How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 596

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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 (596)

“What is this ritual?”

I asked while looking at my blood-covered palm.

“It’s a promise to keep silent about everything you see and hear in this place. You are half one of us now.”

“I’m hearing this for the first time, but I’ve already made such a promise.”

I clenched and unclenched my hand as I continued speaking.

“I have no intention of talking.”

“It seems that way.”

It would seem so. Would someone who’s been burned by people tell others where their escape route is? ‘I’ asked the clergy for help and he offered to help by handing me a knife. Before I could even find hope, there was no way ‘I’ could tell others about this.

I sat in that spot all day long. I watched people flow into the cathedral like high tide and ebb out like low tide several times. I kept my position quietly with a smile from beginning to end. When evening came, the same clergyman I had seen at dawn approached me. He said nothing, but I followed behind him. He went outside the cathedral and entered a small shed. Then suddenly he opened a lid in the floor and went down below.

“What is this?”

I asked, but he didn’t answer. I stepped down the iron foothold that seemed ready to break at any moment and arrived at the underground level. I hadn’t closed the door when I came down, so the clergyman went back up to close it. During that time, I looked around the room. It was a dim hall covered with all kinds of books. It was quite spacious.

The clergyman sat at the round table in the center without hesitation. I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, then looked at the book placed beside me. It was a report loosely bound with leather straps. ‘Eichstätt Volume 16’. Eichstätt. A very familiar name to me, having conducted Pleroma extermination operations in Bavaria. What had they researched? Local legends? Traditions suitable for converting to magical formulas?

“First, if you reveal the existence of this space, you will be killed.”

“This kind of warning is also a first for me. But you know better than anyone that won’t happen, Father.”

“Since you’ve seized this opportunity, don’t disappoint me.”

“Of course—”

“This isn’t a request not to reveal anything. Can you swear that what you said earlier wasn’t just superficial words but has proper grounds and weight?”

This person interrupts while making the sign of the cross and performs folk traditions—he doesn’t seem cut out to be a clergyman, but surprisingly he values meaning. Actually, it’s not surprising. If he thought I was making a wish that seemed useless to him, he would have just told me to leave when he caught me trespassing. The reason he brought me to this place is because he judged that even though I wear the skin of a young man, my mind is on the verge of meeting the afterlife. Because I’m someone who won’t be swayed by youthful passion due to exhaustion. Even if I generously concede about the mind, my body still has many days left, so I have one last thread of desperate will and the kind of obsession that could help their organization. But there’s a problem. To be helpful, I shouldn’t be researching childish wishes. That’s why he was interested in my mind that’s on the verge of going to the afterlife from the beginning.

“I’ll go find materials from here, so make clear what you want.”

He said that and got up disappointingly quickly, leaving the hall. There must be more archives.

What do I want? I lifted and put down the cover of the Eichstätt report while glancing at the inside. As I did so, I thought.

He heard me talking about making a contract with Mephistopheles and such, and thinks I want wish fulfillment through mysticism. At that time, I said I don’t seek understanding. He heard that and spoke as if he was certain I had senility. That old clergyman understood what I meant.

I was sincere. I don’t seek understanding.

To speak of something different amid the ‘flood of sameness’ is to become the other, to speak of negativity that society won’t tolerate. In other words, it’s taking the risk of being eliminated. However, while understanding and empathy have become clichés yet are simultaneously considered the foremost values—simply as slogans rather than grasping their meaning due to lack of education in other values or inertia—I dare to think this way today. Understanding is superfluous. Respect comes first.

Nothing is as destructive as respecting because you understand. Conversely, trying to understand because you respect is the path to holistic harmony. It presupposes respect even if you ultimately fail to understand the other. However, respecting because you understand is the rejection of the other. It means recognizing only the in-group, unity without others. Nazis respect because they understand. Aryans. Nazis don’t respect because they don’t understand. Jews, people of color, the disabled, …. This is the easiest example. We all don’t restrain ourselves from criticizing Nazis. However, the moment we look at our interior with the same perspective we used to criticize Nazis, the lens and speaker that return to us become things that must be eliminated, and those who cast ripples on our common sense suffer countless demands for proof. Yet still, I don’t seek understanding, and we bear responsibility for all the easy understanding that surrounds us.

