Why go this far? For a moment, Encrid couldn’t understand. Was there any reason to hate him this much? He had seen the hatred in those eyes, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Even if the man was consumed by hatred and resentment, why direct it at him?

Naturally, Encrid had no way of knowing, but the fortune-teller tribe’s prodigy shaman had called the apostle Encrid killed his father. In the West, there was a saying that one must not live under the same sky as one’s father’s killer. The prodigy had merely done as he had been taught since childhood.

Or perhaps, with everything ruined, he had simply needed someone to blame. A little thought revealed how foolish it was. Why follow the teachings of the West after betraying the entire region?

Seen another way, his actions made sense. The young shaman of the fortune-teller tribe had been brainwashed and cornered. He had only two choices: be captured and killed, or do something insane.

He chose insanity. He staked everything on it, selling his soul to a demon and cursing his own flesh. He didn’t care if his soul fell into hellfire to walk a path of eternal suffering. By cursing himself and paying his due in misfortune first, he had taken a gamble. In a sense, it had paid off.

Along the way, he had deceived a shaman of the Great Wing tribe, and luck had favored him there as well. The man pitied him for his illness and lost legs. Pretending he had been kept as food for cannibals had also worked. With heaven helping him, the shaman believed his actions were right. Everything around him had led him to that belief. That was how the prodigy saw it, and this was the result of his misguided choice.

Of course, Encrid knew none of this. And what of it? Would knowing change his present circumstances? No. He simply had to accept them.

“Hmm.”

Encrid made a sound for no particular reason. The world was yellow. Even the wind seemed dry enough to crackle. The scorching heat was one thing, but there was nothing around him to use as a landmark.

What should he do, then? Fortunately, Encrid wasn’t Ragna. He could just wait until night. Navigating by the constellations wasn’t something he did often, but he could do it. Besides, following the Path of Grime had given him a rough idea of where the desert lay.

‘Southeast should do it.’

That ought to be roughly right. Encrid turned his head from side to side, then cast his gaze into the distance. An endless river of sand, a lake of sand, a sea of sand. Sand, sand, and nothing but sand.

He tried to find shelter from the heat, then gave up. The desert was a goddamn miserable place. There was nothing here. Hadn’t he heard there were cacti and a few monsters? Animals that lived only in the desert, too? Yet there was nothing. At least, that was what his senses told him.

He had no choice but to endure sunlight that went beyond scorching and seemed ready to cook his flesh. Fortunately, his armor mitigated some of the heat, thanks to the monster hide. That made it bearable.

Encrid knew little about deserts, but he knew all too well how dangerous it was to blunder about in unfamiliar surroundings. After walking a short distance to inspect the area, he stopped and endured. Endurance was his specialty.

‘Did I let my guard down?’

He decided to spend his spare time reflecting on what he had just learned. Night still seemed a long way off. The sun was fiercely hot. He couldn’t afford to wear himself out exercising as he usually did. Sitting down, he slowed and deepened his breathing, then meditated as he waited for night.

* * *

Geomnarae stood before the corpse with the split head. Luagarne and Dunbachel were there as well. His brow furrowed deeply.

“A secret art of spatial transport.”

Spells worked through a medium. That could be a totem or a talisman. Sometimes, the caster offered up their lifespan. Geomnarae himself had intended to fight that way if Encrid and Rem hadn’t been there, burning his remaining years through a medium. By consuming the flame of his own life, he would briefly fight his enemies with the might of a Hero.

Having made similar preparations, he could tell. This man hadn’t merely burned through his lifespan. He had offered up everything.

‘Mad bastard.’

He thought he had a rough grasp of what had happened. It was conjecture, but he had pieced together the likeliest possibility. There had been someone in the fortune-teller tribe whose talent rivaled Rem’s. That man must have sacrificed his soul to cast the spell. Instead of using a totem as his medium, he had offered his lifespan and soul. The traces left on the corpse told that story.

Talent, a soul, sacrifice, an offering. That was the sort of shit he had pulled. Otherwise, this could never have happened.

