Chapter 16
“Anyway, I'm glad we won. You all worked hard.”
I walked over to my companions, shaking out my fist. Goblin blood dripped over the mana-made hide.
“We won easily thanks to you. You sure had the strength of an ox.”
“Yeah, no kidding. You were insanely strong, Nord. I underestimated you.”
Est said, clicking her tongue in amazement. Between words, she kept jabbing her short spear into the fallen goblins' necks. She was making absolutely sure they were dead.
“It isn't so much that I'm strong; this magic deserves most of the credit.”
Under normal circumstances, I couldn't have beaten twenty motherless (母親less) little brats trying to fight with swords this easily. I'd already been caught by an ax blow earlier because I'd let my guard down.
“That? What exactly is that magic? No, is it even magic?”
Paragon exclaimed in admiration as he wiped his stone staff.
Ah─ they didn't know? Everywhere I looked, they were all half-finished humans.
“A sorcery that was once… called a curse.”
“A curse? It isn't dangerous, is it? You didn't push yourself because of us or anything….”
Francesca worried as she stroked my mana coating. It was strange how it felt exactly like touching actual skin even though her hand was touching mana.
“It probably isn't a problem. More importantly, I found this magic on the stele we excavated together, Ms. Francesca.”
“Huh?”
“A stele? You got something from these ruins?! Where?! Where is it?!”
Est, having finished confirming the kills, rushed over at my words.
Her enthusiastic reaction made me wonder if I should've hidden where it came from, but I quickly changed my mind. Archaeologists would be coming to investigate these ruins before long anyway.
There was no guarantee this was magic only I knew. The Mage Guild might already have identified it. It seemed to be Ulster's sorcery, after all. So I just told them.
“This way. I'll show you. But I don't know how to undo this magic.”
“Is that not also a type of magic? If you cut off the mana supplied to the spell, it should end.”
“I don't know how to do that.”
“…If you don't know how to handle mana, how did you use magic?”
“I read the letters, and it just started going whoosh-whoosh on its own.”
Whatever-it-was, the phrase about the Sky God had caused this transformation. The moment I read it, my body changed, and the power of an Earth Warrior settled inside me.
“Ah, could the writing over there have been the spell?”
“A spell activated by a brief incantation would be low-level magic. A spell activated by a short phrase could not produce such an incredible effect.”
As befitted a priest who handled sorcery, Paragon stated it categorically. But right now, how to undo this was more important than where the magic came from.
“Cut off the mana… cut it off….”
I muttered while focusing on sensing the mana. Let's try feeling qi, as they talked about in pseudo-Korean medicine.
Shwack─ Shwack─ Shwack─.
When I closed my eyes, I immediately felt something. No, “felt” didn't begin to describe how obvious its presence was. I could plainly tell that something other than blood was flowing inside my body.
Actually, I could blatantly feel it even with my eyes open. It was like a thin catheter used in surgery had been coiled all around inside my body, with IV nutrients circulating through it.
“Fuck! This feels weird!”
I screamed and ordered the catheter running through my whole body to stop.
“Begone, specter of Ungnyeo!!!”
Shwoooooooooosh─.
Ssssss. Click!
At my shout, the catheter inside my body disappeared.
No, it hadn't disappeared. It had merely shrunk, like a dick pulled out an inch. It was an intensely strange sensation, as if I could feel exactly where every nerve in my body was.
“Ddet?”
Tremble-tremble-tremble!
It wasn't just that. My legs were trembling too. The sensation was different from the muscle soreness after destroying my lower body.
Fuck, it felt like the muscles in my legs had evaporated and flown off with a fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh. I couldn't feel any strength at all in my well-trained horse thighs!
“Nord! Your legs are shaking like crazy!”
“Are they? Thank you for the live commentary. They're my legs—do you really think I wouldn't know? I guess this is where I go. Kkeokkeodak.”
“Mr. Nord!”
Francesca supported me as my legs gave out and I collapsed. Paragon looked at me, clicking his tongue.
“Why are you overreacting so much? That's merely mana exhaustion.”
“Mana exhaustion?”
This was happening because my MP had run dry? The leg muscles that had always kept up even when I brutally pounded out heavy-weight squats were going “nyah nyah, your mom” at me?
“From what I can tell, you don't seem to be a mage, do you?”
“Of course not. I'm wearing armor and using a sword.”
“Naturally. Since you were neither a mage nor someone who normally handled mana, your total mana must have been low. So your mana ran dry from excessive use of magic.”
“Holy shit.”
If Paragon was right, the reason I was in this state was that I had only a tiny amount of mana.
Me, mana-premature-ejaculation? Tears actually welled up from how fucking sad I was.
“Is this what usually happens when your mana runs out?”
“I know because I've experienced it myself. Your consciousness remains clear and you can speak fine, but your body has no energy, correct? It's a very common symptom.”
“Ah… So the magic has a bit of a side effect.”
“A side effect? Mere mana exhaustion?”
