The Ring's Time
The Archmage’s hut (3)
The ring’s time returned to normal without incident. While I was rewinding time, Viran stared at the surrounding magical instruments—things that looked like measuring needles and gears—with a grave expression.
“Hmm……”
“I’ll give it back. Please check it.”
There was no reaction from the elderly archmage.
“Viran?”
“Hm? Ah, ah…… What did you say?”
“I rewound the ring’s time. I’ll return it, so please verify it.”
I didn’t miss the way her face, which had never lost its leisurely, sly, or wicked smile, had hardened. Just what had the measuring devices shown?
“Ah…… Right. Understood.”
Viran had Pirel return the ring to her, then made her wrap my hand tightly in cloth again. After that, she slipped the ring onto one of her own bandaged fingers.
“…Good heavens.”
A look of astonishment flickered across the pale witch’s face, the kind that seemed unshakable by ordinary events. Both I and Pirel—who still clung to Viran like a puppy—watched her with curious expressions.
“Miss Kaira.”
The archmage called my name in a quiet, almost chanting voice.
“Y-yes…?”
“Do you know what this ring you just rewound and handed back to me actually is?”
“Huh? You said you made it a long time ago……”
The pale witch let out a long sigh.
“Yes. It was made long ago. Back when I was a military mage, I gathered an enormous amount of the essence used in magic to create a ring that could cast destructive spells without any material components, incantations, or hand gestures.”
I twitched my eyebrows slightly as I listened to the witch’s old story.
“You’re a mage, so you should understand. The more magical elements you omit, the more the difficulty of manifestation skyrockets. It demands an absurdly large mana circulation system, or the formula’s length becomes practically impossible to implement.”
“Yes.”
“It was the same when I made this. Even though I’m the one who created it, I was only the planner. Several mages at the level of Magic Academy professors poured days’ worth of their mana circulation systems into it, and the calculations were immense. There were no mechanical integrators back then, you see. Hundreds of research students from the Academy were mobilized to copy everything by hand. Naturally, we poured in material components like gold dust and gunpowder as if we were dumping them in.”
I could guess where this was going.
“The ring I created fulfilled its purpose long ago. One hundred and forty years back, during the battle against the dark dragon Kr-zaan, it expended all twelve of the spells it had stored. I’m not sure if I should say this to our hero who defeated the Demon King, but that creature was truly formidable. If I said its wings could cover the entire Imperial Capital, that might be an exaggeration… but not by much.”
I rattled the short chain of my handcuffs and twisted my fingers anxiously as I asked,
“And you’re saying all that magic has returned? Magic that should never be refillable by ordinary means?”
“Exactly. You catch on quickly.”
Viran stroked the head of Pirel, who was still glued to her side, then turned her gaze back to me.
“It really is an absurd power… I think it’s a power that should not exist……”
As she spoke, Viran pierced me with a penetrating stare. Maybe because it felt like my very existence was being denied, I frowned slightly.
“Well. It’s not as if I, who distorted the laws of life to live more than two hundred years, have any right to talk.”
Though her voice carried a hint of laughter, Viran’s expression did not soften at all.
“So tell me, Kaira. Are you… truly a hero?”
“Earlier you called me a witch and a murderer.”
“I did. I was wrong. I should have said something far worse.”
Viran took Pirel with her and approached the mechanical devices she had been staring at so seriously earlier. They were crude contraptions, little more than junk from the wild hastily bound together with mana.
“Your power is certainly similar to the great magic of time, but the way it actually functions is different from the time magic that mages have manifested. There was almost no flow of mana.”
As she spoke, Viran picked up a small pebble that had fallen to the floor.
“Have you ever seen a windmill, Miss Kaira?”
When I was very young, my father had occasionally taken me along when he went to collect flour.
Like all children, I had been endlessly fascinated by the sight of the windmill spinning round and round, and the massive gears inside the millhouse turning the heavy millstones. I remembered staring at them until my father tugged on my sleeve.
“I have.”
“A windmill doesn’t turn without wind. A watermill doesn’t turn without flowing water.”
With that, Viran tossed the pebble she was holding upward.
“A stone doesn’t fly unless thrown. It doesn’t fall unless it rises high first. So what exactly is magic?”
