How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 529

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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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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Noble Family (529)

He briefly leaves time behind. He is no one and only himself. Anything could enter that place. The corpse that had been beside him, eyes wide open in conversation, was never there to begin with, but now it’s even more completely gone. However, it’s not that the corpse truly disappeared from that place to return where it should be, but rather that he left his position. The chaos and confusion in the Pleroma diocese that he had been half-consciously managing and the cleanup work in Nuremberg also fall silent.

Now he is no longer bound to the pages of religion where he had wandered for so long searching for answers, nor to the pages of philosophy, literature, science, history, or among the typefaces of all humanity’s memories, proverbs, and maxims. Instead, he gazes at the mist from a blank page like a wilderness. He looks at the tens of thousands of heads that compose it. He knows those heads are crying out about him, “Come, let us see him crucified!” Without seeing or hearing, he is seeing and hearing. There was never any need to cling to numbers that rise and fall in an instant. He already knew better than anyone what those he utterly didn’t know were doing to the world. Because he lived as a human, he recalls the women who became witches and burned to death. Because he fell ill, he recalls the leprosy patients who became the living dead. Because he existed, he recalls the ethnic groups who died in closed rooms, in the wilderness, in cities.

Since this sometimes operates on the same principle as murder committed against individuals, he wanted to know the cause. He recalls what might have once been his own life. He recalls all the words that those he utterly didn’t know said about him, his colleagues, and everyone else. He observed his own death at their hands with detachment, yet perhaps he grieves it as he would another’s death. However, he staggers and bows his head at the thought of his invisible selves scattered throughout the world being killed by them. The waves of greed without tolerance or understanding, no matter how they themselves believe, strictly avoid only themselves and their own groups in their rumination, so the dawn-dew-like integrity, righteousness, and fairness that existed within them are no longer right, fair, or just. Though not always righteous, in many cases the righteous me, the me who undoubtedly has an objective perspective, is declared wrong, so you are a wrong being, and when all of us together unanimously say you have grown into a mistaken being, you are still certainly a wrong being. Regarding one person’s life, he hears voices declaring that you should become human but you should not become human. Already the heads have declared without hesitation or reservation that this being is wrong and thoroughly mistaken, nailing this person and that person with both hands and proclaiming it to be justice, righteousness, and correctness. How different were you and I in our qualifications to judge the right and wrong of life? Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself, and when you reverse positions and think, when you reflect years later, when you calm your emotions and become a third party to today’s you, when you look back saying such things had to happen, could you be confident you were doing something that would leave not the slightest hesitation in your heart and your neighbor’s? The voices of past, present, and future answer: Yes. I can say with my hand on my conscience that I am acting for righteousness. So come, let us see the wrong thing crucified. Let us see with our eyes the ecstasy of the wrong being corrected, the false being destroyed, and justice covering all worldly affairs.

So he came here.

He might die again according to Pleroma’s intentions. Does it seem possible to have realistic hope? Is it unfair? Those who burned to death, those trapped on islands and treated like garbage, those uprooted to their very foundations all died innocently. The only sin involved in their deaths is the killers’ lack of reflection. However, it’s natural that those who burned people and stoned them to death, those who treated people as evil spirits and drove them to death, those who killed people simply for being people, all think they are not reflecting or thinking. They believe they removed what was wrong, corrected entities that deviated from what should be done, and carried out God’s will. What was once God in ancient times has become justice today. Justice being misunderstood is an unsurprising cycle of history. Therefore, it wasn’t unfair. Following the two bitter cups he drank on some day in the 21st century, and the third bitter cup he drank today while charging forward with resolute will as if the past never existed, he now looks toward a different path.

