How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 530

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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 (530)

At that moment, Lucas’s balance, which had been peacefully surrendering itself to the world, changes completely. His head slowly moves from over his shoulder. Finally, he makes the first movement that Leonard recognizes. Leonard continues speaking without giving him a chance to respond.

“How can I make you believe that I can lead you to victory? What could give you certainty?”

That I can lead you to victory, that today I desire it and have confidence I can make it succeed—how can I draw your heart to this side? He knows he must give certainty instead of mere words.

Only then does Leonard realize that he has little to show for himself, that his arduous achievements, modest yet self-sufficient, feel as pitiful as a candle before a storm in Lucas’s presence, that what he wants to give Lucas is so immense and valuable that even he can barely comprehend it, yet what he has accomplished so far feels neither great nor valuable compared to his feelings. This doesn’t mean what he has achieved is truly modest and vain. Since both excessive humility and overconfidence become poison, he who can view his own perseverance neither too highly nor too lowly, seeing it exactly as it is, still despairs and grows anxious because what he wishes to give now is immeasurable. Should he have shown Lucas his victories sooner, even a little sooner? Leonard’s patience and natural precision allowed him to endure plans spanning years to decades, and this now becomes his downfall. Perhaps to his friend, he is merely a foolish prince who has achieved nothing.

Yet he knows deep down. He may be wishing for something beyond human capability. The desire to receive even one more ray of sunlight for just one more day cannot be handed over in one’s grasp. The heart that waits for a comet returning in ten years and wishes to see seawater stained by the Milky Way today cannot be satisfied even if you pluck stars or bring all the ocean’s waters. How should one give such a heart? How can one convey the heart that wishes not to return to dust just yet? He is closer to his friend than ever before, yet they are furthest apart. Though the warmth they share is so comforting, they are separated by billions of light-years.

Having nothing to show, Leonard embraces what his flesh holds. He feared Lucas might leave him. It would be a lie to say otherwise… Even if such confession stems from weakness, even if it shows him too fragile to meet expectations as one who will become a king, he doesn’t know how to be dishonest with himself. He doesn’t know how to be dishonest with those he loves. Surely Lucas felt the unintended force applied to his back through Leonard’s fingertips, and surely he knew it was to stop the trembling. Though his sunken voice must have honestly revealed everything, he didn’t want to pretend. If truth wouldn’t burden them, he didn’t want to tell lies through any means.

This inner demand to be most cleanly honest in all things, after thinking and thinking, finally leads him here. To that distant realization he had refused to hear.

“You said you understood why God gave Cain a mark.”

Leonard asks his friend who slightly moved his head resting on Leonard’s shoulder, who must be looking at Leonard’s profile with a calm face, having withdrawn from observing the world.

“Then do you also know why people are so easily swayed and talking about you like this?”

Leonard feels the world he knew changing into a different shape. It changes so gradually that the world sixteen-year-old Leonard saw was quite different from what seventeen-year-old Leonard saw, a fact he would only realize later—such natural progression of growth gradually accelerates here, in this place. The days from meeting Lucas until today felt like years to him. Just as all worldly matters have two sides, the public’s behavior, which didn’t always seem positive but didn’t always seem wrong either, now appears like an invisible executioner—Leonard never expected to feel such grief toward those he had respected. Though the time for distinguishing all things into good and evil, right and wrong has passed, so he hasn’t simply categorized the public as evil like flipping his palm, he had never felt such direct sorrow and resentment.

He knows this, though still young and not knowing much. Words generally don’t let you immediately guess the breadth of the speaker’s inner self, but they reveal with piercing clarity how shallow their depth is. The self-righteousness and isolation of those who become adults and elderly without learning to reflect makes their wrinkles meaningless. What remains beneath the adult flesh is the rudeness of one who failed to learn what should have been learned in time. What should be learned is not Latin, theology, science, or even the alphabet, but only how to understand. Humanity begins with understanding oneself and understanding others. One who lives their whole life in a stream and knows not the sea fears not water. For him not to babble to those who live before raging waves that water is only useful to humans, he must know to listen carefully to others who say water should be approached with caution, and the heart that knows how to listen springs from understanding that others’ words carry the same weight as one’s own. Yet what exists infinitely in reality are only those who slander Lucas before even hearing his testimony.

