The Witch of Fragrance (2)
Acheron’s teachings were the starting point of a mage’s path.
Under the last guardian’s tutelage, the boy had made listening his own.
If possible, he would have liked to learn the other cognitive concepts as well.
He had hoped to gain the nose that smelled and the mouth that conveyed, too, but the situation was a little different from what it had been in Dragon Valley.
This was a rocky mountain he had reached through a dream.
Even gaining the listening ear had taken a full month.
If this was only a single meeting, there simply wasn’t enough time to learn the cognitive concepts.
So if he was going to learn anything here, it would have to be magic.
Fire and Shadow.
Fire Tail and Shadow Spear.
And, lastly, Shadow Light.
Those were the only five spells Lawrence could use.
Right now, he was desperately short on raw magical options.
If he could learn magic from her…
It might be a tremendous help in finding the shrine in the swamp.
“Magic?”
Arwen, who had been holding a teacup, looked at Lawrence.
“Arwen is a witch. Lawrence is a mage.”
Letters made of light continued for her.
“Witchcraft is magic allowed only to witches. Even for a beloved child, crossing that wall isn’t easy.”
It was not a form of magic that could be handled lightly.
Even after Arwen’s firm refusal, Lawrence did not give up.
“I’d like to see witchcraft.”
The boy had an eye for this sort of thing.
The ability to understand magic was Lawrence’s greatest weapon.
The girl stared at him for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. Follow me.”
That was fine.
Even if he couldn’t fully understand it, he still had cognitive concepts as a fallback.
He wouldn’t master everything while dreaming, but if he could at least grasp the basics, something would remain.
Lawrence followed Arwen toward the stairs.
The staircase was pitch-black, not a single ray of light reaching it. Unlike the neatly kept first floor, the stairs leading down to the basement were blocked by thorny vines.
As though welcoming the girl, the vines split apart to the left and right.
Once the two of them had passed through, the thorns knitted themselves together again like a web.
A strange fragrance tickled his nose.
As if to drive away the darkness draped over the stairs, motes of light gathered there.
The tiny lights drifted around Arwen, guiding the way.
At the foot of the stairs stood a door woven from tree roots.
The moment the girl’s hand touched it, the root-bound door melted away as if it had never existed.
The underground space beyond it was very different in atmosphere from the floor above.
It was earth beneath the earth. The ground itself seemed to be writhing, alive.
Plants nourished by a great tree’s roots had grown into something almost gardenlike.
They hadn’t gone that far down, and yet from the ceiling far above, enormous earthen pillars jutted upside down like giant reagent bottles.
Each of those pillars held a different-colored liquid.
The unknown contents glowed with a mysterious hue.
Liquid spilled from the ceiling like falling meteors.
Those multicolored starry lights began to circle around her.
“Arwen is the Witch of Fragrance. She realizes mystery through the blending of scents.”
Words floated up amid the starlight.
“Focus. Only then will you understand.”
Arwen reached into the air.
The mingled lights gathered there.
The multicolored starlight was drawn into her grasp.
A fiercely dense fragrance kept rising and rising.
It was hard to say whether it was sweet or simply intoxicating.
Each color of starlight carried a different scent.
Yellow, red, white…
As they gathered and gathered, the starlight shifted from orange to a pale flesh color once more.
White and black. Light and darkness.
As if to show that all things were two sides of the same coin, the light kept gathering and dispersing.
And in that moment, Lawrence realized his mistake.
This was not starlight.
He had relied too much on sight.
Entranced by vivid colors, he had missed the essence.
The true nature of the starlight was the fragrance she controlled.
The drifting light began to take shape.
Dandelion seeds, the sort one often saw along the road.
Arwen scattered the seeds of fragrance gathered in her hands.
Carried by the wind, they drifted down and took root in the ground.
Was this how the view atop the rocky mountain had been made?
The scent of grass blooming.
Countless sprouts surged upward and grew into verdure.
Before the mystery wrought by fragrance, Lawrence understood at last.
Arwen’s witchcraft was perfect.
Its unfathomable completeness whispered that the boy could never reach this level.
Because Lawrence was not a witch.
This was that kind of magic.
That was what witchcraft was, what this mystery meant.
But the effort was not wasted.
He didn’t need to master witchcraft perfectly.
What mattered was what he could feel from the mystery now unfolding, and what he could learn from it.
Lawrence focused on the change in form.
The fragrance that had once carried starlight.
It rooted itself in the earth and turned into vegetation.
He was certain that if he could freely apply that principle, a new path would open.
Still, once was not enough.
To truly understand, he would need to see it again and again.
“I’m sorry. Would you show me once more?”
Arwen gazed at Lawrence in silence.
“A good attitude. Lawrence is devoting himself to effort.”
Starlight born from fragrance danced.
It did not merely take shape. Answering the girl’s call, the starlight became a single band of color, embroidering a white mantle.
“This is witchcraft that manipulates fragrance.”
The starlight woven into the mantle was blue.
The mantle dyed in blue fragrance soon began to erode the cavern.
It melted into it.
It wasn’t only the mantle that turned blue; even the surroundings exposed to the fragrance were swept up as well.
A manifestation of mystery.
The blue starlight began to bead into countless droplets.
Raindrops containing starlight.
He had just enough time to lose himself in the beautiful sight before the girl lightly stepped into a dance, and the water dampened the dry earth.
The rain born of starlight did not simply fall once and end.
As though it would not cease so long as the fragrance remained, it slowly spread farther and farther.
“That’s incredible.”
Lawrence spoke in pure admiration.
The feeling of rain falling on his head.
The cold drops soaking his body told him this was no illusion, but something real.
