Vol 3 Chapter 37 – Boyhood: Autumn at Thirteen・Part 15

My teacher always said that, while forcing the impossible is part of a mage’s craft, outright recklessness is forbidden.

It seems that impossibility itself is a mage’s domain. An apple dropped from a branch can be made to shoot back up into the sky, a ball hurled onto wet ground can be kept from rolling, parchment scorched by flame can be frozen solid. Bending the laws, imposing the impossible on the world, and asserting our will—that is our calling.

But recklessness is taboo. Twist the world itself too far and the backlash will eat away at you, and you might even have divine apostles sent after you.

If, by being reckless, you weave an incantation beyond your skill, the recoil to your body will be far too great—whether the spell is advanced or you’re just squeezing out mana that has already run dry.

Still, when what can be gained is great enough, I think it’s worth being reckless and forcing the impossible.

No—depending on the reward, one might even be obliged to do so.

“Friend… I’ll protect you.”

Driven by a vicious headache, I whittle away at scattered thoughts and the last scraps of mana to shape a spell. My vision bleeds red, my nose clogs as something inside it ruptures—veins must have burst from the strain. The annoyingly loud drip echoing through the hall is probably because my ears are bleeding, too.

Yet the spell I paid for with so much of myself is only a modest spur, hardly worth the life poured in as fuel. With no spoken chant to bolster it, and my body already exhausted, there isn’t much I can do.

At best, I can momentarily thicken the countless strands of spiderweb hanging from the walls many times over.

Spider silk is famed across the Triple Empire as the finest wire. The threads spun by the Spiderfolk who nest here are so strong that the steel cables forged for bridges seem like a single strand of silk by comparison, and cloth woven from their silk is as tough as armor.

In that case, even the fragile webbing here should, if fattened up, at least slow a blade’s swing.

I can’t expect strands dangling from the ceiling to actually snare a sword, and I don’t know how long they can stand against an edge sharp enough to slice other blades apart. Even so, it felt worth trying—worth staking my life and future on.

【Clack.】

Beyond the blood-blurred vision now seeping from the corners of my eyes… my friend finished it.

Ah, he really is cool. Blood-soaked and tattered, yet his spirit never breaks—that’s true coolness.

I’d like to watch a while longer, but it seems I’m at my limit. My sight lurches as though my head were tied to a string and being whipped around.

Even so, it’s all right. He won… …

【Tips】 At times, depleted mana can be wrung out by overloading mind and body. This, however, carries proportional risk.

I used to love battles where every resource was bled dry, comrades were pushed to near-death checks, and the last die roll decided the outcome.

They were always thrilling—great climaxes you could still revel in afterward. A GM’s job is to let you lose right on the brink of a fatal blow, neither killing nor sparing you outright. After such a scenario and fight, you’d want to dive straight into the continuation—or launch a brand-new adventure. Yet…

Never again.

After the desperate struggle, that single thought was all that came to mind.

Leaning on my staff, Okuri-ōkami, I barely managed to stand while the dismembered undead lay silent before me. I’d used my last strength to unleash a flurry of blows so it couldn’t reclaim its sword, dismantling it at last.

Sweat and blood slid off my chin. Muscles and joints screamed from reckless overuse, and the head that had wrung out every drop of mana throbbed on a razor’s edge—like a foundry built inside my skull, every lathe and press running flat out. Did the PCs always feel like this after mortal combat? Simply switching scenes had begun to feel unfair.

“Mina…”

I crawled toward my unconscious friend. My life was saved thanks to him. I don’t know exactly what spell he cast, but he’s the one who slowed the sword’s speed. Bleeding from every hole in his body, he still squeezed out mana and fought beside me to the end.

When I finally reached him and checked with a prayer, I found he was still breathing. Shallow and deep breaths in turn; pressing my ear to his chest, I heard no strange watery sounds. No blood seemed to have entered his lungs, and no vital organs were pierced.

The head is the problem… but that’s beyond me. Healing magic is far too expensive, and I don’t know the basic theory to learn it. This should be a moment to cling to a divine miracle, yet sadly, even sacred healing can’t cover damage from mana exhaustion.

If only there were a guardian deity of magic—but a god who grants miracles with administrator privileges and us sorcerers, who merely abuse the source code, are fundamentally opposed, so no god presides over magic.

I wiped away the spilled blood with cloth and poured water from my flask into his mouth; he swallowed weakly. He looks rough, but perhaps his life isn’t in immediate danger. Even so, we should show him to a specialist healer—someone who makes a living with curative sorcery. If his brain is bleeding, regret won’t suffice.

But… I’m at my limit, too. I sat beside him and gulped down water. I’d promised myself I’d drink my fill during the battle, but I never dreamed it would taste this good. The flavor alone made me glad to be alive.

I drank like I was breathing air, squeezed out the last drop from the leather pouch, and finally felt human again. Strength drained from my core, my whole body wrapped in a fluffy haze. I won’t be moving for a while.

Right—once I recover, I’ll make a stretcher. With some nearby wood and clothing, my carpentry skills should throw one together easily, and that will keep Mina’s head from bouncing. An adventure doesn’t end at the dungeon; you have to plan the trip home, too.

…Still, what to do with that sword?

There it lay, the black blade we’d defeated, resting on the floor. It neither twitched nor wailed, quiet as an ordinary sword.

