My father was a man with enough money to buy a couple of neighboring kingdoms. And that father of mine had bowed his head. The past me had sneered that it looked cowardly and ugly, that I’d never live like him. I hadn’t the faintest idea of the dream that bowed head carried.
I regretted every moment of the past I’d lived through.
Five years at the military academy, ten years in the army including the Seven Years’ War—I’d break before I’d bend. That was why I was torn out by the roots. And it wasn’t only me. The lives of five million foreigners were torn out too.
During my ten years in exile, my thinking divided into an early first year, a middle two years, and a late seven years. The first year was a period of self-abandonment. After that, I went over my regrets again and again, chewing on “what if” thousands of times.
The conclusion: I hadn’t known myself, and I’d refused to admit it.
I’d blindly trusted the power of money far too much.
My nonexistent political sense had shut my eyes.
Trusting in my father’s money, I’d insisted on the frontal approach, yet I never tried to understand what it meant when my father, the owner of that money, bowed his head. Failing to recognize the dream he’d wanted to realize through his son, I’d only pushed forward, drowning in arrogance.
What couldn’t be done simply couldn’t be done.
Left all alone on the island, I was dying day by day.
Every moment of being alive was so hard and lonely that it was unbearable. Every single day, I refused food, and worn out by starvation, hunger, and loneliness, I fell asleep hoping never to open my eyes again.
Days more miserable than the word misery, days devoured by misery—back then, death was my life’s only purpose.
‘This is no time to be bound to the past.’
‘I have to live.’
‘A living life has to strive to keep living. That’s the courtesy owed to life.’
One day, when the brilliant sun pried my eyelids open, birds were flying, carving paths across the sky. In that moment, a realization struck like lightning.
That while I was alive, I had to strive to stay alive—I roused myself and stood up.
Recalling the theories of mana synchronization and phase shifting, I transformed the nature of magic-power binding by bringing the properties of the magic restraints into my own body. By compressing and absorbing magic with binding properties into my own, I changed the very definition of the mana transmutation formula.
At last, I succeeded in breaking the magic restraints.
Having regained the freedom of my body, I immediately began my own training.
The island was the most brutal training course imaginable.
In case someone came onto the island while I slept and killed me, I wrapped my surroundings in mana and covered the island with my magic current. I slept until my mana ran dry, and when I woke, I refilled it and started again.
Magic power was like muscle. As I repeated the process of using it to the limit every day and recovering, my limit grew to the extreme. Through capacity, recovery speed, output, and ultra-precise density and purity, I succeeded in making my mana core infinite.
At times a sharp sword, at times gentle water—only after I’d achieved ‘Memorize=Mental-Image Manifestation’ so that I could use it freely as needed without constructing a formula did I take up the sword.
Even if I’d made my magic infinite, when radiance and abyss met, an enormous amount of energy was consumed, and when space-time and the source of life met, existence itself was erased. Flame and frost were also opposing forces that couldn’t be held in one vessel, and if they met one-on-one, there was a risk of annihilation. A hair-raising situation where my combat power would drop to zero.
To fill these gaps, swordsmanship was essential.
Even on the battlefield, mages and swordsmen often paired up for combat to cover each other’s gaps.
To awaken to the deep principles of the sword and reach the pinnacle of no-mind.
There’s no irony quite like a mage dreaming of becoming a Sword Master, but to protect my own life, I had to do whatever it took.
Every time I swung the sword, my father’s frustration entered my heart.
“Guess being too big puts limits on your movement. And here I was, jealous.”
At Nikolai’s words, which broke my reverie, I turned to Marquis Leo Herzl and spoke, as if to agree.
It was the beginning of finely wrought politics.
“Watching Nikolai climb up from the bottom of the cliff, I was in awe. I thought, this isn’t something you can learn. Even so, I’ll learn a great deal.”
“Better to just ask your father to fill you up with mana, I should think. There is that famous mana tonic, is there not? Hahaha.”
Nothing happened until Marquis Herzl let go of my hand. I’d wondered whether the ability I’d gained from regressing let me read everyone’s memories.
Come to think of it, nothing had changed when I took Gaston Philippe’s hand while climbing the cliff either.
The twelve Slaughter.
It’d be right to say that the memories of those whose mana I’d swallowed had been copied.
“Take care. See you at General.”
“Yeah. I’ll learn a lot from you.”