Magic that not only formed water droplets, but made it rain.
If he could learn this spell, he couldn’t even guess how useful it would be in Ulbazar Swamp.
A flower bud bloomed above Lawrence and Arwen.
The crimson bud took the falling raindrops instead.
The girl’s dance changed.
Blue light still flowed from the mantle, but red began to mingle with it, and then a violet hue, the same as her hair, spread through the cavern.
The rain turned violet.
SSSSSSS.
Something burning sounded out.
Smoke rose from the vegetation touched by the violet drops.
A harsh, acrid smell.
Was it burning?
No. It was different.
Beneath the falling rain, the plants were literally melting away.
The water that had once brought life was instead stealing it.
Only the red flower bud sheltering the two of them could escape that sorrowful sight.
By the time the girl’s dance came to a stop, nothing but a lonely landscape drifted through the cavern.
“Can you get over it?”
To grant life.
To take life away.
That, too, was the essence of mystery.
She was asking whether he could make this sight his own.
“……”
No answer was needed.
To reach understanding, he had no choice but to keep watching, again and again.
Sensing Lawrence’s unshakable resolve, Arwen nodded.
“Arwen does not speak falsehoods. If it’s you, you’ll cross the wall.”
Conviction lived in the girl’s writing.
He would not doubt it. Starlight left behind a long, long trail.
During the time they had been given, he observed as much magic as he could.
Each time, Arwen dyed the white mantle in a different color.
The magic she cast changed according to the fragrance infused in the cloak.
That was why she wore white to begin with.
The problem came once every patch of white on the mantle was gone.
The muddled mixture of colors had turned into a pitch-black hue.
The blackened mantle carried only darkness, and the deep, profound darkness swallowed the cavern whole.
The plants touching that darkness withered at a startling rate.
Leaves lost their color.
Tree trunks dried and shrank.
The cavern’s arid, desiccated landscape called the swamp to mind.
This was not moisture being drained away.
It was a bizarre sight, as if darkness itself were devouring the vegetation.
Arwen’s witchcraft—her ability to project color onto a fragrance that should never have been visible, and then control and govern it as she pleased—was truly astonishing.
And so he realized it.
He had been thinking about this the wrong way.
Just as mercenaries took on commissions relying only on their own bodies, a mage’s most basic duty was to master his own magic.
“Shadow Light.”
The familiar shadow-light rose into the air.
He thought back to the clash with the bugbear.
The overwhelming force of Shadow Spear.
The crushing headache that followed a single casting.
He could not afford to make that mistake again.
The task before him was one thing only.
He had to learn how to control Shadow Spear under Shadow Light, in both its normal and enhanced states, exactly as he wished.
Focus.
Magic was no different from moving one’s body.
He kept his attention fixed on it even before casting Shadow Spear.
“Shadow Spear.”
The first attempt failed.
An odd Shadow Spear, neither normal nor enhanced, was formed.
The thing was half-finished, and it scattered helplessly.
“Shadow Spear.”
The second attempt failed as well.
Because his focus had been only half-formed, the Shadow Spear emerged in an enhanced state.
“……”
And then came the third invocation.
At last, a Shadow Spear close to its normal state was formed.
Its shape…
It was more perfect than the Shadow Spear he usually cast.
The burden pressing against his chest…
It felt exactly like an ordinary Shadow Spear.
There was no headache, and it felt as if he could maintain it however long he wanted.
It might have been a fluke.
Lawrence dismissed the Shadow Spear and cast the spell again.
“Shadow Spear.”
Once more, the same Shadow Spear as before appeared.
Lawrence watched it quietly, then became certain.
He could do it now.
After observing Arwen’s witchcraft repeatedly, his ability to control magic had clearly grown.
“There’s something I’d like to try.”
Arwen gave him a silent affirmation.
Lawrence lowered his head slightly in thanks, then extended his hand.
“Shadow.”
Not Shadow Spear.
The shadow that manifested from the darkness rose into the boy’s hand.
What flashed through his mind was Acheron’s lesson.
If you can only cast one spell at a time, then increase the number of thoughts. The highest form of a connected mind. This is called multitasking thought. However, you are still far from reaching that stage.
Just as one could not look left and right at the same time with the same eyes, magic too could not be cast as two things at once.
Yet the exquisitely precise control of magic had shown him a new road.
Then instead of casting two spells at the same time, he should split the already formed Shadow in two.
A change in perspective.
It was a method he had never tried before.
He divided the Shadow he was handling into two.
Lawrence concentrated on Shadow.
The Shadow on his hand melted away into the darkness and vanished.
He focused, and focused again.
His concentration sharpened like a quill being honed, until at last it gave off a single gleam.
Within the shadows, two movements appeared.
Like bubbles rising to the surface, the Shadow bubbled up and out, then the moment it showed its head, it turned back into darkness and disappeared.
Failure.
It didn’t feel as though he lacked mana, but dividing the Shadow and controlling it that way demanded greater concentration.
It was not easy.
Still, he didn’t feel as though it was impossible.
If he grew skilled at this control, he might be able to apply it to Shadow Spear or even his other fire spells.
A Shadow Spear split into two.
A Fire Tail that could be swung with a delay between motions.
Either way, there was no denying the appeal of those uses.
But to make them truly his own, he didn’t have enough time.
If only he had a few more days.
If only he had time to keep watching witchcraft…
He set the regret aside.
It wasn’t the time to be disappointed.
He had to absorb as much as possible within the time he’d been given.
Perhaps because he had pushed his concentration even further?
So absorbed in controlling Shadow, Lawrence failed to notice the subtle light in Arwen’s gaze as she watched him.