novelraw Chapter 188 : Chapter 188
Chapter 188 : Chapter 188
Chapter 188: 5th Rank
There are degrees even when playing around.
When a human plays around, an insect dies.
When a giant plays around, a human dies. Perhaps even more than that. Harad recalled the 6th Rank giant he had once encountered.
‘A King.’
The King of the Red Tower.
What kind of play would come from a mage whose Origin was the sun?
A mere torch, such trivial playing with fire, still existed even now.
Not only did it exist, it had become an environment that ruled a section of the Boundary.
More than that, it had granted three hundred years of life to a witch who was not even a Sage, and had become the fuel that kept the witch’s manifestation from extinguishing.
The driving force behind it was, naturally, the King.
A mage who was a King—his attained realm, and the capacity of the Origin called the sun.
‘What about me?’
If Harad were to scatter fire, it would burn for quite a while.
If he exerted himself fully, several days would be easy.
Several days versus several hundred years.
Harad’s full power did not even come close to the King’s play.
A mere torch.
That was something only Elaine could say.
‘She was stronger.’
The living Elaine of his past life had reached that level.
That was why she had called this playing with fire.
This immense thing.
Their perspectives were different.
Elaine had looked down on this and called it play.
Harad had to look endlessly upward.
There was such a gap. He was now keenly feeling that vast, distant difference.
Ellen, Manoa, Balbebron, Alena…… the village vanished. A sun floated before him. Harad realized that this place was inside his heart, his mindscape.
A space so vast its end could not be measured. At its center floated a sun as large as Serzila’s Inner Fortress…… and into that mindscape, fire intruded.
Flames surged up without warning, filling the empty space and swallowing even the sun.
It looked as though a tank had been filled to the brim with water.
No, it was as if the tank called a mindscape had fallen into some sea. The flames were so immense that it felt as though the mindscape of the mage named Harad had originally been made of fire.
‘Embers.’
That sudden invading fire—that was the true form of the Embers.
The subject had changed.
Now, the one bewitched was not Harad. It was the Embers.
If one is bewitched, it shows.
Harad had drooled, proving that he was bewitched by the Embers.
And the Embers were proving that they were bewitched by revealing their true form…….
‘This is play?’
Harad let out a hollow laugh at the scale of it.
To the King of the past, fire of this magnitude had been nothing more than play.
Harad stared blankly at the flickering flames. It felt as though the world itself was dancing.
The color was close to orange. It looked yellow, or perhaps white, and if one looked very closely, it even seemed red. A full spectrum of colors that a human eye could observe in the sun hanging in the sky.
‘I cannot distinguish it.’
The quality of the magic power was the same.
He had felt the gap was unfathomable, yet the flames that brushed against his body were not very hot.
The Embers were weaker than they felt.
Like food with a strong smell but a bland taste.
‘Because the Origin is the same?’
Because it was the same sun? Or because it had been weakened by Manoa? As he thought that, the flames suddenly surged. The roar of burning grew as loud as thunder.
-Ignorant.
Harad thought someone was speaking.
‘Was that said to me?’
As he thought that, the flames surged once more.
-Foolish ones.
It was clearly a voice.
-No matter how long you wait, what exists then will not be me. Neither will you.
A voice left behind within the Embers.
-Do not force it. What is right is right, and what is not is not. No matter what I do, my Origin is the sun, and the reality that is me cannot be eternal.
Reality.
Harad realized the owner of the voice was a mage.
And that he was the King of the Red Tower.
-Do not worship the Origin. Do not hesitate to be foolish. That itself is proof that we are realities.
Oh.
Harad pressed his lips together. Do not worship the Origin. The King of the past had been an awakened mage. As expected of the 6th Rank.
Harad suddenly grew curious about what the King had been like.
But all he could see were the flickering Embers.
-This is the lingering attachment of the reality that is me.
The flickering flames expanded.
Harad realized that the King had played a prank. He had scattered the Embers across the Boundary.
……Elaine’s words had only been half right.
The Embers were play, but they were not a torch meant to light the Boundary.
That had merely been Elaine’s conjecture.
-My planets.
Planets.
The King called the stars that shone because of his fire “planets.”
‘Planets.’
Harad thought of Jis.
That mage whose Origin was Shadow was a star. In the King’s words, a planet.
There seemed to be more such mages.
-My Origin will return. The reality that is me will not.
Harad understood the King’s intent.
The Embers were consideration for the foolish.
-If you would be foolish together, eat this and endure.
The sun would return someday.
The Embers were food given so that the stars could endure until then.
And they were a lingering attachment left in case the returning King might be himself.
-If you do not wish to be foolish, follow me. I am going to conquer a place called hell.
What choice did the stars make?
Harad did not know. The Embers conveyed no more.
Only the fact that the Embers remained before him was certain.
Some stars had not eaten this and had followed the King to their deaths.
The sun.
The play and lingering attachment left behind by a past mage of the same Origin, food scattered for the stars.
And that…… Harad was eating it.
He did not feel that his pride was wounded.
On the contrary, he was glad. When one is hungry, one eats whatever is available. Harad instinctively put the Embers into his mouth.
The fire passed through his esophagus, settled in his stomach, and vanished like smoke. It became a part of the sun buried somewhere within those surging Embers.
Harad’s hands grew busier.
He had already eaten everything that brushed against his body. He reached out, grabbed a handful of fire, and shoved it into his mouth. He ate the fire at his side, and plucked the flames rising above his head as though picking fruit.
