The endangered nobleman sat beside him with no regard for image, both of them breathing in the thick, cold scent of the sea. The muffled crashing of waves sounded like it came from another world. The professor stared in fascination at the faint glimmers refracted through the water and the strange shadows—probably schools of fish—flitting by beneath them, and instinctively began fumbling through his pockets for pen and paper.
Azukar had to speak up to interrupt him. “Professor, how much do you know about how spellcasters are born?”
Nova’s attention shifted quickly. “The more devout the believer, the likelier they are to become a spellcaster—that’s what Bishop Fens said.”
Only the nouveau riche commoners went to church schools and shared meals in dining halls. Nobility would always hire high-ranking clergy—usually bishops or above—to personally educate their children. The more powerful the noble house, the higher the status of the cleric. They functioned like private tutors, but far more prestigious.
But the Brody family wasn’t particularly wealthy, so Bishop Fens had only shown up for a formality. The rest of the instruction was handled by lower-ranking clerics in the parish.
Fens was a low-tier Apostle spellcaster, a rank high enough to earn him the position of bishop in the local Radiant Church parish. Nova had listened to his endless droning about “our god’s glorious light,” and by the third lengthy monologue about how his own piety had won him the favor of Zephiel, god of light and glory, Nova was convinced he’d never get any useful information out of him.
“Bishop Fens,” the five-year-old black-haired boy had said, fixing the cleric with smoke-gray eyes far too cold and stern for a child, “I don’t understand. Why does piety alone lead to becoming a spellcaster? Is it due to repeated stimulation of a certain area of the right cerebral cortex causing a mutation? Or is the concept of a ‘spellcaster’ purely idealist in nature?”
This noble pursuit of knowledge had ended with Fens making sarcastic remarks and Lady Brody offering forced smiles as she saw him out—followed by a furious outburst.
Nova believed the bishop simply didn’t know the answer and used fake smiles and eye-rolls to cover his ignorance—but his mother clearly disagreed.
“Why are you—always this strange?!”
“Are you doing this just to punish me?!” His mother in this life had grabbed his shoulders hysterically, her sharp nails nearly digging into his skin. “Your mind is always full of strange, disgusting, appalling thoughts—you’re not some filthy street urchin who talks nonsense all day. You are the heir to House Brody—the next Viscount Brody! How dare you say such things to Bishop Fens today? By the light, what will your ambitious uncle do if he hears of this—”
She collapsed onto the ornate yet worn armchair, draping herself over the armrest and weeping pitifully.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” her strange son had said softly beside her. “But I don’t understand why you’re angry. And I don’t think Uncle will do anything even if he finds out.”
Lady Brody slowly raised her tear-filled eyes and met a pair of smoke-gray irises—calm, emotionless, like a desolate moon. She shivered. For the first time, she felt fear toward her own child.
Then she heard him speak in a tone no child should possess—cold and weary: “Uncle would actually be pleased to see the Brody heir fall out with the Church. The Royal Court controls inheritance, so he won’t move against us for now. But anything else could provoke him into recklessness. Still, if it makes you feel better, I can go apologize to that underqualified bishop.”
The unpleasant memory made Nova frown slightly, and he forced himself to focus back on the present topic. After briefly repeating Bishop Fens’ theory, the professor concluded, “The Church and the academies keep a tight grip on this kind of information. There’s pitifully little published material, so I don’t know the details very well.”
The other man listened quietly and intently, without interruption, which made Nova feel a bit more favorable toward him.
“Some of that is correct, but let me explain it more systematically first,” Azukar said after a moment’s thought. He lightly tapped the center of his chest. “This is our ‘origin’—you might call it the soul. When we first resonate with one of the world’s many ‘concepts,’ that concept and our origin form a resonance. It leaves a mark on the soul and creates a stable circuit, allowing us to store and draw power from that concept through further resonance.”
He spoke with the clarity and patience of a responsible teacher, seemingly unaware—or unconcerned—that what he was explaining was the sort of knowledge the Church and the academies kept strictly confidential, never to be shared with common folk.
“That bishop only knew what, not why. The easiest way to become a spellcaster is to choose and worship a god. That way, the believer doesn’t need to resonate directly with some elusive concept—they resonate with the god instead. Once that’s successful, their soul bears the god’s imprint, and it becomes much easier to access the concepts the god represents.”
