Chapter 6: The Door-Opening Spell

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Chapter 6: The Door-Opening Spell

Over the next few days, aside from purchasing the necessities and making sure to show his face around the neighbors, Charlie devoted all his remaining time to meditation.

Ben was constantly worried, afraid that Charlie might keel over again at any moment. Even Mr. Squirrel, who lived outside Pinecone Tower, passed by Charlie’s window with a pinecone in its paws much more frequently than before.

Unfortunately, Charlie had already repaired the window, so Ben and the squirrel couldn’t play pinecone ping-pong for the time being.

Before they knew it, six days had passed.

Charlie always passed out after pushing his meditation to its limit, leaving him deathly pale. Eventually, he got so used to looking pale that he stopped caring.

Ben asked him, “If you don’t wake up and I can’t save you a second time, can I burn you with soul fire, turn you into a skeleton like me, and we can keep each other company?”

Charlie was touched, but he still refused.

On the sixth day, Charlie finally managed to use the pitifully small number of magic elements he could sense to form a dragon. He let out a long sigh of relief—

That is, if that vaguely outlined, unidentifiable mass could actually be called a dragon.

Ben had been isolated from the outside world for many years and had no idea what the current standards for mages were, but Charlie dug the relevant information out of the original owner’s memories.

According to the latest regulations issued by the Magic Council at the end of last year, anyone capable of learning and proficiently using three or more spells could be granted the title of magic apprentice.

As for talent, Charlie could currently sense around three hundred magic elements. That was enough to light up a crystal ball, but he was still about seven hundred short of meeting the admission requirements for a magic academy.

In other words, the admission standard was roughly one thousand. It was only an approximate figure, because no one was going to risk going blind by counting them one by one. The number of magic elements sensed each time also varied slightly depending on the time and location.

Charlie knew he was still very weak. Apparently, a single forbidden spell required the mobilization of millions of magic elements. Three hundred was barely enough to make someone sneeze.

But his short-term goal was simply to open a door.

“Ben, tell me the Door-Opening Spell. I want to give it a try.” Whether three hundred was enough or not, he would only know if he tried. If his previous meditation had been a matter of forcing his way through, then Charlie could force his way through this, too.

How could someone raised by an exam-oriented education system not know how to brute-force a problem?

As it happened, Charlie already had a wand in his luggage. The original owner had bought it at the city gates when he first arrived in Magipo City, full of beautiful hopes for the future.

Charlie felt he had been ripped off. How could a holy city of magic be selling wands at its gates? It wasn’t like they were selling souvenirs. But whatever this wand was made of, and whatever it was worth, at least it was a wand.

It should be enough to cast a little Door-Opening Spell, right?

Ben was always shocked by Charlie’s boldness and fearlessness. Charlie had none of the reverence for magic and life that one ought to have. But in Ben’s opinion, unlocking a door only required a tiny spell, so it was hardly a big deal. He told Charlie without much hesitation.

The spell was obscure and awkward to pronounce, and it sounded nothing like the common language of the continent of Totolando. With every syllable Charlie spoke, he could feel the surrounding magic elements being drawn in and summoned. His throat felt distinctly constricted as well, as though some invisible force were preventing him from completing the spell. Even his brain began to swim with a sensation akin to oxygen deprivation.

“Y-you—you’re coughing up blood!” Ben shrieked.

“It’s fine.” Charlie calmly wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “It’s enough.”

“What do you mean, enough? Enough for what? Your blood? Or magic elements?” Ben’s thoughts were in complete disarray. He felt that this was absolutely not the right way to learn magic, but what could he do? He was nothing more than a skeleton.

Charlie didn’t stop. He had already begun trying to break the spell down.

He had heard that powerful mages didn’t need to recite incantations when casting low-level magic. Some could even cast them instantaneously. That meant magic incantations only played a supporting role rather than a decisive one.

Just as Charlie had stubbornly refused to respond when he and Ben had clashed that day, he felt that in this other world, language itself possessed power.

A casual “Open,” and a forceful “Open, damn you,” would presumably produce different results.

Charlie didn’t understand the deeper meaning behind the obscure, awkward spell, but he could experiment. Did an incantation have to be recited from beginning to end without pause, or were certain syllables meant to be emphasized?

