I Want to Hear Your Story (3)
I Want to Hear Your Story (3)
His head felt like it was going to explode.
Aramis pinched his calves, struggling to free himself from the crushing drowsiness.
'...This is insane.'
It was absolutely insane.
He felt in his bones why the urge to sleep was counted among the three primal desires. In a single day—a single day—the disciples had become complete wrecks.
Of course, if all they had done was simply pull an all-nighter, it wouldn't have been this brutal. But after cycling endlessly through exhaustion and forced wakefulness, the oncoming sleep was impossible to endure.
'If I fall asleep, I die.'
Right next to him, Ro lay sprawled on the ground with his tongue lolling out. Ro, who had gone down in the very first bout, still hadn't managed to regain consciousness.
'Lord Lloyd.'
Today of all days, he found himself missing the White Tower Lord terribly.
Of course, judging solely by the quality of instruction, this was overwhelmingly superior. The quality of the training materials, the skill of the teacher, the experience...
'Damn it!'
Why the hell did the White Tower have absolutely nothing to boast about!
Aramis squeezed his eyes shut.
Just then, a familiar voice reached his ears.
"Sleeping?"
Startled, Aramis sprang sideways. As he pressed a hand to his chest to calm his racing heart, his eyes fell on Olivia, who wore a pleased smile.
"Why so startled? Did you doze off?"
"Absolutely not!"
"Really?"
"I swear to the heavens, no!"
What was that about a sociopath who couldn't understand the emotions of others?
At least, there was no such person before Olivia's eyes at this moment.
This was the result of two weeks of thorough drilling—no, thorough character education.
"Aramis."
"Yes, Master."
"You see those guys over there?"
Olivia pointed a finger toward her disciples, who lay there gone cold. They looked so wretched that you would think they really were dead, if it weren't for the occasional twitching here and there.
"Wake them up."
"...Yep."
Carrying potions that tasted like twisted hell, Aramis walked toward his peers.
"Ah, Aramis..."
"Please, anything but that..."
Everyone begged desperately with faces that pleaded for mercy.
But as if such pleas were beneath him, Aramis shoved the potions into their mouths.
Every last drop.
He thought he heard Jeina mutter 'traitor,' but he had no choice.
'I have to survive.'
If there was one thing he had figured out by now, it was that getting hit less, whatever the cost, was the winning move.
Love for your peers? Consideration? Sharing?
Those dreamy words were, at least in this place, no better than garbage.
'But I'm more than willing to share my potions.'
Aramis grinned to himself. He had just managed to reduce his own quota by two bottles with that stunt.
"Urrrgh..."
Coming to their senses, the others shuffled toward Olivia. Watching them move like little more than zombies, Aramis thought once again that he had been wise to fight off sleep.
"My dear disciples. If I'm going to keep stepping out like this every day from now on, what good is it if you're sitting around gambling? Can I really trust you and leave if you act like this? Should I bump up your daily quota by five each?"
"Master!"
"What."
"I have a good idea."
Every pair of eyes whipped toward Aramis.
"What is it?"
"The truth is, the reason we were gambling is because the intensity of the training is too high, isn't it?"
Olivia cocked her head sideways.
"So, you want me to lower it a little?"
"As if that would ever happen. I'm simply suggesting we change the system a bit. While this brutish—no, innovative—method is certainly good, it seems this situation came about because we lack a means of raising our motivation."
"You're lacking motivation?"
Olivia fiddled with her staff. At that, Aramis shot to his feet and waved his hands frantically.
"Ah, no! Now that I think about it, our motivation is more than sufficient!"
"Then what's the problem?"
"Anyway, what I'm trying to propose is that you establish a system in which the person who finishes their daily quota first receives a reward, say, reducing their next day's quota by one. I think that would be a truly wonderful thing."
Olivia furrowed her brow.
"That's too complicated. Summarize it in one line."
"That..."
Jeina, who had been watching from the side, spoke up in a whatever tone.
"He's saying, let him coast the next day if he finishes early."
"Ah, is that so?"
"Jeina! I never said that!"
"'Never said that,' my foot. Every day you finish early by yourself, thinking only about coasting."
Watching their harmonious display, Olivia laughed.
'Hmm, I'm sure I picked them based on character.'
Something must have happened to them over the past few days.
"So, are you all in favor of Aramis's proposal?"
"No."
"You heard them? By majority vote, your proposal is rejected."
She said that, but in truth, motivation was an indispensable ingredient in training. She wasn't some lunatic, and she couldn't just beat people up every single day.
"I intend to treat all of my disciples fairly. So, I will take Aramis's proposal and introduce it with a slight modification."
The disciples' eyes went wide.
That meant...
"The slowest one gets one added to their quota every day. How's that? Feeling the motivation kick in?"
"Uh..."
"If you don't like it, we'll just keep doing things the same way. What will it be?"
"W-We'll keep doing things the same way!"
"Actually, I've always liked your training methods, Master!"
Olivia nodded with a satisfied look on her face.
"Good, good. I'm stepping out for a bit, so keep practicing."
Leaving the lamentations of her disciples behind, Olivia went outside.
It was time to wake Kiel, who lay slumbering within the ice.
