Chapter 55 - The Ruler II

3

I mentioned in the last episode that every guild leader in the country had gladly accepted the AI judges, with Dang Seorin the sole exception.

“Oh, come on—”

Now I would like to explain why. Because in a sense, at least where this particular issue was concerned, I was not free of responsibility either.

And so this could also be called a record of two accomplices: Dang Seorin and me.

“Another failure. Again.”

It began in my sixth run.

Dang Seorin had taken off her pointed hat—an extremely rare occurrence—and was tearing at her hair with one hand, like a novelist suffering from writer’s block or a lyricist utterly dissatisfied with how the words fit together.

In truth, that description was less a metaphor than a statement of fact. Clutching a quill pen—which she had actually made herself by trimming a goose feather—Dang Seorin was creating a spell.

“This one is taking you quite a while. What sort of spell are you trying to make?”

“Equivalent Exchange.”

Dang Seorin pouted.

“I’m making a spell that exchanges two different objects or phenomena on a one-to-one basis.”

“... I cannot begin to imagine what you would use that spell for.”

“Huh? You can’t judge magic by how practical it is. First you follow your dreams and make something cool.”

“A statement very much in character for you, Guild Leader.”

As I have said before, Dang Seorin’s ability was Spell-Song Chanting. In other words, magic made of song.

That meant she absolutely had to sing to cast a spell, and naturally, songs had lyrics.

In short... for Dang Seorin, developing a spell was no different from writing song lyrics.

I never mastered any magical abilities myself, so I cannot say for certain, but according to Dang Seorin, when she finished the right lyrics, she got “the feeling of all the gears in my head clicking neatly into place!” and the spell activated. Or something like that.

Thus, even the Regeneration Magic that was practically Dang Seorin’s trademark had lyrics roughly like these when you heard the actual song:

Turn, turn

The bottom of the chasm, the pinnacle of ether

Let all things turn and turn and whirl

Ether at the pinnacle, the chasm at the bottom

O wheel of fire, breathing out for all eternity

Incidentally, it was all in Latin.

Did Dang Seorin know Latin? No. A member of Three Thousand Worlds had majored in it, so she used them as her personal translation service. That member was promoted to the leadership solely because they knew Latin.

This should hardly come as a surprise anymore, but I sincerely hope you are starting to appreciate, deep in your bones, just how seriously Dang Seorin took her witch cosplay. This woman’s entire life was fandom, I’m telling you.

Thanks to Dang Seorin’s crackpot philosophy that “Latin is the superior language of poetry” and “choral pieces in particular must be sung in Latin, no matter what,” every time she activated large-scale Spell-Song Chanting, as in the battle against Tenlegs, we got to hear a Latin chorus grand enough to fill the sky to its farthest reaches.

To be honest, it was pretty cool.

Of course, being cool was how she became the greatest idol the Korean Peninsula had ever produced. Anyway.

“Where have you hit a wall?”

“Hmm... I guess it feels like I’m lacking a little intuition? For example, Deputy Guild Leader. If someone offered you factory-made potato chips in exchange for six cartons of milk, what would you do?”

“That is a good trade.”

“Right? That’s exactly what I mean by ‘Equivalent Exchange.’ The problem is, things get a little murky once you move beyond food and drink.”

Dang Seorin chewed on the tip of her feather.

“For example... say someone offered to get rid of every last monster in this world for you. But in return, you had to spend a thousand years in prison.”

“Hmm.”

“Solitary confinement, by the way. Your meals come right on time, but you can’t talk to the guards. You can read books or watch dramas, but you can’t communicate with anyone else at all.”

If I received that same offer now, I would jump at it, thinking, ‘What a steal!’

But back then, I was only a regressor on his sixth run. I had not even lived a hundred years, and even those fewer than a hundred years had felt terribly grueling.

“Well? Would you take the deal?”

“... It is hard to say. I do not know.”

“Exactly. ‘I don’t know’ is the honest answer.”

