Pivot of the Sky
chapter-12

The message itself was not told by the cat. The magic Bair was best at was the [message magic]. He sealed a message in that cat. It disappeared after Crazy’Ole had read it using the corresponding magic.

The last message from Bair was —

My dear teacher,

Please forgive me for not having contacted you for such a long time. I have spent every last second trying to solve the problem you gave me. Your guesses are likely to be true. Mortals can become gods, and the secret lies in the practice of magic and body arts. The achievement beyond the ninth level in either path will make one a god. However, if one sticks to only one path, the difficulty will be unparalleled. The final step will be so hard that any breakthrough before appears to be trivial. I have come to this conclusion after going through the countless records about almost every supreme mage and warrior in history.

Nevertheless, practicing magic and body arts at the same pace is also impossible, at least in the records which I had access to. The sole exception is the technique of Duc you have taught me on the first day, which appears to be primitive and trivial in front of any magic or martial skill. It is indeed perplexing that you, a master of the technique, could not make progress in body arts after achieving so far in the other field. This should not simply be attributed to your age or your physical condition.

In my recent research, I may have found out a secret, that the learning of body arts is just like that of magic. It needs the practitioner to pass various tests. They are never specially mentioned. The warriors who ascend to the next level actually have passed the test. But it seems that no one has ever made an explicit summary of it. If the path of body arts is left by the gods, then they must have intentionally omitted a part of it.

There are many more body arts practitioners than that of magic. Many of them don’t know that they have passed the tests, but believe that it is assiduity, perseverance and luck that have helped them surmount those barriers. They are not totally wrong. But I have yet to figure out the key behind it. Luck is nothing but a series of unexplained rules.

I have studied the experiences of thousands of warriors, from advanced to primary. I have correlated some regularities, which are probably the part omitted in all existing instructions.

Moreover, if magic and body arts are two parts of one path, then there is probably a special order when putting them together, like the tones in a melody. Otherwise one cannot learn the both of them to the highest level, but have to abandon one to give way to the other.

If one has unfortunately embarked on a wrong path from the beginning, then the only way to correct it would be to give it all up and start again. I have no idea how that’s possible. Further, it is too hard for most of us to even make that choice. After all, these are just my conjectures. Even if they are the true secret behind the gods’ divinity, the overwhelming majority of us can still only sigh in desperation. Because this path could be even harder than that of magic and body arts, and we know that ninth-level mages and warriors are already rare enough.

I am still evolving my theory and have yet to reach a definite conclusion. I took the Adoratrice and the Gods’ Tear with me, which may help me solve the final secret. As the price, I have been followed by a large group of people. Since I cannot reach you anytime soon, I send you the above message.

Yours respectfully,

Bair

Crazy’Ole’s story had finally reached an end. He sat down and drank his wine silently. Amon did not break the silence. Though he had a mountain of questions, he did not know where to start asking. The topic was way out of his range of knowledge, even beyond his imagination.

They started the chat at noon, and now the sun was about to set. It was time Amon went home and cooked dinner. Crazy’Ole had finished his jar, but his eyes were still limpid. There was just a trace of tiredness in them. He put down the goblet and said, “Amon, I’ve been watching you and training you since you were a baby. Your potential and talent are even much better than Bair’s.”

“Oh.” Amon did not really answer. He guessed that Crazy’Ole was planning something for him. His guess was confirmed in a few seconds. Crazy’Ole continued, “I was planning to make you into an excellent sorcerer, but every time I think of the message from Bair, I feel that I should be more cautious. The first step is always the most important one.”

“Me……?”

Crazy’Ole looked at him and smiled sneakily, “You. Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t have taught you so much. You know the two common writings in the continent. I’ve taught you to extract the parangons in another way so your body and mind have both got the best training without learning any magic or body arts. All I am waiting for was today.”

“What about today?”

Crazy’Ole turned the subject away, “Amon. If you are going to be a sorcerer, you should understand from Bair’s and my experience that in order to keep yourself safe, you have to hide till the day you become a great sorcerer. So being a warrior can be your best cover if you learn both of them at the same time……Don’t you want it, my child?…… Please don’t refuse me. Even as a thank you for my help all these years, you should not. ”

Amon rubbed his head and replied, “I won’t refuse you. Why should I? I’m just a miner’s son. I’ll do it even if I am not going to thank you. You will not do harm to me.”

Crazy’Ole smiled bitterly, “Do harm to you? Maybe! But I often think about Bair. If what I have done to him can be counted as harm, he must have been willing to accept it…….I have only one hope for you as well: please solve the secret of the gods for me.”

“You are talking too far now. How can I compare to Bair? I can’t even imagine that.”

