Magic (1)
I'd tried to figure out what had happened to my body, but my sister didn't know either.
Of course, I knew even less.
So I decided to consult the one person most likely to have answers. I just waited until the hangover had eased a little before heading out.
"Sister, are you still that rough?"
I'd bounced back after a bowl of spicy, bracing soup, but she clearly hadn't.
"Go by yourself."
"You sure you'll be all right?"
"I'm going back to sleep."
With that, she shuffled off to bed. Fair enough—when a hangover hits that hard, sleep is the kinder option.
I left her behind and made for the self-defense force training ground.
The people there looked about as rough as you'd expect. Everyone had been drinking the night before, so it was only natural. The Instructor standing at their center was no exception.
"Hey. You made it."
"Everyone looks pretty rough."
"After the way they drank, of course they do. More to the point—something about you looks different."
Same thing my sister had said. Something really had changed in my body overnight.
"I woke up and my condition felt… off. Different."
When I mentioned that something like strength seemed to be welling up inside me, the Instructor quietly looked me over.
"It isn't mana."
So it wasn't mana after all…? Too early to be disappointed. Whatever it was, some kind of power had clearly taken root.
"I'd say it's closer to Holy Power."
"Holy Power…?"
It wasn't as far-fetched as it sounded. I'd spent more than ten years offering prayers to a goddess. Someone like me might well have earned a measure of divine favor.
"Yeah. I haven't seen many priests myself, so I can't say for certain."
"Ah…"
"Well, they say it isn't all that different from mana in practice. I'll teach you how to handle it."
The Instructor walked me through a simple method for sensing mana. People who awakened on their own, he explained, usually figured out the handling by instinct without anyone teaching them—and since he was describing a sensation, his explanation might not be perfectly precise.
"It starts with looking inward and feeling the concentrated mass of power somewhere in your body."
"Looking inward…"
I settled naturally into a cross-legged seat and rested both hands over my lower abdomen—the circulating-energy posture I'd read about in martial arts novels. Slowly I closed my eyes, drew a long breath, and tried to feel what lay inside me.
"That's the posture you've chosen, is it? Well, it differs from person to person."
The Instructor's voice buzzed at the edge of my hearing; I was concentrating too hard to catch the words properly.
A god… the goddess has granted me power… it has taken root in me? Thinking that as I looked inward, I seemed to sense a bright light somewhere deep inside.
"Ah—is this it?"
The moment I recognized it, I knew: this was the power that had settled within me.
It was a strange sensation.
"Fast… Is that because it's Holy Power?"
Sensing the power was one thing. I still had no idea how to use it.
"Think of slowly circulating it through your whole body."
The Instructor's voice reached me. Circulate it through my whole body? How was I supposed to move it?
Hey! Move!
I barked the order at the source of my power. Of course, nothing happened. Maybe because I hadn't decided where it should go?
To my hand!
The instant I specified a destination, I felt the power shift. A warm, gentle force traveled from the center of my body, through my shoulder and arm, and arrived at my hand.
So this was the feeling. Once I'd successfully moved it once, the sensation sharpened dramatically. It no longer felt like issuing commands—more like I could guide the power with my will alone.
I held onto that feeling and repeated the cycle: spreading the power through my entire body, then gathering it back in.
"Whether your instincts are good… or Holy Power simply works differently from mana…"
As the power circulated through me, vitality flooded every limb. It was close to a sense of omnipotence—strength overflowing from every part of my body.
"So this is power…"
"All right. Open your eyes and try using it while you move."
"Yes."
I opened my eyes and rose to my feet. The power was still surging through me.
"Move slowly and put the power to work as you go."
Following the Instructor's guidance, I moved my body and applied the force. It was easier than I'd expected. Physical reinforcement came almost naturally.
"So this is mana…"
"I'm fairly sure it's Holy Power, but—"
I ignored him and put the power through its paces. I flipped into a one-handed handstand, did push-ups from that position, lifted heavy objects—movements that would have strained even a well-trained body, all of them effortless.
It was absurd strength. No wonder my sister was so powerful if she had something like this…
"Reinforcement seems fine. Let's try projection next."
"Yes."
At the Instructor's order, I tried to push the power outward.
The same force that had obeyed me so readily until now refused to follow my will.
"Difficult, isn't it?"
Reinforcement and projection were separate skills, he said. Training would be required.
"Hmm…"
Why wouldn't the power leave my body? Was my mental image incomplete? Was the command itself lacking? I dredged up memories from my previous life. Maybe this approach would work.
I sent power to my fingertips and imagined slowly turning a faucet, water beginning to flow…
Nothing moved. There was a faint, ticklish sensation—and that was all.
"Hah. This is hard."
"The fact that you handled reinforcement so smoothly is already remarkable."
"Is it?"
"Well, the knights around me either awakened on their own or had been trained in secret techniques since childhood, so they could all manage it…"
The self-awakened type would be people like my sister and the Instructor. Secret techniques probably meant the nobility.
"The ones who learned through secret training said it took them time to get a real handle on the power."
I understood what he was telling me.
"Ahem. Don't rush it. You've awakened a power—that's what matters."
"Yes…"
Not mana, he'd said—something like Holy Power. If this truly was Holy Power, wasn't it a blessing from the goddess herself? I bowed deeply to the Instructor, returned home, and went straight to the sacred image.
I stroked the bracelet on my left arm and offered a prayer with a sincere heart.
"Goddess, thank you for granting me your favor. When I succeed, I swear I'll repay you."
