The treasury opened for the first time in a thousand years.
My first impression of that grandiose name was this:
‘It’s cleaner than our lab.’
The interior was so well kept that not a speck of dust could be seen.
It was clear someone had been tending to it with great care.
Probably Selene.
For a thousand long years.
She had been sweeping and polishing this place alone, waiting for its owner to return.
At the center of that space, where time itself seemed to have been preserved, Selene began guiding us with light steps.
Unknown relics were scattered everywhere.
Surely every last one of them was a precious item.
Among them, one strange object placed far off in the distance caught my eye.
It looked fascinating.
What was it used for?
“What’s that? The design is pretty unusual.”
“That’s Etardos’s bracelet.”
That’s a bracelet?
It looked far too hefty to be an accessory worn on the wrist.
It was more like a small, elaborately crafted bowling ball.
His wrist must have hurt a lot.
Eleanor tilted the doll’s head and cut in.
[Did that fellow Etardos ever have children in the end? He was the most stubborn of all my disciples.]
“No, Master. He just kept hammering away until the day he died. He didn’t raise any disciples or pass down his techniques, either. Just like one of your disciples, Master.”
At Selene’s words, I clicked my tongue inwardly.
He didn’t pass down his skills and only hammered until he died?
He must have been an awfully foolish and tenacious craftsman.
[Foolish man. I told him so many times to bend that stubbornness of his, if only a little.]
“Well, speaking of which, Master, you never had children either, did you? You lived your whole life mad about magic without dating even once.”
“Senior, don’t tell me you’ve never even dated?”
Our senior sure lived a dry life.
Right now, she was in a doll’s body, all round and cute.
But I remembered her real body as an unparalleled beauty who could make one’s eyes spin.
Why didn’t she?
[………I was simply better suited to magic than romance. Do not speak nonsense!]
Selene paid no attention and giggled as she explained the bracelet’s effect.
“When that bracelet activates, it warps space itself and nullifies most attacks. It’s mana-charged, and it can be charged up to two times.”
“Oh…”
Absolute defense through spatial distortion.
For a 0th Circle like me, it was an extremely tempting item.
I felt like no one would notice if I slipped it into my pocket on the way out…
I gulped down dry saliva.
“You were just thinking of swiping that bracelet, weren’t you?”
“……!”
I thought my heart stopped.
“How did you know? Is this future sight too? You said future sight doesn’t work on me.”
“I’m joking, joking. Your eyes looked so shady at a glance that I just poked at you. Foresight still doesn’t work on you.”
For someone from a thousand years ago, this lady was remarkably good at teasing people.
Seeing her act like that with a face identical to Ibelin’s made me feel strangely complicated.
It was like a future Ibelin was teasing me.
It was an expression that would never suit the cynical villainess Ibelin.
And yet, when it came to Selene in front of me, it suited her absurdly well.
‘Will there come a day when Ibelin can joke around that comfortably too?’
Ibelin smiling playfully instead of wearing her usual cold expression.
How should I put it?
It wasn’t a bad thought.
No, it might actually be a sight I’d quite like to see.
****
Eleanor discovered an especially old and crude staff placed in one corner of the treasury.
Judging by how the doll’s head froze at an angle, it seemed she recognized it.
[You still have not thrown away that firewood? I merely carved it roughly as a pastime and tossed it to you.]
“Of course. It’s my most cherished treasure. It was the first thing you ever gave me, Master.”
Selene stroked the staff with care.
‘Hmm… It doesn’t look that great.’
I knew one shouldn’t judge by appearances alone.
But visually, it looked like something even the old men who used to hike the mountain behind my neighborhood wouldn’t spare a glance at.
No matter how I looked at it, it was just a tree branch commonly seen at the entrance of a hiking trail.
“Is that staff really that good?”
[Of course not. I merely carved a beginner’s mana circuit into it. By my standards, it is at a level where using it as firewood would be perfectly acceptable.]
“Master, really… To me, this wasn’t just a staff. It was a lifeline.”
Selene let out a small laugh, as if recalling the past.
“I was a nameless little child dying of illness in a corner of the slums, and you tossed this beside my head. If you want to live, learn magic. That one sentence changed my entire world.”
Estal was from the slums?
This lady.
She really was a dragon risen from a muddy stream.
Selene playfully added as she mimed lightly swinging the staff.
“Don’t you remember? The time I took that one staff and blew away three peaks of the Ironblood Mountains all at once. Though now they’re called the Estal Mountains after me.”
