༺ 𓆩 Chapter 22 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
For some reason, drowsiness came over Isaac.
Clang—!!!
Clang—!!!
The interrogation room lay under a pallid darkness, with nothing but torchlight to hold it back at the edges. If he slipped for even an instant, a stake might be driven straight through his brow. Yet strangely, Isaac felt no tension at all.
‘It was like that back then too.’
Isaac did not know war.
But fragments of war, those he knew.
In the final year of his previous life, two soldiers who had deserted from the army of the Grand Prince, the Second Prince, fled into the ruins of Goethe Keep; they had been on the verge of starving to death, and their fingers and toes were rotting away from frostbite.
Isaac gave them shelter.
He shared what little food he had, meager as it already was.
But once they regained some strength, they repaid his kindness with enmity.
They tried to kill Isaac so they could keep the last crumbs of bread for themselves.
It seemed they had convinced themselves that Isaac was hiding food somewhere.
The two deserters fought.
Let’s kill this old man.
No, let’s not. Don’t give up being human.
In the end, the deserter who wanted Isaac dead killed the other one.
But he did not kill Isaac.
“What would you gain by killing an old man like me? There’s nothing left on me but bones. Not enough flesh to strip, even if you meant to eat it.”
“If you had just handed over the food you hid, none of this would have happened!”
“I’ve told you again and again, there is no hidden food. What you saw is all there is. Will you still kill me? If you cannot believe me, then go ahead and try.”
Isaac looked at the deserter with empty, weary eyes.
The man’s hands, already smeared with his comrade’s blood, were trembling.
The deserter hesitated.
Isaac did not.
He thrust the fire poker into the deserter’s throat.
The reason an old man over seventy had been able to kill a young man was simple.
For the deserter, even if he survived today, there was only the same desolation waiting in tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that.
But for the old man, who had nothing left but regret, there was still a task to complete.
He had to free himself from that abnormal constitution.
From the curse that had begun at birth.
That alone had been the reason he had lived this long.
And so, he could kill.
A hideous old man sustained only by obsession murdered a youth who struggled desperately not to die.
And as Isaac watched the light fading from the young man’s eyes, drowsiness came over him.
Then, dimly, he understood.
He did not know what war was, but at the very least he knew this; it was not something that could rest upon mercy or understanding.
One neither asked for mercy nor granted it, but instead exercised the greatest violence one was capable of.
That was what a fight to the death was.
Something so exhausting, so cumbersome, so wretched, and yet mankind had carried it on since the dawn of history.
And would be fated to go on carrying it still.
And so.
Isaac felt the weariness closing in.
He felt sleep tugging at him.
He wanted to sleep.
To be freed, once and for all, from such a yoke.
He wanted to fall asleep forever.
And because he knew he could not, he longed for it all the more fiercely, all the more desperately.
For eternal rest……
It was the same now.
In a moment no longer than a blink, he knocked away the flying stake with an ice crystal.
He launched more ice crystals, bent their trajectories, and when the blocked crystals failed, he gathered the blood of Deacon Silvio and forged new ice from it.
His life had hung in the balance from one instant to the next, enough to send a chill down the spine.
Yet what Isaac felt was neither tension nor fear.
It was fatigue.
And yet, regardless of that, he was striking down projectiles too swift for the naked eye to follow with ice crystals placed without the slightest error.
Why was it possible?
Even Isaac himself wondered.
“The young master’s greatest strength is his imagination.”
‘Of all times, why did that bastard’s words have to come back to me now.’
The voice rising of its own accord in his mind answered his question.
Lucas.
Years had passed since Isaac first learned swordsmanship from him.
Isaac’s body had never once been able to keep up with Lucas’s blows; yet from a certain point onward, Isaac began to predict Lucas’s movements, even when his body could not follow, he took the exact guard position in advance, before the strike had even begun.
It was the price, perhaps, or the reward, for surviving each day in confinement beneath the earth.
Cut off from seeing and hearing the outer world, what had grown clearer and clearer instead were the landscapes and sensations his own mind had drawn for him.
Through them, Isaac sparred with Lucas dozens, hundreds of times a day.
