What Do You Desire in Exchange for the Price?
While Isabella sat sunk in worries far removed from her studies, heedless of everything around her, Frion — who had been fretting over his disciple's adolescent moods — was thinking along much the same lines. To be precise, the only thing their thoughts shared was the subject: Jenison.
'...His skill was most certainly not like this before...' That much was true as well. In his eyes, the Jenison of the delinquent days had been leagues behind the boy of today — average reserves of mana, unremarkable control, nothing more than a thoroughly ordinary thug.
Of course, that was not to say there was no way to sharpen one's control over mana. But the method demanded spending entire days pouring mana into something without ever losing focus, and even then, only after a long process of wringing out every wasted drop along the way could one's control grow by a sliver.
From a level that had been plainly ordinary to the one he occupied now — how much time had the boy invested to get here, and how much more would he invest? A week? A month? Only by pouring in that much time without food or sleep could anyone hope to barely reach such a level.
For that reason, the Great Sage had taken him for a bundle of talent — believing that the boy had truly endured fifty days on little more than scraps of food and snatches of sleep, every remaining hour consumed by the control of mana he had never even intended to practice.
He had no way of knowing the truth of it, and so he took what comfort he could in the fact that the boy showed no ambition to become a scourge upon the Empire. A tenacity of that order might commit any manner of atrocity — and he himself still had things he was sworn to protect. Besides, the boy's eyes, which had changed somewhere along the way without anyone marking when, continued to trouble him.
Jenison, who had become a person of keen interest to the Great Sage without the faintest awareness of it, was currently doing nothing more than agonizing over what he should research today.
The moment I stepped into the room, I caught sight of Ella's back as she sat on the sofa. Hm? For some reason I couldn't place, she seemed angry. She hadn't set foot outside the dormitory, so there shouldn't have been anything for her to be angry about.
"Young master..."
"...Hm?"
Her voice was far heavier than anything I'd heard from her before — so much so that I half-doubted she was the same Ella I knew. I had no idea what the cause was, but anyone with eyes could see she was furious, so I decided to keep quiet and listen.
"...I was cleaning your room, you see?"
"Mm..."
"...At first, what with all the dust and those strange cylindrical things scattered everywhere, I simply assumed you'd been working hard at something."
Hm. Had she seen the coffee cans I'd drained? The amount I'd put away of late was quite a lot — no, far more than even I had realized — but if I didn't go that far, sleep would drag me under and no research would get done.
"...And then, when I tried to wipe under the desk..."
"Under the desk...?"
"Would you mind explaining to me why there are bloodstains under there?"
Ah. Right. Let me say this upfront: it had been unavoidable. Creating an intelligent being required a body, and I had designated its form as human. To build it, I first had to become capable of building a human body — and for experimentation, my own flesh was the most suitable material available. Becoming able to create a human body from nothing demanded a comprehensive knowledge of an ordinary one, after all.
Of course, even with the twenty-first century's knowledge of human anatomy at my disposal, whether it would apply to a body of my own making was another matter entirely. But my deliberation did not last long, and I moved to act at once. In other words: I took my own body apart, piece by piece.
The first was a finger. It was the easiest target, and so long as I aligned the bones of the finger correctly, it could be regenerated without trouble. Before long, I cut — without hesitation.
It hurt. It hurt, and hurt, and hurt. It had hurt, it hurt, and it would go on hurting. A pain that refused to grow familiar no matter how many times I endured it. The wound burned as though seared over open flame, and the blood fountaining from the severed finger made for a thoroughly sickening sight. Though I had willed none of it, my arm began trembling of its own accord, and my tear glands — which I'd assumed must have withered from long disuse — burst open and would not stop.
I clenched my teeth against the staggering convulsions of agony, my other hand balled so tight that blood seeped from the palm. Wracked like that, I had no presence of mind at first for body-creation or anything else. Only after crafting a painkiller and swallowing a single tablet did I barely come back to myself, and before long I set about trying to build the finger.