Like understanding, words that have already become distant affairs in 21st century OECD countries, flattened and romantically consumed while their reality is forgotten—subversive revolution works in the same way. It ‘worked’. Because what many people think of through the word revolution is subversive, militant revolution, typically the French Revolution, the revolution here is first based on the French Revolution. In the French Revolution, they kept alive only what homogeneous groups understood. What wasn’t understood was sent to the guillotine. From the Marxist historian Soboul’s perspective, this process was essential for class struggle. In this process, tolerance is fundamentally impossible. This revolution is not revolution as an already misread word, not revolution as a signifier that has lost its original signified and is reproduced in romanticized form, but revolution in reality.

In the information overload era, the economy of words determines the life of words. Today, language must be immediately consumed and function rather than be savored. All expressed words and writing must be short and as simple as possible so that everyone with various intellectual levels can immediately understand. We who are submerged in the sea of information focus on the signified and despise the signifier, but ironically, for phenomena where the signified is most important, we let the signifier devour the signified. Revolution, understanding. Whether we degrade them to something totally worthless or make them into stuffed specimens with emptied contents for admiring the surface, we were skilled at making true values into vanity. In the era of revolution consumption, subversive revolution is growing distant from us. Subversive revolution cannot be reproduced among those who misunderstand.

Understanding is the same. The ‘understanding’ universally used and revered in the 21st century, understanding that judges what’s worth respecting, is based on homogeneity with me. 20th century philosophers Levinas and Adorno pointed out that understanding has the violence of absorbing the other into the understander while flattening the other’s complexity. In contrast, the 21st century I lived in seems to be an era where diversity is respected and the other appears to remain unique. The totalitarianism that 20th century philosophers confronted with their lives now seems like an outdated ideology. However, in today’s information overload era that demands transparency from humanity, requiring everything to be disclosed in detail so there’s nothing we can’t understand, the other disappears. In the storage tower of algorithms with filters, no other remains. Our generation learns understanding amid the flood of sameness. I reject the trend of revering understanding in such an era.

“I’ve selected some for now.”

The clergyman had already come and sat down while I had my eyes closed. He said he’d look around but didn’t seem to wander for even 5 minutes. He put down the booklets he held in his arms on the chair beside him. Why not on the desk? Because I have to pass by telling him the contents written in the booklets he brought. I mustn’t say trivial things that children might say. The clergyman is staring intently at me.

“As I said before. How should I explain? I do want people to change. But as you already know, I don’t want them to change so they’ll do what I say without question. Like bringing gold or such things. I don’t want such trivial things.”

“How do you prove you don’t want that?”

“I’ll say as much as you want. But first, let me ask. Why do you ask this?”

“Those who have power must have a mindset befitting that power.”

“Hmm, as I said, I don’t have childish thoughts either. Wanting to be understood by all others, that is.”

“Wanting to be understood isn’t childish. It’s human instinct.”

“But Father, you’re worried right now whether techniques will be misused by that instinct. You yourself see wanting understanding as childish whining that can be blurted out without consideration. No matter how much suffering someone has endured, if they’re someone without consideration, they’d suck up only the ability and act like a different person as if asking when they were ever burdened, so you’re saying that.”

“You know well. When people are told they can fulfill wishes, they do anything. Honestly, we can’t say we don’t do anything either. Since magic has appeared, we must do our best until the day comes when nothing is impossible with it.”

“Then why are you lecturing me?”

“At least one person should reduce their greed.”

I looked at him with the same expression he had. In that state, neither of us opened our mouths. I had a staring contest with him before opening my mouth.

“I have already contemplated this for a long time. So to speak, we fail to realize the ‘distant understanding’ that we reach through constant effort despite heterogeneity, and we name immediate bonds based on homogeneity as understanding. We live in such an era. It becomes more so as time passes.”

“….”

“In a society that doesn’t know the meaning of understanding has already been distorted, understanding is still accepted as the highest value humans can show when dealing with other humans. Of course, bonding based on homogeneity isn’t wrong.”

I only realized after coming here that bonding based on homogeneity brings deep and magnificent self-satisfaction to my foundation. What I exchanged with several people I met here was fortunately not superficial understanding based on superficial homogeneity, but intimate threads of homogeneity surrounded by heterogeneity, and this is the true face of understanding that the 21st century has forgotten as if sleeping with eyes open, knowing yet forgetting. Since I don’t want to taint precious relationships, I want to say so.

However, from before coming here, from my teenage years, what I’ve consistently thought—understanding is still superfluous to me.

“But before examining the semantic scope of understanding, the trend that ‘understanding must precede respect’ is still problematic. That stems from superficial and simple knowledge that believes understanding basically occurs within homogeneity. In an era when understanding is commonly used that way, I don’t seek understanding. What I want is an environment where I can live a minimally human life, and just because I alone left that scene and now enjoy peace doesn’t solve anything. I mean I don’t want to see other people who aren’t me suffer.”

