Book 7 Chapter 14
Chapter 163
“Rista, what should we do?”
When was it, the place we found Tureina was a village in the Lambrus region.
It seemed to have been ravaged by the forces of the Abyss before we arrived, and Kees, with his sharp detection of presence, found the child hiding in a barrel.
It was a squalid sight, covered in grime, dust, and blood, and even when Rista or Prida gently reached out a hand, it just ran to a corner and cried silently.
“We can't keep it here. The bastards might come again at any time. We should leave it in the city.”
“Then Kees will have to pull some strings. Though I don't really like this method.”
At that time, I might have felt a strange kinship with that child. Because in that little one's demeanor and expression, I could see my old self.
“You guys go on ahead.”
It seemed to be living, but barely, wanting to die yet still clinging to life.
“Huh?”
“I'll take it. It might take some time.”
How did the Dean help me back then? I stacked firewood, started a fire with flame magic, and then took out meat from my bag.
The other three only stared at me quizzically, but as the peppered meat slowly cooked and began to release its savory aroma, the child gradually stopped crying and showed interest.
And from its emaciated, bare belly, a gurgle, a sound craving life, emerged.
“Come here, aren't you hungry?”
“…?”
“You fool, you don't know how many delicious things there are in the world, do you? Living in a remote village like this, you probably never tasted proper food, did you? How regrettable would it be to die without eating them? If you're going to die, you should at least go on a culinary journey first.”
At first, it didn't come close, but that evening, and the next morning… by lunchtime, it was subtly approaching the campfire, though still wary.
“What is this, you ask? This is ‘delicious’. Just kidding… This is Lyn's special charcoal-grilled skewer, so good that if three people eat it, a fourth might die without knowing…”
As I excitedly explained the cooking method, wiping under my nose, the little one suddenly took the skewer.
“…”
It took a big bite, and tears welled up in its eyes.
And seeing it devour the food, as if someone might snatch it away, my nose inexplicably stung.
- Child, look at that sky.
Was it because I had shown the same reaction on the day I first met the Dean? Or was it because I heard the voice from that day?
- All the suns and moons in the sky shine for you, and no one else. That food, too, is delicious only for you.
- …!
- It was hard, wasn't it? You don't need to be sad anymore. In this world of infinite possibilities, your potential is also infinite. Come, follow me. This is not where you belong.
No matter how much I cleared my throat, I simply couldn't utter such wonderful words as the Dean.
And I wasn't that kind of person to begin with…
So I just got to the point. The core of my conversation with the Dean.
“This is not where you belong. Come with me. I'll take you to a place where you do.”
It took another day to get the little one to follow, but it eventually started to follow me, its eyes slowly regaining their vitality.
One peculiar thing was that it couldn't speak, whether due to mental trauma or an inherent reason.
Nevertheless, its mind seemed quite clever, as it quickly understood and often imitated whatever it was asked to do.
“The truth shall set you free. Do you know what this is? It's a famous quote from Emissa Page, the progenitor of magic.”
And I decided to teach this little one magic, just as the Dean had taught me.
The best gift that gave value to someone who had none.
Since I received it without cost, I decided to give it to this child without cost as well.
“People need to have value. You currently have no value. Not a single bit! So stop complaining and learn magic from me, got it?”
And I gave it a name.
Just as the Dean had given me the name 'Spring Breeze'.
“It seems dragons live lives befitting their names. So I'm going to specially, really specially! give you a name.”
“…?”
“Tureina. It means 'learning' in Dragonic. It means 'learn well.' If you learn well without bothering me, I'll give you a better name.”
No matter how hard I tried, giving a cool name like 'Spring Breeze' felt a bit cringey, so I just roughly gave that name.
Well, I'll just ask the Dean or Prida later to change it to a better name.
As I was thinking that, the little one's lips suddenly began to tremble slightly.
“Tu, Turei, Tureina…?”
That day was the first time I heard the little one's voice, more transparent than the sky, with the sky-blue hues of early spring.
“What? You could speak?”
“No, no, now, now, I mean…”
“Sigh, it's gotten even more troublesome. This already annoying kid will now chatter, too. If you bother me, I won't let you off easy.”
Though I grumbled like that, seeing the child gradually brighten, a smile naturally formed on my face.
Later, my reunited companions warmly welcomed Tureina, and eventually, after it ran away from the city we intended to leave it in, the child became a member of our party.
Pipi, in particular, became so close that it always made a spot on Tureina's sky-blue hair to sleep.
“Wait for me, this fight will be a bit long.”
