It was dark, unnaturally so. No matter where Merlin looked, he could not see the Pass, the monster, or Leon. Raising his hand, he couldn't even see his own body, which, for the first time, scared him.
"Did I die?" He asked himself, letting his thoughts echo around him like a shout within a deep cave.
"Death..." Another voice resonated with his previous sentiment, coming from all around him. It was not his, yet it was familiar. Maybe it was his, but... Something... something was not right.
Merlin's mind tried to focus and find the source of the voice. The moment he did so, the darkness began churning around him, parting like clouds and revealing a grey, misty image of an old library. Walking towards it, he finally managed to start seeing his body when he looked down, which was strangely transparent and naked, but at least it was there. It was as if he was finally starting to acknowledge that he was, in fact, existing. Stepping into the greyness from the dark was like traveling to a different world, one that was familiar yet alien.
"Where am I?" His voice remained echoey, reverberating between the tall bookshelves and thousands of ancient tomes while he began strolling inside the labyrinthian library.
"No, it is not enough... I want more than a few years..." arrived the same voice as before, and following it, he finally came upon a more opened-up space with a massive table in the middle.
He was no longer alone as a figure of a man was leaning against it, wearing a silk robe, studying a stretched-out parchment while dozens of candles surrounded him on the table. The more Merlin focused on the back of the man, feeling it was eerily familiar, the more color he began noticing around him. By the time he took a step closer to the figure, he could see not only the colors but also smell the paper, ink, and melting wax of the candlesticks.
"Who are you... where am I?" Merlin asked, shaking his body and walking over to the table to look at the man, but he completely ignored him. "Wait..."
The surprise in Merlin's voice was genuine because he recognized that face. No matter how different it was, grown-up, with his hair being blonde and his eyes golden-colored, there was something he inherently knew. That charming, young face was his. He instinctively knew that who he was looking at was him. Even if nobody else would think that... It was the truth. Whoever he was looking at now was him... but where? Or better yet, when?
"Is this a memory from my previous life, as Leon guessed?" He whispered, looking around once again and trying to figure out where this library was, but he had no idea. When that failed, he turned towards the parchment on the table, his eyes immediately stuck at it as if a spell had hit him. "Can't be..."
The longer he looked, the more he understood, and before long, Merlin was no longer standing there, separated, but his consciousness was that of the other version of him, merged into one person. He was leaning against the table, looking down at the drawing of a massive, four-legged beast's skeleton. Next to it, there were precisely 99 runes listed down, all marked on the monster's drawing, and while for others, it was nothing but a jumbled list, for Merlin, it was a magic circle in the making.
"It is not complete... there has to be more to it. These beasts can live indefinitely, thanks to the energy of the CC within their bodies. Hmm... Their enemy is not time but each other. If I can crack open their secret and manage to create CC within my body, I can become immortal! It is right here, hidden within their bones, inside their marrows... but where?"
Hearing his own thoughts shocked Merlin; it was the thought process of a completely different person looking for the secret of immortality. A riddle that was solved by monsters, beings that didn't even have human-like intelligence yet could live until the end of time... and it annoyed him. He was better, stronger... He was Merlin, and if he can't achieve it, nobody can!
"Wait... could they live that long? Really?" The sudden question made the candles flicker, and Merlin could feel his head hurting. "Owie... is it... the desynchronization between my memories? I need to focus... My questions can wait!"
The moment he pushed down his current thoughts and only focused on his 'past,' the pain was gone, replaced by ideas and knowledge coming from a different era. It didn't take long for Merlin to learn how to direct those thoughts and see himself walking amongst the bookshelves, taking off ancient codexes and hand-drawn diagrams.
"Incredible..." He whispered, reading personal recountings of different emperors and the expeditions they led into the Beastlands.
It happened more than once in the past and always had the same result: annihilation of their fighting forces. Yet, it did not mean nobody made it back. Their findings and reports were permanently sealed away, only for the eyes of the Emperors and Empresses as they detailed all that they learned about the marvelous beast on the other side of the endless mountain range. Merlin was reading about tales of giants as big as castles walking around the land, house-sized CC growing out of their backs, while smaller yet still monstrous beasts roamed about, fighting, using spells ranging from adept strength to master-level magic.
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"I need to translate more..." Thought the 'old' Merlin, going for a specific book that, when he opened, awed his visiting self.
The more he focused on it, the stronger his headache became, but he couldn't help it as it was ancient and handwritten. Going by his old self's translations, it was a book written by someone carrying the name Vasa, who detailed multiple expeditions into the Beastlands. It was a collection of multiple generations and hundreds if not more, excursions and recoveries of lost documentation of marvelous beasts living on the other side of the world. It detailed not only spells but also their observed habits and how they hunted each other not for their meat after a certain level of strength but for their cores.
"They do eat CC!" He exclaimed, giggling, ignoring the pain within his skull.