Put simply, casting a spell while manipulating magic elements was like speaking with your eyes open while meditating at the same time. Gathering and releasing were the key. There should be a unique rhythm to the process.

Charlie wasn’t trying to kill himself, either. Whenever he felt he was reaching his limit, he stopped to rest for a while. A pot of sweet milk-and-oat porridge was always simmering on the kitchen stove, and large pieces of marinated meat were waiting to be roasted.

Ben saw it all clearly. Charlie used the little silver table knife that had belonged to his master and cut each piece of meat into eight perfectly even pieces, making sure every piece could be dipped in the delicious sauce.

He even found time to take a bath.

After his bath, Charlie looked much better. He noticed that the magic elements seemed to be more active at night, and since he had more or less finished practicing the spell, he decided to put it into practice.

Just in case, he brought Ben’s skull, a native of this world, with him to the door on the fourth floor. With Ben there to witness it, he took out his wand.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pointed the tip of his wand at the tightly closed door, and the instant he opened his eyes, the spell burst from his lips.

At the same time, a faint glow appeared at the tip of the wand.

But just then, Charlie keenly sensed something wrong. The faint glow flickered, showing signs of collapsing. The spell was interrupted, and Charlie looked at the wand in his hand, his brow furrowing slightly.

Was he not familiar enough with the spell? Or were there still too few magic elements, not enough to condense into a spell?

No. The spell had already formed. It was this door.

Charlie looked up at the walnut-colored door and faintly sensed that the door itself seemed to be absorbing his magic elements, preventing his spell from taking shape.

With only three hundred elements, losing even one could make the whole thing collapse.

“What are we going to do?” Ben sighed and couldn’t help suggesting it again. “Actually, actually, burning yourself to sacrifice your soul is really great. You’re especially devout, so all the impurities in your soul get burned away too. Compared to necromancers who take the ordinary route, you’d have much better talent!”

Charlie replied quietly, “So there are other ways to become a necromancer?”

Ben gave a dry laugh. “Ha ha. I don’t know any of the others.”

“Your master must have really appreciated your honesty.”

Ben was delighted. “How did you know? I’d forgotten that.”

“The answer is behind the door.”

Ben asked again, “How do you know?”

This time, Charlie didn’t answer. He had only said it offhand. But could you really say he was making it up? Was the answer truly not behind the door? Maybe there really was an answer inside.

That was Schrödinger’s answer.

Even as he talked with Ben, Charlie continued thinking. In just a few minutes, he had made his decision. He picked up the wand again and cast the spell once more.

The familiar sensation returned, but this time, he didn’t interrupt the spell. He gritted his teeth and refused to let up. Then, at the exact moment the final syllable fell, he used all his strength—and kicked the door.

“Bang!” The door flew open, slammed hard against the wall, and bounced back, nearly smashing the bones that had been turned into decorations and hung on the wall behind it.

As for Charlie, a bead of sweat slid down his jaw. He leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the floor, golden hair clinging to his pale cheeks. He still looked as melancholy and fragile as ever, like some pampered young nobleman who couldn’t even lift a chicken.

Ben: “…”

Th-this is allowed?

Charlie couldn’t get back up for quite some time because his legs had gone numb, but he felt wonderfully relieved. It was as though all the frustration and restlessness he had accumulated since transmigrating, even the fear and panic he had never allowed himself to show, had all been released through that single kick.

After a long while, Charlie used the wall to pull himself up and walked into the mysterious study on the fourth floor. Ben’s skull also successfully reunited with his ribs here.

The study was smaller than he had imagined. Three walls were lined with bookcases reaching all the way to the ceiling, while the fourth was occupied by a window with a desk and chairs in front of it. Apart from the same starry-sky ceiling as the kitchen, inlaid with fragments of gemstones, everything else was utterly unremarkable.

Charlie casually took a book from the shelf and tried to open it, but no matter what he did, it wouldn’t budge.

One of Ben’s ribs poked its way out from a high shelf and explained, “That’s a magic book. You can’t open it right now because you’re too weak.”

Hearing this, Charlie closed his eyes, sensed the existence of the magic elements, drew them in, and infused them into the book. A faint glow appeared on the book, but vanished in an instant.

Excellent. Nothing happened.

Charlie didn’t care about his weakness and simply took another book.

