Ch.125125. Leap and Preparation (2)

“…No, what on earth.”

I couldn’t close my mouth as I felt the mass of the celestial body tilting. The weight it carried was different. Cutting a mountain or cutting a giant was an entirely different dimension of problem. It seemed as if the mere collapse of the balance that thing had maintained was twisting the laws of physics. Holy Sword was looking at me with an expression that seemed to say, “This is what it feels like.”

“To cut a star is to cut through an entire world.”

Holy Sword spoke. She looked at me with the crumbling planet as her backdrop. The world was collapsing without making a sound. The finely shattered fragments of the star began to deviate from their orbits and fly into the distant void. Holy Sword smiled as she sheathed her sword.

“That’s not something you can solve with brute force alone, Ilroy.”

“I knew that, of course, but…”

Holy Sword’s movement just now was something I couldn’t comprehend at my current level. A single slash. No, it couldn’t even be called a slash—just a movement of the sword. All I could feel was that the path drawn by the blade never wavered once. I stared at Holy Sword’s waist where the sheath was fastened.

“What did you feel?”

I opened my mouth with difficulty.

“…Without wavering, it was very honest and straight.”

“That’s quite accurate, Ilroy. And you saw a lot. Someone who hasn’t reached this level wouldn’t feel anything. You should be proud that you could even sense a fragment of it. It seems you’ve learned something while fighting me and that woman.”

Proud or not, I still couldn’t recover from the shock, like I’d been hit on the head with a hammer. I had thought cutting a star was just a vague abstraction, but seeing a star actually being cut before my eyes left me unable to even joke about it. Holy Sword looked at my dumbfounded expression, chuckled, and approached me.

“Now, engrave that shock well into your mind. So that when you close your eyes, that image clearly appears.”

Holy Sword’s voice came right next to my ear. She stretched out her arm and covered my eyes. I closed my eyes, feeling her warm touch on them.

“My movement when I cut the star, the image of the star being cut. The disappearance of an entire world.”

Even with my eyes closed, I could see the star. The star was cut and rejoined repeatedly by Holy Sword’s pale gesture. Like a suggestion, Holy Sword’s words were imprinted on me.

“Remember all of that as if it just happened, Ilroy. That will be the starting point of your transformation.”

Like water seeping into cloth, Holy Sword’s voice seeped into my ears. When her hand covering my eyes fell away and I opened my eyes again, the universe and the stars were nowhere to be seen. We were standing face to face in the same white room-like space as before.

“Can you remember it, Ilroy?”

In front of my blurry, flickering vision stood Holy Sword, hands behind her back, looking at me. I nodded dazedly. My hands felt like they didn’t belong to me.

“Yes.”

“Hold your sword.”

I gripped the sword. Holy Sword waved her hand again, and a training dummy commonly used for practice appeared before me. She tapped the dummy. A pile of wood and straw. Standing with arms spread wide. My gaze capturing it seemed different from usual.

“You must think about what you want to cut, Ilroy. You mustn’t stop at cutting the concrete, the outer shell. What you need to cut exists beyond that. The form exists only in the process. It’s merely the path your sword traverses.”

Holy Sword smiled as she tapped the dummy.

“If you can cut that, there will be nothing you cannot cut. You’ll be able to reach anywhere you want. Even if it’s a god.”

I raised my sword. I expected my mana to go wild, but it was as calm as a lake at dawn, as if asleep. I only needed to apply as much force as necessary. The palm gripping the hilt. The hilt seemed to have taken deep root in my hand.

I swung the sword down. Constantly recalling the movement Holy Sword had shown me, my sword began to fall, tracing a straight trajectory. And the blade cleanly split the dummy in half.

“…This isn’t it.”

I frowned as I withdrew my sword. In that slash just now, there was a sensation of cutting. That’s not right. The object being cut shouldn’t exist on the sword’s path. It was the cleanest and most flawless of all the cuts I had attempted so far, but I couldn’t be satisfied.

“You shouldn’t try to imitate the movement, Ilroy. Recall everything again. It’s not about knowing with your head, but feeling with your body. Concretizing that into a theory in your mind is the next step.”

“Could you show me just once more?”

Holy Sword crossed her arms and shook her head.

“No. You mustn’t let the first impression fade. I won’t show you that slash again until you reach that level.”

Holy Sword was resolute.

“You mustn’t become accustomed to that mystery, that fantasy. The more you explore your fantasy, the more you try to concretize it, the closer you’ll get.”

She waved her arm again, and the fragmented dummy reattached itself and stood up. Without even having time to feel regret, I gripped my sword again.

“Again. Explore on your own. I’ll give you plenty of time. No matter how long it takes.”

I nodded and raised my sword, and the real training began.

==

“I have no choice. I’ll open my office. Conduct your research and meetings there. I can use another place.”

Laura said with a sigh. Nella’s sigh that followed was one of relief. Laura looked at Nella with her differently colored eyes.

“The atmosphere has subtly changed, Nella. Were you very frightened by the recent attack?”

Nella slightly frowned.

“No. I was surprised, but I’m not the type to suffer aftereffects from something like that.”