“Learn? Share a deep friendship as classmates.”
“You heard my father, right? Friendship, he says.”
Nikolai Herzl took my hand, going on about friendship as his father had said. At that moment, the view before my eyes changed again. Turning the ground into the inside of an ether lake, a scene floated up. I couldn’t clearly tell whether it was forming on my retinas or whether the memory was simply as vivid as if I’d lived it myself.
The place was clearly a lecture room, but black blackout curtains had been lowered, and there were very few students. A handful of students sat in a circle, and all their faces were blurred. Only Nikolai’s face was strikingly clear. This time too, the scene came with sound.
Nikolai wore the same cadet uniform as now and had a youthful face.
-Cadets, you who shine brightest when you move toward a purpose—I cherish you. Outstanding combat mages, pioneers, and innovators are born from among you.
Nikolai’s expression turned proud.
Then the professor snapped his fingers and brought up footage recording disasters in midair. Strewn corpses, burning cities, collapsed towers, ruined battlefields, and so on.
-These are the results of counting small sacrifices as worthwhile for the sake of a great purpose. Suppose the ruined cities were restored with magic. Since the great purpose was achieved, may we turn our eyes away from those results?
Silence fell over the lecture room.
-Cadets, a purpose is right when it takes responsibility for its results. Conviction is completed on a foundation of moral and ethical responsibility. The Empire declared itself a nation where people live together in harmony. I beg you, do not forget altruistic elitism. You make what is called a choice, knowing what you will tear down and knowing what you will sacrifice, but when you choose, keep this in mind. That you must carry that choice for the rest of your lives.
-Professor, mixing altruism with elitism is a contradiction in itself.
One of the blurred faces argued against the professor’s words.
-Then you need only learn the joy one feels in giving.
-There is no such thing. A parent giving to a child. Only then does one feel joy. Feeling joy in giving outside of that would be nothing but a pretense. And a choice is only a choice. I believe the result that follows a choice is itself the responsibility. I see no need to go so far as to carry it.
-Is that your conviction?
At the professor’s question, a red radiance rose above the student’s head and spread throughout the lecture room. It was his conviction answering: yes. The professor wrinkled his nose at the answer, smoothed it out, and went on.
-Conviction is not discarded simply because one tries to discard it. It is innate. Instead, all of you must learn responsibility.
The instant he finished speaking, the red radiance floating above Nikolai’s head swelled. Sparks crackled—fssssst—then in a flash burst out as piercing light. Just as the cadets leapt from their seats to face the red resonance, the professor brought his staff down.
CRASH!
A silver-white magic array flowed out and swallowed the sparks.
-Young Herzl, for no reason other than wanting to beat me in a debate, this lecture room nearly became the site of a disaster. One or two of your classmates would have died. Do you still believe this result has itself taken responsibility?
-We’d just clean it up. Those who couldn’t dodge would have taken responsibility with their own lives.
The answer came not from Nikolai but from someone else in his place.
Nodding vigorously at that someone’s words, Nikolai continued.
-Professor, the Empire has conceded far too much all this time. The Empire needs purification. That isn’t a disaster. It’s a resolution.
-You see disaster as resolution? Then we shall have to debate the dictionary definition of resolution. Before that, what has the Empire conceded?
Because the hand let go before I could hear the answer, the scene vanished and the ground went flat again.
It seemed Professor Highland had wanted to stop Nikolai’s gang from whatever they were trying to do as they ran around in a pack, but debate didn’t work on them.
Seeing disaster as resolution.
And claiming that the responsibility for a choice had already ended with its result.
A “common sense” that had strayed far from any sensible common sense.
By my standards, it was utterly incomprehensible. My head had started to ache, and I’d been on the verge of retching.
“Professor Hubert, since fate brought us together today, let us see each other often.”
“Please call on me.”
“Yes, yes. It was a very fine meal.”
Leo Herzl, the racist who didn’t offer a single word of thanks for the meal even after my father had treated him.
His son, Nikolai Herzl, a core member of the Purification Alliance that shut out and annihilated immigrants, and one of the Slaughter.
As a poor (?) marquis with no inherited fief, he lacked the middle name ‘de,’ which signified a fief. To them, that must have been a grievance a thousand autumns long. To secure even a fief to develop, they’d need my father’s money. Wasn’t the real meaning behind “let us see each other often” a longing for money?