There were books such as Miscellaneous Discussions on Witchcraft , The Book of Oaths , Almanac of the Stars , On the Fifth Element , and The Gems of Edo . He wanted to read every one of them, but he couldn’t open a single one.

Charlie wasn’t discouraged. He carefully studied the titles and arrangement of the books and found no discernible pattern. Obscure and difficult texts were shelved alongside popular encyclopedias, with songbooks for bards, popular romance novels, adventurers’ travel journals, and all sorts of other books mixed in.

The strangest thing was that although Charlie couldn’t open the vast majority of the books on magic, he could occasionally open a page or two. Yet there was one cookbook that wouldn’t budge no matter what he tried.

What kind of magic recipe book was this? One containing recipes for potions that could let you cast forbidden spells after eating them?

Charlie laughed at himself, put the cookbook back, and continued searching.

His efforts finally paid off. On the second shelf of the southern bookcase, near the desk, he finally found a stack of notebooks grouped together. They could also be called— The Alchemy Notes.

The notebooks were bound in parchment and could be opened without magic. When Charlie turned the pages, lines of beautiful calligraphy sprang into view, apparently written with a quill.

Charlie wasn’t making a random guess, nor was it because he had any particular knowledge of notebooks. There was simply a quill sitting in the pen holder on the desk. The only unfortunate thing was that the notes bore no signature, so Charlie still had no idea who the original owner of Pinecone Tower had been.

Speaking of alchemy…

Charlie looked toward another door in the study. This door should lead to the alchemy laboratory on the fifth floor. He had asked Ben about it beforehand, and the door leading to the fifth floor didn’t require magic to open. It could essentially be considered part of the study itself.

With that in mind, Charlie didn’t hesitate. He walked straight over and pushed the door open.

The moment the door opened, the lights in the hallway came on. Countless magic lights automatically lit up beneath their glass shades, while dark-gold lines drawn across the walls connected them all. For the first time, Charlie truly felt as though he was standing inside a mage tower.

“Are those lines a magic array, Ben?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t remember. Probably, maybe, yes.” Ben wasn’t certain, but after thinking about it, he added, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Charlie looked up. There was no denying that the dark-gold lines were interconnected without appearing chaotic. They resembled the branches of an ancient tree, or paths connecting the stars, and carried an inexplicable, mysterious quality.

He collected himself, climbed the stairs, and pushed open the door to the fifth floor.

“Creeeak—”

The old door let out an ear-piercing creak, and the first thing that caught Charlie’s eye was the enormous pentagram painted on the ceiling. It was the same dark-gold color, enclosed within a circle, and looked no different from the pentagrams Charlie had seen online in his previous life.

But when he stepped inside and looked up at it again, he keenly noticed something different.

“Is this… an inverted pentagram?”

“Yeah.”

Ben’s left hand emerged from the laboratory’s cauldron without a sound. It was carrying a magic lamp, which swayed back and forth as it illuminated the small patch of floor around it.

He said, “My master was a necromancer. She sought life through death, so of course her magic array is upside down.”

“Magic array?” Charlie immediately picked up on the word and asked, “You mean this is the magic array carved into the mage tower that keeps the tower running?”

Ben froze. But Charlie’s words seemed to stir something in his memory, and he finally managed to grasp a fragment of information from his otherwise empty mind. “Maybe. It should be. Since it’s upside down, the magic array is on top rather than underneath.”

Charlie thought about it. It did make some sense. But he vaguely remembered seeing something about “above” and “below” just now, so he returned to the study and took out The Alchemy Notes.

Sure enough, the very first page contained a single sentence:

[As above, so below; as below, so above, to make one.]

The reason the master of Pinecone Tower had drawn an inverted pentagram array on the ceiling was apparently not simply because she was a necromancer. It also had something to do with alchemical theory.

Could Charlie understand it?

“Six of my seven orifices are open,” he said self-deprecatingly.

“Huh?” It wasn’t the first time Ben had heard something strange from Charlie, but he found it interesting and was curious.

“I understand absolutely nothing.”

“Hahahahahaha…”

Ben didn’t understand, but he thought it was hilarious, and his laughter rang out like a string of silver bells, as cheerful as an eight-pound child. Charlie remained perfectly calm, though he had a slight headache. His brain felt as though it were being pricked by needles after the excessive exertion.

Forget it. Time for a bath and bed.

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