LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 100
“Why… why did you do that!”
With a thud, Ha-ru fell onto the soft cushioning and poured out her frustrations.
The brilliant fantasy was now nowhere to be found.
On a starless night, the only sound breaking the silence of the playground was the chirp chirp of crickets.
“Why did you end the magic so abruptly…! We hadn’t finished talking yet, Mom!”
She slapped the ground with her tiny palms, smack smack.
But all it did was hurt her hands, so I lifted Ha-ru back up.
“It’s time to go back to reality.”
“No, I don’t want to go!”
“It gets chilly at night, and you might catch a cold.”
“No, I said I don’t want to!”
First, I had to get the friends back home.
Ha-ru was throwing a tantrum, refusing to budge from the playground.
“I think I can fix your eyes.”
“What…? Even the doctor couldn’t fix them; how can you fix them…?”
“Remember when I used Aura on you and you saw colors for a moment? I know how to do it now.”
Her expression still showed doubt, but Ha-ru willingly took my hand.
We didn’t say a word until we reached my house’s entrance door.
I could occasionally hear her huffing beside me.
I was usually pretty proud of my stamina, yet Ha-ru seemed to be worse off than me.
The shock of losing her mother was not the only reason she couldn’t distinguish colors.
The pill she had taken, while ultimately from the Alchemist, emitted a magical energy wave that clearly suggested ‘dark magic.’
If that’s true, and if she had knowingly given it to her, then Ha-ru’s mother was definitely not in her right mind.
Once back in the room, I sat Ha-ru on my bed.
Then I pulled Yuna, who was seated on my desk chair, over so that Ha-ru could face her.
“Lee Ha-ru, what color is Yuna’s hair right now?”
“Gray… no, black…? No, gray…”
Yuna’s hair was still the same bright red thread.
Her eyes seemed to have a problem.
“Close your eyes. Raise your right hand if it hurts.”
I wiped the moisture flowing from her puffy eyes and covered them with my palm, sending out my aura. However, I intended to use it differently than before.
“Ah… it hurts…!”
Ha-ru instantly grabbed my wrist, groaning.
“It hurts? Where does it hurt?”
“I-I don’t know… Na-me, I’m scared… Can you stop? My head hurts too much…”
What I was doing was merely a purification process using Aura.
There shouldn’t be any elements that could make her feel pain.
Even so, Ha-ru trembled her right hand and continued to complain about the pain.
I held her hand tightly. I couldn’t stop here.
This couldn’t rule out the possibility of dark magic.
However, in this world, dark magic couldn’t exist in its complete form.
There was a ‘storage’ phase to summon mana from another dimension, so spells wouldn’t just be cast through simple methods like sacrifice.
So the remaining possibility was that I had indirectly used magic through ‘engraving,’ like the time I turned a pen into an atomizer.
Was it engraved with a magic circle on the pill and activated through absorption into her body?
[3rd Circle Reversal: Unseal Engraving]
With a sense of anxiety, I cast a spell to extract the engraved magic circle backward.
As a result, black letters and formulas twisted out of Ha-ru’s eyes, climbing onto my hand like snakes.
A tingling sensation washed over me, and my right arm became filled with runes and distorted circles as if it were tattooed.
I barely managed to contain it from spreading throughout my body with my aura.
Just when I was letting out a sigh of relief,
“What the heck is this?”
Yuna asked, surprised.
“It’s engraving magic. The contents might be… an acceleration of thought from the 6th circle.”
Did Ha-ru’s mother think this was just a pill to make her smarter?
I was frustrated that I couldn’t confirm the truth.
*
I laid Ha-ru on my bed and asked Yuna to watch over her for a moment.
I had to go dispel the engraved spell before the temporary sealing on my arm disappeared.
“If Ha-ru wakes up, let me know.”
“Ha-ru isn’t… wrong, right?”
“Yeah, I fixed everything, so don’t worry too much.”
The reason Ha-ru couldn’t see colors or heard voices was simple.
It was due to being exposed to high-level circle magic, which was inappropriate for her age, overloading her brain.
The former case was about lacking the brain area needed for information processing, so it affected her other senses, while the latter was a case of interference in brainwaves.
Ha-ru was in a much-disrupted state due to continuous exposure to untreated mana from the Aura Heart.
