Why go this far?
Encrid couldn't understand for a moment.
Was there any reason to hate him this much?
He had seen the hatred in those eyes, but he couldn't understand it.
Just because he was filled with hatred and resentment, why toward him?
Of course, Encrid wouldn't know, but the genius sorcerer of the Fortune-teller Tribe called the Apostle that Encrid killed his father.
In the West, there was a saying that you shouldn't live under the same sky as the one who killed your father. The genius sorcerer had simply followed what he had learned since childhood.
If not, it might have been because everything was ruined, and he needed someone to blame. If you think about it a little, it was just a foolish act.
How could he betray the entire West and still follow its teachings?
But in another sense, it was also a reasonable action.
The young sorcerer of the Fortune-teller Tribe had been brainwashed and driven into a corner.
He only had two choices.
Get caught and die like this.
Or do something insane.
He chose the insane option.
He bet everything on this.
He sold his soul to a demon and cursed his own body.
Even if his soul fell into the fires of hell and walked an eternal path of suffering, it didn't matter to him.
He cursed his body directly to take the bad luck in advance, and that gamble succeeded.
In the meantime, he deceived a sorcerer of the Big Wing Tribe, and luck was on his side here too. The sorcerer pitied his sick and crippled self. Pretending to be prey for cannibals also worked.
With the heavens aiding him, the sorcerer believed this was the right path. All the circumstances led him to believe so.
The genius sorcerer thought that way, and this was the result of his misguided choice.
Of course, Encrid had no way of knowing this.
So? Does that change the present?
It doesn't. He just had to accept it.
"Hmm."
Encrid let out a meaningless sound. It was a yellow world.
The wind seemed like it would crunch as it blew. The heat was intense, but there was nothing around to use as a landmark.
So what should he do?
Luckily, Encrid wasn't Ragna.
He could just wait until night.
It wasn't something he was familiar with, but it was one of the things he could do: finding his way by watching the stars and guessing the direction.
Moreover, having followed the Path of Grime, he had a rough idea of the desert's location.
'Moving southeast should be the right direction.'
He figured it was roughly correct.
Encrid briefly turned his head left and right, then cast his gaze far into the distance.
A desolate river of sand, a lake of sand, an ocean of sand—nothing but sand, sand, and more sand.
He tried to find a place to escape the scorching heat but gave up.
The desert was a cursed place. There was nothing.
Weren't there supposed to be some cacti and monsters living here? And animals that only lived in the desert?
But there was nothing.
At least, that's what Encrid's senses were telling him at the moment.
He had no choice but to endure the blazing sun and the searing heat that seemed ready to roast his skin.
Fortunately, his armor absorbed some of the heat. It was thanks to the monster leather. So, it was bearable.
Encrid didn't know much about deserts, but he knew well enough that moving carelessly in an unfamiliar environment was dangerous, so he walked a bit, checked his surroundings, and then stopped to wait. Waiting was Encrid's specialty.
'Was I careless?'
He spent the leftover time reflecting on what he had learned recently.
It seemed it would take quite a while for night to fall, the sun was scorching. He couldn't afford to wear himself out like usual.
Encrid sat down and slowed his breathing, making it deeper. He meditated while waiting for nightfall.
* * *
In front of a corpse with its head split open, Geom Nares stood with Luagarne and Dunbachel.
Geom Nares frowned deeply.
"It's the technique of spatial movement."
Sorcery is achieved through a medium.
The medium could be a totem, or it could be a talisman. Sometimes, it could even cost one's lifespan.
Geom Nares would have fought the same way if Encrid or Rem weren't there. He would have burned his lifespan into a medium.
By burning the flame of life, he would have fought the enemy with the valor of a warrior, even if only temporarily.
Geom Nares had prepared similarly, so he could tell. The opponent had sacrificed not just their lifespan but everything.
'What a madman.'
He could roughly guess the situation. It was speculation, but it was the most likely explanation he could come up with.
There was someone in the Fortune-teller Tribe with talent comparable to Rem.
That person must have sacrificed their soul and used sorcery. In other words, instead of using a totem as a medium, they sacrificed their lifespan and soul.
The traces left on the corpse were telling that story.
