You Need Only Bring Your Body!
“Over there.”
“Heavens, heavens, heavens!”
“Lady Natasha?”
“This is impossible! She must have gone mad……! Good grief, how can such a thing even happen……!”
The perfectly normal person had suddenly started acting strange. It was terrifying. I flinched without meaning to. Natasha wasn’t just muttering to herself like someone who had lost their mind—she was screaming like her soul had gone on vacation. It was fortunate there was no one around; if a passerby had seen us, they would have yelled at the two lunatics to shut up and stop their drunken midday ranting.
I couldn’t begin to guess why someone who had been sitting quietly would suddenly have such an extreme reaction. I was the one who felt like screaming “Heavens!”
‘Did something happen?’
I’d heard that some mages kept in touch through magical communication tools. Maybe she’d received some grave news from an acquaintance? A rebellion in the organization she belonged to. Someone dumping manure in her laboratory for a dung-terror attack. The kidnapping of a beloved pet monster she’d raised with such care. A drunk colleague mistaking her lab for a bathroom and vomiting everywhere. Whatever it was, something serious must have occurred. Otherwise, the quiet cat-like woman wouldn’t suddenly be glitching like a broken robot and throwing a fit.
“Th-this can’t be……! How……! Aaaagh! It makes no sense!”
“No, listen—”
No matter how many times I called out, Natasha’s tantrum showed no sign of stopping. In the end, I couldn’t hold back any longer and opened the eyes I had kept shut.
“What happened……huh?”
The moment I opened my eyes, I was struck by two astonishing facts.
One was that Natasha, whose neatly braided hair had come completely undone, now stood with wild hair and a face that perfectly matched the expression in The Scream by Munch.
The other was—
“Whoa.”
The world before me had changed completely.
A vast net large enough to cover the entire earth stretched between sky and ground. It was a sight I hadn’t seen before I closed my eyes. A golden wave had been overlaid upon the forest that had been nothing but green foliage. Curtains of dazzling silk woven from threads of gold fluttered in the air like an aurora, dancing weightlessly.
‘It’s exactly the same structure as the net I saw in the mental world.’
The golden net that had spread across the universe in that pure white space was now manifesting in the physical world. No—not manifesting. It had always existed in this world; I simply hadn’t been able to see it until now. Only now had my eyes opened enough to perceive it.
‘So this is what it means to perceive space!’
There wasn’t just one net. Countless nets, too numerous to count, layered upon one another all the way to the horizon, stretching endlessly and rippling like waves. All this time, I had been living inside this ocean of nets without ever knowing they existed.
‘How can something like this even exist?’
The world looked different. The world I had known until now was no longer the world. It was a mysterious realm filled with secrets and wonders. This new world seemed to be speaking to me. The golden sea reflected in my eyes was the true “world of mine” in which I would live from now on.
‘This is the real world I must live in.’
Everything I had known before suddenly felt trivial.
‘So this is the world mages live in.’
I was so captivated by the fantastical, beautiful scenery that I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Lost in indescribable rapture, I was admiring the golden-tinted world when a choking sound snapped me back to reality.
“Gurgle.”
When I turned my head, I saw Natasha collapsing backward.
“Lady Natasha!”
I rushed over and caught her by the shoulders and back before she fell. Thanks to my quick movement, her head was spared from cracking open on the ground, but her complexion was another matter. Her face had gone deathly pale. Her pupils were half-dilated. She kept making zombie-like noises as she muttered to herself.
“Urrgh…… Howww, it makes nooo sense……”
This was bad. She had completely lost it.
“Lady Natasha. Are you all right?”
“Gurgle. I’m f-fine……so……”
I tried shaking her to bring her to her senses, but her round little body only flopped about limply like a piece of sashimi that had been dipped too long in soy sauce.
‘She’s conscious. Her breathing is fine. Doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong.’
People said that when someone experienced an extremely shocking event, they would faint or nearly faint. Judging by how utterly rattled she was, the news she’d received must have been no ordinary matter.
‘This is terrible. Of all times, right at this crucial moment.’
I had only just taken my first step into magic. If Natasha left because of some urgent business, I wouldn’t be able to make any more progress. I’d have no choice but to sit around waiting indefinitely for her return. After finally tasting the joy of learning magic, having that happiness snatched away again made me feel like a Christmas present had been given and then immediately taken back.
Of course I felt sorry for whatever had happened to her, but the situation was cruel, and I couldn’t help feeling a pang of disappointment.
“You don’t look fine at all. We need to get you calmed down first.”
She needed to return to the cabin, lie down on the bed, and steady her mind and body. I decided to carry her there on my back. Though my frame was slender, years of labor had made me stronger than I looked. I had more than enough strength and stamina to carry her to the cabin. I could just think of it as hauling a big pile of firewood like usual.
“Please get on my back. I’ll carry you to the—”
Thud!
