Chapter 1233 – #288_Fable(7)
#1227
1.
Like a climber who said they climb because the mountain is there.
Shiwoo simply walked the path laid out before him.
As if expressing the musical notes that had accumulated within him.
He savored the sweet melody in his ears, climbing the stairs again and again.
Paradoxically, this was an act of both ascending and descending.
The higher his mastery of magic grew, the deeper he could manipulate the layered ‘settings of the world,’ like a pastry.
He had crossed the wall of the 24th tier that had obscured his vision, and now he was moving towards the 25th tier.
At the center of his heart was himself.
But it wasn’t arrogance or self-righteousness, but the will to protect those he held dear.
“Hoo…”
He had even uttered a cheesy line to Erelim, like, ‘This is the answer I’ve found,’ but now he slightly regretted it.
He should have said it less coolly.
It wasn’t that his mindset had changed.
He wasn’t being consumed by a demonic force, nor was he not enjoying this act.
Magic was so free and beautiful.
Each moment of realizing that fact was so overwhelming that he felt it was lovely.
But the limit came fairly, regardless of his mindset.
He slowly felt the heat rising in his head and the overload.
His body felt weak, as if he had run out of fuel.
It was a path of enlightenment that would have been burdensome even if he had been in perfect condition from the start.
His battered body and exhausted mental state after the clash with Erelim were like a high-altitude sickness, numbing his consciousness.
The stairs became increasingly precarious and easily crumbled.
The abyss that stretched out below the narrow stairs was deep, and a strong wind blew, as if trying to push him down.
“……”
Erelim watched Shiwoo’s back.
Unlike Erelim’s path, which was already neatly paved, Shiwoo was forging his own path at this very moment.
In the randomized space.
The stairs, which materialized the will and mastery, inevitably depicted each person’s ‘Magical Path.’
Erelim’s path was that of a monk who silently practiced asceticism.
It was a path that commemorated the will of the forgotten witches and gathered their intentions, solely for the sake of magic.
A world dyed in deep green. Ashes fluttering like snowflakes. Tombstones. Eulogies. The wishes of the departed. The yearning for transcendence. Self-righteousness. The absolute conviction that witches exist for magic. An obsession that wouldn’t break even when facing death.
A path built by gathering all of this.
Forged with a single desire, without a single doubt or delusion.
That was why she was able to build the stairs so solidly, reaching the lofty achievement of the 25th tier.
This was the Magical Path that Erelim had drawn.
Then, what about Shiwoo?
Foolishly, he had abandoned the stairs he had already obtained, something no other witch would do.
He had chosen the dangerous path of building a new path moment by moment.
Therefore, Shiwoo’s Magical Path was truly precarious.
Compared to Erelim’s stairs, which stretched straight up to the sky, it swayed back and forth like a drunkard’s steps.
It was narrow like a trail, unable to stretch out wide like the grand avenues of a prosperous kingdom.
He had no confidence in himself, and he hesitated and agonized endlessly.
As a result, it was reflected directly under his feet, and if he counted the number of times he had almost lost his footing and fallen, it was already well over ten.
At this rate, it was doubtful whether he could even reach the 25th tier, let alone reach the ‘System.’ It was a truly shabby and insignificant path.
To Erelim, who was close to the most complete form among the existing witches, it was a flawed product with nothing to learn from.
“……”
But.
Why couldn’t she take her eyes off him?
She knew the reason.
The path he was trying to take was warm.
It was as pure as the optimism of a child who only saw the world as beautiful.
It shone with a brilliant golden light that made her squint.
It was a sight that Erelim had never imagined, and at the same time, it was a radiance that completely denied her life.
She tried to scoff.
The world she had watched for a thousand years was always full of tragedy.
God was cruel, and the world was even crueler.
It was not a place that could be overcome with such ambiguous warmth and optimism.
The scenery he could embrace was a childish fantasy that he could embrace because he didn’t yet know the ruthlessness of the world.