That Leonard grew up studying fiercely for more than a third of each day since childhood was certainly because there is much a ruler must know, but also to instill wisdom he cannot possess at his age. It is to immediately become human when innocence inevitably disappears in the future. Wisdom begins with experience, and a young child who cannot accelerate time must inherit experience from all things on Earth accumulated over 4.6 billion years before his birth. He learns from books, from nature, and from his inner self. From the ten thousand books he has read, from nature that was like home, and from Leonard who chose to lie alone on grass during free time to examine whether he had done anything shameful to his future self, his mother, and his responsibilities that day—the first thing he learned in life was patience. He learned not to speak his first thoughts even before learning not to make hasty judgments. Before uttering a single word, he sometimes buried thoughts in his heart for years, sometimes because the subject wasn’t urgent, sometimes because he loved that present moment too much. Even when neither was the case, usually as time passed his capacity for understanding and acceptance broadened, and sometimes he realized his vessel was still too small and was glad he had remained silent. This had to be distinguished from the ability to speak at the right time, and Leonard knew well that many people confused this and that he sometimes did too, so he didn’t force others to live this way.

A life of continuous restraint taught him not to rashly reveal joy and sorrow after learning to be patient with speaking. Yet that he fully reveals his emotions to his friend today is perhaps his nature and above all, trust. Iron-like trust that overcomes education so powerfully instilled it became second nature and constant self-reflection—Lucas gives him such trust. Leonard wishes to repay such trust.

Leonard closes his eyes, conscious of his conscience aching as if it might tear in the moment his thoughts flow. The incident from first year lives on without fading for a moment, making his heart sting. He who was always calm in all matters had always, only in Lucas’s presence, grown anxious too early. For reasons unknown, he was always becoming a different person in Lucas’s presence. Even to this day.

However, from the day he realized his mistake, he became even more silent than before and displayed strictness toward himself decisively enough, and as a result, he could reach today early, in a direction different from the ordinary future he would have had if he had spent time without Lucas as a catalyst for change. So the eyes with which Leonard now sees the world, the greater understanding and compassion reflected in his eyes, the diversity of human affairs—these were also created by his friend who extended his hand that autumn day last year, making him realize his mistake early. If he hadn’t turned away from the mistake as painful as grinding away his own bones and flesh, Leonard would not be himself today.

Therefore, Leonard truly pitied those who do not yet know their own rashness and haste, reflecting on his distant past self who seems to have become a different person separated by time’s river, but apart from pity regarding foolishness, his cold sense regarding wrongness remains. Just as he mercilessly sharpens himself with the blade of reflection, looking back and applying the blade again, though much less than the merciless strictness he applies to himself, Leonard considers it different levels that those countless people making the continent buzz are heartbreakingly foolish and that they are going down the wrong path. He grew up as a ruler, not an ascetic, and rightfully so, so unlike ascetics who traverse the world with bare hands and feet, he always had to look down from above and pass judgment on reality with the sword and scales in his hands. Whether the target becomes Lucas or anyone else, those who insult someone must surely receive punishment in court, and if everyone’s lack of reflection becomes the spirit of the age, ultimately leading us toward an age of destruction, the sin of abandoning human ethics must be charged to us all.

His friend breaks the long silence and answers concisely.

“Because they are foolish.”

So what Leonard wants to know is whether his expectation is correct. Even after hearing that expectation is right, he wants to know what degree of injustice he will commit. That way, even if Leonard commits the same injustice, he wants to commit a different injustice.

“Even if they are wondrous as life itself with primitive, countless colors of existence, foolishness is foolishness. Just as you cannot call sentient beings bodhisattvas, just as you cannot say the disciples who misunderstood Jesus’s words and mistakenly thought he was warning us because we have no bread were in a wise state… I cannot say those who don’t stop at misunderstanding but kill people with their tongues are not foolish. I especially cannot say those who don’t know they kill people are not foolish. Because it functions like poison that will kill everyone in distant ages to come, and before discussing the future, it’s the cause of countless deaths in past days.”