As I grew troubled, Paragon instead widened his eyes as if my statement were absurd.
“The opposite, the opposite. I don't know how strong you were originally, but someone who had never even used magic in his life used it for an extended period and suffered nothing worse than a little mana shortage? It's an incredible magic, if anything.”
He said this while wiping the sweat from the hand gripping his stone staff.
“I'm extremely curious about what that magic really is too. Let's go take a look.”
I had become like a deflated promotional balloon. Like a vinyl doll that had died after an intense dance.
“Oh! Then I'll carry you!”
“What?”
Francesca, who had been supporting me from beside me, said that and then scooped me up. Being carried by someone more than twenty centimeters shorter than me was utterly absurd.
“No, since you know where it is, Ms. Francesca, couldn't you just go there and come back?”
“I don't know how to read the writing on the stele.”
“Ah, damn, right.”
Well, then there was nothing for it. I resigned myself to being carried quietly.
It absolutely wasn't because I was tempted by the huge breasts brushing against my arm. Her leather armor was thick, so I could barely feel anything anyway. A deeply regrettable situation, one might say.
Swish.
Francesca carried me on her back to the front of the stele. The same writing as before remained at the exposed base of the stele.
“Huh? This is writing? Ah, you mean this?”
Est pointed with her finger at the cuneiform inscription and voiced her question. I offered a moment of silence for the Ogham script, which hadn't even been treated as writing.
“Yes. Those are the characters of an ancient civilization.”
“Writing from the Golden Age, then. There was an object with characters like those among our church's sacred relics as well.”
“A sacred relic? Really?”
Francesca, filled with anticipation, set me down on the floor. She peeked at my profile, her eyes sparkling.
“Mr. Nord, Mr. Nord. How do you read this?”
“《yáǵeswō deiwōm dyeus》. It means ‘Pray to the Sky God.’”
“Ya, yáges… wh-what?”
Est stumbled over the pronunciation. I read it out again in a loud, clear voice.
“《To the Sky God (deiwōm dyeus), pray (yáǵeswō)》”
“《To, to the Chonbyung God, one glans!》”
Mr. Chonbyung God. That lady over there has sent you a glans.
I wanted to pretend I hadn't heard that.
“Ms. Francesca? I think Est is going to be struck by divine retribution soon, so let's keep a little distance from that person.”
“W-what did I do?! It is right! The pronunciation!”
“Let's go with that. Ah, and please don't come over next to me.”
─Crawl, crawl.
I crawled across the floor to put some distance between Est and me. I didn't know what kind of god the Sky God was, but it might just fire a bolt of lightning down through that open ceiling.
“Yáu. Yá-ges. Ya-ge? De? Dei-om? Wom? Agut!”
Francesca tried to imitate my pronunciation, then bit her tongue. Though she was a dwarf rogue, apparently tongue ability didn't depend on DEX.
“Aphyaaa…. I can't pronounce it…. It's too difficult….”
“Is it that difficult?”
Well, differences in pronunciation between languages were difficult to overcome. Even back on Earth, I'd struggled quite a bit with English pronunciation.
Fweee─!
Just then, Paragon, who had been mumbling to himself for a while, whistled once. Then he said:
“─《Pray to the Sky God (yáǵeswō deiwōm dyeus)》.”
His pronunciation was quite accurate. As expected of a priest. Even among fellow scrubs, the reading experience he'd gained from actually reading books was paying off here.
When he successfully pronounced it, we waited for the result. Was I about to gain another Vector Man companion?
….
….
….
“………But nothing is happening?”
“Ddet?”
What the fuck was going on? I tilted my head at Paragon, who was showing no change whatsoever.
“Mr. Paragon, aren't you feeling any reaction? You should feel like well-cooked strands of pasta have spread through your whole body, spewing out streams of spinach sauce.”
“That was a very impressive metaphor. I would have been even happier if I could have felt it in my own body.”
His voice was rather sour. Afraid he would think I was a con artist, lying shepherd, and master's-degree holder, I hurriedly said:
“But it worked for me.”
“Hmm…. I can guess why. This is clearly not an ordinary spell. It is closer to a Prayer of Consecration, the kind we priests recite.”
“Consecration… what? Damn it. You've been spouting nothing but incomprehensible stuff.”
Est, who had been quiet, grumbled while shaking goblin blood off her weapon. She seemed to have given up on pronouncing the inscription.
“A Prayer of Consecration. It means a prayer that bestows a blessing.”
“Does that mean it's divine magic?”
It was rather funny that miracles performed by priests borrowing the power of gods were called ‘magic,’ but the translation was close enough that there was nothing to be done.
The ominous image attached to ‘sorcery’ or ‘magic’ in Chinese-character cultures didn't apply to this otherworld's mysterious powers.
“No, it seems different from ordinary divine magic.”
Paragon said, striking his stone staff against the floor.
“If this were divine magic, my mana of abundance should have reacted. It would be magic that uses divine power, after all. But there was no reaction at all.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don't know either?”
