Temple of Sorrow (3)
“Never forget this: the laws of the world dwell even within the tiniest creature. Every being that makes up the world possesses a force that resists the mysterious.”
Suddenly, Acheron’s forgotten lesson came back to him.
Lawrence’s stay in Dragon Valley had not been long, not by any stretch of the word. In that short, and therefore all the more precious, time, the last guardian had tried to teach him as much of the mysterious as he possibly could.
“To simply savor the passage of immeasurable time is itself a way of approaching the mysterious. Keep that in mind. The laws of this world are more dangerous and more beautiful than you think.”
Now that he thought about it, maybe that was why he had been so fixated on sheer power when he went after the bugbear.
He could not afford to fail, not even once.
If he made a mistake, people would be hurt, or die.
The burden of knowing that the success or failure of his magic weighed on everyone’s lives.
Those dizzying thoughts clung to Lawrence’s ankles like mud, dragging at him.
Why was he only remembering it now?
The reason was not far away.
Because part of him wanted to deny the cold, hard reality.
“……”
He did not trust his own eyes.
It had been a direct hit, beyond any doubt.
Without the slightest hesitation, the Shadow Spear had swallowed the two soldiers guarding the sarcophagus.
Yes. It had definitely struck them.
They had not dodged, and they had not even made the slightest move to swing their spears.
And yet there had been no small explosion. Not even a speck of dust.
It was as if the Shadow Spear had simply vanished halfway there.
What had that been just now?
He had clearly seen it. The moment the Shadow Spear landed, a brilliant shield of light had appeared before the soldiers.
A blaze so intense it felt as if it might blind him in an instant.
The shield that had suddenly appeared had blocked the shadow spear, then vanished as casually as it had come.
This was no time to stand around.
He forced down his confusion and steadied himself.
Having collected his thoughts, Lawrence prepared for their counterattack.
But no matter how much time passed, the two soldiers never moved.
They merely stood their ground, spears crossed.
As if nothing had happened at all.
As if they hadn’t even recognized that the attack had been an attack.
That indifference drove his nails into his palm.
It was humiliation, pure and simple.
Since learning magic, this was the first time he had been treated with such contempt.
What was worse, his most trusted spell, Shadow Spear, had been dismissed as if it were nothing.
Feeling his mind flush red with rage, Lawrence lifted his hand again.
“Shadow Spear.”
One failure was enough.
This time, he would emphasize power.
Answering to Lawrence’s anger, the Shadow Spear began to transform into a more terrifying shape.
Its size. Its form. There was nothing he could fault.
He poured more and more mana into it until the shadow spear reached its peak.
A faint pain crept into his chest.
He ignored the warning not to push any further.
This was not an opponent he could bring down while holding anything in reserve.
More than that, his fury far outweighed even the pain.
Here. Try taking this.
He reshaped the spear’s shaft into the form of a rope.
Gripping the end of it, Lawrence spun the spear in a wide circle.
The Shadow Spear carved a black arc overhead.
Slow and unhurried.
He hurled the second Shadow Spear at the unruffled soldiers.
There would be no chance, however small, of the spearhead going astray.
It was a javelin throw he had designed himself and practiced over and over again.
A sharp whistle split the air.
The shadow spear shot toward a single point.
It was twice as fast as before, but the soldiers still did not react.
Instead, that shield of dazzling light from before appeared again.
He had expected it.
This was a battle of spear and shield.
The question was whether he could pierce it or not.
The shield engraved with sacred script collided with the Shadow Spear.
There was no sound.
No explosion either.
The shield did not merely block the spear.
It seemed to erase the Shadow Spear itself, making it disappear.
Could it be…?
Lawrence had seen something like this before.
An unidentified phenomenon Acheron had wielded in Dragon Valley.
He told himself there was no way, but denial changed nothing.
Every Shadow Spear that followed was blocked by the shield and came to nothing.
This would not break through.
He had already poured out a full round of mana.
Mana was like water in a skin bottle; once it was spent, it took time to refill.
No matter how hard he squeezed himself dry, the power would not increase. If anything, it would only weaken.
Lawrence drew in ragged breaths.
By contrast, the soldiers guarding the sarcophagus had not changed at all.
Even after he unleashed Shadow Spear after Shadow Spear, he could not draw so much as a glance from them.
It was not a matter of quantity. It was quality.
He needed a spear honed to the utmost sharpness.
If he gathered every last drop of mana he had left…
He might manage to break the shield.
But what meaning would that have?
“……”
He needed to judge the situation calmly.
He could not afford to misread it.
Breaking the shield would not be the end of it.
He would have to neutralize the soldiers behind it as well.