That strange codex stated directly before his eyes. They followed different, monstrous, twenty to thirty-meter-tall beasts and watched them fight, devastating the land around them with destructive spells, tearing each other apart to consume the loser's core.
"What else- hey! Don't flip the page; I was reading that! Stop it!" No matter how hard Merlin tried to argue with himself, the grown-up version was browsing quickly, looking for something different, ignoring the curiosity of his reincarnated self. "I don't care about living forever; go back! Hey! I am you; listen to me! Ugh!"
The more he tried to interfere, the stronger the pain became in his mind, finally feeling like a horse had kicked him in the head. He felt his body stumble backward, the colors go from the world, turning back to grey and into complete darkness at the end.
...
....
......
"Ugh..."
"Merlin!"
"Mmh... what... where?" He groaned, this time for real, trying to open his eyes, feeling weak and sick. The intense light coming in from the outside hurt his eyes, and as he twisted his body to try and sit up, he felt his stomach turn, almost vomiting out the little that was inside of him.
"Haaaah..." I couldn't help but sigh with relief seeing him move again. "Slowly, you are still not well!"
"Sovereign?" he asked, trying to focus his eyes. Finally, he recognized my face as I helped him sit in the bed while my Mom was preparing some soup.
"Yep. You made me worry... You were out for four days, and we had to force-feed you; it was not easy!"
"S-sorry..."
"It's fine, you saved us." I added with a chuckle, patting his head. "For two days, you were on the verge of turning into ice, but finally, you began warming up again. Still, for now, you are going to be bedridden, and my Mom will take care of you!"
"U-um... Okay..."
"Oh?" I asked, raising my eyebrows, "Zero pushback? No smart rebuttals about why are you fine?"
"No, Leon... I feel horrible!" He answered with a half-smile and looked like someone who had just returned from the land of the dead. Little bastard, heh! "What happened after...?"
"A lot, but we survived; that is what matters. Right now, the Pass is a winter nightmare! The monster's blood and magic are still affecting everything around it. In turn, it totally blocked the passage, as anything that got forty meters or closer began freezing up. It gives us time to replenish our losses and clean up the castle."
"I dreamt of the monsters." After thinking it through, he explained, "I... I remember not much of it. It was weird... It was... Hmmm..."
"Dreams are like that; they are vivid when we have them, and they burst like balloons the moment we wake up. Even if you feel it is as real as possible, you still forget it after waking up. Don't stress about it!"
"But... I feel it was important!"
"If it was, it will come back to you, believe me. For now, rest! I am going to tell Mom you woke up; I was just visiting; lucky me... and lucky you! That was way too close!"
"As long as everybody is fine... it was worth it!"
"Mhm." I nodded, patting his head, "As I said... rest. You earned it."
...
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......
It took Merlin two weeks to be in a state where he could walk around without any support to finally return to Avalon. For the remainder of the winter, I ordered him to stay home, recuperate, and not force himself. This time, there was a little pushback from him, but Sasha managed to convince him by seriously warning him with her motherly air filling the room. It was the moment when a new position was finally established around my ministers, including Merlin, as he began planning out the Institution of Imperial Clerks. I didn't stop him from organizing; it wasn't taxing on him and kept his mind occupied. While staying home, he reviewed his current and old students and their files, looking for names and talents to be assigned under every minister, serving not the person but the position for a lifetime.
While he was doing that, I was sitting in my office, examining the spell he had summoned, drawn up from my memory. It was marvelous and so complex that it took me multiple days to crack it. Even then, I could tell that I couldn't replicate what he pulled off on the spot, even if I was magical. He created a clear-cut template, using our basic trojan spell, leaving certain parts empty, and using the creature's own spell to be part of the 'code' and corrupt it from there. Essentially, he coded something in a way that wouldn't work as it had missing parts... yet the moment it interacted with the beast, the missing runes automatically slotted into place, completing the spell, and it worked flawlessly.
My job now was to take it apart in a way that it could be replicated. Merlin created the working template of an improved version that could be universally used; I just needed to make adjustments so it could be applicable, no matter the target. We now had a shut-down sequence telling the target spell to cancel itself, no matter the energy backing it up. It was a direct dispel command with nine changeable runes.
After studying it extensively, I was sure that those nine runes could be swapped out. After I identified them, the ones that Merlin used were all related to the element of water. All of those were present in water-based spells that I cross-referenced without missing once, and the absent runes, the ones that the beast used, were also water-based, as I found the runes in some advanced listings. No wonder its breath attack had a freezing attack...
I don't know how Merlin managed to do it, but he created the perfect version at that critical moment. If we manage to identify the enemy spell and its inherent element, we can use this formation to inject it and simply cancel it from happening. Without failure.
Of course, this needed more tests and study, but I was sure of my conjecture. So, in the coming days, I worked on identifying the rune present in every fire-based spell, going through all kinds of samples in my head, and finally narrowing it down to one rune. What remained after was a simple test to see if it worked...