Chapter 317
Chapter 317
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 317
Chapter Title: War of the Puppets (14)
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Clop, clop. Even gripped by terror, the horse struggled along the official road. It was a sight that would make any sane person's skin crawl and body stiffen—a natural reaction for such a skittish beast.
Every citizen in this city. No, every moving thing was a phantom from a thousand years past. Worn and decayed remains. Even the horse Ravirata now rode. Her mount walked gracefully, just like its master.
[How is it?]
"Beautiful."
[Hehe, isn't it? I think so too.]
Ravirata looked around the road as she spoke. The citizens went about their daily labors, children dashed about energetically, the elderly basked in the sun while watching them, and merchants bartered with worn coins and frayed fabrics, laughing and chattering.
It was all an illusion. A puppet show repeating ceaselessly for a thousand years, destined to loop eternally. They knew the truth, yet they willingly entombed themselves in the same endless day.
For the human mind is frailer than time itself.
To survive.
Even corpses, long dead, deceived themselves with the single burning desire to live.
-A painting in a masterpiece is no mere cheap imitation of reality.
Even after learning it was an illusion within Mumto's hallucination, Fernandez couldn't easily shake it off. He now knew that every stroke in the artist's canvas, every flowing texture, was no lowly copy of the real world.
He watched the children playing and frolicking, then closed his eyes.
Tiny spirits without vocal cords, unable to transmit sound through mana. Though no voices should have reached him, pure laughter seemed to emanate from beneath their parched, withered skulls.
[Hard to look at?]
"It wasn't their fault."
[No one's fault at all.]
Ravirata slowed her horse to match Fernandez's pace. She gestured slowly into the air as she spoke.
[Do you remember what I told you? Humans inevitably march toward death, but that doesn't define them as beings who live solely to die.]
"Yes."
[From that very realization, Asit's vision begins. Do you see?]
At her words, Fernandez opened his eyes. A clear blue sky and lush green meadow stretched before him. It was an intricate illusion magic, knotted together in an instant.
"Asit's priests—the old ones called burial priests—didn't raise corpses merely for immortal labor."
Beside him stood a stunning beauty with long black hair cascading like ebony. Her snow-white skin and alluring eyes smiled coyly before him.
"Have you ever seen a burial priests' temple? They paint images at the entrance. 'Remember us. We are...'"
"'Your future.'"
"Oh, so you have. Which city's ruins?"
"Altarak. I saw it in the underground ruins of Mahras."
It felt like ancient history already. Before the conclave's threat emerged, when this wasteland was still barren. Before the Fifty Years' War ended.
In the buried ruins of Altarak beneath the peaceful oasis city, Fernandez had seen those words.
"Quite a large site, then. Yes. The priests studied the departed to remember them. It was... the highest form of respect. A way to honor eternal life, immortal souls. Our necromancy values the essence of the life those remains once held more than the corpses themselves."
-Rumble!
At Ravirata's gesture, intricate mana knots wove through the air. Though he knew it was all illusion, Fernandez watched her hand seals and mana patterns intently.
"Those shaped this way are no mere copies of reality. They are respected warriors, people, life itself. Thus, I pity neither myself nor my people, Fernandez."
Ravirata gazed at him with a gentle smile. At her gesture, the ground trembled, the meadow split open. From the fissures rose warriors clad in gleaming steel armor, one by one.
The scene repeated everywhere his eyes could see. Men of varying heights and builds—dozens, hundreds... no, thousands of soldiers slowly rose to their feet.
They thrust their sun-glinting spears and swords upright, then knelt on one knee in unison, shouting.
-May the sun reign eternal!!
"In our ancient myths, the sun is born at the eastern edge and dies at the western. It ages and sickens like man, fading away. Yet its final rays at dusk hint at tomorrow's dawn in the east. That is life—"
-May the light reign eternal!
"We who walk that path, we phantoms—we are specimens preserved in time, living eternally in daylight, not night, Fernandez. Like the sun at its zenith, it was our effort to eternally honor the departed's most glorious moments."
So, feel no pity. True to her words, Ravirata smiled as brilliantly as the noonday sun.
"Don't pity us for repeating meaningless acts like fools through the ages. That was our life. Instead, revere those dazzling moments we cherished and preserved through eons."
"My thinking was narrow. My apologies."
"Well..."
-Clap!
Ravirata clapped with a bright smile. A rough wind brushed Fernandez's face. He blinked, and the city's scene reappeared before him.
The phantom lord in her golden mask spoke from beneath it.
[Our current forms were made to remain as Mumto's puppets, so how could we reproach you for pitying them? In truth, you can dismiss it as a long-winded excuse.]
Let's go. The space is cramped. Ravirata spurred her horse onward with a clop, clop, exiting the road.
* * *
"Show me once more."
[Hehe, even for you, that might be tough? Of course. Asit's vision is as long and intricate as its history. Very well. I shall impart as much wisdom as you desire.]
Ravirata formed hand seals again, threading mana into the air. Fernandez watched the entire scene in silence.
Three times. This was the third demonstration of 'raising phantoms.' First ten, then fifteen, then twenty-two. As Fernandez requested, she increased the numbers, diligently constructing the spell.
Before them stood forty-seven newly awakened departed in tattered armor, silently arrayed.
-The outer triangle follows variable clauses. Clever trick.
