Laura had always been taught to keep her pride. Even when her family was destroyed, even when she fell into slavery, even when she was forced to learn every depraved act there was, she never forgot her pride above all else. In her view, life was not long to begin with.
Once, while strolling through her family's garden, she had fallen into a reverie. She could feel the maids whispering about her. Whenever their eyes met, they would busily wave their brooms as though absorbed in cleaning, but Laura could tell—the mockery hidden in their gazes.
It had been that way since she was young. She could discern what someone was thinking just by looking into their eyes. Everyone knew the rumors about the "eccentric young lady of the Farnese" who never attended balls or social gatherings, instead locking herself in her room poring over tactical treatises—Laura herself knew them just as well as anyone, deaf as she was to the outside world. Though she was technically the family's second heir, it was merely a title with nothing left beneath the surface.
"Reputation is a worthless thing."
Laura gazed at the green mountain chrysanthemums in the garden. The chrysanthemums swayed gently in the breeze.
"Everything flows."
Not long ago, a mage dispatched from the Petersburg Academy had given an entertaining lecture at the school. It was titled "On How We Should Judge Nature Possessing Life." The mage ultimately argued that the concept of "stillness" was fundamentally flawed. Everything flows. If a human perceives something as being at rest within living nature, that is nothing more than a human illusion, the mage declared.
"Sense and motion—that is, the speed at which we perceive things—depends entirely on the rate of our pulse. The faster the pulse, the more quickly we perceive the world. For instance, a domestic rabbit's heart beats four times faster than a cow's, so it perceives four times more within the same span of time. It can act four times faster, and thus will have four times as many experiences. In short, a rabbit experiences four times as much time as a cow… Even within the same space and time, the inner lives of humans and various other species—demi-humans and animals alike—each flow at different speeds. Suppose the pulse, perceptual capacity, and mental flow of the human species were to slow down or speed up dramatically! If a human's entire lifespan—childhood, youth, and old age all combined—were compressed to one-thousandth of its original length, roughly a single month, and their heart beat a thousand times faster—people could watch an arrow in flight with perfect ease!"
The elderly mage was bouncing about the lectern like a child.
"What if life were compressed again by another thousandth—to roughly forty minutes? Just as mountain ranges appear to us now, we would perceive the grass and flowers as utterly immobile. As for a single flower bud bursting open, we would perceive about as much or as little of it over a lifetime as we currently do of the geological shifts of a continent. The movements of rabbits, the footsteps of deer, the leaping of frogs—we would see none of it. They would be far too slow! At best, we could only infer the footsteps of a deer the way we now infer the motions of distant planets. And if life slowed down even further still?… We might even hear the sound of sunlight. Now, let us imagine the reverse. What if our pulse slowed by a thousandfold? Our lives might well last eighty thousand years, and what we currently experience over eight or nine hours would take us an entire year."
The mage whispered something softly. Then a flame ignited in his right hand. It was a simple fireball spell.
"In that case, within four hours we would witness the winter snow melt away, the frozen earth thaw and give rise to sprouting grass and flowers, the leaves grow lush and bear fruit, and then all vegetation wither once more… Day and night would alternate as though bright one minute and dark the next, and the sun would streak across the sky at arrow-like speed. And if this life, already slowed a thousandfold, were slowed by yet another thousandfold?… The difference between day and night would vanish entirely! The sun would trace a visible arc in real time, glowing like a spark from a sparkler. Respected students of Lombardia—this is 'the mage's perspective.' Everything that appears to persist around us has in fact completely dissolved into time. Everything is swallowed by the savage current of creation. Permanence, stillness, and the unceasing are illusions born of our human limitations. A perfect illusion… a beautiful mirage."
The lecture had left a deep impression on Laura. Everything flows. This way of thinking, expressed in such a concise axiom, fit her own life perfectly. Reputation toward others, hatred toward others, injustice, vengefulness, even love—all of it was nothing but a fleeting instant that appears and then vanishes. The pride of aristocrats toward slaves, the system of nations, even the grandeur of temples. After all, the humans walking the earth a hundred years from now would all be entirely different people.
If the only certainty is that all things flow, then the only thing she could do was face the death that would someday come with dignity.
