Not a Single Thing Is Going Smoothly - 6
The next day.
It was time for practical magic, so instead of the classroom where we usually gathered, we assembled in an empty lot a little removed from the building.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't entirely empty. A wide field of sand lay ringed by something like a barrier. The construction was so convoluted that I thought even rummaging through my memories wouldn't tell me what it was—and then Yuanshi Tianzun's memory lit up.
A device for letting the current of qi settle and pool. In short, it was built so mana would gather. I had guessed it was probably meant to stop an attack even if one flew a long way, but that doesn't seem to be it.
Meanwhile the teacher arrived carrying a bulky piece of machinery and set it up in the center. I watched quietly to see what it was for, and they began calling us one by one, ordering each of us to cast some spell.
"So that's what it was. Same thing here, huh."
At Victoria's mutter I searched my memories again. At the Clockwork Knight school, magic was used when operating machines, or when tuning the devices that served in place of batteries. There was nothing like that equipment here.
Digging further back, I found a memory of setting down a small machine and casting a spell that formed a sphere of light in front of it, to take a measurement. I watched, wondering if this was the same, and it was.
Here, too, they made a sphere of light and set it atop a rather large machine. Something in the machine below began to clack, and then it spat out a sheet of paper punched full of holes.
"Wow. They're still using junk that old……."
From the way she said it, the equipment was extremely outdated. This was the Royal Academy; the funding ought to be good. Why wouldn't they use better machines?
One by one, those who had cast their spell moved off a ways and used magic here and there. Most of them did not loose anything powerful—no great balls of fire sailing through the air, no earth splitting open. No. They couldn't. A few sparks drifted. Water trickled in a thin stream. Someone rose a bare fraction off the ground.
Of course, there were also those who used magic enough to hurt a person: electricity spraying from a hand, a whirlwind, a spear made of fire. The children around them watched with respect, or with envy. More than I had expected, it was the look people give someone good at sports. In the second world, it would have been close to the way one looks at a person standing high in the martial arts.
Victoria made her sphere of light and was measured, and at last my turn came. I stepped up before the teacher and said:
"I can't use mana."
For a moment everything went quiet. The teacher stared at me, thoroughly startled. I can produce effects similar to mana, but doing so risks cracking the world, so it is more accurate to say I have none.
"No, but—then that recovery ability isn't magic?"
By now everyone knows I can restore a person. They know the side effects, too. I nodded at the teacher's question. According to Daegon, and according to Yuanshi Tianzun, I myself stand at the pole opposite mana. So what it isn't, it isn't.
"A contract is a contract. It isn't magic."
The teacher considered for a moment, then came closer.
"Just in case, let me check. People who truly can't use mana are rare."
A glance at the children around us told me the words meant about the same as saying someone was disabled. I had no particular distaste for it, so I offered the teacher my arm.
The teacher took my arm and held still. I felt absolutely nothing. But all at once the teacher's face went pale, and they snatched their hand away as if they'd been shocked.
The Heavenly Demon had felt something wrong, too, when he put qi into my body. That was after I had already been made into a Harvester, so I don't know whether he felt precisely the same cold I feel. I do remember that he showed the same physiological reaction as the person standing in front of me now. The teacher was the same. The weather was not so cold, and yet the capillaries contracted and the fine hairs stood on end. The body shivered, trying to make heat.
"I can't use mana."
A fish that lives in the deep sea cannot breathe air. What cannot be done cannot be done.
The teacher's whole body was soaked through with sweat. Well, it was early autumn. The body had decided it was cold and tried to hold on to its heat, so of course it was sweltering.
"You don't look well. Wouldn't it be better to go somewhere you can be treated?"
At my question the teacher, dazed, slowly nodded. But what was that flinch from the children around us when I said it? There was fear in it. They weren't thinking I had done something, were they? The teacher was the one who reached out and got a fright. However you look at it, I am not the one at fault.
Still trembling, the teacher announced that class would end here, gathered up the equipment and the punched sheets the machine had produced, and left the practice ground.
"Did you do something?"
Victoria sidled up and asked. The instant she did, I could see ears pricking all around us. I shook my head.
