Chapter 1161 – #276_서막(9)
#1155
1.
She had advanced for the sake of truth, even cutting away half of herself.
Like all other witches, she sacrificed much and threw it away like straw to follow in the footsteps of the Great Mother.
It wasn’t easy, but like ascetics, she chose to walk a thorny path.
However, what Keter, who had reached a high position, discovered was not the next step.
It was an abyss.
“The laws of this world are similar to a game. There are minimum units of energy or particles that can no longer be divided, the maximum speed is the speed of light, and clear limits exist as constant values, right? This kind of divine setting is the law of the world.”
Witches modify and alter this.
They can create particles smaller than the smallest unit particle, and they can realize light faster than light.
Modifying the settings of the world is why witches are classified as transcendents.
However, Keter had discovered it.
An absolute law underlying the world, which could not be touched by any means, cutting off the steps of magic.
“I named it ‘the System’.”
She had only observed and named its existence, but there was no way to grasp its exact identity.
She could only vaguely guess that it was the most fundamental law governing the entire universe, a huge, fluid administrator.
Perhaps it was the being that humans call ‘God’.
This world, where the Witch of Creation had fled, was originally a world line without witches.
The world had overlooked the existence of the newly born witch and had stood by as the Mother reached the 32nd tier.
It was not so much generosity or mercy as a kind of observation.
The System was neither good nor evil, it was impossible to tell whether it had consciousness or not, it was just a system as its name suggested.
But was it because it had watched the Witch of Creation enough?
After observing the appearance of a power that should not have been allowed in the world, the ‘System’ began to move.
The moment Keter crossed the wall and reached the 31st tier, she felt her spirit and flesh shatter into pieces.
It was not a magical effect.
Nor was it anything physical.
It was a metaphysical force that even a pioneer of the mystic arts, a witch, could not describe.
A primal and overwhelming force grabbed Keter, who was about to soar, and threw her away.
The ‘System’ had imposed sanctions.
At first, it was a problem she didn’t take seriously.
She was somewhat shocked, but she thought it was a problem she could overcome.
Witches are foolish seeds who seek to catch up with the achievements of God.
Their king was the most foolish, not intimidated or discouraged.
She burned and burned and burned.
She rushed and rushed and rushed.
She firmly believed that if she explored endlessly, a step to transcendence would be placed at the end of a magnificent golden tower.
But as time passed, all she learned was the absoluteness of the System.
It was not the kind of thing that even a witch could intervene in.
If the world’s settings were layers stacked upon layers, this System was the world itself, supporting all the other layers from the lowest level.
By the time she realized that, the sanctions the System had imposed on Keter were also showing their effects.
Just as a patient exposed to high-level radiation looks fine for the first few days, Keter’s mind and body had been eaten away by the sanctions that she had not taken seriously at the time.
“It was an inevitable attrition that even the highest wisdom and magic of a transcendent could only delay.”
“……”
Erelim thought that the words coming out of Keter’s mouth were truly absurd.
Perhaps she wanted to believe that it was just a delusion of Keter, who had gone into a trance.
But Erelim also felt it.
The vastness that unfolded before her eyes after reaching the 25th tier was a little different from usual.
As Keter said, it was a feeling of hopelessness that seemed like a ‘system limitation’, a feeling that there was no way to move forward, a somewhat comical analogy.
In the end, that was it.
The life she had lived, leaving behind her loved ones, struggling not to be consumed by ennui, and devoting everything to magic…
A meager ending had been decided by a behind-the-scenes story that Erelim had not even been aware of.
“Then what about Shin Siwoo? Is Shin Siwoo different?”
Erelim asks in a hollow voice.
A question that was merely a continuation of a series of conversations, finding clues from her excellent reasoning.
It was as futile a question as the ramblings of the dead.
Keter shook her head.
“No, he is also an existence that originated from me, so he cannot escape the System.”
In the midst of utter despair, Keter endlessly searched for detours.
She sought a way to deceive the System’s interference.
“But his child is different.”
All witches are beings born from the witch factor and the threads of fate that the Mother had sown.