So he no longer converses with corpses. He no longer rides blindfolded across God’s horse, pushed up from behind, moving in all directions. However, he still understands why God heard murderer Cain’s fear and gave him a mark so no one could kill him. Why would God, who should always be fair and just, help a murderer avoid death? A long-standing debate reaches a conclusion within him. Perhaps he knew from the time he finished his first remembered life, but he turned away, and today he can no longer turn away. He grasps thousands of reed-like hands emerging from the mist and feels a wondrous pulse. The flesh within his sight is utterly clean, yet the whites of eyes that have turned helplessly yellow from never truly purifying themselves, and the gleaming ‘self’ and obsession above them, the sensitive ears and mouth waiting breathlessly for the day to seek their own justice, are colorless beneath this steady, ancient pulsation. To him, this constant, quiet pulsation seems like the sound of the universe that has existed since primordial times. His heart empties before the primordial contained in that pulse, before sorrow and joy. The anger he should rightfully feel toward others disappears that way. Though the signal flare that life first burst when drawing its first breath and the purity facing the unknown may not be easily visible in those yellowed eyes, he doesn’t wish for sentient beings to be driven down the same path as himself. Even if one sentient being cannot pity another sentient being, and even if one who was once murdered cannot pity one who will murder again today, that’s how it is. He still doesn’t want the same nails that were driven into him to be driven into the light of life.

Perhaps he’s still in confusion like when he conversed with corpses, but the thought remains that he has finally realized why the fratricidal murderer who let his brother’s blood flow from his body onto the earth received Yahweh’s curse yet was guaranteed life by Yahweh. Even understanding Yahweh’s seemingly capricious decision, he is still not the Christ someone speaks of, nor a saint, nor even clergy, believer, or theist. He calls all suffering suffering, making him an atheist, and has never thought his knowledge to be axiomatic. He simply feels many things passing through him. Noisy wars and quiet wars, one-sided and silent massacres, death of the flesh and death of the spirit, the purity and ignorance of those who killed yet didn’t know they had killed because not a drop of blood stained their hands, the bulging veins in necks that shouted “I am right” at the top of their lungs, the procession of death that has never ceased since humanity’s beginning, and the sound of wailing in the wilderness. The screams he has heard several times in this place are still vivid in his mind today. He thinks of humans who became lumps of mud for feeling human emotions, and thinks of how they were pointed at by those who hadn’t yet burst and died, though they too might become that way someday. The very person whose pulse he feels is that person, and that person is this person.

How futile are cause and effect, retribution, and everything else—the dead are killed and the killers continue killing, yet no one hears the sound of wailing in the city. Even when days come when they themselves might die, they first declare others wrong. They remain silent, silent, silent again, and only regret their silence when the day comes to die, but the dead have no way of speaking except through the corpses they leave behind… The living add nobility, sorrow, joy, and meaning to that death. He recalls Ralph Huber, who was like Gelda Asmann, and thinks of those countless Asmanns and Hubers. Feeling pain at all kinds of death, he nevertheless gave Sarah Hohenfelss a mark. The arbitrary justice of these countless eyes, hands, and mouths crying “Let us crucify him” would become injustice running parallel to Hohenfelss’s crimes. He didn’t want to allow that. And when these eyes, hands, and mouths face their own turn at crucifixion someday, he will give them a mark too. If he has that ability, at least in his world. Thus mercy and the call for self-reflection simultaneously become marks of salvation. Not because he is Christ as someone claims, but because that is how it is in that individual’s life. Isn’t society composed of individuals? Even if he was confused by biblical constraints in his distant mind, he still, always, eternally knew he was merely human, a sentient being.

He knows he did the impossible in battle. Those he had to defeat stopped attacking him and obediently made their decision. He thus made his second country victorious. The country he promised that king and the king’s children he would take responsibility for achieves complete victory through him. Then now, with his final attempt to rise once more and ensure no one dies in vain having collapsed today, in this endlessly reincarnating life that has collapsed like his previous life’s pattern, shouldn’t he be allowed to accept fate for a while? So he decided to rest for a moment with his forehead against the earth.

But if memories and pleas not so old caught at the end of his gaze returning to earth, if they caused him to postpone going down for an instant, whose will was it that prevented him from resting?

* * *

Move to Augsburg. That must be done first before he can meet Lucas.

Leonard thinks this about 15 minutes ago. And about 10 minutes after that, when he had just heard news of Nicolaus Ernst’s great victory from the Bavarian Royal Army strategic room, Leonard knew his decision was right and it was time to make the next move.