Her Excellency the Great Witch smiled in satisfaction.

“Because we don’t have an accurate intuitive sense of how long a thousand years is, and we can’t have one, can we? Put simply, even if someone tells you to live a thousand years, you can’t grasp how much time that really is. A thousand years, nine hundred, eleven hundred—they all feel vaguely the same.”

“Hmm.”

Dang Seorin was right.

In fact, between the two of us, Dang Seorin was almost always the one who was right.

After all, my claim that I would accept the offer now only held true because I finally had an accurate intuitive sense of a thousand years.

“And it’s not just a thousand years. I simply haven’t experienced enough of life.”

“Hmmmm.”

“... Yes. I know what you want to say. What I mean is, even if I’ve been through all sorts of things compared to other people, I still don’t have enough experience to pull off a grand spell like [Equivalent Exchange]. Satisfied?”

“Who could possibly accumulate that much experience? Life is not infinite, and our lifespans are limited.”

“... True.”

Dang Seorin rose from her wooden chair and suddenly began to sing. It was a song I had never heard before.

In fact, she habitually hummed songs quite often, improvising them on the spot. Playing music critic and listening appreciatively on each such occasion was another of the Deputy Guild Leader’s unofficial duties.

I clapped. Having finished her solo concert, Dang Seorin gracefully picked up her pointed hat and bowed.

“Was that the Equivalent Exchange spell?”

“Yes. Though the spell didn’t activate. What did you think?”

“It was good.”

“Good.”

Dang Seorin smiled brightly.

And that was the end of it.

From time to time, Dang Seorin suffered the anguish of a creator, agonizing over how to make Equivalent Exchange—in other words, what lyrics she had to write to activate the spell. But she never completed it.

Because Tenlegs killed her before she could.

It was the same in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth runs.

In every run, Dang Seorin became obsessed with the spell called Equivalent Exchange, and in every run, she failed to check it off her bucket list.

At best, it was about ten percent complete.

We were never granted enough time to create a spell like Equivalent Exchange.

I did not know exactly how Dang Seorin met her end. I failed to protect her, and my only point of pride was that I always died at least a little before our little witch.

And so came the long-awaited tenth run.

“I can’t walk beside you along the rails you travel, but at least for the span of my life, I’ll follow you, matching your stride.”

“Even if we can’t live together in life, we can travel together in death.”

“Take care of me from now on, my companion through time.”

Dang Seorin left me those final words and died.

I could not prevent her death, but at least I could give her a funeral. I served as chief mourner. Like me, Dang Seorin had no surviving family.

I do not want to describe her funeral in detail now. No, I cannot even promise that a day will ever come when I want to.

All I know for certain is that Dang Seorin’s final words, mingled with laughter, left a deep mark on my heart.

The tenth run ended too, and the eleventh began.

“Oh, come on— Another failure. Again.”

“This one’s taking you quite a while. What spell are you trying to make?”

“Equivalent Exchange.”

I no longer spoke to Dang Seorin with formal deference, and she now called me “Undertaker” rather than “Deputy Guild Leader,” but our relationship remained as good as ever.

“A fine name. A spell that exchanges two objects or phenomena?”

“Huh? Oh, yes. That’s right.”

Dang Seorin blinked.

“How did you guess? You caught on surprisingly well.”

With difficulty, I swallowed the words: Because I am a regressor, and because I once served you as my liege.

It was none other than the person before me who had asked me to keep my regression a secret to the very end. That was the request she had made of me.

Thinking back on it now, Dang Seorin had a side to her that was chillingly cruel.

To herself. To me.

Sometimes, the touchstone of a human relationship was how much cruelty we permitted each other.

“... Where are you stuck? My first impression is that trying to exchange all things is rather too grand an ambition.”

“Oh? Yes, that’s a fair point too. More precisely, the fundamental problem is that I lack an intuitive understanding of all things. Hmm...”

