Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Chapter 2. Lord

Before leaving the room.

The last thing Kawin did was touch his face with both hands.

It was an unnecessary gesture.

He could see now, and there was a mirror in the room.

But Kawin had a special reason for doing it.

To ‘compare.’

“I look... almost the same as I did in my previous life.”

It was simple curiosity.

What had I looked like in my previous life?

By comparing what his fingertips remembered, he could know for certain.

Above a sharply defined jawline that looked almost sharp enough to cut his hand, a straight, refined nose rose prominently.

His eyes were long like a runway, with their outer corners drooping slightly, giving him a somewhat dreamy look.

Though in my previous life, I doubt I had platinum-blond hair that gleamed like this.

It sounded incredibly conceited to say it myself.

But there was simply no other way to put it.

“I was really handsome.”

Wasn’t it said that even babies who had only just opened their eyes could recognize handsome men and beautiful women?

If his old face had resembled this one, then Cha Hoon must have looked fairly impressive in his previous life as well.

Certain incidents he had never understood finally made sense.

The female students who used to hand him drinks while he worked at the library.

They had not been lying about anything, yet the temperature of their breath had always risen.

After letting out a silly laugh, Kawin tossed a small container into the trash.

Thud!

A black medicine bottle that looked suspicious at a glance.

Kawin’s developed sense of smell let him roughly guess what kind of medicine it contained.

If someone swallowed a large amount of it, there was no chance they would come out unharmed.

“...You should’ve kept living. Even I fought tooth and nail to survive when I couldn’t see.”

Before Kawin was possessed, he had taken his own life.

Kawin did not think him pathetic.

Nor did he particularly feel like comforting him.

Kawin simply did not want to lose it.

The newly granted life of light he had received.

‘Five years from now.’

The only son of the Anper family, who possessed no talent and had not even formed a single Circle.

Could he fight against the protagonist of the story in this state?

Kawin clenched his fist tightly.

It wasn’t a question of, ‘Can I do it?’

He would do it.

If his arrival in this world was not mere coincidence, then there had to be a way.

‘My previous life and this one are no different.’

Kawin decided to do what he did best.

One word.

‘Preparation.’

* * *

“What do you think, Kawin? Isn’t it nice working the fields with your own hands like this?”

To put it nicely, his smile looked harmless. To put it less kindly, he looked like he was missing a screw.

Kawin’s father, Xymoron, approached me with a broad grin.

To a fallen viscount, a ‘territory’ was not a place where one ordered people around.

It was simply land where he had to pick up tools and work alongside everyone else.

The farmland was barely a handful compared to the estates of other noble families.

Xymoron worked up a sweat here alongside the young men.

And of course, Kawin, who had been dragged out against his will, was working too.

“Oh, dear. Your clothes are covered in fuzz.”

After saying that, Xymoron gathered mana at his fingertips.

With enough mana packed together to make the sweat on his body thicken into streams, Xymoron accomplished what he wanted.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

He burned away every bit of lint clinging to his clothes.

Xymoron planted both hands on his hips as though he had just accomplished something extraordinary.

“What do you think, Kawin! This is the greatness of Lightning. Where else could you find magic so intimately connected to people’s daily lives? Hahaha!”

Instead of answering, Kawin checked Xymoron’s breathing and the scent of his sweat.

There was not the slightest trace of falsehood.

His father was genuinely proud of his ‘lint-burning magic.’

‘This man is dangerous.’

Ignoring Kawin’s dubious expression, his father Xymoron straightened his back.

“We’re more or less finished with the work, so go wash up and get ready. Today is the day of an important ritual.”

“A ritual...?”

“Have you forgotten? We kept putting it off because you were too lazy to get out of bed. The ritual for my father’s father, the Archmage Dharma.”

When Kawin asked where the ritual was held, Xymoron answered casually.

But his answer made Kawin’s eyes widen.

“Where else? Naturally, before the grimoire he left behind.”

* * *

A grimoire.

Not merely a magic book containing magical principles and formulas.

A divine relic possessing a will of its own,

“Something that incredible... belongs to our family?”

“Hmm? You’re talking as though you’ve never heard of it before.”

Xymoron’s eyes widened for a moment before he slapped a hand to his forehead and burst into laughter.

“Well, I suppose so. Every year you either overslept or ran away. It’s understandable that you’d forget.”

“I really was a terribly irresponsible son.”

“You have no idea. Vilcus once said we ought to plant you in that field over there like a radish. Leaving only your head above ground, naturally.”

Kawin briefly recalled his first encounter with Vilcus.

With that contemptuous stare of his, he was absolutely the sort of man who would say something like that.

His head was cleanly bald from forehead to crown, leaving hair only along the sides.

Though the suit he wore was old, it was impeccably neat.

‘Compared to him, this man is...’

If Vilcus was like the tip of a carefully forged fountain pen, Xymoron was more like a set of gears roughly fitted together.

Something about him creaked, looked sloppy, and felt blunt around the edges.

His magnificent platinum-blond hair fluttered in the wind as though crying out that it had chosen the wrong owner.

‘Still, he is handsome.’

His blue eyes had grown deeper with age.

