Chapter 14
I check the footage.
The footage displayed on the monitor seems to be moving.
Can I move it like a drone?
I wonder if I can view things from a little higher up.
Oh—it moved!
It moves in the direction I want... Amazing.
So Clairvoyance really is like an actual drone.
I'm a little excited.
I've always wanted to feel like I was traveling by drone.
No, no!
That's not what I'm here for right now.
I take one deep breath.
I raise the drone-like Clairvoyance and display the whole area on the monitor.
The shadows make it hard to see, but a huge rocky mountain appears.
Looking at the whole area, I can't see the entrance I came through at all.
Now to prepare for Purification.
Should I envelop the rocky mountain in a dome, including some of the surrounding area?
I managed to visualize it well.
Come to think of it, in Japan, there's a technique for returning curses to their casters.
It's the whole "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" thing.
If I purify the shadows, will the curse return to the person who cast it?
Well, there's no point worrying about it here.
If a curse you cast comes back to you, that's your own fault.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
"Purification!"
I feel something smoothly leaving my body.
That startled me a little.
Is this what magic power feels like?
My heart races at doing this for the first time, but I see no effect on my body beyond that.
It seems there's no problem.
The rocky mountain and its surroundings appear clearly on the monitor.
"Barrier. Strengthen."
I really don't want the area to be affected by the shadows again after purifying it.
I monitor it for several minutes.
"It looks fine."
...
Hmm... Maybe it isn't fine.
When I check again a few hours later, I find shadows have entered the barrier.
Why?!
When I investigate, the answer is simple.
The spatial barrier included the floor as well.
I only covered the rocky mountain from above.
That's why: the shadows are infiltrating from below.
The monitor shows shadows slowly seeping out of the soil.
It's disgusting, and it pisses me off.
I'll purify it again, but this time I'll make the area a little wider.
Including the forest around the rocky mountain.
I don't like seeing shadows in my field of vision.
I can't help feeling uneasy because of the shadows.
There's no point checking underground with Clairvoyance, since it only lets me look from above.
I can't grasp it with Spatial Perception because there are no walls.
Thinking it over... Huh? Maybe I don't need to perceive it.
I need Clairvoyance to see how large it is, but I don't need to know what's underground.
As long as I can set up a barrier, I'll imagine stakes buried underground.
The idea was simple, so I imagined the stakes extending to a depth about five times the rocky mountain's height.
Connecting the stakes makes a box.
I imagine extending the stakes aboveground as well and connecting them to form a box.
A huge transparent box buried underground takes shape in my mind.
...This will work!
"Purification! Barrier! Strengthen!"
The shadows seeping out of the ground were disgusting.
So I focus hard on sending the curse back to its source.
...What even is the source of the curse?
Oh, well. If the curse came from a talisman, send it back to that talisman!