Steel (3)
Tap. Tap. Tap...!
A small sound rippled out through the Boundary.
Ellen kept pressing her fist against Harad's palm.
The force behind it was climbing, little by little — very, very little by little.
They had agreed she would raise the intensity in small increments.
Out of her mind, all right.
Heavenly Might was, indeed, Heavenly Might. What Ellen considered merely "pressing against" him carried enough force to burst a small animal's skull outright.
Harad, however, felt no pain.
As durability rises, the sense of pain scales to match.
Which meant this was no cheap trinket.
Thud. Without warning, the shock ran up his palm and shot through his whole body. His wrist, especially, went numb.
"That just now. About how strong was it?"
"Mm..."
Ellen couldn't answer.
Elaine of her past life had known her own strength perfectly, and had known how to rein it in. Ellen at twenty, it seemed, did not. Not yet.
It hardly mattered at the moment.
Heavenly Might grows along with its master.
She would grow used to it soon enough, once she'd brushed the brink of death a few times. She had in her past life, after all.
"Tell me — with that strength of yours, what could you kill?"
"Mm... up to a 2nd-tier?"
Meaning the fist she'd just thrown would burst the head of a magical beast up to the 2nd Circle.
"Without aura?"
"Yes. I didn't use any."
Harad realized anew what an absurd blessing Heavenly Might truly was.
No wonder she left a wound on the body of a 6th-tier giant.
It had only been a scrape, but honestly, even that alone defied belief. The kind of gash only a Sword Master could carve. In raw power alone, Ellen already did not yield to a Sword Master.
"Remember that punch just now. A touch harder, and I would have been hurt."
"Is the outer artifact all right?"
"Seems to be well made."
It was a sturdy artifact. He had no idea what sort of magician had crafted it, but the workmanship was superb — very likely the finest result possible from the materials at hand.
"So now we sprinkle the pepper?"
Ellen's eyes lit up.
He had used that metaphor the last time he refined something.
"That's right."
"Go ahead, take your time. I'll keep watch."
Ellen drew her sword and stood guard at his side. With that image as his last, Harad closed his eyes.
Every outer artifact has a structure. However plain it might look from the outside — just a simple ring — within, it was as bewildering as a maze.
Harad's magic combed through that maze slowly, meticulously. Once it had devoured the interior whole, he began, bit by bit, to raise the temperature.
The inside grew hot. Before long... it turned viscous.
The moment the maze threatened to melt away, Harad withdrew his magic. It must not deform. The ring's structure had to remain exactly as it was.
Except tougher.
Harad slipped the ring off and set it carefully on the ground, then stepped back.
"What are you doing?"
"Cooling it."
The Boundary's chill quenched the heated ring in a single breath.
"And this part is cooking it again."
Harad slid the ring onto his little finger and poured magic into it once more. Just as its structure threatened to melt, he set it back down on the ground.
"Quenching, you mean?"
Heat it, cool it. Ellen had caught on to what he was doing.
"Correct."
"Is that even possible?"
"Magic is a nebulous thing, but it cannot escape the laws of nature. Not below the 6th Circle."
As a rule, water douses fire, and a steady wind whips the flames higher.
Magic was no different.
So long as the gap in magical power was not overwhelming, magic bent to the laws of nature.
That was why magicians made such a fuss over affinities.
"This artifact makes its owner tough as steel. Steel melts when heat is applied, and cools when left in the cold — and so it grows ever tougher."
"But it isn't real steel, is it?"
The ring did not turn its owner into genuine steel; it was an artifact that merely made them sturdy like steel.
"Which is precisely why it's magic."
Truth be told, Harad wasn't confident he could explain it any more clearly than that. Such was the nature of magic. But vague or not, it would work. His own body had managed it — there was no reason an artifact could not.
"Isn't that explanation awfully hand-wavy?"
"What can I do, when the world itself is like that?"
Harad had none of the leisure of a back-alley magician, free to amble through the world, the Origins, and magic at his ease. He simply had to do what could be done, within the limits of what he knew.
Time and again the ring went onto Harad's finger, and time and again it was tossed onto the ground.
Ellen looked bored.
It had been interesting at first, but repetition sours anything, and her interest had faded fast.
With no magical beasts showing up, she must be bored out of her mind.
He'd thought they'd been at it quite a while, yet not a single beast had appeared.
Come to think of it, that had been a misjudgment on my part.
The tunnel-digger knows the safe ground of the Boundary; therefore the area around a tunnel's exit is safe. Harad had once reasoned exactly so.
He had been wrong.
Rick couldn't read so much as a letter, never mind the Boundary. The tunnel exits he had dug had been safe out of sheer, dumb luck.
They do say your lifetime allotment of luck is fixed.
Perhaps this was the compensation for ten years rolling around under Isota's heel. Few fates could be less lucky than that.
The ring lying on the ground vanished into shadow. The sun was setting before he knew it. It was nearly the hour they had promised to head back.
As it happened, this quenching was to be the last. One more round, and the artifact's structure would warp — and Harad had no confidence in taking it any further than that.
As he had once told Ellen, he had little talent for crafting.
