Tokyo bombing incident Nth time

If you go straight to the long passage that follows, the information density in this part is much lower, so low that it makes you wonder if the author deliberately padded the word count. Yuri has to summarize it in order to understand it.

[As practitioners of vows, spellcasters, and inheritors of esoteric arts, we have been defeated. Even with the utmost effort in mastering the ten mysteries of our art, we cannot overcome—the end has come upon us. In my final moments, I leave behind all that I have learned, hoping—may it not be defiled, that future generations may rise again from our bones, and that our esoteric arts, which have endured to this day, will not be lost. —(a large number of ambiguous and unclear words)—Abyss, Heart Ehren, whatever you may be called, one day, someone will defeat you!]

Skipping the part about meditation and energy generation, this is the kind of thing you'll see right away.

The ten mysteries refer to "death, fate, power, life, matter, mind, essence, space, spirit, and time." Yuri believes this is probably how the author of this notebook categorized supernatural forces.

Yuri himself knows about death and matter, so he should be able to use the same classification method as this author. —However, if I'm not mistaken, don't the terms "fate," "space," and "time" sound particularly unique and powerful just from their names?

Another explanation is that the author himself knew these ten categories, in addition to hundreds of others. However, this is unlikely, since the author himself stated that it wasn't "he" but "they," meaning many people perished together, and he/she simply left behind his/her last words. Even through a single sheet of paper and countless hours of time, Yuri could sense the author's despair and anger.

Yuri calmed himself down and reminded himself that since these ten mysteries were mentioned side by side, there was no reason why any of them could be worse than the others—besides, even if they were worse, Yuri didn't choose them himself, and he didn't even know how he acquired the ability to use them.

It is worth noting that the author used many words to describe the formidable enemy they faced, but this is also the most vague and unrecognizable part, with only a few words that seem to be phonetic symbols and whose meanings are unclear remaining.

Abyss, Heart Eh-en.

Let's ask Mingmei what these words mean when she gets back. The author's use of phonetic symbols is a bit unusual, and the pronunciation may not be accurate, but that's probably just the literal pronunciation and doesn't have any deeper meaning. For now, let's continue reading.

[—It pollutes and interferes with pure magic, corrupting supernatural beings associated with magic, but it has no intention of harming ordinary people; it simply prevents them from awakening. Perhaps this is a silver lining amidst misfortune. Because our awakening was not through inheritance, but rather a natural emergence among the people. Exploring the mystery of awakening has been our long-held desire, but ultimately yielded no results—at this moment, with all methods having failed, the lack of results themselves become a new hope. I can only hope that future awakened ones will learn from our lessons, not be blinded by arrogance, and maintain wisdom. Being able to realize a vision does not mean one can do whatever one wants, nor does it mean one is invincible—it is a capability, with the potential to change the world, but nothing more.]

The following part is no longer a coherent sentence, as if the author wanted to write something more after reaching this point, but was suddenly interrupted.

Yuri could feel the pain between the lines, but more importantly—when the author said he was arrogant, he was truly arrogant.

If he weren't arrogant, at least he should add definitions to words like "awakening," "arrogance," and "wisdom"!

The author is most likely dead, so there's no point in blaming him/her. Yuri has to interpret these words using his own imagination.

First, the author refers to himself as an Awakened One, which, in the context of the text, means someone who has "awakened" and is able to use magic.

These people use magic similar to Yuri's, which is also based on wish fulfillment.

They fought a great battle against their great enemy, the Abyss, at an unknown time, in an unknown place, and in an unknown manner, and were all wiped out.

Before they completely collapsed, they—at least the author—tried to pass on their knowledge, hastily jotting down what they wanted to preserve in a nearby notebook. The author believed that anyone who read the notes would easily understand what had happened, or at least not be harmed by it.

The appearance of the victim Yuri does not necessarily mean that this was the intended purpose—it is very likely that the notebook was altered.

It's likely that after their annihilation, the Abyss interfered with or influenced the notebook in some way—if they had discovered the notebook itself, they could have simply burned it, but that didn't happen. Therefore, it's more probable that they encountered some kind of supernatural influence—in short, it's highly likely that the Abyss intervened to eliminate them completely.

The method they used was probably to distort the original text, giving it a mutated effect, which directly dealt Yuri a blow.

Fortunately, whether its original effect was insufficient or its efficacy was diminished over time, by the time Yuri encountered it, it was so weak that even Yuri could withstand it.

Since wish fulfillment is called magic, Yuri considers himself a "supernatural being related to magic." According to the text, he will be "corrupted and twisted"—the initial temptation might be corruption, and the damage after resistance is probably twisting... Perhaps it's not necessary to distinguish so clearly, as the information is not yet sufficient.

