by Ryota Hori
“Do you mean it’s impossible with the current techniques?” A hint of mocking glinted in Ryoma’s eyes.
In the two months since he had escaped Shardina’s pursuit, Ryoma went in all directions, seeking out famed thaumaturgists. Annamaria’s words were the same ones spoken by the many thaumaturgists he’d spoken to up until now.
The same from her, too... Shit.
Ryoma clicked his tongue, annoyed by his efforts once again coming up in vain. But what the woman said next exceeded Ryoma’s expectations.
“No, it’s not because I have no technique to send someone back. It’s because a technique to send someone back simply cannot be produced.”
“What?!” These unexpected words made Ryoma raise his voice in anger.
It was a countenance of wrath that the Malfist sisters hadn’t seen on Ryoma’s face in the two months he’d traveled with them. For two months, the three of them ignored all guild-related work, traveling in search of thaumaturgists who might have a way to send him back to his Earth.
Of course, having killed Gaius and been driven out of the empire of O’ltormea, Ryoma couldn’t visit any thaumaturgists in the empire’s sphere of influence, so he put them aside... And so they went from place to place, but whoever they visited, they always gave the same answer.
There was no way back.
But they also said that the technique simply hadn’t been developed yet. Which prompted Ryoma to ask them, “Can you develop that technique?” But their answer was unanimous. “It is impossible for me.”
Very few verbal thaumaturgists were capable of making use of the technique to summon someone from another world, which was a guarded, secret art. Its existence may have been well known, but very few could actually make use of the technique, and Ryoma was asking them to reverse engineer the craft and form an entirely new one. Anyone would naturally hesitate.
He’d heard that same answer repeated more times than he could count already. Some of those he asked named a few people who might be capable of creating a new technique, and one of them was the woman before him, Annamaria.
If a technique to take him home didn’t exist, it only needed to be made. That was what Ryoma simply thought. And he was aware that it was far more easily said than done. He was prepared for the process to take years and require vast resources. But if the technique simply could not be produced, that would be entirely different.
His escaping from Shardina’s clutches and traveling from place to place, evading his pursuers, would have all been for naught. It was only natural Ryoma would lose his temper.
“Calm yourself. Getting angry will not change that answer.”
Even in the face of Ryoma’s anger, Annamaria didn’t change her expression. Apparently, she had once been a civil official for some country and had to leave her post for opposing a minister over national policies. Ryoma could agree with those rumors being plausible.
Even before the threatening pressure Ryoma’s massive frame gave off, her expression didn’t so much as budge. She had a grit one wouldn’t expect out of a woman. Realizing threatening her wouldn’t help him here, Ryoma changed his tone. Buying Annamaria’s ire here wouldn’t do him any good. He needed to gather any information that might help him get back home.
“I apologize for losing my temper... I’m fine. Could you explain why it’s impossible for me to go back?”
Suppressing the hatred and anger brewing in his heart, Ryoma found the presence of mind to speak those words. Shouting here wouldn’t change the facts. If he was to advance even a single step forward, what he needed was to remain cool-headed, not to stew in anger.
Perhaps he’d clenched his teeth too strongly, because the taste of rust spread out in his mouth.
“The reason is clear enough... Before I explain it, though, I need to confirm something. How much do you understand about how thaumaturgy works?”
“How thaumaturgy works...?”
Annamaria’s question caused what the Malfist sisters had taught him about thaumaturgy to resurface in his mind. Thaumaturgy was a general term for techniques that made use of prana, the fundamental life energy that all living beings in this world had. And depending on how it was used, thaumaturgy could be divided into three main categories.
The first employed the prana within oneself to strengthen one’s body; martial thaumaturgy. This technique required no incantations and was used to augment one’s physical ability, making it extremely menacing when used during close quarters combat. Its greatest flaw was that the scope of its influence ended with strengthening one’s body; it only augmented what the human body was capable of to begin with. So in other words, it could boost your muscle strength and stamina, but couldn’t enable you to fire flames or anything of the sort.
The second was closer to what fantasy novels described as magic; verbal thaumaturgy. This allowed the user to temporarily borrow a bit of the power of existing gods, demons and spirits in exchange for their prana. It required reciting incantations, but it allowed one to unleash flames, fire bolts of electricity, and to make use of all kinds of powers and phenomena that humans wouldn’t normally be capable of exhibiting. At its core, verbal thaumaturgy was a method for humans to achieve what was normally impossible.
And as for its biggest flaw, it was certainly the requirement of the incantation itself. It was possible to shorten and omit parts of the incantation depending on the caster’s skill, but all the same, mortal combat rarely allowed one the time to recite a spell. As such, verbal thaumaturgists showed their value only when given distance between their foes.
In addition, since they were asking for the assistance of others, i.e. gods and demons, they would need to have a thaumaturgical technique made up of knowledge regarding the one whose power they were borrowing. Those were, however, secret arts only held by those in positions of power within the different countries; since the rate of illiteracy in this world was exceptionally high, very few people had the freedom to choose to learn by reading books.