A bead of sweat cheerfully slid down the bridge of his sharply sculpted nose.

His eyes drooped ever so slightly, and all of his features were large and striking.

Which only made his current occupation suit him even better.

Not a mage, but a farmer.

‘No need to ask why he doesn’t work as a mage.’

A wide variety of magic appeared in [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star].

Water and fire formed from mana, earth and wind, and more.

Mages could wield one attribute for every Circle they possessed.

And among them, the weakest branch was electricity—Lightning.

The protagonist, the ‘Heavenly Slaughter Star,’ fought mages as routinely as eating three meals a day.

And among all the mages who had ever threatened him, not one had belonged to the Lightning branch.

Why doesn’t Father work as a mage like the other family heads?

Why is Lightning so absurdly weak?

Why doesn’t Father use another type of magic like the families that abandoned their old traditions?

All three questions would stab directly at Xymoron, so Kawin decided to swallow them for now.

Instead, he asked something else.

“The Anper territory is more fertile than I expected, but it’s strange that monsters never appear here. We’re pretty far from the capital, aren’t we? Anywhere else would’ve been reduced to ruins by now.”

“Haha. That’s simple enough.”

“Simple?”

Xymoron spread both dirt-covered palms toward the sky.

“Is all of this not the blessing of Archmage Dharma! We are the only ones in this empire who still remember him and perform a ritual in his honor every year. Surely his power must be protecting these farmlands.”

“Ah.”

Kawin understood completely and ended the conversation.

Xymoron had simply found a grandiose way of saying, ‘I don’t know.’

“Come now. It’s been a while since you last saw the grimoire. Your eyes will practically pop out of your head.”

* * *

A handsome platinum-blond man who looked exactly like Xymoron Anper.

Kawin muttered quietly.

“This... is the ritual?”

“Ahem! Ahem!”

At those words, Vilcus glared and cleared his throat.

His father only smiled awkwardly.

Kawin knew it was disrespectful.

But the moment he saw the altar before him, a hollow laugh slipped out.

Fine. He could overlook how absurdly simple the ceremony itself was.

But shriveled jerky, bread covered in crumbs.

Stale-smelling fruit and a chipped cup?

If Archmage Dharma saw this, forget giving them his blessing—he would probably flip the entire table over.

‘I knew things were bad, but were they really this bad?’

Then again.

In a territory where putting food on the table was already difficult, using food for a ‘ritual’ was bound to be extravagant.

Even Kawin could understand that.

“He didn’t exactly pass down particularly powerful magic. Do we really need to keep honoring him like this?”

“Good heavens! Young Master!”

Vilcus had been repeatedly clearing his throat and making his displeasure obvious.

At last, veins bulged across his sparsely haired scalp.

“We are standing before the altar! Watch your words! Lightning may be weaker than flint today, but when Lord Dharma was alive, Lightning was the mightiest branch of magic! Is that not so, Master?”

“Saying it’s weaker than flint is a little...”

Dressed carefully in formal ceremonial clothes, Xymoron wore the expression of a man who had just been stabbed.

Kawin watched their exchange, then tilted his head.

‘Lightning was the strongest? When?’

He could dismiss its absence from [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star], since that was a story about the Empire of Swords.

But even the books preserved by the family contained nothing of the sort.

Was this some kind of self-delusion? Convincing themselves there was no way their ancestor could have been so weak?

As though reading the doubt in Kawin’s gaze,

Xymoron shrugged.

“It’s only natural you wouldn’t believe it. But the stories about Lord Dharma are true. Lightning’s power declined as the ages passed, but in his time, no being who stood upon this earth was stronger than Lord Dharma.”

“I see.”

After checking his father’s breathing and the scent of his sweat, Kawin knew he was telling the truth.

If that was the case, it was all the more regrettable.

Had the Anper family been able to use Dharma’s power, survival would have been far easier.

“Now then. Let us pray.”

Before an altar that could hardly be called reverent even as a courtesy,

Kawin and Xymoron bowed their heads.

And prayed silently.

I finally get transported into another world, and it turns out both the empire and my family are doomed?

Isn’t that a little too much?

Anything will do, so please give me a way out.

I’m confident I can work hard.

It was closer to a complaint than a prayer.

“Now it is time to see the grimoire he left behind.”

With those words, Xymoron took the lead.

See it.

A grimoire was still a kind of book, yet they spoke of ‘seeing’ it rather than reading it?

But Kawin soon understood what Xymoron meant.

“Whoa...!”

Dharma’s ritual was held in the innermost room of the Anper manor.

And the grimoire itself could only be seen after passing into yet another chamber beyond it.

“Didn’t you say the Anper family has kept this grimoire for hundreds of years?”

“Yes. That is true.”

“But...”

-Flash!

He had heard that something called a mirror ball existed in his previous life.

He had been blind back then, but now he could guess what sort of object it had been.

A festival of color that sprayed brilliant light in every direction.

Perhaps this grimoire was like a mirror ball compressed to several hundred times its intensity.

He had cried uncontrollably when he first saw the sun.

But this was even harder to look at.

“A divine relic really is something else.”

“Isn’t it?”