If that was denied by the System because it was from another world, then a new life based on the System from the beginning could be created.
Not a witch born by inheriting the witch factor sown by the Witch of Creation, but a primordial witch belonging to this world from the beginning.
For that, she finely divided and distributed the brand.
She altered the consciousness to make Shin Siwoo more suitable.
Even before he was born, she directly intervened in the prophecy agency to find the most suitable partner to be the mother.
All of her actions ruined Keter’s deteriorating physical condition, but she did not hesitate.
That was all that was left for Keter.
Her earnest efforts eventually bore fruit.
It was unexpected that Shin Siwoo had managed not to have his consciousness taken away, but he overcame all the hardships and adversities and became the foundation for true transcendence.
There was no room for human emotions to intervene in that.
“I have fulfilled my mission.”
In front of Keter, who stated it with unwavering certainty, Erelim felt that everything that made up herself was scattering like old, crumbling shells.
She had wanted to pioneer the path of magic.
But the end was nothing more than a fall into an abyss, the end of which was determined for truly unreasonable reasons.
She had wanted to create a world for witches.
But the order of Keter, which she had held onto with love and hate, was a self-satisfaction of a machine obsessed with delusion, and the evil of humans was as Erelim had expected.
At the very end, she had gone to Keter to ask about the path she should take.
But even Keter, whom she had believed would show her the way, was just a lost soul in the same situation.
She had only lost her way a little earlier than Erelim.
Perhaps she knew this ending, which is why she had so easily talked about ‘the coexistence of humans and witches’.
Then, what is left in these empty hands?
Erelim looked at Keter.
She looked at the broken Keter.
She was smiling, as if she was satisfied with something.
It was not a hollow and futile smile like before.
It was the expression of someone who had found light alone in the endless darkness.
She is moving away.
Her dim golden eyes, reminiscent of her past glory, do not contain Erelim.
A seeker who has found her own way in the darkness, Keter does not care about those who are left behind.
As Keter had put it, all witches are failures.
Erelim is also just one of the most outstanding of countless failures.
Looking back, it was just a shallow relationship.
“……”
She felt like a fool.
The days she had spent alone, agonizing over countless things, keeping rules she didn’t even know why she had to keep.
The days she had barely understood why Keter’s legacy and attention had suddenly turned to a man who had suddenly appeared without any explanation.
The days she had mistaken the affection that was gradually becoming stained with resentment and hatred as something precious, wiping it away with past memories.
It was boiling up.
Another emotion that could not be faded even by the long years, an emotion that did not mutate into ennui.
It would have been fortunate if it had ended in ignorance.
It would have been merciful if Erelim’s desperate prayer had ended in rejection.
She hated her.
But she did not hate her.
There was a deeper longing, respect, and love than that.
Keter was like a mother to Erelim, like an older sister, and at the same time, like a teacher.
Until this very moment.
The newly emerging hatred is as deep and heavy as the love she had felt.
Erelim’s lips moved.
“Revere.”
The witch’s image that defines magic.
The incantation that represents it in one word.
Everything Keter had shown was magic itself to Erelim, and therefore, it was life.
Therefore, Erelim’s incantation was the same as Keter’s.
A pure white magical reflection flickered like tears in Erelim’s eyes.
Dense magical particles, as if a slow-motion shot of water droplets scattering, filled the wide workshop.
The harmonious dance of magical particles, like a small universe under the ancient moonlight, is breathtakingly dreamy.
And apart from its beauty, it has enough power to kill a witch.
Keter did not raise her magic power.
She is still sitting there, without lifting a finger, in front of a magic that would have been a far inferior version in her prime.
She is not ignoring it.
She is not mocking it, nor is she frustrated.
“Blanche.”
Instead, she smiled quietly.
It was still an incomprehensible smile, but it was the same smile as her friend who had left the world after throwing off a heavy burden.
Keter said.
“We can’t find the answer.”
Erelim replied.
“I… I found it.”
-Thud
With a sound like breaking dry firewood, the magic that had been surging all around was gathered into Erelim.
Her body, which had fallen over with the chair like an old tree, rolled on the cold marble.
