The Landscape of the Mind
At that very moment, Samir’s gaze shot toward me like lightning. He had realized that I was detecting him.
Samir looked at me with a gaze as deep and dark as an abyss, then finally opened his mouth.
“Come in, Odin. Why are you merely watching from there? If you wish to meet me, come inside.”
His tone was cold, yet quite gentle.
Samir spoke as if he held some affection for me. It was bizarre, but unmistakably so.
What was even more bizarre was that it did not seem to be merely an act.
Could he truly hold some affection for me? That was impossible.
But it mattered not. The only emotion I held toward him was hostility.
“No. You will come to me. To the battlefield of our final battle.”
I spoke. It did not matter whether my voice reached Samir or not. I would drag him here anyway.
I immediately activated spatial magic. Waves surged forth like a geyser.
A method I had chosen after simulating various possibilities beforehand.
It was a method of dragging Samir into a newly created space, rather than entering the Magus Tower where a passage directly connected to the demon realm lay open.
There was no need to needlessly provoke the demon realm and cause problems for the cosmic order, nor was there any need to bring great destruction upon this world.
I simply needed to create a space for Samir and me to settle our match. A void would suffice.
But I created a rather massive void for this battle.
Pure white light radiated from me. The light rode the detection line I had extended into the red portal and surged into the Magus Tower like a whirlwind.
Moment by moment, the demonic energy within the Magus Tower was purified and diluted. But that was not my goal. Purification was merely a side effect.
The white light surged toward Samir at terrifying speed and snatched him up. It coiled around the infinite pentagrams drawn by his magic power.
As the waves intertwined, the magic I had designated activated.
The space where Samir stood flipped and churned, and a new space was created.
Samir was sucked into the void. I, too, had already reached the void.
Samir and I no longer existed within the three-dimensional space that had existed until moments ago.
We had entered the space beyond by following the curvature of space. Into a void where nothing existed. Into a time like the primordial beginning.
“Uaaaaaaaaah!”
A desperate cry rang out, like the scream of a heart.
Of course, while being dragged along the path of the inverted space, Samir had not done nothing. The moment he sensed spatial magic, he simultaneously unleashed protection, detection, and attack.
He spread a protective barrier to block the waves emanating from me, attempted detection to ascertain the nature of the white light, and the moment the waves intertwined, he called down a firebolt upon that spot to stop my magic.
But that firebolt fell upon the Magus Tower where he had been just moments ago. He could no longer even witness its aftermath.
Protection and detection alike were useless. We were merely drifting fleetingly through a space where neither he nor I now existed.
Samir had failed to see through my magic, and his magic was too slow.
He was screaming like that because he knew it himself.
Samir could not even figure out what space he was in now. I could see him drifting in the void, unable to grasp any direction, any concept of existence whatsoever.
“Samir!”
When I called his name, Samir, who had been wandering the void, finally turned around.
It was a space without up or down, without inside or outside, yet I could grasp direction as a concept.
We stood facing each other in the void.
“Where is this…? How dare you… me…?”
Samir’s appearance, now finally showing wrath and resentment, was rather easier to deal with.
His gaze, as deep and dark as an abyss, did not look special at all here. The void, which had not yet generated anything, was the abyss itself.
I could see something like surprise and fear flitting between his wrath and resentment.
Surprise born from exceeding his expectations, fear born from surpassing the bounds of his understanding.
In contrast, I was not afraid of Samir in the slightest. Because this was a space I had created. Because he was inside my magic.
The moment I realized that gap, I too could finally see the human named Samir for who he truly was.
Samir is not strong. Samir is no great being.
Though he had created the organization known as the Magus Tower and an immense space, his achievements in spatial magic were paltry compared to my level.
Furthermore, though Samir was certainly an outstanding black magician, in truth he had never fought against a strong adversary. He had merely reigned over the weak.
‘He was a pathetic human being.’
Moreover, most of the spatial magic and black magic prowess he had shown until now had been accomplished using the demon realm’s energy.
In truth, rather than his own skill, they were things obtained through a contract with the demon realm, merely borrowed from it.
Samir had probably never even fought against the demon realm. He had simply used his position to strike a deal.
In the end, none of Samir’s possessions were truly his, and Samir was not as strong as he appeared from the outside.
“Samir, I have waited for this moment. I have lived beyond time for this day. To eliminate you.”
The moment I opened my mouth, a cold rage churned within me like a blizzard. A rage that had continued from my previous life.
To think that I had lost so much because of a human like this. To think that my things had been stolen by that nobody.
The power Samir possessed was merely the power to deceive and manipulate people. Nothing more than stealing others’ power like a vampire and using it as his own.
