I am Saengdisyu Branchev, the fourth servant of the goddess Ripyue and a mage of Tetradia.
How can a servant of the goddess and a mage of Tetradia exist within a single body?
If you ask me that, I have no choice but to look back upon my childhood.
Yes. I, Saengdisyu Branchev, was born the third son of an ordinary tenant farmer on a rural estate...
* * *
...What must be considered is the matter of “why divine power and mana cannot be handled together.”
The greatest reason, one might say, is talent.
Handling mana and awakening to magic belong purely to the realm of talent.
Even if one makes efforts that carve away the bone and make one cough blood, magic is such that ordinary talent cannot advance beyond the 4th Circle.
Then what of divinity?
In truth, divinity is precisely where talent is everything.
One chosen by a god, under the premise that basic faithfulness is already in place.
Yes. I, Saengdisyu Branchev, am a genius among geniuses, born with both of these talents.
I was so overflowing with talent that, looking back...
* * *
...We young magicians used this opportunity to band together.
The old fogeys of magic called us Generation X and judged us the worst generation, one that would shake the very foundations of magic, but we did not give up.
Stagnant water is bound to rot.
Orthodoxy must be respected and remembered, but clinging only to it is foolish and idiotic.
Opposing the gods, creating the ultimate magic that would overturn the laws of the world.
What an outdated way of thinking that was.
This era is, indeed, an era of great harmony. An era in which gods and magic can coexist as well.
That was what we believed, and in the end, we achieved it.
Of course, in that process, I, Saengdisyu Branchev, an unparalleled genius magician and one chosen by Ripyue, played the decisive role...
* * *
...The point was initiative. Which power would be given precedence?
If mana was made the main force and divinity the supplement, it lost much of its meaning.
It merely became needlessly more difficult and complicated, no different from other magic.
Thus, divinity would be placed at the center, and mana would supplement it.
That was the correct answer.
However, there was no dramatic change great enough to astonish the world.
It was somewhat better than existing divine arts, but compared to the effort, time, and talent required, the increase was small.
We had to research further. If we looked from the same perspective as everyone else, then in the end, we would only see the same things.
So we lowered our gaze even further. It was in order to look more closely.
Not at mana, but at divinity.
Mana had been dissected in detail by the enormous organization known as Tetradia, but divinity had not.
I, too, was a servant of Ripyue, so I knew well the inner workings of the church.
Faith and prayer alone were emphasized; they did not analyze and dig into the power of gods as magicians analyzed everything.
There were even priests who considered such a thing irreverent.
But I was both a priest and a mage officially recognized by Tetradia.
Those who were with me were also far more... no, a little below me, but in any case, they were quite decent fellows.
And so we delved intensively into divinity.
And we discovered it.
That there were different kinds of divinity.
Depending on which god one served, and which church one belonged to, its nature was distinctly different.
Ripyue’s divinity was hope.
It is not the brightest, but it always shines.
It is not the highest, either, but it exists where all can see it.
It is not behind. It always shines ahead and dwells in the future.
It contained that nature in its entirety.
Because I was not a god, I could not bring out all of that power, and for that reason, the assistance of mana was essential.
That was how my divine magic was completed.
How could I possibly express this emotion?
I clutched the completed magic and wept for an entire day.
This is hope.
I can declare with certainty that it is the magic closest to hope.
It is not as resplendent as the divinity of love, nor is it the highest like the divinity of dominion, but this was hope.
Wishing for the day when the whole world would surely look upon it and think of hope, I shed tears without end.
Once I refine it just a little more, I will register it as one of the official spells.
And I am certain it will become the first divine magic acknowledged by both Tetradia and the Church of Ripyue.
* * *
This is an unprecedented war.
Before a despairing calamity, we have decided to step forward.
With me at the lead, the young magicians who completed divine magic will join me.
A priest serving the god of death and a mage, Berin Badim.
A priest serving the god of love and a high-ranking mage, Roisia.
A priest serving the goddess of hope and a mage, myself, Saengdisyu Branchev, and others.
I will certainly survive before the calamity.
My magic is hope itself, and so I must survive.
For Ripyue.
For this beautiful continent, I shall gladly become hope.
That must be the reason I completed divine magic, and the reason the goddess bestowed divinity upon me.
Hope must be so.
And so I shall return and continue this record.
...Without fail.
* * *
Hio closed the book and sank deep into his chair, letting out a quiet sigh.
With that, the record continued no further.
Even though many pages still remained afterward.
“Saengdisyu Branchev. A mage who pioneered divine magic...”
He muttered as he looked around.
The house of the divine magician, third basement floor.
A vast space.
Everything packed tightly into the bookshelves, including those along the walls, was books.
Traces of efforts to combine divinity and magic.
Analyses of it and research into methods.
And the record of Saengdisyu he had just read lay open on the desk.