Lucas heard Pleroma’s declaration but didn’t panic and moved to the next destination. His practical mission is over, yet he does this. Why? Because he was determined to personally make this operation a great victory. The Pleroma 7-diocese propagation operation—it was impossible nonsense. Leonard realistically thought they’d be fortunate to half-destroy two or three dioceses. Nevertheless, Nicolaus Ernst said he would make the impossible possible, and he did. The technology he obtained through cooperation with someone, the support Leonard himself barely obtained by drawing the Catacombs’ agreement, each detailed operation, situational judgment in the field—all of this was accomplished through the great combined weight of the rapid Atropos response medicine and Bavaria’s systems over time, but the overall responsibility lies with Nicolaus Ernst. Both long-term and short-term, he was the practical operation leader. Even when all gears mesh and turn, there must be someone to oversee and supervise it, and not forgetting that responsibility is both virtue and duty. Nicolaus Ernst did this in a situation where it was difficult to be conscious of virtue or duty. He didn’t avoid panic but found his duty and charged forward despite being in shock. The Lucas Leonard knew was such a strong person, and Leonard knew that interfering with what his close friend and comrade-in-arms had decided was not the way to show him respect. It would be no different from preventing him from achieving what he wanted and only prolonging his shock.

However, a person exerting their last will and squeezing out all their strength to run is different in every sense from a person of composure. After he achieved his goal, he absolutely had to help prevent him from losing strength. He knew where to go.

[Your Highness the Prince.]

While he was still defending against Pleroma attacks pursuing from Pleroma’s remaining coordinate systems, his childhood friend’s voice is heard. Since they were in different units, direct communication shouldn’t have been possible, but Elias gave some command to the strategic room and connected a line to Leonard. He asks in a voice different from usual.

[Where is Count Ernst?]

Behind him, sounds of attacking and defending can be heard. He knows what the situation is. Processing the last remnants before operation completion. Leonard was doing the same thing. Leonard tells him Lucas’s predicted route.

“Nuremberg, I don’t know what’s after that. I’ll tell you after extracting him.”

What does he mean he doesn’t know, and what does he mean by extracting him afterward? It would be natural to be curious, but Elias, like a close friend, doesn’t ask more and cuts the connection. Mutual trust makes each other conscious of the other’s existence in such trivial yet important moments, and he gains even slight strength to drive his body, knowing once again that he’s not alone in the world regarding something he’s never handled before. That friend would be the same. His thoughts quickly return to their original place.

Lucas won in a way no one could know. That was impossible. Was it that today in particular, under adrenaline’s influence, he could use divine power without restraint to blow away 11 dioceses outside Bavaria? That might be so, but it’s unlikely. There would certainly have been Pleroma counterattacking, so even if he could do that to two, or at best three or four, more would be difficult. Leonard knew. His brilliance in making the impossible possible comes first from the person he is himself, but secondly it’s also possible through special abilities remaining in his core. The two might stem from the same essence. At any rate, at least he and his childhood friend would have known that much. He certainly absorbed Pleroma’s power. Power? Does power mean mana, Vitriol? Then did he kill them? If he showed that appearance to everyone… That can’t be.

Then, didn’t he absorb their will? The moment Leonard has this thought, he feels everything from his heart to his neck, to his head freezing.

Crash—!

Leonard, who had been fighting with his sword, kicks the ground to stop the acceleration of retreat, and forms a strategy before the Pleroma who uses fire as their unique ability. The sound of requesting additional personnel is now tiresome. How much longer do they want to detain him, and how much more delay? Should he use his unique ability? He thinks the time has come. Even with several Royal Army mages attached, the opponents are also numerous.

The fire demon turns plants to ash. The compatibility isn’t very good. If fire goes down below the plants and burns the seeds, it will take Leonard a long time to make their life force emerge.

