02 - I Am That I Am

The water was cold on his skin, freezing cold.

Johan had always been a traveler, it was the family tradition to be a traveler, yet he never particularly bothered to go to Antarctica.

But this amount of coldness had already been enough to compensate for a lifetime's worth of ice baths, so how cold would Antartica actually feel?

Nevertheless, Johan was quite thankful of the swimming lessons that his father had given back then.

Johan quickly scrambled out of his suit, and took off the white dress shirt underneath. They would just get in the way and slow him down at this point.

His naked upper body was revealed to the world as he dove deeper and surged his muscles with Magical Energy to resist the tides.

Each and every contour of his torso was one that you wouldn't expect from a bookish scholar. Although it wasn't exactly a bodybuilder's brawny physique, it was more like the physique of a rugged treasure hunter.

He could have passed for a male model were it not for his plain facial features. Then again, it was a fake face, but in reality, his real face was sadly not much better.

The Magic Crest that was embedded around his solar plexus began to glow a soft cerulean hue as a giant bubble of breathable air appeared around his head, isolating his skin from the chilling waters.

Swimming against the currents like was a struggle even with reinforced muscles, one that took his breath away. It was a deadly face that he had noticed immediately.

His Magic Crest glowed once more as hundreds of metal wires that had been embedded deep within his skin shot out from his exposed back.

"Agh...!" Johan bit his tongue to suppress the enroaching scream as morphine and various pain-killing opioid drugs were directly injected into his bloodstream.

He silently felt that the choice of automating this mechanism had been the right one.

The metal wires shot down onto the river bed before implanting themselves onto the ground, dragging his bleeding body down in the process.

There, half-buried in the sand and pebbles, was a shining object, one that you'd easily miss if you hadn't been specifically searching for it.

And that was what Johan was looking for.

It was shaped like a ring, but was far too large to have been worn by a human. Although it had been buried deep here in the river bed, it showed not a single sign of wear and tear on its golden surface, nor of any rust.

Etched on the giant ring's surface, was a series of words written in the same esoteric language that the ancient manuscript had been written in.

It read...

"I am that I am."

It was a familliar sentence to Johan, he had heard it somewhere before. Unfortunately, due to being underwater and tortured with severe pain, he couldn't really remember where.

The Magus was immediately filled with excitement.

Johan felt the sweet tang of iron flowing down his mouth as his bloodshot eyes snapped from left-to-right, appraising the artefact before him.

It was the treasure that his family had been hunting for generations, it was the only chance for the Lawrence to take a glimpse at the Root and comprehend True Magic.

It's name, the Gobbler Ring.

His hands trembled, but he didn't dare to hesitate.

Johan grabbed onto the metal wires and dragged his body down, intending to touch the Gobbler Ring.

And when the tip of his index fingers finally grazed the smooth surface, that's when it happened.

"...Ah!" The Magus yelped as he fell on the wet floor, a slight pain immediately smashing into his head.

"What... huh?" Johan felt his world spin as he reached up and held his forehead tightly, a migraine more severe than an avalanche boring into his brain.

He then realized that his bubble had vanished.

Panic settled in, but before it could sprout any further, Johan realized that he still had no trouble breathing.

"I'm... not in water?" Johan muttered as he glanced down to confirm the fact.

—No, he was still very much in water, it's just that the water had gotten much more shallow, only reaching to his ankles.

"...Where on earth is this?" He asked out loud as he glanced at the surroundings.

It was just a blank space beyond the horizon, with the floor being flooded with ankle-height water above polished stone.

Although he had jumped from the London Bridge in midnight, it was a sunny day here, weird thing is that...

When Johan looked up, there wasn't a sun to look at, it was light that came from nowhere, there weren't even any clouds.

It was just a blue sky without blemish, like a canvas dipped in cyan paint.

Johan touched his forehead again, but now, the migraine had died down to a barely-noticeable level.

That didn't mean he was calm though.

"Just... okay, so, is this Heaven? Did I actually just die like that?" He wondered out loud as he glanced at the surroundings once more, making sure there weren't any hidden monster about to attack or something.

