The old grave keeper sighed. He raised his wrinkled hand and pointed at me.

“Gray, hold Add up to eye level.”

“Huh? But Add’s still asleep…”

“That doesn’t matter. What’s important now is not Add’s personality, but its functions as a Mystic Code. The Magic Crests implanted to you were especially altered to fit it, so all you have to do is let the scythe take over, as usual.”

“…S-sure.”

I raised the scythe as Bersac had instructed, just like what I used to do when I trained.

I held the center of my body as close to the scythe as possible and focused my attention there, removing the boundary between the two and filling the space with [emptiness(空).]

“Focus. Making yourself as small as possible is the same as making yourself expand to the extreme. Compress yourself while using your consciousness(yourself) fill up the world.”

I tried my best to suppress a smile, because this was very similar to what my mentor had talked about once in class. Though I had attended classes at the Clock Tower for a while, most of it had not managed to stick. I felt as if I was an idiot who was staring at a giant block of gold but was completely ignorant about its value. …Even so, I did still managed to learn something.

It all seemed like an overly luxurious gift to me.

I took a deep breath.

I focused on the still-sleeping Add.

With a thunk, I touched the handle of the scythe to my forehead. The ice-cold metal made my forehead slightly numb, and the tingling sensation soon spread through out my whole body, seeping into my skin.

A light shined in my mind.

Suddenly, the light was linked together, and a Milky Way of light spread out above and below me.

“…I see, a path,” I mumbled to myself, unknowingly.

“What a surprise.”

Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files: The Atlas Contract (Upper); Chapter 2, Part 2