Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Chapter 3. The Grimoire Only I Can Read

Crackle!

Pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen.

And the dazzling light bestowed by thunder and lightning.

Kawin had now experienced both absolute extremes of black and white that existed in this world.

Zzzzt...!

The crackling sound tickled his ears.

Thunder and lightning powerful enough to shake the entire manor.

A young man in his late teens who had taken the full force of that power.

Kawin’s eyes snapped open.

“...It’s huge.”

A white circle was reflected in Kawin’s blue eyes.

So enormous that he had to crane his head all the way back just to take in the whole thing.

Sparks large and small danced wildly around the circle.

‘What is this?’

Kawin slowly walked toward the white circle.

He wanted to touch it with his own hands.

It was an old habit of Kawin’s.

Even now that he could see, Kawin still tended to examine important things with his hands.

“Ah...!”

But he couldn’t.

Every time Kawin took a step closer, the white circle moved exactly that far away.

As though it were something he could never reach.

Kawin took several steps on legs still trembling from the lightning strike.

Then he quickly reached a conclusion.

‘This circle isn’t actually here.’

It was right before Kawin’s eyes.

But it did not exist in reality.

The foundation of magic that every awakened mage carried within their mind.

A Circle.

‘It’s ridiculously huge. Are Circles normally like this?’

Kawin briefly recalled [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star].

Then shook his head.

‘No. There was never anything like this in the novel.’

-All five Circles, each the size of a heart, shattered.

There had been descriptions like that in the novel.

Which meant this Circle had to be extremely unusual.

Unless someone was a giant from mythology, there was no way they could fit a Circle this large inside their body.

Crackle. Crackle.

The remnants of lightning surrounding his entire body gradually faded away.

But something else was becoming clearer instead.

The brilliant white Circle created within Kawin’s body.

Markings were appearing one after another across its surface.

‘This is...!’

Writing from neither this world nor its language, readable only by Kawin.

Braille.

[Stormlord]

[Passive: Electric Predation]

[Passive: Electro-Perception]

[Passive: Lightning Speed]

[First Orbis]

Stormlord.

The very words Archmage Dharma had spoken were clearly engraved there.

‘Why are there... so many?’

The moment he completed a single Orbis, three basic abilities appeared.

Understanding their concepts was easy.

The magical knowledge contained in the grimoire had been clearly engraved into Kawin’s mind.

‘First Orbis... I suppose it says that because there’s only one circle?’

As though declaring itself fundamentally different from an ordinary mage.

The circle before him used the unusual term ‘Orbis’ instead of ‘Circle.’

Its enormous size, the sparks dancing across its surface.

It certainly looked different from a Circle.

But there were similarities as well.

Just like Circles, he was certain that the more Orbis he gained, the stronger he would become.

‘First...’

Lightning Speed.

Kawin closed his eyes and focused on the sensation of mana flowing through his body.

When he had first awakened in Kawin’s body, he had needed intense concentration just to sense mana.

Now, even while standing still, he could feel torrents of mana rushing through him.

‘I need to root this through every nerve in my body.’

Following the grimoire’s knowledge, Kawin began moving his mana.

This ability was a nervous-system skill that accelerated the user’s body.

From the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes.

He spread mana through every nerve he could feel.

Zzzzt!

The moment Lightning Speed activated, everything around Kawin instantly seemed to move in slow motion.

‘Slow.’

Before the dust falling from the roof could even reach the floor, he felt like he could run to his father’s pasture and back dozens of times.

Kawin moved without hesitation.

Crackle!

Blue sparks erupted beneath Kawin’s feet.

Movement at literally godlike speed.

It was fast enough to make the charge of a seasoned knight look laughable.

However,

“Huff... Hah!”

Kawin’s body was far too frail to properly use ‘Lightning Speed.’

After only a few steps, Kawin had to stop and gasp desperately for breath.

Not only his lungs, but every muscle in his body was screaming.

“Before the skill... I need to strengthen my body first.”

After finally catching his breath, Kawin straightened his back.

Now it was time to understand the second basic ability.

There was no need to practice it or examine it separately.

Kawin glanced toward the manor entrance and smiled.