But there was nothing, there was no one. Johan was alone.

He sighed deeply, taking a few more breaths to calm himself down.

Freaking out at this moment would be completely understandable had he been a normal man, but it was utterly unforgivable for a Magus to react in the same manner.

After all, this was his one chance to acquire True Magic... perhaps, where ever this place was, it could potentially lead him to the Root?

Johan knelt down onto his knees as he gazed at his reflection. The face that gazed back wasn't that of the false identity that he had been using, but the real Johan Lawrence.

He had a rather plain face in his own opinion, with the saving grace being his almost-golden hazel irises and sharp jawline.

Johan dipped his hands in the water and brought forth a handful of water to drink.

It was lukewarm and extremely clear, without a smudge of dirt or bacteria in sight.

He brought it onto his lips and sipped.

...Well, it was just water.

The Magus glanced at the reflection of his back, there were no metal strings coming out of his skin, nor was there any blood.

Actually, Johan was completely naked, but weirdly, he didn't feel uncomfortable by this fact.

What made him panic though was the revelation that hit him at the next moment.

His Magic Crest was gone.

Johan tried to feel the Magical Energy in the air and reinforce his body, but that too did nothing.

All of his Magic Circuits had vanished.

Johan Lawrence...

Was currently no different than an ordinary human.

"Shit... shit, shit, shit!" Johan wanted to kick something, had there been fish in these waters, he would have already choked one to the next afterlife.

The loss of Magic Circuits... it wasn't a joke to say that any Noble Magus would rather have lung cancer.

A deep, vivid anxiety and panic stabbed itself onto Johan's heart, taking root within.

"God... please, just be a dream, don't you dare make this real..." However, he began to rationalize.

Most likely, what ever this place is, it wasn't actually real and more or less a mindscape dimension of some kind.

"...What the fuck is a mindscape dimension!?" Okay, maybe not so rational, but it was better than accepting a reality where he lost the right to call himself a Magus.

Johan went silent and still for an entire minute with vacant eyes before he laid on the floor and tried to drown himself.

"Cough... cough... ah, fuck!" He cursed like a sailor as he lifted himself up back from the water.

Yeah, no. Johan didn't want to kill himself yet... he didn't have to guts to endure the shame of drowning in a kiddie pool.

"Damn it, maybe I should have listened to that grandma, after all..." He muttered, mostly, and definitely to himself.

With nothing else to do, Johan slapped his own cheek to give himself strong sensations as motivation before he set his gaze on the horizon.

There was nothing there, but what else was there to do other than walk?

And so, he began walking.

It was not so much of a labour-intensive exercise, but it was a mind-numbingly annoying one.

He couldn't run with water all over the place, and yet he also couldn't swim since the water was much too shallow, leaving him with the choice of walking naked with awkward gait for the rest of eternity.

An hour passed.

At this point, there was still nothing to comment about, let alone any sights to see.

Johan continued walking.

Another hour passed.

...Or was it actually just 20 minutes?

Johan didn't know, he couldn't tell the time, he didn't know how those prison inmates could survive for so long in solitary confinement, just this long was already enough for him to want to do perverse and depraved deeds all for the sake of doing something other than walking.

"Wait..." And then, Johan stopped. "Is that..."

He recognized something in the distance.

Brushing his eyeslids to make sure that he wasn't seeing wrong, he walked closer, silently praying that he was just imagining.

But it was right there, a naked human corpse floating on the water.

He recognized the corpse.

...It was Juniper Lawrence, his mother.

Johan felt like puking.

Of course, it wasn't the first time he had seen this woman naked, they bathed together back when he was little, after all. But to see her body in this context?

It was disgusting.

Moreover, after giving his mother a closer look, Johan realized something.

"No... what... what the hell is suppossed to be?" She had no face.

That's right, she didn't have a face. Juniper's head completely lacked any facial features, there wasn't even a nose, it was a smoot surface with the same hue as her skin.

Johan turned away from the body, resisting the urge to puke.

No, that wasn't his mother, it was probably just an illusion created by this mindscape dimension.

