The Severed Head of the Demon King, and the Diary (2)
The giant Gormak toppled, uprooting dozens of trees and sending earthquake-like tremors through the ground. The entire forest seemed to shatter from the impact, leaving my head spinning, but I could not afford to lose consciousness. I had to maintain the spell.
Even a 1500-mana tank could be immobilized if thin strands of barbed wire tangled its tracks. That was wisdom I had learned on Earth… though it was a place I had never particularly wanted to return to.
‘Heh. As a former military-service female college student turned mage, this kind of thing is common sense.’
Kadros had boasted that the vines could withstand a dragon’s foreleg, so layers upon layers of them should keep even that giant thrashing helplessly for a while.
I kept my guard up and observed the fallen Gormak from a distance.
I had hoped the slender vines would sever the giant’s legs, but their power fell short of that. We did not have much time.
The giant was no tank, and Menelon’s Ice Sheet was not a long-lasting spell. It had no tracks, and it still had hands, so it would soon tear free of the vines and rise.
“Go, Saintess! Quickly!”
Kadros shouted, his voice urgent.
“I’m going, even without the urging!”
Azalea, wreathed in dazzling flames, leapt forward.
“Ugh…!!!”
She took a direct blow from Gormak’s palm and was driven into the ground, coughing blood in a pitiful heap. We were all shocked, yet none of us could recklessly charge into the giant’s reach.
While I frantically flipped through my spellbook for a counter-magic, a thin ray of light leaked between Gormak’s fingers covering the Saintess. The slender strand soon became a torrent of light, and Gormak’s hand burst apart in a spray of black blood, flesh, and charred meat.
The giant’s agonized roar echoed off the mountains.
Still sprawled on the ground, Gormak—now missing everything below the wrist—fixed its furious gaze on Saintess Azalea, who blazed with light too brilliant to look at directly.
With a spine-chilling cry, the Saintess gripped a sword as tall as I was and leapt toward Gormak’s head. The blade of light grazed the giant’s neck.
After what felt like an eternity compressed into an instant, we heard the thunderous crash of the house-sized head striking the barren forest floor.
“Hoo.”
As one, we all exhaled in relief.
We had slain Gormak. It was a victory only because the giant had been a mindless, corrupted being, yet the Demon King now had five heads instead of six.
This was the most grueling battle we had ever fought. The greatest lesson I took from it was that the joy of victory was, in truth, rather hollow.
Kadros’s armor was crumpled, and the breastplate that had protected Glazalus’s belly was bent inward. Azalea looked outwardly unharmed, but the impact of the giant’s palm must have injured her internally. None of them had suffered fatal wounds, yet none were light either.
Damaged armor and equipment I could easily restore, but I could not casually rewind my companions’ bodies. I had to weigh the experience and injuries gained from fighting a powerful foe like Gormak.
Continuing the journey with such wounds was also impossible. We would soon set foot on the northern lands ruled by the Demon King—territory where encountering the Demon King itself would not be strange.
My companions no longer even asked me to heal them. They knew I would refuse, citing the importance of experience. Kadros shot me a single resentful glance, but that was all.
Now was the time. I had to test whether the spell I had created while sacrificing sleep would prove useful. Its completion was still somewhat uncertain, but I had to decide.
I walked slowly toward the three exhausted figures at the campsite we had prepared that day.
“Kadros-nim.”
“……. Kadros, son of the White Hammer Andrak.”
“Kadros, son of the White Hammer Andrak. I’m sorry… for making excuses and refusing to heal your wounds until now.”
Kadros replied in a sulky tone, yet without true resentment.
“No need for apologies. We won this fight thanks to you, clever little one.”
“……So I’ll heal you now. Please hold out your hand.”
“What? I thought experience was too important to allow that?”
I ignored his words, tore a page from my spellbook, memorized the logical structure written there, and slowly moved my left hand to unfold the spell formula.
“Heh. So that’s how it is. Instead of that ability, you’re using healing magic? You’re saying you’ll never use that time-reversal power unless someone’s head gets blown off? Well, at least you’re fixing us with magic. That’s something.”
I finished the spell without answering. Kadros tilted his head.
“What? Am I healed? My whole body still aches just like before.”
Still silent, I closed my eyes and placed my hand on Kadros’s shoulder.
