Eric Willow thought he was dreaming.
It was the only explanation. The idea that those bizarre fingertip joints were part of a goddess was already absurd enough—but to say that merely seeing them meant he had received a baptism?
If someone wrote fiction like that, they would be torn apart for it.
Yet Ludger’s expression was far too calm. It was the look of someone stating the plain truth, exactly as it was.
“N-No, really? That can’t be...... But then this condition of my eyes.......”
Eric tried to deny it, but when he considered how perfectly fine his eyes felt, he couldn’t simply turn away from reality.
This was the first time he had ever seen the world so clearly and refreshingly.
The energy of the Magic Eyes, which normally ran wild on its own, was now quiet.
It was a power that had always rampaged endlessly, like an infinite well of stamina no matter how much he exhausted it—like a child who never tired of causing chaos. Since this had never happened before, Eric had no idea how he was supposed to react.
‘And this isn’t just the Magic Eyes calming down. More precisely, their power is being suppressed by some other force.’
This must have been what Ludger meant by the goddess’s baptism.
An unknown, unfamiliar power lingered in his eyes, restraining the strength of the Magic Eyes.
It was like tossing a tiger into a pen full of feral dogs that never stopped barking and snapping.
‘Wait. If it’s a power even more dangerous than the Magic Eyes, what then?’
Power injected from the outside was not truly Eric’s own. The moment it went berserk against his will, it could become far more dangerous than the Magic Eyes themselves.
“I can tell what you’re thinking. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Because his emotions had shown on his face, Ludger guessed Eric’s concern and reassured him.
“Didn’t I say it was a gift, and a baptism? That power won’t interfere with you or harm you. At the very least, compared to other gods, that goddess understands humans quite well—and knows how to regulate herself.”
“I see.”
Eric nodded at Ludger’s words.
He didn’t think Ludger was just saying something nice to put him at ease.
From the moment Ludger had helped suppress his Magic Eyes, Eric had no choice but to trust him completely.
Even if he didn’t show it outwardly, Eric’s trust in Ludger had already hit the maximum.
Eric felt confident he would believe it even if Ludger told him he was a great archmage who existed only in legends.
“No, wait a moment. Gods—plural?”
Eric realized he’d just heard a word he couldn’t let pass.
Not god, but gods?
Even if the Bretus Theocracy had fallen and the Lumenis Church was walking the path of decline, the faith that still existed in the world was, in the end, Lumenis.
Gods other than Lumenis were generally regarded as minor spirits, or meaningless lumps of belief that merely imitated gods.
Eric knew that wasn’t true, having directly seen a fragment of one himself—even if only a very small part.
Still, the idea that there were many gods was hard to accept.
“There are many gods you don’t know. They simply lost their names in the distant past, so people today no longer remember them.”
“......I see.”
“The one who gave you that baptism was a goddess who loved humans more than anyone else. However—hm...... as I said before, the problem was that her love was far too excessive for humans.”
Eric recalled the union Ludger had mentioned.
Being drawn in and becoming one with the goddess, without even realizing it.
‘If I go purely by image, when I think of a goddess, I picture a kind, gentle, beautiful woman.’
But judging from Ludger’s faintly awkward reaction back then, that probably wasn’t the case.
After all, if she truly had the form of such a beautiful woman, there was no way his entire body would have broken out in goosebumps just from seeing her fingertip joints.
“......Well, from far away, she’s fine. From far away, at least.”
Because Ludger was the one who had seen that goddess closer than anyone, that was the only way he could explain it.
Either way, the fact remained that she had helped Eric.
‘In the past, she would’ve just poured out baptisms recklessly. At least it’s fortunate she’s learned what moderation is.’
The one who had contributed most to that change was Ludger himself.
The decisive trigger had been the Silver Sun disappearance incident—now an unsolved case.
The Silver Sun had once been a mafia-style criminal organization that dominated an entire city.
They spread their influence across all of Rederbelk, committing filthy deeds and acts of violence without restraint.
