A mage who had placed his soul into a staff.
The last image of him I saw through his memories had been so magnificent it was worthy of respect.
[Your body seems sturdy, and you look young enough, but… a man. Good heavens.]
But the staff now chattering away in my hand was someone entirely different from back then.
I let out a sigh and cut off his words as they dug into my head.
“Could you stop going on about women and explain what happened?”
[What is there to explain? You saw it too when you grabbed the staff, didn’t you? I’m a mage who evacuated people at the end of this star and died in these ruins.]
It seemed he had seen the memories I’d seen as well.
Since they were his memories, it was only natural that he would see them with me.
Unlike the grand memories I had witnessed, his explanation was exceedingly simple.
[It was merely something that happened long, long ago.]
After answering my question calmly, he continued.
[In any case, I, who had died, used the last of my remaining strength to call in one of the people who entered the ruins.]
Hearing him say it made the many things I’d experienced feel like they were nothing much.
So I tried nitpicking a little.
“You keep saying you died, but you’re speaking perfectly fine right now, aren’t you?”
[I merely copied my memories and personality into the circuits inside the staff.
There are some idiots who say it’s the transfer of a human mind or soul, but this is just a degraded copy, the ego of a staff.]
It was self-deprecation I hadn’t expected.
Whether it was true or not, to call himself an inferior copy?
I couldn’t tell if his self-esteem was high or low.
It was a story with everything before and after cut out, but in any case, now that I’d heard the circumstances, it was time to move on to the next step.
I politely asked his name once more.
With how he kept speaking down to me, I had considered doing the same, but every time I did, the memories I’d seen when I held the staff came to mind.
For that sacrifice alone, he was someone worthy of respect.
“I’m Hyeon Myeonghan. May I ask your name?”
Even if he was nothing more than a copied artificial intelligence, I couldn’t call him “staff” or “rod.”
[I don’t know.]
“No, not the staff. I mean your name, Mage.”
[I said I don’t remember.]
“What do you mean…”
[It’s been tens of thousands of years. It’s not as if I was sealed away, and a staff that’s been used all this time could hardly remain intact. Circuits break, energy tangles, memories vanish.]
My mouth opened of its own accord at the absurd answer.
“So you were a senile old man…”
[Such outrageous words in front of the person concerned!]
I didn’t know how the translation relic rendered my words, but it seemed unpleasant for him to hear.
Instead of apologizing right away, I attached a condition.
“I’ll apologize too if you show me a little more respect when you speak to me.”
Just as I was speaking politely to him, I deserved respect as well.
Because he’d come in swinging with casual speech from the very start, I’d let it slide, but things like this had to be made clear in advance.
However, my opinion didn’t get through at all.
[If your age were even one-hundredth of mine, I would have respected you. But are you even one-thousandth?]
He was far more terrible than I’d expected.
The person inside the staff was obsessed with women, senile, and an old man who cared only about age.
‘Should I just throw him away?’
It was bad enough that the thought actually crossed my mind.
But I couldn’t. The scene I had seen in the memories aside, I couldn’t throw away a relic I could converse with.
He said he’d lost his memories, but there should still be things he remembered, just as in the scene I’d witnessed.
I needed to learn about the monsters I had never seen before, and where the people of this star had fled.
There was much I was curious about.
In order to keep listening to his stories, I had to make sure no one else took him from me.
“For now, I’ll call you Soph.”
[What does that mean?]
“It means a wise person.”
[Not a bad name.]
In truth, it was a shortened form of “Sophos,” meaning wise old man.
It was a name I chose in the hope that he would please become one.
“Soph, can you talk to other people too?”
[When I’ve been bound to you? Do you think that would be possible? Even now, I’m holding on with the power of your star.]
“The power of the star? Do you mean dark energy?”
[You call the power of the star “black energy”—no, “unknown energy”?
That isn’t wrong. Yes. Right now, I am maintaining my intellect through your power. If you don’t provide me with energy, I will return to being an ordinary staff.]
It seemed that when I’d grabbed the staff and seen his memories, it was because I had bound the staff to myself.
Good. If it was bound to me, then I would be the only one who knew what was special about this staff.
Now I only had to hide the fact that this staff was a relic.
I looked at the staff, then at the spear in my other hand.
As expected, they were similar.
Just as I had mistaken it before, this staff really did resemble a spear shaft.
I untied the cord once more and removed the spearhead.
[What are you doing?]
A puzzled voice came from the staff I had set down on the floor.
As expected, it seemed fine even when I wasn’t holding it.
[As long as I’m within your domain, within a certain distance. No, more importantly, I asked what you were doing.]
Instead of answering his question, I showed him through action.
I tied the spearhead to the end of the staff that looked like a rod.
Once I bound it tightly with the cord, it was no different from the spear I’d originally had.
[No, what are you attaching to a mage’s staff!]
As expected, he got angry.
I quickly changed the subject.
“This staff seems incredibly sturdy.”
[Of course it is. Do you know what kind of metal it’s made from?]
“Do you remember what kind of metal it is?”
