Chapter 286: What I Want Is Not That |
Six-Armed Angela asked Saul to give her a new name, so she could use it as her new identity.
But Saul, in his current state, wasn’t interested in naming anyone. He rejected her flatly. “Your identity is yours to define.”
The girl fell into hesitation again.
“No rush,” Saul said, then turned his attention back to the other three soul consciousnesses.
While he wasn’t communicating with them, the energy depletion of their soul consciousnesses was very slow.
“Now that the diary is functioning as a locator, even the energy drain during communication has lessened. That means I won’t need to replenish them as often.”
He didn’t feel any joy—only calmly analyzed the current situation.
After that, Saul told the four of them to wait off to the side. He once again began flipping through the diary.
He had already reread everything in the diary and had a good understanding of the four soul's conditions.
He wanted to see—by getting even closer to the diary’s consciousness—whether he could witness a different past.
“Don’t disturb me,” he instructed.
The four soul consciousnesses quickly stepped back, respectfully acknowledging his request.
Saul lowered his head and activated his mental power.
He didn’t need to focus it on his eyes—after all, right now he was just a consciousness himself.
As Saul’s awareness flowed, a star in the sky suddenly began to flicker.
That star was far dimmer than the rest of the lights above.
And after flashing rapidly for a moment, it grew even dimmer.
Saul, fully focused on the diary, didn’t notice it. But the other four souls did.
Especially Agu and Morden—the two of them exchanged a glance.
They observed the flickering star for several seconds, then turned their attention to the other stars, and their expressions gradually shifted from calm to solemn.
Their master was using some kind of power.
And his power… was potent enough to rival the stars in the sky!
For a moment, the two quick-witted minds fell completely silent.
Only Angela, who was cautiously keeping her mind restrained, and Herman, who wasn’t that sharp to begin with, remained relatively calm.
Saul, unaware that Agu and Morden had just reevaluated his level due to their own overthinking, remained focused on digging through a new piece of history from the diary.
As Saul channeled his mental power and looked once more into the Dead Wizard’s Diary, light and shadow shifted—and a new world unfolded before him.
It was a quiet night, and Saul was observing the land from an aerial perspective.
On the ground, there was no grass or trees—only bones in endless heaps wherever the eye could see.
In the distance were snow-capped mountains stretching far and wide—but none stood taller than the one before Saul.
Yet this mountain wasn’t made of snow—it was a mountain of corpses.
This mountain, made of rotting flesh and white bones, rose into the clouds. The higher one looked, the fresher the corpses.
It was an upside-down snow mountain—white at the bottom, red at the top!
At the summit of the bone mountain sat a massive throne carved from grey stone.
The throne was ancient and imposing, its back engraved with densely packed runes. It was, strangely enough, the most “normal” thing on the mountain.
A blurry shadowy figure sat squarely on the throne, holding in his hand none other than the diary Saul knew all too well.
One hand held the diary; the other held a black fountain pen, scribbling furiously on its pages.
But this time, due to the angle of the vision, Saul couldn’t see what was being written.
However, as the figure continued writing, the corpse mountain at his feet rose higher and higher, reaching closer and closer to the starry sky above.
Saul didn’t know how long it lasted—his perspective rising with the mountain. But the figure grew more and more agitated, his writing increasingly sloppy and erratic.
Time passed. Eventually, the shadow stopped writing, dropped the pen, and looked up at the sky. The stars above were still impossibly distant.
“This path leads nowhere,” the man muttered softly.
The sentence seemed like a variant of the language of the dead. Saul could barely understand it.
Then, the man gripped the diary’s cover in one hand and tore out every single page with the other.
He casually tossed the red hardcover down the corpse mountain. The dark red shell tumbled down along the flesh and bones, vanishing into the sea of blood, never to be found again.
The torn pages, too, crumbled to dust—falling like snowflakes and settling upon the corpse mountain.
As the blood-red, bone-white mountain was slowly blanketed and concealed by white flakes, until its original form was no longer visible, Saul heard the black figure sigh—and vanish.
That piece of history came to an end.
Saul opened his eyes and returned once more to the mental realm.
The four soul consciousnesses were still waiting nearby, watching him cautiously, unaware that Saul had just sat through a short movie in front of them.
“That was another slice of the diary’s history… is it trying to show me something?”
“That shadow caused so much death—but clearly, the deaths didn’t give him the outcome he wanted. ‘This path leads nowhere’… What didn’t death achieve? Godhood?”
That was the only possibility Saul could think of.
After all, most wizards pursued knowledge ultimately in pursuit of power.
And gods—were the highest form of life, born from the collective consciousness of countless intelligent beings.
In the wizarding world Saul resided in, the concept of gods existed too—but most were simply powerful beings who called themselves gods, or were worshipped by the weak as one.
Loosen the definition a bit, and even a creature like the Nightmare Butterfly could pass as a god to the ignorant.
That shadow in history created death, and Kismet created death too. But Saul didn’t think the shadow was Kismet.
Though he couldn’t see the face of the figure on the throne, his aura was completely different from Kismet’s.
Did Kismet know that creating death wouldn’t lead to success?
And even if it could lead to godhood, Saul had no intention of following that path to power.
For one reason—his worldview didn’t align with it.
In a world of mental power and conscious entities, doing things that clashed with one’s worldview wasn’t just a matter of inner unease.
It would truly lead to corruption and contamination.
Saul stared at the diary in his hand and asked silently, “Is death what you want?”
The diary didn’t answer.
So he answered himself. “No.”
He smiled slightly. “What I want… isn’t that.”
“No matter whether this path leads nowhere, I have my own way. What I seek is not death.”
Just as this thought passed through Saul’s mind, the Dead Wizard’s Diary hovering above his right hand suddenly began to flip rapidly.
After it passed through the golden pages, the white pages filled with unknown handwriting started to crumble one by one.
Just like in the history he had seen, the white pages turned to powder and flew up into the pitch-black sky above, vanishing completely.
The others looked up at the fragments disappearing into the heavens, their faces full of confusion.
Only Saul remained calm.
Though a trace of melancholy stirred in his heart.
He understood—this meant he had likely lost whatever “inheritance” the diary’s previous owner had left for him.
But he felt no regret.
“That path was never mine.”
That’s what he told himself.
The four around him, though they didn’t know what had happened, could sense something had changed in Saul—as though he had undergone a transformation.
“The locator function is already complete. Third Rank is just a matter of spellcraft now. I’ve abandoned the path of my predecessor, though I still haven’t clearly defined my own. But I’m just a prospective Third Rank apprentice—there’s no need to rush,” Saul slowly gathered his thoughts.
He could feel his “History Watcher” ability had grown incredibly weak—no longer usable on the diary.
And his next target couldn’t be too powerful, nor too complex. It had to be someone Saul was relatively familiar with.
Saul raised an eyebrow. “Little Algae… could that work?”
(End of Chapter)
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