In other words, compared to martial thaumaturgy, verbal thaumaturgy had a much higher running cost on the battlefield. It was for this reason that among the many thaumaturgists, only very few employed verbal thaumaturgy.
The final type was endowed thaumaturgy. It involved carving thaumaturgy into a tool that lacked prana of its own, like a sword or a spear, allowing it to exhibit a predetermined effect when enveloped with a user’s prana, and in so doing endowing an effect on the material.
While it required no incantations, on the other hand it required the thaumaturgic carving to be etched by a knowledgeable craftsman, and was only capable of the single effect it was endowed with. But since the user himself didn’t need to be the one doing the engraving, the number of weapons wasn’t very limited.
Of course, depending on the quality and material, endowed weapons could be extremely expensive, so in other words, this was effectively something the power of money could acquire.
Each system had its own pros and cons, and the system one chose to make use of depended on the environment they were in and the skills they had.
Ryoma’s explanation made Annamaria break into a grin.
“Correct. So you understand the basics... Then allow me to ask. Which system of thaumaturgy does the spell to summon someone from another world fall under?”
She wore a smile like that of a teacher testing a bad student. Ryoma whispered, as if spitting out the answer distastefully.
“Verbal thaumaturgy...”
“Exactly.” Annamaria nodded with a smile. “And the biggest hurdle with sending someone back to another world is in determining: to which god do you offer up your prana?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m here, in this world. This world’s thaumaturgy is what called me here!” Ryoma’s voice grew rougher. “So just tell the god they told to summon me to put me back where I was!”
His face, usually serene and calm, was uncharacteristically awash with panic and annoyance. And that was obvious, in a way. It ha
d now been two months since Ryoma was summoned to this world. His patience was at its limit.
“Yes, leaving this world is possible.” Annamaria said, not changing her expression one bit.
“Then—!”
Ryoma tried to cut in, but the next words Annamaria spoke would send him plummeting to despair.
“But you would be cast out to wander the fabric of space-time for all eternity.”
“What...?”
The moment they heard those words, a shiver ran through the Malfist sisters’ shoulders. Annamaria, however, continued speaking without budging an eyebrow, even as Ryoma cast his verbal wrath and fiery gaze in her direction.
“And wandering within the fabric of space-time... would effectively mean death, or even a fate worse than that.”
“Don’t bullshit me!” At that moment, something that had been bottled up inside Ryoma ever since he was summoned to this world loudly crumbled to pieces.
The powerful sound of a blow echoed through the room. Ryoma’s clenched fist bashed into the wooden table, causing countless cracks to run through it. The table seemed rather valuable, but Ryoma could hardly care at the moment. His fist would have surely flown into Annamaria’s face, if not something else to unleash his anger upon.
“Master Ryoma!”
“Your hand!”
The Malfist twins, who were standing at his side, screamed in shock.
He’d probably broken the skin. As he struck his fist without restraint, reddish blood dripped down to the floor.
“Master Ryoma, your hand! Sara, get a clean cloth!”
“Fuck off! Don’t get in my way!”
Shooing away the sisters who rushed over to treat his wound, Ryoma ignored his bleeding and glared at Annamaria.
“Hey. I dare you to say that again.” He growled in a subdued voice, that almost felt like a grumble from the pit of the earth.
Cold, dark hatred burned in Ryoma’s eyes, and his voice was steeped in blatant murderous intent. Neither notions of respect for his elders nor the worried glances from the Malfist sisters held any meaning for Ryoma right now.
Emotions that he’d kept restrained until now shook Ryoma’s whole being. The man standing there with his eyes bloodshot seemed to be nothing less than a savage, frenzied demon.
“Threaten me all you want, it won’t change the conclusion. There’s no going back to your world, which is to say, Rearth.”
“Rearth?”
“Yes, your original world. We call it Reverse Earth— Rearth for short. The other side of this world we live on, Earth.”
Annamaria spoke without a hint of wavering in her expression, which made Ryoma regain a bit of composure. No amount of anger would overturn the facts, which meant that listening to Annamaria’s words right now was of the utmost importance.
I gotta keep it together. What I need right now is information.
Annamaria wasn’t guilty here, and Ryoma understood this perfectly. But his heart still rumbled with anger and hatred at how her merciless words shattered the hope in his heart. So Ryoma focused on the reasons for keeping her alive. He repeated in his head time after time that if he was to survive, he needed Annamaria’s information.
So they call this world Earth, and the world I came from is Rearth... Well, I guess that makes sense. That’s just how the people in this world call it...
This happened a lot in his old reality, too. The sun shines equally on all countries of the world, but Japan still called itself the land of the rising sun, and the world is round, which meant no matter where you were, you were never in the middle. That didn’t stop China from calling itself the Middle Kingdom.
If there existed two sides to the world, it would only make sense for people to name the world they live in the ‘true’ side and the other side as ‘the reverse.’
