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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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In the dedicated laboratory, I passed by the messy desk with various things still scattered around and stood in front of the bookshelf.
The secret passage was open because Mentor was inside.
“Let’s go in.”
“…Yes.”
Light.
As I uttered the activation word for the spell, a sphere of light illuminated the passage brightly.
This was my second time coming here.
Last time, I was in awe of this large-scale spatial distortion magic and came without much thought, but now, perhaps because of what Sylphia said earlier, my heart felt strangely heavy.
When I glanced sideways, Sylphia was walking silently with an expressionless face, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
As we reached the end of the passage, in that pitch-black space where I had first unleashed my magic with all my might, Mentor was already waiting with his hands behind his back.
“Rudrick, Sylphia. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Pardon?”
“Today, this old man has called you because there’s something I want to show off to you.”
For a moment, I furrowed my brows, wondering what he meant, but soon something suddenly came to mind.
‘A passage leading to the world beyond the origin. You’re right, Rudrick. Although it’s still incomplete, my goal is to complete it by devoting the rest of my life to it.’
‘If this old man can’t complete it before I die, have Rudrick complete it together with Sylphia.’
The words my mentor had said when I first came here flashed through my mind.
Then, the true identity of the ‘something to show off’ was probably…
“…So it came to this.”
“Pardon? Sylphia, what did you just say?”
And at the same time as Sylphia sighed and muttered, our mentor raised his staff.
Then, from the end of that staff, mana spread like paint and began to form a familiar pentagram-based magic circle.
In fact, the hierarchy of magic couldn’t be simply divided into categories like mages of a certain circle.
However, in common usage, the term ‘great mage’ was often used, and the court mage, Lorenzo Tonali, was one of the mages who best fit the definition of a great mage.
If he seriously went into battle, he would be worthy of being called a one-man army, a true mage who had mastered all types of magic.
It was a shocking fact I learned later, but the position of court mage was secretly regarded as the empire’s ultimate weapon.
Only then could I understand the reason for pouring astronomical funds into research for such academic purposes, but anyway…
“Look. The lines have become a figure.”
While I was thinking that, our mentor was completing the magic circle that had become familiar to me after seeing it once.
Another magic circle overlapped on top of the magic circle, and a new magic circle was painted again, with countless magic circles overlapping and spreading out.
The number of magic circles that made my head spin just by looking at them completely overlapped, and then the magic circle became a single passage.
“Rudrick. Do you remember what this old man’s goal was that I mentioned before?”
“A passage leading to the world beyond the origin… you said.”
“You remember. Although it was incomplete at that time, the research you have been conducting recently has been helpful.”
“Pardon?”
“The book you brought from the library caught my eye, so I read it without much thought, but as I read, a simple change in perspective cleanly solved the part that was blocked.”
Our mentor grinned, and Sylphia, who was next to him, clicked her tongue and muttered softly.
“…This is why there are too many variables in changing a fixed future. I thought it had gotten much faster for some reason.”
Regardless, our mentor completed the ‘door’ with a face full of excitement.
“It will be the moment of us reaching the truth. The first moment of glimpsing the truth that all mages yearn for. Now this old man can finally satisfy his curiosity before he dies.”
“Rudrick. Be ready to cast a defensive spell at any time.”
As our mentor and Sylphia spoke in turn, the passage leading to the world beyond the origin opened.
Actually, I was still confused about what was going on, but the same vibrant colors I had seen before began to paint the passage that had come without anything and the pitch-dark space.
A melting world.
It was the exact same sight I had seen before.
The only difference was that last time, I had the instinctive insight that I couldn’t go beyond that door, but this time, I felt like I could go back and forth sufficiently.
Our mentor’s eyes widened through the wrinkled corners of his eyes.
“Oh… Finally…!”
The colorful aura spread and engulfed the area.
The sight of the tremendous amount of mana swirling and multiplying, which any mage could instinctively feel, was even awe-inspiring at a glance.
If I were to use an analogy, wasn’t this the kind of exaltation humans felt when they first discovered fire?
The feeling was strange.
Even I, who was completely unrelated, was suddenly filled with exaltation throughout my body, and I felt an indescribable joy.
‘…Why on earth?’
I asked myself that inwardly, but I couldn’t know the reason.