Or was this actually a messed-up interpretation of purgatory? You know, Twillight Zone and all?

Johan walked away with a lot in his mind. But it didn't take long before he was met with another one.

Now it was his father, Conan Lawrence.

"...How ironic." Johan muttered to himself.

Like his wife, Conan also did not have a face...

The inventor of the fake face now lacked an actual place.

Yeah, it was all coming together.

...Johan wanted to shoot himself, but found that he actually didn't have a gun. So he walked away again after convincing himself that the body wasn't actually the real Conan.

"This..." But he kept finding more.

Consistently, all of the bodies belonged to the people that he recognized.

There was that driver that drove him closer to the London Bridge, there was that grandma who shouted at him on the Bridge...

"Ah, you're here too..." Johan muttered to himself as he saw the naked body of a blonde woman.

Johan looked away, he didn't want to see a faceless version of her.

He walked again.

...But the bodies kept coming.

They became denser in quantity, they started appearing in groups, appearing almost like small land masses.

And then, there was a full-blown island of them, an island made of faceless bodies that he recognized.

Johan finally puked, but what came out was only the water that he had drank earlier, nothing else.

"God..." He clutched his heart, attempting to pry his eyes away from the sight.

But he couldn't.

Johan walked towards the island, and eventually made landfall, his feet climbing on top of the bodies as if they were actual land.

And then he glanced up.

Ah, that's where it was.

There were clouds in the sky, but they weren't made of water vapour.

No, they were made of the faces that belonged to the bodies, all of them screaming in silence, all of their bloodshot eyes crying with agony.

Johan clutched his head.

The migraine got worse, he heard a loud-ringing sound as he closed his eyes.

He was wrong, this wasn't Heaven, nor was it purgatory.

It was Hell.

...There was something in the middle of the island of faceless bodies, something that wasn't a human corpse.

Actually, maybe it was, but it was really big, it was gigantic.

An arm the size of a skyscraper was erected from the water, its palm spread out with each finger pointing to the sky.

When he got closer, Johan noticed that there were figures standing on the fingers, one in each finger.

He finally realized why there was no sun when he looked at the figure on top of the middle finger.

That's the Sun.

He didn't know why he felt this, but it was just the Sun in human form.

The Sun's face was unrecognizable, and he was covered in pure white silk.

Next to him, the figure that stood atop the index finger, was one covered in seaweed and tentacles.

That is one cruel Tyrant...

Johan felt the urge to bow down and immediately kill himself when he looked at the Tyrant.

On the other side, the one that stood on the ring finger was less humanoid and more like...

A White Tower...?

That'a right, it was just a White Tower that spilled out liquid books from each of its pores.

At the same time, it was the only the figure that seem to actually be intentionally looking at him, making Johan feel an inexplicable compulsion to recite a Chemistry textbook.

Right next to the White Tower, the figure that was wrapped aroud the pinky...

He's a Hanged Man.

It was a featureless man that was simultaneously crucified and hanged.

When Johan looked at the Hanged Man's shadow, he swore that there were eyes inside.

And finally, the one atop the thumb.

I don't know what that is...

It looked like a silvery Dragon, but felt even more imaginary and unreal.

Really, that was the best way he could even describe it. Anymore and Johan's head would split open.

And then, all of them turned their heads in Johan's direction.

He frozed, and they spoke.

"I am that I am."

And then something fell in front of him.

It was a huge stone tablet with words written on all of its sides.

Instinctively, as if compelled by his own body, Johan began to read.

「Sequence 9」

— Sailor — Bard — Secrets Supplicant — Reader — Spectator —

With every word, Johan seem to gain knowledge, forbidden knowledge, the kind that could kill him.

He read more, ignoring his migraine.

「Sequence 8」

— Folk of Rage — Light Supplicant — Listener — Student of Racionation — Telepathist —

He felt that he needed to stop, he had to.

But he didn't, Johan continued to read.

「Sequence 7」

Seafarer — Solar High Priest — Shadow Ascetic — Detective — Psy...

He couldn't finish the last one.

Johan's mind... simply stopped.