In any case, after their failure, they placed their hopes on future volunteers to leave behind as much of their legacy as possible—at least this author believed that knowledge was the most important thing, so he left it behind.

The Abyss is the victor, whether as an individual or an organization—or perhaps as a phenomenon? In any case, unlike the authors who have already fallen by the wayside, the Abyss has mostly survived.

The author's advice, "Don't be arrogant, stay wise," is just a universally applicable piece of nonsense, which probably shows they've really run out of ideas.

In any case, Yuri was quite grateful to them—now he should start studying the knowledge they left behind, beginning with the meditation ritual at the very top.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

When Akemi got home that evening, she saw Yuri lying peacefully on the ground.

"Yuri? What's wrong with you again?" He simply placed his backpack next to the sofa.

“I discovered a power in the notes—” Yuri drawled.

"And then?" Akemi asked, intrigued.

“And then it’s completely unusable,” Yuri’s voice suddenly changed. “It designed a meditation method, a thought process, a state of mind—I couldn’t enter it at all.”

"That seems normal enough. So where's the problem? The kind of thing you're talking about that requires self-adjustment can't be achieved overnight—it's rather strange that you can even understand it."

Akemi's words make a lot of sense. Compared to her, who doesn't even recognize what's written on it, Yuri has a huge advantage. At least Yuri can somehow understand the meaning of this jumble of words.

But it still didn't work. Yuri had realized the problem, and it was one that he found difficult to solve and didn't really want to solve.

This meditation method is clearly designed according to the designer's way of thinking. Learning this meditation method means synchronizing, coordinating, and aligning one's thoughts with the designer's thoughts.

But Yuri just couldn't do it.

He instinctively resisted directly copying other people's ideas into himself; the harder he tried, the more he found fault with them. Unreasonable, non-compliant, inefficient, inconsistent methods—he couldn't think according to the requirements.

Ordinary learning inherently involves absorbing the thoughts of others, but at least that can be done if it suits one's tastes and dissipated if it doesn't; even if one opposes it, there's no need to forbid the act of memorization itself. But the supernatural—especially this way of thinking—requires, to some extent, becoming like the designer, thinking in his way, concentrating in his way, and carrying out desires in his way, if one wishes to utilize it.

Or, to put it another way, how can Yuri succeed in fulfilling his vow if he himself doesn't believe in it? In order for his vow to succeed, Yuri must convince himself to believe in and accept what he has learned.

It's not that this system is illogical; even if it were, Yuri wouldn't see it—moreover, it's the culmination of countless generations of inheritance, clearly a supernatural power that can actually function.

But Yuri had a premonition that if he really found a way to convince himself to learn it all... one or two wouldn't have much of an impact, but if he learned the whole book, he would become a different person, someone who not only inherited the recorder's knowledge but also the recorder's thoughts.

The thought of this future instinctively made Yuri feel resistant.

The recorder did not do this out of malice. As long as one is willing to take up his mantle and conduct a long period of research, Yuri can fully master what he left behind without any cost other than changing his own mind.

Is this price really that high? Human thoughts are inherently constantly changing; what's wrong with conforming to the ideas of our predecessors? If someone believes that changing one's thoughts to gain these powers is a reasonable choice, then it's hard to say that Yuri is wrong.

But Yuri simply refused.

Yuri briefly explained his predicament to Akemi, who expressed her understanding.

Although she didn't understand why Yuri was so resistant to changing his mindset, she believed that it at least showed that this path was not suitable for Yuri—and forcing an unsuitable path would not yield good results.

"By the way, do you know what Abyss and Heart Eon are?" After composing himself, Yuri asked the question he had asked earlier.

"Hmm... let me check the dictionary to make sure I'm right." Mingmei opened the English dictionary and started looking it up. The result came back quickly: "They should all mean 'abyss'."

Abyss... The first time Yuri heard the word, an image of a huge pit appeared in his mind.

"Actually, the word 'abyss' is mentioned in many places. Its original meaning is a deep pool or pit, but it is often used to describe a very dangerous situation, region, or state."

The problem was solved, but the gains were negligible—knowing that these people were defeated by the "Abyss" was utterly meaningless, because who knows what the "Abyss" they were talking about is? That's the nature of this book; either it doesn't know what something is, or it knows what something is but can't apply it.

Wait a minute... Yuri realized his blind spot.

Perhaps for those learners who have already achieved something, they need practical and effective methods to strengthen themselves—but they are clueless!

Simply knowing what your type of "wish" can actually achieve is already a huge step forward.

Great, this will be a big project, but a very helpful one.

