Chapter 151. Did You Burn Incense?
And so, even that solemn atmosphere only lasted a moment.
“……Here it is.”
Pen 1 led me up to the front of a certain room, then turned back.
When I glanced over, the look in their eyes felt like it had killing intent clinging to it—but that was probably just my imagination. I mean, come on. We’re both mages.
Anyway, the moment I opened the door and walked in, I saw Parun sitting behind a large desk.
“You don’t know what knocking is?”
“I did.”
“Do you take me for a complete idiot?”
Parun shot me a frigid glare and snapped shut the documents he’d been holding.
Then Parun took the seat of honor on the reception sofa.
‘……What a waste.’
Smacking my lips in disappointment at having the best seat stolen, I flopped down on the floor across from him with a thud.
“That aside—how many days has it even been? You’ve gotten awfully comfortable already.”
I’d heard he’d been given an empty office, but he looked like he’d been using it for ages, like it was his own, so I couldn’t help commenting.
That was when my gaze landed on Parun’s forehead.
“Enough with the nonsense—get to the point… What are you staring at like that?”
“Did you also have a nest… no, a lid. Um, not that either. Your head—could it be… hm. Never mind.”
I chose silence.
People like to call that courage, but misplaced courage only invites disaster.
This was exactly that kind of situation.
I ignored Parun’s icy stare and changed the subject.
“I had something I wanted to ask.”
“Is it about the Infinite Chain?”
“No, well. That too, but…”
In truth, the reason I came to find Parun wasn’t because of the Infinite Chain.
But how should I put it?
“Perfect timing. The Infinite Chain is truly fascinating.”
Parun looked like his mouth was itching to talk.
It was to the point where I wondered if he’d always had a side like this, but if I didn’t ask, it felt like his contempt toward me would go up by 1.
So I asked.
“What’s so fascinating about it?”
“Weren’t you curious? The only artifact known to possess Absolute Tracking. Lortel had it, yet didn’t make use of it. Why, do you think, was that?”
“Because it’s hard to use?”
That was the common guess for why Lortel didn’t use the Infinite Chain.
If it were simple to use, there’d be no reason for Lortel not to use it.
But was my answer lacking?
“And?”
Parun asked again.
I thought it over.
Then answered.
“Because it’s an artifact with a difficult usage method?”
It was a pretty witty answer.
Almost like a proper bit of wordplay.
But Parun was the kind of boring bastard who didn’t understand wordplay.
“To think this is a mage… Just what was that magic that day… Hoo.”
What, why? What’s so special about being a mage? If you make a core and can cast magic, you’re a mage.
‘I mean, me—huh? I even broke through Transcendence (超越), huh? I did it all!’
So what kind of answer had he been looking for?
Parun handed me the “correct answer” himself.
“Do you truly think the only reason was that it was hard to use? No matter how famed a sword family it is, you’re telling me Lortel—of all people—couldn’t properly use such a precious artifact just because the usage was difficult?”
“…….”
Now that I heard it like that, he was right.
‘Yeah… If it’s Lortel, she could procure reputable mages however she wanted.’
Even if the Infinite Chain required a ton of materials to use, she would’ve used it no matter what.
Even if that material were a jewel that existed as a one-and-only in the world, so it could only be used once…
‘With that one use, she’d have tracked something absurd and seized it in her hands.’
But Lortel didn’t.
Even when she did use it, it was only when the family’s secret art had gone missing, and cases where she gained additional profit through “Absolute Tracking” were few and far between.
So, for example… yeah.
‘Items like the Magic Armor Calium—things whose existence is known, but whose whereabouts are unclear. She could’ve found those, too.’
But wait.
Once I thought that far, a question surfaced.
‘Then what was I, in my previous life?’
Lortel and me—both already erased. Memories that belonged only to the two of us.
In those memories, I ran, and Lortel chased.
On moonlit nights, we’d trade swords and magic together in the quiet back hills like close friends, and at dawn we’d exchange pleasantries—calling each other dog, calf, asking after our parents, saying, “No, you’re the hound,” “No, you’re the hound,” and all that.
How many “friendship stab wounds” did I take back then, anyway?
I’d never eaten that much bread in my life compared to back then.
But why was it that I couldn’t shake Lortel’s pursuit at the time?
‘……Absolute Tracking.’
Right. It was because of the Infinite Chain.
If my comrades hadn’t saved me along the way, and if Lortel hadn’t withdrawn for some unknown reason—
She probably would’ve chased me all the way to the end of the continent and taken my head.
Back then I just went, “Well, I guess,” and let it pass, but now a question suddenly rose in my mind.
‘If it goes beyond merely “hard to use”… then how did she use the Infinite Chain back then?’
The tracking had been almost instantaneous, hadn’t it?
Was I just unlucky? No, that wasn’t it. Back then, I hadn’t even eaten a wyvern yet.
As a strange sense of unfairness slowly bubbled up inside me, Parun’s voice rang by my ear.
“There’s something Lortel didn’t reveal to the outside.”
“No way…!”
“Something come to mind? If so, this’ll go fast—”
“Sorry. I wanted to try saying that once.”
“…….”
Parun’s contempt for me rose by 1. No—maybe it wasn’t just 1.
Before, his eyes looked like he was staring at trash, but now, in an instant, they changed into the look someone gives to food waste.
Anyway, Parun continued, frowning as if he’d caught a whiff of something foul.
“The Infinite Chain was an unusable item.”
“……?”
What is this—are you saying we got scammed?
“No, to be precise… you could say it’s an item that is always running.”
“Running?”
“Yeah. Wait a moment.”
Parun sifted through a piled mountain of documents—research papers written by the Magic Studies Hall’s pen-dae—and pulled one paper out.
“Here. If you look at this paper, take a look—no. Forget it. I’ll just explain. Simply enough that even a goblin can understand.”
