Chapter 13

What exactly was the Root?

In a magus's answer, the Root was the cause behind the appearance of all things, the so-called Prime Mover.

If one asked Touko Aozaki, she would say that the Root was the Akashic Records she sought.

By Aoko's own understanding, the Root was ultimate knowledge. No matter what one wanted to know, as long as one could find the origin of that question within the Root, one could immediately obtain the "effect"—the answer—from that "cause." It was the most powerful encyclopedia in the world.

Everything was here, yet nothing was here.

Aoko felt her "self" continuously melting away. In this ultimate void, she could feel nothing, yet it was as though she knew everything.

Her pain vanished, and so did her wounds, because her shattered body hovered between existence and nonexistence.

Aoko desperately wanted to fall into a deep sleep, but a voice deep within her told her she absolutely could not do that.

If an ordinary magus reached the Root, their self would instantly be overwhelmed by the Root's infinite causes, then assimilated and erased in an instant. But the concept of the "human" Aoko Aozaki clearly contained some element that did not originate from the Swirl of the Root.

It was this unknown element that firmly preserved her self and allowed her to remain alive within it.

And as long as she continued to "live," the more "rewards" she took from the Swirl of the Root...

What had Aoko wanted again? She could no longer remember clearly... Amid her confusion, Aoko seemed to see the Aozaki family's Magic Crest, and seemed to recall the Fifth Magic her grandfather had cast upon that door...

Magic...

Right. She was a Magician.

Aoko Aozaki immediately snapped awake, and she instantly gained a physical form within the Swirl of the Root.

She immediately touched her wound, only to feel smooth skin. The injury had disappeared as if it had never existed. Aoko wanted to see something, but she could see nothing, as though she were blind—yet it also felt as though she could see everything.

I need clothes, Aoko thought.

The next instant, the clothes she had been wearing before reappeared on her body.

Aoko immediately understood the mechanism of this place. She began operating her Magic Crest at full power, demanding all knowledge concerning the Fifth Magic.

Perhaps because she had escaped the trance-like state within this chaos, Aoko suddenly felt a powerful rejection, as though the Swirl of the Root did not permit the existence of a self this strong.

But Aoko had already begun drawing in the mysteries of the Fifth Magic. Before she was completely stripped away from the Root, she would master a complete Magic surpassing her grandfather's!

As Aoko "asked" with all her strength, the Magic Crest that had originally existed only on her right arm spread across her entire left arm. Even the Magic Crest on her right arm became denser, its glowing patterns growing stranger still.

Excruciating pain, as though her nerves were being etched, erupted across both of Aoko's arms. Yet she did not care in the slightest. Right now, she only wanted to laugh out loud—and she did.

The crest of the Fifth Magic covered both her arms and began spreading toward Aoko's back. However, just as the marks extending from her arms connected across her back, the laughing Aoko was ejected.

"Ow!"

Aoko landed hard on her backside. She rubbed the section of her spine that had previously been broken by the Primate Murderer and found it completely unharmed. The rest of her wounds had vanished as well, as if she had never been injured.

Aoko stood back up and dusted off her hands. Then she looked around and found herself in the previous cavern. However, the damn dog that had beaten her into a critical state had disappeared.

She reached toward her waist. Her spell component pouch was still there, and for some inexplicable reason, the spell components inside had been replenished.

Her spellbook was still there too. Remembering something, she opened it and checked the places where the scroll pages she had used had been. The spent scroll pages had been restored, but the spells inscribed on them were gone.

Aoko seemed to understand something. She closed her eyes and examined herself inwardly. Her body was now healthy to an excessive degree, even stronger than before she had entered the cavern.

The fragment of the Weave was still there. Aoko let out a breath of relief.

As she lowered her head, Aoko's hair fell down. She grabbed a lock of her long hair and found that it had turned the fiery red of flames.

Why was that? Some side effect of the Fifth Magic?

Aoko recalled that in the memories of her "previous life," the Aoko Aozaki of the original timeline had also turned red-haired after activating the Fifth Magic. But her hair now remained red even in its normal state. Perhaps this was some sign that she had completely mastered the Magic?

Those were all trivial matters, Aoko thought confidently.

She turned around and found that the entrance that had once been there had vanished. This was merely the end of an ordinary rock cave now.

Grandfather won't blame me, will he? Aoko thought guiltily. Destroying the entrance to the Root and all that—every magus in the world probably wanted to kill her as quickly as possible, didn't they?

But none of that mattered, Aoko thought with confidence. There were no more than five magi in this world now who could pose a threat to her.

She walked briskly toward the exit of the cave, unaware that each time she moved forward a certain distance, a section of the cavern behind her vanished.

When Aoko returned to her grandfather's basement workshop and looked back again, the cavern had completely disappeared.

Maybe it was something like a flaw in the world, Aoko thought with a sigh. Her grandfather was gone now, and the cavern of the Root had vanished too. Did that make her some kind of prodigal heir?

But she had obtained the complete Fifth Magic and had even formed it into a complete Crest of Magic. That should count as bringing honor to her ancestors, right?

At that thought, the newly born Fifth Magician, Aoko Aozaki, no longer felt guilty. Humming a popular song that had yet to appear in this era, she began "cleaning up" her grandfather's magus workshop.

Since the old man was gone, it would be far too wasteful to leave these inheritances in this gloomy basement. Without the slightest guilt, Aoko gathered up all the remaining books and various Mystic Codes in her grandfather's workshop, intending to dig another basement beneath the villa she shared with Touko to store them all...

Huh? Aoko frowned as she thought. Wasn't something wrong here...?

Well, forget it. This was no time to overthink things. Happily identifying the uses of her grandfather's various magical inheritances, Aoko sorted them into categories and piled them in the center of the room, planning to call for a vehicle to haul them all away when the time was right...

"Hey, Touko," a cute little boy with golden hair asked as he walked beside Touko, "is your younger sister strong?"

"She inherited the Fifth Magic Crest," Touko said as she walked. "And she has some strange and unusual magecraft of her own. Of course she's strong."

"Then will we win?" the blond little boy asked. "Will you win, Touko?"

"We will win."

Touko spoke in a firm, utterly certain tone, as though the matter had already been settled.

A faint, confident smile appeared on her beautiful face. Touko looked ahead, as though she could already see her younger sister, who had only recently inherited the Magic Crest, being defeated by her and Beo.