Chapter 492

So all that remained here was the brain, and perhaps there was nothing below the head at all.

Everything in existence crashes into perception, making itself known in countless moments. When you run in a trance, there are times when your legs simply refuse to stop. The brain never stops working, even in the deepest sleep, and you cannot stop it any more than you can gather up every thought racing in all directions with both hands.

Thought is, in the truest sense, the most primitive survival method breathing ever imitated. Perhaps it is the last thing that belongs to humanity, too.

It exists, yet it does not exist.

Thought can only barely express an imitation of what it truly is through means like speech, writing, images, and actions—means that are hopelessly confused compared to its own essence. Even as it emerges, it becomes distorted and altered, sometimes going so far as to destroy the original.

Robert Musil wrote this—und niemand in aller Welt kann seine Gedanken von der Art befrein, in der seine Zeit das Sprachkleid trägt. Kein Mensch weiß darum, wieviel er von dem, was er schreibt, auch genau so meint, und beim Schreiben verdrehn die Menschen beiweitem nicht so die Worte wie die Worte den Menschen.

(And no one in this world can free their thoughts from the language their era wears. Therefore, no one knows whether what they write truly matches what they intended, and when people write, they distort words far less than words distort people.)

It was unclear whether this meant that humanity’s boundless thoughts had been trapped within the narrow limits of language, or that language truly constrained thought itself. But what an idea to stimulate the experimental spirit. Indeed. It was so.

Regardless of whether I formulate this thought in English, Français oder Deutsch, stelle ich fest, dass es mir unmöglich ist, die Essenz meiner Gedanken direkt zu extrahieren. Ach, 아니면 soll ich es so ausdrücken, um meinen Gedanken vollständiger Ausdruck zu verleihen: Es bleibt eine unüberwindliche Unmöglichkeit, dessen Essenz aus den Windungen des Geistes zu extrahieren.

(Regardless of whether I formulate this thought in English, French, or German, I cannot extract my thoughts from my mind exactly as they are. Ah, or perhaps I should put it this way to express my thoughts more completely: It remains an insurmountable impossibility to extract that essence from the convolutions of the mind.)

Damn it. Either way.

In the end, Musil was right, and so was Yourcenar’s Hadrian, who displayed such admirable honesty by saying that words distort the truth. After all, the world of thought is nothing more than the workings of the brain—and therefore exists only within the skull, and therefore appears as though it does not exist at all. To take thought out of the skull is fundamentally impossible!

Plato was a pioneer of all ages. One cannot perceive the Form through weak human senses. Every brain on Earth has its own world trapped inside it. Was time itself terrifying? Or was it the worlds splitting apart that were terrifying?

I panicked at the fact that, despite there being a world erupting inside every human mind, there was no way to transfer it intact. Not into a diary, nor into words spoken to another person. In other words, the only person who could record a world that would exist exactly once in this world before disappearing forever was oneself. The only prophet who could hear one’s revelation was oneself. Because only you can ever come closest to yourself.

When we step out onto the street, we can encounter the creator of an entire world. The terrifying wonder of life rises once more to the surface of perception because of this. At the same time, we become aware of how alone we are.

Unlike thought, which took breathing as its model, breathing is either lower or higher than thought in that it can be stopped voluntarily. Thought, being both a component and the entirety of the world itself, cannot be stopped at will. I had no remote control.

God could never have controlled humanity. All that remained in God’s hands was the destruction of the world. I understand Yahweh, who rained a sea of fire upon humans who had gone irreversibly astray.

When too many thoughts are activated at once, the body simply shuts everything down on its own—and that, too, must be the work of the brain. It was obvious that the sensation would be unpleasant.

I stood in the middle of a scorching desert, my shoulders slumped. The heat haze burned my eyes, yet there was nothing there. And I thought the human skull was too heavy. Too many memories become tangled together, and too many thoughts bite into each other’s nothingness, stretching out like a web. And then I become like a person whose power has been switched off, staring blankly straight ahead.

Are you listening?