‘He even cursed himself first to pay his due in misfortune.’

He had taken bad luck upon himself beforehand to make his gamble succeed. Even so, it should have failed. The backlash should have killed him and no one else. Yet somehow, he had sent Encrid away. Where? Geomnarae didn’t know. He had inferred roughly what had happened, but he couldn’t know everything.

“Spatial transport? Where did he send him? Even those called archmages, who are said to have reached the pinnacle of magic, cannot send others away.”

The Frog spoke. Geomnarae judged that even if the man with the split skull came back to life and tried the same thing again, he would not succeed a second time. The weight of fate had simply tipped a little further toward his side. In continental terms, the goddess of luck had sided with the enemy this time. In the West, they called it the tipping of the weight.

“The weight tipped the wrong way,” Geomnarae said.

“Speak plainly, human,” the Frog said again.

“Where is our benefactor?”

Jiba’s mother had just come out and blinked at them. The shattered mood was plain to see. Word spread throughout the tribe. Of course it did. The honorary Hero who had saved them had vanished.

The westerners, desperate to shower him with gifts, gathered together. The chieftain stood at their center and called out.

“Hear me, all people of the West.”

Without even pausing to swallow, he continued, his eyes gleaming and his voice full of force.

“Find him, whatever it takes.”

They did just that. Starting with the smallest traces, they began scouring everything.

“I don’t care how many years it takes. We will find him, no matter what.”

The chieftain was not a man to make promises he couldn’t keep. He meant it. Without loyalty, one was no westerner.

* * *

Rem sat alone in a world of black, lost in thought. How many days had passed? He didn’t know. But he knew one thing: the bestowal of his spells was complete. All manner of memories had passed through his mind during the process.

When he was a child, every shaman who saw his skill with spells had called it dangerous.

[“If your body can’t keep up, it’ll burst with a bang. So take it slowly, one step at a time.”]

The current eldest shaman had held the same position back then. Rem had only half obeyed. Outwardly, he followed that advice, but out of sight, he did as he pleased. Why? Because it was fun. Spells were fun. Why stop him?

In the meantime, he had learned about ancestral gods, spirit spells, and other such concepts. That was when he first realized he was different from everyone else.

[“Using spirit invocation can leave you bedridden for a week.”]

Spirit invocation meant having a god dwell within one’s body. The medium could be markings inscribed on the body, a totem, or something similar. It made one several times stronger and quicker with one’s hands. Naturally, sight and hearing sharpened as well.

Spells in the West fell into two broad categories. One was spirit invocation, as just described. The other was divine possession, which brought a part of a god into the mortal world.

The West’s concept of a god differed greatly from the continent’s. On the continent, a god was an absolute being. In the West, they said a spirit came to inhabit anything worshipped for a long time. That was why they revered wolves, bears, and eagles. They made offerings, performed rituals, and conducted solitary invocations, setting out water and touching their foreheads to the ground to show respect.

That was the norm, so everyone did it. Not Rem. Spirits came and dwelled with him even when he did nothing. Taking them into his body caused no real problems. More precisely, there were no side effects.

Then, while wandering the continent and taking other spells into his body, he had realized something. Huh? This hurt. There were side effects, too. So this was normal. Could he make use of it in a different way? He thought he could. A shift in perspective, experience, and instinct had helped.

Taking another person’s spells into one’s own body was an act of extraordinary madness, but Rem had done it and even developed a theory to explain it. He had told Ayul everything. Horrified at first, she had soon come to understand.

He also understood why everyone, including the eldest shaman, was worried. Spells were an art that borrowed power by appealing to spirits. And the entity they called a spirit could turn out to be a demon.

‘A wayward path.’

An improper path. A wrong one. There were many precedents: people deceived by cunning serpents into creating evil spirits. The greater a person’s capacity for spells, the larger and stronger the spirit they could allow to exert power in the mortal world. That was why everyone worried.

But his resolve was firm. He would not waver.

‘That won’t happen to me.’

So he said there was no need to worry. To whom? His axe.