Even so, there’s no reason to hesitate. Leonard thinks. When Vitriol spread by fire scatters densely and flies to target his clothes and skin, he gratefully realizes the good compatibility between barrier defense magic and those who rely on unique abilities. Another roar sounds. Plants coil from all directions beneath Leonard’s striking foot. Fire begins catching the plants faster than expected. It’s not just an ability to set fires, but the ability to make those fires burn well must also be part of the unique ability. No matter how he thinks about it, the fact that Nicolaus Ernst broke such high-ranking clergy’s attacks in one blow and achieved victory is eerie. Didn’t he truly set up everything and tear down everything with a single finger movement? Though he knows it’s not so, it also felt like a will to no longer tolerate human struggles. By now, everyone who heard the news would have frozen upon hearing that unrealistic news and be respecting him with admiration and cheering. Leonard feels uneasy despite knowing it’s a good thing. And…

Leonard’s plants turn to ash and disappear. Then the solution is simple. One who doesn’t know this simplicity and relies only on unique ability compatibility truly has no sense for battle. What if he outputs faster than the speed at which plants turn to ash?

Crash—!

The movement of plants surging like a river on a stormy day saturates the momentary field of vision with green deeper than gray dust. They fly toward them and slip past to the side. Clustered plants have low chances of success. Naturally, wouldn’t it be harder for the opponent to handle scattered things than clustered ones—the movement of each stem, each branch flies toward the Pleroma’s body and binds him from behind. Vitriol bursting from the clergyman’s body tries to quickly gather the flames, and it will succeed soon. But the moment the condition “soon” is attached, it’s over.

[Brothers, if someone is caught in any transgression—]

Leonard whispers.

[Your Highness, we found the lever!]

A shout through the artifact, he sees another subordinate pointing to a location with his hand from the corner of his eye and attacks one Pleroma’s hand in that gap.

[You who are spiritual should restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself lest you too be tempted!]

While the Pleroma grips his wrist, his sword pierces the heart. The same thing happens through his subordinates’ swords. Leonard kicks the ground again. Thicket-like barriers intertwine with each other, blocking the path. Leaping as if flying and escaping outside through the lever, he moves to where Pleroma cannot find him. After gathering the assembled personnel in one place and counting while reporting.

“Your Majesty the respected King, the Bavarian Royal 2nd Infantry Regiment reports. At 18:32 on April 15th, we succeeded in completely destroying the Augsburg diocese. Without further orders…”

Leonard doesn’t say he’ll return. He thought for a moment, and Oettingen spoke without waiting even a moment.

[What is it?]

“I have something to ask.”

[Please speak, Your Highness. However, the entire continent is in uproar over Prince Lucas Ascanien’s matter, so an emergency meeting will be convened. Should I call out coordinates for your return first?]

Leonard didn’t say he would. He asked what the situation was. Oettingen recites the current status in a solemn voice. Unable to listen anymore, he had to interrupt.

“The temporary coordinates of the area in front of Nuremberg, where we exited from Bamberg diocese—where are they?”

Oettingen is momentarily flustered before calling out coordinates. Hearing the coordinates, he immediately moved there. Nicolaus Ernst had already been there a minute ago and was greeting people’s cheers there, Oettingen’s proud voice said. He doesn’t know about greeting. What Leonard discovered was the procession of people gradually converging radially toward that center, countless people waving Bavarian flags from balconies inside buildings, and a tall mage standing looking at the sky in the middle. It’s truly an Easter scene. The recovered festival atmosphere, movements of blessing—Leonard was momentarily entranced by it. Time briefly moves away. Though he can’t make out the masked mage’s expression, Leonard felt something was going wrong. Even if it’s a mistake, he thought so. When the mage began to bow his head, he heard someone shouting from within and kicked the ground running. He saw the mage gripping his staff firmly and heading toward the floor. Leonard lengthened grass and stems to part people and pulled his friend out from among them. He embraced his friend’s shoulder and prevented him from touching the ground.

“Be angry.”

Be angry—he didn’t know why such words came from him, yet he did know. This person didn’t get angry in a situation where he should rightfully be angry. The action shown in that instant was too far from collapsing in exhaustion. It was no different from Buddhist etiquette Leonard learned as a child or a kind of loyalty oath that Catholic clergy offer to heaven when choosing that fate. Whatever religion it was, such behavior shouldn’t be shown now. There surely isn’t any intention to convert to religion—he repeats that he must believe this natural thing. Whether such thoughts or not, he must not kneel. He must not put his face to the ground and close his eyes. That is resignation. A visual manifestation of resignation, a declaration with his whole body that he will live according to fate’s will. Right now his friend should rightfully be angry, should grieve, should rise and look ahead to what’s next. That is the Lucas Ascanien Leonard has known since last fall. It’s not that he thinks his friend has become weak because it’s not so. It’s just that if one who was so solid collapses today, and if it’s not from some magical attack but he collapses on his own, then he might truly be before the end, so he remains in heart-squeezing fear and anxiety.