“……….”
Wait.
That legend was true?
Those grotesquely carved mountain peaks were actually the result of Selene swinging that staff?
And with that beginner’s firewood staff, no less?
Then.
Just what in the world was Eleanor?
I couldn’t even guess how much higher she wanted to raise her own evaluation score.
I thought I had reached the ceiling, but there was a sky above it.
Perhaps sensing my gaze, Eleanor puffed out her chest arrogantly with the stiff movements unique to a doll.
[I have always been great. Have you only realized it now? Had I chanted an incantation in earnest, I would have changed not merely a mountain range, but the very map of the continent.]
“Senior. That’s not a mage. That’s a walking natural disaster.”
In this world, the moment a 10th Circle mage got into a bad mood and twisted their heart even once, extinction was guaranteed.
Seriously, how had this world managed to survive until now without being destroyed?
‘Statistically speaking, this is a miracle.’
The fact that humans with this level of firepower had coexisted for thousands of years meant that the probability of humanity going extinct was overwhelmingly higher than the probability of survival.
“Hmm…”
Well, now that I thought about it, Earth was similar.
Over there, too, if the big shots went crazy and pressed a few buttons, it would turn into Fallout immediately.
The only difference was that over there it was a red button, and here it was a staff.
****
The deepest part of the treasury.
“It’s over there. That’s what you came to find, right?”
Selene pointed at the altar with her finger.
Something alien was placed there.
“……….”
Visually, it was clearly in the shape of a ring.
But the information my brain received was different.
It felt like facing some vast phenomenon or concept head-on.
Even as I say it, it sounds like nonsense.
But what could I do when that was truly how it felt?
Its very existence rejected every common sense around it.
“…It’s quite a unique object.”
Rather than a ring, it felt like looking at a compressed black hole.
[Do not dismiss it as a mere object. That is my spiritual essence itself. It was not forged from refined metal. It is a portion of the laws that make up this world, severed and preserved in the form of a ring.]
She had preserved a law.
I thought it was a metaphor that would only appear in a major textbook, but seeing the wavering boundary before my eyes, I immediately understood.
Eleanor spoke in a low voice.
[Rihan. Do you truly know what sort of person an outstanding mage is?]
An outstanding mage.
That was quite a fundamental question.
I searched through the memories of my past life and recalled the requirements for a genius physicist.
‘Probably… intuitive insight.’
A genius physicist sees through the simple principles hidden behind complex equations.
One who understands the world and perceives its immense flow.
If so, wouldn’t a mage be the same?
“Someone who understands the laws of the world and sees through what lies behind them?”
[Hehe. Close. However, an outstanding mage takes one more step beyond that. They are those who do not stop at understanding the laws, but ultimately twist those laws as they please.]
Selene, who had been listening beside us, nodded playfully and added,
“That’s right. Rihan, anyone can simply create fire. If you put mana into the formula, the phenomenon is reproduced. That’s third-rate.”
She pointed at the ring atop the altar.
“If understanding the structure of that fire and freely changing its form is second-rate, then first-rate mages twist the very concept of fire itself. They create new laws that never existed in the world.”
Creating laws.
From a physicist’s standpoint, it was a very awkward thing to say.
“So instead of ignoring the laws, they overwrite them with their own laws?”
[Correct. Thus, high-ranking mages each carry within them a unique magic called an Original. They are not those who walk a path made by others, but those who themselves become the path. This ring is the crystallization containing that essence of mine.]
Was it really okay for a 0th Circle like me to touch something this incredible?
Truthfully, curiosity was getting the better of me.
But the aftermath that would follow seemed no joke either.
“Miss Selene, is this really all right? Isn’t this the treasure of treasures of the Estal family?”
Selene nodded toward me as if she had no lingering attachment.
“Go on, hold it. It wasn’t mine anyway! And if Cassian says anything, tell him his founding grandmother gave you permission. Of course, by then I’ll already be gone! Kyahaha!”
This lady was irresponsible to the very end.
Well, that was part of Selene’s charm.
Maybe once someone became a 9th Circle archmage, they all had a screw loose somewhere.
In any case.
I gulped and reached out with a trembling hand.
I worried that the moment I grabbed it, mana might flow backward and send me into deviation.
But there was nowhere to retreat now.
The instant my fingertip touched the ring’s wavering boundary—
Flash—!
My entire vision blinked white.