WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 647: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Magic - 10

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The word for glacier contains the character for river, and not just because of its shape. Like rivers, glaciers flow. Ice frozen upstream moves at an agonizingly slow but steady pace, setting out on a journey that will take eons to reach the cold sea.

The Celsius family even marked scales on glaciers and measured their movement every year. The fact that cold, hard ice could flow, however gently, was a wondrous mystery profound enough to etch itself into a young mage's heart.

That was how Elcia's innate arcane came to be.

Innate Arcane, River of Ice.

Ice flowed. Solid ice became fluid, creating a current more destructive and shocking than any rapids.

Ice scraped across the ground as it surged forward. The torrent of ice crystals resembled a moving grinder packed with countless spinning pieces of metal. Leaving trails of destruction behind it, the rising ice coiled like a dragon.

An ice giant and an ice dragon. They looked like something straight out of a myth.

Elcia stood atop the ice and addressed me.

"This is your final warning. Return the rules to how they were at once."

"What? It feels much colder after it gets warm, though. Why don't we just leave it like this? Warm is better than cold, isn't it? Instead of only you people living warmly, let's share it with everyone."

I didn't mean a word of it. Elcia didn't seem moved, either.

"There's no reason to show such consideration to commoners. If their bodies are warm and life becomes comfortable, they will inevitably grow lazy. They will become indolent and neglect their own development."

"You people were warm and comfortable too, but you didn't get lazy. Or did you get so lazy that someone like me managed to steal your rules?"

"They have not been stolen yet."

A growl came from the ice dragon. A flowing solid was destructive by nature. If that thing swallowed me, my body would end up like it had gone through a shredder. My blood would freeze instantly, leaving me unable to regenerate.

"I'll give you a chance to make up for your mistake."

"Oh, moving ice? That's an interesting technique! Most of all, I like that it's easy for the audience to understand!"

I meant "easy to understand" as praise, but to a mage, it was almost an insult. It meant their power was so simple that anyone could understand it at a glance.

"If you insist on choosing the hard way."

The ice rushed in.

Every piece of connected ice swayed like fluid under the influence of her innate arcane, pouring toward me. The basic principle of her innate arcane was to give ice the property of flowing, but Elcia exquisitely adjusted its range and controlled it in one direction.

It was a straightforward use of an innate arcane that was simple yet powerful.

"But if it's easy to understand, it's also easy to counter. Especially right now."

I gripped Kelvin's thermometer again. Let's see. It only affected "ice," after all.

"Freezing Point Control."

If I changed the conditions required for ice to form, then it would all be pointless...

Huh?

It wasn't melting?

I hesitantly raised my head toward the ice pouring down on me. Elcia answered with cold eyes.

"You're wrong."

If it had only been Elcia's innate arcane, it would have worked. But Elcia possessed a relic.

Olaf.

It had the power to gather ice, or more precisely, moisture crystals.

The ice should have melted under the conditions I changed, but Olaf's power was still forming crystals! Even in Celsius territory, where freezing and boiling points jumped all over the place, the relic's power was preserving the ice!

"Another relic?! You're using an innate arcane and a relic at the same time...!"

"You should have stayed trapped. It's too late now. Be swept away and vanish within the glacier."

"Aaaaaaah!"

Without even a chance to resist, I was swept away by the glacier's raging current. My shadow was covered in white, translucent ice...

Or so the dramatic performance went.

Innate Arcane, River of Ice.

While Elcia's vision was blocked, I stole her innate arcane. Elcia's innate arcane was River of Ice, and its target was ice. Even after stealing it, I would only be able to control a little ice around me...

But what did it matter? As long as that terrifying torrent of ice stopped the instant it came within one millimeter of me, it was no different from ordinary ice. A little cold and cramped, perhaps.

My safety was secured, so why not put on another show? I counted silently, stretched a hand over my head, and muttered.

"Freezing Point and Boiling Point Simultaneous Control. Triple Point."

The pinnacle of Kelvin Celsius's innate arcane.

A miracle occurred in a tiny area above my head. The boundaries between water, ice, and vapor blurred. The three states mixed together, creating immense chaos.