He speaks at a steady pace, gently without particular highs and lows. Leonard still feels unfamiliarity with that tone. It sounds like the wind speaking, and when he hears that voice, words seem to penetrate his body. His friend speaks softly yet firmly.

“I cannot say those ordinary murderers were not foolish, even for the sake of the dead. And I know foolishness cannot function as any privilege of absolution. However.”

However—at these words spoken without hesitation, Leonard closes his eyes. He decides to intercept the answer. Like his friend did, he lets his voice flow faintly into the wind.

“You have compassion.”

“Yes.”

Leonard cannot even sigh and feels his heart gradually tightening. God knew why he gave Cain a mark—that realization is based on transcendent understanding. The sorrow flowing from understanding drove away even anger. Everything burns and only ash remains, unable to anger him. Everything is pitiful and pitiful again over the ruins where life’s brilliance might have remained. The brilliant sunlight, rivers, and civilization the day before ash covered the city, the nature that coexisted with them, the possibility of all things that could have harmonized—all pitiful.

Leonard feels his heart emptying as if nothing remains. His instinctive anxiety was not wrong. His friend clearly knew why people insult him, and knowing this, he chooses to have compassion. If he could, he would give marks to countless Cains like God. But that is not a trial providing cause and effect in the phenomenal world, but transcendence occurring within him. What shows is only the image of offering the other cheek to his enemy and hands caressing the lowly creatures.

What path must humans take to empty themselves and contain the world in that place? What do we call one who empties himself and goes to the lowest place?

How can he be raised up? How can he make the one who has been lowered—not lowered by infamy but lowered by understanding and love—lift his head again?

Is doing so the right thing? Perhaps Leonard is preventing the birth of Jesus, Francis, Buddha, and countless arhats. Perhaps he is blocking and destroying the ascetic, saint, love made high by being low—one who empties his own life and spreads the light pouring over it to the world. Leonard thinks. Because I want you to live with your feet on the ground, because I want you to walk on it instead of pressing your forehead to the earth and be able to look at the sky, because I want you to boldly declare you’ll reach that end with your usual confident face, perhaps I commit injustice against humanity by holding back one who would leave. Like this, I always become foolish before you and always distance myself from justice. Like all the days I held you back, today too.

But he asks. What is justice?

Then his friend, who had been silent all along, speaks.

“But Leonard. I don’t want you to come close to their darkness.”

For an instant, Leonard feels Lucas’s voice change. Very slightly. So slightly that even God wouldn’t notice…

He realizes. Perhaps he is the last bastion keeping this person who might become a saint still standing on two legs. His heart begins to beat. Fear, terror, responsibility, being overwhelmed by the unknown—any of these would be correct. Lucas continues speaking about such Leonard.

“While thinking nothing but the precarious belief that they themselves are human, while casting aside the patience and prudence you’ve cultivated much longer than them to beyond consciousness, while making hasty judgments about others and basely revealing what the bottom of their own selves looks like, while believing they’ve shown nothing and facing those who say I am justice, I am the victor, I am the rejoicing one—I don’t want that. The blades that those with knowledge but no wisdom, experience but no wisdom, bodies aging year by year but no wisdom swiftly seek justice and throw with mouth and hand are never light compared to their feather-like lightness, so they have truly killed many until now, do so now, and will continue to do so. Wars will continue to occur, the annihilation of personhood directed at countless others with different bodies from mine will not cease, and those crushed to death by words lightly thrown by the unwise will not stop. If you’re confident this has already ceased in our time, that would be another murder committed against the dead and tantamount to declaring faithful service to future murders. All these types of murder happen because they all fundamentally believe their actions are correct, or try to believe so, making them unchangeable by our power and making it difficult to charge them with murder… Only a small number of humans standing in Nuremberg and Jerusalem are clearly called guilty. The rest should have their responsibility questioned by fellow citizens and history, but whether that functions properly or will function, we cannot know.”

As the words flow toward the end, Leonard doesn’t understand what Lucas is saying. Lucas’s face turns toward Leonard. Leonard feels dizziness the moment the features that had become symbols of detachment turn completely toward him.

“So, will you understand my concern?”

Leonard awakens his increasingly slow thoughts.