His mouth was the busiest, followed by the hands grabbing fire. Then his feet, stepping toward new food, gradually became busy as well.
‘So that is why.’
As he ate, Harad understood Kandenkel.
He realized why that meteorite in his past life had changed.
And then he realized he had been a frog in a well.
Absorbing it would not even reach the 5th Rank?
‘Nonsense.’
Ignorant, foolish.
Harad thought the King’s words were no different from words directed at himself. In that way, he realized that his past life’s understanding of the 5th Rank had been wrong, and that what he was eating now was not simple fire.
‘It is not fire. It is the sun.’
The Embers were strong only in appearance.
In reality, they were weak. Likely because Manoa had occupied and consumed them for three hundred years.
But until he had absorbed part of them, Harad had felt the Embers were the sun.
Was it only Harad?
Other fire mages would also have instinctively felt the Embers were the sun.
‘Regardless of the remaining power.’
Because this fire originated from the sun.
‘What about me?’
There had been many times when his Origin had been inferred or exposed.
When he projected or manifested it.
When he merely cast magic, no one had suspected anything. No one who saw only Harad’s fire associated it with the sun.
Only after seeing a projection did they begin to guess, and only after experiencing a manifestation did they become certain.
Even so, Harad’s Origin was the sun.
‘What is different?’
Rank?
That was the biggest factor.
‘Is that all?’
In the end, it was the same Origin.
Even if they could not immediately recognize it as the sun, they should at least have had similar thoughts.
‘Crimson Flames. White Flames.’
……Ordinary fire.
Harad had distinguished ranks by the color of fire.
Because that was the true color and power emitted by the sun.
The higher the rank, the more magic shaped what originally belonged to the sun.
Harad looked at the Embers he was about to swallow.
The Embers left behind by the sun of the past. They felt intense, yet were weak when actually experienced.
Their color was close to orange. It was also the color of the sun as seen by the human eye.
Harad knew that the true sun was another color entirely.
‘Is there any need to tell them?’
He had thought it was obvious.
The more so, because the sun’s true value would be revealed.
A mage should dissect and expound upon their Origin in full.
But there is no obviousness in ambiguity.
‘Does it have meaning?’
People do not know the true color of the sun.
They do not know the countless phenomena that occur upon it. They are ignorant of its diversity.
Yet they worship it, and fear it.
Because it is the sun.
‘The color is irrelevant. No—other than me, no one should be able to distinguish it.’
That is what the unknown is.
The sun is the most familiar yet most unknowable Origin in the world.
The fire it spreads should be the same.
‘Only I should understand my Origin.’
Understanding runs counter to fear.
One hides what is one’s own, and explores what belongs to others.
That is what a mage is.
Why try to distinguish the power of fire by color?
Why deliberately give the enemy a chance to understand?
Harad’s Origin was the sun regardless, and any fire ultimately came from the sun.
‘Regardless of power.’
……Like the Embers.
Food with a strong smell but a bland taste.
Harad realized why that metaphor had come to mind earlier.
Three hundred years.
Over that time, the Embers had been heavily consumed by Manoa.
Yet the Embers were still as intense as at the beginning.
Their power had died, but their presence was alive.
Because their Origin was the sun.
‘Like this.’
Fire flared up in Harad’s left hand.
It was close to orange, and at a glance looked yellow as well. It looked like ordinary fire, and in truth its power was meager. But to Harad, it felt like a small sun.
……Fear would be the same.
Just as the world was ignorant of and feared the sun, they would not know the true nature of this fire and would fear it.
‘So you cannot deceive the fact that it is the sun, even if you deceive its power.’
It must not be finely divided.
It had to be one vast whole.
One does not draw fire out of the sun.
One draws it out, but the intent must represent the sun.
‘Be simple.’
Even if one wishes to hide it, one cannot.
The sun is such an Origin.
‘Is that good?’
Everything has its pros and cons.
But Harad smiled bitterly.
This was the correct answer.
At least from the perspective of being a King.
A King must not hide.
‘I was wrong.’
His past life had been wrong.
Rank was a staircase. Was there only one staircase? No. The Harad of his past life had climbed the wrong one. Because he had never received guidance or help as a mage. Because he had been alone.
……Trial and error.
‘My past life.’
If he felt wronged, he did. But Harad decided to see it as the value of regression. And so he tore off and ate the remaining Embers one by one with his hands.
The Embers that filled his mindscape did not run out no matter how much he ate. He had not even consumed half.
And yet, the tip of the buried sun began to protrude above the edges of the Embers.
‘This is considered diminished?’
Harad smiled faintly and became certain.
If not for Manoa, these Embers would have returned him to his past-life realm.
Was it a waste? It was, and yet it was not.
Power exists, originally, to protect something.
So if there was something to regret, it was not being able to protect more.
Not being able to spread the fire farther.
At that moment, the remaining Embers surged.
The roar of burning was louder than thunder.
-That is what a King is.
Harad realized that it was a voice, and that the earlier insult of ignorance had indeed been directed at him.
The Embers retreated, avoiding Harad’s hand. Flames that his hand could not reach billowed overhead like clouds. The Embers flickering within the mindscape raged.
It was like seeing a typhoon made of fire instead of wind. And at its center, instead of emptiness, was the sun.
“Ah.”
Watching the Embers fall into the sun.
Watching the sun grow immense as it wrapped the Embers around its surface.
“Only now.”
Harad finally realized that he had become a 5th Rank mage.