The ink had dried and the quill had crumbled away, but the book alone remained as it was, without the slightest damage.
- Saengdisyu Branchev. That is a name I have heard before. At the time, there were many who looked unfavorably upon young magicians gathering together... In the end, it seems he established his own definition and completed a divine magic unique to him.
A magician who had lived in the same era as Purnel.
However, Purnel had belonged to the school of necromancers and, just before the war, had been turned into a specter by a master who envied his talent. In the meantime, it seemed Saengdisyu had completed divine magic and even participated in the war.
“...You weren’t one of the old fogey magicians mentioned here, were you?”
- W-well? I, I know nothing of that.
“Ugh, of course.”
He could tell just from the reaction.
Just as he was now, even back then, Purnel had apparently been the sort of magician who talked too much, liked old stories, and smiled gloomily while looking at corpses.
- No, I would not say it was to that extent...
The third basement floor contained so many books that it could rightly be called a small library.
Because of that, the moment he arrived, he instinctively realized he would have to stay for quite some time and made a base.
There had been a few minor happenings in the process, but... well, they had all been dealt with safely enough.
The house of the divine magician was, at least on the outside, being reborn as a neat and ordinary two-story house.
“By the way, I never imagined that each church had a different kind of divinity.”
- I feel the same.
“Then is the divine power I have Ripyue’s divinity?”
- Well... Was it not all the other gods who participated in designing the system and arranging for variables? You can compare it through that and find out whose god’s power it is.
The method was plainly recorded in the books scattered throughout this place.
Studying and researching it by reading those books would be quite troublesome, but it could not compare to the magician Saengdisyu, who had started from nothing with his bare hands.
Well, Purnel was here too.
And most decisively...
“So this is... a holy relic.”
On the third basement floor of this divine magician’s house, there was an object equivalent to a holy relic.
Of course, that meant it was holy relic-class by the standards of that time, not the present.
After confirming that there were no Airlights nearby, Hio took a small stone out of his subspace pouch.
A stone as small as a fingernail, emitting a faint and sacred light.
「Ripyue’s Small Stone (Divinity)」
「A stone containing the divinity of Ripyue, goddess of hope.」
「Because it contains the foundation of divinity, infinite divinity flows from it as long as it is not destroyed.」
「Brings stability to all beings within the range where ‘Divinity’ exists.」
「When possessed, stat ‘Divinity’ +65」
「Divine power recovery speed +150%」
「All effects related to divinity +150%」
This was the owner of the powerful divine power he had sensed from the third basement floor.
Ripyue’s Small Stone.
An object that had been treated as a holy relic even back then.
The fact that this was here meant...
- He must have stolen it.
Saengdisyu was not a cardinal-level figure, so how could such an object have been here?
It was obvious.
- Saengdisyu certainly was not normal either.
He, too, had been both a priest and a magician to the bone.
A group of lunatics who would continue their research even if they had to steal holy relics for the sake of magic.
That was what magicians were.
“In any case, what’s contained in this holy relic is definitely Ripyue’s divinity. That means I just have to compare it with mine and analyze it.”
His workload had suddenly increased.
He also had to research the 〔Book of Dragon Summoning〕 he had received from the goddess Ripyue.
He had to go to the Magic Tower and ascend to the 5th Circle as well.
That alone was enough to make his head throb, and now he had to study something called divine magic, which worked in an entirely different way...
No wonder that, despite confirming that there was even a fourth basement floor, he had not yet moved on to Tetradia.
- Moreover, if we examine the records, would it not be worthwhile to search for the divine magic of other churches besides this one?
“That’s true. If divine magic really has that much value, I’ll need to look for other divinities too.”
- If we rummage through all the books here, we may find hints about the houses of other divine magicians. Still... Let us do that slowly. We already have more than enough enjoyable research topics.
“I don’t know about enjoyable... but it looks like I’ll have to hole up here for a while and consider myself dead.”
He did not exactly have an abundance of time.
The assault on the 51st floor had ended in failure, causing Gates to burst open across the world.
And now they were only just reaching the stage of getting that under control.
Therefore, before the 52nd-floor raid Gate activated, he had to diligently raise his level of attainment.
- At times like this, one must proceed step by step. The moment you get greedy and jump from one thing to another, everything will only become more tangled and complicated.
“You’re right. The 5th Circle goes without saying, but interpreting the ancient magic of Dragon Summoning, then researching and practicing this completely unfamiliar form of divine magic... not a single one is easy.”
He would have to decide on one thing for certain, resolve it, and only then learn the next.
- Then decide. The 5th Circle, the ancient magic Dragon Summoning left by the goddess Ripyue, or divine magic. Which will you do first?
“Which one should I learn first...”
It was a more important question than he had expected.
All three were expected to take quite a bit of time, and since he had decided to personally participate starting from the Abyss on the 52nd floor, the direction of the battle could change depending on what he learned first.