It feels like I’ve been dreaming for a very long time. Maybe I’m dreaming that I’ve become a butterfly. I don’t even know if I’m still the same as before, but perhaps I’ll reach Zhuangzi’s conclusion soon¹. Time couldn’t have stopped. And there’s no way I could be the same as everyone else, nor could there be a book containing a world I don’t know. So, in a sense, I’ve returned to the me I knew so well.

Yes, it’s a good thing you’re here, at least. I think I cleaned everything up and burned it, but my memory is hazy. Maybe that’s a good thing.

I’ve said it time and again. You told me there was something wrong with me, but I think I made a discovery I can be proud of, in my own way. All I had to do was throw my memories into an unused part of my mind. That was how I could make myself forget.

Usually, the scenario goes something like this. I take a memory and bury it somewhere in the back, somewhere I’m certain I’ve put it away. Then someone digs it up and brings it out into the front yard. I open it, startled by what I find, and then carefully bury it in the back again. That was how human forgetting worked. Everyone except me knew how to do it, and everyone was good at it. I was the only one whose brain had yet to undergo the evolution that came with forgetting.

How much confusion did it take me to figure this out? How much time? I can imitate it easily enough now. Now that I know, I’m no different from everyone else. I’ve become someone who can forget.

I knew what I was thinking, then I couldn’t know, then I knew again, but in the end everything became tangled together, and I couldn’t know anything. In fact, it’s clear that what isn’t clear is clear. This isn’t me.

My stomach felt hot. Then it stiffened. As though only the muscle that had been pierced were dead.

What did you do?

Elias felt himself being sucked into the air in front of him. Everything flowed slowly as it swallowed him up, and the same was true of the objects around him. Pillars and books, sharp as blades, and old oak bookshelves came rushing toward him, encircling him from every direction.

He could even feel the sensation of the saliva dried beneath his tongue. He became aware of the faint discomfort and pain between the fingers gripping his wand. A strand of hair pricked his eyelid.

Right now, he was concentrating on everything.

It wasn’t voluntary. Then this had to be the old duke’s ability. A Special Ability? Or a spell? What had he said earlier? Concentration? God? Damn it, I should’ve studied Italian more. If it was a Special Ability, he wouldn’t have needed to chant a spell. Ah, but was that necessarily true? Think it through. Maybe he was using a spell to reinforce his Special Ability…

No. He had to snap out of it. With a beam of light slowly coming toward him as if to slit his throat, Elias was concentrating on nothing but his thoughts. Damn it.

Elias realized it. This elder’s magic was perfectly suited to rendering an opponent incapable of fighting. Right now, he was concentrating on everything in the world. Even Leo and Julia’s safety—things he hadn’t even realized he was thinking about, wondering what they might be doing right now—rose to the center of his mind. Above all else, the bewilderment and sense of crisis he felt ‘now’ intensified until they obscured his vision.

In that moment, Elias came to understand, in a way he never had before, how his overly thoughtful friend must have lived his life. He had known there were many things the two of them understood about each other without needing an experience like this, but this was something else entirely.

His eyes, which had been following only his opponent’s movements, shifted to the left.

He couldn’t call him Luka. What was his alias again? He’d know no matter what Elias called him, but the most recent one he’d heard was…

“Theo!”

The moment the word left his mouth, Elias was struck once again by how strange it sounded. His voice seemed to stretch on endlessly. At the same time, he heard an explosion-like sound that persistently tormented his ears. No—it hadn’t exploded. It was the sound of an impact.

The bookshelf before him shattered and collapsed. For several seconds, he watched the fragments of wood slowly fly toward his face. Even the twisted grain of the wood and its sharp edges were etched into his mind.

The debris collapsed over Luka, who had fallen beneath the lower part of the bookshelf. His limbs were stiff, yet somehow unnaturally limp, almost as if he were dead. Elias’s heart began pounding as though he were standing before a corpse. He couldn’t see Luka’s face properly because of the mask, but from the way he had fallen alone, there was no mistaking that he had lost consciousness. The elder must have known that, too.

Elias barely managed to knock away the magic flying toward him. Soon, the divine power that remained coursed back up from his fingers and wrist to his shoulder. It felt as though his blood were hardening like white stone and crumbling apart.

If the elder could alter the composition of his mana with divine power, then there was no point in keeping his distance. Elias lunged toward the elder and swung his arm.