Not one, but two.
He would have to face two soldiers after going all-out.
At best, one of them.
Even if he somehow brought one down, the other would still be waiting.
Fire Tail?
What a ridiculous thought. No matter how much stronger Fire Tail had become, compared to an enhanced Shadow Spear it was hardly more than a drop in the bucket.
And even then, when compared to the fully unleashed Shadow Spear in its empowered state, the difference in raw force was still far too great.
There was also no guarantee that the destroyed shield would not appear again.
If a second shield manifested, then it really would be over.
The soldiers would take the head of a Lawrence already drained and exhausted.
The biggest obstacle was the reach.
If he put the soldiers within Fire Tail’s range, then Lawrence himself would naturally be exposed to danger as well.
If he could keep to maximum range, it might be possible, but only by the narrowest margin.
To take that kind of risk against spear-wielding soldiers would be foolish.
And if Fire Tail did work, they certainly would not sit still; he would have to keep moving without pause.
Could this battered body really manage that?
…He did not want to admit it.
But this was no time for pride.
This was a life-or-death battle.
Bitter as it was, he had no way to break this situation open.
There was no excuse for it. It was a crushing defeat.
Lawrence bit his lower lip and turned away.
* * *
After climbing to the top of the tower, Lawrence stared blankly at the drifting clouds.
The sky was a clear, perfect blue.
Watching the clouds float by so serenely eased the heaviness in his chest a little.
When he thought about it, even the filthy back alleys had always held beautiful skies overhead.
Before he met everyone, the sky had been the boy’s only friend.
Lawrence knew all too well how miserable unjust violence could be.
He had no idea how many times he’d been beaten simply because someone was in a bad mood.
After being hit, and hit again, and hit yet again until he could no longer move, the place where the boy had been dumped was the trash bin.
That was why he had looked up at the sky so often.
It was not because he wanted to.
His mangled body simply would not listen to him.
Still, he had not hated those times.
The sky seen from the back alleys had something magical in it, as if it belonged to another world entirely.
While the real me was thrown away in a trash bin like an old shoe,
the sky above remained forever dyed in the same unchanging color.
A dry laugh escaped him.
He had been deluded by ridiculous pride.
It was no time to rejoice over having dropped nothing more than a bugbear with a single blow.
The neighbors of the Spirit World were on a completely different level from the monsters of the Mortal World.
Hadn’t Acheron told him so?
That one could approach the mysterious simply by savoring long years. If that was true, then inflicting damage on a neighbor of the Spirit World, one who had likely lived for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, was no ordinary feat.
And Lawrence himself had only entered the path of magic a few years ago.
The time he had spent under proper instruction amounted to only a few months.
Even then, he had learned nothing beyond cognitive concepts and basic knowledge.
The limit was obvious. The mysterious he had only skimmed across might work in the Mortal World, but there was no chance it would hold in the Spirit World.
Had night fallen already?
The darkened sky glittered with starlight.
Without thinking, he reached out toward the heavens.
Of course, that did not mean he could touch the stars.
The starry sky was much farther away than it looked.
“…So far.”
Too far. Far too far.
He thought he had finally gotten his hands around it, and yet.
When he opened the fist he had clenched tightly, there was nothing there.
“……”
His self-mocking smile did not last long.
The hand that had failed to grasp a single thing closed into a fist again.
Enough wallowing.
Life returned to Lawrence’s eyes.
It didn’t matter.
So what if the starry sky was far away?
So what if there was nothing in his hands?
The stars hung in the night sky, and they would never drift anywhere else.
As long as he pursued the laws of the world, he would reach them someday, without fail.
The boy first acknowledged his own weakness.
As he was now, he could not defeat the soldiers of the Temple of Sorrow.
Perhaps after learning more of the mysterious, perhaps after achieving a greater measure of growth, but not now. Not yet.
But that was Lawrence’s personal defeat.
He could not say he had exhausted every possibility.
He was not at the end of the road yet.
Remember this: the world’s mysteries were not meant to be handled alone.
To use the ancient magic perfectly, he needed the power of a neighbor.
Then whom should he ask for help?
The gravekeeper of the temple?
Could he really explain the situation and persuade him?
After thinking it over, Lawrence shook his head.
It would be difficult no matter what he said. Like the Silent Penitents, the gravekeeper had already resolved to bury his bones in the temple.
If he learned that Lawrence’s purpose was to open a door that might lead outside, he might even turn hostile.
The Silent Penitents went without saying.
They were people who offered endless repentance in order to atone.
There was no thought anywhere in their minds of leaving the temple.
Then what should he do?
