Chapter 256 : Chapter 256
Chapter 256: Sapling (5)
'We were no more than firewood.'
She had once heard such a phrase.
The inferiority complex of one who could not win.
There is no Sun in the Otherworld.
That was why mages who set forth from the Otherworld for the sake of the cherished aim stood transfixed by the sky. Because out here, the Sun exists.
The degree of wonder differed by Tower. By mage. Some Towers were lukewarm; the Red Tower was the most fervent. For some, the wonder ended at the Boundary; for others, the emotion did not fade even upon arriving in the heart of the continent.
That variety, the Tower of Earthquakes duly comprehended.
Because in the end, they lived upon the earth.
But, separate from comprehension, the Tower of Earthquakes was in the end as fervent as the Red Tower. Only natural. Without the Sun, there is no life.
Though called the Tower of Earthquakes, it was originally a towering Tower pointing to the earth.
The earth existed beneath the Sun. It was where life was born, with the light and fire cast down by the Sun as its nourishment.
"O Sun."
Then why did such a Sun burn life?
From Galuer Berrick's pupils, a sticky sap ran down. That face of his was affixed to the upper portion of the enormous tree. The magic called Manifestation was, at this point, his flesh itself.
Manifestation was magic and phenomenon both.
The phenomenon by which the Origin protrudes into reality for a brief time.
Originization was the fixing of that phenomenon.
Treating a vessel as a vessel in truth, holding the Origin fast to this world. An attempt to mimic the 6th Rank.
If successful, the staircase to 6th Rank would be shortened; if failed, one would fall to a Magical Beast.
Either way, beyond the present state.
Whether the end of this path was success or failure he did not know, but Galuer Berrick was certain he had advanced halfway.
If one likened Rank to a spiral, he had already turned five revolutions, and from there gone half a revolution further.
...... Yet it was futile. The sap flowing down his face ran bone-dry. The second most abundant foliage the Tower had possessed vanished without a trace.
Had it become ash and scattered, it might at least have served as nourishment, but that great being did not even permit that.
That phenomenon, Galuer Berrick could not understand. His pupils, stems rising in place of veins, flickered on and off.
Evaporation and regeneration repeated. Emotions too flickered on and off. Inevitable. Because Galuer Berrick was at present existing beneath the Sun.
The Sun was burning Galuer Berrick.
That fact gave rise to anger.
The Sun was truly as the old records said.
That fact gave rise to rapture.
That—that was light and fire. The wellspring of life. What did not exist in Paradise was here. And it was pouring down upon Galuer Berrick.
Dihake, planter of the Seed of the Tree That Feeds on Entrails.
She must have died gratefully indeed. And for an absurd reason, besides. Galuer Berrick envied and raged.
"O Sun."
Galuer Berrick mouthed.
The voice failed to become words. Wholly natural. Beneath the Sun, one who has not been permitted may not speak.
Galuer Berrick dared not even look up at the Manifested Sun. Yet he felt it more vividly than ever. Just as the old records of the Otherworld described.
Just as the record the Tower of Earthquakes had preciously kept described.
A King was truly crueler than the Sun suspended in the sky.
If the King raged, the earth looked up. Fire and wind became the Sun's. Iron became part of fire, and water and ivory vanished as though they had never existed. The Moon and the Shadow each danced in joy, above and below.
If so.
"Why......!"
Why do you rage?
Why does the Sun—the King of Prophecy—burn us?
With the loathsome continent before you.
The true, pitiable lives of Paradise who have endlessly awaited only you.
From his pupils, steam flowed instead of sap.
Galuer Berrick felt a crushing thirst. What had been more lush than any decent castle shriveled dry. He lost countless leaves and branches. Half his height burned, became ash, evaporated.
The far-sunken ground below—there, what had been buildings and lives had turned to magma. It boiled, surged, and the wind, now become the Sun's, whipped up waves. Laash was being buried.
To Paradise, the King; to the continent, hell.
That record, Galuer Berrick felt deeply. He marveled that he could still think so, and then realized that the King was controlling the Sun.