Even the texture of the air itself had become something he had to focus on, so he still couldn’t move any faster than a snail. But he had to.

— If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish…

“You were there.”

And it will be done for you…

Elias realized that something strange had come from the opponent instead of a spell. Slowly, his vision, which had been curled inward into a distorted circle, returned to normal. Feeling the gap between his body and mind tremble, Elias shook his head. The elder flailed both hands, half frightened and half relieved, as if he were about to cry out, ‘Eureka!’ The expression ultimately made an otherwise perfectly lucid elder look insane.

As a sudden chill washed over him, Elias quickly pulled his friend into his arms and slapped his cheek. The elder, meanwhile, trembled from head to toe, consumed by some incomprehensible emotion all his own.

“I knew you would be here. Didn’t I tell you you were here!”

No matter how much he shook him, Luka didn’t wake up.

Elias checked his mana, but it was running wild, as though his core had stopped functioning properly. Even when Elias poured mana into him, Luka didn’t stir. All he could do was twitch at the ends of his limbs in a uniform, mechanical way, as though he were receiving electrical shocks.

While the elder was consumed by his madness, Elias found himself unable to process the sight before him. It was the first time he had ever seen anything like this while fully conscious. Had the elder used a different ability on him and Luka? No, that couldn’t be it. Had he been swallowed up by his own thoughts?

Elias knew it was possible. But if that was what had happened, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. After all, he himself sometimes found it impossible to escape from an overload of thoughts.

A thought suddenly flashed through his mind. Blood. Should he feed him blood?

The thought, one that would have made his friend go deathly pale if he heard it, rose into his consciousness without the slightest hesitation. There was no guarantee it would improve the situation, but it seemed like the only thing he could rely on. Or…

Elias stared at the elder, his eyes narrowing.

“Come out. I have no intention of harming anyone who has nothing to do with this.”

He had to take this elder down. Just as Insight could be directed at a single person, it was clear that this person was continuously using some ability of his own on Luka. Elias stared blankly at the elder’s face, his lips moving slightly.

“You’re completely insane. The Tower of Babel and all that…”

“You know nothing.”

“We have nothing to do with this! Yes, I suppose you’d have to be this crazy to join hands with Terminus Eukairia. Isn’t that right? What, did they spout some insane nonsense and tell you to capture us?”

The elder did not waver even when faced with Elias’s anger. He was no longer young enough to be flustered by a young adult’s fury, nor was he particularly thoughtful. He was simply blinded by his own goal. That was how Elias saw it. The elder spoke with solemn madness in his voice.

“You know nothing. The person you believe is your friend knows of the world before Babel.”

“I’m tolerant of lunatics, but I don’t talk to religious fanatics. Especially when their religion is a cult.”

Elias stood up with a cold smile, casting a defensive spell over his friend. Even with his wand pointed at him, the elder raised his hands as though he had no intention of fighting.

“Understand that I am only trying to awaken you from your blindness. Anyone who can reach things that should never be reached is a disaster in themselves!”

“The only disaster here is you.”

Elias replied coldly.

Who was this person that could reach things they should never reach? If there was anyone, it was this person who had approached Terminus Eukairia. Elias finally understood why Pleroma had taken such an unusual interest in his friend. It was because Luka truly possessed the Pleroma disposition, just as the rumors claimed. If they had a mage that powerful, he would undoubtedly be a tremendous asset to Pleroma’s forces.

He could never tell Luka that, not even over his dead body, but Luka really was the perfect Pleroma—the very ideal of what a Pleroma should be. Did Terminus Eukairia also understand how important his friend was? Judging by what the elder had said, it seemed they did now. Perhaps they didn’t know about his disposition, but they knew his importance, at least. Still, something about calling him a ‘disaster’ bothered Elias. Did they intend to take Luka away and turn him into another Ismailov? He still couldn’t tell.

As if he had noticed Elias glaring at him with a mocking smile, the elder roared.

“Even after seeing that, you still know nothing? How foolish. Ah, what a pity! To be struck by this magic, lose control of yourself, and react like that can only mean that a fragile soul has taken residence in a weak body! There is no other way to explain it unless some being like the corrupted Malakh has killed the poor human and taken his place. And God had already shown me what would happen today—”

— Do not lift your horns against heaven; do not speak so defiantly!