Professor’s watch still ticked in my robe pocket, but I no longer needed its help to rewind time this much. Working at the hospital had made me accustomed to turning back patients’ time.
‘Rewind.’
And everything returned.
“Oh……”
Kadros marveled. Not only had the armor crushed by the giant been restored, but every internal and external wound from the battle had vanished—while his most important memories remained intact.
“How did you do it, little one?”
Although I had been sparing with my ability, I had never refused to rewind my companions’ time entirely. Whenever they suffered injuries in trivial battles that offered no real experience, I had healed them without fail.
Each time, they had all experienced the terrible memory loss that accompanied time reversal at least once.
Knowing this, our steadfast dwarf looked genuinely surprised that his memories had remained and asked honestly.
“I created a new spell.”
The first new magic I had devised during our journey. It had taken considerable effort, and I still thought the formula looked sloppy, yet it had worked.
Taerei’s Memory Preservation, the spell that extracted and recorded memories, was a simple magic learned right after entering the academy.
Students usually used it to record extracted memories on magically receptive paper—essentially as a substitute for a diary. The spell failed if the target showed even slight resistance, but its difficulty was correspondingly low.
Being a beginner spell, it was somewhat “heavy,” so it could not be cast multiple times in a single day.
In Earth terms, it was like how messy code written by a novice runs far slower than clean code written by an expert, or how assembly-level code runs faster and smoother than high-level code.
Taerei’s Memory Preservation was heavy enough that one could cast it only about twice a day after a full night’s sleep—though the exact number varied with the state of one’s mana circuits and the caster’s proficiency.
I layered an imperfect time-reversal spell over it.
An improperly used time spell generated causal backlash—a resistance that fought against the altered flow of time. Using only that flawed time magic would waste mana with no effect.
I wrapped the flawed time spell like a shell around the memories preserved by Taerei’s Memory Preservation.
Under normal circumstances, the spell did nothing. The preserved memories remained sealed inside the flawed time shell, and the flawed time magic itself was trapped by causal resistance, rendering it powerless. The result was merely a wasteful spell that consumed uses of one’s mana circuits.
But I was different. I could easily rewind time.
The causal shell surrounding the preserved memories melted away when confronted with the flow of time I reversed. As time rewound, the shell protecting the memories shattered and peeled off completely, leaving only Taerei’s Memory Preservation behind.
‘Preserve the memory, and release the preserved memory when powerful external time interference occurs.’
That was the core of the spell I had created.
Unless there existed some archmage capable of successfully wielding time magic alone, or another reincarnator blessed with a time-related cheat like mine, no one else could properly utilize it.
In other words, it was a simple spell only I could use effectively—worthless to anyone else even if they learned it, yet absurdly easy to implement.
With a little practice, anyone could cast it with a mere flick of the wrist, or perhaps even just mental calculation, without proper spell formulas or incantations.
The original Taerei’s Memory Preservation had also been simple enough that talented students could cast it with one hand immediately after learning it. Back then, as a student, I had not been quite that skilled.
Now, with experience from hospital work and the hero’s journey, I could cast Taerei’s Memory Preservation with one hand. The same applied to this newly created spell.
“The mage’s explanation is difficult… but I understand it’s a spell that cannot be used often. Then I am fine. Heal the Saintess.”
After hearing the structure of the spell, Glazalus yielded today’s healing to Azalea. Like Taerei’s Memory Preservation, this new spell could be cast only twice after a full night’s rest.
I believed the ogre’s internal injuries were not light either, but I wanted to respect my kind companion’s judgment.
I preserved Azalea’s outwardly intact memories, then rewound time. The Saintess’s slightly furrowed brow—perhaps from internal pain—immediately relaxed.
That night, I could finally sleep sweetly. I had at last become a truly helpful member of the hero’s party. That thought filled me with genuine joy.
We would soon set foot on the northern lands ruled by the Demon King—lands where winter itself had not properly arrived since the Demon King’s birth.
Just before that, while camping in the last forest still marked as imperial territory, the first spell I had ever created in this life was born.
Attaching my name to a new spell felt a little embarrassing, yet a name was necessary. I wrote the name of this flawed spell in the corner of my spellbook.
Kaira’s Secret Diary.