Around the time the Demon King descended in the past.
At the Goddess’s call, a Hero suddenly appeared in this world.
The Hero, Eleksid Graeme.
He was a peculiar existence who, one day, suddenly.
Dropped straight from the sky without any warning at all.
“There are too many people here, so let’s lure the demons as far to the outskirts as we can before fighting them!”
“If we suffer just a little more, won’t there be less damage to people when we deal with the demonic beasts?”
“How could I just leave the monsters alone when they’re moving after people?”
“I’ll stop them, so everyone, evacuate!”
No matter how difficult things became, the Hero was always righteous.
He was more selfless than anyone.
And when it came to self-sacrifice, he had no hesitation or reluctance whatsoever.
There was not even anyone who had seen him get angry.
Tvalier, the mage of the Hero’s party.
Felt an indescribable sense of incongruity toward that Hero.
Such absolute good.
Could such a thing exist in the world?
He could not understand the absolute evil called the Demon King either.
But the unconditional goodness shown by the Hero Graeme was also something that, in Tvalier’s opinion, could not originally exist in this world.
No, it felt like something that should not exist.
Though they were traveling together to defeat the Demon King.
Tvalier often had to feel a kind of rejection toward the Hero that was difficult to express precisely as a human being.
“Tri. I know you hate me.”
“Was it that obvious? You’ve gotten smart.”
“How could I not know when you look at me like that every time?”
Around evening.
Before a campfire, the Hero Graeme ended up quietly conversing with Tvalier.
During that conversation, Tvalier honestly revealed what was in his heart.
“The truth is, I think you may be more dangerous than the Demon King.”
“……Did you hate me that much?”
“It’s a little different from hatred. I simply see you as dangerous.”
Because an absolute evil called the Demon King had appeared in the world. This world had, through the regulator called the Goddess, “suddenly” created the absolute good called the Hero.
That was the conclusion Tvalier reached.
‘An existence created by the needs of the world.’
That was the Hero, Eleksid Graeme.
Naturally, since he had been created without any narrative or causality.
The existence called Eleksid Graeme was something that should vanish together with the Demon King once the Demon King disappeared.
“You said your lifespan was short, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s what the Goddess told me. I guess I have about three years left now.”
Humanity’s strongest swordsman.
Grand Sword Master.
That was the realm of the Hero, Eleksid Graeme.
In truth, as Tvalier saw it.
He seemed to be at a stage higher than Grand Sword Master, but there was no particular name set for the stage above that.
In any case, for such an absolute superhuman to have only about three years left to live.
It made no sense by common sense.
“You have no memories at all from before you received the Goddess’s revelation?”
“Nope.”
The somewhat dim-looking young man before him.
One day, suddenly.
Had been granted the name Eleksid Graeme along with a mission from the Goddess, and through awakening, he had become humanity’s strongest decisive battle weapon. A Hero who would slay the Demon King.
A rural bumpkin who had never held a sword once in his life had become a Grand Sword Master, the summit of this world, in a single instant.
‘Unreasonable.’
No talent.
No effort.
No pain.
Not even the investment of any time.
And yet he had become an absolute being overnight.
Even Tvalier, whose talent was so outstanding that he was called the greatest magical genius in history, could not accept it.
To be honest.
Rather than the horned monster crouching far away in the Demon King’s Castle, threatening to destroy the world.
This dazed fellow before his eyes felt even more incomprehensible.
“I neither hate you nor like you. I simply don’t understand you.”
“If that’s all, I’m glad.”
“Glad, my ass. Go to sleep.”
Archmage Tvalier was a rational person.
Thus, while traveling with the Hero for that long time, he continued ceaselessly investigating that unreasonable existence.
‘Nothing simply comes into being on its own without any causality.’
If the being called the Goddess possessed the authority to create an absolute good called the Hero overnight.
Without any cost or condition.
Then why was this world so filled with suffering?
If the Goddess simply flicked her finger and mass-produced absolute goods like that, this world would be filled with peace.
But the reality was not so.
‘Then even for the Goddess, there must be certain specific conditions or costs involved in creating a Hero.’
His investigation of this phenomenon continued in that manner, each thought leading to the next.
If the Goddess could not continue creating Heroes indefinitely.
Then was she not, in the first place, an omnipotent being as written in the scriptures?
Such thoughts were utterly irreverent and insolent toward the Goddess.
But Tvalier did not care in the slightest.
Because what mattered to him was simply ceaselessly investigating and contemplating the rules and principles possessed by this thing called the “world.”
That was what a mage was.
And the one who stood at the pinnacle of that existence called a mage was none other than Tvalier.
In any case, after quite a long journey.
Even when the horned Demon King fell by the Hero’s hand, and peace finally came to the world.
Tvalier ceaselessly contemplated the “rules” of the world.
And at last, he realized it.
‘Something about this world is fundamentally strange.’
The appearance of the Demon King and the appearance of the Hero.
The common point between those two was that, without any particular causality, they had come into existence one day, suddenly.
As if they had merely “naturally occurred” because the time had come for them to appear once every thousand years.
‘As though someone had written the script that way from the beginning.’
Tvalier held strong doubts about that fact.
And he strove to determine the cause.
Then, at some point.
Tvalier glimpsed a fragment of truth.
Thus, he himself became an existence that escaped the rules of the world.
The closed world with a lid placed over it.
He became able to see the world, which had been like a fishbowl, from a third party’s perspective.
In that way, Tvalier awakened by his own power, without anyone’s help.
And left the lower dimension he had been in, leaping into the world of the Higher Dimension.
One small drop of water had finally crossed over the wall.