If he could not seek help from a neighbor, he would have to see this through on his own.
But that would take an unknown amount of time, literally anyone’s guess.
A trace of hesitation crossed the boy’s face as he pressed his hands together.
There was one method.
Lawrence took out the book he had been keeping carefully tucked against his chest.
Lemegeton.
The Key to the Spirit World entrusted to him by Acheron and Veles.
A grimoire was a magical book, and for someone like him, who had an absolute shortage of spells, it would surely show him the road ahead.
Now was the time for the power of Lemegeton.
And yet, with his hand on the sealing sigil, Lawrence could not bring himself to open it.
It was because Acheron’s warning came back to him.
“Do not open Lemegeton for at least three years. Keep the sealing sigil tightly bound and only begin learning from Lemegeton when you believe your preparations are complete.”
Three years was only the minimum.
If he wanted to be safe, Acheron had said, he should wait another five.
It had not yet been a full year since Lawrence left Dragon Valley.
No matter how valuable the real combat experience he had gained in the swamp might be, it could never compare to the three years Acheron had spoken of.
If he ignored that warning, there was no telling what might happen.
In the worst case, he might go mad.
“……”
He did not struggle with the choice for long.
There was clearly no clever solution if he remained as he was.
In the end, if he wanted to move forward, he would have to accept the risk.
It was just as Lawrence’s hand closed around the sealing sigil.
A bird flew in front of him and let out a loud caw, caw.
The creature perched on the wall was no ordinary crow.
Its eyes were set with black jewels.
Its gleaming feathers and body held an artificial color.
It looked more like a meticulously crafted glass ornament than a living thing.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t open that, Lawrence.”
Words appeared before the crow.
A strangely familiar handwriting.
There was even a line written with the boy’s name.
Could it be? Lawrence said the name aloud.
“Arwen?”
There was no mistaking it.
It was Arwen, the Incense Witch who wielded witchcraft.
“Hello.”
“How did you get here?”
Surprise came before delight.
Lawrence rose to his feet and looked at the crow.
“Scent doesn’t vanish.”
So she had followed his scent?
Come to think of it, when they first met, Arwen had behaved rather oddly.
He remembered it clearly.
She had suddenly thrust her face close to him and started sniffing him without a word.
“Witchcraft really is amazing. To be able to locate me this precisely like this…”
“Amazing is Arwen.”
Correcting him, she went on writing.
“There’s a reason for the seal. You should stop.”
“It’s not as though I wanted to open it. I had no choice. But now I think I may not need to rely on Lemegeton after all.”
After all, Arwen was here.
He put Lemegeton back against his chest and spoke.
“I want to get out of the temple. Could you help me?”
“Once you’ve stepped into the Temple of Sorrow, the only way out is to open the door yourself. Find the key somewhere in the temple.”
“I’ve already found where the key is. But there are soldiers guarding it.”
“The guardians of the key, protected by the Radiance. A strong opponent for Lawrence to defeat.”
Radiance attribute?
So that shield had indeed been magic of the Radiance attribute.
“Regrettably, that’s true. I still can’t handle them. I was wandering around because I couldn’t find anyone nearby to ask for help.”
“A familiar cannot provide the help Lawrence wants. There’s no chance of winning if you fight the guardians of the key.”
As if understanding what he meant, the writing continued without hesitation.
After all, Arwen herself was not truly here.
The crow was only a familiar, and there were limits to the power it could lend.
There was no way to pull him out from the outside.
A familiar’s power had its bounds.
Wasn’t that just back to the beginning?
No. It was too soon to give up.
Gathering his thoughts, Lawrence said, “Then maybe magic—”
He stopped himself midway through the sentence.
Arwen practiced witchcraft, specifically the mysterious power of incense.
Unlike the ancient magic he could create with mana alone, her witchcraft absolutely required an ingredient: scent.
The temple was a sealed space, closed off from the outside.
Even if he spent time learning it, he could not use it here.
That was a problem he had already faced the first time he saw witchcraft.
“……”
His worry deepened.
No matter what approach he tried, every path ran straight into a wall.
At this rate, the only thing left was to grow stronger on his own.
Maybe the best answer was to keep refining Shadow Spear and raise its power.
Even if she could not offer direct help.
With Arwen here, couldn’t he at least ask for advice?
And if that led him to another clue about void magic…
Void magic.
Suddenly, Lawrence covered his mouth with his hand.
Someone had just flashed through his mind.
Why had he forgotten?
Red Eyes.
The spirit of the Shadow Forest, the one who had taught him Shadow Spear.
If there was a way to meet Red Eyes again, he might be able to learn another void magic.