That is what Laura believed.
"Damn. Look at that soft, tender skin. Hngh. I'm getting hard just from the smell."
"That look in her eyes is no joke, huh? Hm? We're awfully curious just how long she can stay proud. The employer told us to go easy, but heh—we're the kind of bastards who don't know the word 'easy.' We never learned."
"There's just one thing we know how to do, heh heh. We'll be teaching that to you from now on, miss. Pray that you'll be a good little student."
After her body was handed over to the slave traders, nightly gangbangs disguised as "education" took place. They did not take her virginity, citing the need to preserve her marketability. But aside from that, every part of her body was defiled. She marveled at the fact that the human body could truly be used for "that" purpose in any and every part.
Eyes sparkling in the darkness.
The greed reflected in them struck Laura as somewhat amusing. In fact, she had laughed out loud several times during the actual "education." Each time, the mercenaries took it as mockery and tormented her even more viciously. Eventually, she found one instance so laughable that she couldn't help but say something.
'Did you expect me to cower like a kitten? What a waste of effort, commoners. Drop your pointless expectations and take only what you can get from life.'
That day she was tormented from nightfall until dawn. Naturally, Laura didn't bat an eye. The mercenaries realized she was no ordinary noble-born lady. Enraged, they deliberately hired even a lesbian prostitute to torment Laura. They pitted her against women on purpose. Sometimes they called their comrades over to watch. In the world of mercenaries, how brutal a deed you could pull off was a point of pride, and the scenario of a great aristocrat's daughter being violated by a lesbian scored quite high.
Even so, Laura remained unbroken.
'Tough as nails, this one…'
'So all the highborn bastards are like this? What the hell.'
You need someone to play along for the fun to catch fire. Faced with an impregnable fortress that refused to yield, the mercenaries lost interest first. They went through only the bare minimum of education in a half-hearted manner. The sight of a man mounting her body and thrusting his hips felt distant and hollow to Laura.
Everything flows on.
'This young lady is an aristocrat. Laura de Farnese! A duke's daughter, no less.'
Even the night her temporary master came to visit, Laura kept her composure. Only one thing troubled her—the person who had entered the carriage alongside him. He carried a strange look in his eyes. It was a gaze unlike any she had received before. It seemed directed at her, and yet not at the same time. Laura was the type who had to satisfy her curiosity on the spot.
'What does that look mean?'
'Hmm?'
'I asked you about the meaning of your gaze. This is the first time I've seen such a look.'
She sensed that the other party was equally curious about her. She asked her current master to step out for a moment, leaving the two of them alone. He soon let on, indirectly, that he wished to own her.
'How can I become your master?'
Laura had never explained her philosophy before. It felt tiresome, and moreover, it came across as though she were advertising herself. That sort of thing always struck her as distasteful. Yet when the other party asked, she strangely found herself wanting to answer. Fascinated by the unfamiliar feeling, she grew slightly excited and opened her mouth. Perhaps she was simply glad to have a conversation partner for the first time in a while.
From that moment, the man's entire demeanor shifted.
'Maiden. That is a rather compelling way of thinking. By your own logic, no master exists for all people. From aristocrat to commoner, every human is but a mortal. Am I wrong?'
The sudden switch to informal speech didn't faze Laura. After all, it was the polite register that would have been strange for a slave. He was likely trying to pressure her by abruptly changing his tone. Perhaps when the temporary master was present, he had been putting on some kind of act. It didn't matter. There was no reason to get dragged into a contest of dominance. Laura nodded freely, as though she found it all amusing.
'Truly.'
'Did you not realize you just contradicted yourself? You proclaimed yourself a proud master. Yet by your own logic, no one can be their own master. Do you still not understand what I mean? Maiden. I have one question whose answer I cannot fathom — so go on, try to answer it.'
The man wore an expression of pity.
'Why do you not simply kill yourself right now?'
'...!'
It felt as though she had been struck on the head. Her mind went blank. Every counter she had anticipated, every rebuttal she had prepared for his rebuttal, every counter-counter to that — all of it tangled together and evaporated in an instant.
With her mind emptied, the scene before her eyes was reflected all the more clearly. The man was watching her. It was truly the gaze one would cast upon something pitiful. She felt humiliated. Being sold off as a slave had never been this humiliating. No — it couldn't even compare!
