Chapter 1: Burnt Offering

The stars were moving.

Jinseong sat quietly in the center of the Uyuni Salt Flat, which had turned into a mirror, gazing at the sky. His pupils which had become clear like a mirror were reflecting the stars in the sky, and the place where he sat was transformed into clear water by magic, reflecting the stars of the sky and bringing the universe down to earth.

"Oh, stars. The great movement of the star clusters..."

Jinseong murmured to himself, marveling at the moving stars. The terrible thing was that his voice sounded as if it had been torn to shreds and crushed in an abyss.

It was an unfortunate thing caused by his vocal cords and lungs that had ceased to function properly due to long-term illness and constant battles.

Jinseong momentarily frowned at the squeezing pain in his lungs and the burning sensation in his vocal cords as soon as he muttered.

'Until the very end, huh.'

The unbearable pain that he felt even after consuming a near-lethal dose of fentanyl and injecting other narcotic painkillers all over his body.

It was a pain he couldn't get used to, even though he had suffered all sorts of injuries and been tortured by enemies during his time as a mercenary.

'Flesh, weak flesh...'

Horrifically, it was a pain like having nerves pulled out and rubbed with sandpaper, and having the brain seared with a hot iron, unable to even faint. What was even more terrible was that this pain had significantly eaten away at his lifespan.

Pain was something that could only be transcended by the mind alone, but it was a demon that ate away even that mind.

Pain unconsciously manipulated his body to grit his teeth, and the gritting shattered the once-solid teeth and twisted the jaw joints that were in their proper place.

Even when lying in bed, the sudden bursts of pain exposed all nerves and activated all bodily functions during the time when the mind was asleep, making it impossible to control the body at will. Such seizures were no different from torture that didn't even allow him a peaceful sleep.

The brain went mad with excessive pain, and even the five basic human senses were made erratic. Sometimes he couldn't taste anything even when eating salt water, sometimes he smelled grilled meat when there was nothing, sometimes he felt crushing pain in his legs while walking calmly, and sometimes he felt nothing even when there was a hole in his stomach.

Blackouts where the world turned dark even without blinking, and then the pain that came back to awaken the brain again, preventing even the rest of fainting.

This physical pain drove even the soul residing in the body mad, and the twisted and wounded soul again transmitted its effects to the body. Thus, body and soul continuously wounded each other, causing pain to one another, and the end result was a tattered soul and a body no different from a corpse.

It was the worst synergy that could only result in death.

Body, energy, mind. A tragedy caused by the characteristic of magic where all three strongly 

influenced each other.

'If only I had strengthened my body beforehand...'

If only he hadn't given up in the first place, if only he had at least tried....

Jinseong looked at his own body, cracked like an old tree, with inner regret. His body was fissured all over like a field cracked from a long drought, and the blood vessels and muscles in the cracked areas were dried and twisted, not even bleeding. And with white bone visible at the ends of the cracks where it was most severe, it was a body that was hard to believe as belonging to a living person.

But what was the use of sighing like that?

Jinseong was dying, and now there was less than an hour of his lifespan left.

When he looked up at the sky, the star that had been with him since his birth shone ominously, pronouncing his death, and when he looked down at the mirror-like ground, the energy of the underworld was enveloping him in darkness. The palm of his hand had all the lifelines representing life and future erased, and his soul, which should have been quietly sleeping in his body, was going mad and barely holding on from jumping out of his body.

Jinseong was soon going to die.

Fate was absolutely unavoidable.

There was no book of life and death in the afterlife, and no grim reaper coming for humans.

There were no angels for him as he didn't believe in religion, and even demons took no interest in him since he knew magic.

He, who had traveled the world solely with his own power after learning magic, would meet his end entirely due to his own karma.

Thus, his soul would return to the world, his body would be preserved in the salt flat, and his mind would disappear without a trace.

That was death and the inevitability he would face.

"Regret...table. Regrettable..."

Jinseong felt himself becoming indifferent towards the approaching death. But if there was a strong lingering attachment holding him back, it was that he hadn't achieved his goal.

He hadn't fulfilled the dream he had held since childhood of mastering all the world's magic and transcending through magic.

He had accidentally encountered magic as a child and lived solely for magic, yet he was ironically destined to die by having his lifespan eaten away because of magic.

Jinseong felt the irony of his fate.

"But since it can't be avoided, I will choose the process myself."

Jinseong believed that since he had lived a life for magic, its end should also be decorated with magic.

Therefore, he intended to finish himself with 'human sacrifice', the most terrible and alien magic among magics.

'To what is the person offered, to what is the body presented.'

