278. The Council (4)
A mage cannot become a god.
To be precise, a being who becomes a god can no longer remain a mage.
The ‘miracle’ that creates divinity is composed of a logic entirely different from that of magic, even if it produces the same result as magic.
Even if it creates fire out of thin air, a mage weaves magical power to pull concepts into reality. But gods do not create fire in that way.
Divinity is an extremely condensed ‘power.’ Power without direction. Power that has become the concept itself. If beings imbued with such power wish to create fire, they imagine the flame and whisper to the world.
[Let there be fire.]
And so it shall be.
This is a phrase commonly found in the scriptures of all faiths, at least those of the benevolent gods in the Temple of the Gods.
‘Ask, and the Lord shall provide.’ Literally, gods do not weave phenomena. The power of a god inherently contains the phenomenon.
“Immortal Orcis.”
Therefore, those who tread the long staircase toward divinity, walking the path between human and god, are no longer mages. From the moment they begin to embody divinity, they can no longer remain mages.
Fernandez was the same. His divinity was the power of ‘reason.’ And faith belongs to the realm of ’emotion.’ Due to this strange paradox, Fernandez’s divinity could not express the concepts of divine power in the world. It was a bitter side effect.
So he chose magic. He abandoned the convenient miracles that divinity could bring.
For him, the power of divinity was nothing more or less than a tool. If there was a more rational tool, it was economical to use it.
As Diemonica, and as a quasi-god imbued with divinity, Fernandez’s way of using magic was ‘death.’ Only by bringing himself to the brink of death and forcibly dispersing his divinity could he grasp even a fragment of magic.
“Impressive, Faijashi. Truly astonishing. Perhaps your greatest strength is, well… laughably, wisdom.”
“Let’s not embarrass each other with such talk.”
Non-mage. Grand Speaker. No, Immortal Orcis. In this era, and the one before. Even in the era of the world’s destruction, he was one of the few remaining immortals.
Among mortals, immortals appear. Giants who bridge eras. The Raccoon of the Southern Jungle. Delphia of the Iron Fortress. Paul of Vaitas. And, the Wanderer Orcis.
Quasi-gods imbued with divinity. Seekers walking toward godhood. Priests sworn to the missions given by gods. Or, corpses deprived of rest by the curse of a god.
Regardless of their origins, all of them held fragments of divinity—
“Do you know of the Origin World?”
During the great cataclysm of the Origin World, they were the wraiths who thoroughly resisted the forces of hell and ultimately perished.
“Haha. I was lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“That Faijashi crossed over to this world at that time, and that the great mage repented and became active.”
In the darkness, the old man’s voice echoed. The voices overlapped and resonated, sounding as if there were many.
Diemonica’s senses shone like a sharp sword even at that moment. He grasped the reverberations of the voice, pinpointing the distance and position of the other.
“The High Council itself. No… the very name of Aseas was an illusion.”
“Right. Immortality is often like that. Changing masks and blending into the surroundings.”
“The others didn’t do that.”
“Probably because they were lazy. Or arrogant. Or… stupid. To walk among people, one must become a person. Tsk.”
Sound forms waveforms. The difference between knowing it as knowledge and perceiving it through some transcendent sense is more dramatic than one might think.
If one could read the texture of sound colliding, breaking, and merging, they could infer the space.
Generally, even for Diemonica, this would be an impossible feat. Fernandez was analyzing the size and shape of this space by tracing the reverberations of sound.
This is not a reception room.
From the moment one crosses the gateway of the tower, everything is no longer magic.
The Twelve.
Twelve. Shaysh. The path toward truth.
Mystic runes, the vision of Aseas. Not of a school, but of an individual.
“Wildcast. Since you couldn’t use magic, you experimented. You were caught in the paradox of divinity.”
“Hahaha! This is why I like mages. Once you understand one thing, you understand everything without needing explanation! You’re right, Faijashi. I couldn’t use magic, so I couldn’t see the magic I created myself!”
So he created a school. Took disciples, taught them magic. And those disciples… could never leave this tower until they died.
This was a trap. The kind of trap that no mage could escape, a very alluring trap.
A trap for mages who volunteered to be experimental subjects, who willingly marched to the slaughterhouse in pursuit of a fragment of truth. Not a school, but a massive workshop.
“The Twelve are…”
“Yes. My other faces. I am us, and we are me. Orcis. Alejandro. Ascanio. Alexander. All my other names, each with a different role.”
-Click!
The sound of fingers snapping. And the light returned. The night sky spread like a carpet on the floor, and the ocean’s surface reflecting its light flowed majestically across the ceiling.
The slyly smiling old man sat far away on an old sofa, looking at him.
“Shall we have some tea, Faijashi? Let’s share some old tales among old wraiths.”
“There’s something I don’t understand.”
“What is it?”
“The Origin World was destroyed, and at the moment I took my last breath, Vaitas created this world. The Temple of the Gods sealed the full effort and hid the plan. How were you able to escape the end and cross over to this world?”
“Do dimensions flow in the same time?”
The old man extended his finger and snapped again. A soft breeze brushed past his ear. The old man, who had been sitting far away, was now right in front of Fernandez. And between them was spread the same tea set as in the reception room.
“And, could the me of that time and the me now be the same being?”
“Information reflection.”
“Correct.”
Wow. That was the result of the Aseas secret technique experiment.”
Fernandez chuckled. It had been a while since he felt this way. It was like he had returned to being a mage, one who was deeply immersed in academia.
He was wandering somewhere between concepts and pedantry, desperately trying to grasp a thread of truth that seemed about to snap at any moment.
“The High Council of Aseas in the main world perished… because I no longer needed to pretend to be part of the council, nor did I have any reason to continue the experiments. No matter how much I tried to predict the future, all I saw was the end.”
