Chapter 449
Chapter 449
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 449
>Chapter Title: Is It Calling Me?
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Before charging into battle, Aster took a moment to collect his thoughts.
Darkness was encroaching, but he stood motionless, staring straight ahead without any reaction.
It was strange.
‘……What is it?’
There was something off about the 9th Elder’s demeanor.
- Go back.
- To avoid unnecessary conflict.
Such proposals were only made when one was scared. When they lacked the guts to bluff and were utterly helpless.
But.
- I won’t retreat.
The 9th Elder’s response to his answer was unexpected.
- How unfortunate.
- Me too.
- Don’t regret it.
A attitude without the slightest hesitation. It wasn’t the manner of someone who shied away from battle.
This raised two questions.
‘What’s he relying on?’
Even with the white magic circle, they had three grand wizards on their side. Was he underestimating them because of the mana restraints?
‘No, that doesn’t add up…….’
As he thought that far.
Fwoooosh—!
Darkness flooded in from all directions.
The darkness was like water.
Breathing wasn’t an issue, but a bizarre pressure crushed his entire body.
In the pitch-black darkness where nothing was visible, Aster extended his senses to scan the surroundings. He was trying to locate Demeia and the Judge of Jamal……
‘……It’s murky.’
How to put it.
His senses wouldn’t extend outward.
The darkness was devouring them.
He couldn’t even detect close range.
Having grasped that much, Aster quickly erased the two from his mind.
‘They’ll handle themselves, whatever.’
They were grand wizards, after all.
Even weakened by the white magic circle, they surely had some hidden trump card.
That wasn’t what mattered now.
Let’s see.
‘……Is this what he was counting on?’
This darkness.
He’d anticipated it, but it was far from ordinary.
It didn’t just block senses; even testing it out, magic wouldn’t manifest.
It was incomprehensible.
A grand wizard’s magic failing to manifest.
It was enough to fluster anyone, but Aster stayed calm and continued thinking.
Why?
……Because no phenomenon came without a price.
Ordinary magic might be different, but things like forbidden magic that defied logic always came with a cost, without exception.
The motionless 9th Elder was proof of that.
That aside, the second question.
‘……Why avoid battle then?’
He clearly had the ability.
And no qualms about using it.
Yet the 9th Elder had tried to avoid fighting.
‘To avoid unnecessary conflict,’ was it?
‘Really just that?’
Maybe it was true.
After all, he and the 9th Elder weren’t locked in some personal grudge.
Honestly, Aster had no real reason to antagonize Salvatium if they left him alone. They were just tangled up now, that’s all.
But……
‘……There’s definitely something.’
He needed to find out what.
Why?
No particular reason.
Call it intuition.
Anyway.
“……Hmm.”
Having thought that far, Aster cast his gaze into the distance.
A single beam of light shone down into the space filled only with darkness.
“Is it calling me?”
Aster strode toward the light.
* * *
It wasn’t just Aster who began walking toward the light.
‘…….’
Demeia stared at the distant light before stepping forward.
Even in this desperate moment where magic couldn’t be cast, her face was serene—almost indifferent.
She knew.
What this space was.
‘……A barrier.’
Demeia was well-versed in various schools of magic.
One might expect that of a grand wizard, but the breadth of her knowledge went far beyond what could be dismissed as ‘because she’s a grand wizard.’
And within that vast knowledge were spells hard to believe even existed, including barriers of this type.
Illusory Barrier.
Within that false world, different laws from reality took effect.
A simple example: gravity.
Not from above downward, but from below upward.
If the caster specified it so, gravity in the barrier pointed up.
Of course, that was just a basic illustration. Things could get more complex, like the current phenomenon, without issue.
Anyway, the key was……
‘Rules.’
What rules governed this illusory barrier?
Magic didn’t manifest with ‘mana.’ Had the medium changed? Or were other rules twisted to suppress magic manifestation? Were those the only distortions?
Dozens of hypotheses flashed through her mind in the brief moment of a single step. A thought speed no ordinary person—no, not even most grand wizards—could match.
How long had it been like that?
As she neared the light, Demeia had uncovered several facts.
The distortions in this illusory barrier went beyond just the conditions for manifesting magic.
First……
‘Space.’
Whether her spatial perception was warped or the space itself was didn’t matter; this darkness was on par with an entirely separate realm from the Sanctuary.
And there seemed to be a few more things.
“…….”
Demeia halted and gazed at the light. The light standing alone in the darkness was like a ‘door’ to another space.
She couldn’t see what lay beyond, but it was clearly a new space.
……Could even an illusory barrier do this?
Even Muspellun, the utmost authority on barrier magic, couldn’t achieve an illusory barrier of this level.
Was it possible only because it was forbidden magic?
She couldn’t tell which, but standing still wouldn’t reveal anything.