But I failed to get Natasha onto my back. While I was trying to lift her upper body, a thunderclap suddenly rang out from my forehead. She had abruptly stood up, and our heads had collided dead-on.
I tumbled backward and rubbed my forehead. Ow, that hurt. My poor forehead wasn’t going to survive today. I had prided myself on having a head toughened by Altrong’s finger-flicks, one that could withstand most impacts. For even my proud stone head to feel this sore…… For a split second, Natasha looked less like a person and more like a head-butting dinosaur.
“Juno. Do you have parents?”
Head-butting dinosaur. No—Natasha was already standing on her own two feet again, looking perfectly fine, and wearing a grave expression. She had the air of a charging commander on a battlefield. When had she even collapsed? What was with this sudden, random question? She kept swinging from one extreme to the other. She was impossible to read.
“You could barely stand a moment ago, and now you’re asking that?”
“Answer the question. Do you have parents?”
“……No.”
“Siblings?”
“None either.”
“So you have no family?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“The magic tower!”
The magic tower? Why all of a sudden?
“There is a magic tower where I work. Come with me there. Right now!”
Seeing how desperate she was to get to the tower, my guess that something personal had happened seemed correct after all.
“A whale must swim in a great ocean. Juno. A genius like you must play in deep waters. We cannot let your talent rot away in this tiny countryside. You must go to a vast land that can contain your vessel.”
I stood up and asked, “A genius? Me?”
“Mm-hm! Juno. You are a genius. An ultra-ultra-ultra genius the likes of which are nearly impossible to find even if you searched the entire history of magic! I stake my name on it!”
Natasha nodded so vigorously that her head made a whooshing sound.
‘A genius? Me?’
She spoke with such intensity that I half-expected lasers to shoot from her eyes, but my own reaction was lukewarm. It was hard to accept a story that was so difficult to believe. It was the first time I had ever heard such words. That I had talent.
‘And not just “some talent”—a genius, no less.’
What was a genius? It referred to the most outstanding among those who already stood at the very top. More than joy, I felt strangeness. If I had lived my whole life as an orphan and one day a bunch of men in sharp suits suddenly appeared and said, “Actually, you’re the youngest son of a chaebol family,” would I easily believe it? That was exactly how I felt right now.
In my previous life, I had been an utterly ordinary person. There was nothing I was particularly good at, and even when I tried hard, my abilities never really improved. I had spent an unremarkable school life and, even after entering society, remained a colorless human being who never quite reached the middle. Colorless. A black-and-white human with no color at all.
Nothing had changed in this life either. Skills and status windows were things that only appeared in novels; in reality, there were no such cheat codes. Even roadside weeds had their own fragrance and color, yet my life existed in the middle of a colorless void. Especially when it came to magic—I had firmly believed I had zero talent for it. Yet the opposite was true.
‘I have talent for magic?’
If I hadn’t met Natasha, I never would have known. On one face of the die that was my colorless fate, there had been a unique color even I hadn’t known about. I still didn’t know its saturation, brightness, or code, but I could vaguely sense that it was a spectrum of colors that could make my life bloom like a wildflower.
“This can’t be.”
You are a genius. A genius. A genius……
‘Me. Really, me.’
A genius like you…… A whale must…… Your vessel……
Natasha’s words kept echoing in my ears. As the stopped world began to move again, a belated sense of reality washed over me.
‘So I’m first-rate when it comes to magical talent?’
I had never once been first place even in my previous life. And now I was doing it here. The feeling was strange. A mixture of restlessness, absurdity, and queasiness swept through my heart, and only after it passed did an indescribable joy bubble up inside me like soap bubbles.
“Normally, perceiving space takes a very long time. It varies from person to person, but usually half a year, and even the top students at the academy take at least one or two months no matter how short.”
“That long? It just happened for me, though.”
Why would it take months? It had been so easy.
“Even I, who was called a prodigy from a young age, took two whole days. That means your talent is rarer and more special than mine, and far surpasses even me.”
Natasha had also taken two whole days for something this easy?
“Among all the people I know, you are the first to grasp ‘spatial perception’ in less than an hour. When you said you could see the net earlier, I was so shocked I nearly fainted, you know?”
Ah. Now I understood why. She hadn’t received some urgent news—she had been shocked because of me. Because I had learned it far too quickly.
“Juno. Become my disciple!”
Natasha’s eyes widened as she thrust her face right up to mine.
……I appreciated the words, but could she please move her face back a little?
“I shall be the master, and you the disciple! Let us go to the magic tower and learn magic properly in a much richer and more comfortable environment! Meals and lodging are all provided at the tower, so there is no need to worry. You will also receive a steady stipend. You need only bring your body!”
The veins bulging in her eyes made her look almost deranged. If I said I wouldn’t go to the magic tower, she looked ready to drag me there even if she had to kill me first.