NOVEL FROG Chapter 23: [Taboo]
{Himitsu - Hideki Taniuchi} {Apple music vers}
This world's history is strange and primarily covered in mystery as every adult I ask for simply tells me, "There's not much." I've learned the ways of the sword as best as I could, and I've leveled up enough to sit comfortably next to Vera even if she out-classes me with her long list of abilities.
Vera knows about the history of the witch kingdom, which makes sense since she went to school at a witch institute, but Bartholomew doesn't know much about world history, and neither does anyone in the town. It's strange that I noticed when I asked about legends of this world, which they do have.
The legends in this new world are more believable, as shown by the whole "This is a magical land" argument. Everyone knows about the legends, but no one knows where they originated or why they came to be. The most interesting legend is that of "Leviathan."
In my world, Leviathan was a bible monster, which is the same here, but the monster's description is more like that of a hydra creature. An unstoppable, unkillable enemy that'll always win no matter what, all to protect the world from the "recession."
The recession is another one of this world's myths that basically tells the story of the apocalypse that is bound to repeat itself over and over for eternity. I don't quite understand what it means, but by how they describe it, I would say it sounded a lot like in Narnia when Aslan died and everything reset.
Yet, there are no records of these events. It's all just folklore. It's all just legends that nobody takes seriously but more like nighttime stories to tell their children, but I refuse to believe it's all just made up. It all came down to this world's push to make it clear that humanoid races are not all the same.
I didn't understand why I was marked as a "Witch" in my appraisal while Bartholomew was marked as a human. From the outside world, witches and humans look incredibly alike, and you can't tell us apart, but the world makes its categorization very clear.
Vera explained that the main difference between humans and witches lay in magical and physical elements. Apparently, witches age as fast as humans until we hit fifteen, and then the aging changed between Witches and Humans, with witches aging almost ten times slower.
Humans are physically stronger than witches, but the trade-off is that witches tend to be blessed by mana, far greater than even the strongest humans. That was another one of my questions, which nobody has an answer to; what exactly was mana, to begin with? How did it come to be?
The truth is that nobody knows what it really is and where it comes from or, more importantly, why we can all use it. That voice inside my head, too; nobody knows who is talking or why. Everyone simply accepted it as part of life, but as an outsider, I can't help but wonder why these things exist.
Like my hope, why is there such a power boost for people with virtuous skills? Who made that thing work like that? Who or what is in control of it all? Is it the work of one lonely god or many? Nobody knows, which further fuels my curiosity because I want to know.
Back then, when I tapped into my dark power, I was met with a strange godly figure who said I looked lost, that tapping directly into my power wouldn't be fair, and that I should break away from the system in the right way, but which way was that?
I asked Vera if she knew of any legends or stories where someone had broken away from the world system, but she came up empty, and the same response came from everyone in town. What did that god mean with his comment about breaking away from the system anyway?
It's all complicated, and thinking about it makes my head hurt. Yet the driver that keeps me going is not shutting down now that I've got so many unanswered questions. I want answers to all these unknown questions about the world I came to.
[Proficiency has reached the required level] [You've unlocked Taboo level 1]
Taboo? I have been speculating about the many holes in the world's history that can't be right. According to Vera, you only unlock skills when you perform something unusual or out of the norm. Yet I refuse to believe I'm the only one that seeks answers to these matters. I can't be the exception.
Surely, scholars are thinking and researching my basic questions, right? I can't be so low that I obtain taboo for merely asking questions that don't seem right.
[Proficiency has reached the required level] [Taboo level 1 has become. Taboo level 2]
Wait a moment; this is making less and less sense with every second. How did I earn another level of taboo? Am I not allowed to question the system itself? If you're unable or put off by the taboo levels, is it not a good piece of evidence that there's something fishy about the entire thing?
I don't mean to disrespect any gods or creators of the world, but keeping things so tightly secretive only makes me want to question it even further. I want to know how that man was able to beat up the Queen, who was arguably the strongest ally we had like she was made out of paper.
I also want to find out if there's more like me. Perhaps I'm not the only reincarnation in the world at the moment, and judging by Vera's words, I'm not that uncommon, so I want to know why people even reincarnate in this world, to begin with. Why don't we just go to heaven or hell when we die?
I know how I got here, but is it the same reincarnation process for everyone else? According to Vera, my reincarnation is a strange one made by a demon of some sort, but the most common one is done by the gods themselves, according to her.