'The overlapping shapes in the inner structure are Asit hieroglyphic schematics. Five characters layered needlessly, making it overly complex.'
-Seems meant to boost mana efficiency in the knots... Well, room for improvement. What if we rewrite the glyphs in modern imperial script?
'Greater deviation from the canon risks distortions in the underground mana stone veins. Not a good idea.'
-Tsk, rote memorization is no fun. Such a romance-lacking era. That's the problem with young mages today—they just memorize without understanding.
'Care to consider we're the same age?'
-Were we? Oh... I hadn't realized, Fernandez. I took you for a twenty-year-old babe.
'At twenty, you're weaned. Got soul dementia in your old spirit body?'
-Hahaha! You got me! By a novice, no less!
'Ah... If you had a body, I'd have punched you a few times.'
The two necromancers bickered as they analyzed Ravirata's mana. Feizashi chuckled sinisterly at Fernandez's retort.
-Count yourself lucky I lack flesh, Fernandez. Always... always. If I had a body, you'd be my lab rat.
'Shut it.'
Fernandez had no desire for an argument. He had nothing to say. If Feizashi's true self had fully transferred, he wouldn't even have these doubts.
Fernandez shook his head and spread five fingers toward Ravirata.
"Now I'll try."
[Too soon, isn't it? I can show more if needed.]
"Enough."
The hand seals and arm angles followed a direction utterly unlike modern magic. This was less spellcraft and more an ancient rite of supplication to nature, not gods.
Now called the 'Marakalai school,' it was the foundational text of one magic lineage. Like druidic incantations, it treated nature as sacred, beseeching its providence.
And Fernandez—no, Feizashi—had mastered the Marakalai spells back when the Enssorcery school was founded, as a grand archmage—
"All spells, if yielding the same result, share the same direction."
-Fwoosh!
Return to origin. No, closer to convergence evolution. Different styles though they be, research toward the same end inevitably shares textures.
Thus, Asit's secret arts' schematics were already familiar. The difference was merely sailboat versus horseback to the destination.
Hand seals traced the air. Precise, swift, beautiful. At the pinnacle of restrained aesthetics, allowing not even a hair's breadth of error—
The artist's canvas. Every motion considered dozens of techniques, profound stroke by stroke. Like sign language, like conversation, to nature itself.
With a heart beseeching providence.
-Fwoosh!
The bronze throne's mana circuits glowed hot. A grand spell unused in ages. Raising phantoms was no simple necromancy. Its essence differed entirely from modern necromancy.
Or perhaps... modern necromancy was merely this great discipline's degraded remnant. The pinnacle and origin of arts handling the departed—such was the weight of Asit's secrets.
'Respect.'
Affirming the departed's life, honoring their prime, their radiant moments, wishing their names to endure eternally in this world. A great discipline born from that prayer. Closer to supplication than magic.
Rightly called burial priests, not burial mages.
-Rumble!!
[T-This quickly...?]
Ravirata's shock rippled through the air like a whip. She was bewildered. How could he grasp it so fast...? Mastering Asit's secrets and becoming a burial priest required decades of study.
It was a higher learning, worlds apart from mere incantation mastery. To comprehend and replicate it from just a few demonstrations?
-Fwoosh!
The final seal traced the air, and thirty phantoms rose from the earth, straightening their backs. Fernandez closed his eyes, arms extended, exhaling deeply.
[Hah, tiring? Of course. Everyone struggles at first. But don't rush... Dangerous. Slowly. Lower your hands slowly. I'll take over your spell.]
"Wait."
Without opening his eyes, Fernandez sealed with his left hand. Double casting. Simple spells could be done one-handed by anyone, but such complex grand magic? Impossible.
Yet maintaining a completed spell with one hand while casting another? Feasible for skilled mages.
-Fwoooosh!!
A black halo flared menacingly behind him. Ravirata recoiled instinctively. Beneath the brilliant sun, the halo's black flames twisted like heat haze, as if—
As if wings were sprouting...
No, hands. Withered, twisted hands emerging from his back.
Those hands moved at varied angles and directions, forming seals.
One after another.
Five seals wove a flawless knot without the slightest error.
Distorted air in the flames. Faintly visible within, two faces knotted mana into the void.
-Ruuuumble!!!
Spiderweb cracks scarred the vast meadow. Like glass shattering in an instant.
[What... in the world...!]
From those fissures, one by one, phantoms rose. Their numbers—visible ones alone exceeded thousands, a grand host.
The risen legion instantly formed ranks, arraying in perfect formation. Only then did Fernandez open his eyes to behold his creation.
Three heads, six arms. Threefold spellcasting in tandem. Chaining the same spell amplified its effect exponentially.
The first spell yielded thirty phantoms.
The second, nine hundred.
The third's completion raised... twenty-seven thousand across the plain.
Spells are like waterways, mages the outlet pipes at their end. No matter the infinite mana, limits exist without skill and precision; total output per cast has bounds.
Yet with infinite mana handled flawlessly, without a shred wasted—perfect, frictionless conduits of overwhelming scale. That was Feizashi's magic.
Aided by the vast underground mana stone veins, assuming infinite supply, the maximum host he could muster now stood arrayed before him.
[Had you lived in my era...]
Ravirata's voice rasped, tense and parched.
[Mumto's name would have been yours.]