Dragon Valley
Acheron was waiting for Lawrence in the gorge.
“From this point on, I will withdraw the Hearing Ear. In that state, think carefully about what your neighbor wants, and how you might answer their request.”
“Without the Hearing Ear?”
It made no sense at all.
If he couldn’t hear, how was he supposed to know what anyone was asking for?
And yet Acheron only nodded, as if this too were a question the boy had to discover the answer to on his own.
“From now on, I forbid the use of magic. Keep that in mind. Rest is as important as practice. When it comes to magic, pushing beyond your limits every single time is not necessarily the right way to train.”
“Understood.”
“The deadline is… yes. I’ll give you two months.”
“Two months?”
The words slipped out before Lawrence could stop them.
He only had three months in Dragon Valley. Was Acheron telling him to spend two of those precious months on this?
Don’t complain.
Acheron had shown him the path forward. That alone was enough.
Soon, a neighbor that looked like a rabbit came into view.
“Is there anything you want?”
“What do I want? Let’s play! Loved child.”
He winced inwardly.
In his haste, he had asked the question badly.
“No. Not playing…. Hmm. Right. Is there anything you want me to do for you?”
“Ah! In that case, if you go to the mountain and… eh… there’s a place where the… uh… the…?”
The important part was swallowed up and lost.
“Sorry. I can’t quite hear you—could you say that again?”
The result didn’t change.
The rabbit with four ears still couldn’t quite reach him.
“For now, let’s play together! If we play, all your worries will fly away!”
“I’m really sorry, but I’m a little busy. Next time I have free time, let’s play then.”
“You promised, okay?”
“Of course.”
After sending the rabbit off, Lawrence’s expression turned grave.
The situation was worse than he had expected.
Ordinary conversation reached his ears, but the truly important things remained stubbornly out of range, no matter how hard he listened.
It wasn’t that he heard nothing at all. If anything, the half-heard fragments only made him more impatient.
Still, it was too soon to give up.
Fortunately, there were plenty of neighbors here.
He only had to go find the ones he could hear.
And then four days passed without a single gain.
He had no choice.
Lawrence went looking for Acheron.
The guardian, as if already aware of his problem, held out a branch.
“I’ll tell you one important fact. You can already understand, to some extent, what the neighbors of the Spirit World are saying.”
“But I still can’t hear the truly important parts.”
“You’re missing the point of what I’m saying. Doesn’t it strike you as strange? Without the Hearing Ear, how are you able to understand the words of your neighbors at all?”
“Now that you mention it….”
He had been so naturally immersed in it that he’d forgotten. It wasn’t that he heard nothing. He had heard some things.
“It isn’t absent. The Hearing Ear has already manifested.”
“Then why can’t I hear everything?”
“That is for you to discover. Keep my words in mind and listen c—”
Acheron’s voice blurred and faded.
Lawrence went back down to where the neighbors were running and playing.
“So? So?”
“Everyone went off to find something sparkly.”
Even with the Hearing Ear, he still couldn’t understand everything.
There were still voices that slipped through in pieces, impossible to catch in full.
Could it be that the Hearing Ear, like magic, could also be trained?
“Something sparkly? Maybe it’s…?”
“Yeah. Apparently it’s delicious.”
He had made the mistake of dismissing the half-baked chatter as meaningless.
From then on, he listened to every voice as closely as he could.
The neighbors were not all the same.
For instance, the ones that reminded him of rabbits or cats were mostly understandable, while the words spoken by neighbors like deer or bears remained beyond him.
The Hearing Ear grew.
And if it could grow, that meant it could rise to a higher level through effort.
That alone was a meaningful result.
One day, with Acheron’s help, Lawrence finally managed to speak with Veles.
“Loved child. It seems you’ve found the answer you were looking for.”
“Yes. From here on, it depends on my own effort.”
The old lizard spent more than half the day asleep.
Judging by what he’d said about going on a long journey, it almost seemed as if he were preparing for death, which would soon come for him.
“Is it hard?”
“Walking toward the principles of the world is never easy.”
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard. But it’s fun, too. More than anything.”
“Fun? Do you truly think so?”
“Feeling yourself grow from one day to the next is a joyful thing. With magic, you can see that growth right away.”
It wasn’t even worth comparing to the tedious lessons of reading and writing.
Magic paid off immediately in proportion to effort.
It was nothing like memorizing text, where if you didn’t keep checking whether you’d remembered it or not, it would simply slip away.