KABOOM—!!

The force of his shout left the taste of blood in his throat. Brilliant blue mana burst forth, only to be pushed back by the white light rushing at it from the opposite side. Elias quickly spread his mana wide and poured even more into it. Strange screeching and cracking sounds rang out as flashes of light erupted before his eyes—the white light was striking the deep-blue barrier and shaving it away.

Elias gritted his teeth and reinforced the barrier, but the hand gripping his wand was trembling violently. Even his legs, planted firmly against the floor, were shaking enough to make the floorboards tremble. It felt as though even the bookshelves behind him were losing their balance. Still holding the stance he had taken to form the barrier, Elias extended his wand forward and gripped it with both hands.

“You say I know nothing. I know very well.”

“That—”

“At least I know more than some elder I met for the first time today and haven’t even had a proper conversation with!”

BOOM—!

Elias caught his breath and drew blue mana from his heart, forcing the divine power back about a meter. The elder staggered back a step or two. Every time Elias sent another spell at him, the elder swept his wand aside with a firm motion, knocking it away, then shouted with absolute conviction.

“I agree that I look like a lunatic, but I do not agree that I am ‘a lunatic who believes he must hurt people.’ Look at me even now. Am I not trying to save you, an innocent person? Ah! So this is where the source was! Why can you not see that all this chaos came from this? We must stop the end! The end!”

At those words, Elias abruptly stopped the wand he had been swinging wildly. His eyes widened to the size of lanterns, and his mouth fell open. The elder launched into a passionate explanation, wearing the expression of someone trying to convince a foolish child.

“We have found the starting point of the Great Calamity, and today we can finally put an end to all this chaos. If you step aside, no one needs to get hurt!”

“No.”

Elias stared only at the elder’s eyes as if hypnotized, his lips barely moving. How could he not understand what the elder was about to do to his friend?

“No… You’re going to kill a person?”

“Do you really think that thing is human? It isn’t! It is a living, breathing calamity, an empty shell. To know everything is to be the universe itself—and that means it can no longer serve any purpose as a human being.”

“How many times do I have to say it? My friend doesn’t know everything!”

Once again, Elias tasted blood in his throat. The elder’s expression returned to calm after the shout that had left Elias’s ears ringing. Even now, Elias was calculating whether he could catch the elder off guard if he attacked. The elder looked at him with pity.

“Can you really be so certain? Are you claiming that there is nothing he has kept hidden from you?”

“…….”

“You know nothing. You say you know, but you know nothing. Tell me, then. What do you claim to know, and how much of it? Can you truly say that what you know is actual knowledge? Did you not find something deeply strange about him? Was he not far from ordinary? Can you honestly say you were never awed or shocked by something unusual about him? You know nothing about who he is or why he came here. Please, help me so that I do not have to kill an innocent person like you. If that is too difficult, then I will help you.”

The elder opened his hand. A mass of pure white divine power had gathered in his palm. Elias narrowed his eyes as he watched the shimmering divine power, then met the elder’s resolute gaze. The divine power in his palm began to swell like a flame.

“I will give you the chance to learn who this person really is.”

Silence fell.

Elias silently stared into the elder’s bloodshot eyes. It wasn’t hard to guess what lay in his wrinkled palm. Whether it made sense or not was beside the point. Even if something sounded like an absurd fantasy, the moment that impossibly low 0.0001% chance became reality, there would be no taking it back. The only sensible thing was not to take the risk, and Elias had no intention of even touching that mass of divine power in the first place.

“What if I refuse?”

Elias answered with his eyes wide and the corner of his mouth twisted into a crooked smile.

The elder calmly nodded, as if he had expected that answer. The moment Elias tightened his grip on his wand and opened his eyes after briefly closing them, the elder’s staff, which had retreated a few steps, cut through the air.

Translator Note

1. This refers to the famous ‘Butterfly Dream’ from Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi dreams that he is a butterfly, then awakens and wonders whether he is a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. He concludes that there must be a distinction between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, but he cannot know which is the ‘real’ state of being. ↩︎