However, he didn't know 'who' or 'what' purpose this human sacrifice was for.

Because it was magic he had obtained from a dilapidated ruin during his mercenary life.

The ruin had been half-collapsed, and the murals weathered to the point where they couldn't be properly restored even with the latest scientific technology. The only things that had remained were the method of performing the human sacrifice magic and a few brief records.

Because he didn’t know anything about the side effects or effects of the magic, which had been recorded with pictures scratched with something sharp on the rough cave surface and unknown ancient hieroglyphs, he had only memorized it and hadn't dared to implement it, but....

'If it's the last, it should be fine.'

Jinseong was about to die anyway.

What consequences could be heavier than death?

Moreover, thanks to mastering magic to a high level, his body had become immune to the baptism of transcendent beings, so he would surely avoid the terrible fate of being unable to either die or live.

Then it was right to resolve the unknown with one's life.

Jinseong sincerely thought so.

That was why he could do everything without hesitation, even when feeding oil to the firewood, when piling up the altar with firewood and straw, and even knowing that in the future at the end of the human sacrifice magic, he would have to burn his body alive and chant spells.

Because for him, magic was everything, and it was worth sacrificing everything for.

"Huu..."

Suppressing the excruciating pain, he slowly walked towards the altar he made.

The altar was made of straw and oil-soaked firewood, and in the center of the altar, clear water-like oil was swaying in the salty wind.

Swoosh.

He threw off the single layer of clothing he was wearing, put his naked body into the oil, and lay down comfortably, looking up at the sky.

"Gra…nd Alignment..."

What entered his eyes was the movement of stars slowly finding their places.

It was the sight of planetary alignment, where all the planets in the solar system were in a straight line.

"Oh, stars..."

The Grand Cross where planets formed a cross shape.

The Grand Alignment where planets were in a straight line.

In astrology, it was said that when this alignment occurred, a great event would surely happen.

Jinseong shouted as the stars aligned exactly in a straight line.

"With forgotten magic discovered in ruins, I decorate my end, oh stars! Accept my death..."

Whoosh.

And on cue, the altar began to burn, and as if the fire was drawing a pattern, it began to draw pictures here and there on the altar and rise upwards. The sight looked like an evil snake flicking its tongue, like a nebula somewhere in the universe fluttering its gaseous body here and there, and like the final scream of an exploding star.

Eventually, the flames gathered numerous forms and symbols and reached Jinseong, igniting blue flames on the small pond of oil and beginning to burn Jinseong's body.

The flames spread slowly over Jinseong's body. First the hair on his body, then the skin, then the muscles....

What started as blue flames became fierce, bright red flames so intense that nothing could be seen inside, soaring towards the sky. The sight was like lighting a giant candle using a person as the ingredient, evoking both horror and solemnity.

Jinseong grinned in the midst of those fierce flames., feeling the pain that even all sorts of drugs couldn't suppress.

"ॐ--"

t, tT, Ttt, T-

Yha'sy thalap, Byyyyyyyyyyy-------

"ॐ--------"

The flames entered his lungs, turning the already rag-like lungs completely to ashes.

The esophagus was burned by the flames, rendering it unable to function properly as a passage, and the organs shrank as they cooked.

Yet, sound came from his throat endlessly.

A sound too high to be called low, and too low to be called high.

A sound like an unceasing wind deep in a cave.

Even though Jinseong's body could no longer breathe, exhalation flowed endlessly without inhalation, and even without a tongue, the sound resonated consistently yet with variations, as if moving inside his mouth.

Ypag-sothepppppppppppt--------

Yi-t, t, ttttttttT...

The sound spread.

A burning candle, a lump of coal turned pitch black, a corpse closer to an object than a human.

Despite being utterly unable to speak, the mind alone moved the dead body.

The maddened soul already left the body and scattered into the world, and the body was burning and crumbling in flames, but the mind alone lived and formed a shape.

"ॐ-----------"

And finally, when the flames moved to form a shape despite the absence of wind, and created a long stem despite the lack of firewood to burn further, changing that shape to decorate the sky like a flower.

Zzzzzing!

With the sound of the world tearing, the altar turned to ash and burst in all directions.

And at the center of that altar, there was no being that should have been there, and the mind that had remained until the last disappeared without a trace.

As the planets moved out of alignment, Jinseong thus vanished from the world.

That was the end of a sorcerer who had roamed the Earth.

The insignificant end of a wretched sorcerer who had wandered battlefields, was cursed as a parasite, yet endlessly sought transcendence.

That was all it was.

Death was this empty.

It was just that...