Demon's Virtue

Chapter 625: Consciousness of Everything

“Oh?” Eiro let out as he sat at the desk in his study, spending some of his time carving smaller pieces of wood into detailed figurines as practice for his carving skill. He didn’t have that much time to spend on it lately, so he wanted to catch up on it, since it was long past due for him to improve those skills.

“Is something the matter?” Ariella looked up from her seat on one of the couches next to Eiro’s desk; she had been sitting there and reading for a while, as Eiro was working. She usually did this quite a lot, simply so that the two of them could spend some time together.

“Nothing much. I told you that the duplicates both reached the second floor of the towers of books, right?” he replied, and the nephilim raised her brow curiously, “Did they find anything interesting?”

“Sort of. The one in the plane of water found some interesting research on the nature of magic that I haven’t really seen before. Nothing too special, just questioning the existence of mana,” the Demon explained, and Ariella placed down her book, “As in, questioning whether it really exists?”

“That… not specifically? It’s more… about what it is? Where it came from? Because, mana is the essence of the mind, but minds haven’t existed for all of eternity. We at least know that the gods were born at one point or another, so if they were the first beings with thought, were they the ones that created mana? Or was mana just always around, and then gave the ability of thought to the gods? But that also begs the question, why do plants have mana, why does it flow through the ground, the dirt and rocks? Those don’t have thought, but it’s undeniably there.”

Ariella thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “Isn’t it because this world is alive? You spoke to it a few times, right?”

“Well yes, and no. It’s more like I was conversing with the will of the world, not the world itself. This world isn’t alive directly… Rather, I would support the idea that it was the overall consciousness of the mana flowing through this world. In that sense, it would be the mana that gives birth to thought, and not thought that gives birth to mana,” Eiro explained to her, and she leaned back while looking at the Demon, “Right… that sort of makes sense. But… I’m honestly sort of surprised that you’re so interested in philosophy.”

Eiro laughed and slowly got up, “I’m not really super interested in the philosophical aspect. I spend some time thinking about it; rather, I have a few mental duplicates discussing a couple topics right now that I want to delve in a bit deeper, but at the end of the day, what I think about it doesn’t reality. I am interested in the idea that this concept brought me,” the Demon explained, sitting down right next to Ariella.

“Just think about it this way. If mana is created through our thoughts, then it contains everything that has ever been thought about until now. But if it creates our thought, then-”

“It contains everything that will ever be thought about as well?” Ariella understood, and Eiro immediately nodded, “Exactly. If that’s the case, if you were able to tap into the consciousness of mana, then you would be able to know everything. It’s just a fun idea to play around with. You know that man that I turned into a servant in the plane of water, Anura? Through him, I’ll be learning a unique sort of magic, called ‘Source of Knowledge’. Since it’s a unique magic, it’s perfectly attuned with Anura’s mind, so I’ve been struggling in my attempts to properly make use of it, but I think this might have helped me find a decent enough approach in it.”

“Oh, so do you think you’ll be able to tap into the ‘consciousness of mana’ with that? If you can, wouldn’t that sort of give you divination abilities?” Ariella asked, and Eiro smiled lightly, “That would be great, though divination is a rather fickle thing. Seeing the certain future is absolutely im… possible,” the demon pointed out, as he quickly stood up.

Seeing the certain future? He already did that, didn’t he? The two visions shown to him of another world, one that was this one, but also wasn’t. That was the consciouscness of this world showing him the future, of what this world will turn into millennia from now. It was the same way back then, when Eiro first found Lugo. He had seen that world back then as well, but a different part of it. It felt the same, but also not.

Eiro rattled his brain, and came to a conclusion. The being that stood so far above even the greatest of gods. The one that created the arcane, and the one that gave the Sage that specific splinter with the intention of collecting the splinters of the arcane that were within the hero, priestess, and all the cards of the major and minor arcana. If this world, this planet had a consciousness because of the mana within it, then why would it stop there? In this complete universe, on other planets and in other stars, they probably all have mana within them too.

That being was the consciousness of everything that has, and will ever exist. That meant that the consciousness of this world was naught but a small subset of it, like one of Eiro’s mental duplicates. Somehow, this realization made Eiro shudder. He had reached this conclusion based on information that was merely on the second floor of the tower of books. Sure, his own knowledge added onto it and brought him to his conclusion, but that didn’t mean that it was absolutely necessary.

Eiro was absolutely terrified at the idea of what he would end up finding on the next few floors.

The demon took a deep breath. He walked through the hallways, carefully evaluating everyone that he hadn’t met yet. It was finally the start of a new semester, so there were plenty of chances for new talent to show up out of nowhere. But most of all, it meant that Eiro was going to be rather busy again from now on. Not that he minded, of course, since he had plenty of ways to advance himself even if he was just standing still in the front of a classroom. His mental duplicates were analyzing new information that was read by the duplicates in the elemental planes constantly, after all. Just today, he managed to complete a new fire elemental spell based on knowledge that he procured this way. Not that he had any way of trying it out yet. It wasn’t the kind of spell you could try inside of a building. Or anywhere near people at all, really.

Eiro pushed open the large door in front of him. There were mostly new students in here, though there were a couple of people he recognized from last semester. It was their first time taking this class, of course, but he knew them from other classes. The Demon walked to the front of the class, and quickly spoke up, “Welcome to Introduction to Magical Application, I’ll be in charge of this class this semester. Some of you already know me, but most probably don’t, so I will quickly introduce myself. I am Eiro Jura Daemonherz. I teach a variety of other magic-related classes as well as combat-related classes, so you will be seeing plenty of me this semester. If there is anything woryring you, or you need help because you don’t understand certain assignments, please don’t hesitate to come to me.”

The Demon walked through the classroom, “To begin today’s class, we’ll be doing a measurement of your elemental aptitudes. If there are any reasons why you cannot participate in this part of the class, please let me know,” Eiro explained, walking up to the large crystal orb at the side of the class, beginning to haul it over to the center. Nobody seemed to object; rather, they were all particularly excited about measuring and showing off their aptitudes. That was, with the exception of one individual.

He raised his hand, and Eiro looked at him, not showing his surprise on his face. He thought he picked up something unique, now he knew what it was.

There was a young boy in the back of the class with two aptitudes, at least from what Eiro picked up with his nose. One, he had a particularly high fire aptitude. And two, even stronger, he had an aptitude for unholy magic. The scent of a demon lingered in the room, and it wasn’t Eiro’s.