Chapter 18

Though the boy’s eyes were still hazy, the nark moving through his body showed no disorder.

“Please wait just a moment. It takes some time to prepare.”

“What are you trying to do?”

The talismans began vibrating.

Was it the sorcery used for massaging?

“Controlling the direction in midair was a bit difficult. I couldn’t get a feel for how to contain this thing called ‘intent.'”

Intent.

It was a common word written in basic sorcery books, but properly handling intent was difficult work. Enough so that people said sorcery began and ended with ‘intent.’

Will, emotion, thought, perhaps even soul.

A word that collectively referred to the intangible energy humans emitted.

“You contained intent?”

“That’s what the book said. Ah, I’ve got it.”

Quilbion threw a talisman toward the window.

The slowly flying talisman fixed itself in midair.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the sorcery for hanging pictures in midair.”

“It does look like that, but what are you planning to do with it?”

“You’ve skipped stones across water before, right?”

The vibrating talisman and stone skipping.

Al Terua found himself laughing for a moment.

The idea was good.

But it was a difficult path.

“Continuously controlling sorcery after it’s left your hand is…”

Al Terua closed his mouth midway.

Because Quilbion had thrown the second talisman.

The talisman that swam through empty air touched the first talisman.

Thunk!

With a clear sound, the talisman bounced away.

Al Terua narrowed his eyes.

Two talismans had lined up in a row with equal spacing between them.

“Like this.”

Third, fourth.

Quilbion threw talismans without hesitation.

Once might be luck, but performing it twice in succession made it skill.

Four talismans had been placed in a straight line.

Al Terua drew an imaginary line.

At the end where the talismans were heading, the target tile sat.

Al Terua staggered backward. The strength drained slightly from his knees.

“You didn’t say I had to hit it using just one, did you?”

A stepping stone path was being laid across the darkened night sky.

Al Terua took his eyes off the talismans and looked at Quilbion.

The nark capacity was still small. If other goblins had seen it, they would have designated him a failure and devoured him in one bite.

Unattractive material.

But his ability to operate nark was abnormal.

The nark moving sluggishly and slowly became visible. Since he was using sorcery, it was natural for nark to move.

But the nark’s movement path was frighteningly consistent.

The human body wasn’t divided into districts like a planned city.

Muscles, bones, blood, fat, flesh. Nark flowed over a complex lump of meat made of all kinds of byproducts.

That’s why even when guided in a consistent direction, nark was bound to twist slightly.

Because sorcery wasn’t science, even if the force’s movement path changed slightly, it didn’t affect the sorcery’s effectiveness.

Of course, if examined closely differences would show, but it was a level that could be ignored.

“This is the last one.”

Quilbion threw the last talisman.

While throwing over twenty talismans, Quilbion’s nark had moved through the same path without deviation.

“Did you see…”

Quilbion tilted his head.

“The talisman I just threw hit the tile. You saw it, right?”

“No, I didn’t see it.”

“You should have been concentrating. It takes time to prepare again. Ah, and…”

“It’s fine. It must have hit. It definitely hit.”

Al Terua flicked his finger toward the talismans lined up outside. The talismans tore into small pieces and disappeared.

“How long did it take you to succeed?”

“I don’t know the exact time. About four hours? From the middle onward, the bouncing directions were all over the place, so I struggled. I managed to control it somehow, though.”

“Can you explain that ‘somehow’ in detail?”

“That?”

Al Terua pulled open a drawer. He took out a large piece of paper inside and cut it with a knife.

“Here, talismans.”

“So talismans are just made by cutting large paper?”

“No. A processing procedure is needed. This has already been pre-treated.”

I see, Quilbion muttered as he grasped the talisman.

“I had to contain intent as written in the book. But the farther the distance, the weaker this thing called intent became. I clearly wanted it to bounce forward, but it would bounce to the wrong place.”

Quilbion formed a hand seal. The nark inside his body moved slowly, visible to the eye.

“I couldn’t know exactly what intent was, so I first closed my eyes and concentrated. Like when I first touched the talisman. But that didn’t help much either. So next I…”

Al Terua stepped back and observed Quilbion.

The nark that exited Quilbion’s body pulled in the surrounding mana. It was a natural phenomenon induction that occurred when activating sorcery.

If there was a difference, it was that a lot of mana was responding compared to the weak nark.

Mana in its natural state clung to Quilbion’s nark as if possessing viscosity.

“I glared at it.”

“Glared?”

“Yes. Then the sorcery contained in the talisman activated just as I wanted. From what I felt… it seemed like the talisman was watching my mood. Funny, right?”

“Watching your mood? The talisman?”

“Yes. Though that couldn’t be the case.”

Watching his mood.

Al Terua looked at the mana moving along the nark.

Nark was a guide.

Ultimately, sorcery’s driving force was mana.

Normally, the amount of mana that moved increased according to the guide nark’s capacity, but Quilbion had a large amount of mana transferring to his eerily small nark.

Not enough to become visible, but not enough to ignore either.

“Keep containing sorcery in this talisman.”

“I tried that too. When I contained it for about 17 minutes, the talisman broke.”

Seventeen minutes.

It was a poor record.

Twella would have poured in nark exceeding the talisman’s limit capacity in one second and broken it.

It meant the amount of nark that could be used at once was small.

“Wait a moment.”

Al Terua recalled the number of talismans used. He’d used up over 350 talismans in half a day.

“The talismans you left here, you used all of them?”

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“I contained sorcery and sent them flying. There’s no other way to use them. Ah, I didn’t waste them. I used them preciously, one by one.”

He confirmed the nark Quilbion possessed.

