I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 124 - Half Magus (3)
Chapter 124 – Half Magus (3)
===================
Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
Duke Komalon- or rather, the one beneath that name- suddenly recalled a memory from the distant past.
It was so old that even its colors had faded.
A fragment he could only glimpse now and then in dreams,
from the time when he had still lived as a disciple beneath his magus teacher.
“Do not leave your vegetables behind.”
“Do not grow lazy in your implementation practice.”
“Let us go out for a walk.”
“He is far better than you. Why did you bring in such a worthless scrap?”
The passing memories were nothing special.
A memory of eating with his teacher.
A memory of being scolded by his teacher over magic.
A memory of going on an outing with his teacher.
A memory of his teacher defending him when others said he was inferior to another magus’s disciple.
They were merely the sorts of memories that might be found in one corner of anyone’s life.
Unremarkable memories.
And yet,
to Duke Komalon,
they were fragments more precious than anything else.
Still,
the duke- the one beneath him- did not like those memories very much.
Because the end of those fragments of memory
always converged on a single point.
The scenes he had been watching overturned,
and then his teacher’s voice could be heard.
“There is no choice. When the world’s souls have filled, there is nothing more to be done now.”
It was the same now.
He came back to himself at that voice,
realizing that he had lost consciousness for an instant,
and checked the state of his body.
His condition was not good.
His right arm was gone.
There was a hole in his abdomen.
But Duke Komalon’s attention went elsewhere.
He raised his head and looked forward.
There stood a man.
Wearing a dark coat dusted with earth,
looking down at him with an expression from which no emotion could be read,
Marquis Palladio.
A half magus like himself was standing in the ash-gray world, blocking his way.
“How exactly did you use a sentence?”
Marquis Palladio showed not even a fragment of emotion.
Duke Komalon could not understand it at all.
He had definitely used one.
“Even if it was not a formula or self-nature manifestation, that was still undoubtedly a sentence. How could someone who should be another half magus like me possibly manage that?”
That was the point he could not comprehend.
He had definitely used a sentence.
Even if he had not reached formula or self-nature manifestation,
it had still been a sentence,
and it had still drawn out its effect.
Of course,
that did not mean Marquis Palladio was a complete magus.
No matter that he had been given a sentence and had achieved self-nature manifestation,
if he could not reach formula,
he could not become a magus.
He was,
without question,
a half magus.
A half magus who had inherited sentences from a magus,
just like himself.
“…Ha.”
And that was exactly why the duke could understand him even less.
He laughed dryly.
“You inherited even the sentences, and yet why do you stand in my way? In the way of me, who bears the wish of every magus?”
Surely he had seen it.
The end of this world.
The unavoidable ruin.
And surely he also knew
that the magi had once defended this world from that end.
That was why he laughed.
Because the half magus before him,
who now sought to render empty once again the world bought by the lives of all those magi,
filled him with an unbearable hollowness.
And the moment he formed a seal,
he felt danger without warning.
He hurriedly protected his body with a shield.
Then,
slammed into the ground,
the thing he saw was
a blood-soaked beastwoman who had shattered the great cause he had built.
“Master. Sorry I am a little late!”
Even so,
the duke’s purpose did not change simply because she had joined the battle.
“Compound.”
The duke-
the one beneath him-
formed another seal in order to kill him.
####
The battle continued.
“One Point, Dispersion, Scatter, Azure Sky.”
Incantations flowed without rest from Duke Komalon’s mouth.
They were fragments of magecraft accumulated over hundreds of years of silent survival.
A path of magecraft belonging only to him,
a man without talent.
In the dark ash-gray world,
a Milky Way spread open.
It was a feat he could accomplish precisely because he had not inherited sentences in full.
Thousands,
perhaps tens of thousands,
of spheres rose into the sky,
then fell to the earth in the form of a meteor shower.
At the same time,
into the duke’s mind there rose once again a voice,
a faded memory that could now only return in dreams.
“I am glad you did not become a magus.”
Even while that voice surfaced,
the magic poured down toward the beastwoman who had destroyed his great cause,
and toward the half magus who was trying to return the will of the magi to emptiness.
“If you are not a magus, then it would only be a futile death. So instead, I leave what comes after to you.”
The voice flowing from the dim memory disturbed his ears.
Then,
there came a golden flash,
and,
“Azure Sky.”
Even in this situation,
the marquis, wearing a completely indifferent expression,
avoided the magic he had manifested.
And with that,
the final memory rose.
“You must survive. And then protect this world. The world we- the magi protected.”
He remembered his teacher’s final voice.
