The Fourth-Tier Trial (1)

After the tower's guide, J, vanished, Hanseong remained where he stood before the Mage's Tower, turning over what he had just been told.

Karma. And Alignment.

In truth, he had never thought of Alignment as anything that mattered. To him it was only a rough measure for sorting the good from the wicked. Hearing J explain it, though, he sensed something heavier underneath. Otherwise there would have been no reason to say such a thing at all.

If karma piles up past a certain point, it becomes the cause of a fatal mistake in some decisive battle yet to come...

Advice that rang with uncomfortable weight. Hanseong frowned and tried to work out what it meant, but nothing came of it, and the time simply went on slipping past—until a familiar voice spoke from directly in front of him.

"Mage?"

It was A, already close enough to touch. Only then did he notice she had approached, and he pulled himself together in a hurry.

"Ah. Administrator."

"It's been a while. Have you been well?"

"Well enough."

They traded the usual courtesies, and then A spoke again.

"What had you thinking so hard? Is something troubling you?"

"Ah, well..."

Right. He ought to ask A. Someone already well disposed toward him would surely give him a clear answer. With that decided, he told her what he had heard from J.

"Hmm. I see."

Once he had laid the whole of it out, A lifted a hand and brushed the line of her jaw. She seemed to weigh her reply for a moment, then spoke again. What came back was not the answer he expected.

"You don't need to concern yourself with it."

"Pardon? But..."

"The tower's guide says useless things now and then. You needn't take every word at face value."

She answered in that same calm voice. The moment the words landed, though, a strange sense of wrongness prickled at him. As if she were dodging the question itself. He activated his Magic Eye and studied her, meaning to test whether the answer was true, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.

...Nothing shows.

Truth ought to have shone blue, and a lie burned red, yet no light whatsoever rose from A. The Magic Eye simply did not work on her.

By then she had turned away. She pointed toward the door that led into the tower and spoke.

"Then I'll show you in."

There was nothing for it. He would have to ask J about Alignment again later, or look into it on his own. A clearly had no intention of answering. Hanseong kept his mouth shut and followed her inside. They passed down the familiar corridor, and soon the vast interior of the first floor opened before them.

"Welcome back to the tower."

The moment they stepped into the Mage's Tower, A offered a polite greeting. Then she raised her head, looked him over from head to toe, and murmured as if impressed.

"You've grown a great deal since I last saw you."

"Grown?"

"As a mage."

Hanseong did not deny it. Even he could tell he had come a long way since his first visit to the tower, and his command of magic was far sharper than it had been.

"At this level, you should clear a fourth-tier trial without much trouble."

There was a smile in A's voice. Hanseong's reaction was flat. He would be glad if that proved true, but he was not about to judge a trial before he faced it.

"Will you challenge it right away, then?"

"No. There's something I need to do first."

"Oh? And what would that be...?"

"I want to warm up."

He finished answering and looked around, calling up what A had once told him about the tower's first floor, the Workshop.

There was supposed to be a training ground.

A place where magic could be used freely. He meant to cut the time it took to build a Formula and release a spell as short as it would go, and only then step into the trial. In a one-on-one fight, victory or defeat turned above all on how quickly a spell could be completed and cast.

And there's something I want to test.

Whether that experiment succeeded would matter just as much to clearing the trial. The thought settled, and he turned back to A.

"I'd like to use the training ground."

"Ah. So that's what you meant. Very well. I'll take you there at once."

A spun on her heel, and Hanseong followed. He could not have said how long they walked. By the time it felt as though they had covered a considerable distance, an enormous magic circle appeared before his eyes.

"Step up onto this."

A climbed onto the circle first. He followed without protest, and his vision went black at once. He was not startled. He had been through something like this more than once. A moment later the dark lifted in a wash of bright light, and a landscape wholly unlike the last one met him.

"This place..."

It was familiar: pure white in every direction, the same as the chamber where he had faced his last trial. He was still staring at it blankly when A's murmur reached him.

"It resembles the place where the trials are held, doesn't it?"

"Yes. It looks exactly the same."

"Hehe. I arranged it that way especially for you. It should make the trial a little easier to settle into."

So the training ground had been made to resemble the trial chamber purely out of A's goodwill. When she was finished, she bowed her head to him once more.

"Please train as freely as you like, and call for me when you're done. I'll come for you at once."

"Thank you."

With that, A vanished—like smoke. Left alone, Hanseong stared at the place where she had been.

I felt it last time, too...

A was well disposed toward him. She explained things he had never even asked, and her manner was as attentive as if she were receiving an honored guest. Back then he had simply been grateful for the kindness. Now it sat differently.

A is hiding something.

Brushing off what J had told him as not worth a thought was one thing. Avoiding any mention of karma and Alignment was another, and that was suspicious. More than anything, the favor she showed him felt as if it served some purpose. It was the same instinct he had felt on his last visit.

If that's true...

Then it explained why she had dismissed J's words as nonsense. A fuller account would get in the way of whatever she was after, so she was reluctant to speak of it. Even so, all of this was still nothing but his own speculation. He had felt the instinct, but he had no credible proof of anything.

For now, I'll accept the kindness.

But he would not trust her. Better to think of it as each of them using the other toward their own ends. Having set his relationship with A on that new footing, Hanseong turned his eyes to the white space. It was time to do what he had come here for.

"Hoo."

A short breath, and then, before he began casting in earnest, he decided to start with skills. He wanted to observe the phenomena each one produced and fix them in his mind as images. Only then could he shorten the time it took to build a Formula.