Then, in the span of a single day, every member—from the boss down to the lowest foot soldier—vanished.
The Silver Sun Disappearance Incident.
It happened so suddenly that even the Empire’s Nightcrawler Knights stepped in to investigate, yet they were unable to find the culprit.
There were no traces of magic, no signs of combat. There was no blood or bodies to suggest they were dead, and fleeing made just as little sense.
Why would a criminal organization that feared nothing abandon everything it had and run?
What was even stranger was that there were no eyewitness accounts of them fleeing at all.
They were people—and a large organization at that. If they had moved anywhere, there should have been at least some trace left behind. But even that couldn’t be found.
As a result, the citizens reacted with a sense of “serves them right” at their disappearance, while also harboring a vague fear due to the inexplicable elements surrounding it.
Thus, the incident became ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) both an unsolved case and an urban legend.
‘It was the result of me handing all of them over to the goddess.’
In a sense, it had been a transaction.
Back then, during a magical spar, there had been an incident where his mana depletion weakened the seal.
When the goddess tried to emerge on her own, Ludger used a deal to send her back to where she belonged.
Offering up the Silver Sun had been partly because he was furious at the time—but also because, in making a deal with the goddess, he had presented them as sacrifices, as gifts.
To a goddess who loved humans, there could be no better gift than humans themselves.
Having newly acquired humans like that, the goddess seemed to have observed and studied humanity more closely, in her own way, from the world beyond.
That she gave Eric a gift that wasn’t excessive was surely the result of that.
“Anyway, you can rest easy. In fact, thanks to that, it’ll be much easier for you to control the Magic Eyes in future lessons.”
Ludger pulled out prepared teaching materials from within the shadows and handed them to Eric.
Eric accepted them naturally.
He had reached the stage where seeing Ludger freely pull objects out of thin air no longer surprised him.
“Eric. Why do you think Magic Eyes come into being?”
“I’ve learned that Magic Eyes occur when a fetus possesses mana from the womb, and that mana settles into a part of the body.”
“That’s right. Children born into mage bloodlines have an especially high chance. Mana normally blends naturally into the body, but with a faint probability, it settles more heavily in a specific part.”
For example, there were cases where mana accumulated heavily in the hands, or in the legs.
In the hands and feet—or even across most of the body—mana ultimately couldn’t remain concentrated for long, and spread evenly throughout the fetus’s body as it circulated.
However, there were a few body parts where mana lingered in particularly unusual ways.
“The brain, the heart, the eyes—and the mouth.”
The heart was, by nature, the part that stored the most mana.
Because of that, a child with a large amount of mana accumulated in the heart possessed more mana innately than other mages.
Even so, people didn’t call that a strange constitution, or a Magic Heart.
The brain was similar.
When mana accumulated heavily in the brain, one’s understanding of magic expanded, and their perspective on the world changed.
The brain, which communicates with the outside, opened more fully, granting a kind of spiritual enlightenment.
But people didn’t call that a Magic Brain either.
That was why the most representative case was the Magic Eyes.
The mana settled in the eyes developed in an unusual direction, automatically activating bizarre powers rather than conventional magic.
“If there’s something similar to Magic Eyes, it would be someone born with the power of Words—mana pooling heavily on the tongue.”
In fact, Ludger had once met a Word Mage.
To control his ability, the man had carved magical tattoos around his mouth.
In other words, Words were far easier to control than Magic Eyes.
“Magic Eyes are the window through which you see the world—the unknown power that resides in your eyes. That’s why they’re so hard to control when they go berserk. A Word Mage can simply close their mouth and stop their magic. If necessary, they can always keep their mouth shut. But eyes are different. Vision is one of the most important of the five senses. Giving it up for life is practically impossible.”
Living with one’s eyes closed for the sake of suppressing Magic Eyes would only erode one’s sanity.
Eric didn’t want that either.
