Before leaving the room.
The last thing Kawin did was touch his face with both hands.
It was an unnecessary gesture.
He could see now, and there was a mirror in the room.
But Kawin had a particular purpose.
The purpose of ‘comparison.’
“It's…… almost the same as my past life.”
It was simple curiosity.
What had I looked like in my past life?
By comparing the sensations of his fingertips, he could tell precisely.
Above a jawline sharp enough to cut a hand stood a keen, high nose bridge.
His eyes were long like runways, their ends drooping slightly, which gave a somewhat dreamy impression.
Though in his past life, it probably hadn't been such shining platinum-blond hair.
It was truly obnoxious to say such a thing about himself.
Even so, there was no other way to put it.
“I was really good-looking, huh.”
Didn't they say that even babies whose eyes had only just opened could recognize a handsome man or a beautiful woman?
If he had resembled this face, Cha Hun of his past life must have looked fairly decent as well.
Anecdotes that had puzzled him finally made sense.
The female students who used to hand him drinks when he worked at the library.
They hadn't exactly been lying, yet the temperature of their breath had run high.
After letting out a single idle laugh, Kawin threw a small container into the trash can.
THUNK!
A black pill bottle that looked suspicious at a glance.
Kawin's heightened sense of smell let him guess at the medicine's components.
Swallowing a large dose of this would never have ended safely.
“……You should've lived. Even I, who couldn't see, clung to life tooth and nail.”
Before the possession, Kawin had taken his own life.
He did not think it was pathetic.
But he had no desire to comfort him, either.
Kawin simply didn't want to let it slip away.
The new life of light he had gained.
‘Five years from now.’
The only son of House Anper, who had not even managed to form a 1st Circle, let alone show talent.
In this state, could he fight against the protagonist of the novel?
Kawin clenched his fist tightly.
It's not ‘Can I do it?’
I'm going to do it.
If his possession here wasn't a coincidence, there had to be a way.
‘My past life and this place, there's no difference.’
Kawin decided to do what he did best.
That single word: ‘preparation.’
***
“How is it, Kawin? Isn't it nice, farming with your own hands like this?”
Put kindly, it was a harmless smile; put a little meanly, it felt like a screw was loose.
Kawin's father, Xymoron, came up to me with a grin.
For a fallen Viscount, a ‘territory’ was not a place for ordering people around.
It was simply a home ground where one had to swing tools alongside them.
Farmland that was only a handful compared to other noble houses.
Here, Xymoron sweated beads of sweat together with the young men.
Of course, Kawin, who had been dragged out against his will, was with them, too.
“Oh, dear. Your clothes are all worn out.”
After saying that, Xymoron gathered mana at his fingertips.
With mana gathered so hard that the streams of his sweat thickened, Xymoron accomplished what he wished.
Zzt. Zzt.
He burned away all the lint that had pilled up on the clothes.
Xymoron put both hands on his hips as if he had done something great.
“How about that, Kawin! This is the greatness of Lightning. Where else is there a magic so closely tied to people's lives? Ha-ha-ha!”
Instead of answering, Kawin examined Xymoron's breathing and the smell of his sweat.
Not a shred of falsehood could be sensed.
His father was genuinely proud of his ‘lint-burning magic.’
‘This man is dangerous.’
Paying no heed to his dubious expression, his father Xymoron stretched his back out wide.
“The work is mostly done, so go wash up and get ready. Today is the day we hold an important ritual.”
“A ritual……?”
“Your backside was so heavy that we have been putting it off all this time. The ritual for the father of our fathers. The Archmage Dharma.”
When Kawin asked where the ritual would be held, Xymoron answered as if it were nothing.
But at that answer, Kawin had no choice but to open his eyes wide.
“Where else? In front of the grimoire he left behind, of course.”
***
A grimoire.
Not simply a book of magic recording its principles and formulas.
A divine artifact possessing a will of its own,
“An object that great is in our family?”
“Hm? You talk as though you are hearing about it for the first time.”
Xymoron's eyes went round for a moment, then he soon pressed a hand to his forehead and burst out laughing.
“Well, then. Every year, you either overslept or ran away. It is no wonder you forgot.”
“What an irresponsible son I was.”
“You can say that again. It got so bad that Vilkus said you ought to be planted in the ground like the radishes in that field over there. With only your head left sticking out.”
Kawin briefly recalled his first meeting with Vilkus.
With that contemptuous gaze, he was more than capable of saying such a thing.
A hairstyle bald clean from the forehead to the crown, with hair left only on both sides.
His suit, though old, had been immaculate.
‘Whereas this man…….’
If Vilkus was a neatly forged pen nib, Xymoron was a set of gears roughly matched together.
Somehow creaky, sloppy, and blunt.
It was as if his magnificent platinum-blond hair, fluttering in the wind, were clamoring that it had met the wrong master.
‘Well. He's handsome, though.’
Blue eyes that had set deeper with age.
A drop of sweat happily slid down the sharp-edged bridge of his nose.
His eyes drooped just slightly, and all his features were bold and generous.