Still small.

But wait, wasn’t it in this state earlier too?

“You applied sorcery to over twenty talismans simultaneously, right?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t impressive sorcery, nor was it sorcery that devoured nark mindlessly, so he’d thought nothing of it.

But looking at the nark Quilbion possessed, this was also bizarre.

Twella also had to rest when she emptied her nark. She had to wait for the dispersed nark to be generated within her body.

She had excellent regeneration ability, so even after using massive nark, she could recover more than half with about ten minutes of rest, but ordinary sorcery users needed two days of rest.

Quilbion had definitely emptied all his nark.

The amount of talismans used proved it.

Yet nark still remained in his body.

“Quilbion.”

“Yes?”

“Try containing sorcery until this talisman breaks.”

“Is there some problem?”

“I’ll explain later. Just try it for now.”

Quilbion infused nark into the talisman.

Just as he’d said, after about 17 minutes passed, the talisman tore with a snap sound.

While Quilbion shrugged and shook the talisman, Al Terua had to furrow his brow.

Nark was flowing in from somewhere.

Nark was like a fingerprint. Every person’s was different. Right now, nark with a different grain coexisted within Quilbion’s body.

Of course, it quickly mixed and became Quilbion’s nark, but what was certain was that nark had flowed in from outside, not from within his body.

He used White Form’s sorcery to heighten his eyesight.

He had to confirm the source of the power.

But he couldn’t see it.

A dried-up well was filling, but he couldn’t tell where the water was springing from.

“Ascetic?”

In the meantime, Quilbion’s nark had recovered.

“When you contained sorcery in the talismans, weren’t you tired?”

“Boredom and tiredness are different things, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

“I didn’t feel physically exhausted. Ah, I did feel a bit dizzy then. When I applied sorcery to thirty talismans.”

“You only felt dizzy at that moment?”

A hollow laugh escaped.

Sorcery application ability, and nark that was small in quantity but never dried up.

“Fate truly is remarkable.”

“Fate again? Since it came up, I have something to say too.”

Quilbion raised his finger and pointed outside the window. At the place his finger indicated, there was a tile.

“You said fate is like a command that can’t be refused, right? But you were wrong. You said it wouldn’t work, Ascetic, but I did it. You see, I never lose at bets. Fate lost to me.”

“Yes. You were right this time. But even so, nothing changes. The grand fate remains solid.”

“Fate, fate. I really don’t like that word ‘fate.'”

“I used to feel that way too.”

Quilbion scratched his head.

“Anyway, I succeeded, right?”

“Yes. You did very well.”

“Will you tell me now? Everything about sorcery?”

“Since I promised.”

Twella’s prophecy had been realized.

That child’s eyes had foreseen all of this.

Then what was Twella trying to change through her efforts?

“I’ll teach you starting tomorrow. Let’s rest for today. My head is throbbing from working since morning.”

Quilbion spread out a thin blanket with a thwap.

“Lie down.”

“Thanks.”

He lay down using books as a pillow. Quilbion also quickly settled in, having grown comfortable with this place.

“What’s Twella doing?”

“She’s probably still learning sorcery even now.”

“There’s still a big difference, right? Between Twella and me.”

“Difference. That’s a word you can use for comparable subjects. That child has already gone to a place immeasurably far. She’ll reach a position you and I can’t imagine.”

Quilbion whistled softly.

“She’s amazing, Twella.”

“She is amazing.”

“It feels like just yesterday she was asking me to save her.”

“Now we’ll have to ask her to save us.”

Twella was special. Compared to her, Quilbion was a bit disappointing, but he was also unique.

Had Twella’s powerful gravitational pull of fate drawn in Quilbion as a supporter?

A play wouldn’t progress with only the lead, so supporting roles would be necessary.

“Can I ask about the outside?”

“Mm, there’s nothing much to tell.”

“Still. Anything is fine.”

“Anything. Well, where I lived was a quiet farmhouse…”

Images flashed by. The village scenery, people’s faces.

But the strange thing was that they didn’t float up clearly.

Was it because he’d been here too long?

“Ascetic?”

“Sorry. I can’t remember well. But there’s nothing special. It’s roughly similar to here. No, there are aspects that are a bit harsher.”

“Do people there also all go eat together when it’s time?”

“Not like that. Instead of a large dormitory, families have separate houses where they live.”

“What’s a family?”

“Mm, family.”

Al Terua turned his head to look at the boy lying down.

“People who eat and sleep in the same place like this?”

“If they’re separated, are they not family?”

“I knew you’d ask that. Blood relations…”

He watched Quilbion’s reaction while speaking. As expected, he seemed not to know the word blood relations. No, it must be sleeping in his memory, unable to surface.

“People your heart connects with. People you want to protect. People you want to keep by your side. You could call such people family.”

“Then… Twella and I are already family?”

“Hmm, this is difficult. Definitions really are hard. Saying something is something, cutting it clearly is difficult work.”

“Even if it’s difficult, I’ll call us family. Because I want to protect Twella.”

He laughed and opened his mouth.

“Can you include me too?”

“Can I be honest?”

“Go ahead.”

“I trust you, Ascetic. But I trust you because I have no choice but to trust you.”

“What if it weren’t that way?”

“I think I would have kept my distance.”

“Why? Haven’t I explained things so kindly, and even saved you?”

“It’s just that your eyes were too cold. I didn’t like that.”

He couldn’t think of what to say to such an honest answer.

“Fine, I can just go find my real family. Sleep. It’s late.”

“Yes, you sleep too, Ascetic.”

He looked at the pitch-black sky wall for a moment, then closed his eyes.