Mage? Magic Engineer!-Chapter 101 - 98: The 4-Hammer Verdict
The Divine Abomination’s embryo struggled more intensely, trapped within the Domain. It sensed a fatal danger.
The power it inherited from Mother Earth also contained a fear of great extinction. Mother Earth herself might have been indifferent to destruction, but as a living creature, the embryo trembled at the memory of a world-ending meteor.
An unstoppable impact and a heat capable of melting anything came whistling through the air.
The two forces combined. Four meteors streaked toward the embryo in succession. When the first one struck, a wail echoed through the forest. Before the sound faded, the second and third followed close behind. By the time the fourth attack was complete, the chilling, mind-rending howl had yet to fully dissipate. Large chunks of tissue carbonized and scattered, mixing with the molten sand and earth as they burned.
Amidst the billowing, burning smoke, the power of filth and mutation seemed to realize its cause was lost. It evaporated from the puddle of flesh that could no longer hold its form and returned to its parent body. A nauseating, fetid stench filled the air as the powerless, residual flesh began to rapidly decay.
The deer-headed Divine Spirit glanced at the mage whose four strikes had settled the matter, then transformed into a streak of light and vanished into the forest.
"Huh? Is it morning?" Ella noticed sunlight dappling down through the branches and treetops of Deryats Forest.
At 2:10 PM, the eternal night in the Core Area of the forest ended. Under the protection of the Divine Art, no one was injured.
Kano, Humboldt, and Kou Bo walked into the woodland Rorschach had summoned and were startled by his condition. Purple beams of light coursed across all of his exposed skin like slithering snakes or Magic Circuits, and a purple radiance shot from his mouth and eyes.
Rorschach was fighting the influence of the Divine Abomination and the battle itself. He had been forced to continuously pump massive amounts of Magic Power into his body to keep the canopy of his Divine Art regenerating. As the Magic Power coursed through him, his fading consciousness first registered four blasts of air wash over him. Then, the frenzied winds of magic died down, and Rorschach finally stopped the Technique.
Master Humboldt quickly began to heal Rorschach.
"You really gave it your all, kid. So, what did you think of my dashing entrance?"
Although his physical ailments were being soothed, Rorschach’s mind was utterly exhausted. The young man glanced at Kano, then at the towering trees around them. Just before losing consciousness, he mumbled a random reply, "Arbor Day... if there’s a competition... send me. It’d be a guaranteed win." And with that, he passed out.
"What in the world was that about?" Kano cast the Floating Skill on Rorschach, then told Cavendish to put him in a sleeping bag so he wouldn’t catch a chill.
"Alexander von Humboldt."
"Lionel Kano."
The two Great Mages shook hands and began to discuss the next steps. They needed to decide what to do with the Divine Abomination embryo’s remains and the book collection from the Elf Village—which items would be for joint research, which would belong to the Tower of Stars, which to the Tower of Forest, and how they would report the incident to the Magic Guild.
「Rorschach was in a dream.」
"We agreed to part ways after the job was done. What are you doing in my dream again?"
Rorschach was walking beside a stream, somewhere in the forest at some unknown time. He wasn’t sure if this place was real or a reconstruction from Deryats’s memories. The stream’s current was gentle, its water so clear he could see the bottom, along with the reflections of leaves and himself.
A beautiful woman emerged from the woods ahead. Her features suggested she was from the southern continent. She wore a simple, long robe, her unbound hair cascaded to the ground, and a blue beetle rested on her hand.
"This will likely be the last time we meet in a dream. You don’t have to be so cold, do you?" The tall girl walked barefoot along the stream’s edge, stepping lightly on moss-covered stones as she approached Rorschach.
Rorschach could sense Deryats’s aura, but he found it hard to get used to this new image and much younger voice. Not only that, but her tone had also changed. The profound, mysterious air was gone, replaced by the manner of a simple farm girl.
’Where did my Deer-headed Monster go?’
Still, he replied, "Me, cold? I brought in three Great Mages to be your muscle. Are you satisfied now?"
She nodded. "If things hadn’t turned around, I had considered perishing along with that Divine Abomination. I’ve already died once before; to die again for the forest would have been nothing. You know, ’Deryats’ isn’t the name of a god. It simply means ’Forest Maiden.’ Aresuza, Daya... I have many other names."
"And you have other forms."
"Correct. Besides the human maiden, the tree spirit is also one of my most primitive forms. Vidar is my masculine incarnation, the manifestation of my strongest Divine Power. He represents the ruthless, silent, and indestructible side of nature, capable of commanding the power of thunderstorms and storms. And the form you and I are most familiar with is the incarnation at the culmination of my path, the one that receives the faith of all spirits."
In the stream’s reflection, images flashed one by one: an Elf adorned with flowers and emerald leaves; a silent, solemn Warrior clad in leather and iron boots; a Priest with the head of a deer...
The Forest Maiden continued to speak as she drew closer to Rorschach, until they were almost face to face. "But enough about that. Time is short, and I came to thank you."
’Wait, I’m a man who’s going to be a Mage. This isn’t right, is it?’
The maiden reached out, grabbed the young man’s arm, and then...
Rorschach felt himself accelerate. As his body followed a parabolic trajectory, his head made a circular motion around his center of mass.
In layman’s terms, Deryats had thrown him, sending him spinning headfirst into the stream.
’I... You...’ Before Rorschach could even let out a curse, he was stunned silent by the sight before his eyes.
He had actually seen this before, during his promotion to Middle Level Mage when he first came into contact with the Secret Contract. It was the same vast, starry sky, with constantly shifting clusters of blue, purple, and red light. But unlike last time, he didn’t see the projection of some unknown existence. This time, in the very center of the cosmos, was a pair of supergiant celestial bodies.
One was a massive, incandescent ball of light, the other a black hole of comparable size. They constantly revolved around the midpoint of the line connecting their centers.
As they moved, the incandescent body spewed forth matter, light, heat, and... Rorschach’s intuition told him, a colossal amount of Ether. The black hole, in turn, constantly devoured the flowing stars and light; entire suns were but specks of dust at its event horizon.
The beginning and the end of this world danced together, constantly sending out spiraling, nested traces—ripples in space and time, a turbulence of matter and Ether.
"How did you leap so high all at once?" Deryats’s voice echoed. "Don’t let them discover you."
As soon as she spoke, Rorschach felt a force pulling him down. After a brief sensation of drowning, the scene in his vision changed once more.
The starlight grew hazy, as if receding into the distance. In its place appeared an inverted "tree"—an endless trunk hung high above, branching and weaving endlessly downward. These paths had many intersections, but they were roughly arranged in concentric rings.
Rorschach did a rough count. From the main trunk to the final branch tips, the visible clusters of intersections formed sixteen rings. Countless points of light traveled from the trunk out to the branches, with some pausing at certain intersections. The closer to the trunk, the fewer the intersections and the less frequently they flickered. In contrast, the outermost rings teemed with a massive number of light points, their intersections twinkling without end.
"The place you first leaped to is the source of the world, called the Supreme Heaven. Some Exorcists and Philosophers also call it the Original Phase Layer. Where we are now is the Symbolic Realm, which scholars from before the Old Empire called the Original Layer."
Rorschach could feel a few of the branches resonating with him. He instantly recognized one path in particular—it was thicker and had numerous offshoots—as corresponding to "Magic Control."
"What you now see before you reveals the truth of Magic, Divine Arts, and all the motive forces of the world." Deryats paused before adding, "A partial truth."
