Why was it that so many people, so often, could never stick with something for long?
Cui Ciyou had pondered this question before.
External factors were certainly part of it. For instance, you had to consider the basics of making a living. You had to eat, had to survive; ideals could not fill your stomach. Then there were differences in talent. Watching someone else effortlessly reach heights you could never attain, even after giving it everything you had, was enough to crush most people. Or there were incalculable sunk costs. You had invested so much, yet still saw no return, and reason told you to cut your losses.
These were all reasons.
But Cui Ciyou felt that there was really only one deeper, more fundamental reason: you could see no hope.
When everything before you was so pitch-black that you could not see your own hand, without even the faintest glimmer of light, it felt like walking alone into a deep, dark dead end.
There was no way forward, and behind you lay endless darkness. What could you do except give up, turn around, and take another path?
Often, those said to have perseverance, those praised for never giving up, might simply have been luckier than others, able to glimpse even a faint, flickering candle flame in that darkness. The truly admirable ones were the madmen who knew that a solid wall, a dead end, lay ahead, yet still braced themselves to smash out a future with their own flesh and blood.
Before encountering Roxy's theory of "dual Magic Circles," Nanahoshi had been trapped in just such a hopeless predicament.
And that successfully summoned cola bottle from Earth had been the first ray of dawn to pierce the endless darkness.
Now that they had proven Summoning Magic feasible, now that