Good idea.
But as I listened quietly, one thought came to me.
‘Professor, this lecture evaluation is a zero.’
It was an explanation that not just a goblin, but even the academy’s teaching assistants wouldn’t understand.
Something about the mana flowing from the Infinite Chain, something about ambient mana reactions.
Just the number of theories he rattled off to explain a single phenomenon was in the dozens, and the number of mage-scholars’ names attached to it was three or four.
Anyway.
“So, to summarize….”
“Yeah. Say it.”
“The Infinite Chain—ever since it was discovered—has been continuously tracking ‘some target,’ right?”
“Hm. Slightly better than a goblin.”
So what does Parun think of academy students, then? If this is what Parun considers “goblin level”…
Hah. Miserable.
But wait.
“……Then did we get scammed?”
“…….”
What, why.
“You said it’s unusable. From what I’m hearing, it sounds like we definitely got scammed.”
“……You can’t even imagine there might be another method?”
“……There is another method?”
“Your distrust of humans is impressive.”
“…….”
Is this really my fault?
Think about it. After suffering suffering dog-suffering to obtain it, you’re told the item is defective.
And you know for a fact the previous owner had been using it.
So what would you normally think?
‘Did we get played as suckers?’
Yeah. Thinking you got scammed is the normal conclusion.
But Parun didn’t seem to see it that way.
“It’s Absolute Tracking. And yet, there exists something that cannot be found even while being subjected to Absolute Tracking.”
“And?”
“I’ve said this much and still… Hoo.”
Ah—when he put it like that, I could tell what Parun was trying to say.
In other words, Parun was talking about the ‘target’ the Infinite Chain was chasing.
Maybe he noticed I’d caught on, because only then did Parun give a cold, satisfied smile.
“Looks like you understand now.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded proudly.
“If it’s an item that can’t be found even with Absolute Tracking… then it’s no ordinary item.”
“Correct. And also….”
“And it’ll be really expensive, too.”
“…….”
Parun pressed his lips shut tight again, like a clam.
The silence didn’t last long.
“Doesn’t it occur to you that we might discover a way to break ‘Absolute Tracking’? Do you have any idea what a monumental discovery this is in the history of mages?”
“Why would that thought occur to me?”
“Are you really a mage?”
“…….”
That was a bit much.
For all this, I’m a mage who broke through Transcendence.
Even if I’m still half-finished…
‘And maybe I’ve got some defects, too.’
I’m a great mage in name, at least.
But the look in Parun’s eyes as he stared at me was no different from how he looked at a goblin.
“What in the world am I even talking to you about.”
Parun shook his head like he was sick of it, then pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
Did Parun always smoke? I briefly wondered, but if you think about it, among mages, the ones who don’t smoke are rarer.
“I’ll explain the usage method. The purely practical usage method that has no academic value whatsoever—that’s what you care about, right?”
Parun spoke with thorns packed into every word, and with a resigned face, he explained the usage method he’d figured out so far.
“According to the paper, derived from the Bebseup theory….”
…Omitted below.
My brain rejects knowledge.
Anyway, if someone like me—only a little smarter than a goblin—were to roughly summarize what he said, it was like this.
‘So you slightly twist the artifact’s target.’
For example, like this.
Say there’s Person A, and Person B.
And the target the Infinite Chain is tracking is ‘Person A.’ But if we want to chase ‘Person B’?
You interfere with the magic of the Infinite Chain that’s pursuing ‘A,’ lightly erase ‘A,’ and then write in ‘B.’
Sounds simpler than you expected?
‘Simple, my ass.’
With an easy example, it sounds like all you do is change a single letter, but reality was far more complex and difficult.
Of course, I understood everything—but Parun already explained the detailed part, so there’s no need for me to think about it, right?
Anyway, back to the main point.
If what we want to find isn’t ‘Person A’ but ‘Goblin C,’ then what?
That’s right.
‘This is where it goes insane.’
At least Person A and Person B share the commonality of being the same species, but Goblin C is a completely different lifeform.
That was why Lortel couldn’t actively make use of the Infinite Chain.
But wait.
A sudden thought brushed past me, and the corner of my eye trembled.
“……Then does that mean we didn’t need to go through all that dog-suffering?”
Why did we go through dog-suffering at Lortel’s place?
Because of those Deculan bastards trying to find the Thousand Origin Art, or the Thousand Origin Art paper.
But from what I’m hearing now, it was a problem we didn’t even need to worry about in the first place…
“No. We absolutely had to obtain the Infinite Chain.”
“……?”
I tilted my head.
Parun calmly cleared up my doubt.
“From what Lortel determined, what the Infinite Chain is chasing is either a ‘book,’ or ‘something that contains printed letters.’”
Ah, I see.
I let out a sigh of relief at the fact that our suffering hadn’t been pointless.
And I could also understand why, in my previous life, I’d been chased by Lortel. What I’d stolen and run with back then was Lortel’s family secret art.
Well, I don’t know how she could activate it so immediately, but… come on, it was their own secret art. Wouldn’t they have a method?
But wait.
“A book, or something that contains printed letters?”
“That’s right.”
“When was the Infinite Chain discovered?”
“I don’t know. Even before Lortel obtained it, the Infinite Chain was wandering the continent.”
“So it’s been a long time, anyway. In all that time, did the tracking target never change even once?”
“At least, if Lortel’s investigation is correct.”
I smell something. I smell something.
“Did you burn incense?”
“……?”
That’s a joke.
Anyway, what I meant by “I smell something” was completely serious.
‘An item that can’t be found despite being under Absolute Tracking. And it’s a book, or something that contains printed letters….’
This—could it be?
As far as I knew, there was only one such thing.
Yeah. It was a Grimoire.