“I suppose they have every reason to be surprised.”

He could sense two sources of mana rapidly approaching from dozens of meters away.

They had to belong to his father and Vilcus.

Kawin detected both without the slightest difficulty.

A supersensory perception far beyond the five senses of an ordinary human.

Electro-Perception was already active.

* * *

“Kawin! Kawin!”

“Young Masteeeer!”

Xymoron and Vilcus rushed into the manor, shouting desperately.

A bolt from the blue.

That was exactly what they had witnessed.

The manor was embarrassingly small for a noble estate, but it was still far larger than an ordinary house.

Lightning had engulfed the entire building, so it would hardly have been surprising if everyone inside had been electrocuted to death.

“Father.”

But Kawin stood perfectly unharmed before the front gate.

He had sensed their mana and come out to meet them in advance.

“Oh! Gods above!”

“Young Master! You’re alive!”

“Yes. I’m fine. Everyone else inside the manor is safe too.”

Kawin reassured them, but Xymoron continued patting him all over with both hands.

“Are you truly unharmed? I could swear I smell something slightly burnt.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me. More importantly...”

Kawin’s blue eyes sparkled.

“You really are worthy of being the last remaining Lightning family. To think you installed something like that in such a large manor.”

“Hmm? Something like what?”

“You made a device that lets the lightning flow underground, didn’t you? That’s how I survived too.”

“That...?”

Deep wrinkles formed between Xymoron’s brows.

A device that sent the power of lightning into the earth?

Forget installing such a thing, he had never even heard of technology like that.

But Xymoron did not ponder it for long.

What mattered was that neither Kawin nor anyone else had been hurt.

“Of course! Perhaps one of our ancestors installed such a device! Lightning magic must have been tremendously powerful back then, after all!”

“Oh. So that’s what happened.”

Kawin nodded as though everything finally made sense.

The sight of the platinum-blond father and son smiling innocently at each other was as beautiful as the golden sunset, but Vilcus’s expression was another matter.

“How did you know we were coming... and come out to meet us?”

“Of course I knew you’d come. After something like this happened, wouldn’t it be stranger if the two of you stayed at the pasture?”

“That is... certainly true.”

Vilcus nodded at Kawin’s plausible excuse and pulled out a handkerchief.

Then carefully wiped his sweat-soaked scalp.

He must have run here in quite a hurry.

A moment later, Kawin’s expression darkened slightly as he held out something from his arms.

“But what should we do about this? I’m fine, but...”

The grimoire in Kawin’s hands had been charred pitch-black, as though it had been tossed into a furnace.

The brilliant light that had once been bright enough to blind someone had vanished without a trace.

“...”

Xymoron stared down at the grimoire with empty eyes.

The grimoire was practically the very reason their family existed, and now it had been destroyed during his generation. His sense of loss must have been immense.

But soon, he bared his teeth in a wide smile.

“It’s all right now. No one could decipher the grimoire anyway. What matters is the devotion its descendants hold toward Lord Dharma. As long as our will continues, it is no different from this grimoire continuing to shine.”

“My lord...!”

“Vilcus, have a display case made and preserve the grimoire inside. It has been badly burned, so take care that it doesn’t crumble.”

With those words, Xymoron turned away without lingering and headed toward the pasture.

He said they would need to milk a little more than usual today.

Even while everyone pointed fingers at him, he had stubbornly held on to Dharma and the grimoire.

Yet even after losing it, Xymoron simply kept moving forward.

A broad, rough back that anyone would mistake for that of a country farmer.

Destroying the grimoire had not been Kawin’s intention, but he still couldn’t help feeling guilty.

Kawin watched that retreating back with deepened eyes.

‘Someone carrying an enormous burden on his shoulders, yet never stopping his march forward.’

A man perfectly suited to the word ‘father,’ something Kawin had never once known in his previous life.

* * *

That night.

Kawin quietly slipped out of the manor, muffling his footsteps.

There was one sentry guarding the main gate, but that posed no problem.

‘Mr. Jefferson. He’s even snoring.’

That sentry had spent the entire day struggling alongside his father to milk the sheep.