Crazy’Ole shook his head, “You never know before you try. You may fail after trying. But if you don’t dare to take the first step, then you will only live an ignorant and precarious life. Try your best and you won’t regret. ”

“So what should I do now?”

Crazy’Ole nodded with satisfaction, “You are indeed not an ordinary child. You are shocked and perplexed after hearing so many things from me, yet you are still calm and lucid……To tell you the truth, I have no idea about Bair’s final conclusions. But I am already pretty sure of one thing.”

“What thing?”

“The first step.”

“To awaken the two powers at the same time? You know how to do that?”

Crazy’Ole smiled, “You are smarter than I thought to come to this conclusion right after hearing my story. But you erred slightly. Not two powers. Just one. There is always only one power. The magic and the body arts are just its two manifestations, like the two sides of a coin. I have been thinking about my whole life’s experience and traced it to the very beginning. Eventually, the technique of Duc inspired me.”

“Gabriel asked you if you have learned any body arts. You haven’t. You just have a great body, with a little skill having some elements of magic. Now I will give you a test to see if you can awaken the power. Beware that since the power has two sides, the desire you awaken will have two sides too. So you are passing two tests at the same time, including the first test for the body arts learners, which is neglected all the time.”

“How are you going to test me then?”

Crazy’Ole’s eyes glistened, “You are going to the cold spring tonight and do one thing for me. Come back and tell me if you make it.”

Young Nietzche was a miner of Duc, just like Amon. That was more than a hundred years ago. During that time, a war raged between Bablon, Assyr and Hittite. Chaos was everywhere. The ruler of the Syah state changed several times and life in Duc was much harder. He found that he would oftentimes lack basic human necessities.

The poor land could only generate a small yield of barley and beans, just barely enough to keep the inhabitants from starving. The grassland at the edge of the Charcoal Forest could only raise a few sheep. One day, in the early spring, there was no more sheep left for food. Nietzsche could no longer stand the bland cereal, and so he went hunting in the mountainous forest to the east of the town. A strong miner equipped with hunting skills made for a great hunter. Nietzsche knew that the forest was dangerous, but he had been hunting in the peripheral area for years. He thought he could take the risk.

Nietzsche went far this time, really far. He smoked his prey, turning them into jerky and carried it with him. When he realized how far he had gone, he had already crossed the cavemen’s habitat and was approaching the steep canyon of the Euphrate River. He lost his footing when he chased after a stag and slipped down the cliff. Fortunately, he was caught on his clothes by some vines and stopped falling after breaking through many of them. He crawled to a hidden hollow in the cliff to take shelter from the rain. There, he found the body of a mage who had died not long before, and obtained his belongings.

The mage had been using a magic item to fly away from his enemies in a chaotic fight. He escaped from his pursuers but ultimately died from the wounds he’d sustained in the chase. He was an advanced mage from the Marduc Shrine of Bablon, which was then at war with Hittite. He left his last words on the cliff in the wedge writing.

Unlike most miners in Duc, Nietzsche knew how to read and write. His grandfather was the clerk of Duc. Having violated a law of the then dynasty, Nietzsche’s grandfather was punished and lost his nobility. He spent his last few years teaching Nietzsche how to read and write.

The place Nietzsche found the mage in was far from any inhabited region. The hollow was on a high cliff, facing the fast flowing Euphrate River. The mage was badly wounded with no food and medicine. He had struggled in great pain to pray to his god Marduc in his last seven days for mercy and help. He eventually passed in desperation.

In his last words, he wrote that he did not want to be returned to the shrine. He asked the one who found his body to bury him where he died according to the traditions of his family and bring his belongings to his wife and children. As a reward, he left on the wall all he knew about magic and how to learn it. From the primary stage to the advanced stage, and the key method to achieve the third stage that he had not yet practised. He had also left a marked staff and several precious magic items.

This discovery changed Nietzsche’s life. He started to learn magic and was lucky enough to not to be badly hurt in the process. He had sufficient food in his backpack to stay and record all the content on the cliff for several days. In the end, he managed to clamber over the cliff along the vines, carrying the mage’s belongings.

The Ducians thought that Nietzsche had gotten lost and died somewhere in the forest. But Nietzsche returned to Duc ten years later. He claimed that he had been captured by the cavemen and was enslaved for ten years before he managed to escape.

In fact, Nietzsche had just completed a long journey to Bablon City, capital of the Kingdom of Bablon.

He went to Bablon to return the mage’s belongings to his wife. At that point, he had become a third-level mage. Combined with a bit of caution, he was capable of handling any situations on the way. In the outside world, Nietzsche started to realize how special the technique of Duc was. He had already had the strength and skill of a second-level warrior. It was more than luck that he had been able to survive the fall from the cliff.