“You seem subdued. If not because of the attack… is it because of the Calamity? Or perhaps because of the hero, whose life and whereabouts are currently unknown?”

“Who would feel upset because of that guy-!”

Nella shouted sharply at Laura, who seemed to be testing her. But soon she deflated and sank into her chair. Nella couldn’t understand herself either. The hero, whatever happened to him should be fine. But somehow his face kept coming to mind, making her uneasy.

“It seems it is because of the hero after all.”

“Enough. Let’s stop this conversation here.”

A hero bleeding profusely with a hole in his abdomen. Nella remembered well a hero in a similar state. She remembered Ilroy collapsed in a corner of the beach after being severely injured in the battle with the third Calamity, the Kraken. She remembered Ilroy with broken legs, arms twisted at strange angles, coughing up mouthfuls of blood. It was the price he paid for forcibly cutting down the third Calamity with strength that shouldn’t have been enough.

‘He survived… He defeated it.’

The saint couldn’t help. She had exhausted all her energy and magic taking care of George, who had accumulated serious injuries during the battle, and collapsed in another corner. George was also completely exhausted and had fallen asleep, and Aryen, as always, showed no interest in anyone except Isis. Nella approached Ilroy, who was lying in a corner after receiving only the most basic first aid.

‘Are you alive?’

‘More or less.’

The hero didn’t show his suffering. Nella didn’t feel sorry for him. She did think it must hurt, though. At that time, it was before she had left the party, so her relationship with the hero wasn’t that bad. Although she thought of the hero and his party purely as a means for her advancement, at that moment she felt differently. After all, they had come closest to death together.

‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

‘Not really. Don’t worry about me.’

Ilroy answered gruffly and got up. She couldn’t understand how he could move his body freely with such injuries. Nella watched his retreating figure with a sigh.

‘Good job.’

Nella muttered in a voice too small to be heard. The hero limped back to the barracks. The waves, of a different color than usual, covered the beach. There, the seawater was dirty with fluids and blood flowing from the bodies of the giant monsters and demons collapsed before them.

I wonder how he’s doing now. The hero was transported elsewhere after having some conversation with Daphne. Nella couldn’t get close due to Daphne’s stubborn attitude. All she could see was Ilroy’s teal eyes looking at her apologetically.

“So, what are you planning to do?”

Nella awoke from her reminiscence at the sound of Laura calling her. She tried to erase the scenery of that day that kept flickering before her eyes. Where were they in the conversation? Ah, yes, they were discussing how to use the Tower Master’s office.

“It will take about a month for the 11th floor to fully recover its function. We can’t postpone observation until then, so I plan to continue observing the sixth Calamity from the rooftop.”

There was only one spare telescope left, but it wasn’t as good as the one they had been using. Of course, it was much better than having nothing. If the comet is approaching at a constant speed, or accelerating at a calculated rate… Nella was in the middle of complex calculations when she looked at Laura.

“Have you been thinking of ways to deal with the Calamity, Tower Master?”

“At present, I think the plan proposed by you and Daphne is the best. Not simply preventing destruction, but eliminating the damage altogether.”

A smile appeared on Laura’s lips.

“I don’t need to worry about the future of the Magic Tower. Such excellent young magicians are growing up.”

“If there’s no need to worry, then you’ve decided who the next Tower Master will be.”

At Nella’s unchanging words, Laura burst into laughter.

“I’ll consider it positively. If you really succeed in stopping the sixth Calamity with this plan.”

Nella clicked her tongue softly, and Laura’s smile deepened.

“Well, I’ll leave the design to you. Rather than me getting too involved, it’s much better to leave it to the originator. Since it’s a type of magic that hasn’t existed before, it might not be a bad idea to submit a paper to the academy after the work is successfully completed.”

Laura concluded the topic with that summary.

“Now, let’s talk about something else.”

As she said this, Laura snapped her fingers. At that moment, something emerged from Nella’s shadow and was retrieved into Laura’s hand. Nella stared with wide eyes at what had been hiding in her shadow.

“That… Have you been monitoring me all this time?”

“Forgive me. It was a situation where I had no choice. I had placed them on almost all magicians in the tower.”

For a moment, Nella was furious, but thinking of Edwin’s transformed face, it wasn’t incomprehensible. No one would have known how many such people were hiding within the Magic Tower. Except for the witch sitting in front of her. Nella calmed her anger and opened her eyes. What would change by getting angry here and now?

“This is related to the recent attack, right? Can you tell me what’s going on now? Who those people were, what circumstances Edwin had…”

Laura slowly nodded.

“Before that, may I ask you one thing?”

“…Sure, as long as it’s not a useless question.”

Laura’s expression was more serious than Nella had expected as she looked at her disgruntled face.

“Do you have the confidence to continue fighting against threats to this world, even after this incident? Even though you left the hero’s party?”

It wasn’t a frivolous question. Nella frowned, then nodded.

“I still don’t want this world to end. I’m still quite greedy.”

“Then, I’ll tell you a story about people who desperately wish for this world to end.”

Laura smiled slightly and clasped her hands together.

“People who want the world to end…?”

Laura nodded at Nella, who showed a perplexed expression.

“For instance, the refugees from Barktins whose homes and lands were all destroyed.”