“You want me to become a daemonist?”
“Whether or not you become a daemonist is up to you. What matters is that you use those meteors of yours to blow up as many towns and villages as you can.”
I didn’t answer.
I’d only half-anticipated that question. Of course, the only possible answer was no, but I wanted to keep the conversation going and get some more information.
“What is the benefit to me in joining forces with you?”
“The only benefit is…you won’t be destroyed immediately.”
“Huh?!”
A crescent-shaped imperfection opened on his monochrome face.
It was a smile.
“Lord Wizard!”
As if the mystic’s sharp voice was a signal, “they” appeared on cue. Behind the daemonist, ugly, human-like figures started floating toward us across the shore of muddy waves. What had started out as one or two figures rapidly filled the shore, forming an army.
The colors of their bodies kept changing, rapidly oscillating from red-brown to jet black and gray. But they were unmistakably daemons.
“Gaaah, gaaah, graah…”
“Greee…”
“Muh…Mar…Margil…”
The army of daemons lined up behind their monochrome master like a wall. One of them was clearly calling my name.
“Baron Corbal…?”
There was a small imp with two horns and a slender, twisted body. Its face was none other than…Baron Corbal’s. The man I’d fought with in Relis City. His soul had been trapped in this place.
“Death here is death of the soul. Even if you don’t die, but are trapped here, your physical body in the real world will be rendered comatose.” The monochrome daemonist explained it to me very nicely, perhaps because he wanted me to understand just how much of a disadvantage I was at here.
“Mana doesn’t work inside the spirit of a daemon. Lord Margilus, perhaps you have already learned special sorcery from the The Meaning of Life, but that power is useless here.”
Huh? He was misunderstanding.
He was probably talking about my knowledge of “magic,” as he’d heard about it from daemonists I’d fought like Baron Corbal, or from daemons. He didn’t know I had a whole different kind.
Well, that was convenient…
“I’m sorry, it’s a huge decision. Please give me some time to think about it.” My face probably looked distressed. I raised one hand to hide it and retreated.
“Gi-gaaa… Gah, graah!”
“Gi-geee… Gi-geee…”
A swarm of daemons large enough to block my line of sight was approaching, as inevitable as gravity.
“You’ve talked enough. I’m perfectly fine with turning you into a vegetable right here and now.” The daemonist might not have had a face, but he looked irritated all the same.
“L-Lord Wizard? Is that possible?” The mystic looked back at me, concerned.
I really did want more time, and it wasn’t a lie that the decision was a big one. But the decision I was talking about was a very different one than what our pale host had in mind.
While weakly raising one hand to hide my mouth, I’d started forcefully chanting a spell.
There were two problems. One was the ethical issue. The spell I was about to use had inhumane effects, and I’d never wanted to use it in my entire life.
The other was a more serious issue. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to use this spell inside the spirit world of a daemon. As a test, I’d gone into my inner world once, right after going through the door. So now I knew something the monster didn’t: I could cast my spells here.
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s heavier than usual…”
I became my imagined self in my inner world—the internal me that my true self imagined—while I was already imagining myself in the consciousness of a daemon. It was like I was seeing a dream inside of a dream (and only with conscious effort).
That awkwardness expressed itself as a tangible weight.
For example, normally, in my inner world, the lantern light shone five meters in diameter. However, the light I had in my hand now only showed me what was right in front of my eyes. After that was darkness. Just imagining what was ten centimeters around me required so much concentration that I thought my brain cells would burst. I suppose that was to be expected, since my brain was being forced to work more than twice as hard as normal.
“The eighth level sure is far…”
Both my head and body felt heavy, and I couldn’t see well. I went through the Gate of Magic and down the spiral staircase, feeling as if I was walking underwater.
The heaviness intensified as I went down the levels. I thought my brain would fry just trying to maintain my imagined self; I was in no condition to climb stairs.
Somehow, I managed to make it to the eighth-level spellbook archive. I opened the heavy door—it felt like it had rusted—and approached the charged books on the nine pedestals within.
“I’m going to see if I can use this here…”
I pointed to the book I had in mind and started to release the chaotic energy in the form of magical power. The book responded to my chanting, lighting up and changing into two ten-sided dice. One was white and the other was black. They were the familiar percentage dice.
“Argh… My head!”
While enduring the terrible headache, I threw the dice onto the pedestal. Now, as long as the execution doesn’t fail…
Clack. Clack.
The white die bounced on the pedestal and landed on zero. And then the black die…also rolled zero.
“Huh?”
It was a fumble.
Fwoooooo!
The dice became a vortex of dazzling light and went berserk.
When normal spells ended in a fumble, it only meant one wasted spell. But here, in the inner world of an inner world, and a special environment at that, the runaway chaotic energy swelled infinitely, swallowing up whatever was around it. This was just a temporary space created by my consciousness in a corner of the sea of chaos. The collapse of that space meant that my consciousness itself would soon be swallowed by chaos.
I desperately focused my will and tried to fixate on the image of a solid wall, floor, and myself.
“Wh-whoa!”
Me, the archive, everything…into the light…
✦ ✦ ✦
I was swallowed by the sea of chaos.
Chaos was the root of all possibilities. The majority were negative, but if I could connect to one of the rare positives, there was a slim hope of returning to reality.
I desperately tried to maintain my form.
I am an ordinary, forty-two-year-old bachelor who works in an office. I commute to work by bus every morning, work without excessive overtime or stress, play computer games at night, and sometimes dabble in making TTRPG rulebooks and supplements that honestly have no shot at commercial success…
I was a junior high school student born into a poor family. I spent as much as time as possible in the classroom alone, bought only one piece of bread for lunch, and had a secret part-time job at night.
I was a private detective in America in the 1900s. A frightened young man asked me to investigate the strange phenomenon that occurred in the house of his uncle who’d suddenly died. I headed to a town in Massachusetts with a congenial newspaper reporter and a bored doctor…
I was one of the adventurers based on the frontier. With fellow bandits, monks, and warriors, I stamped out the goblins and fished for treasures left in the ruins…
No, wait. That wasn’t right.
I am Geo Margilus, a powerful wizard who transmigrated to Sedia from Japan.
I am the Great Wizard Geo Margilus.
I am Lord Geo Margilus.
I am Geo.
Who am I?
What am I?
Me?
I—