You might call me cowardly, but let’s think this through. To be honest, Lee Arin’s information is useful, but that doesn’t mean I have the loyalty to stand here and confront the Truelight Sect head-on with her. Of course, if I got out of here, I’d contact Yu Hanul and tell him to raid this place, but that’s about it. Escaping the building in one go by climbing the outer wall would be difficult, but if I took it slow and rested along the way, it might still be possible to get out somehow.
When I was mulling over it, Lee Arin, holding a gun, turned to look at me. “Ah, don’t think about escaping on your own from here. If the people from the Truelight Sect catch you, they’ll drag you straight to the lab.”
I must have been making my desire to leave too obvious.
“Instead of dragging me to a lab, wouldn’t they try to persuade me first…?”
“There’s no chance of that. In the first place, the Gwanghwamun Dungeon Break itself happened because they were targeting you, Jeong Daon. If the Truelight Sect is really behind it, why would they let you go?”
…That was true.
Judging by their behavior, getting any more involved would be nothing but trouble, so I’d wanted to distance myself at all costs. But it seemed that wouldn’t be possible. Since things had come to this, it might be better to focus on extracting whatever information I could from the Truelight Sect.
Having cleanly given up on cowardly escaping alone, I clicked my tongue once and asked Lee Arin, “So what exactly do you want my help with? It looks like you’ve already prepared more than enough.”
“Nice—quick decision.” Lee Arin grinned. I couldn’t quite tell whether she was mocking me or not. “My plan is simple. Lee Manbok is already at this branch. Once night falls, he’ll come out to the central garden to avoid prying eyes.” She showed me a rifle with a long barrel. “At that moment, I’ll snipe him. So, Hunter Jeong Daon, I want you to disable the magical shields Lee Manbok will have around him before I fire. That’s Plan A. Simple, right?”
It certainly sounded simple enough. I let out a hollow laugh. “You want me to disable magic shields from that far away?”
“Just using some offensive magic to draw the escorts’ attention will be enough. If I get even a momentary opening, I can blow that old man’s head off. I may look like this now, but I used to be a pretty impressive Hunter. Now I’m just a water balloon.”
Considering what she’d said earlier, that she’d once reached A-rank, and how easily she’d climbed the outer wall, her confidence seemed to have a solid basis.
“How are you so sure Lee Manbok will come outside? With all this chaos, wouldn’t he hide even more?”
“No. For Lee Manbok, this is the most important schedule he has right now. See that statue?” Lee Arin pointed toward the grotesque statue standing in the central garden. It wasn’t very visible at the moment, hidden by smoke. “That statue has—”
“I know. It’s imbued with a mental-type magic that enchants people. If you stay within a certain range together with the person designated as the statue’s target, the effect stacks.”
And if the target was someone who already had faith, it would be even more effective. It could probably escalate to the point where they’d temporarily be unable to disobey commands.
Lee Arin nodded. “You already know. Originally, I was supposed to meet him in front of that statue tonight. So he’ll definitely come out.”
“No, doesn’t that make even less sense? After you caused all this chaos?”
“To be precise, the person isn’t what’s important. If I’m not there, they’ll just use Choi Miyeon instead.”
Use.
That verb didn’t sit well when applied to a person.
Seeing my puzzled expression, Lee Arin curled her lips upward. “You must’ve heard about Lee Manbok during training. Doesn’t anything click? On the internet, they say Hunter Jeong Daon will become the strongest mage in history.”
It was true that I was the strongest mage, but I didn’t see how that had anything to do with this conversation. Of course, the executive who gave me the building tour had talked a lot about Father Lee Manbok. It was all so absurd that I hadn’t really listened.
“From the way they talk, Lee Manbok sounds like a once-in-an-age archmage.”
It was exactly the kind of thing a cult would say. With a touch of Lee Manbok’s hand, the blind regained their sight, the crippled walked again, and when he scolded sinners, they repented of their crimes on the spot. Not only that, when monsters appeared, he could conjure flames from his hands and kill them in a single blow, or even ride gigantic winged monsters soaring through the sky. All were stories that could only be dismissed as nonsense.
“But what if it’s true?”
At Lee Arin’s words, I frowned.
The age of myth. In this era where magic had arrived instead of a world governed solely by physical laws, none of those feats attributed to Lee Manbok were strictly impossible. With mastery over healing magic, disabilities could be cured. With mental magic, people could be brainwashed. With elemental magic, one could spew fire from their hands. And with high monster affinity, it might even be possible to tame them.
“You’re saying Lee Manbok might actually be a true archmage?”
Still, it didn’t add up. No matter how skilled a mage was, it was nearly impossible to wield so many different branches of magic, each at a level powerful enough to leave behind legendary achievements. If it were possible, Lee Manbok would have to be an archmage on the level of my past life…
This server has failed to meet the appearance conditions for “Destroyer of Worlds”.