Author's message

————Author's Note————

Volume One has come to an end. Thank you for reading. The author realizes that the pacing was poor and will strive to improve in the following chapters.

Yuri has established a firm foothold, and the period of confusion will decrease (or at least decrease).

Soul in turmoil

Chapter Fifty-Two: The Sculptor (Self-proclaimed)

There had been no new incidents for several days, and Yuri finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Although the last time I breathed a sigh of relief, new things immediately came up, it's always good to rest when you can.

Research on the notebook is still ongoing, and unfortunately, the other page that Yuri deciphered again offers little direct or effective help to the current situation.

This page contains a bunch of secret techniques about time, claiming that if used, one can foresee the future, interfere with the present, and change the past—Yuri doesn't yet know how to put them into practice, but he has good reason to suspect that these things are simply impractical. As long as even a third of the descriptions can be understood literally, the author will definitely not lose to that point of despair.

The only item last time wasn't related to time, but to fate—time and fate probably have nothing to do with each other, and it's very likely that this was just the order in which the author remembered it.

Yuri didn't understand why these things hadn't served their intended purpose. The author had recorded them, surely not to mislead future generations. If it were Yuri, he would only worry that he hadn't explained things clearly enough.

However, based on his reading, the brief descriptions of these complex rituals made no mention of resistance from other affected individuals.

Others will naturally resist, whether instinctively or deliberately. In fact, even if the target isn't other "people," it's the same; trying to make water flow is easier than trying to make steel flow, simply because steel resists more strongly. Even ordinary materials without life or consciousness won't move at will, let alone something as intangible yet incredibly influential as time.

Therefore, the power of these spells can likely only be fully realized within a vacuum spherical universe, where there are no obstacles, no unexpected events, and everything is in a perfectly ideal state. In other circumstances, their power will be diminished to some extent.

However, even if it only has one-tenth of the effect, the "Abyss" that can face and annihilate the practitioners of these spells must be incredibly powerful—this is a secret technique that interferes with time, and the strongest of them is said to be able to replay infinitely, that is, to take a point in time and "save" it, and no matter how many times you fail afterward, you can start over from that "save point"—even if you can only replay it once in reality, it is enough to turn the tide.

To be honest, Yuri wavered after just reading the spell's description. A part of him screamed, "If I don't want this power, what's the point of improving myself?" It was truly undeniable. If objective reality didn't prevent Yuri from actually changing his mind—even if he did learn it, his abilities would be completely incapable of casting such a spell—he might have actually given in.

Regardless, Yuri still memorized the contents, just in case he could master similar powers in the future. At least knowing the secrets of time could enable him to do such things.

Now he was even more excited about the effects of the other mysteries—if they could be compared to the time mysteries that were touted as so powerful, they couldn't be that bad, right?

Perhaps next time we should start by deciphering the first page; maybe it contains a table of contents or something… This time, Yuri went straight from where he left off, reading the second-to-last page. Looking back, that plan was wrong.

In any case, Yuri doesn't have the ability to analyze things more deeply for the time being, so he's looking for something else to do.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

For example, he is upgrading his way of entertaining himself.

Some time ago, Yuri developed a hobby of carving wooden sculptures (at the level of cursed dolls). Although the sculptures he made were uglier and uglier, Yuri's aesthetic sense was certainly not distorted to that level. However, two things prevented Yuri from bringing his ideas into reality—yes, his left and right hands.

Every time I design a wonderful product in my mind, it gets completely ruined during the process of becoming a real object. I cut too deep, thinking I cut too shallow, so I added more force and cut too deep. I thought the wood could withstand it, but in reality, the wood broke with one cut... In short, every time I make it, it's different from what I envisioned. Before making it, I'm full of confidence and expect a perfect result; during making it, I grit my teeth and try to fix the problems; after making it, I just throw up my hands and take out the finished cursed doll.

In short, that's the situation. Yuri once felt that he had to wait until he could perfectly control his body, to be able to accomplish whatever he wanted—and at the same time, he had to build a complete structural diagram in his mind beforehand, making sure he understood everything he wanted to accomplish. Only when both of these conditions were met could he create a qualified work.

This might take a long time and a lot of patience, and Yuri wasn't even sure if he could stick with it. Killing boredom was one thing, but diligent study was another. It was quite fun to casually carve out a cursed doll, and it was fine to throw it away when it made him feel bad. However, if he had to study diligently and still didn't see results, Yuri foresaw that his motivation would suffer a serious setback.

Before that, a more practical issue was that Akemi felt her knife was wearing out too quickly and asked Yuri to find a replacement. Metal knives don't show much wear on rotten wood, but their sharpness diminishes rapidly. As for the sawdust in the house, Yuri was already cleaning it up, so it wasn't considered a problem.