And one more thing.
Marquis Herzl probably intended to keep Nikolai glued to my side. He hadn’t chosen me but my father’s money, no doubt, but I welcomed it.
“I plan to go straight to Duke Philippe’s funeral. And you, Professor Hubert?”
“Several of our affiliates, Rune Weave included, have sent funeral wreaths.”
The Empire’s soldiers wore uniforms infused with mana. Protective uniforms that spears and blades couldn’t pierce. They were an imperial asset achieved through my father’s magic nuclear energy technology, produced and supplied under a monopoly by the magic uniform manufacturer ‘Rune Weave.’
The company’s head was Otto von Strasbourg, who had campaigned for human rights on the side of immigrants, arguing that immigration law needed to become a little more lenient. Of pure imperial blood. Only under his name would a wreath delivered to the funeral hall actually be set out. Wreaths sent under the name of Hubert Eigenhardt were liable to be thrown away.
When even the wreaths were thrown away, would my father even be let in if he went to pay his respects?
Knowing all this, Marquis Herzl suggested it anyway, odiously.
“It would be good if we went to pay our respects together. You seem busy, though.”
“Yes. I must return to my laboratory. I hope you will comfort him well.”
My father personally opened the door of Marquis Herzl’s official car as he got in, and bowed at the waist.
I bowed at the waist beside him as well.
“Young Marquis Nikolai, when I see you at school in three days, I’ll speak to you casually.”
“Right. I’m looking forward to the friendship we’ll share.”
I bowed politely at the waist to Nikolai Herzl as he got into the seat beside the Marquis. Because he held out his hand to say goodbye, I took his hand for the third time. I’d expected a new scene, but something unexpected unfolded.
Like the legend that people connected by a red thread on their pinky fingers are destined to meet, a core web that only I could see stretched like thread between him and me, and his previous life flowed into me. His infancy and childhood, his five years at the academy, the seven years of war, and even the ten years I’d spent exiled on Devil’s Island—all of it.
He let go of my hand with a face that knew nothing.
I’d swallowed the mana of the twelve who’d been crushing me to death, the same way I’d broken the magic restraints. That had worked a miracle and brought me here, to the past. I, who’d been forty-one, had become seventeen and finished the entrance ceremony of General Military Academy.
I’d killed the leader the Slaughter called their captain, found one of the twelve bastards, and copied his memories. The mana I’d swallowed so as not to die, the mana I’d swallowed so we’d all die together, seemed to have opened a door by shaking hands with its original owner. On the third try—third time’s the charm.
Could I bring over the memories of the other eleven too?
Had I brought over their mana and abilities as well?
I clearly remembered the people who’d been close to Gaston Philippe. Every one of them was a General Military Academy graduate and a classmate of mine. First, Nikolai Herzl. Then Dolf Rudils, Hans Rosenberg, and Chloe Dahl, whose names I’d called out on a guess.
All of them had risen to the rank of lord. In the final moments, I’d realized there were Constellations among them too.
Had the group been made up only of lords, or had Constellations been mixed in? Among the many people close to Gaston Philippe, who were the Slaughter? From now on, that was what I had to find out.
What if I found them all and copied every one of them?
I’d be able to learn who had done what from the Purification Alliance’s very infancy. What incident had triggered the massacre, and since when I’d become their prey—everything.
The Empire during my seven years at war and ten years in exile, seen through the eyes of the twelve—in the end, I’d be remembering it through one-sided values, but I could make my own interpretation based on their memories, so I’d come to know every corner of the Empire.
Right. Having set off something as enormous as a regression, there was no way it had sent me back without any benefit.
“Dro, I think academy life will be fun with you around. I’m looking forward to it. Next time we meet, please, just call me Nikol.”
Nikolai Herzl even rolled down the window to wave at me.
I bowed my head slightly, politely, but at an angle that wouldn’t look servile. In this life, I had to appear as an ordinary man who lived in conformity with an immigrant’s lot. I had to look like the Empire’s dog, who knew his place and lived with his head low.
Everything, just like my father.
If I was to have a future, it had to be that way.
Watching the car pull away from the hotel, I bit down slowly on the inside of my cheek. A certain premonition settled into my chest.
Someday, the car carrying that family would overturn, and everyone inside would die instantly.
***
TL Note: “Finely wrought politics” — the raw plays on, which means both “finely wrought” and “politics”.