WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 639: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Magic - 3

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Missionary Casas glared at me with a terrifying expression. It was as though they were looking at their mortal enemy. What had I even done?

"Well, Father locked up a priest and taught black magic to a child...?"

"No. Hilde was the one who personally captured and locked them up."

"Father ordered me to do it! You're the ringleader, so of course they hate you!"

"What? You said you had it harder because you did the work yourself, but when it's time to take responsibility, you dump it all on me."

Unfair. I really should have been the only one taking baths.

"Glory Lord Celsius!"

Temperus did not sit idly by after Father Casas barged in, swinging the staff wide. A huge hemispherical dome of ice formed along its path, enclosing the missionary and me.

Creating an ice structure this large with a short incantation? As long as Temperus was within the family estate, the mage was practically an innate arcane user. No, since I could not steal and use innate arcane, perhaps Temperus was an even more troublesome opponent for me.

"Stay where you are!"

An ice prison rose up. Sharp icicles swallowed Father Casas like teeth. Then light flashed, and Time Anointing was invoked once more. The ice began melting slowly from the points it touched.

Magic and time collided. Water melted and froze again and again, and like the glaciers of the Northern Sea, ice and water fought over their territory. Freezing, breaking, clumping together, scattering apart, fragments of ice glittered like starlight.

"Save us from sin, save us from sin..."

Missionary Casas was at a disadvantage. This was deep inside the Celsius family's territory. If they had been alone, they could have protected themself, but they were nowhere near strong enough to protect Richard and the twenty people from the Outcast district.

Gripping their rosary tightly, they flipped through the Bible with one hand.

"Saint, Holy Maiden, Holy Spirit! In the beginning, there was light. Watch over those without sin!"

Light burst from between the closed pages. Radiant light. Lightbringer, something any clergyman could use. Yet the missionary's light was bright and hot enough to melt magically created ice.

The evaporated mist slowly dispersed. Missionary Casas's entire body had frozen blue, but the Bible still emitted holy radiance.

The essence of holy power was the force that denied the unnatural. A restorative power that returned what had been twisted to its proper course. Nothing could match holy power in defense. Temperus looked irritated.

"The moment that child uses black magical energy, he becomes a black mage! A servant of the Sanctum intends to attack a mage to protect a black mage?"

"The child has committed no sin. If there is sin, it lies with me for failing to teach him beforehand what was evil, and with this land for failing to stop it."

Exactly. What sin had a child who did not even know whether black magic was good or evil committed? What was bad was not the child, but this world...

"Though the most detestable one is that man!"

"Huh. I acted out of pure goodwill."

"If it is goodwill, it ought to lead to a good outcome! If this is goodwill, then demons must whisper into human ears out of goodwill too!"

That was true. No matter how much one claimed their intentions were good, if they did not take responsibility when things went wrong, it was simply malice.

But still.

"Then what should I have done? Like you, should I have let that child slowly sink into death in the Outcast district? Mercifully?"

Holy power was a force that rejected ideals. An authority that forced people to give up and submit. A religion that told people to endure the suffering of reality while promising happiness in the afterlife was well suited to safeguarding the system.

"Should I have pushed him into a place where promised extinction awaited, crushed the hope that made him look upward, and locked him in a cold prison while whispering only of happiness in the afterlife? Would Richard have been satisfied with that life?"

I knew the answer to that question. It was no. There was no need to ask.

"If that had been the case, Richard would not have come looking for me. He would not have struggled to climb higher either. Isn't that right?"

I looked up at Missionary Casas. They would understand what I meant.

After all, it was Missionary Casas who had told Richard, back in the Outcast district, about an extraordinary mage from the floating castle. About me.

Missionary Casas's radiance wavered for a moment. Only for a moment. Then they shouted at me as though they found me contemptible.

"How shameless, spreading a sin like black magic! You could have helped him through proper means rather than such wicked methods!"

"That's sophistry. This structure is what came from proper methods piling up over and over. This is the result. Regardless of good or evil, it is an order that hardened over a long time through what was considered proper."

It simply turned out that way. A regrettable thing. The people who first created this order must have imagined a future where everyone was happy and full of hope. The world did not go as they pleased.

Did that mean I should hold them responsible? That would be unreasonable too. Did one person live alone in this world? Did one person create the world? An era was the work of every human being who lived through it.

"I'm not saying order is evil. Nor am I pursuing good. I don't care about such things. I won't shove the responsibility onto anyone either. This is the result of everyone struggling."

Humans were nothing but beasts. Foolish and lowly beasts. Even if one tried to dump sin and virtue onto a small handful of people, human beings did not have the capacity for that.

Neither the capacity to cast it off nor the capacity to bear it.

I took out my cards and shuffled them lightly.