“Throughout history, those who were born with Magic Eyes far beyond their means often lost themselves to the power and went berserk.”
For example, someone with Ignition Magic Eyes that burned whatever they looked at lost control, their eyeballs burning away as their brain melted in the end.
Another Magic Eye bearer went insane from the excessive power and tore out their own eyes with their hands.
There was a reason this constitution was called Magic Eyes.
The greater the power, the more endless hardship and trials it inflicted upon its user.
The end for those who failed to overcome it was never a good one.
In that sense, Eric was fortunate.
His Magic Eyes had manifested relatively late, and thanks to Elisa Willow’s swift response, the situation had passed without major incident.
“Suppressing Magic Eyes means using the sealing magic I mentioned. You apply multiple layers of sealing magic to confine the power, then gradually release specific stages of the seal whenever you need to use the Magic Eyes’ strength.”
Ludger used mana to display a spell formation in midair.
“This is the sealing magic I use.”
“So I just need to master that?”
“No. This sealing magic was designed specifically for me, so it works differently from suppressing the eyes. In this case, it suppresses this.”
Ludger tapped his own head lightly with his finger.
“The sealing magic to suppress your Magic Eyes has to be customized for you. This process will never be completed overnight.”
“And naturally, if I participate actively, the time it takes will be shorter.”
“You’re quick to catch on. Depending on your effort, this process can be shortened significantly. If we’re optimistic, it might not even take three months. However, the process itself may be quite harsh. We’ll have to keep provoking the power of your Magic Eyes.”
Ludger warned Eric.
“There’s a chance your Magic Eyes could go berserk and cause an even more serious situation. In fact, it might be better to endure things as they are now—using the artifact I gave you while under the goddess’s baptism.”
“But that isn’t permanent either, right? I’m correct, aren’t I?”
“That’s right. Still, it should easily last ten years—no, even twenty. As long as you’re careful.”
Should he take the risk of improving the sealing magic and suppress the Magic Eyes, despite the danger of a rampage?
Or should he choose the comparatively safe path to reduce risk?
“In the past, I might have chosen the safe, long road.”
Eric stared out the window.
Though his gaze rested on the warm scenery of the academy grounds, in truth he was looking much farther back—into a distant past.
“But after receiving the baptism today, and seeing the world with my own eyes without any artifact...... I realized just how much I’d been losing all this time.”
Eric lightly brushed his eyelids with his hand.
In the past, he would have cursed his damn eyes and gripped them violently—but now, it was different.
“If there’s any way to escape this wretched power, I’ll do it no matter what. I want to live a life where I wield my power, instead of being dragged around by it.”
With unwavering resolve, Eric earnestly pleaded with Ludger.
Please, teach him the sealing magic.
And Ludger, as always, gave the same answer to students who displayed such powerful determination.
“Excellent.”
* * *
After finishing his first lesson with Eric, Ludger walked across the academy grounds on his way back to his lodgings.
As he walked, he paused and fixed his gaze on a tree trunk.
Caw.
A pitch-black crow was perched on the trunk, looking down at him.
The moment their eyes met, the crow took flight, and a neatly folded piece of paper dropped where Ludger stood.
Catching the falling paper, Ludger unfolded it and checked its contents.
He folded it again, then ignited it with a flame, burning it without leaving even ashes behind.
The direction of his steps changed.
After reaching a place devoid of people, Ludger’s entire body was dyed in shadow and vanished like a mirage.
When he reappeared, it was inside a tavern in Rederbelk, the city adjacent to Seorn.
The tavern door bore a [CLOSE] sign, but Ludger paid it no mind and entered anyway.
At the bar counter of the empty, quiet tavern, a woman sat with her back to him.
Without turning around, she spoke.
“Are you finding your work as a teacher at Seorn rewarding?”
“To think the current Emperor would come here alone, without even an escort. The future of the nation is truly worrying.”
The Empress, Aileen von Exilion, turned to face Ludger.
With a bewitching smile.