Chapter 92 - The Aurora Disc

It was written in ancient Lemm. Azriel could not see it well because it was too small and because the basement was too dim. As she was looking into it, suddenly a blue light shone. A breath that Marthi exhaled became a blue flame and floated around in the air.

“Marthi?” Azriel asked in surprise.

“I thought you’d need light,” Marthi replied.

“Thank you. You seem to be good at treating flames. You are like a spirit.”

“There was a fire spirit among the ingredients that made me. It’s easy to treat fire.”

“You have a spirit in you?”

“I heard it was a spirit born in lightning. It was huge enough to burn a mountain. So, my fire can do that much, too.”

“Wow, lightning? That’s a very rare spirit. That’s amazing.”

“Ehem, it’s nothing,” Marthi said in a subtly proud way and wagged his tail. “This much is natural since I was born to be the most powerful familiar spirit. Except for Ofeq, the first familiar spirit of Reshith, I must be the most power—”

“Wait, what? Reshith?” Azriel was so surprised that she forgot about the disc she held in her hand. “Rhema Reshith? Are you talking about Rhema’s familiar spirit? Its name is Ofeq…?”

“Yes, the Ofeq. Anyone less than that level won’t be a match to…”

“Did Rhema have a familiar spirit named Ofeq? Not Largo, Blanchet, or Noir?”

“What?” Marthi made a sound like a hiccup.

“Master, it somehow feels like… you know are related to Rhema Reshith… Perhaps it’s my imagination, is it?”

“It’s Rhema who taught me magic. Of course, I know him.”

“Whaaat?!” Marthi’s eyes were widened. He looked at Azriel with its mouth open. “Are you saying you are Rhema Reshith’s pupil, master?”

“Yes.”

“Oh god, oh god…! You are indeed someone who deserved to be my master. You are amazing.”

“Do you know about Rhema, Marthi?”

“Even though I was a beast, I was made to be a familiar spirit. How can I not know the wizard who created the contract of familiar spirit?”

“…Huh? Rhema made the contract of familiar spirit?”

“You are not familiar with it? Rhema Reshith needed a guardian to protect his seal, so he created a strong servant that would not betray him for the first time,” Marthi continued as he straightened his wings. “That’s the first and the most powerful familiar spirit, Ofeq. Since then, other wizards imitated that and the contract of familiar spirit became common.”

“Wait a minute, a seal? A guardian to protect a seal? What kind of seal is that?”

“Of course, it’s the seal of the watchman.”

“…What is a watchman?”

“Oh, are you not familiar with it, either? Rhema Reshith is also a watchman.”

“I’ve never heard of…,” Azriel perched on a nearby rock with the disc in her hand. Three years ago, she did not acquire much through her investigation of Tarbo Tameion. She found out many things, but she could not find any relevance between Rhema and that wizard. But she ran into a clue from an unexpected place. Her heart pounded. “Marthi, tell me everything you know about Rhema, and Ofeq, too.”

“All I know is simple common knowledge…”

“Around what time were you made? Do you know about Iskam the Great? What about the Iskam Calendar?”

“…What is that?”

“It’s a calendar. This year is 999 in Iskam Year. So, your common knowledge is ancient secrets now.”

“Oh…,” Marthi blinked his red eyes. The lion cub pricked his ears and opened his mouth in a calm manner. “The watchmen are the wizards who swore to protect people from the dragon. All of them are said to become watchmen by pulling out and sealing their hearts.”

“A dragon? Hearts?”

“Are there no watchmen in the current time?”

“No. There is no dragon, not to mention the wizards who protect people from the dragon.”

“There is no dragon? Back then when I was made, the war against the dragon was at its peak. I guess people won and drove out the dragon!”

“The war between the dragon and people…”

“It was called the Great War.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that.”

People guessed that the Great War was one of the causes that the ancient magic civilization fell.

‘But I thought the Great War was between wizards, not between the dragon and people,’ she thought.

It was a war against the dragon and there used to be watchmen who fought against the dragon. Come to think of it, Rhema’s nickname, ‘the Wizard of the Horizon’ originated from the legend that he fought against the black dragon in the Endless Wilderness.

“What do you mean by pulling out and sealing their hearts?” Azriel asked.

“I’m not so sure about that. It’s just what the wizards who made me loaded me up.”

“What exactly did they say?”

“They said that the watchmen sealed their hearts to fight against the dragon.”

“…Is that all?”

“Yes. They said that one of the watchmen, Rhema Reshith, made the first familiar spirit, Ofeq, to protect that seal, and I’d become the strongest familiar after Ofeq. This is all I know.”

Marthi seemed to remember things that were related to himself to a certain degree. But this was a tremendous clue. Azriel repeated the word ‘watchmen’ in her mouth a few times and asked another question. “What kind of familiar spirit is Ofeq?”

“I heard it was a huge bird that could cover the sky when it spread its wings. It is competent with magic like a wizard and it is the only familiar spirit that could fight a dragon.”

“A bird…,” the familiar spirits she knew were only three. Noir and Blanchet the cat and a large dog, Largo.

‘I’ve never seen a bird… Wait,’ Azriel recalled a colorful bird which had its nest on the roof of Rhema’s house. She also remembered that she was curious why Rhema did not introduce her to it when she was young. ‘Is that bird Ofeq?’