Elf's Reincarnation - Prologue: Reincarnation Magician
I was racking my brains in the magic workshop I had set up in the mansion.
Sixty years have passed since I was born in Japan in 1912. I finally realized something when I was on the verge of death.
Life is too short to master the art of magic.
I have devoted myself to magic, but I have only stepped foot in the door. There's so much more I want to do.
If we make the most of the technology we currently have, it may be possible to extend its lifespan by ten to twenty years.
"But what's the point of doing that?"
Such a small deception is simply not enough.
I want at least ten times that.
But I don't have that kind of power. My body is aging and decaying. My mind is dulling. I simply resent myself for being tied down to this vessel of flesh.
If so, should I give up?
No! Absolutely not! My desire to learn magic was screaming at me with all my might.
I'm almost there. I'm sure of it.
"I see, if I can't survive in this body any longer, then I can just throw it away."
Probably more than a few hundred magicians have come up with this answer.
The idea of transferring one's soul to another body.
However, no one has been able to achieve this.
Taking over someone else's body is extremely difficult. Magic is the power of will. The power exerted within oneself is the strongest. And the unconscious desire to preserve one's self is an immense force.
Then there's the issue of compatibility between soul and body. The human body develops in accordance with the soul. Even at the baby stage it is slow. The moment the body enters this world, flesh is formed as a vessel for the soul.
It would be best to aim for that moment, but life at that stage is extremely fragile. Taking over and causing instant death is no laughing matter.
Is there a safer and more reliable method?
Would this genius stop at the same ideas as an ordinary person?
Magic is the study of the soul. Therefore, I should know more about the soul than anyone else.
And so, I found the answer.
"Reincarnation"
Yes, the soul cycles.
The soul rises to the heavens when it dies, and eventually descends to earth to reside in flesh. I surmise that during this process of rising to the heavens and descending to earth, the soul is bleached, and all memories and will are stripped away.
However, there are exceptions. Strong feelings can sometimes cling to the soul and continue to live on even after being reborn. This is why, on rare occasions, people appear who remember memories from their past lives.
Then I will do it.
I will intentionally engrave my memories and will deeply, deeply into my soul, so that they will never slip away.
That way, when I am reincarnated and born again, I will be born as myself.
Perhaps the time to do it is now. Before old age robs me of my thoughts and skills.
If I fail, my soul will shatter and I will become nothing more than a living doll.
Even if I succeed, there is no proof that reincarnation exists.
It is a gamble with terrible odds.
But
"I have no choice."
It is my only option.
The bright future, the path I desire is right there. So why should I hesitate?
When I abandon this path, I will die as a magician.
"Release my soul"
This is the prayer I chant when I perform a ritual to manipulate the soul.
"Oh memories and feelings that dwell in my body! I will engrave this cry into my soul. Ceremony begins."
Originally, there is no meaning to chanting.
Magic is activated by constructing a magic formula in the soul and brain and rewriting the rules of the world.
However, by chanting, I can give direction to my feelings.
I feel a burning sensation deep in my chest. The information that merely existed in the part of the brain is engraved more deeply. Information in the brain disappears when brain cells die, but if it is engraved into the soul, it will never disappear.
However, this is the same as damaging my soul. If I'm not careful, my soul will shatter and I will disappear.
It is complete annihilation, with no reincarnation even permitted.
Thousands, tens of thousands of command formulas continue to run. Blue, strings of letters... my image takes shape and begins to spin around.
Blood spilled from my mouth. It was as if the wounds to my soul were feeding back into my body.
It was hot, just hot. It felt like my existence was swelling up more and more.
Why had I been so attached to a fleshy body until now?
Toying with my soul made me truly feel that way.
This was the correct form for a magician.
Blood spurted from every pore. It was my first time, so I didn't know how much to do. But I continued to carve my existence into myself, never to fail.
And finally, my body reached its limit.
A physical limit that cannot be changed by willpower.
A grin on my face as I sank into the sea of blood I had created.
I succeeded. I was wounded, but my soul was safe. I had certainly carved myself into it.
If I continued like this, I would surely meet my death.
But that didn't matter. This would prove that my thinking was correct.
In the end, my reincarnation was a success.
My first reincarnation was in America in 1972.
I was born as the second son of a fairly middle-class family.
I remembered my past life on my thirteenth birthday. It seemed like my brain couldn't accept information from my soul until my body was fully developed.
In my first reincarnation, I devoted myself to research, following my original life.
However, I felt a sense of hopeless loneliness in that life. The world was abandoning magic.
Science was illuminating the darkness of the world, and there was no longer any place for mystery to lurk. Things that magic could do that chemistry couldn't do were disappearing.