Yet if this dark palace hasn’t collapsed, it must still be plotting something—perhaps looking for its “next bearer.”

And that reminded me of the word flag: someone once said that every bad thing a person can imagine can indeed come to pass.

It’s an excessively pessimistic line, but an undeniable truth.

Suddenly, the sword began to tremble—and then, to my astonishment, it floated up into the empty air on its own. Still quivering in short spasms, it… unleashed an overwhelming intent.

The immense will it radiated reminded me of the voiceless messages Lady Agrippina sends when she can’t be bothered to speak, or of the oracles I sometimes sense while praying at the temple—only far more grotesque. A raw emotion too vast to put into words slammed into my brain, wringing my stomach like a wet rag.

If I had to name that nausea-inducing force, I suppose it was love. Scattering mind-scouring words of affection, the sword shot toward me—of course it did.

“Aaaaaaa!?”

A scream tore from a mouth I thought had reached its limit, and I instinctively wove a spell. What little mana I had left guttered out; in exchange, a pain like sanity and grey matter being scraped away twisted the world. The sword barreling toward me at lethal speed was caught not by my flesh, but by a gate I tore open in the air—an entrance to somewhere unknown.

Absolute defense through spatial transition—the blade was swallowed by a frayed bit of world that likely led nowhere and vanished.

Th-that was close…

Sliding down the wall, I thanked whatever luck let my reflexes keep up. Come to think of it, the sword had been flying at me handle-first, not tip-first.

So it meant, You beat my last master, now wield me? No way! I’m already drowning in my childhood friend’s overbearing love; adding a yandere-reeking cursed item to the party is way too much of a penalty game.

I’m not asking for a legendary holy sword or a sentient blade that turns into a cute girl, but couldn’t it be at least a little more heroic?

Perhaps in answer to my silent rant, the backlash from my reckless spell hit a beat later. A relentless staccato headache assaulted me, as if my skull were being minced. Seems coupling depleted mana with a costly spatial-shift barrier was asking for it.

The world spun—warping, melting… No, that wasn’t an illusion. Was the demon palace collapsing? The wall I’d been leaning against liquefied, and I fell forward, my nose burying itself in something soft that smelled of rusted iron.

Amid the eerie creaks and the chilling sounds of things breaking, what reached my ears was… a heartbeat. Slow yet steady. The only other person here was Mika. Ah—I’d ended up resting my head on an injured man’s chest.

But I couldn’t move away even if I wanted to. My body wouldn’t respond, and a nauseating sense of my insides being churned made it impossible to collect my thoughts.

Ah, geez, this run was just the worst…

【Tips】The demon palace vanishes along with its core, swallowing the anomalies it caused. In the backlash of the warped world reverting, everything disappears—leaving only the heroes who conquered it.

“…An unfamiliar ceiling.”

I’ve used that line so many times it’s cliché, but at this point I can’t relax without saying it.

Forcing my body—still riddled with dull aches and headaches—to sit up, I found myself inside a cramped cabin.

The timber-framed hut had decayed with age, and the abandoned cot, fireplace, and simple writing desk hinted at the owner’s humble nature.

It seems my hunch was correct. The demon palace had been a famed adventurer’s hermitage warped out of shape, its core the dreadful sword he favored. The emaciated mummy cradling the blade had been that hermit himself…

The very author of the journal left on the desk.

“…No, there’s something I need to do first.”

Holding my throbbing head, I looked to my friend sprawled beside me. He still showed no signs of waking, and leaving him on the floor couldn’t be good, so I borrowed the bed. The cot was old, but not so rotten it’d collapse under a body.

Thankfully, I sensed no enemies nearby. Unlike those systems where Tokyo gets wrecked every arc and the mooks stick around even after the boss falls, there didn’t seem to be any hellish gauntlet for the way back. Perhaps caught in the collapse, the dead that hounded us had vanished completely.

At any rate, being able to catch our breath was a blessing. I lifted my friend—no energy left to use <Invisible Hand>—and laid him on the cot. I banished stray thoughts about how delicate he looked or how shockingly light he was, along with the urge to flop down beside him, and instead sank into the chair at the desk. Just because I sensed nothing didn’t guarantee every corpse had disappeared; I couldn’t relax completely.

For now, I’ll stay alert until he wakes and can take over.

And until then—since we have our objective right here—I may as well savor the completed quest while resting. Reading it once before handing over the quest item shouldn’t incur divine wrath.

I picked up the weathered journal and felt an ineffable sense of accomplishment and satisfaction take shape in its weight between my hands.

We had won—completed our goal and survived.

Put into words, it was just a single session—one that might someday sink into memory and become only a handful of experience points I won’t even remember spending.

Even so, this sense of achievement is real. It’s strange how the brutal fight I swore I’d never repeat now feels worth it just for this feeling. Humans really do forget the burn once it’s past their throat—along with how the scalding water ruins their stomach later.

Well, that’s fine. Even the Buddha spent plenty of time rejoicing in his own deeds. If a petty, materialistic fellow like me indulges in a little self-admiration, it hardly strays from the human condition.

Let’s relish the moment. If wounds are badges of honor, then this throbbing pain is just something to nibble on with my drink…

【Tips】Once properly resolved, the demon palace’s remains regain their original nature—whether the cursed land twisted over ages or an accursed object ran wild for some trigger…