Harad slipped the ring, cold through and through, onto his little finger, and fed magic into it. The structure itself did not change — he had taken considerable pains to see that it would not degrade.
It does seem sturdier, though.
Harad held out his palm to Ellen.
"Strike it again."
"At the same strength as before?"
Ellen worked her lips, as though recalling just how much force she had put into it earlier.
"You may hit a little harder."
"...If it breaks, you're not taking responsibility, right?"
For all her words, Ellen's face was careful. Apparently she had broken more than a few things in her life. Possibly a few people, too.
"As if broken things would be the end of it. And if I'm hurt, I won't be asking you to answer for that, either."
"..."
Ellen curled her hand into a fist. For some reason, a strangely unsettled feeling rose in her — and that feeling rode into the punch.
Crack!
The air split open with a bang. His palm was flung back so hard he half suspected his shoulder had popped from its socket.
His shoulder throbbed. His palm hurt far worse.
Its owner, turned to steel, had been injured — yet the artifact was unscathed. Its durability alone was uncanny.
Somebody's masterwork, was it?
A pity, then, that that somebody's tier had evidently not been high. Had it been, the effect would hardly have amounted to something so modest as hardening its wearer like steel.
"...Are you all right?"
"I've sprained my wrist."
Harad stared blankly down at his wrist. It was already swelling.
"What will you do? I can't take responsibility, you know."
Ellen smiled, insufferably pleased. It seemed this was precisely the injury she had anticipated — her control over her strength had sharpened somewhere along the way.
"...How hard did you hit, exactly?"
"3rd tier?"
"So, 4th tier."
Not enough to kill outright, but enough to deal a meaningful blow. Even Ellen could not kill a 4th-tier magical beast without aura — bare-handed, at that. Not yet.
"Shall we head back now?"
Caught squarely out, Ellen changed the subject with an awkward smile.
They were somewhat delayed in the end.
Not that Harad's calculations had been at fault.
"Why are we so late?"
"I sprained my wrist."
"You could crawl on your elbows."
"My shoulder's a bit out of joint, too."
"..."
Ellen quietly slowed her crawling pace. On the way back through the tunnel, she always took the lead.
"You can go on ahead."
"And turn whom into garbage, exactly?"
"Wasn't that the idea?"
"..."
"Ugh."
Ellen stopped moving.
"What is it? Is something behind us?"
"I've gone and used my wrist."
"..."
Ellen kicked a spray of dirt at him with the sole of her foot. Harad, having seen it coming, ducked deep and took it on the crown of his head.
After crawling for some time, lamplight seeped in from far ahead. The tunnel's mouth — and yet he sensed no one there.
"It's us — Harad and Ellen."
Only at his call did the presence of people stir.
Three of them. Two stood to either side of the tunnel, and the third waited directly before the exit, at a prudent remove.
Well done, this.
Had what came crawling up the tunnel been an Outlands magician, they would have stuck their head out without ever sensing a soul. And then they would have died.
The knight of the 2nd Knight Order gave Ellen a brief nod — hard journey, well met — then reached out a hand to Harad as he pulled his upper body from the tunnel.
"You're late."
"My apologies. Something came up."
Harad presented his swollen wrist and tipped his chin toward Ellen. At that, the knight nodded with a fresh look of understanding.
"She's strong as well, that one."
Among the knights, too, Ellen apparently passed for a formidable fighter in her own right. Though of course, not on Elaine's level.
"Harad, this must be your fault."
"Dear, dear. I seem to have no allies in this land."
According to something Cassion had let slip once, Ellen was rather popular among the knights.
"Not a knight alive dislikes her. She's strong, and she's beautiful."
Strong, and beautiful. Come to think of it, that was the Northern ideal exactly.
"Do you fancy her too, by any chance?"
At that, the knight fixed him with a level stare.
"Harad. Are you warning me off just now?"
"Warning you off? Me?"
Harad snorted. A misunderstanding hardly worth the trouble of correcting.
"Quit spouting nonsense and hurry up."
Ellen, already at the foot of the stairs, urged them along. They were to dine with Kubel and Shura tonight, and they were already running late.
"Though I see no need for anyone to be warning anyone off."
"It's not like that."
"I'll take your word for it."
In lieu of an answer, Harad committed the man's face to memory and followed behind Ellen. The name, he was fairly certain, was Hopper.
Ellen sniffed at the air.
But around Kubel's annex, there was no smell at all.
"They finished without us?"
At the mere thought, Ellen's face crumpled. Even when she had moved through the world as Elaine, she had eaten Kubel's cooking and nothing else. Her body was now simply incapable of surviving without it.
"Would Kubel do that? He must be waiting."
Her steps quickened at once.
Sure enough, the moment they stepped inside the annex, the aroma washed over them. Kubel had cooked everything precisely up to the line where the flavor would begin to suffer, and had been waiting there ever since.
"Big sis!"
Shura came darting over and buried herself in Ellen's arms.
"I'm sorry. We're terribly late, aren't we?"
"Well, the reason we're late is—"
Before Harad could elaborate, Ellen shot him a glare. It was on Shura's account. In front of the girl, Ellen kept her violent streak carefully hidden.