It just felt that way from the moment the door leading to the origin opened before my eyes.
It was a bizarre sensation that made me lose my soul and have my gaze stolen for a moment, and Sylphia, who had been watching that sight, uttered the activation word for the spell in a low voice.
“Barrier.”
Almost simultaneously, translucent mana enveloped Sylphia and me like a protective shield.
Kwaaaaang──!!
Explosion.
The enormous mana gathered at the center of the door exploded violently like ignited gunpowder all at once.
The explosion caused by the burst of mana swept through the surroundings in an instant with a force incomparable to that of mere gunpowder.
“What?!”
“It’s about to begin.”
Sylphia, who had an expression as if it was inevitable, spoke to me amidst the fierce explosions occurring beyond the protective barrier.
“Rudrick, get a grip. It’s starting now, and it will probably take about an hour or two.”
“Pardon?”
“The court mage… unfortunately, it can’t be helped. The pursuit of truth was not a realm allowed to humans from the beginning. We have no choice but to think of it as the price for violating the taboo.”
“What do you mean by that? What’s happening right now?”
“I’ll do my best to protect you, Rudrick, so nothing will happen… I took action in advance, so that bat girl will come and help soon too. It was the same before the regression.”
As soon as Sylphia’s words ended, the fierce explosion that had occurred once subsided, and the sight right after that was shocking.
“…!”
They say people can’t even speak when they’re too surprised.
“Ah… It’s worse than last time.”
Along with Sylphia’s mutter, our mentor’s figure appeared through the cleared explosion.
He was standing with his back to the passage.
However, with his eyes rolled back revealing the whites and his joints twisted in some way, and decisively, the black something protruding through his chest, no matter how you looked at it, our mentor’s condition couldn’t be considered normal.
“That’s…”
“The dimensional boundary is unstable. In the first place, it’s a space fixed with coordinates by distortion magic, and the boundary is very unstable due to the aftermath of the experiments repeatedly conducted by the court mage.”
While Sylphia calmly explained beside me, the black something piercing through our mentor’s chest was wriggling.
As if sucking out vitality, each time the tentacle-like thing protruding from his chest wriggled, our mentor rapidly lost his liveliness.
As the scattered fragments combined with Sylphia’s explanation and what had unfolded before my eyes in the blink of an eye, it slowly started to fit together.
“…Those tentacle-like things are from beyond the passage our mentor opened, right?”
“That’s right. And until the door closes again, they will try to come over to this world, so we have to do our best to stop them. Based on experience, about an hour?”
“…If you knew, why didn’t you stop it?”
“It’s too late. And there are too many variables in changing a fixed future. Even I didn’t know it would become this fast.”
While Sylphia was answering, the black, undulating tentacles from beyond the open passage were multiplying and increasing in number.
One thing was certain, it was already too late for the Master, and the intuition that if those tentacles crossed over here now, something really big would happen.
“And… last time, that bat girl and I quietly resolved it.”
“Was it the same situation as now?”
“Yes. It was fortunate that she and I were in a position to handle the initial suppression. If we were a little late, the entire empire would have been devastated.”
Sylphia, who had been concentrating her power on maintaining the protective barrier, began to raise her mana.
It was the magic of a dragon, known as the strongest creature on earth.
I also couldn’t bear to keep watching the sight of our mentor being pierced by the black tentacles and slowly being sucked into the passage, so I began to heat up the mana circuits in my body as well.
“Still, it would have been nice if you had stopped it…”
“Honestly, do you think the court mage would have stopped even if I had said something?”
“…He wouldn’t have.”
“And I don’t need to reveal that I’m actually a dragon who has returned to the past.”
As if saying what can you do about something that has already happened, Sylphia shrugged her shoulders.
While I was looking at her, finding that demeanor somewhat unfamiliar, her eyes slowly began to change to those of a reptile.
Her essence was a dragon.
Even if she said she came to genuinely like the pre-regression me while going through the regression, the fact that her essence was a dragon didn’t change.
Actually, if you think about it another way, the death of a few humans would be nothing more to her than us stepping on a few ants while walking by.
Realizing that fact anew, I felt a sense of distance.
Too many things had happened suddenly, and they were still coming…
It was a strangely unfamiliar feeling.
It was confusing, and actually, I still didn’t really know what was going on.
This felt disgusting.
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