Moreover……
‘…….’
Demeia held her hand toward the light. The darkness was seeping into her skin. Slowly, like black ink staining white parchment.
She tried summoning mana to push it out, but it was impossible.
For now, it was fine.
……For now.
But what if a little more time passed like this?
Black mana was no less lethal than demonic energy. In some ways, even more so.
Thus, Demeia walked toward the light.
And when she entered it.
Thung—!
A strange sense of helplessness swept through her body. At the same time, light spread across the world.
“This is…….”
When she opened her eyes again, the scene was the Sanctuary.
But somehow, it was different.
Hermits bustling hurriedly through the corridors. They seemed oblivious to the Salvatium intrusion, all peaceful, and it was right then that one Hermit approached Demeia.
“Hermit Visab, hurry.”
“……Are you calling me?”
The Hermit who spoke to her furrowed his brow. He tilted his head, then asked back.
“Who else would it be? Hurry, Hermit Visab. An important guest is arriving.”
With that, the Hermit hurried off.
Demeia watched the scene quietly before looking down at herself.
It wasn’t her body.
A hermit clad in Hermit robes.
‘Hermit Visab……?’
That’s what he’d called her, surely.
Having become Visab, Demeia watched the departing Hermit before setting off herself.
* * *
In the space drowned in darkness.
The 9th Elder watched the three grand wizards enter the light, his eyes gleaming.
‘As expected…….’
Grand wizards lived up to their name? They were too resilient to be felled by mere black mana in the darkness.
Thus, he’d had no choice but to shift to the second illusory barrier, but what surprised him this time wasn’t the grand wizards—it was the Sanctuary.
Why would the Sanctuary surprise him?
To understand that, one first needed to know what his magic was.
The 9th Elder called his own magic this.
Recall.
A spell that recreates the past imprinted on a place.
The principle was simple.
Like the fragrance lingering where a flower bloomed, emotions linger where people have been.
Most such emotions fade quickly, but some are so intense they seep into the space itself. And those emotions embedded in space become memories.
The 9th Elder summoned them forth.
Naturally, the emotions he chose were negative ones.
……Despair, or frustration.
Now, consider this.
‘If it’s an event that would make the Sanctuary’s Hermits feel despair or frustration—’
What could it be?
And if his malicious intent were infused into it?
What would have originally trapped just one grand wizard now held three, with their powers greatly suppressed by the white magic circle.
After imprisoning the three grand wizards, the 9th Elder invoked the space’s memory.
And the result.
‘……Demeia.’
The ‘memory’ into which Dinai’s matriarch Demeia fell was one riddled with despair.
‘……The Judge of Jamal.’
The ‘memory’ he fell into was one of utter frustration.
The two, separated into different memories, each became the Hermit who had tasted the most intense despair, the most intense frustration in that memory segment, and wandered through it.
Now, the only one left was the Tower Lord……
“……?”
As the 9th Elder observed Aster, he rarely voiced a question.
Unlike the two for whom Recall had proceeded normally, the Tower Lord……that is, Aster’s state was somehow off.
[What is this?]
The Tower Lord, bewildered by his situation, was looking around, but unlike the previous two, he retained his own body.
And that wasn’t all.
The ‘memory’ the Tower Lord fell into wasn’t a memory of the Sanctuary.
Rather……
‘……Before the Sanctuary.’
In other words, a memory from before the Sanctuary was even built.
‘This is ridiculous…….’
Recall summoned memories via traces of intense emotions.
‘No way the Recall glitched……?’
The 9th Elder startled and checked the situation, but Recall was fine.
The memory assigned to the Tower Lord, the emotion embedded in it, was in no way inferior to the other two.
If anything, it carried a searing something.
Even so……
‘……Before the Sanctuary existed?’
Had there ever been such a case?
Recall wasn’t omnipotent. Limited by the 9th Elder’s capacity, it couldn’t traverse infinite time to recreate.
Thus, some ‘something’s’ intervention was certain……
As he thought that far.
Finally, people appeared in the ‘memory’ the Tower Lord had fallen into.
Two people appeared.
Two elderly wizards with snowy white hair.
[……Huh?]
[Uh……?]
The two wizards who had leaped out from below the clouds spotted the Tower Lord and tilted their heads.
Their expressions suggested they hadn’t expected anyone to be there first, and Aster likewise tilted his head at the sight of them.
But that lasted only a moment.
[Uh, huh……?]
Aster let out a faint sigh.
It was an illusion.
That much was clear……
‘……What is it?’
The Fire Mark on his chest was wailing.
What did that mean?
‘Fragment.’
A fragment was nearby.
Reverse Heaven was pointing straight at those two old men.
That was why Aster couldn’t hide his bewilderment.
A fragment was there.
But……
‘……Not just one?’
As he’d said, Reverse Heaven was pointing at those two old men.