Growth
The deathline. The victor there is the one left alive.
—Only the living may advance.
Elaine's swordsmanship instructor, Moresz Palas, had always hammered those words home.
He wasn't wrong. Only the living could build upon what the deathline taught them.
As proof, Elaine's body moved light as air. Yet the sword that lanced out at the end of each motion was heavy, as though it carried her whole strength behind it. Even a gliding walk packed Heavenly Might into every footfall — and the same held true for aura, for aura was both the second self and the very nature of the one who bore it.
That contrast of weight was proof in itself: the sword that never wearied no matter how it moved, that kept its full power through endless swinging, belonged to the victor.
Carrying that realization, Elaine swung her sword like a woman possessed. The more she swung, the more she felt herself change.
The wounds the magical beast had given her had long since healed. Her body never tired, and the sword stayed heavy without end. Her craft deepened with every stroke.
And so Ellen survived the deathline, stacking each hard-won insight until it became truly hers. The results were so clear it was hard to believe this had been her first.
...And yet she wasn't glad. Not purely.
'What if I had died?'
The very hypothesis left a bad taste.
Elaine wasn't the sort to dwell on such things.
But her mind refused to stop, because she had not survived alone.
She had let her guard down and allowed the attack. She had conceded too readily that the beast outsped her. She had failed to divide her aura.
If she hadn't?
'Would I have won?'
The hilt crumbled in her grip. She had no certainty. The sting of defeat would not wash out, and the fact that there would never be a rematch with the thing grated on her.
It was already dead.
Harad had killed it. Which made it all the more grating.
'I lost, and Harad won.'
As if Harad had won thanks to her?
Such words were no comfort. Elaine was Serzilla — heir to the great North, born with Heavenly Might and talent beyond measure. She should have been the victor.
Even if the only witness had been a single magician.
'I'm special, you see.'
Right. He truly had been a special magician.
Elaine could no longer refuse to admit Harad's words. Harad was the victor, and Elaine the defeated.
It didn't curdle into jealousy. This was Elaine's own problem — one she could overcome by winning the next deathline alone.
"Young Lord."
An unwelcome visitor cut her thoughts short.
Moresz Palas. Elaine's swordsmanship instructor.
Catching sight of him, Elaine squinted.
"You're here early today."
"I'm late, actually."
"Is it that time already?"
The surroundings had brightened. The sun had risen without her noticing.
"You've been up all night."
Moresz had noticed that Elaine was drenched in sweat from head to toe.
"Has something happened?"
"Nothing has."
Elaine felt no dissonance in the body remade into a man's. She was an outside thing to concerns like that.
The sword Elaine swung now and the sword Ellen swung were one and the same; the insight wrested from the patchwork magical beast was plainly worked into it.
"...Your sword has changed."
Moresz had caught the change in a single glance.
Unnecessary strength had drained out of it — and in that draining, true strength had revealed itself. It was counsel Moresz himself could never have given.
Heavenly Might.
Elaine alone had been born with that uncanny power.
Even Aratus the Grand Duke, the finest in all the land, had not been born with it.
"Has something happened?"
Moresz asked again.
His face had set hard, and at the sight of it Elaine laughed outright. She had known already — but seeing Moresz's expression turned knowing into certainty.
"I've had a realization."
Harad taught Elaine a great many things. Only Harad could put a deathline in front of her.
Elaine sheathed her sword, swiped the caked sweat from her face with a palm, and started walking.
"Where are you going?"
"To go realize some more."
"You can't."
Moresz barred the entrance to the training ground.
"My apologies, but if it's today's training you're worried about, we can make it up another—"
"Today is a hunting day."
A hunting day.
That was what Serzilla called the days of search operations Elaine accompanied.
"Says who?"
Until yesterday it had been a day she counted down to with relish — a chance to enter the Boundary. On every hunting day Elaine had hoped to cross paths with a high-tier magical beast or a magician of the Outer Realm.
Not once had that wish been granted.
"It was at the Young Lord's own whim."
"That whim is already dead. Sorry, but cancel it for me."