The society I ultimately wanted in the 21st century wasn’t a society of understanding with all otherness castrated, but a society that respects despite all that otherness. I tried to achieve that. Together with the perfect other. So….

I closed my eyes. I was walking on fire. After a long while, I opened my eyes and looked at the old priest.

“Even if different, even if incomprehensible, I want a society that respects. More than anything else.”

So I always hope to want respect.

Borrowing a philosopher’s thought, empathy is me becoming you. You become me. Shared emotion. We are bound by homogeneity. Emotional projection is me and you trying to reach each other from our respective positions. Despite our vast heterogeneity, we try to think by switching positions and try to respect others who should have been rejected according to some primitive instinct. Instead of homogeneity that leads to understanding without effort, heterogeneity that requires constant effort to respect—treating people as people despite this heterogeneity is the virtue of free people.

Let me be clear. I don’t want those who put me in the circular arena to understand me. That simple thinking doesn’t reach the essence and reproduces violence. Those who don’t know how to respect what they don’t understand and only respect when they understand should know that criticizing the in-groupists I mentioned earlier is contradictory. They are the same murderers as those before them. While it’s right for them to criticize numerous murderers, it’s wrong for them not to know they are the same murderers. If I said this in the 21st century, I would be attacked by all in-groupists, that is, unconscious discriminators. Even without saying it directly, that’s what happened to me. Sometimes I would receive 21st century arguments that I didn’t even feel were worth considering. The more people there are, the more they can misunderstand discussions and solemnly present countless thoughts that don’t even need consideration as paradigm shifts. But since I’m a public figure, I can’t open my mouth to just one person. Thus, bombardments of ‘sameness’ rather than discourse fall on SNS, excluding me who raised objections. While those who first raised counterarguments may have been constructive by their standards, this situation concludes with attacks on the speaker. The violence of groups pretending not to be violent is carried out wearing the mask of critics.

What’s certain is that people cannot understand all people and sometimes stand at polar opposites that can’t touch each other at all. I have yet to see a person who understands all of these. So if understanding precedes respect, it only demonstrates humanity’s bleakness. Understanding is a subset of respect and respect is the essence of understanding, but in today’s world where words are misunderstood, understanding breaks away from its mother respect and becomes a condition for respect. This is the concentration of positivity without any negativity, the smooth understanding idealized today. Transparent understanding, natural understanding that requires no effort.

And decisively, since nine out of ten things that ignorant people babble are nonsense, conversely there’s also not feeling the need to be understood. One can only earnestly hope that they won’t proudly show the world what they think is remarkable rudeness when it’s not particularly remarkable to the person involved. Being understood by such people isn’t particularly joyful personally. My entire past life guarantees this.

“Good.”

The clergyman put the book on the table.

“People your age commonly want people’s understanding. That’s essentially no different from wanting to command the world by borrowing magic’s power. We can’t carelessly hand over such techniques.”

“So is there actually something? You’re acting like there are magical formulas, but it would be awkward if there’s no meaning after I’ve said this much.”

“We’ll have to combine things from now on.”

“What combination?”

“Hmm. There’s a technique that makes you seem present yet absent to people within a 1500-foot radius. I don’t know if it actually works, but an alchemist named August who lived around 1300 supposedly used it for thievery.”

“Does thievery seem related to respect?”

“No. But originally everything involves digging with bare hands while combining.”

Then the clergyman opened another book and turned pages while wetting his fingers with saliva. I worried whether the ink might smudge from his saliva and lowered my expectations. How did these bastards bewitch people? Seeing that Mathilde Lorenz didn’t go berserk, they don’t have Pleroma’s drugs. I now had to recalculate the possibility that Mathilde Lorenz had seizures due to illness.

The clergyman thrust a book in front of my listless face.

“That’s a hasty judgment. Look. It’s a drug that makes you feel good. People who take this can smile plausibly all day and treat people politely. Why? Because they just feel good. So I take this before important meetings. If you combine this with August’s drug, people won’t think deeply about you. Naturally, they’ll also withdraw their rudeness.”

“That’s an unheard-of, simple, ignorant mechanism. But isn’t it solid? It would be awkward to go around feeding this to everyone.”

“If you make the solid drug into gas and spray it around like perfume, people who encounter you will have appropriate attitudes. The ratio should be 1 part August to 9 parts this perfume. Alright, let me show you Mr. August’s drug first.”