This is the answer to my proposal that I would make you victorious. His friend worries Leonard might suffer the same ordeal today. Leonard sees fragments of the Lucas he knew here and feels profound longing without knowing it. Thinking of his friend even in any hardship is the friend he knew, and that one who used to face any hardship not facing them today is not the friend he knew.

Perhaps Leonard could now let go of his beloved friend and help him become Christ or a saint, function as a lamp illuminating all people. Even if many spit on and turn away from the saint who breaks the world’s turbid stability and shows love with his own body, the saint’s life would itself become lasting teaching. Thus among hundreds of millions of descendants, even thousands or hundreds might know the brilliant and quiet love the saint transmits with his whole body, and it could spread far again to let the world know what love that seeks no price is. Leonard was moved by Francis of Assisi’s life and deeply impressed by the days Siddhartha became Buddha. He bows his head with respect to those saints and Buddha who voluntarily descended to the lowest places to comfort sentient beings’ suffering. Leonard pities clergy who focus on religion’s secondary aspects to rationally oppress others and believers who confirm their own biases in religion’s name, spreading them widely and committing spiritual murder, and he is angry at their conduct. In this age when biblical inerrancy is not recognized, if anyone can be oppressed in religion’s name, then first those who have accumulated wealth should distribute all that money to the world’s beggars, and especially if we must follow everything in the Old Testament, which has ancestral backgrounds of one people and is more chronological than the New Testament, few could exist here as they do now… Therefore, he holds complete respect before those who were not deceived by whispers to follow all of religion’s temporal limitations and secondary aspects but practiced its essence—the primary teaching that can only be realized by going to the deepest place, hidden by all kinds of misunderstanding’s temptations. Those who would have devoted themselves to others’ suffering even without religion, ascetics who silently smile faintly while stroking with rough hands those lying in low places.

And Leonard truly does something contradictory today.

Leonard recalls his past when he constantly strived to be just. It crumbles to selfishness. If someone didn’t descend to a low place by himself but was pushed by indifferent and indifferent fate to roll and fall endlessly until finally emptying himself, if the pain experienced in life’s journey was much greater than the sum of happiness so he decided to stop resisting, Leonard cannot let this person go.

“You asked if I understand.”

Leonard rather feels his heart becoming cleanly organized. He clearly knew what he had to do. He moved aside and began answering calmly.

“Of course. Because I worry about you as much as you worry about me. But this concern is meaningless worry.”

Lucas silently looks at Leonard. Leonard feels his heart sink with a thud at those still distant eyes, takes a deep breath, then continues.

“If you’re worried I’ll suffer unnecessary pain not even in my fate, I don’t want to know whether that was my fate or not. It’s not important either. I already had to face together what opposes you from that moment last year when I became your friend.”

Earlier he wanted to clarify what degree of injustice he would commit. This is not to avoid injustice. It’s to know the size of injustice he commits and not avoid accepting it. To not avoid disappointing himself, to accept the pain of his known self seeming to shatter and disappear, to prevent other injustices that would occur from that injustice and bear the weight himself.

And now he was thoroughly blaspheming God. Leonard feels his injustice expanding beyond measure.

Leonard realizes he must bring up the request he wasn’t proud of once more. There was never an option to give a different answer from the beginning. But if he himself chose to do so, then it’s necessary pain. So now he can speak with not a speck of shame, swearing to all things. He looks into his friend’s eyes and says.

“I have confidence I can win. I have confidence I can take you where you wanted to go.”

He dares to say he has it. Leonard knew his proposal would sound to Lucas like childish words, like a child throwing out anything to hold on. But he gives the answer to the long-repeated question.

Justice gained by burning one person is not justice.

“You could be happy too. For one who has reached as high a place as you, humanity’s arduous suffering may have become bearable now. For you, the pain striking the shadowed pits of the world might be sadder, so caring for them might feel happier.”

“…”

“You will surely become a lamp illuminating the world. I know you’re that kind of person. So if I wish you to be angry instead of letting you sacrifice yourself to have compassion for all people by blocking your path ahead, I would be committing injustice across ten thousand generations.”

Leonard doesn’t look ahead. His vision is confused.

“But you?”

Neither sight nor sound nor anything conveys information to him. In that state, he continues speaking.