So he admired, rejoiced, and raged at the young King's accomplishment. For his regenerated pupils had looked down upon the ground. Because lives still survived in that hell.
The King was enraged.
Why? The cause lay with the Sapling. With the mage called Galuer Berrick. For having laid hands on the girl whose Origin was eyes, whom the King cherished.
"Punish only me."
The earth and the lives upon it were guiltless.
Pwoot! The Upside-down Tree—two-thirds of the baobab gone—grew anew.
It rose toward the Sun, blooming countless branches and leaves. They wrapped round the Sun like clutching hands. And at the same moment, they became ash, and the ash became vapor.
'We were no more than firewood.'
That inferiority complex had been truth.
There was an undeniable hierarchy. The earth was only of that degree.
That countless lives lived upon the earth was not because the earth was great. It was because they were not as great as the Sun.
So that Galuer Berrick's father—that lofty tree—had died to the Red Tower's fire was an utterly natural principle.
Pwoot! The Manifestation, the baobab that had taken Galuer Berrick as offering, swelled again. Branches thicker than before grasped at the Sun.
No—tried to. They evaporated before reaching. The magma surging across the ground melted the roots and gnawed at the trunk.
'We were no more than firewood.'
He should not have spoken such words; he should have begged forgiveness.
For having dared, born upon the earth, to take the Sun lightly. For being so lowly that he burned even from a mere fire that was not the Sun.
That only he ought to die, and no other life.
That he alone was irreverent.
As now.
Galuer Berrick's pupils were tilted up toward the sky. Thus he beheld that form. A Sun that only the few, the chosen, could see.
It did not mean Galuer Berrick was chosen.
This was because the King was still young.
A tableau permitted briefly by the vagueness of Galuer Berrick's years as a mage and the outstanding magical power that scaled with them.
"Ah!"
Yet Galuer Berrick fell into ecstasy.
He had no choice. Those who had seen the Sun could be counted on the fingers. In the present age, he might be the only one.
Dihake, who had died before him, had not seen the Sun either.
Galuer Berrick felt he ought to regard his own death as a glory. It was then that something beyond the Sun caught his eye.
'...... The ceiling.'
The hemispheric ceiling.
That artificial sky proved this space was someone's magic.
That magic stood unscathed above the Sun.
Unscathed below, too. The ground was hell, but that hell existed upon the earth. The trunk encircling Laash had burned only in part.
'We were no more than firewood.'
You too had been such.
Galuer Berrick was no different.
"O Laash."
But the Tower of Earthquakes.
Our King, who stood firm even beneath the Sun.
"Ueghk."
Galuer Berrick vomited up a bell.
His tongue struck the bell.
No—tried to.
Whip! The tongue was severed.
A sword. And, simultaneously, magic—Galuer Berrick felt and saw it both. The Point-mage who had pierced his neck earlier had driven his feet obliquely into the baobab and was looking down.
The bastard grinned.
Galuer Berrick grinned back. For when his tongue was cut, the bell had been dropped. A stem that sprouted in its place moved smoothly.
"You don't know the use of a bell."
A bell must be made unable to move.
DONG—!
The bell, fallen into hell, rang.
***
Harad.
No—Harein.
Felt a faint incongruity.
From the Sun. A sensation she had never felt in her past life. The same since regressing, too. Kandenkel Lilldorf. She had not felt it then either.
'Must be because of Embers.'
Aten, the Extinguished Torch, could also be responsible, but that possibility was low.
The bastard had not been the first to absorb a fire Origin.
'Something's off.'
The Sun.
An imposing display anyone would marvel at.
The same even compared with her past-life Manifestation.
"Street" was merely the name; Laash was closer to a city. And a tree the size of a city had Manifested before her eyes. All of that, the Manifested Sun was reducing to nothing.
'Empty?'
From that sight—from her own Manifestation—Harein felt a hollowness.
What she had completed was the Sun, yet it did not feel like the Sun. It made no sense, yet Harein could not simply deny it.
Intuition was what it was for a mage.
At times laughably wrong; at times chillingly precise. That accuracy grew in proportion to life and experience. Hence one must trust it steadily.