An old memory.
“Hoo.”
Duke Komalon let out a shallow breath and looked ahead.
He knew it.
His incantation speed was overwhelmingly faster.
The same was true of his spell manifestation speed.
He was certainly stronger than the half magus before him.
And yet,
his magic would not reach him.
The fragments of magic he had trained for centuries
did not break through the half magus before him,
the one like himself.
And this time as well,
it was the same.
He looked at the marquis.
There were clearly more small wounds on the marquis’s body than before.
There were countless broken vials scattered across the ground as well.
But his expression was still emotionless,
and with both hands tucked into the pockets of his coat,
he faced the duke.
The dark coat, dust-stained,
fluttered with quiet dignity.
Compared to that,
Duke Komalon’s own condition was poor.
The damage to his right side,
the strike he had taken in a single instant of carelessness,
was steadily gnawing at his concentration,
and the hole in his abdomen was clearly taking his life.
Even so,
no pain appeared on his face.
Rather,
he gave a dry laugh and asked calmly,
“You surely know it.”
“Know what?”
“How foolish a thing you are doing.”
He spoke with no emotion in his voice.
“Even if you received sentences… if you survived without receiving the image, then you should know it as well. That before long, they will rise, and this world will be destroyed.”
There was not even the slightest hint of anger in his tone.
“There is not even half a year left until the souls are full. If this world and humanity are not dealt with before that time, then they will rise.”
Still no anger.
“Knowing that, do you intend to make empty the world the magi protected by abandoning all else, and their deaths as well?”
He was simply calm.
Calmly,
he asked.
And yet,
despite Duke Komalon’s question,
Marquis Palladio’s face remained composed.
As if he did not sympathize with the duke’s words in the slightest.
As if he had stripped away even the smallest fragment of emotion,
the marquis stared at him,
then finally opened his mouth.
“You are saying that I am making the deaths of the magi meaningless?”
A plain question.
The duke laughed dryly again.
“You should know it as well. This world has only continued because of the sacrifice of the magi.”
####
Alon silently looked at Duke Komalon.
There was calmness in the duke’s eyes.
And precisely because of that,
it paradoxically felt as though anger lived there too.
In that brief span,
Alon forced his sluggish mind to move.
Was what the duke had just said the truth?
He did not know.
Then was it a lie?
He did not know that either.
Unfortunately,
Alon was not the half magus Duke Komalon mistook him for.
He was simply an outsider.
Someone who had encountered this world as the game Psychedelia,
and who knew none of the hidden past of this world.
Strictly speaking,
he was no more than a foreign presence here.
So he could not judge.
He could not judge a single word spoken by the half magus before him.
Not whether it was true,
nor whether it was false.
“Then answer me. Do you have any way not to make the sacrifices of the magi meaningless?”
Alon remained silent at Duke Komalon’s question.
Even if all of the duke’s words were true,
Alon still could not make a judgment so boldly.
He was not a person grand enough to immediately sort through the possibility that the information he had just learned about the world, whether true or false, might actually be real.
He was merely an outsider.
Still,
there was one judgment he could make clearly.
That the man before him
had to be stopped here and now.
Because Duke Komalon’s goal lay in the extermination of humanity,
or in some great cause equivalent to it.
“I see.”
At Alon’s silence,
the duke let out a low murmur.
Alon gave no answer.
The two looked at one another,
and formed seals.
Because both Alon and Duke Komalon understood.
There was no further meaning in talking.
Alon checked his mana.
Perhaps because he had poured in so many potions,
his mana hall had already recovered a fair amount of mana even during that brief conversation.
The moment he realized that,
both men recited incantations at the same time.
“Refraction.”
“Hundred Flowers.”
This fight no longer cared about judging right and wrong.
“One Point.”
“Blooming.”
Nor was it a place to determine who was good.
“Compression.”
“Raising Bloom.”
Nor was it a place to determine who was evil.
“Extinction.”
“Expansion.”
Now,
it was only a place where two different convictions collided.
And at the end of the completed spell,
Duke Komalon opened his mouth.
“I will kill you and fulfill my will. The wish of the magi. My-”
“-great cause.”
And then he manifested his magic.
The flowers of mana scattered around him expanded instantly,
eroding the surrounding air,
and as they spread,
they erased everything as though rubbing it away with an eraser.
Within those fully blossomed flowers of mana,
Alon thought for just a moment.
Then,
with a small voice,
he said,
“I am-”
and flicked his finger.
With a white ringing noise that gnawed at everyone’s ears,
the convictions of the two men-
the convictions of two half magi,
collided.