Therefore, my first step of purification was to use Ha-ru’s Aura Heart to remove the mana impurities, and the second step was to completely remove the engraved spell and temporarily infuse my aura.
While Ha-ru slept, my aura now circulated from her head to her toes, repairing the organs that had not functioned properly.
Click-
With the sound of the bathroom door closing, I faced the mirror above the washbasin, examining my reflection.
My hair was really long.
After Hiasen had carefully cut it, the illusion magic was undone, and everything returned to normal.
That’s why I didn’t want to cut it…
Regardless, that wasn’t the problem. I decided to attempt the unbinding of the spell first.
It was a procedure I had done ad nauseam before, so I didn’t even need to close my eyes to concentrate.
As my golden aura flowed out, the combination of runes scribed on my arm began to shake.
Aura. A probability overlapping substance derived from mana.
Just as the blood in our bodies supplements oxygen through the lungs, mana is transformed so that it can receive brainwave signals through the Aura Heart.
In summary, one could see aura as ‘controllable artificial hormones.’
Unlike regular hormones, the distinguishing feature of aura is that it encompasses the continuous secretion of hormones.
For instance, if the Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone (TSH) stimulates the secretion of thyroxine and thyroxine promotes metabolism, the aura skips this and condenses everything into one step.
However, aura is, after all, a concept derived from mana, so it is not a tangible substance.
It merely makes it look as if new hormones arise from inactive hormones already present in the body.
In other words, while it can make someone run 100m in 10 seconds, a human can never be faster than a cheetah or a Ferrari.
Of course, if one has an exceptional ability to manipulate aura, short distances can possibly emit outward, but we will leave that as a separate issue.
Honestly, in my personal opinion, being born with an Aura Heart is as miraculous a phenomenon as dragon kin being able to use dragon language.
Even though the limits are clear, the ability to enhance the body without any permanent side effects or costs is already a tremendous blessing in itself.
Who said human greed was endless?
Aura is easy to apply, but its limits are clear; on the contrary, mana is difficult to handle, yet its possibilities are infinite.
Thus, people trying to use mana in the manner of aura came out in droves, and they would even sacrifice their lives.
Though they didn’t understand the principles, they activated spells automatically—once, we referred to it as ‘dark magic’ in slang.
It seemed like the same magic was layered multiple times, so it took a while. Who knew unbinding tattoos would be this difficult?
The engraved spells pulled from Ha-ru’s head were all results gradually injected into her through dark magic.
Engraving magic is the only magic capable of mass production in the world and is often used more in factories than by people.
Therefore, if this magic contained in the pill wasn’t cast by a human, it might yield some useful information when deciphering the caster’s password.
The decoding process was similar to dispelling.
However, the much trickier point was that dispelling could make the mana’s sum ‘0’ indiscriminately, regardless of dynamic or static equilibrium, while decoding only applied the procedures of static equilibrium.
So, like untangling a knotted thread, I reversed the processes of all the casting steps to unbind the spell.
Decoding is the reverse sequence of magic records. Therefore, the ‘subject’ that must be written first when recording a magic circle ends up being the last character remaining.
The reason Korea’s Magic Power Plant can impose individual levies is all thanks to being able to decode the ‘subjects’ obtained from the ‘storage’ process.
“This…”
When all the ugly tattoos disappeared and only one character remained on my hand, I couldn’t help but bite my lips.
[Walpurgis]
At that moment, a hundred thoughts flashed through my mind.
‘Why is this coming up here?’
Could it just be a coincidence? It’s not definitively real. Unlike a caster, the naming of mechanical subjects is up to the user.
Yet I couldn’t shake off this sticky unease.
My heart was racing on its own.
Why would those who engage in the illegal manufacture of a 6th circle magic, which isn’t even permitted for commoners, choose to designate ‘Walpurgis’ as the subject of the engraving?
Were they really involved? Or was it simply a convenient name for a group that had been eliminated long ago?
As the dizzying hypotheses swirled in my mind, a knock echoed.
Knock knock-
“Hey Na-me, are you ready yet?”
For now, I should keep this a secret from the kids.
Still, the amount of information I had was woefully insufficient.
[1st Circle Cast: Clean]
I completely erased the last remaining characters and greeted Yuna with a bright smile.