How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 482

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I was at the center of tears.

Elias thought. Unlike the refreshing wind of divine power that wrapped around his entire body and disappeared, the atmosphere surrounding the surface pulled his limbs down with hundreds of times the gravity. Faint outlines rippled in the world that had turned blank. Ah, Elias opened his mouth at the divine power penetrating his entire body. I know what I learned while you were gone. A low voice he had never heard before flowed through his head. His face from ears to cheekbones felt like it would shatter. Information and sensations like an ocean began to form his body. Countless thoughts he couldn’t keep up with, like a steel black train, like the smoke billowing from it, like raindrops falling and seeping into the ground in the blink of an eye, like lightning striking down to burn the forest… brushed past the tissues of his brain and faded away. For an instant I knew the names of all light. I knew the names of all wind. The moment I faced the universe in the night sky, terror struck down my spine. You’re right. But I’m also right. A young voice was heard. He couldn’t tell whose it was. But now seeing it, it felt unmistakably like his own, and that degree rose like the water level of a rapidly overflowing torrent, until he was deluded into thinking he had possessed such a voice all his life. No, was it a delusion? Elias barely managed to feel his own face with his fingertips while enduring the gale. The rushing information and the voice flowing like a stream between it made him forget who he was. He couldn’t even tell what kind of being he could be called. I knew everything but knew nothing. An approximation of omniscience. His eyes felt like they would burst. I had a dream, but I don’t even know if it was a dream. Reality is a dream and dreams are reality. I was a butterfly, and all the days I thought I was human scatter like vapor into midair. I had a dream of a wondrous world that understood me. At the same time, a dream of a world racing toward humanity’s end. The reason of a world like glasswork on the verge of shattering was in chaos. The world of absolute affirmation existed nowhere. Escaping from the genealogy of morals or crossing to the other side of good and evil was impossible. Moreover, if there was something I feared, Zhuangzi knew he had dreamed of being a butterfly. In that sense, lack of technique is no different from death for an artist. If life is art and every human is an artist in their own life, then I failed completely, and only upon coming to this matrix where I can’t tell dream from reality do I seem to understand what art is. Before the cool lens emitting dark inner light as if to devour me, before the black pupils mixed with emotion, what I never knew in my lifetime. Art my ass. I… Now I think I know who I am. Why couldn’t I know then? If there had been many people like you by my side then as now, could I have known even then…? Among the saturation of information, I came to my senses at the confession that struck and scattered clearly like an arrow. The light pouring into my blue irises stung. My heart was melting in the bitter wind. Now and then, I couldn’t tell. The voice of the friend I remembered, the voice of a boy that was still slightly childish and would reveal his young age as it was unless he deliberately tensed the muscles in his throat, was gone. There was only the quiet voice of an unknown young man. Why was this familiar? So it wasn’t familiar to me, but to the owner of this world. Why? Who is Zhuangzi? He dreamed of being a butterfly? A world of absolute affirmation—what? The alliance of neoliberalism and capitalism, magic power, homogeneous essence, new class theory, market theory, and guilt, disillusionment, why? I could follow the thoughts but couldn’t. Yet truly I knew who Zhuangzi was and what it meant that he dreamed of being a butterfly. I also knew that escaping from the genealogy of morals or crossing to the other side of good and evil being impossible was wordplay. I knew the class structure of an unknown society. I understood his class and his unwashable debt. It is transient, Nicht von Dauer sein. Having no ability to accept the wave-like rushing information, it all passed by his trembling self, so he would soon forget it. Elias, intuiting that he had become a single reed in a reed field facing a bitter wind, clenched his fists before forgetting. He thought. Though blood of information flowed from every section of his face, still the thread of thought caught one of his friend’s speculations. Even while going back and forth between inside and outside, between ‘my’ vision and the air’s vision. If there had been many people like you by my side then as now, Elias stood alone in the wilderness looking up at the sky. He acknowledged the distant cry of anguish as if heard thousands of years ago. He thought he knew nothing about his friend. No, still while all the knowledge of the world was penetrating and passing through his body, he didn’t know all of that, but he knew one thing for certain. He knew that he didn’t know. There were memories his friend didn’t know deep in his friend’s heart. There was no way his friend, who had been confined to the manor in Dessau all his life, could have such things. Wasn’t that so? But it was definitely here. The stable voice of someone past adulthood was here. Divine power penetrates the center of his entire body.

So I’ll apologize in advance. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.

A stone fell into the water. Ripples spread. What should I think? Unlike the old man’s circle, no thoughts came to mind. Probably because I knew nothing except a vague sense of disparity. Even plausible guesses weren’t possible now. But why, I wanted to ask too. Perhaps because the wind information that filled and disappeared from my head made my mind dazed, but my heart ached for no reason. Won’t everything return to the starting point someday? Because that’s the natural order, I believe so. Elias doesn’t remember what expression his friend had when drinking his blood that night at the observation deck. The Munich air was pressing down on his heart while stealing the warmth of his blood, and he was dying. His entire body was scattering back to where it came from. So he doesn’t remember. He’s relieved not to know what expression he made. If he had known, it would have been carved deep into his retina by now. And…

No matter what happened, he didn’t want to see that face directly. The thought of wanting to know the truth couldn’t hold back my ankles now. I stomp my feet in the mud to pull out roots stuck under the swamp. Where are you? I shouted. The wind brushing past my ears tells me to admit what I don’t know. It tells me to acknowledge and know betrayal. It tells me to know through the unknown truth and the gale of knowledge that he is the son of the end times. It tells me to meekly acknowledge the fear surging from the abyss, having truly been overwhelmed, having faced awe and the possibility of omniscience. It tells me to do so while dropping me in the middle of tears!