Dang Seorin closed one eye.

“Would you listen to it? Sometimes hearing someone else’s opinion might help me come up with ideas.”

You were someone who never showed anyone the process of creating your spells, because you believed that “Magic must always be mysterious!” And when I asked whether that meant you had no intention of ever casting any magic on me, you had laughed foolishly and said, ["Huh? Is that how it works out?"]

As the person who remembered all of that, I could not refuse her request.

“You’re inviting me to be the first to hear the unfinished song of the leader of Three Thousand Worlds? What an unparalleled honor.”

“Indeed, indeed. You should feel honored.”

I listened.

“What did you think?”

“I enjoyed it. It’s splendid.”

“Well, obviously. What I want from you is feedback. Feedback. The Latin lyrics mean this... Is there anything I could fix?”

“Hmm. Then how about changing this word, ‘objects,’ to ‘starlight’ or ‘moonlight’?”

“Oh?”

“This part represents all the things in the world whose value is difficult to calculate, doesn’t it? Then rather than a dry word like ‘objects,’ I think you should express more explicitly how difficult they are to grasp with human hands.”

“Ah—so, starlight. Hmm. Oh? Wait a minute. Then...?”

Apparently struck by inspiration, Dang Seorin sent her quill racing across her notebook.

Of course, I had neither a creator’s talent nor a critic’s eye, and naturally, no aptitude as a mage whatsoever.

I was simply reciting, word for word, the lyrics of the unfinished songs Dang Seorin had left incomplete in previous runs.

“There! Yes! It’s still a long way from finished, but I definitely have this feeling that it feels like I’ve made a little progress!”

“I’m glad I could help.”

“Wow—thanks, Undertaker. What’s this? Do you have a talent for witchcraft, perhaps? Are you sure you won’t join our guild? I’ll pull some strings and slot you straight into the leadership. Hmm?”

“Sorry, but the Three Thousand Worlds uniform is a little...”

“Huh? You wanna fucking die?”

That was how my—our—project to create Equivalent Exchange began.

Although we began defeating Tenlegs in the tenth run, Dang Seorin poured almost all her lifespan into the battlefield, so she never had enough time to devote herself fully to creating magic.

Even so, with each passing run, she drew closer to completion, one word and one sentence at a time.

“Wouldn’t ‘judge’ be a little truer than ‘exchange’ in this refrain? At least for you, Dang Seorin.”

“Oh?”

My role was to pass that unfinished work on to the Dang Seorin of the next run.

“I think the word ‘alchemy’ carries more feeling here than ‘trade’...”

“Insisting that Equivalent Exchange must be completed with a single chant may be pointless stubbornness in the first place. Split the song into two separate pieces to activate it.”

“First, regeneration. Then a song about things whose value cannot be measured, and finally...”

The eleventh run. The twelfth. The thirteenth.

As the runs went on, Equivalent Exchange grew more complete by the day.

At first, Dang Seorin had been halfway to giving up, wondering how she could ever finish such a grand spell. But as time went on, her expression grew visibly brighter too.

“Huh? Wait a minute. Wait! If I do it this way, like you suggested... Huh? Maybe I really could make it...?”

To be honest, perhaps all of this was a small, childish indulgence of mine.

Even if I could not tell Dang Seorin I was a regressor, I wanted us to have at least one work that the two of us had spent time creating together.

It did not particularly matter what that work was. Equivalent Exchange simply happened to catch my eye.

I, the Undertaker, had always had a side so hopelessly soft that it made me chuckle. Toward myself, and toward you.

I wanted to believe that sometimes, the touchstone of a human relationship was how soft we could allow ourselves to be with each other.

And once again, Dang Seorin was right.

“—No way! I actually finished it!”

At last, in the twenty-sixth run.

“Goodness, a spell this grand with just two chants... I really am a genius! And Undertaker! I think you might be a bit of a genius too!”

Dang Seorin completed Equivalent Exchange.