The clergyman took out something like a black pill from the pouch he brought. Everything was becoming disagreeable, so I was glaring at the drug wondering if it was rotten, when the clergyman ate the drug without hesitation. I was thinking of propping my chin and looking through more of the Eichstätt report. But I was soon shocked and half-rose from my seat.

The clergyman had become somewhat hazy. He seemed to be one with the air. Does this work? I couldn’t close my mouth in disbelief and waved my hand in the air.

“Don’t do that. I’m here. I took a rather large amount.”

The clergyman spoke calmly while hazy.

“People in the 1300s didn’t have the ability to use mana. But now it’s different. We have the ability to use mana.”

He showed the silk pouch containing the drug while speaking matter-of-factly.

“Through the mana dissolved in materials and August’s spell that fully brings out that mana, we can make such drugs. Now we might even be able to synthesize gold if we do well.”

“Oh….”

The corners of my mouth rose. Look at this. This is serious….

The clergyman opens various books in front of me and speaks. What he’s saying gradually grows distant from me. I disguised myself as Abel, inspired by red earth, to lure out Terminus Yukairya. However, I don’t even know if Terminus Yukairya exists now—since I could easily approach such a temporary Terminus Yukairya, I chose this era—and I don’t know if they’re already interested in Abel. Nevertheless, I proceeded. Whether Abel or Cain, what’s important to them is ‘power’. Whether God’s power or occult power. Therefore, I was confident that if their predecessor exists today, they would come find me.

Now I’m in some cathedral in Würzburg. Unexpectedly, it turned out this way. I don’t know how much I need to change direction toward Terminus Yukairya from here, but….

Respect, huh. He brought me in because he’s confident he can instill the spirit of respect in people. He was confident, so he confirmed whether I was qualified to receive abilities….

It feels like the blood flow forming my organs is greatly surging from deep within. I swallowed saliva. I blankly lifted my gaze that had been stuck to the book and closed my eyes. The back of my neck suddenly feels cool.

I newly realize how Pleroma and other groups controlled people.

It was strange that I was even momentarily bewitched by their words of ‘granting wishes’. The desire to change people by any means possible if it were possible…. I feel the resentment each of them must have had. I wasn’t someone who could think everything was fine just because I alone escaped. I truly wanted people to be able to live better lives. The fact that I’m temporarily escaping from that suffering now doesn’t mean the problem is solved. Even at this moment, people aren’t being treated as people. Someone habitually commits murder without knowing. Or they know but ignore it as convenient for their peace of mind.

But what meaning would change achieved through magic have? It’s a house built on sand.

After remaining silent, I spoke honestly.

“It feels a bit hollow.”

Just because I came to empathize doesn’t mean I think Pleroma did well. That there are no humans without circumstances doesn’t mean it was good that they killed people. The clergyman looked at me with his blurry face after touching his mouth with his finger.

“Why? There are no fruits gained at once.”

“But….”

“It’s about time for others to come.”

“What? You didn’t mention that.”

“We’ve already shared.”

It might have been fortunate that I encountered someone who omits all sentence components like this. Since he spoke this way, he stayed quiet even when I said strange things.

While the clergyman went out to greet them, I flipped through the Eichstätt report again. There was nothing special, and as expected, it was about local traditions and stories of alchemists and mages who lived in medieval times.

While I was doing that, people dressed in black clothes came in. There seemed to be about ten or so. Someone grumbled from afar as they entered.

“The Abel case was a bust.”

“That’s right. It was fake.”

I almost widened my eyes but maintained composure. I watched the two clergymen closely and observed them until they sat down. Then instead of greeting, I threw out a remark.

“It seems to be an ancient document research society.”

“That’s right.”

Another elderly clergyman answered nonchalantly. Thank you. It’s an ancient document research society organized by the church. Clergymen are surprisingly those who can easily approach the occult. They possess ancient documents accumulated over a long time. From this period, libraries began appearing in workers’ associations in cities, but until then, most libraries were in churches. Monks actually studied the occult and alchemy. Notably, wasn’t Bishop von Dernbach of Würzburg also someone interested in alchemy? He had even held the bishopric of Bamberg. Demonology for exorcising demons was also occult research, and this was a discipline officially studied by the church.

However, Christianity officially prohibits the occult on the surface. Nevertheless, in a world where magic has been introduced, clergymen seek to quickly gain an advantage based on their information network. Just look at these people called clergymen. Rather than viewing magic as a betrayal of God, they consider it something that can coexist.

