and text instructed, circulating the internal energy of the cultivation method he had practiced for years—and a tangible force of magic punched clean through a tree trunk so thick he would have needed both arms spread wide just to encircle it.
"Ah. Got it. It's different from martial arts, but there's a lot of theory involved, so it's easy to pick up."
Had the old man witnessed the scene, he would have doubted every scrap of knowledge he had ever accumulated. A complete novice—someone who knew nothing whatsoever about magic—had just unleashed a spell of that magnitude.
To use magic properly, one first had to construct Circles inside the body and forge mana circuits, optimizing the flesh for spellcasting. Kaisent had done none of that—no Circles, no mana, no circuits—and still cast the spell. Magic's power scaled with the quality and quantity of one's mana, yet the force he had just displayed rivaled that of those called Archmages.
"Hmm… next is… Vampiric Grasp."
Having learned one spell in moments, Kaisent moved straight on to the next. The book had originally been the old man's contingency grimoire, prepared in case body-snatching cost him some of his knowledge. Naturally it was written for rapid recovery of power—as intuitive as possible. Even so, a complete stranger reading it once and replicating the magic should have been impossible.
I have no idea how big this forest is. I can't leave everything to Mingming—I need some way to protect myself.
Kaisent was timid, not stupid. Between beasts that saw him as prey and the murderer he had already met, he could not wander around relying on Mingming alone. Only moments ago the old man had tried to kill him in a bizarre space where Mingming could not help.
And I can pick up simple self-defense techniques this easily.
Intuitive or not, magic was a difficult discipline—yet Kaisent absorbed it with absurd ease.
"Mingming, let me know if anything comes near."
Mingming, camouflaged against his nape, answered with a ripple only its master could feel. Ignoring Circle ranks entirely, Kaisent tore through every spell in the book as if speed-reading.
This one looks too noisy. I'll just memorize it.
He skipped anything that looked explosive or loud and, trusting Mingming, focused on devouring the rest of the text.
He must have handled it roughly—it's damaged all over. To… m… ye… no good. I can't read this.
The final spells, ruined when the old man fled in panic, were beyond recovery. He flipped past them—and instead of more magic, found writing of a different kind.
How to create mana circuits and Circles? It uses meridians, so it's basically a cultivation method after all, just like I thought.
The middle section laid out in careful detail how to build the mana circuits needed for magic and the Circles that served as their engine. Clearly these were prerequisites for the spells he had already used.
Huh? Moving qi this way is inefficient. Why route it so awkwardly?
He could not shake the sense that the mana circuits and Circles described in the book were hopelessly wasteful.
Why not just open every meridian and find the optimal route? What's the point of all this looping around?
The cultivation method his parents had created activated every meridian, letting him use any martial art with perfect efficiency. The book also recommended gathering mana for Circles by drawing on the death qi of corpses—another point he found baffling. Everything in existence held qi. Why insist on the death energy of the dead?
The author had clearly tinkered and refined things here and there, but the system remained inefficient all the same.
Mana circuits are basically meridians, Circles are basically a dantian—I don't need to learn any of this.
Convinced the cultivation method he had practiced since childhood was more than enough, Kaisent simply erased mana circuits and Circles from his mind. Modifying or improving them was an option, but a pointless waste of time. Even if he succeeded, the result would still fall short of his own method.
Had the old man heard that, he would have snapped that Kaisent had no idea how hard it was to build mana circuits without straining the body—but to someone whose every meridian already stood open, the complaint would have been incomprehensible.
Skipping the middle section, Kaisent moved on to the latter half.
"Ugh…"
The moment he saw the contents, his face twisted. If the front covered magic and the middle covered Circles, the back was packed with chimera fabrication methods and secret arts for reinforcing zombies and skeletons raised through necromancy. The diagrams were drawn in such clinical detail that looking at them was unpleasant—but he forced the discomfort down and read on, just in case. He kept hoping for something useful for self-defense. To the very end, though, it was nothing but the manufacture and enhancement of chimeras and necromantically raised corpses.
So desperate for automated bots that he'd use corpses… the universe really is a big place.
The management AI of the space fortress that was both his hometown and his home—now named Skynet—had once gone berserk and tried to exterminate all life, or so he had been told. His father had personally "treated" it (with extreme prejudice), and these days it was rational and well-behaved. This technology, he guessed, had probably been developed by someone who loathed artificial intelligence so deeply they refused to trust machines at all.
I should have asked what race he was. I was told no one outside our clan knows how to use qi and meridians.
Having read the book through once, Kaisent incinerated it with magic. It was heavy to carry, and that final section was the worst kind of depraved hobby—he would not risk anyone else trying it out of curiosity. Besides, he had already memorized every word. Anything that could be abused needed to be destroyed in advance. That was a duty.
