ZAP!
A pitch darkness where nothing ahead could be seen.
And the dazzling light gifted by thunder and lightning.
Kawin had become someone who had experienced both extremes of black and white that existed in the world.
Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt……!
A crackling sound tickled his ears.
Thunder and lightning powerful enough to rock the entire mansion.
A young man in his late teens who had taken the full brunt of that energy.
Kawin's eyes snapped open.
“……It's big.”
A white circle was reflected in Kawin's blue eyes.
It was so large that he had to tilt his head all the way back to take in the whole of it.
Around that circle, sparks large and small were leaping this way and that.
‘What is this?’
Kawin slowly stepped toward the white circle.
He wanted to touch it with his own hands.
That was an old habit of Kawin's.
Even now that he could see, Kawin often examined important things with his hands.
“Ah……!”
But he could not.
Every time Kawin took a step closer, the white circle drew exactly that much farther away.
As if it were something that could never be reached.
Kawin moved his legs, still trembling faintly from the lightning strike, a few steps.
He soon reached a conclusion.
‘This circle isn't here.’
It was before Kawin's eyes.
But it did not exist in reality.
The root of magic that every awakened mage held within their mind.
That was the Circle.
‘It's ridiculously huge. Is this what a Circle is supposed to feel like?’
Kawin briefly recalled [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star].
He soon shook his head.
‘No. There was no description like that in the novel.’
-All five heart-sized Circles were shattered.
That was the kind of description the novel had.
So this Circle had to be considered quite unusual.
Unless it was a giant out of myth, no being could fit a Circle this large inside its body.
Zzt. Zzzt.
The remnants of the lightning that had wrapped around his whole body gradually died down.
On the other hand, there was something growing steadily clearer.
The white, brilliant Circle created within Kawin's body.
Engravings were appearing on its surface one by one.
‘This is……!’
Not the language of this world, but writing only Kawin could read.
It was ‘Braille.’
[Stormlord]
[Passive : Current Devour]
[Passive : Electron Perception]
[Passive : Lightning Flash]
[First Orbis]
Stormlord.
The word the Archmage Dharma had spoken was clearly engraved there.
‘Why is there…… so much?’
The moment he completed a single Orbis, three basic abilities had been created.
Understanding the concepts was easy.
After all, the magical knowledge contained in the grimoire had been clearly engraved into Kawin's mind.
‘First Orbis…… I guess it's written like that because there's only one circle?’
As if to say it was on a different level from ordinary mages,
the circle before his eyes used the peculiar term ‘Orbis’ instead of ‘Circle.’
Its size, and the sparks leaping across its surface, too.
It certainly looked distinct from a Circle.
But there were similarities as well.
Just as with Circles, the more Orbises there were, the stronger he would surely become.
‘First…….’
Lightning Flash.
Kawin closed his eyes and focused on the sensation of mana flowing through his body.
When he had first become Kawin, he could only sense mana by concentrating fiercely.
Now, even when he stayed still, he could feel the flow of mana surging like raging billows.
‘I'll root this in the nerves of my whole body.’
Kawin moved his mana, following the contents of the grimoire.
This ability was a nervous-system skill that made the user's body faster.
From the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes.
He spread mana into every nerve he could feel.
Bzzt!
When he activated Lightning Flash, the world around Kawin instantly turned into slow motion.
‘Slow.’
He felt he could make dozens of round trips to the ranch where his father was before the dust falling from the roof reached the floor.
Kawin moved his feet without hesitation.
ZAP!
Blue sparks leapt from the soles of Kawin's shoes.
Godlike speed, in the most literal sense.
A speed that could easily sneer at the charge of a seasoned knight.
However,
“Huff…… huff!”
Kawin's body was far too frail to use ‘Lightning Flash.’
Unable to move more than a few steps, Kawin had to gasp for breath.
Not only his lungs, but every muscle in his body was screaming.
“Before any skill…… I need to make my body tougher first.”
Having barely steadied his breathing, Kawin soon straightened his back.
Now it was time to figure out the second basic ability.
That one needed no separate practice or examination.
Kawin looked toward the mansion's entrance and smiled slightly.
“No wonder they're startled.”