Harein had the experience of a past life and a regression. So her accuracy rivaled that of a mage of considerable years.
Her present state was also proper grounds.
A sound mind dwells in a sound body.
Harein was certain her state at present was good. Blood might be flowing here and there, but not to the point of breaking her.
Just as Ellen's and Elaine's strengths were one and the same, Harad and Harein too were the same.
Aten, the Extinguished Torch's Origin, and the bastard's Tempering had raised Harein to that level.
'The present sense must be the more accurate.'
So the sensation now was truer than the one before Kandenkel. Her intuition was proclaiming there was a problem with the Sun.
What that problem was, she did not know.
Because she had never experienced it. A sensation not felt in her past life.
And...... a sensation stranger still was clouding Harein's mind. DONG. The bell's sound was peculiar. As though forcibly prying her head open. For someone else it would be not a head but a door.
Dihake had had a bell.
'...... No one said there was only one bell.'
Dihake had led her to a door.
The door was on the tree's trunk. Harein glanced toward it. No door. When she Manifested the Sun, that was the first place she had set alight.
'The Key opens an entrance. A virtual door. Meaning the entrance is the Key itself, and there is only one.'
...... But not the exit.
No one had said there was only one exit.
The door on the tree's trunk was nothing special.
Someone's Key might be granted many exits.
Namely, the owner of this magic.
Screeee.
The sound of a door opening. A thoroughly spine-chilling sound. It came from on high.
The hemispheric ceiling.
It had become a double door and was beginning to open.
Harein's face hardened.
'The big one who conforms to the prophecy.'
The Tower Master of Earthquakes was coming.
A 6th Rank mage.
"...... Fuck."
Cassion, who had reached her side at some point, bit his lip.
He had realized the blunder.
It was Harein's blunder too.
She should have mentioned the bell.
"Go. Earthquake's target is me."
"Are you mad?"
"6th Rank."
There was a time to be rough, and a time when one must not be.
It was fortunate Ellen was not here.
"He follows the prophecy. I won't die."
On the contrary, he would treat her well.
The Tower of Earthquakes loved the Sun.
"I'll go to the Otherworld. I'll find a way out somehow."
Even if she couldn't, it was better than dying. Shura had been rescued.
"Grand Duke Aratus has a friend in the Otherworld. And the Grand Duke needs me."
A way would present itself somehow.
The Sun, which had just reduced Galuer Berrick to ash, stirred a wind. Cassion, eyes wide, was blown far, far away.
Jis was nowhere to be seen.
Searching for the exit, surely. Shura came first. He was a splendid mage. He would manage on his own.
'Parus.'
Harein had not thought that far.
The double doors had swung wide open before she knew it. Their speed was faster than she had imagined.
'From the Otherworld to here. The distance must be immense.'
A mage capable of absorbing such a distance, then.
'So this is the 6th Rank.'
The situation was different from with Kandenkel.
Not an opponent she could fight. Harein immediately dismissed her Manifestation. The magma that had overtaken all directions lost its speed and settled into calm ripples.
'Judgment enough has been served.'
Grand Duke Aratus would be satisfied.
Even taken to the Otherworld as she was, she would find a way through Elder.
'The Otherworld.'
No need to force a positive view.
Harein felt an unstoppable interest. The irresistible curiosity of a mage.
The Otherworld was a place she had been curious about since the past life.
With no threat to her life, she would be able to enjoy it to the fullest.
'Will he come himself, or send a magic?'
A magic.
Having sensed the magical power, Harein was certain.
Then her brow knit. For that magical power carried a chill.
Through the double doors, a cold blowing from beyond spat something out. Thunk—! It fell to the earth with a clear, ringing sound.
A frozen head.
"Don't trouble me."
The chill that had dropped the head spoke.
The voice was familiar to her ear. Many times clearer and more piercing than when heard through the Crystal Ball.
"He was a good child."
The chill said, speaking of the head.
...... Its meaning was plain.
The Moon had killed the Tower Master of Earthquakes.
'And after giving the prophecy herself.'
The Moon did not conform to the prophecy.