But strangely, I see different people from those I’ve seen all day today… I glanced around and was certain. There are priests not only from Würzburg Cathedral but also from other cathedrals. It’s a kind of united format. Are there priests from other dioceses here too? Then I suspect there might be people from adjacent dioceses like Bamberg and Eichstätt here as well. I smiled at the elderly clergyman’s brazenness in engaging in conversation. He asks me.

“How did you know to come here?”

“I just came to the cathedral—”

“From what I can see, you didn’t just happen to come to Würzburg Cathedral by chance.”

“…”

I checked the status window, but he has no special abilities. Is he also in a state of having taken the special medicine made here? Thinking of these hidden magical organizations everywhere, I realize that Pleroma was actually inevitable. Terminus Yukairya is also inevitable.

“It’s nothing special. I have good intuition. I heard somewhere…”

Some French people keep mentioning Würzburg, don’t they? As I was about to say that to extract information, a thought flashed through my mind. Why did Henri put Laplace in Würzburg University? To monitor the Crown Prince. That’s what I thought.

He said I didn’t ‘just happen to come to Würzburg Cathedral by chance.’

I stared at the table in silence.

What to do after leaving this extra chapter had been decided long ago. I need to find out what became of their organization and technology in 1898. Did the Papacy know that northern Bavarian Catholic priests were gathering to conduct strange research? Where did their information flow? Now it’s time to gradually return to Bavaria and relay what I’ve learned to the intelligence agency people.

And what I need to do after leaving this cathedral before that was just decided.

Someone speaks.

“I heard.”

“…I heard that a bishop here used to practice alchemy long ago, so I came to pay my respects to that bishop.”

“…”

Strangely, everyone remains silent. I know, I know. Bishop von Dernbach must be the focal point connecting you all. Otherwise, why would that servant have borrowed von Dernbach’s book? Since you talked about it first, there’s no problem for me.

“So what did this person come here to do?”

The young man who had talked about Abel asks. With the desire to whistle, I looked at the clergyman who brought me here. The clergyman repeated exactly what I had said so far.

“Quite ambitious dreams.”

When the story ended, someone scoffs. Everyone seems to have the same thought as they look at me with indifference. However, the clergyman who appeared to be the oldest spoke in a completely cracked voice.

“I don’t know what circumstances you have, but you seem desperate. Since you’ve already entered, you’re a dead man if you reveal anything, so show him. Don’t we have a few things?”

“Yes, well…”

“Since you’re already here, let him research directly. Nothing to lose.”

The clergyman who brought me got up from his seat and returned with some files.

“You shouldn’t get your hopes up, but long ago there was a commoner in Munich who wanted to become king. Just a farmer from the common Miller family. Looking at the magical formulas that person developed, there should be something useful for you.”

“A king? That seems far from respect.”

“You should cast a magical formula that makes people think until their heads burst.”

I played dumb at that scolding and looked at another file he thrust forward.

“There’s this too. It’s a family that was already wiped out long ago, but according to tradition, there were people in that family who used magic.”

“Is that so?”

I’ll play along appropriately and then say I’ll make that 1:9 magical potion he mentioned earlier. Then I’ll stay and observe the flow.

“A person named Kunigunde Sara von Hohenfelz. This person supposedly had the ability to manipulate memories. A sick person once visited this person, and the patient forgot the memory of being ill and was completely cured of the pain. It’s just tradition though.”

“What?”

“Tradition…”

“No.”

“She has the ability to manipulate memories. Hmm, perhaps she could even erase those good memories of yours. If we had the ability to revive the dead, this person would have been helpful to you. We’d just need to implant one memory of each of them having respected you.”

I waved my hand dismissively. He looks at me indifferently with a ‘what now’ expression.

“Hohenfelz?”

“Yes. An old noble family. But we don’t know how to revive the dead.”

The clergyman closed the file and took it back to himself, saying.

“You don’t seem interested in research, so let’s just make that mixed potion I mentioned earlier.”

“No. I want to research.”

I grabbed his arm. The clergyman looked down at my hand, quietly removed it, and handed me the file.

Seeing my extremely hardened expression, the other clergymen sneer. They must think I became this serious because I believe there’s a possibility for resurrection. They probably think, could I possibly revive bare bones?

No, that’s wrong. You’re acting like this because you don’t know something. Sara Hohenfelz was a Pleroma I killed, and there are no Pleroma in 1851. There’s no ability to revive corpses in this era. This ancient document research society wants to revive numerous medieval people like Sara Hohenfelz. Even if not strongly desired, there’s incentive for that.

Is there someone among these who revived Sara Hohenfelz? In other words, might the original Pleroma who first revived a corpse be here? The faces of people sitting at the round table slowly overlap and flow past in my turning vision.

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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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