Talent, soul, sacrifice, offering. That's what they did. If not, such a thing would have never happened.
'They must have cursed themselves first to take the bad luck.'
They accepted misfortune first to succeed in the gamble.
Even so, failure would have been more likely. They should have died on their own from the backlash.
Yet somehow, he managed to send Encrid flying.
To where? No one knew.
It was a rough guess of what had happened, not something that could be fully understood.
"If it's spatial movement, where did they send him? Even the great sorcerers who have mastered sorcery to its extremes cannot send others away like that."
Frog spoke.
Geom Nares thought even if the person with the split head came back to life and did the same thing again, they wouldn't succeed next time. The scales of fate had tilted slightly in his favor this time.
In the continental way of speaking, the Goddess of luck had sided with the enemy this time.
In the West, they called this 'the scales tilting'.
"The scales have tilted to the unfavorable side."
Geom Nares spoke.
"Speak clearly, human."
Frog spoke again.
"What about the benefactor?"
Just then, the mother of Ziba appeared, blinking her eyes. It was clear that the atmosphere had been completely shattered.
This incident had spread to the entire tribe. Of course, it had. The hero who saved them had vanished.
The Westerners, eager to give everything, had gathered together.
The chieftain stood at the center and shouted.
"Listen, all Westerners."
He didn't even swallow his saliva, his eyes shining. His voice carried strength.
"Find him, no matter what."
That's what they did.
They started combing through everything, starting with the smallest clues.
"It doesn't matter if it takes years. We will find him no matter what."
The chieftain was not someone who made promises he couldn't keep. He was sincere. Without loyalty, you weren't a Westerner.
* * *
Rem sat alone in a pitch-black world, lost in thought.
How many days had passed?
He didn't know. But one thing was clear.
The sorcerism descent ritual had ended. Throughout the process, countless memories had flashed through his mind.
When Rem was young, the sorcerers who saw his sorcery skills all said the same thing.
"If your body can't keep up, you'll go pop and burst. So take it slow, one step at a time."
The current head sorcerer was also the head sorcerer back then.
Rem followed the head sorcerer's advice halfway. On the surface, he seemed to obey, but behind the scenes, he did as he pleased.
Why?
Because it was fun.
Why stop when sorcerism was fun?
During that time, he learned about ancestral spirits and divine sorcerism and realized he was different from others.
"If you use possession sorcery, you'll be bedridden for a week."
Possession sorcery meant letting a God reside in your body.
The medium was the patterns carved into the body or totems.
Doing so made you several times stronger, faster with your hands, and improved your senses.
Sorcery in the West was divided into two major categories, and one of them was the possession sorcery just mentioned.
The other was divine descent, which involved bringing part of a God into the present world.
The concept of Gods in the continent was very different from that in the West.
If the Gods of the continent represented absolute beings, the Gods of the West were spirits that inhabited things long venerated.
That's how they worshipped wolves, bears, and eagles.
They performed rituals, ceremonies, and prayers by fetching water alone and bowing their foreheads to the ground.
That was the norm, so everyone did it, but not Rem.
Even when he stood still, the spirits would come to him and reside in him. It didn't cause any major issues. To be precise, there were no side effects.
However, as he traveled across the continent and absorbed other sorcery powers into his body, he began to understand.
Huh? This hurts. There are side effects.
This is normal.
Can he use this in another way? It seemed possible. A shift in perception, experience, and intuition helped with that.
Absorbing another's sorcerism into your own body was no ordinary feat, but Rem managed to do it and even developed a theory around it.
He taught everything to Ayul, who was initially shocked but later understood.
Even the head sorcerer and others worried, and he understood why. Sorcerism was a technique that borrowed power from spirits.
The entity called a spirit could even be a demon.
'It's a wrong path.'
It was an unholy path, a crooked one. There were many precedents.
Stories of those who were deceived by cunning snakes and created evil spirits.
The larger the vessel of the sorcerer, the larger and stronger the spirit that could use its power in the world. Hence, the worry.
But with a steadfast mind, there was no wavering.
'That will never happen to me.'
So, he reassured them.
Who? His own axe.
It was an iron axe. Just because Rem was skilled in sorcerism didn't mean he could perform without a medium.