For fuck's sake, you damn fake monk. After putting on such a grand show, that's what you have to say?
“I mean, I'm not a mage, am I? If you want to know for sure, find a learned mage. If necessary, you could even submit a request to the Mage Guild.”
“Damn it, forget the theory. I just want to pronounce it properly.”
Est flopped down flat, while Francesca propped her chin on her hand and tilted her head. She was actually bracing her elbow against her breasts and resting her chin on it. That was fucking incredible. How was that even possible?
“Hmm─ Could it be that special magic is imbued in this stele, and it grants that magic only to the first person who reads the phrase?”
“That does not seem to be the principle at work. If it were, would the Gold-class adventurers not have at least guessed as much? Their senses for mana should be keener than ours.”
I agreed with that assessment. When I recited the inscription on the stele, what I'd felt had been closer to mana boiling up from inside my own body.
“Why did you say it was a Prayer of Consecration?”
“Because of the spell. You said the inscription on this stele was a prayer to a god, did you not?”
“Pray to the Sky God.”
Francesca said it. It wasn't the pronunciation of the ancient characters.
“Precisely. If Mr. Nord's interpretation is correct, a magic that gains power by worshiping a god would be a primitive Prayer of Consecration.”
“Primitive…?”
I read the writing at the base of the stele again.
[─The ancient sorcery, the primitive mystery, the druidic secret of granting humans the power of beasts─]
The primitive mystery.
That was what was written on the stele.
The person who wrote this was probably an Erin of the ancient civilization. In other words, the magic called ‘Beast Regression’ was sorcery so ancient that even he─or she─described it as ‘the primitive mystery.’
Fuck, of course it was ancient as hell. It might even be a magic thousands of years old.
“Before faith took root in humanity. In the ages before the ancient civilizations of the Golden Age, there was no distinction between magika and faith.”
Paragon said. The primitive age he referred to was when the otherworld's inhabitants were Homo Otherworldus.
“Faith in the primitive age… You mean animism or totemism?”
“What are those?”
“I would've punched you in the jaw if I could even move my body.”
Fuck, this conversation wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't a rally; it was a conversation where both sides just kept smashing the ball back.
Thinking about it, this bastard's way of speaking was a trait of otherworlders. Saying only what they wanted to say while showing off their own knowledge.
The even bigger assholes took it a step further, charging exorbitant prices for any useful knowledge they sold.
“I mean humans worshiped not only gods, but monsters and other powerful beings as well, indiscriminately!”
“Ah, yes, that's what I meant.”
Motherfucker. It felt like having a medical debate without using any technical terms. Why did I have to explain every term one by one just to have a conversation?
“This magic seems to be a remnant of that age. Some of the misguided faith from back then carried over into today's worship of evil gods.”
“No, fuck, what?! This is sorcery for worshiping evil gods?!”
“Eek! Mr. Nord, are they going to drag you before the Inquisitor?!”
I was staggered by the shocking truth.
Fuck, I was screwed! Sorcery of heretics! The even more barbaric Romaniac religious fanatics from this already barbaric otherworld were going to kill me!
“M-Mr. Nord? I think it would be better for you to bite your tongue and die right now….”
“D-do you think so? Suicide would hurt less than torture, right?”
Francesca worried about me out of the goodness of her heart. Even a child could see that killing myself here would be better than being dragged into the torture chamber of those insane lunatics.
“Ah, don't misunderstand me. I told you, didn't I? This isn't about praying to a god and receiving power. It's a sorcery that imitates a god to strengthen oneself, so it's no different from magic.”
“…What does that mean?”
“It is not heretical magic for worshiping an evil god.”
“You fucking bastard!! Then why did you bring up heretics?! You just wanted to show off what you knew, didn't you?!”
“P-please calm down! Mr. Nord! Calm down!”
I was so pissed that I forgot about my mana exhaustion, stood up, and went on a rampage.
This damn fake monk was yanking my emotions up and down. Now it wasn't some beautiful woman but a man who had nearly stopped my heart. I was fucking furious.
“Tsk, tsk. In any case, it is truly blasphemous.”
“What is? What you're doing, fucker?”
“Not that. I mean the primitive people who tried to imitate gods.”
Paragon clicked his tongue as if displeased.
“Most ignorant, unenlightened primitive people wanted the power of the creatures they worshiped. Among the sorceries created for that purpose, perhaps this one happened to become a sorcery for worshiping the true god, Lord Uranus, the Sky God.”
“I-if it's the Sky God, isn't that Lord Odin?”
“Lord Uranus.”
“Oh….”
“Lord Uranus.”
“Eee….”
I silently watched the otherworlders' argument─though one side was usually the aggressor. Arguments like this were matters of faith; if I meddled, I would only get cursed at.
In an otherworld with many gods, gods gave the impression of autocratic yet unavoidable kings or politicians.
In short, Otherworld Putin and Fantastic Mao Zedong.
Along the same lines, the argument between the dwarf and the priest of the God of Abundance could be seen as Mao Zedong VS Putin.