That was why his current profession seemed to suit him all the better.
Not a mage, but a farmer.
‘No need to ask why he doesn't work as a mage.’
Various types of magic appeared in [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star].
Water and fire, earth and wind, all shaped from mana, and so on.
Mages could use one attribute per Circle.
Among them, the weakest line was Electric: Lightning.
The protagonist of ‘Heavenly Slaughter Star,’ who fought mages as regularly as eating three meals a day.
Among the mages who had threatened him, there wasn't a single Electric-type to be found, even if you washed your eyes and looked again.
Why don't you work as a mage like the other Family Heads, Father?
Why is the Lightning line as weak as trash?
Why don't you use a different magic, like the families that turned their coats?
Since all three questions would gouge at Xymoron, he decided to swallow them for now.
Instead, he asked something else.
“The Anper territory is more fertile than I thought, so it's strange that no monsters show up. This place is quite far from the capital, isn't it? Anywhere else, they'd have already turned it into a field of overgrown mugwort.”
“Haha. That is simple logic.”
“Simple?”
Xymoron spread both his dirt-covered palms toward the sky.
“All of this is surely the grace of the Archmage Dharma! We are the only ones in this empire who remember him and hold a ritual for him every year, so it must surely be his power that protects this farmland.”
“Ah.”
Kawin understood completely and ended the conversation.
Xymoron was saying ‘I don't know’ in grandiose terms.
“Come, let us go. Once you see the grimoire after so long, your eyes will go wide.”
***
A handsome, platinum-blond man who was the spitting image of Xymoron Anper.
Kawin murmured under his breath.
“This crap is…… a ritual?”
“Ahem! Ahem!”
At that, Vilkus glared with axe-sharp eyes and cleared his throat.
His father just smiled awkwardly.
He knew it was an irreverent thing to say.
But one look at the altar before him, and a hollow laugh slipped out first.
Fine, set aside the bare-bones order of proceedings.
Dried-out jerky, bread flaking with crumbs,
fruit giving off a musty smell, and a chipped cup?
If the Archmage Dharma saw this, far from blessing them, he would have flipped the table first.
‘I knew the family was struggling, but was it this bad?’
Then again.
Food for a ‘ritual’ in this territory, which was busy just trying to get by.
Even Kawin thought it was an extravagance.
“He isn't even someone who passed down strong magic. Is there any need to keep paying our respects?”
“Heavens! Young Master!”
Vilkus, who had been clearing his throat again and again and making his discomfort plain,
finally had a vein bulge on his barren crown.
“We are before the altar! Watch your words! It may be magic worse than a flint now, but in the past, when Lord Dharma was alive, the Lightning line was the most powerful magic! Is that not so, Family Head?”
“The expression ‘worse than a flint’ is a bit…….”
Xymoron, who had dressed carefully in ceremonial robes, wore a look as though he had been stabbed with a knife.
Watching the two of them talk, Kawin tilted his head.
‘Lightning was the most powerful? When?’
[Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star] was a story about the Empire of the Sword, so fine.
But even the books kept by the family contained nothing of the sort.
Was it a kind of self-deluding victory, insisting that their ancestor couldn't possibly have been that weak?
As if reading Kawin's doubtful gaze,
Xymoron shrugged both shoulders.
“It is only normal not to believe it. But the stories of Lord Dharma are true. As the ages passed, the power of Lightning declined, but back then, of all those who stood upon the earth, there was no being stronger than Lord Dharma.”
“I see.”
Having checked his father's breathing and the smell of his sweat, Kawin knew he was telling the truth.
In that case, it was a shame that would linger for a long time.
If only House Anper could have used Dharma's abilities, survival would have been easier.
“Now then. Let us pray.”
Before an altar that could not be called sincere even as empty flattery,
Kawin and Xymoron bowed their heads.
And prayed in their hearts.
I finally got possessed into someone, and it's an empire and a family that are about to be destroyed?
Isn't this a bit much?
Anything's fine, so please grant me a way.
I'm confident in my ability to work hard.
It was closer to a protest than a prayer.
“Now it is time to view the grimoire he left behind.”
With that, Xymoron walked on ahead.
View, huh.
A grimoire was ultimately a kind of book, too, yet instead of ‘reading’ it, they would view it?
But Kawin soon understood what Xymoron meant.
“Whoa……!”
Dharma's ritual was held in the innermost room of the Anper mansion.
And the grimoire could only be seen by going one more compartment into that room.
“Didn't you say House Anper has kept the grimoire for hundreds of years?”
“Yes. That is true.”
“But…….”
-FLASH!
In his past life, he had heard there was something called a mirror ball.
Back then, he couldn't see, but now he could guess what sort of object it was.
A festival of color spraying dazzling, five-colored light in every direction.
Perhaps this grimoire was that mirror ball condensed hundreds of times over.
He had shed streams of tears facing the sun for the first time.
This was even harder to look at directly than that.
“A divine artifact truly is a divine artifact.”
“Isn't it?”
A stone pillar carved perfectly square.
Atop it rested Dharma's grimoire.