*****
Kiel hadn't simply been waiting around for Olivia. He had no intention of wasting the time he had left.
And so, the first thing he did upon entering the capital was visit the Gold Tower.
"The meeting has just concluded, so she should be here shortly."
"Fine."
At a gesture from Kiel, the attendant bowed and closed the door behind him as he left.
Before long, the door to the reception room flew open.
A pair of sharp golden eyes swept over Kiel's form in an instant.
"Well, who do we have here? Isn't that Duke Kiel?"
"Yes. I came because I have something to ask..."
"Ah, let me sort out these documents first, then I'll listen."
Melina raised a hand and stirred the empty air. Following her gesture, the stacks of documents that had been strewn about haphazardly found their proper places.
"Done. Now, ask your question."
"Is it possible for a mage's ego to split?"
"...You get right to the point, don't you."
"Apologies. It concerns an acquaintance."
"Hmm..."
Sensing the unusual atmosphere, Melina straightened her posture.
"In all my years, I've never seen you so agitated. Even back when you were a child and your father went off on a campaign to the south, you didn't say a word. Don't tell me you've finally found yourself a lover?"
"Spare me the idle chatter and just answer the question I asked, Gold Tower Lord."
"...Playing hard to get."
Kiel didn't like Melina's dismissive attitude.
'Would you react that way if you knew it was your prized disciple?'
But Kiel decided to hold his tongue. He could see clearly how this mage before him would behave if she learned the truth.
Though she appeared to be a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, Melina had lived for so long that she defied comparison with Kiel.
Two hundred years, in fact. Kiel understood that living a long life wasn't always a good thing.
In terms of personality, and in many other ways.
"To give you the conclusion first, such cases do exist. But they are exceedingly rare. Even I have only witnessed them twice in all my years."
"...What causes the ego to split?"
"It's a phenomenon that occurs when one repeats parallel processing for far too long."
When no reply came, Melina furrowed her brow. She was irritated at the prospect of having to provide additional explanation.
Tap.
When Melina snapped her fingers, a model of a brain appeared in midair. She then raised her hand and split the brain model exactly in half.
"When mages reach a certain level, they divide their brains into multiple compartments like this for use. This increases the number of subjects that can deploy magic, thus making parallel processing remarkably easy."
The four base elements shimmered and vanished at Melina's fingertips.
"Of course, merely dividing the brain into multiple compartments does not cause the ego to split."
Melina rummaged through a drawer. An Eldritch skull. It was not the sort of item a Tower Lord should own. Melina tapped lightly on the skull.
"But after a very, very 'long' time has passed, the story changes."
With a crack, fissures began to spread through the skull.
"As the years go by, the mind of a mortal wears down rapidly. The usual limit is a thousand years. By that time, ninety-nine out of a hundred simply break down and die. Most Eldritch meet that end, as do the High Elves who refuse to become one with the World Tree. However..."
Melina exerted force, and the skull was reduced to powder.
"Very rarely, a case arises where one of the compartments created within the brain awakens as a separate ego, allowing the individual to survive."
"...Why does doing that let you survive?"
"Simple. If you live by alternating between two egos, doesn't the rate at which the mind wears down also cut in half? To put it bluntly, your lifespan essentially doubles."
She was dressing it up with words, but Melina's face was far from pleased.
"Even I become a different person when I drink. I sometimes suspect that might be another ego..."
"Absolutely not."
"...At any rate."
Melina cleared her throat.
"Splitting one's ego is an act of madness. You see, you can no longer remember which of the two was the original ego."
"..."
A flicker of unease passed through Kiel's eyes.
'And he still claims it's just an acquaintance?'
But if he insisted it wasn't him, she could hardly press the matter by force.
"Is your lover, by any chance, an elf?"
"No."
"Then there's no need to worry. So long as they are human, such a thing is absolutely impossible. Do hurry and tell this acquaintance of yours that they can stretch out their legs and sleep soundly."
Melina glanced out the window. A solar halo was setting far in the distance. If she couldn't get rid of this one, she would be stuck working all day.
"Kiel."
Kiel flinched.
"...Is it truly impossible for a human?"
"Yes."
"Not even the slightest possibility?"
"Little black-haired brat."
Melina shifted her tone.
"Even I, who have lived a mere two hundred years, am driven to the brink of madness by the tedium of existence. Every morning when I wake, I can feel my mind wearing thin in real time. And you ask about a thousand years? In a human body?"
Melina let out a snort.
"Absolutely impossible. Do you think dragons go into hibernation for no reason? It is because even the mind of a dragon struggles to endure the density of a thousand-year span of time."
"..."
Kiel remained silent for a long while. Seeing this, Melina clicked her tongue inwardly.
'At this rate, he'll never leave.'
Melina clapped her hands.
"At any rate, I suggest you be on your way now, Duke Kiel."
The next moment, a bright light enveloped Kiel. Watching him disappear without much resistance, Melina clicked her tongue.
"Tch."
There was no way a man of such insatiable curiosity would withdraw so meekly.
Beep.
[Yes, Tower Lord. You called?]
"Starting tomorrow, if Duke Kiel comes, tell him I'm not here."
[...Pardon? Ah, yes. Understood.]
Kiel did not get to meet Melina.
For a full ten days.