IBTRFL Chapter 8

Resolve and Promise

Aer stood in the cave with a grim face and looked at the objects laid out on the floor.

A red soul stone. A blue soul stone. A black soul stone. Three expensive stones, each holding a different kind of power, each throwing off its own light.

Aer picked up the blue one and held it up toward the ceiling. It shone brilliantly, like sunlight breaking across the surface of still water.

She could understand, a little, why the Director and other collectors staked so much on acquiring these.

The problem was that she now had to chew and swallow this expensive stone.

Literally—chew it with her teeth and work it down the back of her throat. Something rare enough to be fought over, something collectors coveted and mages used to inscribe spells, something nobody had enough of.

"…I really don't want to do this."

There was no other way.

Magic was a power meant only for those chosen by birth. To obtain that kind of power, you had to go through a process that defied common sense. Anyone watching would think her mad, and that would be the charitable interpretation—but the source of the method had clear credibility behind it.

The great hero who had defeated the evil god threatening to destroy the world single-handedly. The unparalleled genius who had grasped the truth of magic and become a god of the heavens. A figure dismissed today as nothing but legend—the faded, mythic Great Sage Scyenthia.

The magical inheritance inscribed in that Great Sage's tomb.

He who wishes to inherit all that I am: chew and swallow all seven soul stones of the seven colors.

Accept death. You must.

It sounded less like the words of a legendary sage and more like the ravings of a mad fortune-teller. But she had no choice but to believe it.

The endless power filling that vast space.

She had never been able to return to it, but what she had felt there was authority that approached the divine.

And yet—the miracle of inheriting the Great Sage's attainment had not been permitted to her. Because of one warning, carved deeper than all the rest.

Those who cannot dream: forget all that is here.

Those who cannot dream. An idiom not much used anymore, meaning those who had passed the age of sixteen.

When she had found the tomb, she had just turned eighteen. She had not been foolish enough to ignore the Great Sage's warning.

The abandonment had been quick. The regret had been long.

Whenever she felt her own powerlessness, the memory of that day would surface—she could not prevent it. And then the Extinction Cult's invasion came, and the regret returned as something far worse.

If I had had that power. If I had found that place sooner.

The chance that had passed in an instant left a longing that would not let go—thick, dark, clinging. And then, at the very end of a life, something she had not expected happened.

A second life. The chance she thought was gone forever had come back like a migrating bird, circling before her eyes.

Then she would take it. Even if it meant accepting death.

Aer swallowed against a dry throat and stared at the soul stone in her hand. Unaware of what was about to happen to it, the stone went on shining serenely.

Her reasons for living had never been grand—not then, not now.

The sky was beautiful. Bread tasted good. Wine was good. The small pleasures that could be found in a life had kept Aer stubbornly alive. And besides—the letter from that drunk old so-and-so was still sitting unopened in her room, wasn't it?

"……I'll just have to hope the Great Sage wasn't a fraud."

Aer squeezed her eyes shut and put the soul stone in her mouth. Contrary to her expectation that it would be hard as rock, it crumbled apart like dry clay. At the same time, her body's instinctive retching began.

The water left after washing a fish that had been abandoned in a market corner through an entire hot summer month. That taste, condensed to a viscous concentrate. It was a cruel and vile sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced, and it drove all coherent thought from her.

Her upper body heaved violently, demanding she vomit. Her organs began to writhe and spasm. Tears pooled in her unfocused violet eyes.

Aer clapped a hand over her mouth in urgent desperation. The hand, drained of color and gone white, trembled in fine convulsions.

Insane Great Sage. Aer forced her half-numb jaw to keep working. Each time her teeth broke the soul stone into pieces, the dreadful taste thickened.

I can. I can. I have to.

Without stopping even to breathe, Aer chewed and swallowed the soul stone.

The hand that had been covering her mouth fell away without strength. The tears that had pooled tracked down her cheeks.

"……Hah."

Aer, hollowed out in an instant, lifted her bowed head. Eyes that had gone dull and flat as a dead fish stared at empty air.

No matter how she thought about it, the Great Sage was absolutely out of his damn mind—nothing else could explain leaving something like this on your own tombstone.

She felt thoroughly awful. The dreadful taste was one thing, but her stomach was full in a deeply unpleasant way.