He was trying to gain the Cognitive Concepts instead of magic, but the core idea was the same.
The point was to pursue mystery.
“I see. Fun, is it…? I too find sleep dull, but dreaming is pleasant. Perhaps it is something like what you feel.”
“So you dream too, Veles?”
“Of course. Lately I have been so steeped in dreams that this place feels like the dream, and the dream feels like reality.”
What kind of dreams did Veles have?
As if reading the boy’s expression, he continued in his calm, measured way.
“Old memories, child. From when I was still young in spirit. Memories from the time when our kind ruled the heavens.”
It was truly a dazzling era, Veles said, closing his eyes.
“Old memories… people always think of the past when they’re suffering.”
“One recalls the brightest of memories. Who among any living being would not do so in the face of hardship and trial? But I have no fear. Death is not an end, but a new beginning. It may still be a difficult thing for you to understand.”
“No. I think I understand, at least a little.”
Lawrence thought of the fire lizard he had met on the blazing mountain.
Death was not the end, but the beginning of a greater cycle.
Before the great will of nature, all things were small.
“The neighbors of our Spirit World are mystery itself made alive. Ancient beings forgotten now in the real world. In a sense, you might say they are beings living inside fantasy. For a human standing outside that fantasy to see what cannot be seen, to hear what cannot be heard, it is only natural that the body should suffer.”
Lawrence nodded silently.
Beings within fantasy. If he had not understood the concept of the Spirit World, he would surely have dismissed all of this as a dream.
“Magic is, at its root, the use of the powers held by the neighbors of the Spirit World. Humans cannot handle magic through the proper organs engraved in the soul, and so they scream without sound.”
Soundless screams.
He thought it was an apt metaphor.
“Remember this well. The principles of the world are not something one handles alone. Listening to the world’s whispers while trying to seize and manipulate them however one likes—that is the folly of human magic. Life and death are two sides of the same coin. The foundation of magic is the same great cycle. I hope that, as one standing upon the wall, you do not forget that fact.”
With those words, Veles slowly closed his eyes.
His breathing became shallow, steady, regular.
Watching him, Lawrence lowered his head.
“Has Veles fallen asleep?”
“He has just now drifted off.”
While Lawrence mulled over what Veles had said, Acheron, who had given the pair their space, returned.
“Take care not to forget it. What Veles teaches can be given by no one else—not even me.”
“Even you, Acheron?”
Lawrence couldn’t hide his surprise.
As far as he knew, there was no one who understood the principles of the world better than Acheron did.
“You speak as though it were obvious. No matter how much I may know of magic, my depth cannot compare to Veles.”
“I had no idea Veles was so extraordinary.”
“No idea?”
Acheron frowned, clearly troubled by the admission.
“Then what did you think of Veles, normally?”
The first word that came to Lawrence’s mind had to be buried before it escaped.
“…I thought he was a quiet sage.”
Even so, he couldn’t exactly say the old fellow was just someone who slept all day.
“A sage. Right in some ways, and wrong in others. Let me rephrase the question. What kind of species does Veles look like to you?”
“Well…. A lizard, I guess? An incredibly large one.”
Seeing Acheron’s face twist, Lawrence hastily added more.
Honestly, he didn’t know.
Veles, who had already become one with the mountain, barely retained even the outline of a lizard anymore.
It was impossible to tell how many legs he had, and his body had long since changed into something like a turtle’s shell.
Maybe “turtle” would be more accurate than “lizard.”
“A lizard… Sometimes I wonder if you’re ignorant or simply pure-hearted. I truly can’t tell.”
Acheron sighed.
“Do you remember where this is?”
“You told me it’s Dragon Valley.”
“Then what does ‘dragon’ mean?”
“A dragon, of course.”
Lawrence answered at once.
He might not know much, but he wasn’t that hopelessly ignorant.
Dragon.
An extinct race from fantasy now lost to sight.
He had heard elves and dwarves could still be encountered from time to time, but dragons were the stuff of ancient legend.
At that moment, the boy gave a violent start.
Acheron never spoke meaninglessly.
Why had he brought up dragons while talking about Veles?
“Could it be…?”
“What you think is correct.”
Lawrence stared blankly at the sleeping Veles.
A being living inside fantasy.
The Spirit World was a place where old beings forgotten by the real world dwelled.
The old lizard before him was that dragon.
“The old lizard was a dragon?”
Even knowing Veles was a dragon changed nothing.
He was still the old fellow who spent half the day asleep.
