Practical Evaluation (3)
What the hell just happened?!
I pressed a hand to my chest.
The organ where mana is generated. By all rights it should have been full to the brim, like a reservoir braced against a drought—
It's gone. I've searched everywhere, and it's gone!
I swept through my arms, my legs, the hollow sacks where mana usually coiled, like a man frisking empty pockets—but it was all for nothing. Like the sea lying beneath a horizon with no end in sight, the mana that had once overflowed out of me had simply vanished. I felt a despair crawl up my spine, the same crushing feeling as reaching into the rice bin to scoop out dinner and finding not a single grain left.
An ordinary human with no mana. Me.
Had I gone back to those days as a nameless wage slave toiling away at some crappy little office in the middle of nowhere in Korea? Had being transmigrated into a novel as its villain been nothing but a sweet dream conjured by my own overactive imagination?
“Solis, are you feeling unwell?”
“I'm fine.”
Like hell I am.
It was Sylvia who had spoken up. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder, and the warmth of that touch was all the confirmation I needed—this was no dream, but reality.
Ah, for fuck's sake. There was no dream-ending here.
It meant I had just scored a flat zero on the practical assessment. Twice in a row. And here I was, running face-first into a crisis where I'd never expected one.
Calm down. Stay calm.
Like a certain character counting primes to steady his nerves, I closed my eyes and turned to meditation, hoping to pin down the cause. Every result has a cause. If I retraced my steps far enough, I was bound to catch the thread.
Right up until yesterday, my mana had been regenerating perfectly normally. From sitting through class to falling asleep at Marin's place, nothing in that stretch had stood out as the slightest bit off.
So it's that, isn't it?
The night I'd been wrung dry by Marin from dusk till dawn. My body had been wrecked, I'd been drifting in and out of the border between life and death, and eventually I'd been carted off to the infirmary and treated. From arriving in this world all the way to the start of the practical, I hadn't drawn on my mana a single time. And yet something had been wrong with my body ever since that night—I was certain of it. There was simply no other explanation for where my mana had gone.
Okay. Summarized and sorted. I understood that much.
But why?
Why do I lose mana from finishing inside Marin?
Mana is water. It is born from the heart, the wellspring, and its role is to keep the vessel of the body from running dry. Even when the contents of the vessel are spent, the law of this world dictated that the heart replenishes exactly what was used. And yet here was my heart, sitting on top of an utterly empty vessel, failing to fill it. My organ had simply abandoned its post.
“Writer, can you hear me?”
This was unmistakably a matter of critical importance. Time to call in the expert.
“The mana inside my body has vanished. My heart isn't producing any either. At this rate I'm going to score a flat zero on the practical. Is there any way to fix this?”
A desperate SOS. I screamed Help into the void, praying she was watching.
Ding!
She's here!
God never forsakes me! The connection alert lit up the chat window, and I waited eagerly for the reply to roll in. The other party, well aware of my desperation, rewarded my faith with a lightning-fast response.
“Fucking hell—you're not who I called, you bastard!”
The warmth of that moment boiled over, curdled, and detonated. I had called a name, pointedly, so there'd be no confusion—and instead some other guy strolled in and started wiggling his ass. It was an eyesore if ever there was one.
“If you get the picture, stop hogging the seat and switch off already.”
The Helper, apparently willing to step aside without a fight. My situation was dire by the minute, and I was desperately hoping he'd hand the seat back to the Writer, fast.
“Wait, hold on!”
That careless remark, tossed off like it meant nothing, made me scramble to stop him.
“Um... Solis? The other students are lining up, so...”
“Just a moment. Just one more moment, if you would.”
Meanwhile Sylvia was begging me to hit the machine so the queue could move on to the next student. Part of me wanted to just slap it half-heartedly and pass the turn along, but if I stepped back now there would be no second chance—so I asked for her patience and turned back to the chat window.
“Explain. In detail.”
“I heard that part from her directly. But she also promised me she'd be right back.”
“I'm losing my mind.”
Code red! I was screwed! It was all over! A genuine impasse, pinned between retreat and advance. My head spun with dizziness.
“So when can the Writer reconnect to the chat?”
“Haaaah.”
What could I even say. I had a deranged lunatic with her eyes rolled back who couldn't attend the most crucial moment of all—when I would have been grateful for someone watching over my shoulder twenty-four hours a day just to give advice. The plans I'd been building all this time were about to go off the rails, and it was entirely the Writer's fault. Why should I be the one cleaning up after her?!
“So why the hell did you go and use mana there?!”
“And that mistake is about to make me start all over from square one?”
“Then talk. Fast.”
This was no time to quibble over warm rice versus cold. I had no idea what he might demand using this as leverage, but I decided to accept for now.
“The instructors are watching us like hawks. Even if I somehow pulled it off, the moment they realize it's not my own mana, I'm out for cheating.”
“Storage? Residual?”
“Oh!”
Only then did my eyes go to the bracelet hanging from my wrist.
The Solar Halo. The one and only solution left to me now.
I just need to draw the mana out of this thing.
It was the same principle as pulling mana from the heart and channeling it into my arms—except the bracelet would stand in for my heart, wrapping the mana around my fist. It was delicate, precision work. One slip and the whole world would know I was the owner of the Halo. Getting the relic exposed or botching the test—either way, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other, so I proceeded with the utmost care.
Fwoosh!
The familiar sensation coiling around my arm. Smoldering flame lapped around my hand. It was weaker than the power I was used to, but a chicken in the pot beats a pheasant in the bush—I had no other choice.
Here it goes!
BANG!
The shockwave tore through the air and rode the wind. The impact split the atmosphere as my flame-wreathed fist smashed into the metal apparatus.
Bzzt-ding!
Sparks burst out like firecrackers, and a deep metallic tremor rang in my ears. It was worlds apart from the two previous attempts, the ones I'd failed.
“Solis, fifty points.”
“With scores of zero, zero, and fifty, the practical total comes to fifty points.”
Thought I was a goner.
It had been razor-thin, but I'd scraped together a score at the last possible second. On its own it wouldn't clear the average, but being able to flip the results at any time during the duels was a huge win in itself. I had just barely dodged the crisis.
“Thank you.”
I gave him my honest feelings. Without his advice, even this chance would have ended in a fat zero.
“As long as it's nothing extreme, I'll hear you out. Name your price.”
There was no such thing as free kindness. I didn't know what he wanted, but settling the debt quickly was in my interest. Like a loan shark dunning a debtor, I pressed him to name what he hoped for.
“That's your request? That's easy enough to grant—but of all things, why that?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
The Helper, still feeding me cryptic nonsense. Fine—for my part, the debt was settled, and that was enough.
“Don't worry yourself. I'll beat them black and blue.”
Things that had been impossible without mana were now possible again. It would be a grueling battle, but as long as the draw wasn't terrible, I had more than a fighting chance even against a Purity Academy student.
No more words were needed. The results would speak for me. And so I marched toward the dueling grounds, brimming with ambition—only to find my first opponent standing there, waiting.
“Hello, Solis. It's lovely to see you.”
Arlan Carnelian.
She was my first duel opponent.
Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!
Of all people—the top-ranked student. And not just that, but a member of the hero's party from the original novel. The matchups just kept getting uglier and uglier.