A square-cut stone pedestal.

Resting atop it was Dharma’s grimoire.

Despite the countless years that had passed, it continued scattering lights of every kind in all directions.

“May I touch it?”

“Of course.”

Kawin carefully reached toward the grimoire.

There were no special letters visible on the cover.

Only the lights, each competing to make its presence known.

The first page beneath the cover was the same.

And so was the next.

‘What is this?’

Tiny squares densely filled every page.

Each sheet looked as though someone had laid a Go board across it.

There were no letters anywhere.

Only different colors revealed themselves across each page.

“Beautiful no matter how many times you see it, isn’t it? Take your time looking. Come to the pasture afterward. Vilcus and I will go feed the livestock first.”

Perhaps he was pleased that his son had finally shown interest.

Xymoron laughed heartily and left the grimoire chamber first.

Now only Kawin and the grimoire remained in the room.

Multicolored light illuminated the walls, dancing wildly across them.

“...Strange.”

He did not know much about magic, but he knew what a grimoire was.

A divine relic possessing a will of its own.

The culmination of an Archmage’s lifelong efforts, something that could rightly be called the embodiment of their knowledge.

Would someone really create a grimoire just so it could put on a mirror-ball show for hundreds of years?

‘No way.’

There was no chance.

Aside from the five senses that had sharpened because of his blindness, there was one more thing Kawin had always been sensitive to.

His sixth sense.

What people called ‘instinct.’

‘There’s definitely a secret hidden inside this.’

Kawin sat there and read the grimoire again and again.

Tears streamed down his face from the intense light, but he did not care.

After repeating the same motions for hours without moving from his spot, his sense of time and space began to numb.

What was in front of him.

How much time had passed.

It was an experience he had endured until he was sick of it in the past.

And that allowed him to focus even more deeply on the book.

‘Glowing pages. Square cells. Colors shining inside every cell.’

Yet no matter how much he tried to analyze the pattern, it was impossible.

It was difficult enough to guess letters from color alone, and even when he turned to the same page again, different colors appeared.

Had his instincts failed him this time?

There were occasional squares with no color at all, but they did not seem particularly meaningful...

“...Huh?”

At that moment.

Kawin trembled as though he had been electrocuted.

Because a thought struck his mind like lightning.

“Colorless, pure-white squares...”

They were definitely there.

Square cells on every page where no particular color appeared, glowing only white.

Some were very bright, and others less so.

The white cells had two distinct levels of brightness.

And on every page, those cells were positioned in fixed places,

two across,

and arranged in three rows.

“This is...!”

Kawin shot to his feet.

Once he found the clue, everything fell rapidly into place.

Three rows made of two positions each.

For Kawin, who had been blind in his previous life, the pattern was far too familiar.

‘There’s no mistake!’

A thrill ran through him.

If a Braille book used small, round raised dots,

then this grimoire used square cells with two levels of brightness.

In other words, this grimoire,

was written in Braille.

* * *

One Braille character per page.

Naturally, deciphering even a single sentence required turning through many pages.

But Kawin flipped through them as though possessed.

Reading Braille was as natural to him as breathing.

The Braille in the grimoire followed the Korean system, but even if it had belonged to another country, it would not have been a problem.

He had already learned the Braille systems of nearly every major country.

Rustle. Rustle.

A grimoire no one in this world had ever managed to decipher.

It was a gift meant for Kawin alone.

His eardrums seemed to dance with the pounding of his heart.

What noble teachings had been written here? What profound truths?

Kawin began reading the deciphered Braille in his mind.

[Fuck.]

“?”

The first sentence was a thousand light-years away from what Kawin had imagined.

Apparently, Dharma was a slightly different sort of Archmage from the one Kawin had pictured.

But he soon understood why the man had begun with a curse.

[There is not much time left.]

[The thread of life granted to me will soon be severed.]

[Fucking bastards. Weak as they are, all they know how to do is scheme together.]

[Were you truly so afraid of our power that you would corrupt the very truth itself?]

[There is little time.]

[No one understood even when I spent a lifetime teaching them. Will anyone ever be able to decipher this?]

[It is the faintest thread of hope, but the truth is, I have no other option.]

[I have poured every last bit of my power into this grimoire.]

[The moment this book is completed, I will vanish from the world.]

[To whoever deciphers this grimoire, I ask only this: use this power for what is right.]

[For you will soon become the strongest being upon this earth.]

Thump.

Kawin’s heartbeat grew even louder.

[Ignorant fools and common riffraff call our magic Lightning.]

[What a load of fucking bullshit.]

[Fools see only what fools are capable of seeing. Do you truly think such a pathetic name could ever be fitting?]

[You who have deciphered this grimoire. Listen carefully.]

[The moment you finish reading this grimoire, you will no longer be some worthless ‘Lightning’ mage...]

Gulp.

With trembling hands, Kawin read the next page.

[You shall become the Lord of Thunder (Stormlord).]

Rumble!

White lightning struck from a cloudless sky.

A deafening roar that seemed ready to burst the eardrums, accompanied by a flash that washed every color in the world into one.

The thunderbolt summoned by the Archmage’s will crashed down toward the Anper manor.