Elaine no longer looked forward to hunting days. She had watched an Outer Realm magician die; she had even been beaten by a high-tier magical beast. Tonight would be different.
"Shall I notify the garrison knights, then? His Grace the Grand Duke will be furious. In truth, hunting days only exist because the Young Lord begged for them in the first place."
"A bad custom. High time it was done away with."
"Not today, you can't."
"......"
Moresz was unmoved.
If she went to the Grand Duke — to her father — and asked directly, he would surely bend. But Moresz and the garrison knights would be left bitterly disappointed.
"...Fine. I'll go."
It was the only thing the Young Lord could do.
"Right — a hunting day."
He would not be seeing Elaine today. She would be spending the day with the knights in the 1st Boundary — so today was for the things one could only do alone.
Harad left the Inner Castle at a brisk pace. The gatekeeper clicked his tongue but opened the gate all the same.
"Proof? As if he needed any," the gatekeeper muttered softly behind him.
Word that Harad had obtained the seal of Serzilla had already spread through the Inner Castle. Those with any business knowing also knew he was no mere hostage, but a magician.
The streets Elaine loved were always thick with people, and every one of them was built on a grand scale. On land this barren, many made their living by the body alone — citizens who could turn warrior at a moment's notice. Elaine had been proud of them.
And they, in turn, were proud that this land was Serzilla. That pride made them tougher still.
"Hold on."
A hulk of a man seized Harad and stopped him short.
"What's the matter?"
"Don't know your face."
"Can't say I know yours either."
One look said the man was a Northerner through and through. His face was hard-bitten, and a handful of scars — left by blades or by teeth — shifted with the muscle beneath.
"No Northerner, then."
"Moved here a few days ago."
"You?"
The big man looked him up and down. Not short, but slight through the middle — an ink-stained scholar at a glance.
"You don't look like you'd last long around here."
"A keen eye, unlike this face suggests. I'd wager I've got a good twenty years in me."
"I'm a salt merchant, live over by the Red Bridge. You — where's home? What's your trade?"
"That's classified, I'm afraid."
The big man's brow knotted. An ink-stained scholar, rare in the North — home and trade both under seal.
"Suspicious. I'll have to take you in."
The salt merchant rolled his sleeve up over the elbow.
"Why not report it to the guard instead?"
"Why would I?"
That was a Northerner for you. Guard force or no, they beat criminals down with their own two hands and laid them at the Inner Castle's gates.
—You see, Harad? This is Serzilla. Brave, every last one of them.
—Utterly ignorant.
Harad, deep in the memory, smiled wryly.
To the salt merchant, already squaring into a stance, he held out the thing he'd drawn from inside his coat.
"The seal of Serzilla."
"...It's genuine."
The salt merchant held out the bundle he had set down on the snow; when the string came loose, a slab of freshly butchered pork lay inside.
"Take this, and let the anger cool."
Even his apology was delivered chest-out.
"Isn't pork precious out here?"
In the frozen lands, pork was dearer than beef.
"It's a cheap price for doubting a guest of Serzilla. Will you take it?"
"Then I'll eat it gladly."
Harad didn't trouble himself to refuse.
The salt merchant strode off toward the Red Bridge, head high. No shame at having stepped in without cause, no unease at having laid hands on a guest of Serzilla — none of it showed.
—You see, Harad? This is Serzilla. Not a grudge to be held.
—Simple creatures.
In his memory, Elaine puffed up with pride.
Harad picked up the bundle and moved on.
The door of the Flowerbed's Flesh stood shut, and the strand of Ellen's hair he had wedged back into its frame was gone.
Harad let nothing show. Instead of glancing around, he opened the door and slipped inside as if he belonged there.
No one was within. The settled dust lay just as it had. There was no trace of anyone coming or going.
"So they only opened the door for a look."
Harad went straight down below and took the tunnel. Crawling through it alone was quiet work, and in that silence his thoughts swelled.
The night in the Boundary had been far more intense than anything that had happened at the Flowerbed's Flesh. And he had been the one to provide that night — which meant Elaine must have dreamed.
"What would she have dreamed?"
For her first dream, Elaine had dreamed of their first meeting in his past life.