Even though an immeasurable length of time had passed, it was scattering light of every kind in all directions.
“Would it be all right if I touched it?”
“As much as you like.”
Kawin carefully reached out toward the grimoire.
No particular letters could be seen on the cover.
Only lights vying with one another to assert their presence.
The first page after turning the cover.
And the page after that were no different.
‘What is this?’
Tiny squares densely covering the pages.
Every page looked as if a Go board had been transplanted onto it.
There was nothing like letters anywhere.
Each page merely displayed different colors.
“Beautiful no matter when you look at it, is it not? Look to your heart's content, then come to the ranch. Vilkus and I will go ahead and give the fodder.”
Was he pleased that his son was showing interest for once?
Xymoron laughed heartily and left the grimoire's room first.
Now only Kawin and the grimoire remained in the room.
The multicolored light pouring out of it cast itself across the walls, dancing a dazzling dance.
“……Strange.”
He didn't know much about magic, but he knew what kind of object a grimoire was.
A divine artifact possessing a will of its own.
An object that could fairly be called an Archmage's lifelong effort and the culmination of his knowledge.
Would anyone make a grimoire just to put on a mirror ball show for hundreds of years?
‘No way.’
It couldn't be.
Besides the five senses that had developed because he could not see, there was one more thing that was sharp.
His sixth sense.
What one might call a ‘gut feeling.’
‘There's definitely a secret hidden in here.’
Kawin read the grimoire again and again from where he sat.
Tears streamed down because of the bright light, but he didn't care.
Repeating the same motion for hours on end in one spot, it felt as though time and space had gone numb.
What was in front of him.
How much time had passed.
It was an experience he'd faced until he was sick of it in the past.
That was why he could focus on the book all the more.
‘Glowing pages. Square cells. Colors glowing in each cell.’
But no matter how hard he tried to analyze the pattern, it was impossible.
Guessing at letters from colors was difficult in itself, and on top of that, different colors appeared even when he turned to the same page.
Was his sixth sense wrong this time?
Now and then he did see cells without color, but they didn't seem to mean anything in particular…….
“……Huh?”
In that instant.
Kawin shuddered like a man who had been electrocuted.
Because a thought had struck his mind like a bolt of lightning.
“Pure white square cells, without any color…….”
They were definitely there.
On every page, square cells that displayed no particular color and simply glowed white.
Very bright ones and less bright ones.
The white cells had two levels of brightness.
On every page, those cells sat at fixed positions, left and right,
and in three rows.
“This is……!”
Kawin sprang up from where he sat.
Once the thread came loose, everything after that raced on like a river running a thousand li at a stretch.
A pattern of three rows, left and right.
It was a shape all too familiar to Kawin, who had been unable to see in his past life.
‘No doubt about it!’
A thrill ran through him.
If a Braille book had small, round protrusions,
this grimoire had square cells with two levels of brightness.
In other words, this grimoire
was written in Braille.
***
One Braille character per page.
Naturally, it took several pages to decipher a single sentence.
But Kawin turned the pages as if possessed.
Reading Braille came to him as naturally as breathing.
The grimoire's Braille followed the Korean system, but another country's would not have been a problem.
He had mastered the Braille of nearly every country.
Rustle. Rustle.
A grimoire no one in this world had deciphered.
It was a gift meant for Kawin alone.
It felt as though his eardrums were dancing to his pounding heartbeat.
How noble the content, how profound the truths it must contain?
Kawin began to read the deciphered Braille in his mind.
[Fuck.]
“?”
The first sentence was ten million light-years away from what Kawin had imagined.
It seemed Dharma was a slightly different type from the Archmage Kawin had pictured.
But soon, he could understand why he had spat out a curse first.
[There is not much time left.]
[The thread of life given to me is about to snap.]
[Those fucking bastards. Weaklings, and look at them plotting together.]
[Were you so afraid of our power that you would ruin the truth?]
[I have little time left.]
[Not one bastard understood even after I taught them my whole life, so will anyone decipher this?]
[It is a hope as thin as a thread, but it is also true that I have no other way left.]
[I have poured all of my power into this grimoire.]
[The moment the book is complete, I will vanish from the world.]
[You who decipher this book, I urge you: use this power in the right place.]
[For you will soon become the strongest being upon the earth.]
Thump.
Kawin's heartbeat grew louder by another level.
[The ignorant street riffraff call our magic Lightning.]
[Do not spout that X-ing bullshit.]
[As they say, a you-know-what sees only you-know-what. Do you think such a trifling name could ever be fitting?]
[You who have deciphered the grimoire. Listen well.]
[The moment you read this grimoire to the end, you will be no measly ‘Lightning’ or the like, but…….]
Gulp.
With trembling hands, Kawin read the next page.
[You will become the Stormlord.]
KRA-KOOM!
A pure white bolt of lightning struck down from a sky without a single cloud.
A roar loud enough to burst eardrums, and a flash that merged all the world's colors into one.
The thunderbolt summoned by the Archmage's will came crashing down onto the Anper mansion.