And usually, chaos ended in an explosion.

Boom.

A large explosion erupted above my head. Half-frozen crystals, cloudy bursts of vapor, and glittering droplets of water. The three forms of water scattered and painted a rainbow.

Elcia, riding atop the flowing ice, was caught in the blast.

"Eek...!"

Olaf quickly blocked the explosion with its hands. A hazy mist briefly covered the stage, and I quickly crawled out, straightened my clothes, and bowed.

"H-how...?!"

"You should be the ones figuring that out. Mages make a living through tricks. Is it right to demand that I immediately tell you how it works, or isn't it?"

Magic was no different from a stage trick at its core. It only added a sense of mystery through techniques and devices the audience didn't know about, along with a little deception.

It was the sort of technique that would make you laugh once you knew it. To those who didn't, it was a mystery.

"Does no one know? Does no one know what he did?!"

Not one person answered Elcia's question. To the Celsius family, that silence hurt worse than any defeat.

"He's using the power of Celsius in the heart of our territory! And you're saying you have no idea how he accomplished this?! Then this is...!"

The words "a complete defeat" rose to Elcia's throat.

Maybe they just didn't know. If failing to notice a trick meant defeat, I'd be winning every day.

Well, I did win every day.

"Now then. Anyone else?"

No one answered my question. Under the rules of the street, it was legal for me to collect my winnings and leave. These sheltered Celsius snobs, perhaps because they had been raised too gently, couldn't let go of their lingering attachment.

"Stop...!"

Her fighting spirit had already been broken. Still, Elcia had something left to say. She raised a finger and pointed somewhere.

"You may not know this, but Celsius considered that method too. Gathering cold was far more intuitive and easier to use. But after calculating it from every angle, we could not choose that approach."

Something glittered there in midair: a vivid blue crystal.

It was a crystal without a clear shape. Mysterious, chilly mist flowed around it, making even its outline impossible to discern. By my estimate, it was smaller than a grain of sand... but the power contained within was beyond imagination, and it was growing in real time.

"Gathering the cold scattered throughout the city? Yes, it could be done with Kelvin Celsius's power. But the Celsius family would become the core where that cold gathered, and the accumulated cold would turn into an ice crystal."

"An ice crystal?"

"As cold gathered through the rules, it would gradually condense and become a crystal of pure cold. It is a curse of cold that will explode someday. You would freeze just by approaching it."

An ice crystal was a lump of air that had absorbed enormous amounts of cold through the rules before ultimately condensing and solidifying. You couldn't even approach it. The air around it settled into a cold stillness, freezing everything that came near.

It was the solidified atmosphere I had seen in the Cyan Tower Master's innate arcane. Power on the same level as what had made the Green Tower Master and Black Tower Master tense, and what the Demon King had barely resolved personally.

No, unlike an innate arcane that recreated the resulting phenomenon, that was the pure result of gathered cold. It would be even stronger.

"If left alone, the ice crystal will keep growing until it swallows the family. It will reach a point we cannot control. When that happens, the commoners will pay the full price at once for the warmth they enjoyed. Would you leave a bomb like that, one that will explode someday, unattended? Without taking any responsibility?"

"Responsibility? Me?"

Just because I changed things, did I have to bear every consequence? Had Celsius taken responsibility, then?

"You are the ones who left things unattended. You held rules like these in your hands, yet left the cold outside and the commoners' ignorance untouched. Who took responsibility for that?"

It was the same thing. Everyone only forced it on someone else. Responsibility? I had never seen a single person who used that word actually take any.

"Try to work it out somehow. You people."

"That is so irresponsible..."

"And honestly, you can deal with the ice crystal too, can't you?"

Why were they acting so dramatic? They had rejected it because it wasn't worth the cost, not because they were incapable of doing it. The Celsius family couldn't be that weak.

"...Are you talking about Elisha?"

"Hm?"

Elisha? The Cyan Tower Master? Why was that name coming up?

Elcia had maintained a minimum level of dignity until now, but then she said,

"Yes. Elisha. My inadequate younger sibling's power could control the ice crystal. That child's innate arcane is difficult to use... but there is one thing it can control, and that is an ice crystal."