“That’s why the information-reflecting entities committed suicide.”
“Exactly. But what’s even more terrifying is that I was immortal. Other ‘prophets’ might have died before the end, but not me. What could I do? Just sit back and wait for the end?”
“Why didn’t you help the other heroes?”
“Ha! Heroes? Are you seriously calling them heroes, Faijashi? Those guys, heroes?”
For the first time, a sneer appeared on the old man’s face.
The playful, friendly expression froze into something cold.
“From Hell’s perspective, you might have been a hero too. From some humans’ point of view, those guys could be considered heroes as well. But it wasn’t about the clash of good and evil, or justice and corruption. It was an extension of the Celestial War, a power struggle between the Temple of the Gods and Hell. Or…”
“Survival of the fittest.”
“Exactly. The only rule in that was the law of nature, and the only truth was the survival of the strongest. The so-called heroes you mentioned were nothing more than warlords who were born with greater power and ruled with even greater force.”
“Wasn’t hypocrisy better than the world ending?”
“Well, I didn’t like either.”
-Clink.
The old man took a sip of tea and shrugged. Seeing Fernandez not even touch his tea, he chuckled.
“Just like the old days. All tense and curled up like a kid.”
“I get the information-reflecting entity thing. You saw the future, gave up. So what did you do?”
“I tried a lot of things. To avoid the end, I even supported the so-called heroes, as you suggested. But you know what? Whenever things started to improve, whenever hope began to appear, those heroes you mentioned would stab each other in the back.”
“Ah, those were the days.”
What a cruel paradox. Both Hell and Heaven. It was a time when, within a collapsing social structure, people struggled to keep the next power in check.
If the reason the divided civilization couldn’t be overthrown in one fell swoop was the rift among the Great Demons, then the fatal flaw of the civilization that couldn’t maintain the hard-earned hope was also due to its own internal rifts.
It’s the same with the behavior of the Empire’s Dukes now. The strong dislike the emergence of an overwhelmingly powerful force that could shake the paradigm. Heroes? The more powerful the warlords, the stronger that tendency was. Because the weight they carried wasn’t just their own lives, but many others as well.
When the Great Demons were at each other’s throats, there was hope on the side of the Temple of the Gods as well.
Some Hell Gates collapsed, some were caught in counterattacks and ended up opening paths to Hell, and some Great Demons even sold out other demons to the Temple of the Gods.
But, without fail, power struggles would begin at such moments. It’s ridiculous. And tragic. The end of humanity, as Faijashi often said, was marked by humanity itself. All Faijashi did in between was to add a single punctuation mark.
“That’s what got to me. Would this one be better? I’d look into the future, and it was always the end. That one seemed promising. I’d look, and again, it was the end. In every future, there was no conclusion other than destruction, and I had to prepare for something else.”
“What was that?”
“You.”
The old man looked at Fernandez with his faded eyes.
“Your regret. Your lament. Like the destruction of the main world, there was one thing that never changed in any future. Your regret, Faijashi. In every future, in every possible outcome, you regretted the past.”
“Must have been funny. A guy like me knowing regret.”
“No. It was impressive.”
The old man smiled softly.
“Very. It was touching. A guy who sometimes betrayed, sometimes was betrayed, and in most cases, had his hands stained with blood. In every future, every possibility, under any condition, he regretted himself.”
Then, perhaps it’s not just nature? The old man whispered.
Fernandez didn’t answer, just quietly thought. It’s not nature. It’s fate. What he had to bear. But the old man didn’t stop.
“Vaitas had hope in you. It was the most human, the most humane action. And so did I. The moment I saw that future, the moment I saw Vaitas’ plan, I made the same preparations.”
“Are you talking about defying Heaven?”
“No. That’s just a one-in-a-million possibility even if the Temple of the Gods went all out. If I had to stake my life, it had to be on something more certain.”
“…What was that?”
A prophet facing the end. Even an immortal with divinity had to find a way to deal with the inevitable end. The old man smiled slyly.
“I reflected information.”
“…What?”
“Even if another world is created in the distant future, the me in that world would still be an information-reflecting entity. You know why we don’t just call that trait ‘prophet.'”
“Because it’s a completely different skill.”
“Right. The echoes of information from the future and the past, scattered and reflected. A being that can read them. Here, I focused on the word ‘reflect.’ After experiments, there was a result. If I can reflect and read information from the future, couldn’t I reflect information to the future?”
And, perhaps not just along the timeline of future and past. Couldn’t it also be possible across the boundary between dimensions?
“The tower…”
“Right. The magic tower of the High Council of Aseas. This is a kind of transmitter and receiver. Not just for information about the future, but also to catch the echoes of information reflected from beyond dimensions. I wandered the world to find its place. After successfully transmitting, I destroyed the tower. I waited for the future, spending time until the moment of the end.”
The old man laughed. Most things were explained. But there was still a lingering question. Why? What was the point?
“Reflecting information across dimensions. It’s a romantic notion, but also a meaningless one. It’s not about avoiding the end or ensuring survival. It’s just about informing ‘Orcis’ in this lower dimension about what happened in the main world. So, in the end, you’re not the Orcis of the main world, but just a specter.”
“Correct. But there was a reason it had to be that way. Faijashi Wildcast. The reason why the me in the main world had to risk death and focus all efforts on delivering information to the me in this world.”
“…What was that?”
The old man’s laughter stopped. Coldly. A killing intent? No, perhaps it was more detached, more inorganic. Like a judge’s verdict. Emotionlessly, decisively. As if testifying to the facts.
“Even now, in every future I see, there’s still only the end.”
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