"You're called Rowan, right?"
Serie suddenly pointed in another direction and said with visible displeasure, "That city sitting on top of the red mountain—what exactly is that? Why are there so many bizarre-looking creatures there?"
Rowan immediately understood what Serie was referring to, and why she looked so disgusted.
After all, anyone who knew what the Celestial Dragons were would understand.
"That's the Holy Land, Mary Geoise. The people living there are the world nobles known as the Celestial Dragons."
"Celestial Dragons? Are they even more exalted than emperors?"
"Yes. At least in this world." Rowan nodded.
Serie withdrew her farsight magic, snapped her fingers, and several chairs appeared out of thin air.
She sat cross-legged on one of them, resting her chin on one hand, and said, "Rowan, tell me about this world. I want to understand it."
Serie was very interested in the unknown. It was a feeling she hadn't had in a very long time.
Rowan said, "One moment."
He got up, pushed open an air door, returned to his own world and his room, took out a full set of the One Piece manga, came back, and set it in front of Serie.
"If you want to understand this world, read this manga. Everything about this world is in here."
"Oh? Is that so?"
Serie snapped her fingers again. The manga was pulled up by an invisible force and floated in front of her.
Levitation magic—a spell that let objects float in the air and guided their movement gently. It was useful for carrying heavy things and could also be used to reduce falling speed.
That spell had appeared more than once in the story.
Then the pages started turning at an incredible speed. In just a few seconds, Serie tossed aside the first volume of One Piece and moved on to the second.
Ten minutes later, she had finished the entire set Rowan had brought out.
Rowan guessed that she had probably used something like "rapid reading magic" or "information absorption magic," which was how she managed to finish dozens of volumes of One Piece in just ten minutes.
In the world of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, magic was broadly divided into two types.
One was combat magic.
That one was self-explanatory. Any magic used for fighting fell into that category.
The other was everything else.
And that second category covered an absurd variety of things—so many that it could honestly be described as bizarre and all over the place.
Besides support magic like levitation and farsight, there were spells for making hot tea appear, turning sweet grapes sour, changing red apples into green apples, making a flower field bloom, finding lost accessories…
There were even ridiculous spells like removing stubborn grease stains, scratching an itch on your back, cracking eggs without getting shell fragments into them, and making sure you never trip over your words when saying tongue twisters.
In short, if you could think of it, there was probably a spell for it.
The reason for that was probably because the magical worldview of Frieren was completely rooted in idealism.
A lot of mages in that world liked to sum up magic with one sentence:
Magic is the power of imagination.
As long as your imagination was strong enough, magic could achieve unbelievable things.
Which was honestly insane.
Then again, magic existing at all was already insane, so making it even more ridiculous wasn't that big a deal.
After finishing One Piece, Serie looked up and asked, "What about the rest of the story?"
"I don't know."
Rowan shook his head and pointed at the author's name on the cover.
"See this name? Eiichiro Oda. In our world, he's a manga artist. The later parts of the story haven't been drawn yet, so I don't know them either."
Serie said, "So, you're not from this world."
"Of course not." Rowan shook his head and pointed at Hashirama, Minato, and Kanae. "Not just me. None of us are."
"I'm from Earth. They're from the world of Naruto."
"The world of Naruto?" Serie swept an interested gaze over the three of them. "So their world is also a manga."
"Yes." Rowan nodded.
"And what about me?" Serie looked at Rowan seriously. "As someone from another world, you recognized me the moment you saw me. That's strange. So I'm also a character from a manga."
"Yes." Rowan nodded again.
Serie didn't waver at all after hearing that. Instead, she asked curiously, "Then what is my world called? Or rather, what is the title of that manga?"
"Frieren: Beyond Journey's End."
"Frieren?"
Serie looked as if she'd been startled. Her mouth even shifted into a comically cat-like shape.
"That's right. Frieren."
"Hahahaha…"
All of a sudden, Serie burst into laughter.
"That really wasn't what I expected. So the protagonist of my world's manga is Frieren. If Flamme knew that her student became the protagonist, she'd probably smile in satisfaction."
She truly hadn't expected Frieren to become the lead.
That apprentice of her apprentice, who had never shown the slightest ambition, had actually become the protagonist.
It was a complete surprise.
"So then, what kind of story does Frieren: Beyond Journey's End tell?"
Stroking her chin, Serie muttered, "Now that I think about it, not long ago I heard that Frieren and her companions defeated the Demon King. So does Frieren: Beyond Journey's End tell the story of Frieren's adventure to defeat the Demon King?"
"Not exactly."
Rowan shook his head.
"In our world, the story of a hero defeating the Demon King is already far too cliché. There aren't just one or two versions of that template—there are hundreds, if not thousands."
"So people don't really get excited about that kind of story anymore."
"Frieren: Beyond Journey's End tells the story of what happens after the hero Himmel dies."
"At the very beginning of the story, Frieren and Himmel have already defeated the Demon King. Later, at the celebration feast, Frieren makes a promise with her companions to watch a meteor shower together half a century later."
"But after the meteor shower, the hero Himmel dies."
"Seeing Himmel's death with her own eyes, Frieren finally comes to understand that time flows differently for elves and humans, and she deeply realizes that she never truly understood human beings."
"Filled with regret because of that, Frieren sets out on a journey to Aureole, the resting place of souls, guided by the notes left behind by Eisen and by her master Flamme."
"And that begins an entirely new adventure."
"That's the story Frieren: Beyond Journey's End tells—not the story of defeating the Demon King, but what happens after the Demon King has already been defeated."
~~~
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