Rather than concede to his words, she would claim victory through death instead. Clenching her teeth took only a moment's hesitation. The instant she bit down hard enough to sever her own tongue, however, the man's finger had already slipped into her mouth.
The man sneered.
'You hesitated, didn't you, Maiden.'
'...! Mmph!'
'Child who believed death was the one thing she owned. It took only a few minutes to dispose of what you considered yours. Am I wrong?'
The taste of blood filled her mouth. It was the blood flowing from the man's finger. His hand was clearly badly wounded, yet he stared at her without so much as a blink.
'Yes. Your grand philosophy couldn't endure even a few minutes! That which you could never break — I call it the will to live. Far more exists in this world than your philosophy could ever imagine. And you would die without knowing any of it? Simply because you refuse to lose to someone? Laura. I shall show you the rest of the world!'
His eyes blazed with a bright light — utterly unlike the eyes of any mercenary.
'You were never the master of life. You were merely a priest who worshipped death as a god. All this time, you volunteered yourself into slavery, and you mistook that for pride, looking down on everything in creation — and so everything was inverted! How laughable. How could I not laugh? A clown stands right before me, balanced upside down on his hands.'
The man's voice was quiet yet unmistakably resonant. It was as though her mind, once emptied, was being filled once more with his words, brimming and packed tight. An irresistible command drove her forward.
'Listen. The spirit was once a god, then became human, and now at last has become one of the lowest. The shortest path across a mountain range is to leap from peak to peak. For that, one needs long legs. But what of an even shorter path? Why not simply never climb the mountain at all? Master and slave are two extremes — so much so that even a slave can delude herself into believing everything above her lies beneath her feet.'
The man suddenly unwound his turban. At the back of his head grew horns. Laura recoiled in terror. Those were the horns of a Demon Lord — something she had only ever read about in texts. Realizing who her opponent was, she was engulfed in fear. He was incomparable to any king of the Human Realm. The man before her was the sovereign of monsters! Indeed, he seemed to see the future itself, rattling off her fate one detail after another.
She did not fear that future, but the man's gaze and voice gradually suffocated her. Not once resorting to honorifics had been her last shred of pride. Yet she knew better than anyone that nothing remained of her self-regard but the thinnest shell.
'Will you wither away as you are? Or will you seize hold of life at last? Choose one or the other. Do not take the Demon Lord's offer lightly! Surrender to me your true intellect!'
'Intellect...?'
She managed to utter the word, barely, between labored breaths. Her opponent smiled as though impressed and extended his right hand.
'You tell me that life is too hard to bear. Then why do you carry yourself with pride in the morning only to resign yourself by evening? Life is hard to bear — but do not show me such a feeble attitude! Stop disguising your defeats as victories. Fail! Fail again and again! But if at the end of it all, you stand firmly on both your feet, then that is your victory!'
Her ears went numb. Her mouth went dry. Her esophagus constricted. Her right hand rose of its own accord, as though some string attached to it somewhere was pulling her along. But she had no strength, and her right hand could move no further. Seeing this, her opponent laughed once more.
Within the laughter that seemed as though it would go on for eternity, she understood exactly two things. That he would always be watching over her. And that the man's name was Dantalion.
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
The lecture by the mage in the text is based on a speech actually delivered by von Baer of the St. Petersburg Academy in 1860. Nietzsche references this speech in Section 10 of *The Pre-Platonic Philosophers* (*Die vorplatonischen Philosophen*). It can be found on page 313 of the Korean translation published as *The Complete Works of Nietzsche, Volume 1* (Bookworld, 2003). I transferred the content almost verbatim. I also referenced Nietzsche's short piece "On Writing" in some of Dantalion's lines. Heh heh. Those are passages I'm fond of.
In fantasy novels, mana is usually described as circles drawn around the heart, which is why those passages came to mind for some reason. If mana is fundamental in a fantasy world, then the faster the circles rotate, the more the surrounding scenery would appear to move in slow motion to the mage, right? Even producing the same fireball, a fifth-circle mage would conjure it faster than a fourth-circle mage. That's the setting.