That was why he was swaying so much, even though no one had touched him.
The answer you were going to show me is just a plausible failure, isn’t it?
You won’t be able to do it anyway.
-Crackle
“Ah.”
As Erelim had expected, Shiwoo eventually lost his footing.
His steps had been shaky until now, but this was the final blow.
The stairs under his feet crumbled without being properly formed, and Shiwoo’s tilting gaze was filled with the pitch-black abyss.
As much as he had pushed himself for enlightenment, if he fell, it was an abyss of darkness from which he would never return.
“I’m screwed…”
At that moment.
A cold hand wrapped around his wrist.
His tilting body was pulled back.
“Grab on.”
Looking back, he saw someone who shouldn’t be here, holding onto Shiwoo, who had almost fallen.
This was something that shouldn’t have happened.
The stairs in this landscape were parallel.
It was a straight path where no one could interfere with anyone else.
But Erelim was the master of the Secret Library. She was a great sage who could use more magic than anyone else, more skillfully than anyone else.
That was why she was so revered by so many witches.
“Thank you for helping me, but if you’ve fallen for me, that’s going to be a problem.”
“Nonsense. I can’t stay long. I’ll channel my magic, so accept it.”
Shiwoo, who had been joking, calmed his surprised heart and received the magic flowing through the skin that was in contact with him.
“Oh.”
An amazing thing happened.
His tattered magic circuits, as if new flesh was growing, were restored, reversing time.
His overheated, throbbing head cooled down as if it had a water-cooling system, and his terrible condition was restored.
This was unnecessary for Erelim.
Knowing that, she couldn’t help but impulsively help him.
She had the expectation that Shiwoo might find an answer she had never reached, in a completely different form.
“Show me. Your answer.”
2.
Finally, Shiwoo crossed the wall of the 25th tier.
“…I’m going to die.”
Climbing the huge wall while twisting his body was pure suffering.
On top of the huge wall that seemed to connect the ends of the horizon.
Looking down from above, he understood why so many mountaineers risked their lives to reach the summit.
But this was not the summit.
If he had to put it into words, it was a base camp in the middle.
To face the system, to convince Erelim, he had to go higher.
He had to reach the 26th tier and show them how he could break through the system’s limitations.
His steps were twice as heavy as before.
The jazz melody ringing in his ears was many times more complex, and the task of gaining enlightenment from it was also extremely arduous.
He steadied his consciousness, which felt like it would fall into a coma at any moment, and climbed again.
————
Having come this far, he could finally find traces.
The traces of the ‘System’ that was preventing the witches from transcending, that even Keter had given up on overcoming on her own, and that would plunge countless witches into despair in the future.
It wasn’t visible.
The space beyond the stairs was like an infinite void, so even with excellent eyesight, he couldn’t see through it.
But it was certain that an indescribable, enormous presence was looking this way.
Every time its dry gaze brushed past his body, he felt goosebumps all over.
Even as he felt the gaze and concentration intensify as he climbed the stairs, Shiwoo silently took one step at a time.
“……”
Finally, when he reached the end of the stairs, a wide open space unfolded before him.
In front of him, a huge wall that filled his vision stood tall beyond the fog.
The wall of the 26th tier, which even Erelim had only glimpsed at the cost of a penalty that made it impossible to inherit, and which she had ultimately failed to conquer.
No matter how great an enlightenment he had gained up to that point, he had to cross that wall to surpass the tier.
Erelim and Shiwoo walked towards the wall side by side.
Beyond the fog, the two saw different forms of the wall.
To Erelim, the wall was the ‘end,’ a haphazard pile of broken tombstones.
A wall of lament that would make the deaths of all the witches who had left in the past meaningless if she couldn’t overcome it.
A wall of despair that would make her face a slow death like Keter, even if she did overcome it.
On the other hand, Shiwoo saw a more modern art-like landscape.
On the huge wall, all sorts of signs related to ‘crisis’ and ‘warning’ from the information he had unconsciously acquired popped out haphazardly.