"And what are you doing here?"
Cassion was there too.
"I came to eat."
"Then eat and be gone."
"I haven't eaten yet. I heard Lady Ellen was coming."
Cassion sat motionless before the table, looking for all the world like a dog awaiting the command to eat.
"I heard you were busy. Seems you have more slack than I imagined."
"I am busy."
Cassion's voice was perfectly willing. He appeared to enjoy being busy.
"But it looks like I won't manage to eat here for the next several days, so I came now."
"Going somewhere?"
Cassion tilted his head.
"You're the one going, Harad. And Kubel."
This time it was Harad who tilted his head.
"I am?"
"You haven't heard yet?"
"I was only just at the Boundary. I needed to refine an artifact."
Harad fed magic into the ring. At the sight of it, Cassion's eyes gleamed. Befitting a 5th-circle magician, he grasped the artifact's effects and its worth at a glance.
"A rare piece indeed. Did you cross paths with a 5th-circle, or what?"
Cassion had surmised that the artifact's original owner had been a 5th-circle magician. That was how fine this ring was.
Or rather — how fine it had become.
"I refined it."
"I see. Iron sits well with fire, after all."
Fire, and more than fire — steel has need of water, too. Not that this made the various magic towers any closer to one another. Magicians were, in the end, only human.
"Still, remarkable. An artifact's worth usually comes out lower than its maker's tier."
That was why Cassion had taken it for 5th-circle work. A product called an artifact cannot surpass its maker's level. Even matching it is difficult.
As far as Harad knew, no artifact of 6th-circle caliber existed anywhere in the world.
"Well — there's always the Sun."
"...Sometimes I think you believe that Origin of yours is omnipotent."
"Am I wrong?"
"I only mean you'll have enemies to match. Even within the Red Tower, one can never be certain. Stay wary."
Cassion delivered the advice brusquely. It was sound. His enemies were many — the whole of the Outlands was Harad's enemy.
"Don't fret. I've never once thought of the Red Tower as an ally."
Whatever stance the Red Tower took, Harad had no intention of treating them any differently for it.
"So. Where exactly is it Kubel and I are going?"
"The 1st Knight Order."
The answer came from behind them. Kubel — arms laden with finished dishes, his face jutting out above them stiff as wood. The tension on him was plain to see.
"Harad and I have been included in tomorrow's search."
"On His Grace the Grand Duke's orders?"
"No. At the request of Toremote, Commander of the 1st Knight Order."
Cassion supplied the answer.
"They found traces of a magician along the search route, apparently. Hence the request for cooperation."
Ordinarily, such traces would have been waved past. Not of late. Serzilla now had within it a magician called Harad — and the 1st Knight Order had acknowledged him as an ally.
"When it comes to magicians, no one reads them better than you. Though in truth, that would be me," grumbled the Outlands magician.
Harad could hardly agree. Think of it however he liked, he knew more than Cassion did.
"And Kubel is... mm. Holding out hope, is he. That it might be a magician like me."
Cassion stared at him as though he were hopeless.
"Am I wrong?"
"...You're not. Rather, even if it isn't, they're hoping it might still prove an asset."
"Kubel will be an asset beyond any doubt."
The regressed Harad could say that with perfect certainty. Kubel, ignorant of the meaning behind the words, wore a look of deep emotion beside them — though he seemed a touch burdened by it as well.
"The 1st Knight Order will give you the details. Ah — right on time."
Cassion pointed at the door. Before long it opened, and a familiar face walked in.
"Gulen. Been keeping well?"
"It's been a while, Harad."
Gulen's face was stiff as ever, but he could not hide all of his gladness.
"And what's that?"
Gulen came in dragging something behind him. A bundle made of magical beast hide, and a heavy one by the look of it. The wrapping was blotched a dull reddish color.
"A gift the members pooled together. For you — no, for that side of you."
"A gift?"
As Harad tilted his head, Gulen spread the mouth of the bundle wide. The scent of blood gushed out.
"I can't see anything, big sis."
"No peeking."
"Eep!"
Ael, who had been spoon-feeding Shura, hastily clapped her hands over the girl's eyes.
"Is everything in there... that?"
"Yes."
The gift was magical beast hearts.
Dozens of them.
"You can eat every last one."
"..."
Some of the hearts looked fresh; others had clearly been dead a long while. None had spoiled, remarkably enough — a blessing of the deep-frozen North, presumably.
But Harad could not bring himself to say he would eat well, even as an empty courtesy. No — he had no desire to eat them at all. It wasn't as if Ellen wasn't glaring at him and Gulen both from the side, either.
She was glaring at Harad most of all. You're really going to eat that? That was the look in her eyes.
"Gulen."
"There's no need to thank me. It was no great trouble."
He understood, of course. A gift that doubled as a bribe, no doubt. Delic, Vice Commander of the 1st Knight Order, and a good few of the other knights had fallen head over heels for the Sun.
"Hearts that have long been dead hold no magic. In other words — useless."
"Then you won't be eating them?"
"I won't go out of my way to."
"Really? I found them rather more palatable than I'd expected."
"..."
The knights of Serzilla, as a general rule, would put just about anything in their mouths.