“Wait, wait, wait.”
“Wait here, this mission is an ambush, so I can't take you.”
Every time I returned half-dead from battles with the Abyss, Tureina always stayed by my side with a somewhat sad look in its eyes.
The little one who used to boast that it would study magic harder and help me someday.
It felt like I had gained one more reason to absolutely win the fight against the Abyss.
“Prida says my core magic circuit is heavily damaged, so I might not be able to use proper combat magic when I become an old man.”
“Really?”
“So that's a bit troublesome. There are many in the Empire who see me as a thorn in their side. How am I supposed to handle them when they come at me?”
I said that without much thought, not as a consultation or because I had nothing else to say during my watch. But Tureina suddenly stood up and placed its hand on its chest.
“I, I'll protect you!”
“What?”
“I'll protect you, so no one can lay a hand on master!”
“Protect, protect, Lyn is a chicken, a pushover, protect, protect.”
It was absurd.
Feeling annoyed for giving Pipi something to tease about, I struck the child's crown with the edge of my hand.
“Hey, don't you know the saying, 'Even a rotten gunchi is still a gunchi'? No matter how much of a has-been I become, I'm a million times stronger than you, kid. Protect what? You can barely use one 2-star spell. I'm currently the Empire's only Aquizard (5-star) mage.”
“I'll get stronger, even stronger! Way stronger than master! So no one will be able to lay a finger on master!”
“Hah, alright, give it a try. If you can't, expect to get slapped endlessly.”
It was so absurd that I let out a hollow laugh, but whether it was truly hollow or a laugh born purely of joy, I couldn't tell at the time.
From a certain point in the journey, Tureina was always by my side, and I didn't find it particularly inconvenient.
In fact, I even started thinking, 'It's really convenient to have a handyman around'.
It wasn't that I particularly wanted to stay together longer; rather, as the journey was slowly nearing its end, I started thinking I should decide on this kid's future.
“Hey, you.”
It was somewhere in the desert at the end of the journey, with summer night winds blowing, in the dead of night as a campfire quietly burned down.
Standing guard, I quietly asked Tureina, who was clinging to my side and studying magic.
“When the journey ends, do you want to come with me to the Empire?”
“The Empire?”
“Who else would I entrust an annoying kid like you to? Prida? If I did that, she'd probably write a book and curse me out, saying the Archmage of the Hero's party dumped a chore on her.”
“Agree, agree, agree.”
“See? Pipi agrees.”
“M-Master Prida might be like that, but I'm not a chore!”
“Chore, chore, chore-jjarajjam-jjam-jjam.”
“Pipi agrees with this too.”
“Pipi, you!”
“There's a magic tower of the Osarius school in the northern Empire, and most of the people there are unparalleled oddballs, but…”
Recalling my fellow students at the magic tower, I couldn't help but smile, unprotected, but fortunately, Tureina seemed not to notice, busy grappling with Pipi.
“They're pretty decent folks. Orphans, and well, they were really good to me, even though I'm ill-mannered.”
“Really?”
“The decision is yours. Of course, no matter what you choose, I'll go there. It's my… spiritual home.”
Perhaps having something to ponder, Tureina's lips trembled a few times then, but in the end, it said nothing.
I consider myself truly fortunate not to have heard that answer.
The next day, as I headed into the pouring rain towards the final battlefield, the words I left behind, leaving the child there, soon became my last will.
“Mages don't cry. Others will look down on you.”
Because in the Great Ice Coffin of the Lord, trapped in the bitter cold, my time stopped there that day.
……………
…………
……
…
On the day Lyn was brought in, carried on a desert wheeled carriage crafted by Master Tinker Nils Blantz.
“Lyn? Lyn? Lyn?”
Pipi flew aimlessly, as if unable to comprehend the situation, pecking at the ice and calling the boy's name.
The girl in the conical hat merely watched the scene, dumbfounded. Unable to believe what was before her eyes, unwilling to believe it.
The three heroes, returning miserably soaked in rainwater, blood, and tears, embraced the girl and sobbed.
“I'm sorry, Tureina, Pipi, Lyn, Lyn is…”
The flower of life that had bloomed once more withered again that day, and the hands of the clock, moving towards the future, also stopped.
“Come with me, Tureina. I can't be Lyn's substitute… but I'll pass everything I have on to you.”
In that frozen time, for the 'Spring Breeze' that had blown into her life, the girl stayed up nights learning sorcery from the Oracle of the Fire Dragon and soon became the youngest witch.