He could sense two sources of magic power rapidly approaching from dozens of meters away.
They were surely the energies of his father and Vilkus.
Kawin was able to detect the two sources of magic power without difficulty.
A supersense that far surpassed the five senses of an ordinary human.
Electron Perception was already at work.
***
“Kawin! Kawin!”
“Young Masterrrrr!”
Xymoron and Vilkus rushed into the mansion, their voices desperate.
A bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
The scene they had witnessed was exactly that.
Its scale was rather embarrassing to call a noble's mansion, but it was still far larger than an ordinary family home.
Since lightning had engulfed that entire mansion, it would not have been strange at all if everyone inside had been electrocuted to death.
“Father.”
But Kawin was standing in front of the main gate, perfectly unharmed.
He had read the magic power the two of them possessed and come out to meet them in advance.
“Oh! Dear God!”
“Young Master! You are alive!”
“Yes. I'm fine. Everyone who was inside the mansion is safe, too.”
Kawin reassured the two of them, but Xymoron kept patting Kawin all over with both hands.
“Are you truly all right? Somehow, it seems to smell a little burnt, too.”
“There's nothing wrong. More importantly…….”
Kawin's blue eyes sparkled.
“As expected of the one remaining Lightning house. To think you built such a device into this big mansion.”
“Hm? A device?”
“You set it up so the power of the lightning could flow underground, right? Thanks to that, I survived, too.”
“That…… is……?”
A deep furrow formed between Xymoron's brows.
A device that sent the power of lightning into the ground?
Far from having installed one, it was the first he had ever heard that such a technique even existed.
But Xymoron's worry did not last long.
What mattered was the fact that no one, Kawin included, had been hurt.
“That is it! Perhaps one of our forefathers built such a device! Lightning magic would have been very strong back then, after all!”
“Oh. I thought so.”
Kawin nodded, as though it finally made sense.
The sight of the platinum-blond father and son beaming innocently at each other was as lovely as a golden sunset, but Vilkus' expression was not.
“How did you know we were coming here…… that you came out to meet us?”
“Of course I knew you'd come. With all this commotion, wouldn't it be stranger if you two had stayed at the ranch?”
“That is…… certainly true, but.”
At Kawin's smooth excuse, Vilkus nodded and took out a handkerchief.
Then he carefully wiped his sweat-drenched crown.
He must have run over in quite a hurry.
A moment later, his expression a little darker, Kawin held out an object from inside his coat.
“But what should we do about this? I'm fine, but…….”
As if it had been thrust into a firebox and pulled back out, the charred-black grimoire was in Kawin's hand.
The light that had shone brightly enough to blind had vanished without a trace.
“…….”
Xymoron looked down at the grimoire with empty eyes.
The grimoire, which could be called the very reason for the family's existence, had been lost in his generation, so his sense of loss must have been as vast as the sea.
But soon, he bared his teeth in a broad smile.
“This is fine now. It was a grimoire no one could decipher anyway, was it not? What matters is the hearts of the descendants toward Lord Dharma. As long as our will carries on, this grimoire is as good as still shining.”
“Family Head……!”
“Vilkus, make a display cabinet and keep this grimoire in it. It is badly burnt, so be careful it does not crumble.”
With that, Xymoron turned his back without a trace of regret and headed for the ranch.
Along with a remark that he ought to do a good deal of milking today.
He was a man who had steadfastly cherished Dharma and the grimoire even when everyone pointed their fingers at him.
Even though it was gone, Xymoron simply walked on, looking only ahead.
A broad, rugged back that anyone would call a country farmer's.
Destroying the grimoire had not been Kawin's will, but he could not help feeling troubled.
Kawin gazed at that retreating back with deepened eyes.
‘A man who carries a load of heavy things on his shoulders and never stops moving forward.’
He was someone who suited the word ‘father’ extremely well, something Kawin had never once encountered in his past life.
***
That night.
Kawin muffled his footsteps and slowly stepped out of the mansion.
There was one sentry guarding the main gate, but that was no problem.
‘Mister Jefferson. He's even snoring in his sleep.’
That sentry had spent the day until sunset wrestling with his father to milk the sheep.
Having slipped past the watch with utter ease, Kawin walked south.
