268 – Potential
I am a strong person, a special person,
I have never thought of myself as a person born with a great mission.
All the words praising me went in through one ear and passed out through the other.
Because I was rotten and rotten inside and was never that great of a person.
So I didn’t believe in myself.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to endure it in the end.
If I think about it now, it was actually like that,
I may have endured this much.
-Light…
A forgotten word suddenly comes to mind.
In the meantime, I had even forgotten that I had forgotten the word light.
I can’t believe I’ve forgotten so much and so quickly.
Even when everything I knew was fading away like a dream, I still thought I remembered a lot. That’s what I thought until I remembered the words waiting to be recognized in my mind.
-Why am I…
What I now realize is that I have completely forgotten who I am.
It’s not that I forgot my name. I forgot something more fundamental.
It has been a long time since I could feel my limbs. And I adapted to it so quickly that even I was surprised. It was inevitable that everything would fade away.
I couldn’t remember what I was.
Even the fact that I am human.
-Did I end up walking this heavy path?
I was in the whole world just a moment ago.
Even the flowing stars were just powder scattered countless times in this world. The world I lived in was nothing more than a blue dot, not worth discussing, not even worth calling dust.
I couldn’t interpret what I saw. I could just accept it. Everything there was bigger than this little world. I didn’t even dare to compare.
-I don’t know you. I don’t even know why it woke me up. And now, I don’t even wonder about that. All I know is one thing.
These people were called the best on this earth.
And the many things I looked at and admired while I was alive.
Things that have already been erased in the flow of time.
Everything I once thought was precious has already faded away.
-You must take me to the core.
Let everything go and the only thing left.
It is not something grand like a mission.
The last ‘me’ left behind by a foolish human being
It is nothing more than foolish stubbornness.
*****
For convenience, let’s call that a ‘thorn’.
It was long, as if it would reach the sky, and dug deep into the ground. That thorn, so large as if it were piercing the entire North Pole, is a huge stake erected in this northern land.
If you can use it, there is nothing on earth that can compare to it. Roka’s true sword, the princess’s dragon sword, Yurinel’s holy sword, and any other object I’ve seen cannot compare to it.
Because there is such a gap, it can be expected. There is a possibility to tear away this destruction and open a new future. There was hope to stop the fateful destruction that was destined for us.
Even if you say that, this is only if you can use it to a certain extent.
-I am unreasonable. I don’t know how many more days I can live, but at least I don’t want to die now, right?
Oberta gave up long ago. She retreated in despair without even touching her thorns. She seemed to be depressed by that fact herself, and she no longer opened her mouth.
Out of sheer curiosity, Yanid, who was next to her, placed his hand on the thorn. He gently placed his palm on the large thing. Then her expression changed and he desperately pulled her arm. With a crunching sound, her entire frozen arm was torn off. The child’s face also turned pale.
“This is now…”
She only barely touched him, but at the moment of contact, her arm turned into a stick of ice. Surprisingly, Janid wasn’t that surprised that his arm was missing. On the contrary, I and the other people who were watching were even more surprised.
“…I don’t think it will work. “It’s not even possible.”
Rather than that, he seemed even more surprised by the coldness of the thorn itself, which was of a different order of magnitude. I healed the arm with divine power, but just because a new arm grows does not mean the torn arm disappears.
So now, a frozen, colorless arm was attached to the thorn, shaking. Yanid’s expression became somewhat strange when he saw that, but he deserved it. Maybe my expression wasn’t that different.
[It is true that your body is weaker than mine now, but the difference is not that big. If you couldn’t hold on for even a moment and lost your arm, I’m probably the same way. At best, I can only hold on for a few more seconds. No, if you use magic…]
The dragon pondered for a moment and added with a sullen expression.
[But it’s probably not that difficult. It’s a leap from being an object that condenses the coldness of the entire universe, but at best it’s just a crumb of it. As I said before, it’s not just me as an individual that’s the problem, it means that even if our entire species were to attack us, it wouldn’t be a problem. The unit of power is different.]
[My magic is not poor, but the problem is before that. There is no magic that can control different levels of power. Any famous magic is ultimately meaningless in the face of the overwhelming power gap. This is the first time since I just hatched from an egg that I feel this small.]
Something cosmic. That is the substance of that thorn and the fragment left behind by the ancient god.
I don’t know what it is or what its function is. You can make a guess, but there is no way to prove that the guess is true. I heard something like this somewhere before.
-Do not try to judge people sitting higher than you based on your way of thinking. They may be standing higher than you and seeing things you cannot see.
People who climb a mountain can only see one side of the mountain, but those who have already reached the top of the mountain can look down on the entire mountain from that high point. If you can see what others cannot see, it is natural that your way of thinking will be different from others.
If they were ancient gods, they must have been from a higher place and looking further away than me.
It would certainly not be a wise idea to try to guess their way of thinking.
From what I heard from Ajahadaka, the ancient gods had to pay a terrible price if they wanted to directly intervene in this world. Actually, I had heard that story before. An unknown ancient god who punished vampires. Instead of cursing the sun, he sacrificed his own existence.
The reason why this item was left here despite the cost.
The only way to do that is to ask the person concerned directly.
But the ancient god who left this object has probably already disappeared, and even if he has not disappeared, we have no way of communicating with him. So, of course, there is only one way to try it.
It’s a somewhat ignorant and impromptu method, but let’s try to infuse it with divine power. It’s not that I don’t know that it’s a one-dimensional idea, but I don’t think there’s any other way to use it.
“Is this such a great thing? “Then I’d like to try it too.”
I thought so, but Roka jumped out first. Roca must have learned something from Yanid’s actions. He did not grab the thorn himself, but only circled around it and observed the thorn carefully.
That said, I only looked around and looked at the part right above the part that was stuck in the ground, but that was unavoidable. The thorns were so large that it would have taken two days at most to carefully observe every part. Roca didn’t seem to be that interested in this thorn.
“Inhale!”
As the child put his hands together, the image of a hot sun shimmered behind him, emitting a ray of sunshine. It was as if the sun had fallen from the sky and came here, and it looked so similar that even if you compared it to the real sun, you couldn’t find any differences.
One in the sky. And one on the ground. For a moment, it seemed as if the sun had become two. However, the dragon, who saw the blazing heat of the sun, had already decided on the outcome before it even started.
[If it was a real sun, you wouldn’t know. It might really have been possible to melt these thorns.]
Roca looked at the shaky arm that was still attached to the thorn, swallowed, and carefully placed one finger on it. Slightly, just slightly, the finger touched the thorn. At that moment, the sun behind Roca began to fade, making a sound like a dying bonfire.
Chiikik!
As if someone had scooped up water and sprinkled it, the blazing sun suddenly froze. Not only did it cool down and take the shape of a black body, but it also froze and turned into ice.
Roca immediately removed his fingers, but his body shivered from the cold. The only achievement was that his fingers did not get torn off like in Yanid’s case.
[But even if that were the case, the only solution would have been to melt this item rather than use it, and it wouldn’t have been of any help. Before that, if a single human was truly able to use the same power as the sun, then what would have been the big deal? Just burn it.]
Since there is no object on earth to compare with, we have to use the sun in the sky as a comparison, and no matter how you look at it, it is not something that humans can use.
It is not a problem to hold and use it even at the level of today’s Loca, but it is a life-threatening item if touched, so although it is the greatest treasure in the world, it can never be considered precious.
After all, no one has succeeded in dealing with thorns, so now it’s my turn to try.
I slowly approached the thorn and carefully placed my hand on it.