Such a man was trying to bring catastrophe upon the world and seize it in his grasp. In the previous life, in this life, and probably in other lives as well.
“You lived beyond time to eliminate me? What nonsense is a young brat like you spouting?”
Samir snorted. He seemed desperate to shake off the fear in his heart by pretending to look down on me.
“But impressive. When I first saw you, you were a worthless magician. When did you grow like this? What kind of being did you make a contract with?”
He said I was a worthless magician when he first saw me? He truly knew nothing. For some reason, it disgusted me.
How ignorant. It meant he could not handle spatial magic freely. He did not know the horizon one could only reach when spatial magic was pushed to its limits.
“You know nothing. Then I shall show you.”
I immediately radiated white light into the void. A sacred light, and at the same time, a light that was the aggregate of all information in the universe.
“Aack! What is this? Are you casting mental magic on me?”
Before long, a scream of pain burst from Samir’s mouth. I had not directly inflicted pain upon his body. I had simply unfolded the space of his own mental landscape.
The empty void—this place was a world of consciousness, a mirror dimension. A space where each person beheld the landscape of the mind, traces of light remaining in their hearts.
All I had forced upon Samir was making him look inside himself.
When spatial magic is pushed to its limits, the axis of time moves and parallel worlds are born. Now Samir was looking at parallel worlds of possibility, lives he would have lived under different conditions. Or perhaps they were worlds of the past he had already passed through.
As a mirror dimension where each person beheld the landscape of their own mind, this place certainly made villains and demons thrash in terrible agony.
That was why I chose this method. I created this space for Samir.
“Remove it! Stop this! What is all this? You demon from hell! Odin! I’ll tear you to pieces right now!”
Samir shouted, filled with pain and rage. But of course, far from tearing me to pieces, he could not even approach me.
A distance that appeared to be an arm’s length was, in fact, infinite. In this void.
I merely continued to radiate white light. His soul and unconsciousness would unfold the infinite landscape on their own.
“No! This isn’t…! I won’t let this stand!”
For a moment, Samir tried to cast magic. He seemed to be gathering all the energy and waves he possessed to escape this place with spatial magic.
He attempted a portal that might have opened if this space were not a void. It vanished without a trace.
He attempted gravity magic that might have demonstrated devastating power if this space had a floor. But here there was nothing to touch, nothing to invert.
Only the waves of dark energy Samir unleashed briefly swept through the void like a pattern.
“Samir, the landscape you are seeing is all yourself. Do not think of running away from it. Watch it straight on.”
“Odin! Drop dead!”
In my golden sight, Samir’s pain was clearly reflected. The landscapes of the mind he was seeing at this moment were transmitted directly to me as knowledge transcending time, and I understood them immediately.
The various parallel worlds where Samir had lived, was living, or might have lived unfolded endlessly in infinite variations.
Scenes of worlds all uniformly filled with evil deeds.
But worlds that ultimately collided against the limits he possessed and met destruction, again and again.
“No! No!”
Samir denied and denied again.
Himself dying crushed like an insect; himself shattered and broken by beings from the demon realm who came to collect their debts even though nothing remained in his hands amid disaster and chaos.
Finally, the scenery of the parallel world flowed to the time I remembered from my previous life.
Samir was hit by the bullet I fired. He was bleeding and smiling. The one who had died at that moment was not I, stabbed by the knife, but him.
“You bastard! You! I’ll tear you to shreds!”
Samir’s rage grew ever greater, but equally he grew more powerless.
He tried magic again. Flame magic ignited with the sole determination to burn me.
Huge flames billowed. But the one burning was only himself.
“Aack! No! This isn’t it!”
“The cause of all this is yourself.”
“Shut up! Get lost! Drop dead!”
“The one who must die is you, Samir.”
“Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!”
Samir’s screams grew even more desperate.
Why? The landscape of the mind he was seeing was nothing new to me.
Scenes of innocent children offered as sacrifices and burned in fire; his appearance manipulating people with fear born of tremendous violence; his cold figure slaughtering those who worshipped and obeyed him; landscapes where the flowing blood formed streams.
Spreading viruses throughout the city, poisoning the tap water, making people lost in confusion fight each other to the death, and Samir smiling as he watched that hell.
Why did that familiar sight torment Samir so?
It was because this place was a mirror dimension.
In the mental landscape he was seeing now, Samir was the one being burned as a sacrifice, and Samir was the one being stabbed by the knife.
The one infected by the virus, drinking poison, hit by bullets, and screaming in agony was all Samir.
His entire body was the scene of terror, and also the devil’s playground.
Samir died and died again. And was born and born again.
An endlessly repeating agony to the point where he would rather wish for eternal death.
Everything in this void was terrible agony to him. Agony beyond compare.