Nova nodded thoughtfully—got it, gods were just middlemen.
Azukar let out an unreadable chuckle. “But since they don’t resonate directly with a concept, believers must rely on external mediums to construct new circuits—chants, incantations, magical tools—to draw the concept out from the soul into the world. That’s the orthodox foundation of spellcasting today. What I described earlier—direct resonance—is now seen as mad or heretical.”
“So that means unbelievers can also become spellcasters—but the major churches forbid unbelievers from existing,” Nova quickly identified the key point. “Why? Does the lack of believers affect the gods?”
“Maybe,” the Divine Chosen said softly. “But I don’t know for sure. Over the centuries, countless minor sects have been devoured by stronger ones, and with them, countless gods have faded into obscurity—until they vanished completely from history.”
“…Noted. Next question,” the professor nodded slightly. “By definition, a Divine Chosen is someone who receives a god’s favor and doesn’t need any medium to cast spells. That means the Divine Chosen is actually—”
An unbeliever.
The word got caught in his throat with a sudden gust of wind. Nova frowned, only then realizing that a wall of wind had silently formed around them. The other man smiled faintly and tapped his lips with a finger.
“…”
The dark-haired youth expressionlessly mimed zipping his lips shut, indicating he would keep the secret. But the religious leader of the Natalin, Divine Chosen of Utoska, god of storms, was actually an unbeliever? This world really is ridiculous.
The gust finally left his mouth, and the professor coughed for a while, making Azukar feel a bit guilty. He was about to reach out and pat his back when the other finally caught his breath and slowly looked up at him.
“Final question—can my origin resonate with a concept? Could I learn your kind of… mystical, idealistic, fundamentally irrational magic?”
“…”
Azukar gazed deeply into those smoke-gray eyes. They were shadowed with fatigue and laced with bloodshot veins—but also burning with a pure, searing emotion that shimmered like molten metal.
It was a dazzling, mesmerizing ambition and desire—yet not for anything material. It was like a child enchanted by a desolate plain or chasing stars in a spinning sky. A primal human curiosity for the unknown.
“…Your soul is very, very strong.” The Divine Chosen’s voice was soft, as though afraid of startling something. Nova noticed the golden patterns around the man’s pupils rapidly gathering toward the center, tinting those eyes with a radiant gold too dazzling to look at—at that moment, the Divine Chosen looked more like an untouchable god.
“The Ockensell River could not leave a single trace on your soul.” In that moment, it was as if he truly saw the other’s soul through his eyes—or maybe he really had. “Our origin, or soul, is naturally bound by seven shackles: Birth, Awareness, Speech, Motion, Emotion, Death, and Transcendence. As a person grows, they gradually unlock the first six. Only the seventh, ‘Transcendence,’ can never be broken.”
“But I couldn’t see a single shackle on your soul. It’s abnormally active—vibrant and alive.”
Nova blinked, leaning back slightly in discomfort. Maybe to observe his “soul” better, the man had leaned in too close, and the unfamiliar pressure made him uneasy. Then suddenly, the professor was pulled forward by the back of his head, his cheek pressed firmly to the other man’s chest.
“—Like right now.”
Amid a sudden violent tremor, he heard the Divine Chosen’s voice at his ear: “King Kolendin, the Saint-tier Spellcaster, burned his soul to forge the Wall of Signs. The concepts he chose were ‘Wind’ and ‘Protection.’”
“To pass through the Wall of Signs means to clash with those concepts. My origin trembles with sympathetic resonance, and everyone else struggles because the concept of ‘Protection’ blocks their path—but your soul remains untouched, as if unfazed by any of it.”
The ship rocked violently, its frame creaking like it might fall apart. The Divine Chosen shielded the back of his head with one hand. Nova could clearly hear the steady beat of the other man’s heart—calm, with no trace of any “trembling.”
Then he heard the man’s sigh-like reply.
“So I’m sorry. Your soul is too strong—I believe you’ll struggle to resonate with any concept. In other words, you may never become a spellcaster.”
In the manga, Nova Brody remained just an ordinary person—right up until the moment Azukar cut off his head.