The entire wall was covered with red and vermilion letters, with signs like [WARNING] [NO ENTRY] [DANGER] [DANGER].
Radiation warning marks, skull marks with X’s drawn on them, poison warning marks, sharp spikes sticking out like fences, and even flashing warning lights.
All of them were things that stimulated the sense of crisis in human instincts.
A collection of threatening decorations that even a primitive man would turn away from, thinking, ‘Ah, this place is a bit much.’
“…It’s kind of intimidating.”
What would happen if he opened this was only a guess for Shiwoo.
There was no certainty about the details.
But let’s think about it.
What exactly is the system?
Why does it try to prevent the witches from transcending?
All witches are originally beings derived from the Witch of Creation. In other words, they are foreign objects that have crossed over from other timelines.
Therefore, the system accepted witches as ‘risk factors.’
Even Shiwoo, who had inherited Keter’s mark, albeit imperfectly, could not escape that filter.
In light of this prior information, Shiwoo thought when he came into contact with the system a little while ago.
Keter had given it a pretty cool name.
What was lurking behind this door was literally just a system.
It had no free will of its own, and no ego.
It was merely the basis and device that supported the settings of the world and carried out its assigned role.
The strange thing was here.
The system restricts witches because they possess too much power?
Then there are so many things that should be restricted.
No witch has the power of the sun.
No witch is as powerful as a black hole, a neutron star, or an exploding supernova.
Even if they reach the 32nd tier, they are still less than a speck of dust compared to the infinite world, aren’t they?
Then why are only witches subject to the system’s surveillance and restrictions?
“What do you think? Isn’t it strange?”
He said, turning to Erelim.
“No. The system’s restrictions definitely exist.”
Erelim shook her head.
She couldn’t believe it.
She had seen Keter, who had been restricted by the system, collapse.
It was unbelievable that such a miserable downfall had occurred without external intervention.
Even Erelim herself had felt that chilling presence when she stepped into the 26th tier, up to the point of standing before this wall, hadn’t she?
“It’s not that the system doesn’t exist. It’s right there, isn’t it? But it’s the witches who have called in the system, which would have just been watching, and created the boundaries.”
The movement of celestial bodies in the vast universe has rules, but no will.
They simply exist there, like the system.
Therefore, they cannot choose, and they cannot struggle to change what has been decided.
On the other hand, witches have a firm will.
More persistent and intense than any other intelligent life form, they only look at ‘magic,’ even to the point of giving up their own lives.
That single-mindedness, obsession, and desire for magic becomes karma, creating the system’s boundaries.
From the system’s point of view, if a being with such a strong purpose were to be given great power, it would be impossible to predict what vector would be applied.
Therefore, neither the queen who had tried to challenge God’s achievements nor the queen who had tried to embrace the forgotten ones while pursuing the same achievements could cross the wall.
It was a cruel irony.
Just as the intense desire for enlightenment becomes an obsession that distances one from enlightenment.
Witches, because they only pursue magic, have become unable to obtain true magic.
This was Shiwoo’s hypothesis.
And the magic that Shiwoo had accumulated up to this point was not magic as an end, but magic as a means.
At the heart of it was the desire to protect.
-Kugugugugung
Shiwoo pushed the huge wall with both hands.
A roar like a huge steel beast rattling its throat followed, and the sky and earth shook.
Erelim watched Shiwoo walk beyond it without blinking an eye.
Her imagination was soon painting a fantasy of a giant hand grabbing him and throwing him away.
————!!!
The system was approaching.
To judge the one who had crossed the restrictions that should not be crossed.
Shiwoo was just staring blankly up at the sky.
Without averting his gaze or lowering his eyes, proudly.
“How is it? Keter was wrong, right?”
Shiwoo wiped away his cold sweat and gave a slight smile.
Only then could Erelim see the wide path shimmering with golden light behind him.
A warm and beautiful path, like a wheat field at the peak of the late autumn harvest.