A handful of land that, meager as it was, fed the impoverished Anper Viscounty.
Without even this, the Anper territory might have become a region where only the grimoire drew breath.
“……That's enormous.”
At the edge of the fertile land stood piles of stones, rising like graves.
In size, they looked more like meteorites than boulders.
Megaliths that even a fairly skilled mage would wave off, saying, ‘Ah, this is a bit much.’
‘And beneath them…….’
There was land like the land Kawin was standing on now.
In other words, if those stones were simply blown away, the Anper territory could make a somewhat better living.
It would have been nice if some powerful magic, wind or water, had pushed the boulders aside, but
“This family's static electricity wouldn't have stood a chance.”
Kawin smiled slightly and stood before the megaliths.
Tonight.
Kawin intended to learn his first spell against these megaliths.
[The most efficient magic makes the strongest magic.]
Dharma's grimoire had clearly left that message.
Kawin knew now.
That the Rune script mages had created was a shoddy ‘fake.’
It was nothing more than a script that roughly imitated the principles of magic written in Braille.
The script of magic that Dharma had tried to teach, spitting blood, but had failed to.
In this era, there was no one other than Kawin who could decipher it.
“Incantations and magic arrays are the same.”
Trying to draw out magic with a fake, the procedure had no choice but to grow complicated.
Kawin simply held out his right palm.
Then, picturing the image he had in mind, he drew out a handful of the mana held in his Orbis.
‘A sharp, sleek form that attacks from long range.’
Since it was the first stage (First-Orbis),
he chose the most intuitive of the spells contained in the grimoire.
An Arrow.
People would probably have called it Lightning Arrow, but not in Dharma's day.
Not some measly(?) Lightning, but a mace of thunder carved from a lightning bolt.
‘Divine Bolt.’
Translated literally, the lightning of God.
He was a mage who had only just taken his first step, but as the Stormlord, he had the right to use this name.
Kawin drew out an enormous amount of mana, so much that his Orbis instantly grew thin.
Yet for some reason, nothing changed in Kawin's palm.
“Did I fail……?”
Since it was the first spell he had cast, it seemed there had been some trial and error.
He needed to hurry a little.
The pitch-dark night had passed, and reflected light was beginning to shine off the surrounding megaliths.
It seemed dawn was about to break, so he needed to get back before morning came…….
“Wait.”
Kawin stopped thinking.
Ever since he had begun to see, telling day from night was not difficult.
Shouldn't dawn still be a long way off?
Kawin absentmindedly lifted his head.
“Whoa!”
Then he let out an exclamation without realizing it.
A white bolt of electricity, dozens of times larger than a real arrow, had risen like the sun.
So much so that, in this moment, one might wonder whether the sun was even necessary.
ZZZAP!
Its size made it look more like a small missile than an arrow.
What had brightly lit the surfaces of the megaliths was not the sun, but this very ‘Divine Bolt.’
Tingle.
The first spell he had ever created in his life.
And an Archmage's skill he had summoned, at that, so a thrill ran through his whole body.
Now that he looked, it seemed it had been too large to form in Kawin's palm, so it had been formed above his head instead.
‘It didn't fail……!’
If anything, it was closer to a resounding success.
All that was left now was…….
‘Go!’
Kawin fired the Divine Bolt at the megaliths ahead.
As a result,
KA-BOOOOM!
“Ack!”
As if a meteorite had fallen right under his nose, the earth's axis shook, and Kawin's body was flung back.
The shockwave carried by the wind whipped Kawin's platinum-blond hair mercilessly.
If not for the sense of balance sharpened by Electron Perception, he would have tumbled over pathetically.
Twisting his body in midair, Kawin landed a good hundred meters from where he had used the Divine Bolt.
“That should have…….”
Broken one or two megaliths, at least?
Pushing through the thick white smoke and dust, Kawin walked forward.
And he let out an exclamation without realizing it.
“Whoa!”
It was not just one or two.
As if a natural disaster had struck.
The more than twenty megaliths embedded there had been completely razed.
And at the end of that disaster…….
“Haha. I did it.”
The fertile land that existed in the Anper Viscounty.
Kawin had just created one more treasure exactly like it.