Although Yuri had considered refining the knife himself, he had a completely new idea, one that would achieve multiple goals at once.

The results are right now.

At night, Yuri used the moonlight to capture a portion of the shadow cast by the coffee table and sculpted it into the shape of a carving knife with almost no effort. Carving knives come in many varieties and are used in different situations, but Yuri didn't need such advanced skills for the time being; something that was good enough would suffice.

The material strength of the shadow items is similar to that of ordinary iron, but not as good as high-end steel. Yuri believes that as long as more energy is actively spent, its attributes can be further enhanced, but there is no need for that. Maintaining low consumption is more important, since the target is just wood picked up from the roadside anyway.

Capturing shadows isn't inherently problematic, whether it's day or night. However, according to Yuri's tests, the rate at which shadows dissipate is positively correlated with both time and ambient light intensity. Whether it's sunlight or artificial light, higher light intensity increases the rate at which shadows dissipate, making nighttime more convenient.

The daggers in the shadowy figures were also transformed in the same way. They did not choose to manipulate the surrounding shadows but instead chose to change their own bodies, most likely because it was easier that way.

It is worth noting that the shading knife itself does not create new shadows—when facing light, it is as if the light passes through it in some way.

However, if light passes through the carving knife, what exactly is reducing the knife's strength?

Yuri suspected that the force behind the attack was a concept of light itself, or something like a spirit field—but he had no evidence and could only wait for further observation in the distant future.

After preparing the tools, the next step is to carve the rotten wood in your hands.

Yuri also made improvements in this regard, using his willpower to strengthen the toughness of the rotten wood and prevent it from being shredded too quickly.

When he tried to fully reinforce the wood, he obtained a material that was almost like a softer metal. The carving knife, whether in shadow or on metal, could only leave marks very slowly, unable to complete the work quickly.

After two similar activities, Yuri felt that as the hardness was further enhanced, the energy consumed was increasing exponentially. When going all out, the wood could become as hard as steel, but the energy consumption was enormous and could only last for a few seconds.

This is likely slightly beyond Yuri's capabilities, and forcing it would be pointless—besides, it wouldn't align with the original purpose. It might be effective in combat, but it's pointless for crafting items.

Yuri only needs to slightly reinforce the material before he makes a cut in a particularly difficult area; even a small reinforcement is enough to significantly reduce the possibility of material breakage.

The future advanced goal is to only improve the position of the attack without improving the overall design—Yuri has tried many times but failed, no matter how good his initial plans were.

Then comes the main part of the work: replicating the images in the mind onto reality.

It's important not to actually manipulate the wood to deform. While theoretically, directly manipulating the wood should quickly transform it into Yuri's desired shape, that wouldn't aid in training and wouldn't be perfect for the time being—Yuri could do it, but the energy consumption would be too great, leaving no time for repairs. It would require even more energy and more adjustments, pulling up a little here and pressing down a little there—Yuri didn't have that much energy to waste on this, so he abandoned the idea.

Yuri is quite skilled at handling the puppet's face, and recently he's been tackling the ball joints. At first, he didn't know where to begin, but once he got the hang of it, it wasn't much different from handling other parts of the puppet.

Of course, size is important... Fortunately, Yuri can easily judge whether something is suitable or not; he can do it with just a glance or a touch.

The assembly and piecing together is a new project (in the past, Yuri made fixed cursed dolls that were all one-piece molded), but the difficulty is not particularly high.

The problem is that the resulting dolls look more human than before, and therefore more frightening—they're completely devoid of decoration. Yuri hasn't found suitable paints to decorate the dolls either. The paints Akemi prepared for a potential art class might help, but who knows how much will be wasted before they succeed.

So Yuri took a rather lazy approach and directly sculpted clothes for the doll during the previous body completion process.

Although it would be more appropriate to make the puppet first and then dress it up, there was an objective problem that prevented Yuri from doing so—finding wood was relatively easy, but finding cloth was not.

So he simply sculpted the clothes directly onto the doll, which meant he couldn't choose styles that flowed (though perhaps he could?). In any case, he made it based on the armor in Akemi's history book.

Another advantage of choosing armor was that it also solved the problem of hats and hair—Yuri still couldn't figure out how to carve hair out of wood, so he simply used a helmet instead.

Then, by assembling the various parts, a Minmei armored samurai doll that took two hours to complete was finished! It's still missing the paint compared to a normal doll, but it's already passable.

Moreover, and more importantly, Yuri consumed almost no energy throughout the entire process, keeping it all at a minimum level, and didn't even need to use the Shadow Carving Blade a second time. Yuri believed this was the effect of his skill mastery.