He imagined, thousands upon thousands of times, weaving spells with his own hands though he could not yet use them.
He made friends of the great men and sages in his books, and spoke with them.
He gained insight and wisdom.
He painted futures that should have been impossible.
Yes.
To kindle the smallest spark.
To escape the curse.
To kindle a spark of hope.
For that final day, whenever it might come.
And then,
before the graves of his family,
Isaac had at last kindled that spark.
‘Lucas, you were truly a fine teacher. You were right.’
A world of imagination built upon exact logic and reason was, in its own way, almost no different from real experience.
It was the countless experiences in that unseen yet visible world that had made Isaac what he was now.
“……Remarkable. To think you had been hiding your skill.”
The bishop slipped a hand into the pouch at his waist.
There were no stakes left.
“Now it is your turn to show your skill, Bishop.”
Isaac’s face and tone had not changed at all from when he first laid eyes on the man.
“Did you truly sell your soul to a devil?”
The bishop could not help but falter before Isaac’s composure.
There was something almost bored in Isaac’s manner, as if he did not regard this situation as a threat at all.
No one looking at him could have believed he was merely a child standing at the brink of death.
“If we insist on putting it that way, then perhaps both you and I have sold our souls, Bishop. The only difference is where we sold them.”
“That sounded like blasphemy.”
“Is there any holiness left to blaspheme?”
“……How dare you.”
The flesh under the bishop’s chin trembled.
“This is not the end, is it. A bishop of the Old Faith, and all you have done so far is rely on a grimoire and throw stakes around. That seems rather far removed from holiness.”
“…….”
The bishop knew well enough that there was nothing to gain by indulging such words.
But his pride would not permit silence.
“……Very well. I had refrained from using my own power directly so as not to leave behind my unique trace, but there is no other choice now. You know too much. And that talent of yours, that cleverness, looks a little too dangerous. I will cut it out here.”
Depending on the school, depending on whether one was a mage or a clergyman, the method by which magic was learned and used differed. From that arose a certain habitual framework in the handling of mana, and through that, what was called a unique trace came into being.
It marked the body of the practitioner who spent a lifetime training the same magic, but more often it remained upon the victim of the spell.
Through that, experts could identify the caster who had used the magic.
The bishop had judged Isaac dangerous enough that he was willing to endure even the troublesome aftermath that would follow such traces.
“Then cut me down. If you can.”
Whoosh—!!!
An ice crystal made from blood tore through the air.
Fwoom—!!!
Sssss—!!!
In an instant, fire blazed from the bishop’s fingertips, the ice crystal oxidized the moment it touched the flame, the evaporating blood left behind a foul, metallic stench.
“Behold. This is the power granted to me, Holy Fire.”
The flames the bishop conjured were unlike the torchlight around them; they were blue, vividly blue, burning in a sphere that roared and shimmered with a dreadful purity.
To another eye, it might have inspired awe.
Isaac did not so much as blink.
“That is Holy Fire?”
“Yes. A flame of purification beyond the imitation of ordinary mages.”
The bishop’s voice rose, tinged with pride.
“With this, even your ice crystals will be unable to resist and will sublimate in an instant.”
“I see. That would seem to be the case.” Isaac nodded.
“I had not wished to burn, with my own hand, the child I myself baptized. But this too must be His will.”
Fwoosh—!!!
“This?”
“……!?”
From Isaac’s hand as well, there bloomed a blue sphere of fire just like the bishop’s.
Ignition, then compression, and then compression once more.
It was the magic he had used in the abandoned mine when he dealt with the Winter Spider Queen.
If there was any difference from the bishop’s, it was this - the wild blossom of flames writhing around the sphere’s core was far fiercer.
“H, how are you……?”
“Your reaction is almost painfully honest. It is simple. You just undergo the compression process twice.”
“What nonsense! Are you mocking me? Divine power does not work that way. There is a sequence, a necessary order. It cannot be done so simply……!”
“So that is how the Old Faith’s power works. But I suppose I truly am a heretic. The process of my magic is parallel. Which means I can do this as well.”
Isaac compressed it once again.
Now the blue fire burned violet.