Yes. I was afraid and was no different from a primitive human standing naked in the wilderness on the day lightning struck. I was no different from a priest who read God’s wrath in the sky on the day Earth’s shadow covered the sun. If my world was a pond, this world was an ocean, and if my world was an ocean, this world was the universe. The reason I didn’t know this until now was simply because he…

Turned away. Because he didn’t believe. Or because he intended it. Because he didn’t want to accept it. Because he was considerate of us. Or because he himself didn’t know. If so, then I think for my friend at this moment. While non-standard humans must not be human, how far could humans remain human? Whether it was non-standard from above or non-standard from below didn’t matter. From the day humans borrowed the power of science and magic to tear apart and rebuild their entire bodies and threw away organs for longevity, could humans remain human? Of course they could. Espers struggling to become gods are therefore human. I remember Columbus’s voyage. I remember the number of hearts pierced by arrows and guns. I remember white phosphorus matches and the faces of workers whose jaws melted. I remember the erased names of commoner mages. I remember the flags of great powers fluttering in the exotic equatorial lands where the blue sea shone like platinum under the sun. Throughout history, humans have run toward their ideals as much as they had power, so tearing apart and rebuilding one’s appearance into God’s image while holding the fire of technology in one’s grasp is something only humans do. It’s a uniquely human desire. Despairingly, that might be the most human thing of all. Therefore, humans create those who are not human. In an age when humanity and the inability to be human are decided by human hands, humans corresponding to the extreme values at both poles cannot remain human in any sense. They become beasts that raise small birds in their heads, or become gods…

Ah, I understood the old man’s conclusion. He is not only Pleroma’s ideal but also the Espers’ ideal. The old man was trying to kill those who seemed capable of reaching the sky to prevent humans from building the Tower of Babel again. The old man cannot understand all this spectacle as within human domain. However, just because they met the Espers’ ideal doesn’t mean that ideal shouldn’t be human. This person has no right to arbitrarily determine him as non-human. He was human nonetheless, and all his thoughts flowing through this land I stand on are stories of humans by humans. And now he will be for humans. At least he was for me.

Elias cut through midair with his hand. Blue magic power slowly spread through the air and faded. Information rushing at incomprehensible speed became wind and extinguished the magic. The old man’s divine power was strong, as if proving he hadn’t worked in vain for a long time. It ached as if all his bones would crumble to powder. Even rubbing his hands together again, the blue light faintly drawn in his mind couldn’t maintain its pulse and went out. A young voice whose owner he didn’t want to know now flowed through his brain. He closed his eyes, not wanting to hear anything. He stomped his feet to make noise. Crack, the breaking magic blocked the information coming in against his will. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t just keep blocking the incoming information forever; he had to kill the source that was forcing information on him.

Elias felt dizzy as he drew magic from his heart. God will judge outsiders, but drive out this wicked person from among you. He said to them, “Why do you do such things? I hear of your evil deeds from all these people.” The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished even if they join hands! The magic was consumed in tearing apart the divine power that had seeped into his body and couldn’t get outside his hands. He couldn’t even tell where the old man was. Those who use divine power, really. Even with brave words, a different kind of fear bloomed. I had no way to overcome the difference in his experience and innate talent. My head felt like it would split. Perhaps noticing that I was trying to escape mental confusion, dark clouds gathered in the vast sky. Before I could predict what that would do to me, I thought of my friend’s safety, who must be collapsed now. My heart beat violently. Now do you understand? I seemed to hear a thundering voice. I had to find a solution. Elias held his head. In his mind burning as if about to explode, he had to find a lifeline to grasp.

The memory of dawn came to mind not long after. Perhaps it was even before the dark clouds. Up to about 4 versts there was no trouble. Because my eyelids were closing heavily, I couldn’t even enjoy the fragments of light created by water drops falling when the oar lifted toward the sky.

I told you that you would understand now.

Unfortunately, whether he knew the era before Babel or not didn’t matter. Even if he was someone who could know everything, it didn’t matter. But the wind wouldn’t stop and was getting fiercer, wasn’t it? I thought we had to get to the shore quickly. Even if he had the ability to speak all languages if only he learned them, it didn’t matter. Even if his world contained knowledge from when Earth was born until today in 1898, perhaps… even knowledge pre-arranged by the universe, even if he was a living natural history, even if so many things breathed within him, it doesn’t matter to me! The dark clouds covered the entire sky. Because of the wind, we were just being pushed around. Then the coast became frightening. What’s important is that the old man is trying to nip the bud before this person can speak all languages. Finding and killing those who know the era before Babel, eliminating the world’s chaos, as if that were this old man’s duty. Cold water drops that fell from the oar on Lake Constance flow over my head. The sensation of the swaying ferry is vivid. When the voyage was smooth it was comforting, but now it’s heading toward despair. At that moment nature seemed to envy us, and we were enraged that nature hadn’t shown its greatness long ago. But hope that drives humans to extremes made us strong… The gale under the clouds was draining strength from my legs. In my mind’s imagination, blue magic was surging toward the sky without the slightest fluctuation. Closing my eyes, the old man’s figure was vivid in my mind. The slow mind ‘concentrating’ aimed at the old man’s throat.

“I must know.” Elias, who spoke the words, reaches his hand toward the sky. Magic like seawater gathers to form a long, solid shape. On the white ground, whether the old man’s or his friend’s, Elias pulls at the atmosphere. Wind flows along his hand. Power is added along Neptune’s spear.

“I must know that anything can remain human. [Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.] I…”

The mass of magic struck the earth. With a roar, Elias opened his eyes. Light emanated from the blue rod in his hand. The sky filled with dark clouds was collapsing.

“I will say that I discovered nothing has reached its end!”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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