Naturally, nothing went right at first. Bones generating twisted was an everyday occurrence; the fingers came out misshapen; once an extra little finger sprouted alongside the rest; and another time, having forgotten that fingernails existed, I produced a finger without one. Working all the while from close study of my own severed finger, I finally succeeded in creating a perfectly ordinary one — one, exactly one.
A single finger, and that was all. Creating even that had all but drained my mana, and it forced me into an involuntary rest. But having succeeded once, everything afterward came easier — however strange the shapes, they were unmistakably fingers. The pain of that first cut had been foreign to me, yet I soon grew accustomed to it. My body had adapted to pain.
So, trusting this pain-hardened body of mine, I judged I could carry on to other parts — and before long my hands turned toward my toes. From there, it was smooth sailing. Toes. Hands and feet. Arms. Calves. Thighs. The major features of the face. I was tempted to try the vital organs as well, but those could go truly, catastrophically wrong, so I resolved to attempt them only when a priest was close at hand.
Create one, cut it away when it failed. Create again, cut again. Create yet again, cut away once more. The maddening agony never relented, and only after downing eight doses of painkiller could I keep going. Cut, and cut again; made, and made, and made. Whenever the room was fouled with blood and flesh, I swept it all away and fouled it anew. And so a massacre of spraying blood and flying flesh played out over and over inside that little room — until, at last, I reached the point where I could produce limbs at will.
True, I had also developed the rather unhealthy impulse to slice open even the smallest scratch on my arm just for the pleasure of regenerating it — but the ability to regrow my limbs whenever I pleased was merit enough. And since the slightest deviation of my mana meant my body regenerated deformed, my control over it had grown right along with everything else.
Frion, sharp-eyed enough to notice, was every inch the Great Sage he was reputed to be — though it stung a little to hear the result called talent. Every last drop of it had gone in through my own effort and devotion.
Well — if I kept up this pace, surely the day would come when I could create the rest of a body as well. Thinking so, I cleared away every last trace and believed I had brought the work to a hopeful close.
"Young master... kindly explain yourself."
"E-explain... what, exactly?"
"Why the young master, who never once left this room, is covered in blood."
"And why there is a faint smell of blood soaked into this very spot."
And where she pointed was the research desk — the very one where I had carved my body apart time and again, its wood steeped through with the scent of my blood. I had considered making a new table, of course, but it was a space only I ever used, and I had no desire to reorganize the materials piled upon it, so the old piece had simply stayed.
If she learned that I had been researching in this manner, Ella would worry herself sick — that much was obvious. And I had no wish to make her worry.
"...It's a nosebleed."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I've been doing nothing but research all day. I got a nosebleed."
"You're being honest with me... aren't you?"
"Then what did you take it for?"
"I thought you'd been hurting yourself from all the stress, that's what!!"
Honestly, there was nothing untrue in what she'd said — I had, after all, abused my own body. But wasn't the summit precisely the sort of place one reached by making free use of this flesh of mine? The extreme height that others strive toward even at the cost of casting away everything they have — if all I cast away is my own body, can I not reach it as well?! And if so, then surely it deserved to be used, as much as it takes?
After all, even if I died here, I would simply be born again. Unlike the religious folk who insist the dead go to the Lord's side, or the wicked said to descend into hell, I would repeat living and dying without end inside this cup of reincarnation.
Then what meaning did my life hold? I had once pondered that question in earnest, and somewhere around my fifth life, I found the answer: to brand myself upon the people whose lives became entangled with mine, so that they could never forget. Their memories would be the proof that I had lived — and in a sense, that might even count as having truly lived.
In this life, I had merely laid my mother's wish over that goal. Nothing more. And so I would use it. For me, living bound in the fetters of infinity, it existed for the sake of leaving behind proof that I had lived — and for that sake alone, a tool to spend had been placed in my hands: one called a life.
The physical laws that govern all things in this world share a single common rule:
[If there is something you desire, pay the price]
As payment, I would hand over these arms and legs a few dozen times — a few hundred, a few thousand. For when at last I reached the end of this endless existence, that was the only meaning my life had ever held. Because to look back on those eons of agony and find them meaningless was a fate I despised more than death.
With that thought, I threw myself back into my research — and the next day, recruitment began for the teams to be organized for the midterm examinations.