Thanks to that, the surface of the fishbowl of the Higher Dimension overflowed ever so slightly.
But Tvalier himself knew nothing of it , and even if he had known, it was something he would not have cared about.
***
“Do you remember the incident not long ago when a crack formed in the dimensional wall?”
“Haah, of course. Because of that, the higher-ups broke into a sweat negotiating with the beast bastards, didn’t they? It was fortunate they barely managed to come to an agreement with that side and patch the crack back up. If that matter had grown larger back then, we might have ended up in another great war with the beasts.”
“It was dangerous. But did they find the cause of the crack?”
“No, not at all. Even now, no one knows the reason. The higher-ups seem to think that since the seal had been maintained for a long time, it must have loosened a little.”
Somewhere high in the sky, where the humans of the Lower World could not even dare perceive it.
Those beyond the sky were immortal cultivators who looked down over the humans of the Lower World.
And the immortal cultivators were people who, very long ago.
Had separately created a world called the “Immortal Realm” and lived in a world perfectly cut off from the Lower World.
“By the way, I’m worried because the lower-world bastards have been so noisy lately. They only keep fighting.”
“They were always like that. They’re trying to do something with limited resources down below too, so conflict can’t be helped.”
“Even so. The problem is that the somewhat useful ones keep fighting each other like that and dying. This only benefits the beast bastards.”
“What can be done when the higher-ups cannot speak with one voice? We simply have to do as we’re told.”
“Sigh, those damn factional struggles need to lessen already. At this rate, I wonder whether there’s any meaning in going through all that hardship, even using loopholes, just to interfere with the Lower World.”
The two immortal cultivators each stood before a huge mirror, grumbling as they diligently touched something and switched the screens.
“It can’t be helped. We have to pull even one more person up from the Lower World somehow. Even if it’s a little troublesome, we have to do it.”
“Tsk, but to think we have to invest this many resources and this much time into bastards without much talent. What a waste.”
And somewhere that the surveillance from the heavens did not reach.
A boy named Il-hyang was attempting to create a new order that had never existed in the existing world.
***
The flow of a Circle was intuitive.
Drawing an infinite circle using centrifugal force around the heart, where life force was strongest.
That was precisely a Circle, and it was the source of a mage.
‘But…… what in the world is wrong with this?’
Il-hyang frowned while sitting cross-legged.
In order to create the first Circle, he tried to draw inner arts out of his heart and rotate it.
‘It won’t move.’
No matter how much force he applied horizontally.
His inner arts strongly resisted as if blocked by something and kept returning to his heart.
Because a considerable amount of inner arts was also lost in that process, cold sweat flowed down Il-hyang’s forehead.
‘I must succeed no matter what. There is no second chance.’
If he failed on the first attempt, then no matter how much he prepared afterward, he would have no choice but to create a smaller Circle than the first one.
Because an indelible scar would form in the mana circuit of his heart.
The size of a Circle was equal to the size of its rotational force.
If the Circle was large, the rotational force grew larger.
If the rotational force grew larger, the energy absorption grew larger.
In short, the larger the Circle, the better.
This was something that could only appear as an overwhelming gap later, as the number of Circles gradually increased.
‘After I went to the trouble of calculating and gathering the maximum amount of inner arts that wouldn’t burden the heart.’
Il-hyang took the unfamiliar energy called inner arts.
Filtered it through a sieve again and again to make it as pure as possible.
Then carefully calculated and condensed the maximum amount of energy that would not strain his heart.
He had created the perfect conditions to make a Circle.
And yet he was going to fail?
He would have to make a Circle smaller than the first?
‘Not a chance.’
He had to find the method in real time.
He had to discover as quickly as possible why inner arts could not create the centrifugal force of a Circle.
‘Pyeong So-byeok simply gathered inner arts in his qi center like an idiot.’
Once more, Il-hyang drew a strand of inner arts from his heart like silk thread.
And he twisted that thinly drawn silk thread like a twisted doughnut, making it into the form of a chain.
After that, he tried with difficulty to rotate it horizontally around his heart.
‘Ugh…… It’s doing this again.’
The silk thread made of inner arts rejected that movement and kept drooping powerlessly downward.
As if this was not allowed.
It felt like a warning that he was violating the rules.
Suddenly, at some point.
The thought flashed through him that he might have experienced something similar to this before.
But right now, Il-hyang’s concentration was rapidly being depleted, and the recollection stopped.
‘Does this world truly not accept the rule called Circles?’
Was that why no one had ever attempted it?
When Il-hyang’s will weakened for a very brief instant.
The movement of the strand of inner arts that had powerlessly descended downward became somewhat strange.
‘Huh? Could it be?’
At that moment, a flash of inspiration swiftly passed through his mind.
Il-hyang clenched his teeth and did not let it go.
So instead of moving the inner arts horizontally, he tried making them move vertically.
Then.
As if it had all been a lie, the inner arts moved so naturally, and the flow continued onward.
‘It works! This was it!’
The strand of inner arts drawn from his heart.
Began to flow vertically around his heart.
It was the moment his fixed preconception about Circles shattered.
In that way, he struggled to create a single thin path.
And over it, he drew out all the inner arts in his heart and poured them into the mana circuit.
He had only one chance, and if this failed, there was nothing left after that.
Fortunately.
The gamble Il-hyang attempted was successful.
CLINK-CLINK—!
Together with a sound in his mind like a thin iron chain linking together.
A single stable Circle was completed around his heart.
At the same time, Il-hyang opened the eyes he had closed.
A blue sparkling light burst out for a short while, but only for a very brief moment.
Il-hyang soon blinked his eyes, which had returned to normal.