"But if order was inevitably created, wouldn't attempts to overcome that order inevitably arise as well?"

If humanity discovered magic to overcome a harsh environment,

then overcoming the order magic created was also something humans had to do.

"Stop!"

One of the guards pointed a spear at me threateningly. I gave the guard a broad smile.

I drew cards. A spade and a clover. Cards containing the Demon God and magic rested in my hands.

The clover cards I had used before were a kind of magical-energy grenade, compressing magical energy. Since someone with pitiful magical energy like me could not use powerful magic directly, I filled magic circles that I had designed myself with magical energy extracted from alchemical coins, then used them as one-time magical bombs.

They were easy to use, but not very powerful, and their fatal flaw was that they could only be used once.

Most of the clover cards I had left were empty shells with their magical energy exhausted. Duds whose damaged magic circles had only been forcibly repaired.

And then.

"Set."

I crammed magical energy into them.

White magical energy? Black magical energy? In truth, the type did not matter. Magical energy was scattered throughout all things in the world.

The reason white magic chose crystals as catalysts was simply that their magical energy was consistent.

The reason black magic used the body as a catalyst was simply that it was convenient to use my own body.

They had been chosen for those reasons alone. In truth, I could use other magical energy if I wanted.

"I said stop!"

The guard thrust the spear. A mage's bodyguard was the vanguard. A wall that created distance from the enemy while the mage prepared magic.

The split spearhead aimed at me. Instead of dodging, I raised my hand to catch it.

Of course, it was pointless. My strength had grown a little, but catching a blade barehanded was still reckless. If the weapon contained blade aura, it went beyond recklessness and became stupidity.

My hand was cut wide open, and blood sprayed out. The blood shot out like a fountain seemed to coil through the air, then returned to my right hand.

More precisely, to the clover card in my right hand.

"Hoo."

Vampires used blood magic. They moved blood energy through bloodcraft, weaving its life force to complete magic. It was an enormous price that humans would not even dare attempt, but for vampires with regenerative powers, it was no more than a reasonable cost.

In other words, I, who had also gained regenerative powers thanks to the Demon God, could use blood magic as well.

Life force moved. Magical energy woven from human blood. This blood magical energy specialized in life, flow, and control. It had too many disqualifying traits to wield white magic directly, so it needed refining first.

"Lightning Skein."

There was a magic circle inside the human body.

A small lightning magic circle engraved in the body, meant to move this body of blood, bones, and muscle at will.

I wove Lightning Skein and drew a layered magic circle.

A dizzying pain surged through my right hand. The purest pain, crushing the nerves themselves. It was not enough to use my body as a tool, I was modifying it for magical purposes too, and a terrible rejection spread through it. Pain and alienness filled my entire right arm.

Even so, Tyr's Demon God was trying to restore me. Regeneration and destruction occurred at once, delaying the end of this terrible pain again and again. If it healed completely or broke completely, there would be no pain at all.

Magical energy was born as structures collapsed. The magical energy in my arm, where regeneration and destruction occurred in succession, was more abundant than ever.

I overlapped two clover cards. Five, six. Wind, condensation. I seized the atmosphere and solidified it, then shoved the space itself with wind.

"...! This is!"

The atmosphere solidified. The bodyguard inside became like an insect trapped in amber. The guard quickly realized what had happened.

Temperus often used this magic, which wielded wide-ranging physical force.

"Goodbye."

After offering a light farewell, I struck the air forcefully. The impact spread through the entire solidified space, and cracks formed with a sharp cracking sound. The bodyguard, shoved away with the space itself, was flung far into the distance.

Temperus's eyes widened. A mage as well, Temperus could not fail to understand what I had done.

"Black magical energy...?"

Temperus was shocked and furious. Instinctive disgust rose within the mage as Temperus pointed the staff at me.

It was not because I had used black magic in the Arcane Federation, the nation of white magic. Nor was it because black magic had proven stronger than expected.

"You copied my magic...?! With something like black magic?! Impossible!"

It was because I had wielded white magic with murky, filthy black magical energy.

My right arm had already healed. Shuffling cards with my uninjured right hand, I spoke to Temperus.

"Now then. Earlier, you gave people a question, didn't you? Let me do the same."

What I used was standard-issue magic, a form of black magic. A power the Arcane Federation rejected.

Yet the result I achieved was exactly the same as Temperus's magic.

"As you know, analyzing magic is much easier than devising it. Just as criticism is easier than creation. So go on, take a guess. What magic did I use?"

There was a rule in the Arcane Federation. If someone could not prove what magic had struck them, they could not blame anyone.

A rule created to reject the terrible witch hunts of the distant past.

"If you can't, then you're the one conducting a 'witch hunt.'"

Footnotes:

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