Does Lucas know the nationwide reaction now? He probably doesn’t know. But even not knowing, he would have expected it. He certainly knew—he has suffered from external reactions his whole life… Is that really everything? Leonard thinks of that day when they sat facing each other in a carriage looking at yellow papers when they were still awkward with each other. He thinks of that day when they gathered at school thinking about false rumors about Nicolaus Ernst. Lucas was always composed and accepted suffocating air as natural. He wasn’t tense and didn’t make light of it. And today he prefers to lie on the ground.

Leonard knows how to save people by attacking them. And recently he’s also learned how to save people using medicine. However, he hasn’t learned how to turn back someone who is alone going toward the path opposite to life when they have no physical problems. The words and writings of sages he’s read over the years become foam and scatter in his head. They held no meaning in saving a person.

Leonard’s shoe heel strikes down between mud and dust fields. He calls random coordinates he doesn’t know. It’s something he normally wouldn’t do. But if they fall from high in the sky by greatly raising the Z-axis…

Crash—

In that moment, the two were elsewhere. The sound of tearing space is more eerie than expected. Leonard feels the barrier mitigating the shock and resistance of their bodies touching it.

Rather do that. If it doesn’t work, do it for my sake too. Leonard commits rudeness and stubbornness he didn’t even do as a child. Telling someone to accomplish something for my sake—could there be more selfish words? It certainly wasn’t something the child who hated hearing “Your Highness” could have said. It’s even less something for the grown him to say. Nevertheless, he buries his head in his friend’s shoulder and says.

“Rather be angry. Do that…”

They fall onto the slanted roof of a red building connected behind some Bavarian church spire.

What did Pleroma intend? They succeeded in actually shaking the entire continent through more direct speeches than expected, and cunningly, in the most metaphorical way within that directness, confessed they would become the villains who directly hand Christ over to the execution ground. Their strategy succeeded and the Empire is in this chaos. Yes, so what’s next? Those who greatly contributed to crucifying Jesus, they were now proudly saying they would become those who drive some human as Jesus and murder him. But no one thinks that far. Leonard thinks about his ally and companion, what he has always wholeheartedly believed to be the axis of justice… As some scholars did, and as one of the two sides that some of his friends sometimes doubted and sometimes admired endlessly, the masses, like most things in the world, have both light and shadow—they sometimes lead the age with brilliant foresight, and sometimes can force the age’s members toward the path of death. History speaks of memories of both. Leonard realizes his homeland’s darkness in 1898 today, facing his friend’s fate. It’s because they don’t know when to think since they’ve never thought, and because they don’t know that thinking fundamentally presupposes self-reflection, so they’re misled only by others’ words accompanying phenomena and mistake being able to say right or wrong after hearing and seeing for their own thinking, and most decisively because they don’t want to think. For those now calling Lucas wrong, standing on justice’s side is not arduous and difficult work but pleasurable work. What a ridiculous age for the word “think.” Only stimulating information touches their nerve endings. Facts and necessity disappear from their understanding. They all become dilettantes somewhat knowledgeable about Pleroma and pretend to suddenly offer righteous criticism of the injustice called Lucas Ascanien, but actually Lucas Ascanien isn’t even that much of a villain, and since Pleroma themselves predicted murder, they ignore the opinions of people saying we should each be careful of our conduct. The darkness he realized painfully today—what influence will it have in 1908, 1918, 1928…? He feels he’s standing on a foothold like glass hanging on a rotten wooden window frame. Not only that, but all humans are there together. Before a time bomb, he only embraces his friend. He didn’t have the courage to look at his face.