'A linear pattern, then?'
Would the second dream hold the second meeting? And the next, the third?
'And what counted as a meeting?'
Merely laying eyes on each other? Or conversation? And if conversation, were moments skipped depending on how deep it ran?
There was no judging any of it yet. She had only just reached her second dream.
"Difficult."
If he had his way, she would not dream of everything. The years they had shared were no few; dreamed in full, even years of sleep would fall short. So skipping was the efficient choice.
And yet, all the same, he wished she would dream it all.
Even if those dreams held more than a few moments he would rather not remember... still...
Only then would she return, at last, to the Elaine Harad remembered.
"What am I doing."
At thoughts that had run off on their own, Harad gave a hollow laugh. That wasn't like him. A meaningless stray notion, risen only because someone had once asked him what a heart tasted like.
It had never been his to choose in the first place. The regressed outside thing that had drunk Elaine's blood would decide for itself.
There could be no moment spent mourning a reality already fixed — it would only waste time. Regression had to be efficient.
The sky of the Boundary was the same as the night before — ash-gray clouds, small lives drifting beneath them like stars, and far off, over the Outer Realm, a fissure that pulsed like a heartbeat.
No presences stirred. The ground around the tunnel was, surprisingly, safe — which meant the magician who had dug it knew exactly where the Boundary's safe points lay.
The cold and the wind were vicious. The snow piled to his knees was no ordinary snow; a mere touch of it gnawed the life out of a man. None of which meant a thing to Harad.
He stripped bare, tossed his clothes back into the tunnel, and flopped out onto the snow — half-burying himself where he lay.
The Boundary's sky went on pouring snow, but none of it gathered on Harad's body. Far from it: the snow around him melted too.
'The 5th Circle is still beyond me.'
He had eaten two hearts, and yet the size of the Sun still left Harad unsatisfied.
Of course, even that much was a fortune — and thanks to that fortune, there was now something he could do.
Snow became water; water became vapor. Wind sharp enough to shave with softened into a breeze.
That was why the Sun had risen over Harad's body.
A Sun the size of an outbuilding beat down on him. The heat was tremendous. His skin seared bright red and passed the heat inward.
His muscles felt it first. Every muscle in his body sloughed away, melted soft. Literally. Between the sensation of his whole body liquefying and an agony beyond words, Harad's vision went black.
But his mind did not stop. His will touched the Sun again and again without pause. He recalled the body of his past life. It could not be that way at once — but the frame could be set. The melted muscle took shape.
Once the muscle held its form, the Sun's heat eased. Like a pot in a kiln, the muscle slowly hardened.
It was a process no ordinary mind could follow; even Harad, the one inside it, could not have explained it. But it worked. That vagueness was, in the end, the very definition of magic.
The Sun's temperature climbed again. His muscle passed the heat down to his bones. The bones melted, and Harad's vision went black once more.
The bones passed through the same process as the muscle. By the time the Sun's heat cooled, they were harder than before — thicker, and longer.
His frame was now the match of his past life's.
In effect, he had forced his remaining growth to its end.
Now for the last of it.
His bones carried the Sun's heat deeper inward.
This body had grown into a mess; it had needed tearing down and rebuilding from scratch. It was a road the Harad of his past life had walked as well.
That made it no easier to bear. The pain was dreadful enough that he never wanted to live through it a second time.
"...No one should have to do this three times."
It felt like being fed into a furnace in place of the iron — no, worse than that. What was some paltry furnace beside the Sun?
Blood vessels, organs... the waste that had quietly amassed in every corner of his body melted down. The Sun's heat climbed higher yet and burned the sludge away without leaving a trace.
Amid the pain of being cooked from within came a horrific stench — until, at last, a fragrance: the stiff, snug scent of something dried a full day under the sun.
And that scent rose from Harad's own body.
It meant every last impurity had been burned away, trace and all.
Only then did the Sun vanish — not by Harad's will, but because it was forced to.
Having confirmed the last of the waste was gone, Harad somehow dragged his unresponsive body and tumbled it down into the tunnel.
Then he passed out on the spot.
It was the dead of night when his eyes opened.