After easily slipping through the watch, Kawin headed south.

A small stretch of land that barely kept the impoverished Anper Viscounty fed.

Without even this, the Anper territory might have become a place where only the grimoire remained alive.

“...That’s enormous.”

At the end of the fertile land stood piles of stone like burial mounds.

Calling them meteorites seemed more appropriate than calling them rocks.

They were massive boulders that would make even a respectable mage wave their hands and say, ‘No, this is too much.’

‘And underneath them...’

Lay soil similar to what Kawin was standing on now.

Which meant that if those rocks could simply be removed, the Anper territory would have more land to live off.

It would have been nice if some powerful wind or water magic could sweep the rocks away, but,

“The static electricity this family uses wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Kawin smiled faintly as he stopped before the massive boulders.

Tonight.

Kawin intended to learn his first spell using these boulders as targets.

[The most efficient magic creates the strongest magic.]

Dharma’s grimoire had clearly left behind that message.

Kawin understood now.

The Rune characters created by mages were nothing but crude ‘fakes.’

They were merely symbols that roughly imitated the principles of magic written in Braille.

The language of magic that Dharma had tried so desperately to teach, only to fail.

No one in this era except Kawin knew how to decipher it.

“Incantations and magic circles are the same.”

Of course the process became complicated when they were trying to invoke magic with fakes.

Kawin merely extended his right palm.

Then, imagining the shape he wanted, he drew out a handful of mana stored within his Orbis.

‘A sharp, streamlined form that attacks from long range.’

Since he was still at the First Orbis stage.

He chose the most straightforward spell contained in the grimoire.

An arrow.

People of this era would have called it a Lightning Arrow, but not in Dharma’s time.

Not some insignificant thing called Lightning, but a thunderbolt carved from the wrath of the heavens.

‘Divine Bolt.’

Literally, divine lightning.

He had only just taken his first step as a mage, but as the Stormlord, he had the right to use that name.

Kawin drew out so much mana that the thickness of his Orbis rapidly diminished.

Yet strangely, nothing happened above Kawin’s palm.

“Did I fail...?”

Since it was his first time casting a spell, perhaps some trial and error was inevitable.

He needed to hurry a little.

The dark night was passing, and reflected light had begun appearing across the surrounding boulders.

Dawn must be approaching, and he needed to return before morning arrived...

“Wait.”

Kawin stopped thinking.

Ever since gaining his sight, distinguishing day from night had become easy.

There should still be a long time before dawn.

Kawin instinctively raised his head.

“Whoa!”

And an exclamation escaped him before he realized it.

A mass of white lightning dozens of times larger than an actual arrow floated above him like the sun.

At this moment, it almost seemed unnecessary for the real sun to exist.

Crackle!

Rather than an arrow, its size made it look more like a small missile.

The light illuminating the surface of the boulders had not come from the sun, but from this ‘Divine Bolt.’

Shiver.

This was the first spell he had ever created.

And because he had summoned the skill of an Archmage, a thrill ran through his entire body.

Looking at it now, the spell must have formed above his head because it was simply too large to manifest from his palm.

‘I didn’t fail...!’

If anything, it was closer to a resounding success.

Now all that remained was...

‘Go!’

Kawin fired the Divine Bolt at the massive boulders ahead.

And the result was,

BOOOOM!

“Uwah!”

The ground shook as though a meteor had fallen right in front of him, naturally throwing Kawin backward.

The shockwave carried by the wind whipped Kawin’s platinum-blond hair violently.

If not for the enhanced sense of balance granted by Electro-Perception, he would have tumbled disgracefully across the ground.

Kawin twisted in midair and landed nearly a hundred meters from where he had cast Divine Bolt.

“With this much power...”

One or two boulders should have broken, right?

Kawin walked forward through the thick white smoke and clouds of dust.

Then an exclamation escaped him before he realized it.

“Whoa!”

It wasn’t merely one or two.

As though a natural disaster had swept through.

More than twenty enormous boulders that had covered the area were completely obliterated.

And beyond the devastation...

“Haha. I did it.”

Lay fertile land within the Anper Viscounty.

Kawin had just created another treasure exactly like it.