Because he opened his eyes so rarely, Lawrence could only speak with him from time to time, with Acheron acting as an intermediary. He did not often get the chance to talk directly.
And once the chances for conversation dwindled, so did the excitement.
To be honest, even the word “dragon” itself didn’t strike him all that deeply.
Veles looked nothing like the dragons of legend.
Those were said to bear scales like gold and to command every form of magic, the strongest race on land.
But Veles now was…
No matter how generously one phrased it, he looked like nothing more than a lizard wedged between rock and tree.
In the end, nothing had changed.
Meanwhile, Lawrence threw himself into training and finally reaped results.
On the exact day that marked one month since he had begun training the Hearing Ear, he finally heard the rabbit’s four-eared suggestion.
“There are delicious fruits up on the mountain. If the loved child doesn’t mind, would you like to come and eat some with us?”
In the Spirit World, one did not feel hunger.
Even if he ate and drank nothing, he would not starve to death.
That was a special trait of the Spirit World, which called forth the shape of the soul.
So the rabbit’s invitation was truly unexpected.
“Fruit?”
“Yeah. It’s really delicious. Sour, but incredibly sweet too.”
Without meaning to, he felt saliva slide down his throat.
It definitely wasn’t because he was tempted by the word delicious.
“All right. You helped me before, so this time it’s my turn.”
“You remembered?”
“A promise is a promise.”
“That’s why I love the loved child!”
Lawrence walked with the rabbit.
They passed through the valley where the neighbors usually spent their time and climbed the mountain.
This was different from the mountain he had ascended with the fire lizard.
Dragon Valley, with its blanket of pure white snow, was beautiful no matter where one looked.
As he moved forward, letting out quiet exclamations of admiration, he soon arrived at a sight he had never seen before.
It was the peak of a mountain buried beneath eternal snow.
Scattered across the wind-swept white plain were countless fruit trees.
No wonder so many neighbors had been hiding here; the ones gathered beneath the trees were busy stuffing fruit into their mouths nonstop.
Laughter rang out in bright little peals.
The scent of sour-sweet fruit drifted through the air.
Like the rabbit had said, the fragrance was enough to stir anyone’s appetite.
“See? Told you.”
“Yeah. It really does look delicious.”
The rabbit led Lawrence to one of the trees.
There, on the branches, hung a cluster of red fruit that looked irresistible.
“Go ahead and try one. I’m sure the loved child will like it.”
“Then I won’t refuse….”
Just as Lawrence reached out for the fruit, a familiar hand cut across his view.
He felt the accustomed tap against his head.
“Acheron?”
“Do not reach for Pomona so carelessly. Do you mean to be taken by the Spirit World just like that?”
Acheron set down the branch, his expression cold.
“What do you mean?”
The one who answered was not Acheron.
The rabbit that had climbed the peak with Lawrence flew into a rage.
“Guardian of endless regret! Why do you keep getting in the way of what we’re doing?!”
It was not the same voice Lawrence had heard just moments before.
That voice, twisted by fury, was grotesque beyond belief—like a monster’s.
“No matter how lovable the loved child may be, there are lines that must not be crossed.”
The rabbit’s face changed.
Its red eyes filled with a horrifying blood color.
Its mouth opened wider and wider, as though it might split apart, and from within there emerged teeth that no longer looked rabbit-like at all.
“You dare say that? After killing countless loved children already? You were going to do it again anyway, weren’t you? If that’s the case, then hand the loved child over to us!”
Startled, Lawrence stepped back.
It had only seemed harmless until that instant.
Now a small monster wearing a rabbit’s face stood there instead.
He could not afford to be deceived by a cute exterior.
These too were forgotten beings.
Great or small, they were all beings of the Spirit World, carrying the world’s mystery within them.
“That cannot be. Whatever you may say, the fact remains that I am the guardian. If you have no intention of fighting, step aside. I’ll pardon this once.”
“Pardon? How ridiculous. The one who should be asking for forgiveness isn’t us, it’s you, you murderer.”
The rabbit returned to its original appearance.
“Loved child. If you ever feel like it, come here anytime and eat fruit with us. The Spirit World with us will be far more enjoyable than the real world, where there is nothing but hardship and sorrow.”
The rabbit stuck out its tongue at Acheron.
Then, as if fleeing, it took its leave, and the neighbors around them all withdrew from the place as well.
Lawrence felt a chill settle in his chest.
“Acheron.”
“Speak.”
“If I had eaten that fruit, what would have happened to me?”