The girl had never once liked sorcery or magic in her terrifyingly long life.
She had simply clung to the sole hope of wanting to convey the answer she had been too shy, too embarrassed, to say then, dedicating herself to her studies.
Wherever you go.
I will go there too.
She had merely walked through endless darkness, looking only at that single, humble, and simple hope. However.
“Just wait? M-Master… what exactly do you mean by that?”
“I said to wait until the Great Ice Coffin of the Lord ends. Lyn said he would return, so wait.”
“What do you mean… we should help! It's because the Great Ice Coffin of the Lord isn't perfect that he still hasn't woken up, even after 10 years!”
“The Great Ice Coffin of the Lord is perfect. His inability to awaken from it means Lyn's body, his soul, has not yet healed.”
“It's not perfect.”
“Tureina, are you saying you're a more excellent mage than Lyn? That was something Lyn and I created together. Wait calmly, Tureina. Lyn will come back. He's a child who always keeps his promises.”
Was it perhaps a promise to listen to her only if she became a being who surpassed both Archmage Lyn and the Oracle of the Fire Dragon?
In the end, she couldn't hear that answer.
Because by the time she felt she had become such a being, her master had already vanished somewhere.
70 years after the clock stopped…
The girl had somehow become alone. Rista and Kees were dead, and Prida and Pipi had vanished without a trace.
In this terrifyingly vast world, alone…
“Heh heh heh, you want to wake up the frozen kid? It's not that hard. Though you'll have to learn some different magic.”
She had thought she had become quite an extraordinary being, but perhaps, in the end, she was merely a being whose time had stopped before her fragile heart could fully mature.
The Abyss burrowed into the gap left in the lonely girl, and the girl was no longer the sky-blue-haired little one. Neither in body nor in mind.
…………
………
……
…
The world shook with a deafening roar.
The 'little one', whose hair was originally sky-blue but now blackish-blue, breathed its last.
Someone was looking down, crying over him.
Who could it be?
Its eyesight was ruined, so the face couldn't be seen clearly; only the texture of the soul was visible.
The name of that soul didn't come to mind, but it could definitely remember that it was a very precious person.
It opened its lips, trying to say something.
But the length of time remaining was too short to convey the words it had cherished its whole life.
It had wanted to meet again in the present, share the past, and discuss the future.
Its body, mind, and head were turning into a blank slate, and it no longer had the strength or the right to discuss such things.
Therefore.
Therefore, with the last remaining strength of its death throes, it only moved its hand.
It untied the hat strings as if tearing them, and placed the worn-out conical hat on the head of the person who was crying.
The last fragment of memory remaining in its heart, the words it desperately wanted to return on the day they met again.
The words it wanted to say to hide the tears on each other's faces on that day they would meet again.
Mages don't cry.
Right?
The former girl, who conveyed the trembling of her heart by moving her lips, smiled sweetly, revealing her front teeth, and then… let her arm that had placed the conical hat fall weakly to the ground.
A very little while later, the sun parrot stretched its neck and cried mournfully.
The boy's eyes widened, then as both his eyebrows furrowed towards his brow, that world shattered into a hazy blur.
Rain fell from the boy's face as his trembling hands closed the unblinking, smiling eyes of his disciple.
It fell and fell and fell again.
Now, he had to go.
To clean up the mess his mischievous disciple had made, as a master should.
A scroll, tied with a plain cloth string around the former girl's waist, unrolled with a *tok* sound just as the boy finally stood up.
The sacred scroll, unrolled long beneath the *tok, tok* of raindrops falling from the ceiling.
Its holy name, The Hymn of Clarity (彰明詩篇).
The sacred verses written there floated up with a serene radiance, then permeated into the boy's left hand with an omnipotent power of wondrous heat.
Socrafres.
- You can inherit the progress of 'Unique Magic' research from the surrounding environment.
- Progress: 69.8% => 76.7%.
>>>
Brante.
- Changes in the magic circuit have been confirmed: 'Fire Warning: Flowing World-Honored One (火警 : 流量世尊)' => 'Fire Clarity: Flowing World-Honored One (火彰明 : 流量世尊)'.
>>>
Camitishia.
Analyzing the circuit…
ㆍ Upon circuit activation, 'Mental Barrier - Fire Clarity: Flowing World-Honored One' is established within a 20-meter radius around the caster.
Within the 'Mental Barrier - Fire Clarity: Flowing World-Honored One', chanting the sacred words of Clarity embodies the power of 'The Hymn of Clarity (彰明詩篇)'.