Aer lay down flat on the cave floor, irritation written across her face.

"Damn."

Once the shock faded somewhat, her head began to work again, slowly. She felt no power, no change of any kind.

But why. Was the amount of soul stone too small? Was one not enough?

"……"

The blood drained further from her already pale face. Cold sweat began to run down her back. She might have to go through this horrific experience hundreds of times over.

The Great Sage had even included instructions about not being a picky eater.

Nausea surged up, empty and vile. Aer clenched her eyes shut and quietly covered her mouth.

"Just focusing on swordsmanship instead……no, I can't, not after coming this far."

Aer let out a sigh and dragged both hands down her face. In that moment her heart lurched with an ominous shudder.

White, cold vapor slipped out between her parted lips.

"It's……white?"

Aer curled in on herself with a suppressed groan. Cold sharp as a blade tore through flesh and scraped along bone. Each breath drove icy pain into her lungs like a needle. It was like having her soft organs ripped out and ground against a block of ice.

She barely managed to roll her eyes down to look at her fingertips, where all feeling had left. Her hands were not the hands of a living person—white frost had settled across them.

From her organs to the roots of her hair. Literally, her entire body was freezing.

Prepared to die—more like just dying outright.

A worthless death like this, in a cave, from eating one soul stone wrong.

The cold pouring from her body dropped the surrounding air to ice. The pain of the ice pick through her chest earlier was nothing compared to this. No matter how she turned it over there was no way out.

Am I dying here like this? Like a dog?

She refused to die a dog's death—alone in a cave, done in by a single soul stone. Being devoured by a chaos beast on a battlefield would at least be several times better.

Aer rolled her eyes desperately. Not far away, the red soul stone glowed, magnificent.

What she had just taken was the blue stone. Then——

Aer ground her teeth and stretched her arm out, stiff and rigid. A little more. Just a little.

Her cold-frozen hand fumbled twice and then closed around the stone.

A gamble with her life. But no other choice existed.

Aer forced her locked jaw open and crammed the red soul stone inside. Her stiffened jaw ground, creak, chewing it apart. The cold that had started in her heart had already consumed her down to just below the jaw.

Her heart, which had been in the process of stopping, lurched back. Savage heat erupted through the blade of cold tearing her flesh. Warmth returned to a body that had been a lump of meat on a frozen plain.

The gamble succeeded. The problem was what came after.

Cold and heat. The two opposing forces clashed inside her like predators fighting over territory.

Aer writhed, her body bending in grotesque angles. She could not even scream. Saliva dripped from her slack, gaping mouth.

Cold, then hot. Hot, then cold. She understood, bone-deep, what it felt like to be a piece of iron hammered and quenched without end. Something that might have been blood or tears flowed from her eyes. The whites had gone red, all the capillaries burst.

If I lose consciousness, it's over. Aer bit down on the soft flesh inside her cheek. Torn by her teeth, blood seeped out with a raw, metallic taste.

The pain was unchanged, but the two forces were stabilizing, little by little.

Beneath the power rampaging through her body, she became aware of another presence—a formless energy, barely holding on. A faint trace of life returned to the unfocused violet eyes.

An unexpected gain. Unintended, but she had perceived her own soul.

Aer wrung out the last of her strength and forced her upper body up, leaning against the cave wall.

Having perceived the soul, moving it was not difficult. With experience and memory, even less so. Aer called back the sensation from long ago and shut her eyes tight.

Cold sweat drenching her face ran down her gaunt cheeks. Even within relentless pain she kept her focus.

Her soul, moving at its owner's will, gently enveloped the source of the agony.

The two rampaging forces lost their momentum. Little by little. And little by little. The way wind carves a great boulder—the violent forces were ground down and quieted.

How much time had passed. The frenzied powers settled and grew still. Now they circled obediently around her soul, like ducklings orbiting their mother on a pond.

"……It worked."

The tension released and her shoulders dropped. Her swaying head tilted forward, and the balance of her whole body gave way.

Fallen facedown on the cave floor, Aer's eyes landed on the black soul stone sitting right there, as if it had been waiting for her. She wanted to push it out of sight. She could not move a single finger.

Ah, forget it. Aer closed her eyes—done, thoroughly done.

Before long, even breathing filled the cave.