A human who doesn’t laugh when they should laugh and doesn’t get angry when they should get angry is not in a natural state. They’ve grown too much. Being indifferent to everything while accepting their situation and only being able to react greatly to their situation by exerting tremendous will—that’s already the choice of one who has undergone too much wear. Leonard dimly realizes. There was a life his friend lived that he doesn’t know. His friend wasn’t someone who would easily collapse even facing something he tried for the first time and was frustrated by for the first time. Life’s storms come differently to different people regardless of age, and humans become strong by repeating that. The strength Leonard sees in Lucas is that kind of strength. Rather than being born inherently powerful, it’s the strength of endurance he polished and worked on himself. However, repeated attempts end in repeated frustration, and today he chooses to accept rather than continue. He hopes it’s a misunderstanding.

Leonard realizes that although he grew up under the Catholic world, the worldview changes that had been gradually raising their heads on the European continent long ago—the ideological shift of the time when Christianity, which had been the foundation of all their ancestors’ lives, could no longer govern everything in life—accompanied his own life. He didn’t want to become religious. Himself? Wrong. He didn’t want his beloved friend to dedicate his life to religion’s path. So, dare he say, he doesn’t want him to live a life subordinated to God’s will and fate instead of free will. He dares to wish for irreverence atop the cathedral. Leonard reports his approximate location through the artifact and tears off all his and his friend’s artifacts, crushing them in his grasp. While doing so, he simultaneously mutters like embracing some cardinal and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

“You were disappointed, weren’t you? Weren’t you angry that your efforts since last fall came to this? You’re wrong, Ernst. This isn’t the end. There’s still a chance of winning. Will what remains be enough?”

Really, Leonard thinks this isn’t the end. Just as he has plans prepared with Elias for Elias’s victory, he was confident he could do his best for Lucas’s life too. But Lucas is tired.

“You always make what I hoped for into reality. When we join forces, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish…”

That friend laughs. He hasn’t fallen asleep. However, having one’s eyes open doesn’t mean being awake, and having breath doesn’t mean everyone is alive. Hearing something like the sound of wind, Leonard continued speaking.

“Why do you laugh?”

“I’m not trying to give up.”

The empty face with a smile answers kindly. Though speaking properly, he is far away. Leonard is grateful that he at least found the mind to speak completely and grimaces.

“Then what?”

“I’m just trying to think for a moment.”

About what—even without asking, Leonard had something to say. He shakes his head and whispers.

“Don’t think.”

Leonard remembers that the mage he saw was not in a normal state at all. Even standing in place, he was in a dream, and even holding someone’s hand, he was elsewhere. As if standing in a wilderness made of human corpses, or as if standing on some day that was happy or frustrating like today… He was silently closing his mouth but communicating with someone. That other party would have been himself. He’s not dismissing Lucas’s thoughts in that state as futile. Leonard knows better than anyone how someone easily considered mad by others can see the world with such sharp eyes and warm heart, and can speak head-cooling words from such keen insight. He’s not saying Lucas is mad so all his thoughts are useless delusions, but rather his intuition was that the insight gained from dialogue with himself wearing the mask of madness would certainly be his truth, and that thought and conclusion would not be something he could accept without being terrified. His friend raises his head, looks into Leonard’s eyes, and speaks gently.

“Listen, Leonard. I understood why God gave Cain a mark.”

What the hell are you calling me—that phrase that would normally pop out doesn’t think of coming out at all today. Leonard closes his eyes to words that seem to have no context and he can’t understand what they mean at first hearing, but actually have meaning. His friend insists he figured out the answer to one of the topics often considered among the Bible’s difficult problems. There are many theological theories about it, so he’s not saying he academically learned one of them but that he embodied it. Through the current situation.

No, you don’t know. You can’t know such things. No one in the world can know that. He wanted to say that. Not because he truly believes he can’t know, not to ignore his words, but to prevent him from putting his head in the dirt. He hoped he wouldn’t return to earth that way.

“You really accomplish everything.”

Leonard felt his throat choking while looking at the sky, yet speaks with composure.

“Then can you do this too?”

No answer came.

“I always want your victory. National interest and everything else were already accomplished long ago. Only wanting you to continue living, so wanting that.”

Leonard continued speaking while pointlessly swallowing his drying throat inward.

“But today you have no strength. Then this time I’ll make you victorious, so…”

Leonard commits stubbornness once more like when he said to be angry. He repeats that rudeness.

“Please stay by my side.”

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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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