However, when he tried to awaken the power according to what the mage had left, he received the power to communicate with the environment, the so-called divine magic power. So he chose to become a mage.

He found the wife of the mage in Bablon City. He noticed that the mage’s family had declined and was in trouble. The mage was a hereditary priest of the Marduc Shrine in Bablon City, but his only son was not old enough to inherit his title. Moreover, the widow had run into debt in recent years. The creditor, a nobleman in the city, asked the widow to be his wife so he could inherit the title of priest from her husband. It was common practice in wartime.

Nietzsche’s visit solved her problem since the mage’s belongings were worth everything he had left to his wife and child, otherwise his disappearance would not have caused such a big trouble to his family.

The widow appreciated Nietzsche’s actions and out of kindness, told him privately, “If you have learned magic according to my husband’s last instructions, then you are now a sorcerer. Please don’t reveal it to others until you become a supreme sorcerer. If you are lucky enough to reach that stage, then everything will change for you.”

She then urged Nietzsche to leave immediately in order to get away from the troubles surrounding her. Despite his efforts, trouble still caught up with him. Nietzsche was hunted by the noble creditor for having spoiled his plan after he had left the city. Nietzsche killed the pursuer using magic, but he was worried that he would be exposed, so he snuck back to Duc.

Nietzsche lived a normal life as a miner for another ten years in Duc. Then he left town and started another long journey. The law that banned Ducians from leaving the town was nothing to him. He was already a seventh-level supreme sorcerer.

Nietzsche‘s second journey lasted about ten years and would see him accumulate an unbelievable set of experiences. When he came back to Duc, he was an eighth-level sorcerer. The mayor at the time wanted to seek trouble with him, investigating him for having left the town without permission. The investigation turned up nothing, and Nietzsche had stayed in the town since. Nobody bothered him. Everyone regarded him as a crazy old man who always uttered nonsense.

One could not practice magic and body arts to the same level at the same time. That was an oracle and law since ancient times. Nietzsche awakened the divine magic power after he had obtained the mage’s belongings and focused on magic learning. He had nearly achieved the highest level. But one problem had been tormenting him all along with his magic practice: He had been learning a skill similar to body arts even before he had started learning magic, and had only achieved the equivalent level of a second-level warrior.

The blessing ceremony he experienced in the shrine of Mourrin when he first turned sixteen was some kind of power-awakening rite.

Nietzsche knew next to nothing about it at first, so he abandoned the body arts and chose magic, becoming a supreme sorcerer. He started to doubt that there might be something in it waiting for him to discover. But when he tried to pick up body arts again, he found it incredibly hard. He even lost his strength he once had as a second-level warrior in his youth. His strength was merely comparable to a first-level warrior.

It seemed normal. He had aged. It had been years since he trained body arts. He had a mighty magic power but he was already lucky to keep a healthy and strong body. However, the failure frustrated him and only confused him more. This obsession tormented him so much that he could never ascend to the ninth level.

Nietzsche started to disappear frequently from Duc and show up some time after. Even so, nobody cared about it anymore. Crazy’Ole travelled across the continent, looking for various anecdotes about famous supreme mages and great warriors. Details about their personal lives, rumours about their experiences, records about how they learned and practised the power, etc.. He was also very interested in the legends about the gods in the shrines.

Crazy’Ole started to form some guesses and questions. Some so-called gods were very similar to demigods in the legends. There seemed to be no significant difference between these gods and ninth-level mages or warriors. So, were they just demigods, or did they became true gods later? If the latter was true, then could mortal beings become eternal gods? And if so, how?

He doubted that magic and body arts could be learned at the same pace. More possibly, they were probably two parts of one path deliberately separated, such that they could not be practised at the same pace. And the secret of the gods’ divinity might lie right in this subtlety which remained unknown to practitioners.

Crazy’Ole could not find the answer. After he lived his one-hundredth year, he realized that he would no longer be able to confirm it in his own practice. So he pinned his hope on a successor. After a long search in many places, he found a gifted boy, a shepherd’s son, in a small village in Cape. The boy’s name was Bair.

Crazy’Ole taught him all he knew. He asked Bair to do one thing for him: to do his best to solve the puzzle that had tormented him for most of his life.

What happened after was already told. The last place Bair was found was near the cliff beside the Euphrate River, where Crazy’Ole had first discovered the mage. He might have been planning to look for Crazy’Ole in Duc but he couldn’t shake his numerous pursuers. Who knew what magic he had done on a cat to allow it to find its way out, cross the forests and mountains to reach Duc to bring Crazy’Ole a message.

[List of Deities]

Marduc: Patron and Major God of Bablon. According to the legends, he belonged to the same family of Enlil. His father was Ea. Ea and Enlil were both sons of Anu.