Long ago, he had crafted his own weapon of descent and used it as a medium for his sorcerism.
That's why he didn't need to carve patterns into his face.
Why pierce your skin and stuff dye into it?
If that became blurred or damaged, it wouldn't serve its purpose.
Westerners without talent for sorcerism often didn't carve patterns, but most sorcerers used tattoos.
Rem didn't because he didn't need to.
In the darkness, the medium of his sorcerism began to appear.
The thing that had sulked and refused to comply earlier was finally starting to listen.
It was an axe with two blades. One blade was large, and the other relatively small. The blade facing him was barely the size of a palm, but the larger blade was twice as big.
The whetstone was still necessary, but since the axe itself acted as the medium for his sorcery, it would never break or dull. The whetstone was just a treat for the axe, like a snack.
After organizing his thoughts and refining his mindset, Rem opened his eyes to find the old head sorcerer standing right in front of him.
"...You startled me, you brat."
"Why were you startled?"
"It's already the sixth day."
He had poured all his sorceristic power into his weapon of descent, but while he had emptied himself, the sorcery power in the weapon had swelled.
A mediocre sorcerer would have fainted just from getting too close.
The head sorcerer had predicted it would take him ten more days to absorb all the power, but not Rem.
Ever since childhood, neither possession sorcery nor divine descent placed any burden on his body.
Moreover, his body had become much stronger since then. His ability to control his body had increased, and his vessel had grown larger.
He had even finished organizing his concept of what it meant to be a hero.
He knew the difference between a Knight and a hero. No, absorbing the sorcerism again was easy.
A Knight was someone who combined skill and willpower.
A hero was someone who combined skill and sorcery.
That's the simple distinction.
The process of absorbing the sorcery had taken five days, with three of those days spent soothing the weapon of descent.
The total of six days included the first day, which he had spent preparing his body and mind.
If a weapon with a will could be called an 'ego weapon', then a weapon of descent could also fall into that category. It didn't actually speak, but the weapon of descent contained emotions.
As soon as Rem gripped it, he felt an emotion similar to that of Ayul.
It was resentment.
Why did you leave me behind?
It was still young.
Rem soothed the weapon as one would soothe a child. During the process of finishing all this, he felt certain things.
Omnipotence.
'With one more step, I could go straight to that lost brat right now.'
It felt like he could cleave a mountain in half with one swing of the axe.
The sun? The wind? The lake? The earth? He could split anything apart.
But Rem quickly shook off that feeling. Having dealt with many spirits, he already knew the truth.
Knowing the difference between what one can do and cannot do.
Rem already knew that difference well.
That's why he could fight Knights on equal footing without sorcery. If he really tried, he could kill them.
The larger vessel easily accepted the overwhelming sorcery power. He could carry it, but he had set it aside. He had merely left some of it behind for a while.
When he took it all in, he felt omnipotent, but so what? That was the end of it.
As Rem stood up, holding the axe, the head sorcerer's face bore even more wrinkles than before.
"Good work."
Sorcery was a power that required rituals and prayers. It wasn't something you could just pick up and carry out of the dark.
For this, the head sorcerer had probably performed rituals for over thirty days.
He had appealed to the heavens and soothed the earth, seeking the permission of all the spirits that resided in nature. He had done it all for Rem.
Well then, time to head back.
It was time to see the surprised face of the man he served as Captain.
"Let's go."
"I'll rest a few days before I follow."
Not wanting to wait, Rem left the head sorcerer behind and moved first. The first news that reached him upon his return was this.
"Enki has disappeared."
It was Luagarne.
"Where did he go? Did he go monster hunting by himself?"
Rem asked back.
"No."
"He's not the type to get lost."
He had heard talk of a spatial movement technique. His weapon of descent was in hand because he didn't have a weapon holster.
Everyone was subtly tense.
In the past, Rem was the type who would throw fits when something didn't sit right with him. But now, he responded calmly. His casual words were this:
"Well, he'll come back on his own."
A person like Encrid wasn't going to die just from getting a little lost. So he said they just had to wait.
Everyone, including Ayul, blinked in surprise. It was a reaction they hadn't expected.
But Rem had faith. He believed Encrid wouldn't die from something like this.
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