Skills I use constantly, like Call Lightning and Wind Cutter, there's no need to practice.

He already knew them perfectly. So the skills he would use now were the ones he rarely brought out in a real fight. He fired them one after another into the empty air, and among them were skills he had never used even once since learning them.

A pit opened in the ground the instant the skill fired. He could not observe the earth actually being dug. As far as his senses went, a huge hole simply existed the moment the skill activated. Only after he repeated it several times did he barely manage to turn Dig into an image.

Next...

He ran through Teleportation, Sleep, and Maze Trap in succession, and in the end he succeeded in imaging every skill he possessed. It had taken him about twenty minutes from the moment he entered the training ground and began.

Good. Now it's time for magic.

His turn to reproduce, as true magic, every skill he had just used. This part was the real work. Inside a trial, System Eden stopped functioning. He worked through the spells one by one, and for the ones he could call his mainstays he pushed to cut the time from start to release as short as it would go.

And the result—

"...Hoo."

One hour after he had entered the training ground, he reached the goal at last. With that, his preparations for the trial were finished. Even so, he did not call for A.

There's still one thing left.

The experiment he had mentioned to her: turning Inventory into magic. More precisely, reproducing its release function.

If I create a base with magic and activate the World Map, the storage function switches on by itself.

Taking something kept in Inventory back out into the world—the release function—was the exception. What he wanted from the experiment was to activate that release without any help from System Eden. Hanseong focused.

Imagine it.

The instant Inventory released what it held. Space warping, a rift opening, a warehouse that belonged to him alone coming unsealed. He painted every step of that process as an image, and it was anything but easy. Unlike drawing a falling bolt or a rising flame, Inventory's release lay much closer to an abstract phenomenon.

More precisely. More completely...

He did not give up. If he could reproduce Inventory as magic, the trial's difficulty would drop sharply. He tasted failure several times, and then the notification he had been waiting for appeared.

Done!

He had succeeded at last. He had reproduced Inventory without the System's help, and a look of pure elation crossed his face.

Too soon to relax, though.

He had managed it only once, and only after several tries. So he cast the spell dozens of times over, grinding the rate of failure down. Some time later, only when he had pushed that rate to its very limit, did a satisfied smile finally show. It was about two hours since he had entered the training ground.

With the experiment successfully behind him, Hanseong called for A and left the training ground at once. Together they climbed to the highest floor of the Mage's Tower: the fifth floor, the Trial Chamber. A stopped before the enormous door and bowed her head to him.

"Then I wish you good ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fortune."

"I'll be back."

With her seeing him off, he stepped through the door into the Trial Chamber. The interior was wrapped in darkness—but only for a moment. The space around him filled with bright light, as if it had never been dark at all. Then came a familiar voice.

"Hah. You again, it is."

A stuffed doll that resembled the Decoy Dummy. Ragged and unkempt, its identity was the overseer of the trials, commonly called V.

"Five champions already, and faster than the tower's administrator, it is."

What? Faster than A? The moment he caught the mutter, surprise flashed across Hanseong's face, and he put the question that had just cut through his mind into words.

"What? Then are you saying A faced the Apocalypse too, the same way I did?"

"Hmph. I have no reason to tell you, it is."

V said it with a snort. He had felt it before: the thing was thoroughly uncooperative, a world away from A, who offered her goodwill without stinting. V got up and, as last time, came dragging a large stone tablet. Then it stared up at Hanseong and asked,

"You mean to challenge the trial, do you."

"Yeah. That's why I came."

"Good. Then the fourth-tier trial begins now, it is. For the record, from here on a condition is added for passing, it is."

A condition? What was that supposed to mean? When Hanseong looked puzzled at the unexpected words, V grinned.

"Go in, and you will know, it is."

With that, V handed over the tablet. The moment he took it, still ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a little dazed, V vanished without a trace. He blinked once, and a familiar scene spread out before him: a space of pure white, the place where he had faced trial after trial. At the same time, glowing characters carved themselves into the tablet.

The moment he read the tablet, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he understood what V had meant by a condition.

"Ah. There's a limit on how many times I can die."

In the third-tier trial he had faced last time, there had been no such limit while he fought the Collector. Thanks to that, he had broken through on insight hard-won across a dozen deaths. He had never imagined a limit would be placed on it here.

...I'll have to move as carefully as I can.

His eyes took on a grave cast, and he waited for the enemy to show itself. But no matter how long he waited, there was no sign of one. He was beginning to wonder why when the characters on the tablet changed.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

What was this supposed to mean? He was tilting his head at the incomprehensible text when both his eyes went wide.

"Huh?"

He had no choice. In the brief instant his gaze shifted, the white space that had been there a moment ago was simply gone. In its place were a sky dyed dark crimson and a city turned to ruins, and Hanseong himself had been dropped, alone, onto a building in the heart of that downtown.

"What in the world..."

The sudden, bizarre phenomenon threw him off, but he recovered almost at once. Only the space had changed. The fact that he was in the middle of a trial had not. He was glancing around in search of the enemy he had to bring down when his eyes flew wide again. Beyond the window lay a great river, a bridge smothered in fog, and a colossal tree towering into the sky. All of it was a landscape he knew. Only then did he realize where he was—what Combat Reenactment meant, and what the enemy he had to defeat would be.

"...Vampire Tree."

The fiercest battle of his past. The landscape from that memory of struggle after desperate struggle revealed itself before him once more.