[…]
Thankfully, he was struck speechless, and Soph’s anger subsided.
Leaving him to sulk, I tried swinging the staff that had become a spear.
It was made of metal, yet it was light.
It was perfect for use as a spear shaft.
Perhaps because he was displeased, he kept his mouth tightly shut while I moved the spear. However, the silence didn’t last long.
After I told him where we had come from, just as I had listened to his explanation, he let out a low groan.
“So they weren’t the descendants of those who escaped returning…”
It seemed he had thought we were the descendants of the people we had seen in the footage, the ones who had fled while leaving him behind.
Fortunately, he didn’t remain disappointed for long.
Instead, he showed interest in the star we had departed from.
“Earth, is it… That is a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
For him, any name would be one he hadn’t heard in tens of thousands of years.
That thought crossed my mind for a moment, but this time I didn’t run my mouth.
Instead, I asked him.
“Do you know Earth?”
[Who knows. I only remember that it is the third planet of the solar system.]
As before, it meant he didn’t remember well, but his tone was strange.
It felt as if he wasn’t saying everything.
I shrugged and shook off the thought.
In any case, there was plenty of time. Now that I could hide the staff, I could listen to his stories slowly.
“Then, since we got the relic, let’s head back.”
I put the spear shaft into the box, took up my new spear, and left the room.
Soph also agreed when I said we would leave the ruins without looking around any further.
We might run into the ant monsters along the way, but that was a problem to consider when the time came.
Fortunately, perhaps because my body had grown tougher, nothing hurt anymore.
Only that enough time had passed for me to be hungry.
Chewing on a piece of meat, I began walking down the narrow passage.
The way back was far noisier than expected.
Because Soph’s words kept ringing in my head.
[This passage was made to manage the conventional traps. Because I remembered this passage, I was able to make a plan to call you in.
All of this was thanks to my exceptional memory.]
Soph’s boasting about his memory, when he had lost most of it, was laughable, but not easy to refute.
It was reckless, but it was also true that I had survived thanks to it.
It was noisy, but time passed quickly.
Before I knew it, I had arrived at the trap I’d fallen through.
Above my head, I could see the trap floor shut tightly.
I looked up and frowned.
[No need to worry. It is still an operational trap, so I can open it from here.]
If he could open the trap, it was a bit high, but I could climb up by driving my spear into the wall.
However, the reason I frowned wasn’t because of the closed trap.
“There are enemies nearby.”
I could sense ant monsters about four hundred meters away toward the surface.
They definitely hadn’t been there when I fell into the trap…
Had they come out to search?
[Do you possess supersenses as an innate ability? Well, if not for that, you wouldn’t have made it alive to where I was.]
After hearing my words, Soph realized what my ability was.
However, there was something in his words that bothered me.
“Are you saying I would have died if I didn’t have supersenses?”
[You were in a situation where you would die anyway, were you not? At times like that, one stakes things on probability.]
I was dumbfounded.
To think I would come to a star dozens of light-years from Earth and hear something gacha addicts would say.
It wasn’t wrong either, which made it hard to argue.
[If you have supersenses, this will be easy. First, let us get out of the trap. You said they were natives, so there should be no problem.]
I didn’t know what would become easy or what problem there wouldn’t be, but for now, I decided to follow his words.
Following his instructions, I pressed the spear—no, the staff—against the wall and pushed energy into it.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
The trap floor opened.
I kicked off the ground with all my might.
The newly made spear was far better than expected.
Unlike before, it accepted my energy without anything catching, then delivered it to the spearhead.
Thunk.
The spear sank deep into the solid wall.
I pulled out the embedded spear and drove a long bone I had prepared into that spot.
It was a circus-like stunt, making a new foothold while my body hung from the spear in midair, but I was able to create a new support without much difficulty.
Climbing upward like that, I was able to emerge from the trap not long after.
[So that is the extent of your physical abilities. I wondered if I would have to help partway through, but there was no need to worry.]
Sitting on the floor and gasping for breath, I snapped my head up.
“Excuse me? You could have helped?”
[Of course. Though I have lost my body, I am a mage—hm, I do not know how this translates. In any case, I am a mage.]
Of course it translated as mage.
The image of him I’d seen in the footage had truly looked like a mage.
[There is a person with the power of the star—dark energy—a mage, and a mage’s staff. Is it not obvious that magic can be used?]
Behind the staff in my hand, I seemed to see the great mage who had collapsed the ground and created a massive canyon.
[Outside the ruins, you will have to learn and use magic yourself, but for now, I will help.
I have lost many spells with my memories, but I should be able to deal with the indigenous species that have entered the ruins.]
At the mage’s assurance, I sprang to my feet.
We ran toward the ant monsters, and I ended up hearing the mage shout.
[Are you a fool? You can’t remember even a single formula! Anyone who isn’t an idiot could memorize this at once!]
There was no way that was true.
The magical formula he had taught me was harder than the differentiation and integration I’d seen in high school.
This was a problem.
Because I was a proud math quitter, hopeless at both math and physics.