It did not burn Isaac, its caster, but the heat was tremendous.
The hem of Deacon Silvio’s clothing, lying nearby, had already begun to smoke and char.
‘Holding it at this level for long is still too much.’
Inside his chest, Isaac felt as though something sharp were tearing through him again and again.
His mana circuits were running wild.
To compress condensed fire yet again required an amount of mana equal to the capacity of his abdomen.
And he had already gone through that process three times.
The current of mana, already rushing too violently for his vessel to bear, only accelerated further.
“This is impossible. How can a whelp born of filthy barbarian blood wield such power……?”
“It seems you have neglected your training. Or perhaps God loves me more.”
“How dare you utter such madness! I trained in divine power for decades!”
Fwoooom—!!!
The blue sphere burning at the bishop’s fingertips swelled larger.
Perhaps he had drawn in all the mana he could command, for veins stood out across his brow and the backs of his hands.
His heart labored furiously to sustain the brain he was forcing beyond its limits.
“Decades…….”
Isaac looked at him.
“For me, it was a lifetime.”
Whooom—!!!
The violet fireball left Isaac’s hand and tore toward the bishop.
The bishop tried to neutralize it with a fireball of his own.
But the density of Isaac’s mana far surpassed the bishop’s.
The bishop’s spell scattered away into star-like motes and was extinguished.
“Hhk—!”
The bishop sucked in a broken breath.
In his widened eyes was reflected a violet sphere like the pupil of a demon.
“Kraaagh—!”
With a dreadful scream, the bishop was engulfed in violet fire.
If there truly was a landscape of hell, perhaps it looked something like this.
The bishop rolled across the floor, but the flames did not go out until there was nothing left to burn; the screaming did not last long.
What had once been the bishop had already become ash, so thoroughly that no one could ever have known him.
Isaac looked down at the heap of ashes where only a few dying embers remained.
Had the bishop gone to heaven?
Or to hell?
Or to some purgatory that was neither one nor the other?
Isaac wondered.
Perhaps because he had spent too much mana,
a great weakness washed over him, and he sank down where he stood.
“At the very least, if there is an afterlife, then I suppose we shall not meet again in heaven, Bishop.”
Before him lay the bishop’s remains.
Behind him, the corpse of Deacon Silvio.
He would go on seeing such things, endlessly, miserably.
That future was still far off, but war was coming all the same, little by little.
And so Isaac could not sleep.
Even if drowsiness came over him in waves.
Even if a weariness that made him want to cast everything aside crushed his body like stone.
Jonas’s cries, after losing his right hand.
The screams of those sacrificed in the mana explosion.
His father’s sighs, heavy with worry and lament.
His mother’s weary voice, wandering through hardship in search of a cure for her son.
Until the clamoring of those debts in his heart fell silent.
Until true stillness finally came.
Isaac could not sleep.
No, he would not sleep.
“…….”
A presence stirred in the corridor of the second underground level.
“Young master.”
Carlson, drenched in blood, was supporting Randolph, whose body hung limp.
“The holy knights?”
“……How did you know?”
“The bishop told me. Though now, as you can see, it has come to this.”
“…….”
Following Isaac’s gaze, Carlson looked toward the ashes.
“How did it……?”
“The bishop and the deacon quarreled. As you can see, they destroyed one another.”
“……I see.”
Suspicion flickered across Carlson’s face, but in the end he simply nodded.
“We killed all of the holy knights.”
Judging from the bishop’s words, they must have been a formidable force.
Too much for two knights to handle.
And yet Isaac nodded, just as Carlson had.
For now, details could remain buried.
Carlson and Isaac were still the sort of men who each had things they must keep hidden from the other.
“And Randolph?”
At Isaac’s question, Carlson’s eyes dulled.
“…….”
There was no need to ask further.
Randolph, dragging along by leaning against Carlson, was no longer Randolph at all.
“He told me to ask you to look after his family.”
“…….”
At the word family, Isaac faltered for a moment.
“I will.”
Despite the weariness.
Despite the drowsiness.
Despite a life that felt far too long.
That was why Isaac kindled the spark.
“For now, let’s go back.”
To Home.
END σϝ CHAPTER