Stories of the Leads (2)
The work of setting the Grand Temple to rights, after the great fire of the day before had burned it, was underway with a handful of people lending their strength. Ruined or not, it was still a temple, and believers in the Light of Radiance remained. The trouble was only that its so-called servants had proved worse than monsters.
In the old days the whole of the kingdom would have poured in to help. Now the hands at work were truly few. Ninety, perhaps? Half of them were builders Roen had hired, which meant the volunteers who had come of their own accord numbered forty-five at best. A bleak reality.
And then there was a bleaker fact still.
"Hey, Barry! Mix that concrete properly!"
"Ah—sorry."
"Bring a pickaxe over here!"
"A shovel! I said pick up a shovel, a shovel!"
Another thirty of them were students of the sword faculty. The One Hundred and Eight Arhats, the Berserkers—the little bears—the Bald Ones. Called by any number of names, they were out on the Grand Temple site, hard at unpaid labor. Not because their faith ran particularly deep. Because their master...
"Overturning a mountain makes for decent training."
"Sorry—overturn what?"
"A mountain."
"...How?"
"Well."
"???"
...had sent them here in the name of training.
"It'll do you a fair bit of good for training external arts—Gyeong, that is. Climb the mountain, dig the ground, swing a pick, and come back with some muscle on you. Geomdung will see you get three solid meals a day, so don't worry about your protein."
"......"
"For the time being, don't report to the training ground. Report to the mountain. A week ought to finish it, yeah?"
"...Sorry?"
"Never mind. Five days will do. I've done it, so I know."
"......We're human, though?"
Objections did not take. Not a grain of them. He said he himself had managed it, and went so far as to offer proof. What argument was left after that? More than anything, he was telling them this was the road to growing stronger. To declare they wanted none of it would have been the most foolish thing imaginable.
And so most of the little bears had been thrown onto the works, pouring themselves into the labor of turning the mountain over. If such work could bring the mountain back to life, any sense of fulfillment was merely a bonus.
Truly fulfilling—
"Shit..."
There was no day among them that failed to drag a curse out of someone's mouth.
Meanwhile, the sword faculty's two new assistants—who had followed the little bears on the pretext of serving as assistant instructors and supervisors of the students' outdoor lessons—could only marvel.
"Their pace is no joke."
"What in the world did Number 8 teach them? Give these kids three years and they're going to be genuinely strong."
Number 7 and Number 11. Or rather, the man and woman called Dina and Yan stared blankly at their old comrade's disciples. If human excavators existed, would they not look just like this? How could anyone move that fast?
"If it were the instructor, he'd have overturned the whole thing bare-handed, wouldn't he?"
"Five days? Please. If he put his mind to it, he'd be done inside of two."
"I give him a day."
...And Number 8, said to outstrip even these human excavators—what, exactly, was he?
Dina and Yan let out hollow laughs. Even as they did, the absurdity of it gnawed at them. They had, after all, been part of the very organization that planned the operation to burn the temple, and here they were helping put it back together.
Dina brushed the ruined length of one arm and shook her head.
"It's so unfamiliar it hurts."
"Unfamiliar or not, we endure. Number 8—no. Lee Han is our lifeline."
"This life..."
That Dina and Yan were alive at all, and that they had not been dragged into the unspeakably cruel torture chambers of Galahad or Lionel, was entirely thanks to the man who kept his neutrality. Which was why they had to throw themselves even into faculty work that did not suit them in the least. People who might die at any moment had no choice but to go along with whatever he said.
Wretched as it was, they did it in order to live—
And then.
Fwaaaaa—!
A light of life poured down, as if to console the two of them in their misery.
Tok. Tok-tok. Todok.
From the earth the students had overturned, sprouts and leaves began to push their way up. Dina and Yan froze, their pupils quaking.
"...That kid is just a mage, right?"
"That's what I heard."
"A Saint—ha! I thought that was something people had cooked up..."
They were not unbelievers on the order of the black-haired young lord, but unbelievers they certainly were. Kidnapped as children, they had prayed to God day after day, and not once had they been saved. Yet now, with a miracle like this before their eyes, they felt they might almost come to believe in divine mercy and holiness.
...Foolishly, of course.
The two assassins smiled, and the smile was bitter.
Wooooong—!
Where Irene's water-hued mana touched the ground, the earth trembled as if caught in a resonance. The mana of water was mana, yes—but remnants of Holy Power still spread about the Grand Temple were answering it, and the meeting of the two gave rise to something wondrous.
Todok.
Sprouts pushed up again. Trees knit themselves back into being. A sight like magic—surely this was the moment those words were made for.
Of course, the maddening irony was that being a mage did not make such a thing possible. The ability to use magic was not, by itself, enough. It was a gift granted only to someone whose mana was as pure as Irene's.
The other mages only fouled the ground worse...
The day before, watching Irene purify the earth, people had assumed that magic would restore the Grand Temple all the faster. That hope had proved embarrassingly hollow.
"What is this?"
The land had only grown more contaminated, and the mage responsible had very nearly been beaten to death.
"W-wait! P-please, calm down! I didn't do this on purpose! This is only because Lady Irene is extraordinary, I'm telling you!!"