She murmured something, then tilted her head back and exhaled a long breath toward the sky. That was……
“Hoo.”
Following Viran’s breath, a vivid blue magical flame soared high into the sky. Several birds caught in the towering blaze—tall enough to stack several towers—fell helplessly to the ground.
The enormous flame Viran had exhaled rose to the height of a mountain before it cooled from red to transparent and scattered.
I stared at the sight in a daze and muttered,
“Ferius’s Searing Breath? By herself…? Without gunpowder? … To that height……?”
All I had managed to do was burn the deck of a single ship after exhausting every one of Rin’s split bodies. Seeing my murmured admiration, Viran let out a mocking laugh. As if to say, ‘Of course. I’m an archmage.’
“No matter how hard a person tries, they cannot create a flame like this. So where exactly does magic borrow this power from?”
“T-that’s……”
I recalled the theory I had learned at the Magic Academy and offered an explanation.
“By tearing reality with a small amount of mana from the circulation system and using the power that naturally flows in from the energy-filled other side……”
And just like the feat Viran had shown moments ago, the freer one was in tearing reality, the more miraculous feats that should be impossible could be performed.
“Well, yes. That is the orthodox theory.”
Viran winked with one eye.
“But the more you study that other reality beyond the torn one, the more dangerous it becomes. Don’t you think? If the gap is torn permanently, mana might leak in endlessly and cause who knows what. We don’t even know what lurks in that high-energy world.”
“But I was taught that a coercive force arises, like blood clotting, and it closes naturally.”
“Yes. You’re a well-taught student.”
It didn’t sound like praise at all.
“Miss Kaira. As I said, I faced the dark dragon Kr-zaan. It was corrupted by demonic energy… No, it was more like a mass of demonic energy in the shape of a dragon itself. You would understand the analogy easily.”
“Yes……”
Because I had been miserably defeated by it several times. The power that surged from beyond, gnawing away at one’s will. The endless darkness that tore space open like revealing the night sky.
Viran looked down at her ring and said,
“The Imperial mages stayed up for months and spent an astronomical amount of money to store twelve different spells in this ring. Ke-Zaan’s Burning Ruin, Freezing End of K-Zaan, K-zaan’s Firm Rest, Ke-Zaan’s Scattering Storm, things like that. They attached that dragon’s name to all sorts of destructive magic. You’ve probably never heard of them. They were only used here and never even recorded.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Viran’s face, which looked as if she were recalling something chilling.
“We used them all, but we still couldn’t kill the dark dragon. What does the textbook say?”
“It only says that the archmage Astina sacrificed herself……”
“What a pathetic description.”
Viran stuck out her tongue in disgust.
“Astina simply became a mana conductor. In reality, every mage who participated in the expedition… poured out every bit of magical capacity they could use that day. Instead of casting proper spells, they simply tore a massive hole in space. Along with Astina’s body.”
I frowned, imagining the horrific end of the mages described in the textbooks.
“They opened a door leading to that… world, dimension, or other side where mana flows in. They tried to subdue the dragon by pouring pure energy itself into it. What do you think happened?”
“Did they catch it?”
Viran shook her head.
“No…… The dragon wavered strangely, as if the very principles of the world were twisted, then melted into that door and vanished. As if it had found its original home, as if that place beyond was its true world. And it never showed itself to us again.”
For the conclusion of an adventure tale told by a witch who had lived for hundreds of years, it felt strangely anticlimactic.
“It’s different from the textbook.”
I rattled my uncomfortable handcuffs and asked rudely,
“So, Dragon-Slaying Archmage. Why exactly are you telling me this story about slaying the dragon?”
“Miss Kaira. Every time you rewind time, haven’t you felt as if causality or the laws of the world were being twisted?”
“Yes……”
I answered weakly with a blank expression. She must have felt it herself just moments ago when I rewound the ring.
“Yes, I felt it a moment ago as well, and the measuring devices confirmed it……”
Viran bit her lip and continued,
“The sensation you produce when you rewind time is identical to what happened one hundred and forty years ago when Astina sacrificed herself and tore space apart.”
I couldn’t understand what Viran was trying to say. I grabbed the arm of the corpse-pale archmage, glanced once at Pirel who was still smiling brightly, and asked,
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Miss Kaira. I wasn’t there, so this is only conjecture, but… it wasn’t the Saint or the other heroes who eliminated the Demon King, was it? You did it. Didn’t the Demon King also melt away and disappear? Into the gap between the twisted laws of the world.”