The methods are filthy. Using corpses I can understand, but grafting other people's—or animals'—corpses on top to reinforce them…
The magical fire born of Kaisent's qi roared with such heat that the book collapsed into ash in an instant.
"Feather Walking."
Next he cast a spell he had just learned, putting distance between himself and the smell of burning paper. His body lightened as if he stood on a low-gravity planet, bouncing lightly with each step, and the soles of his feet—which had been screaming with every stride—eased at once. The magic cut more than half the load pressing into his soles.
Father's martial arts had something like this, too. If I'd known it would come to this, I should have at least learned a few utility techniques.
He had heard plenty of bragging from his brothers, who had still been eager to train even after watching their father battle his parallel-world counterpart. At the time Kaisent had never intended to fight anyone in his life, so none of it had stuck. Now that he was stranded, he regretted not learning at least basic self-defense.
But honestly, I like magic. You don't have to get up close and trade blows.
Most of the spells were built for long-range attacks, traps, or easy escape. For someone whose legs already trembled at the mere thought of fighting hand-to-hand, this approach suited him far better—the same way pulling a trigger felt less repulsive than swinging a blade to kill.
With the aftermath thoroughly cleaned up, Kaisent set off again on feet lightened by magic, continuing his journey out of the forest.
Thud-thud-thud-thud! Thump! Thump!
From between leaves so dense they blotted out the sun, giant spiders rained down like fat drops of rain. Each one was as large as a human torso; they convulsed, curled their legs inward, and died. But several beasts had already collapsed before the spiders ever fell—bodies shuddering, frothing at the mouth.
Rustle-rustle-rustle—
"…"
A moment later, the figure who seemed responsible for dropping the spiders landed on the ground. She wore thick, billowing clothes and a broad cloth hat attached to the outfit that nearly swallowed her entire face. Gloves covered her hands as well; "bundled up tight" scarcely did her justice. The only clue she was a woman was the soft swell of her chest faintly visible beneath the loose fabric.
Where… am I…?
She had climbed a tree to get her bearings and come back down, but she could not hide her bewilderment. The landscape was nothing like anywhere she had ever lived, and the shock of it left her deeply shaken.
I was fighting the Heavenly Demon alongside the masters of the Murim Alliance just a moment ago… wasn't I?
Her last memory was of standing with the Alliance's experts as part of a suicide squad, preparing for a final bloodbath against the Demonic Cult that had attacked the martial world—and against the Heavenly Demon himself.
One thing is certain: this is not the Central Plains. This place cannot possibly be the Central Plains.
In all her life she had never heard of two suns in the sky. And that enormous spherical mass hanging overhead, as if ready to devour the world, carried an overwhelming presence that pressed down on anyone who looked at it. The spiders and beasts of sizes she had never seen, no matter how far she had traveled, were merely the finishing touch.
If this isn't the Central Plains… what am I supposed to do now?
Until now she had simply obeyed whatever the head of the Dang Clan ordered. Kill this man. Poison that place. Assassinate so-and-so. She had taken it all as natural, and expected to live that way until the day she died. Now she had been dropped somewhere that was not the Central Plains, and not a single person here knew her name.
The sudden freedom left her so stunned she stood blankly for a moment before turning her head.
Someone's coming.
Not the movement of a beast—the gait of a human walking on two legs. But she knew all too well that human malice could erupt anywhere, at any time, so she quietly prepared to release her poison.
Rustle—
What pushed through the undergrowth was a foreign boy whose hair—and even his eyes—were pure white.
"Ah…!"
The boy had spotted her too; his eyes went wide and trembled. He looked so much like a frightened rabbit that the woman felt her tension slip away without meaning to.
"Hic… hhk…!"
The terrified boy, relief overtaking his fear, came scampering straight toward her.
"B-Big sister… please help me…!"
"Wait!"
As the boy rushed in, she flung herself backward in alarm, putting distance between them.
"Eh…? Hhk…"
Taking her retreat as rejection, the boy hung his head and began to cry. The sight struck her chest with a pang of guilt she had never felt before—or rather, a guilt she thought had died after her sixteenth kill.
What is this? Watching this child cry makes my chest ache.
"You mustn't come near me…"
"Why?"
"My body is… full of poison qi…"
She had faced situations like this countless times and always revealed that she was a poison person with perfect indifference. Yet somehow, delivering the same line she had spoken over a hundred times felt awkward when it was to this boy.
One way or another, she managed to make him understand that approaching her meant being poisoned. Then they exchanged names.
"I am Dang Seol-yeong…"
"I'm Jin Resili Caisent. The first two are my family names. Is your family name first or last, big sister?"
"The position of a family name? Do colored-eye people introduce themselves that way too…?"
"Knowing where your family name goes is basic cosmic etiquette, isn't it?"
"??"
"??"
The conversation connected and yet failed to mesh. Both of them tilted their heads, equally baffled by whatever the other was talking about.