For example, even if a magician devotes his life to burning everything and uses various magical tools, the best he can do is burn an area with a radius of fifty meters. But chemistry can achieve a hundred or a thousand times that with tools that anyone can use.
At this point, I gave up on the possibility of magic in physical phenomena and began to focus solely on the mind and soul. Believing that this was the only sanctuary for magic, he lived for fifty years and took his own life, with what he had newly gained engraved into his soul.
◇
The second time was a world like a joke.
Civilization had just moved from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
It was a world where monsters like goblins and orcs roamed the streets, knights in armor paraded through the streets, and magic was something that even ordinary citizens could use.
Yes, it wasn't a different time, it was a different world.
I was born as the fourth son of a knight who served the royal family, and I was able to live a relatively free and wealthy life.
Here, when I was fourteen, my memories of my previous life returned.
I realized something then. On Earth, there is some kind of influence that limits magic.
On Earth, magic would dissipate the moment it leaves the body, but it retains its form no matter how much time passes. There is no noise that comes when you think of a magic formula in your head.
This world was fun. Magic was developed and there was a lot of information I didn't know. Above all, I could use magic in actual combat.
I shone in this world. Magic resides in the soul. My skills, honed in the harsh environment of Earth, were so great that I rose in status and was taken in by the castle, becoming the head court magician.
I learned that in this world, there is individual specific magic, and general purpose magic that anyone can use. Individual specific magic is bestowed by the Goddess. As it is a fantasy world, anything goes.
General purpose magic has a logic to it, but individual specific magic does not. Even though I can use individual specific magic, I do not understand it. According to the Goddess, each person is born with magic circuits specialized for individual specific magic. General purpose magic is merely an imitation that makes use of that empty capacity.
The true nature of my individual magic is to recreate the past version of myself that I wish to be. Using this, I could fight with my body in its prime, even when I was old, and I could even summon the self of my previous life.
My end in this world was to be killed on the battlefield.
With my last bit of willpower, I engraved the memories into my soul here as well.
◇
I was reincarnated many times after that. Japan in the Heisei era, a fantasy world, a steampunk world, France in the year 2210. A world where magic only works within me, a world that seems like a game no matter how you look at it, and so on. I was reincarnated a total of 15 times. Each time I regained my memories when I was between 13 and 15 years old.
My magic was becoming more and more advanced, and I had reached the limit of my self-study, so I had no choice but to rely on things I had never encountered before in the world I was reborn in, and I began to seek entertainment other than magic.
The most interesting place was France in the year 2210. VRMMOs were popular.
Another technology in this world was the use of VR technology to extend the perceived time.
When you dive into the VR world, one second becomes 1000 seconds.
In that world, I enjoyed watching retro Japanese anime and games. I was originally born in Japan, and I was once born in Japan during the Heisei era, so I played some games and felt nostalgic. I was able to enjoy them as much as I wanted for an almost infinite amount of time.
In that world, there was nothing to be gained from magic, so he indulged in entertainment, and then died of old age.
◇
After reincarnating twenty times, everything suddenly seemed to lose its luster. My emotions and enthusiasm disappeared.
I thought it was about time to end it. My research had already reached a dead end, and it was no longer just a matter of spending time on it.
In the twenty-first week, when I decided to end it, I met a girl.
I met this girl in a world ruled by a demon king, where civilization had fallen into ruin.
The girl was a beautiful high elf. With her beautiful blonde hair and black robes fluttering, she was facing off against an entity that was destroying the world, wielding a bow made from the world tree.
No matter how much she was hurt, no matter how many times she was defeated, she kept getting up and fighting.
And then, the final battle. The last city where humans could live was attacked by the demon king.
The girl and her surviving companions faced off against the hopeless battle. Rather than giving in to desperation, she believed in a pinpoint chance of victory and did her best to struggle to the end. One by one, her comrades fell, and even when only one remained, she continued to fight, and in the end, she and the Demon King fought to a draw.
After the battle was over, she looked back at the people watching her fight, smiled, and said that everything was okay.
Bleeding from wounds that should have been fatal, and enduring the grief of losing her comrades.
Looking at that girl, my heart started beating faster for the first time in a long time.
Yes, I knew. Over the ages, my soul will wear down and no longer shine. But seeing a human who shines brightly illuminates me.
After that, the High Elf girl set out on a journey to ensure that the Demon King would never be resurrected again. I traveled with the girl, and eventually died of old age.
This reincarnation changed me. Rather than simply devouring entertainment and mastering magic, he began to search for shining people and observe their stories from the sidelines.
And so, I stopped interfering with the me of that time more than necessary.
The soul travels for the 31st time. A fateful reincarnation begins.
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