“Of course, there’s no true and reverse side, at least not physically.” Annamaria continued, noticing the anger had diminished in Ryoma’s expression. “But the only worlds we’ve discovered that are inhabited by humans are ours and your own, and the people of the past conveniently named them as such.”
“I don’t give two shits which side is true and which side is reverse. Why can’t I go home?”
“It’s a simple matter.” Annamaria answered with a light shrug. “In order to summon someone from Rearth to Earth, one is required to offer up their prana to a god residing in Earth. That’s because there’s a barrier set around the world that prevents anyone from encroaching on it from outside. The same barrier is set around Rearth.”
“Wait a second... Let’s leave the whole barrier thing aside for a second. As a matter of fact, I’ve been summoned here. Why can’t we just pray to the God that let me into this world?”
Rationally speaking, any entrance could serve as an exit.
“No. Whether anyone can enter a barrier is bound to the approval of the gods governing each world. What this means is that after you leave Earth, you’ll need the approval of the god who set up the barrier around Rearth to enter.”
Ryoma tried to organize Annamaria’s words in a more understandable manner.
So I’m welcome to leave, but if I want to get in I need to be approved... So it’s like when the door to a hotel room locks by itself and leaves you stuck outside, then.
Auto-lock systems were common in hotels. Getting out from the inside was easy enough, but once the door closes, it locks automatically, and there’s no going back in without the key. Imagining the worlds were like hotel rooms and the fabric of space-time was the corridor made it easier to understand.
So the key to the room is the name of the God in my world... That’s tricky.
The two big differences, though, were that in this case, you couldn’t phone the front desk to have them unlock the door for you, and there was no guarantee he could survive while wandering the fabric of space-time.
“So I can get through the barrier on Earth’s side, but the problem is getting through Rearth’s barrier, and me getting lost in the fabric of space-time and dying...”
“Yes, put concisely.” Annamaria said with the same unchanging expression. “Sadly, no one’s ever returned from there, so it’s unknown what would happen to you out there. But your way of putting it is apt.”
“But what if I do figure out the name of the god who put up the barrier around Rearth?” Even as Ryoma continued refuting Annamaria’s words, he tried predicting her next answer in the back of his mind.
He didn’t know how long the people of this Earth had been summoning people from Rearth, but it certainly wasn’t just ten or twenty years. A century or two also seemed inadequate.
Which meant that for centuries, perhaps even for millennia, people were forcibly summoned from his world to this one, all to be convenient pawns in a war. But what if some of those summoned escaped their summoners like Ryoma did and tried to find their way back home? If nothing else, Ryoma doubted he was the first person summoned to try to make his way home.
Annamaria placed a faded book she retrieved from the bookcase on top of the cracked table.
“This is a record of otherworlders who have tried to return to your old world.” Opening the book, which was thick enough to pass off as a dictionary, she continued. “Crafting a thaumaturgical technique to send you back isn’t complicated in and of itself, but that alone won’t take you back to your world.”
Opening the tome to a certain page, Annamaria stuck it out in front of Ryoma.
“The names of gods from your world are chronicled here. In other worlds, all the names written here are ones that were used for the spell but showed no effect.”
“So you’re saying that so long as I don’t have the name of a god that isn’t chronicled here...”
“Returning to your world would be impossible, yes.”
Annamaria’s icy warning stabbed into Ryoma’s heart. Ryoma snatched the book as if stealing it away, and left with it under his arm. He then went to a tool store to buy ink and parchments, and shut himself off in his
room at the inn.
“Tsukuyomi, Susanoo, Amaterasu... Yahweh, Jehovah... Indra, Agni, the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara...”
These were all the names of Gods passed down since antiquity. All famous names anyone had heard at one point or another, but the book also contained the names of unknown Gods that were buried in the sands of history and time.
After Poseidon’s name was Odin’s. The names were listed without a trace of order or regularity. Ryoma’s predecessors were grasping at straws, indeed; they wrote down any name they could think of, without regard for religion or ethnicity.
“Dammit! Like hell I’m giving up. I’m gonna get back home if it’s the last thing I do.”
Those emotions spurred Ryoma onward. He repeated to himself that, so long as he took every advantage he could, no matter how low the probability of success was it wasn’t at zero. As if trying to fool himself into believing it...
The sisters stood in the corridor leading up to Ryoma’s room. Ever since they had returned from Annamaria’s home, Ryoma’s expression was thick with gloom, and he didn’t respond to any of the Malfist sisters’ words.
“It’s been five hours...” Sara said, and Laura nodded in silent agreement.
Nighttime was already approaching, the time when most people would be setting off to the world of dreams.
“Master Ryoma...”
The Malfist sisters knew Ryoma’s feelings painfully well. Imagining themselves in his position made a shiver run through them. But they couldn’t save Ryoma from this. The only thing they could do was wait in front of his room, concerned for his well-being.
At some point, the morning sunlight began streaming through the windows. It was sunrise. Exchanging a glance, the sisters hardened their resolve and knocked on the door. In their hands was a tray with a late night meal they had especially asked the innkeeper to prepare for them.