It was made of meteoric iron. Even Rem couldn’t do anything without a medium for his spells. He used the ancestral weapon he had made long ago as that medium. That was why he had no need to inscribe markings on his face.

Why poke holes in his skin and put dye inside? If the markings faded or were damaged, they would no longer serve their purpose. Many westerners without an aptitude for spells had no such markings, but most spell users relied on tattoos. Rem simply had no need for them.

The medium for his spells began to appear in the darkness. It had been sulking and refusing him all this time, but now it was finally listening.

The axe had a head with two blades, one large and the other relatively small. The blade facing him was only a handspan across, while the larger one was at least twice that size. It still needed a whetstone, but because the axe itself served as a medium for spells, it neither broke nor dulled. The whetstone was merely a snack he gave it because it liked it.

After ordering his thoughts and refining his resolve, he opened his eyes to find the old shaman directly before him.

“... You’ve surprised me, you brat.”

“What’s so surprising?”

“It’s only just the sixth day.”

Rem had stored all his spells in the ancestral weapon, and while he was away, its shamanic power had swollen. A lesser shaman would faint just from approaching it. The eldest shaman had expected him to need another ten days simply to take that increased power into his body. But not Rem.

Ever since childhood, neither divine possession nor spirit invocation had strained his body. Besides, he was sturdier now than he had been then. His skill at controlling his body had improved, and his capacity had grown. He had also finished sorting out exactly what a Hero was. Knowing how Heroes differed from knights made taking his spells back easy.

Knights were those who used technique and Will in harmony. Heroes were those who used technique and spells in harmony. Put simply, that was the difference.

Assimilating the spells had taken about five days, three of which he had spent soothing his ancestral weapon. The total came to six because the first day had been spent cleansing and preparing his body and mind.

If weapons with a sense of self were called sentient, ancestral weapons belonged in that category too. They didn’t actually speak, but they held emotions. The moment he gripped his weapon, he had felt the same emotion he had sensed from Ayul: hurt. Why had he abandoned it?

It was still young. Rem soothed it as he would a child. And as he completed the whole process, he had felt something else. Omnipotence.

‘Feels like one more step would take me straight to that directionless bastard.’

He felt as though he could split a mountain with a single swing of his axe. The sun? The wind? A lake? The earth? He could cleave anything.

Rem quickly shook it off. His experience with various spirits had already taught him to distinguish between what he could and couldn’t do. He knew that difference well. It was why he had been able to fight knight-level opponents even without spells. If he committed himself to the fight, he could even kill them.

His increased capacity readily accommodated the swollen shamanic power. He had left it behind even though he could bear it, merely setting it aside for a while. Taking it back made him feel omnipotent, but so what? That was all.

As the eldest shaman watched Rem rise with his axe, his face bore new wrinkles.

“Thanks for the hard work.”

Spells were a power that required invocations and rituals. Even he couldn’t simply walk in and casually carry them out again. The eldest shaman must have performed rituals for more than thirty days for this. Honoring heaven and soothing the earth, he must have sought permission from every spirit dwelling in nature. All on Rem’s behalf.

Now, time to head back. It was time to see the surprise on the face of the man he had chosen to serve as Captain.

“Let’s go.”

“I’ll rest a few days before I leave.”

Rem didn’t want to wait, so he left the eldest shaman behind and set out first. This was the first news that greeted him upon his return.

“Enkie has disappeared.”

It was Luagarne.

“Where’d he go? Didn’t he just go hunting monsters on his own?” Rem asked.

“No.”

“He’s not the type to get lost.”

He heard about the secret art of spatial transport. With no sheath for his ancestral weapon, he was simply holding it in his hand. Everyone grew a little tense. Rem had always been the sort to raise hell whenever something displeased him.

Yet his response was utterly calm. As casually as could be, he said, “Well, he’ll find his own way back.”

Encrid wasn’t someone who would drop dead just because he was a little lost. All they had to do was wait. That was what Rem meant. Everyone, Ayul included, blinked. It was the last response they had expected.

But Rem had faith. Faith that Encrid wasn’t a man who would die over something so trivial.