“I cannot ignore the injustice fate commits against you.”

The teaching after asceticism, glory, that vast love is justice. But if he can commit just one injustice before the cornered one gives up, before he chooses to burn himself and spread light to the world, he will commit injustice against the injustice fate symbolized by God commits in his life. He has prepared to face the fate that empties one person to make him a saint. Even if it’s foolish and foolish again, he will do so. If he could erase just one book from his friend’s memory among the scriptures, it would be Job. The story of a human tested by God and ultimately loyal to God is blasphemy against his friend’s life as he knows it now. Pleroma’s plan, their arrogance of giving trials to one human to create Christ, the fate that allowed that arrogance—all of it. Even if it’s blasphemy, it can’t be helped. Even if the Catholicism that was part of his life calls him an apostate, he has no regret in his decision. If his friend becomes an ascetic by his own will in the future, he won’t stop him, but that day should not be today.

So Leonard dares to block the path of one destined to become a saint.

“I’ve never done it before. I’ve pulled someone trying to fall to their death from a cliff, but I’ve never tried to turn back the steps of someone trying to empty himself and comply with fate to comfort the world. I try to change the fate of someone considered mad but haven’t seen the end yet. So when I say I’ll make you victorious amid this injustice by all people, when I say I have confidence my plan will succeed, when I say I’ll overcome fate and show you—actually, to you, it might just sound ridiculous.”

Leonard lowers his head. Still, his voice flows without wavering.

“Even if it’s such an unjust and shameless request, even so…”

Leonard moves his tongue that had been suspended in air again.

“Could you trust me?”

What should rightfully use the past as collateral urges him to offer trust with the future as collateral. Thus he stakes not only the first death but the second death. If the first is factual death that enables a funeral, now it’s the death of self. He stakes himself who is not himself on this promise.

Long silence flows between them. It may not actually be long, but to Leonard this time feels as distant as the span between the clock tower’s chimes.

“Everyone says they themselves are just, but you keep saying you’re not just.”

His friend no longer speaks with his voice buried in the wind. A clear voice pierces Leonard’s ears.

“Everyone believes in their own justice and doesn’t hesitate to cut others’ breath, but you say you’re wrong. You keep asking and asking and pleading how to become just, yet today you’re shattering and pouring out your glory to hold onto me. The you that you thought of, the you that made you up, both seem to be crushed together on that path and flowing to places where they can no longer be found. So you’re floating now, having lost your roots, with the world that raised you, the you that you loved, the dignity you believed in all disappeared, sitting here with your heart growing cold like I once felt. Isn’t that right?”

You’re in the vast ocean now, aren’t you… he says.

“When humans lose the self they knew and something new takes its place, they realize they can no longer return to the sunny fields of their hometown where they used to play. Some realize this one morning when they get up from bed and see the rising sun, others feel their strength drain as if they can’t stand on two legs and finally collapse, feeling their hearts tear with pain. This happens not from changes in the world but only from transformation accomplished by what springs from within you. And today you decided to exchange your well-being for suffering.”

His friend pauses briefly then moves his lips.

“You’re not one who never makes mistakes but one who always realizes. Your talent and nature are truly amazing, making you succeed at many things at once. But you’re not always perfect, and yet like a woodworker who puts his heart into making joints fit perfectly, you don’t allow even the slightest warping in your heart.”

“…”

“I’m amazed by your self-reflection. Always.”

Leonard feels warmth seeping into Lucas’s voice with these words. It’s simultaneously a shock. What was distant comes near. Lucas’s eyes that had been directed at empty space move to the person closest to him.

“You asked if I could trust you. Setting aside the fact that I’ve never once doubted your ultimate victory, no matter how much you think you’ve achieved nothing, there’s no reason to think that. There’s no need to.”

“No need to.”

Leonard sees emotion beginning to rise in those eyes.

“You’ve already won, Leo. So how could I leave you behind?”

Lucas now returns to the face he knew. He erases his smile of countless eons and contorts his cheek. In this moment Leonard realizes his competition with God has ended. His friend has the face Leonard knows well and continues speaking with a cracking voice, trying to smile a human smile.

“All the light you emit tells me there are still many things I want to keep watching…”

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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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