“……”
I didn’t answer, but in this situation, silence was as good as confirmation.
The dark dragon also melted away and vanished beyond the torn space, she said. Then…… But, that would mean……
I couldn’t accept it.
“It’s starting to make sense, isn’t it? Miss Kaira. That bizarre power of yours—though you won’t want to admit it—”
They said it was a gift.
They said it was a special privilege for a reincarnator, compensation for a tragic death.
Then what on earth was that relay point……?
“To put it nicely, it is pure magic itself. To put it badly, it is exactly the same power the Demon King wielded. It forcibly tears the other side of reality and pastes it onto this one. A power that crawls outside the laws of the world, perfectly suited to drawing the attention of beings that live on the opposite side of reality.”
Viran stole a glance at my expression and spoke in a soothing tone.
“I won’t claim for certain that your ability comes from ‘the gods beyond.’ But the way that power operates is dangerously similar. It twists reality and twists the mind. I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived, but hasn’t your mind always felt like it was on the verge of collapsing?”
…So it wasn’t just bad luck?
“But……”
“Yes. While you were sleeping, I heard all the trivial details from the now-cooperative Pirel. Our hero Miss Kaira was a good child. …At least until she met those priests.”
“Ugh……”
Come to think of it, that was when I began having thoughts so horrifying they shocked even myself, or lost myself and simply drowned in pleasure while seducing men. Was that what resonance meant?
“I’m not telling you not to use that power. If you continue living as the good Kaira you’ve been and use your power wisely, you could make many people happy. As long as you can endure your mind shattering every time causality is twisted.”
Viran looked down quietly at Pirel, who was still clinging to her side, and said,
“But there is one thing I want to confirm. Miss Pirel… died once, didn’t she?”
I stared blankly at my mother’s red eyes as she looked up at Viran and answered quietly,
“……Yes.”
“I want to see how you bring the dead back to life. I want to see exactly how you twist the world to make such a thing possible.”
I bit my lip, then squeezed out the words.
“Do I… have the right to refuse to show you something like that?”
Viran let out a small chuckle.
“Of course. I have no intention of forcing you. However……”
The archmage still wore a smile on her lips. A smile that seemed to linger far too long.
“Now. Pirel. Take off all your clothes.”
Pirel answered with a face full of joy.
“Yes, Sister Viran!”
I was naturally horrified and protested.
“What are you planning?! It’s early winter right now…… Why are you making Pirel do something like that in this weather? No matter how much of that childhood play or whatever magic you cast on her, this is too much!”
Viran calmly answered while stroking her fingers.
“It’s nothing special. If she keeps her clothes on, they’ll shatter and it’ll be an ugly sight.”
“Excuse me…?”
While I frowned deeply, trying to understand what she meant, Pirel had already thrown off all her clothes and stood before Viran.
“I’m completely naked! Underwear, belt, shoes, cape, headband—everything! What should I do now?”
With a dissatisfied expression, I could only stare at Pirel’s small, flat, slightly thin, unremarkable body… and the childish silhouette where her thin abs were gently pushed outward by her slightly swollen belly.
In this state, there was no way I could resist.
“Then…… Would you strike a cute pose for me?”
“Huh?”
I asked back with a stupid look on my face, while
“Okay!”
Pirel answered cheerfully.
She placed her left hand on her hip, made a V with the fingers of her right hand, and held it lightly to her eye in a pose like a magical girl. …Perhaps my memories from Earth had influenced her a little.
“Good. That’s cute, Pirel. Then…… Hoo.”
Viran let out a sigh filled with what seemed like endless deep anguish, then lightly rubbed the ring.
Before I could say anything, a dark purple beam shot out from the ring and struck Pirel directly.
“Wait—”
“Watch carefully and remember this, Miss Kaira.”
My legs trembled violently. Strength left my arms and torso. Unable to suppress the shaking in my legs, I collapsed to my knees.
“This is one of the spells we prepared to defeat the dark dragon. It is K-zaan’s Firm Rest.”
Pirel……
had turned to stone, still frozen in the lively pose she had struck without knowing anything.