It was a matter that required considerable caution.
And so, even though he had more or less made his decision internally, he thought it over carefully once more.
A little time passed, and no matter how he thought about it, in the end...
“Still, as expected...”
The answer had already come out.
“Let’s learn divine magic first.”
Hio quietly looked down at the small, pure-white stone in his hand.
The soft white light emanating from it seemed to resemble the owner of that divinity exactly.
Not resplendent, but calm and gentle.
The image of the goddess, entirely white, who by now must have fallen into a deep sleep.
A hope he might never see again.
“Hope, huh...”
It was the final image of hope engraved in Hio’s mind.
* * *
After deciding to learn divine magic first, things proceeded swiftly.
Once he had decided, there was no reason to hesitate, so he immediately began devouring the books that filled the area around him.
At the same time, he analyzed the types of divinity according to what was written in the books.
First, he compared Ripyue’s stone with the divine power Hio possessed.
“...It’s not the same.”
The two were not of the same kind.
While the divinity of Ripyue emitted by the stone had a definite characteristic, Hio’s divinity was, how should one put it...
As if it were divine power created for everyone.
A divinity without any strong distinctive features, a divinity for the sake of divinity.
That was how it felt.
- Still, since there is a holy relic left behind by Saengdisyu, you should be able to use Ripyue’s divine magic.
The fortunate thing was that Hio possessed and could wield divine power on par with most high-ranking priests.
On top of that, he could still raise his divine power stat even further.
- We are not lacking in divinity, so let us continue experimenting.
And so, several more days passed.
The top priority was to transform Hio’s divine power so that it resembled the divinity felt from the holy relic.
It was the first step toward using Saengdisyu’s divine magic.
All the preparations required for that were already present in this mage’s house, so there was no unnecessary waste of time.
He read through the research materials Saengdisyu had left behind again and again.
He extracted divine power, placed it into special containers capable of holding it, compared them against one another, and distinguished the differences.
In the course of that process, he discovered something about the divine power Hio possessed.
In other words, the divine power he had obtained through the system clearly included the characteristics of Ripyue’s divinity.
And perhaps it contained not only Ripyue’s, but the countless divinities of other gods as well; its contents were astonishingly vast.
However, because it contained far too much information and substance, he could not use Saengdisyu’s divine magic with it in its current state.
He had to leave behind only Ripyue’s divinity and strip away the rest.
And he had to do it at the very moment he cast the magic.
Was that all?
At the same time, mana also had to move in support.
The power of the patterns engraved into his Circle had to be brought forth as well in order to fully draw out the characteristics of the divinity.
In short, it was damned difficult.
Even so, was he not a genius of mana resonance?
And had he not accumulated experience while rising all the way to the 4th Circle?
Handling divine power was also similar in its broad framework, so he was able to adapt quickly.
In just a few days, his sense and ability in handling divine power rose by leaps and bounds.
There was progress.
“……Now I understand why this place is so spacious and filled with books and strange instruments.”
He stripped away the countless other things contained within the divinity and made it identical to Ripyue’s divinity alone.
This was a far more delicate task than he had expected.
To make a comparison, it felt like taking a tiny object barely visible to the eye, filled with thousands of substances, and shaving away everything except what was needed.
Naturally, it would have been impossible without Saengdisyu’s research materials and the countless magical instruments meant for research. It was also possible only because his skill in handling divine power had greatly advanced during the process.
It had taken some time, but somehow, he had succeeded up to that point.
However, this was where it truly began.
Using the refined divinity and combining it with the power of mana to draw out the desired force.
Doing that without the slightest error, at the perfect moment. That was the completion of divine magic.
- Now that we have come this far, the outline is beginning to reveal itself.
The outline was revealing itself.
In other words, he was beginning to understand the divine magic written in the records, and its effects.
“This is…… divine magic.”
- It is indeed a revolution. If this had been revealed to the world just a little earlier, before the war, many things might have changed.
Its contents were so extraordinarily groundbreaking that, for a moment, both Hio and Pureunel were left speechless.
What Saengdisyu had created after long research amounted to three divine spells in total.
「Hope Divine Magic - Heart」
- One of the characteristics of hope is that the moment it is held, the heart becomes lively and fulfilled. This is the first magic created based on that.
「Hope Divine Magic - Light the Fire」
- Hope becomes all the more alluring when the situation is desperate. The more people hold it, the brighter it shines. Therefore, the more difficult the situation, and the more people watching, the less hope can ever fall. The second magic manifests this characteristic.
「Hope Divine Magic - Wish」
- Hope is, in the end, the heart that longs to achieve or do something. A prayer that desperately wishes for it. Thus, the third magic is hope itself, and the wish held within hope. The ultimate magic that can be expressed through this.
……
After countless attempts, he succeeded in the first divine magic only after devoting a full two weeks to it.