Back inside, I tried a simple bit of alchemy. I still didn't know how to project the power myself, so I borrowed the help of a tool.
A staff with the effect of releasing mana. Now I could use it freely.
I lit a lamp and set finely chopped medicinal herbs on a dish. Using a water-producing magic tool to fill it completed the preparations.
"The sensation really is strange."
When I used the water tool, I could feel power draining out of me—a feeling I'd never noticed before. The cost that used to be paid in life force was now being covered by the power dwelling inside me.
Holding the staff felt different too. Something was continuously drawing on my strength…
It was nothing like the sensation before I'd awakened. Was this what projection felt like?
If I reversed the way the magic tool pulled power from me, maybe I could learn to project it myself. I sent power toward the hand that wasn't holding the staff and tried to guide it the way the tool released energy.
Something almost came out—almost.
"Copying it like this, I feel like I'm right on the edge of getting it."
I could use this to learn projection. It wouldn't be easy—I'd need more time—but having a lead put me in a good mood.
I gently stirred the herbs with the staff that was still releasing power. After about three minutes of stirring, the salve was ready, and unlike before, I wasn't tired in the slightest.
"This is a revolution!"
I could use alchemy myself! I could run all kinds of experiments without my sister's help! There had been plenty of methods I'd never dared ask her to try—and if I could do them myself? If I could compound without relying on her? There was nothing holding me back.
"Now—now it really begins!"
I couldn't contain my joy and bounced around the room.
Just a little—but a real chance of becoming a man again had appeared.
In a used bookstore crammed with volumes, an old man gazed steadily at the shelves.
"I suppose he won't be coming anymore…"
The old man hadn't opened the shop to sell books. After retiring, with nothing much to do and far too many volumes to simply throw away, he had opened the store in the hope that, if fate allowed, the books might find their proper owners.
The people of this city, however, did not come to buy books. It wasn't that no one ever did—every two or three months, someone would appear and take a volume home.
Then, for several months, a charming child had been visiting the shop. Watching the child buy books and read all sorts of things, the old man had felt something close to what it must be like to raise a daughter.
So he had found himself teaching the child all manner of things, almost without meaning to.
Not long ago, that child had said they were leaving this place, offered thanks for everything so far, and gone.
"Well. It was only a diversion before I die. Nothing to regret."
In truth, the old man regretted it deeply. What if he had taken the child in as a disciple? Might his final years have been rather more enjoyable? The thought lingered.
It was already too late, so he decided to forget. But he couldn't stop the memories from rising.
Unable to concentrate for the lingering attachment, the old man closed his book.
"Tsk… Could have at least said where they were going."
Then he might have gone looking. He was just thinking of closing early for the day when the shop door opened.
"Is this the place?"
The man who entered wore formal clerical dress. The old man knew him well—and he was not someone who belonged in a place like this.
"What brings you here?"
One of the archbishops of the Metis Church—a figure of such stature that he could have become a cardinal, and had refused purely because it sounded like a bother.
"I came to see you."
They had known each other from the days when the old man conducted joint research with the Metis Church. The paper they had produced then had been a study of Holy Power and mana.
"Don't lie. Tell me the truth."
"It is the truth, for what it's worth. I was in the area on business, remembered you were here, and came by."
The old man fixed him with a stare. It didn't seem to be a lie.
"So what business brought you all the way out to this backwater?"
"It's a confidential mission, but I suppose there's no harm telling you."
Unable to restrain his curiosity, the old man listened—and immediately regretted it with some violence.
"What?! An oracle about a Saint was delivered six years ago, and you still haven't found them?!"
That alone would have been bad enough. Hearing that three years ago the goddess had delivered something like a scolding oracle on top of it left him somewhere between stunned and appalled. However detached the Metis Church might be from worldly power and secular affairs, that did not mean they lacked reverence for their god.
If anything, a church so removed from the world tended toward a kind of zealous devotion to the divine will.
"Which is why I, as a party to the oracle, have been traveling in search of the Saint."
If an archbishop was personally on the move, the Church must be growing desperate.
"Have you found them?"
"If I had, I'd already be back at the main temple."
The old man felt a twinge of guilt for having asked.
"I was certain, in a dream, that if I came here I would meet them…"
At the man's words, the old man frowned. A dream dreamed by an archbishop—no, by a man of caliber enough to become a cardinal. It would not have been an ordinary dream, but something close to a prophetic vision, a revelation.
And still he had not found them…
"Seems the goddess chose a fool."
The man laughed.
"Likely true. The records say the Saints of our Church have generally been missing a screw somewhere."
The old man grimaced. As a scholar, he knew that well enough. The Saints of Metis, Goddess of Wisdom and Knowledge—called guardians or propagators of knowledge—had mostly been eccentrics.
Which was precisely how they had managed to invent impossible magic and craft extraordinary magic tools.
"If the Saint isn't here, will you head back?"
"I'll search the surrounding area a while longer. If you happen to find anything, let me know."
The old man nodded. There was no need to make enemies of the Metis Church, with its abundance of knowledge-seekers.
The man talked on for quite some time in the bookstore before finally leaving. After the quiet, a visit from an old friend had been genuinely welcome. Still, he couldn't simply enjoy it.
"A Saint, is it…"
All because the man had left him with that headache of a topic.
Saints chosen by a god were said to receive a Holy Scar—had this one failed to notice even that?
Of course, it was also possible the mark had been bestowed somewhere out of sight.
"I hope they're found soon."
As a scholar, he was curious what kind of change a new Saint would bring to the world.