He lay in the tunnel — beneath a sky over the Outer Realm where no moon ever rose — yet to Harad's eyes that sky was perfectly distinct. When his hand found the clothes gone cold and stiff on the ground, they felt warm.
"So I did live, after all."
It hadn't been a gamble. Harad had trusted his own instincts and the memories of a past life. The tunnel-digger was a meticulous sort of magician; the ground around the tunnel was safe.
And besides, there had never been a proper place but the Boundary to begin with. This was a process that must not be disturbed by anyone.
Had he undergone it in the Inner Castle, the knights would certainly have barged in. Serzilla's knights still looked on Harad with loathing.
"The road ahead truly is long."
Poking only his head from the tunnel, Harad took stock of his body. Light. These clothes had fit him to the stitch, and now his wrists and anklebones showed. Tempering his bones had made him taller.
'The Sun has shrunk a little. About the size it was before I ate the beast's heart.'
The Sun's radius now measured only about Harad's own height.
The expenditure was exactly as expected. Tempering was a process in which a fixed quantity of mana was permanently destroyed.
A bold choice, if one wanted to call it that.
'On very rare occasions, I may pass for 5th Circle.' That was what he had told Ellen. It was true. Once, give or take, he could manage exactly that.
'But it's suicide.'
The 4th Circle and the 5th were different creatures. It was not for nothing that the 5th Circle was held equal to a Sword Master.
Just as for knights, immense walls stood before magicians as well. For the regressed Harad, too, that wall still stood, half of it remaining: his mind had crossed it, but his body had not.
Manifesting 5th Circle magic unprepared would have threatened his very life.
That was why Harad had chosen not a 3rd Circle that occasionally resembled the 5th, but a 3rd Circle that looked like the 4th — to set hard what he had already gained.
'With this body, I could push past that wall, if only for a moment. Though first I'll need to build back the mana I spent.'
Nor had his body merely grown sturdy. Every impurity the Sun had failed to burn away until now was gone. His cleansed flesh let mana flow without friction — which meant his casting had grown far faster.
"Good."
His inspection finished, a pleased arc drew itself at the corner of Harad's mouth, and he set to crawling up the tunnel at once.
Hunting day. The sweep of the 1st Boundary would already be over; Elaine would have returned. He needed to see her and ask after her dream.
His feet, shoving along the tunnel floor, quickened — the muscles had been tempered, and his heart was in it too.
How long had it been? The end came into view, and with it, presences — faint and rough, but not Ellen's.
'Three? No — four.'
Their level? Nothing special. No aura on any of them — and for Harad, that made them a problem.
'Not Inner Castle people.'
Which meant magic was out of the question. If it truly came to a fight, he would have to kill every one of them.
'People connected to the tunnel?'
The tunnel's gatekeepers had carried aura. These four outside had none — meaning they were either magicians or Northerners. If the latter, they must not be killed.
"Come out."
Just as he had sensed them, they had sensed him. Whether it was because his Origin was the Sun he couldn't say, but Harad had always been poor at masking his presence.
"There he is."
Harad crawled out of the tunnel and raised both hands — a sign that he was unarmed. His mana, meanwhile, stood ready to become fire at any moment.
Four figures ringed the tunnel's mouth: thick fur coats worn over gambesons, an emblem stitched at each breast.
'A white lion. The crest of Serzilla.'
Beneath that crest sat another — a dagger and a small shield. Harad knew it at a glance.
"What business does the guard have with me?"
"Third squad leader of the guard. We received a report of a suspicious location and a suspicious individual. You — what were you doing down there? No. First, state who you are."
The most sharp-angled face among them spoke. The other three kept watch on the surroundings, their expressions so bored they seemed to be only going through the motions.
"Regrettably, I am not a suspicious individ—"
Their expressions brought Harad's hand — already slipping into his coat for the seal of Serzilla — to a halt.
'The hair. It was gone.'
That angular face had said they received a report. Harad thought of the butcher he'd met earlier.
"Right."
"What?"
"I am the suspicious one, you see."
Harad held out both hands.
As if to say: go on, then. Take me in.