Usually written off as a little slow, the mage found his wits spinning rather faster once death was at his heels, and he succeeded in explaining, at speed, both why the contamination had occurred and how Irene had managed what she had.
"If an ordinary mage's mana is about as pure as fifth-grade ditch water, then Lady Irene's is first-grade! No—clean as an uncut diamond! Which is to say, she is the only person in this kingdom who can work magic like that! S-so... please spare me."
...And so the mage lived. He did live. He took a few blows, but he lived.
Perhaps it was his testimony—that she alone could purify the land—that did it. Priests, the devout, and everyone else who had come to gawk at the site...
"A miracle! The Saint is working a miracle!"
"Saint..."
"Irene! Irene Windler!"
They heaped praise on the girl and did not hesitate for a moment to call her God's daughter—the Saint.
Irene had not used Holy Power. She had only cast magic, and still they named her a Saint. Absurd. And yet, looked at a certain way, it was no different from a buildup she herself had carefully stacked.
"They say she smothered the fire in a single stroke during the great blaze?"
"How could something like that be mere magic? It has to be a Saint's power!"
During the great fire she had poured down a vast rain and, in one stroke, put out the wildfire raging over the mountain, Grand Temple and all. A miracle. One could write it off as the talent of an Archmage, but the South had more people ignorant of magic than other lands. This was, after all, called a kingdom of knights and Mystery, and a mage, to most minds here, was nothing more than a human who happens to possess the Mystery known as magic.
Besides, her rain had saved people who would otherwise have died innocent that day, so praising her was only natural. And then there was this: every mage but Irene was useless, while Irene alone was turning scorched earth green again.
Well, then.
She might as well have stood up and declared, I am the Saint.
Factor piled on factor until, from where the people stood, the magic itself hardly mattered. It was simply more comfortable to recognize Miss Irene as a Saint.
If one also called to mind what his lord, Roen, had said—
—he had offered that prediction as well. And if the prediction held, the theory of Saint Irene would sooner be confirmed than ever allowed to fade quietly into nothing.
...Even I know Miss Irene isn't a Saint, and she still looks holy. For everyone else, it can only be worse.
She shone with a fairy's beauty as she flew, and every time that water-hued mana swept the earth, life stirred in the ground. It was holy to look upon. Whether Irene felt wronged or not, her elevation to Saint was...
She brought it on herself.
So Jack thought.
Irene had only come out of a good heart—Well, I'll just call it volunteer work!—but the further she stepped forward, the more, in the end...
...she's digging her own grave.
So this was what it looked like, to go looking for hardship.
"Why are my ears burning like this?"
Irene tilted her head at the itch. Was someone cursing her name?
"No way. There's nobody who'd badmouth me."
"Arin, a person is supposed to see herself clearly."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means a lot of people are badmouthing you."
"...You're mean."
Scolding the ghost girl, Irene puffed out her cheeks.
Fwaaaaa!
Sulking, and still not stopping the magic.
"Arin, you're working awfully hard. Not like you."
"You gonna keep dissing me? ...It's just—the sooner the fire damage is fixed, the better, right?"
"Hmm..."
Irene was throwing herself into restoring the burned ground with a purity of purpose unlike her usual self. It was not that she had suddenly awakened to faith, or to any spirit of service. She simply, truly, wanted the fire undone.
"...I just hate fires."
"Why?"
"The soldier who saved me died because of one."
"......"
"For the record, that wasn't here. It happened in the original world."
"......"
"Haa. He was such a good man... like our instructor."
"Arin..."
"......"
Unlike her usual easy face, Irene wore a look that was faintly mournful. Standing over the burned ground brought too many old memories back, and with those memories the longing for the original world—for home—only grew sharper.
A world where she could use neither magic nor Mystery. She would not even have telekinesis, as she did now. She would walk on her own two feet, and she would lose this beautiful face besides...
I have to go back. Visit that soldier's grave. And sit the CSAT.
Irene wanted to return, somehow. This world was good. Even so, she missed the life of home. A mother who nagged plenty, and still always cherished her. A father who was blunt, and still always stood in front of her. An older brother and a younger sister who could be a little maddening, and still took her side without question whenever someone else was cruel. She missed that family.
And—
"Right. I still have to go to that audition."
...there was a dream she meant to reach.
"You still haven't given up that ridiculous dream. I'm telling you, you don't have an idol's face..."
"I sing well. I told you."
"Huuu......! R-right. Dreams are free, so."
"Ugh...!"
Fwaaaaaa!
Irene flared, and still, as if by habit, poured everything she had into the magic. The home she would return to someday mattered, of course. But for now—
I have to give everything to the work in front of me!
Yes.
...Just like their instructor.
Thinking of the man she loved, the girl flew hard through the sky.
"How long do I have to keep this up?"
"It has scarcely been a day. Why such fuss?"
"A day isn't just a day to me."
"Enough!"
"...I'm gonna lose it."
The man the mage-girl now being raised as a Saint respected without end—the man who gave his all to anything and everything—was, for once, unmistakably distressed. He trembled, fear naked on his face.
And how could he not!
"For the coming week, I forbid all exercise. You will rest. No exceptions."
"......Goddamn it."
An order to rest for an entire week was terrifying beyond measure.
...Muscle loss was simply not a thing that could be allowed.