Magecraft was the furthest world human wisdom could reach.
Magic stood outside everything that world encompassed, a lonely existence beyond the heavens.
—The first changed everything.
—The second that followed accepted more.
—The third that came after revealed the future.
—The fourth that sustained it hid itself.
And so the fifth, which brought it to an end, had long since lost its meaning.
Wouldn't it have been better to stop at the third? Someone had once said that.
Magecraft was the study of history.
The good and evil wrought by humanity, the cycles of the stars—all were ordained by fate.
Magic, however, was decreed by a god beyond the heavens.
If its workings excluded both humanity and the stars, who in this world had come to revere and praise it as a miracle, and why?
Naked evil.
Magic was an enemy of humanity.
Thus, anything that gave birth to new magic was certain to be slain by the red shadow.
—Kinoko Nasu. "Creating something from nothing?" Roland's interest was piqued. "Go on."
"First, do you know what the Root is?" Doctor Roman dug a small blackboard out of the storage room, put on a pair of plain-lens glasses, and picked up a piece of chalk.
"Hmm... Type-Moon's Source Wall?" Roland ventured.
"Not quite, but close enough." Doctor Roman adjusted his glasses. "The Root is the source of magecraft and the ultimate goal all magi pursue. The Swirl of the Root is like a book as old as the Universe, recording the beginning of all things—their causes, their course, and their end. Much like the Akashic Records, it is also called the eighth consciousness in Buddhism: Alaya."
"In other words, the Swirl of the Root is ultimate knowledge, and 'ultimate' implies a limit. All things have limits. Without the finite, the