The Cyan Tower Master's innate arcane, Crystal Theory, possessed the power of forced solidification. It included air. It differed from condensing cold, but that ability could affect the ice crystal.

"You're right. The Cyan Tower Master could control it easily."

"...Do you even understand what that means?"

Elcia ground her teeth and glared at me as though she wanted to kill me.

"You're saying my sibling should die and become a relic."

Elisha didn't necessarily have to die. If the Cyan Tower Master dealt with the ice crystal whenever it came to mind, this territory would become much warmer and easier to live in.

But all kinds of accidents happened in this world. What if the Cyan Tower Master had to leave for a long time for some reason, suddenly lost control, or even died unexpectedly? The means to control the ice crystal would disappear.

A relic didn't come with those worries.

"Every day, that inadequate child would be pressured to become a relic as soon as possible, before dying of old age. And one day, that child would try to live up to those expectations. She is soft-hearted and sensitive. It would only take the smallest trigger for her to make that decision."

Well, maybe. The Cyan Tower Master wasn't stupid, but for a mage, Elisha did care quite a bit about others.

"Wanting to share warmth with everyone, as you have done, is the same as demanding that Celsius sacrifice itself. The rules of this land are built from Celsius's knowledge and sacrifice. Those commoners contribute nothing to these rules! Yet you demand that we pay an even greater sacrifice to care for them? There is no reason for it, and you have no right to force it on us! Then let those commoners live cold and hungry!"

When I heard it, she had a point. Celsius had created it and developed it, after all. Demanding even greater sacrifices from them was unfair.

Still, I couldn't just sit quietly when I had a complaint.

"Why are you so fixated on killing someone and turning them into a relic? You could find another way... couldn't you?"

They wanted to protect their privilege. They didn't want to sacrifice more. When someone complained, they dragged them in and froze them. They tried to discard black magic, the commoners' own means of survival, because it was taboo.

What was this? Were they going to live by these rules forever?

As much as humans compromised, the rules had to compromise too.

"Do you think another method can be found that easily?! It's easy to say, but you don't have any solution at all!"

No. There was a way.

Or at least a road leading to one.

They simply hadn't chosen it.

"No. There is!"

As if answering for me, someone else's voice cut in.

My first impression was fire. Just from her proximity, I could feel the scorching heat. Ice that shouldn't have melted easily under the rules trembled before melting away.

No, it burned.

The north was cold. People's actions and clothing couldn't help becoming closed-off. Yet the woman who had suddenly appeared was as open as if she had come from the far south alone.

She wore only a short tank top, leaving almost all of her upper body bare, while the lower part of her outfit had been torn off where her thighs began. It was hard to say whether it could even be called pants. Even someone suffering in the heat would hesitate to try such fashion.

Yet it suited her.

Red eyes. Hair just as red. Flames that seemed to wrap around her. Her skin, as though singed by her own heat, was alien in a way that felt mysterious.

"The sky you thought was the ceiling of the world is an illusion. The stars are much farther away. A limit is an excuse made by those who define it as a limit. Magic has no limits! There is always a way!"

The red-haired mage shouted and snapped her fingers.

A huge pillar of flame appeared, wrapping around the ice crystal.

The flames were bright enough to light up the world. Even if the sun vanished for a moment, no one would notice its absence. The magical flames burned away the supposedly dangerous ice crystal, then shot into the sky in an instant before they could spread outward.

The atmosphere was sucked in. A rapid updraft rose, carrying ice and snow with it. Snow, hail, mist, clouds. Fragments of snow that had gained different names in a matter of seconds glittered high in the distant sky before disappearing.

The magical power was tremendous, but that wasn't all. Even if it hadn't gathered much yet, the ice crystal's power was already difficult for magic alone to handle.

It was only possible because the magic had been reinforced by the power of an innate arcane.

"You... As expected..."

Elcia recognized who she was and broke into a cold sweat.

The last heir of the fallen Fahrenheit family.

The Red Tower Master.

And the central figure of the Temple of the Demon God.

The Red Tower Master.

Hwaran Fahrenheit.

The most radical, fiery mage had appeared in Celsius territory.

Footnotes:

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