“Destroyer of Worlds” has been excluded.
If that had not been the case, I would have already descended upon this world as the Destroyer of Worlds. In other words, Lee Manbok could never be an archmage on a level even remotely comparable to mine.
“Absolutely not!” As expected, Lee Arin snorted. “If that old man had truly devoted himself to magic and become an archmage, when would he have had time to create some bogus cult like this? He’d have locked himself away in a workshop, researching magic alone until he died of old age.”
…It was a fair point, but as a former archmage and a current low-tier mage, it somehow left a bad taste in my mouth.
“Then what is he doing? Using tricks like a stage magician, hiding people behind the scenes to cast spells in his place? Or making someone act it out?”
“It’s more sophisticated than that.” As she said this, Lee Arin took out something that glittered from within her clothes. “The cult gave this to me recently. They told me to keep it with me at all times.”
What she held was a gemstone carved into a round, orb-like shape. Something shimmered within the faintly colored quartz.
“Since ancient times, quartz has been said to possess the power to awaken its owner’s heart and soul. Perhaps because of that, among Earth’s minerals it’s one of the easiest to hold mana. When the owner carries it, it naturally absorbs and accumulates their mana.”
That was something I already knew. Quartz made up a significant portion of the minerals I had used in the magic circles installed in my home. But this…
I took the quartz from Lee Arin’s hand. The glimmer felt strangely familiar.
Soon, a memory surfaced.
“In the laboratory, this was…”
“…a soul core.”
“Huh?” Lee Arin’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
Of course I knew.
Clenching my teeth as I stared at the quartz filled with Lee Arin’s mana, I felt a chill.
To think I’d see this here on Earth.
That bastard really is insane…
“This will become a truly great achievement, my little sibling.”
The voice that had said those words was still vivid in my memory. The form was slightly different, but holding it directly in my hand, I could tell that this was unquestionably one of the research projects I had been working on in my past life.
…No need to analyze the magic circles, then.
The Enemy of Humanity, my sibling from my past life. This made it abundantly clear that they were connected to the Truelight Sect.
Present-day Earth could not possibly have reached this level of magical research. Unless an archmage on my level had used a cheat key, this kind of research was utterly impossible.
With a puzzled expression, Lee Arin continued, “I don’t know how you figured it out, but one of the main things the Truelight Sect does is create these soul cores and offer them to Cult Leader Lee Manbok.”
“That’s impossible. This research was a failure.” I immediately shot back. That it had failed was something I could say with certainty, having once worked on it myself.
Magic is ultimately a discipline in which the human soul, through powerful will, manipulates mana to create miracles. That’s why the stronger a mage becomes, the more deeply they peer into the soul—and inevitably begin questioning what the human soul is made of. And at the time, with the confidence befitting an archmage, I believed I could perfectly analyze the human soul. That by continuing to explore the unknown domain of magic, I would eventually uncover what the “core” of the soul was—the human will capable of warping even the physical laws of the world.
“Sure, if you accumulate mana over a long period, since it’s familiar mana, it’s possible to transfer a portion of the soul.”
Focusing on the fact that quartz naturally absorbs and stores its owner’s mana, I began researching whether a human soul could also be contained within quartz. For a time, the research seemed partially successful. Leo was even born through that process.
“But once a part of the soul separates from the body and acquires a new body, it’s already no different from becoming a new existence. It begins to think on its own and develops its own will.”
Leo had been the same. The moment a part of my soul was transferred into a new body, it ceased to be me. In the end, all I obtained was the conclusion that the soul and the body cannot be separated.
“So, immortality is impossible.”
If the sense of self that is me cannot be maintained, then even if the soul is transferred into a new body, it is not the existence called “me.” In other words, immortality, the ultimate goal of this research, was impossible through this method.
Thinking about it now, it really does seem like the kind of research a Demon Lord would conduct. In the end, I failed to analyze what truly constitutes the human soul, nor was I able to prevent the fragment of my soul that I barely managed to transfer from developing its own sense of self. All this research left me with were three familiars. I did, at least, learn the lesson that no matter how capable humans may be of performing miracles, there are realms that are clearly impossible.
And after that, I completely forgot about this research. Once I had reached the conclusion that it was impossible, there was no point in clinging to it any longer.
But to think that my sibling from my past life had continued this research even in a new world…
“What an utterly pointless thing to do…”
“Hm? I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lee Arin shrugged. “When did I ever say anything about immortality?”
"What?"
“Cult Leader Lee Manbok isn’t aiming for immortality. He’s using the power of the Hunters residing within the soul cores. Immortality? What kind of crackpot cult leader would even come up with something like that…?”
“...”