“You would have been claimed by the Spirit World. And you would have become a Changeling, never returning to the real world again.”
“……”
The appetite that had stirred at the sight of the fruit vanished in an instant.
The realization that he had been deceived by a neighbor left him feeling hollow and sick.
“Did they mean to do that from the beginning?”
“The pure goodwill a neighbor of the Spirit World holds toward you is offered entirely because they love the loved child.”
“Pure goodwill? By tricking me?”
His teeth ground together with the sting of betrayal.
“They wouldn’t think of it as trickery. Whatever the process may be, they would only believe that they alone can protect the loved child. That is what goodwill is. It is not asking to be understood. It is only a feeling that flows one way.”
“I can’t understand that.”
“You do not need to try. That is what the neighbors of the Spirit World are.”
And then Acheron changed the subject.
“The fact that you were invited to eat Pomona means you can hear a fair amount now. You’ve done well. I thought it would take at least two months, but to see you reach this level in only one… it seems I misjudged you.”
“I’m still far from ready. If I don’t focus, there are still plenty of times when I can’t understand what’s being said.”
At the sudden praise, Lawrence lowered his head.
“It seems we have more time left than I expected. Shall we move on to the next Cognitive Concept?”
What should come after the Hearing Ear?
He still had no clear picture of the Speaking Mouth or the Smelling Nose, the remaining two of the five Cognitive Concepts.
Two months. The timing fit perfectly.
It had taken one month to gain the Hearing Ear; perhaps he could obtain the remaining two concepts in the two months left to him.
After thinking for a while, Lawrence finally spoke.
“There’s something I’m curious about.”
“Go on.”
“My Hearing Ear isn’t perfect. I can understand the neighbors’ speech now, but I still can’t understand Acheron’s or Veles’s words. So I was thinking… just like magic, can’t the Cognitive Concepts themselves be trained further, depending on how much effort you put into them?”
For example, just as the Hearing Ear could hear more—couldn’t the Seeing Eye also see more?
And what about the other Cognitive Concepts he still had not obtained?
“You are correct. Acquiring the five Cognitive Concepts is only the minimum condition for becoming a mage. Depending on the level one hopes to attain, one must also pursue those concepts to a higher stage.”
“So this isn’t the end.”
“Disappointed?”
But reaching the principles of the world was never easy.
Lawrence shook his head.
Disappointed? Of course not.
“A miracle as generous as this always comes with a price. A new Cognitive Concept will be fine. For the remaining two months, I want to train the concepts I already have.”
He still couldn’t properly handle what he already possessed.
There was no need to reach greedily for other concepts.
At the very least, he had to reach a level where he could use the weapons already in his hands to his satisfaction.
A satisfied expression appeared on Acheron’s face.
“A fine answer. For the time you have left, become as familiar as possible with the concepts you already possess. That will be the road to a greater mystery. As for where that road leads, do not worry. While you remain in Dragon Valley, I, Acheron, will guide you toward the principles of the world.”
By the time another month had passed since the fruit tree incident, Lawrence could understand Acheron’s and Veles’s speech even without a branch to help him.
Once what had been silent finally became audible, everything grew immensely easier.
What made him happiest of all was being able to talk with Veles.
Veles was always half-drowned in sleep, but when he did open his eyes, he offered teachings that became flesh and bone.
He barely understood one out of ten of those stories.
And yet, just catching a glimpse of that vast fragment of mystery brought Lawrence one step closer to growth.
Now he believed it.
Veles truly was the legendary dragon.
The treasure house of knowledge that seeped through his words was full of a depth of experience Lawrence could scarcely begin to measure.
If possible, he wanted to hear more, but the time granted to Veles was not long.
“From this point on, speak based on what you’ve heard.”
The next stage was communication.
Not just listening, but talking as well.
In a way, it was much the same as the dreaming he usually did.
“This is a fairy meadow. If you’ve had experience, adjusting should be easy enough. Still, keep in mind that the spirits gathered here carry a greater mystery than even the fairies.”
By now Lawrence knew.
He knew how frightening spirits with cute appearances could be.
Adjusting to conversation was fun.
Lawrence mixed with the spirits like a child his own age.
From there, he began exploring Dragon Valley.
The spirits were so full of energy that once he joined them, they never seemed to want to stop.
One day they climbed the mountain.
One day they crossed the valley.
One day they came and went through the gorge.
They were so active that they nearly wore Lawrence’s stamina down to nothing.
And when another two weeks had passed like that, the day finally came for Veles to set out on his journey.