"I didn't. Aside from what this world calls a superpower, have you ever seen me use anything?"
Victoria thought for a moment, then raised both hands—one low, one high—and brought them closer together.
"When you transformed?"
"Ah. There was that."
A strange memory worked its way through me. Only a few characters. Soosim Gong Choseol. I had looked it over when I had the time, and there was no unusual power in it—only the letters. That was all. But back then, it had been different.
I still remember. The characters Soosim Gong Choseol glittered inside my memory, and after my form changed, Soo's memory shone for a brief moment. I still don't understand it.
"It's my vessel, so I think of it as different. And going back to that form is impossible, besides."
"Yeah……. Better if turning back into a twenty-five-foot fish-person is impossible."
The shape must have come back to her. Victoria folded her arms, nodded, and conceded the point.
"It was a vessel made, originally, to hold a god. That's why a monster like me could get inside."
Victoria nodded, but her face was the face of someone who doesn't really follow and nods anyway. Faint contempt and fear were fixed in it. That incident must have been dreadful. No need to keep dragging up a memory she hated.
"You can tell a lot about a machine just by looking, can't you, Victoria?"
Instead I turned the talk, lightly, toward a field she knew well. And the choice was the right one. Victoria's words came down like a waterfall.
Perhaps because she assumed I knew nothing, the explanation ran long. I already have Victoria's knowledge, so if I set the unnecessary parts aside and interpret, it comes to this. A highest-grade instrument, made long ago. Its specifications are better than the testing machines used not only in the schools where children study, but even in places with reasonably good facilities—yet the interface and the components are old. It is a little aged, but it still runs well, and the performance isn't poor, so there is no real need to replace it. That is why they haven't.
She explained with such enthusiasm that the incident seemed to have flown clean out of her head. Every bad feeling lodged between her expressions disappeared.
Mm.
Good enough.
And once Victoria had poured all those words out, the students cocking an ear toward me were gone as well.
"If you're going to be a Clockwork Knight from now on, Victoria, you'll have to study hard."
I had decided to try a little experiment. At my words Victoria stopped talking. She looked at me as if to scold me, because this Royal Academy does not teach you to become a Clockwork Knight. It teaches you about the people who handle them. And the one who had told me so was none other than Victoria.
"You know I can't anymore."
The prod was plain in it. You know that, so why are you saying it? So I said:
"Are you going to give up the dream? Over nothing more than being held down a few hours a day?"
At that Victoria closed her mouth. She went silent, looking deeply troubled, and I studied her.
How do I draw desire out? If something stands in the way, I will teach her how to break through it and go on. Where there is strength, use strength. Where the head is needed, use the head. The more unshakable a conviction, the more easily one person can kill another. It is precisely when someone is doing what is right that they can go on killing without guilt.
In that sense, a murderer who kills only one or two is a failure. Ordinary people—ordinary enough to feel guilt—are especially likely to yield a small harvest. Serial killers are acceptable. Fast food: an easy way to fill the stomach in a short time. The problem, if it is a problem, is that purple hair, the mark of a Harvester, curdles into a bad image the way a vessel clogs, until I too become someone society finds all too easy to keep at a distance.
Best of all is the person who keeps the law and the norms, and keeps them exactly as they please. Someone who hides behind the group for the sake of what they want, and moves the very system that makes the group. The finest Harvester—one from whom a great quantity of warmth can be taken for a very long time. I mean to try turning an ordinarily good person into that. A childhood dream is the easiest bait there is.
"Why would you say something like that?"
I looked around. A few people were still listening to Victoria and me, but most had lost interest. Perfect.
"I think a person ought to do what they want to do."
Yes. In truth, the words that lead desire are already decided. I have been doing this for a long time; I only mean to do it a little more in earnest. In the second world I did far too much of nothing. This time I will be careful—but I ought to try walking with longer strides.
"Victoria. The same goes for you. People have to dream. Don't they?"
I put pure malice into it, and prayed that not only the person before me, but everyone, would trample others underfoot according to their own desire and climb.
"What, you're rooting for my dream?"
"Yes. That's right. If you've lost the way, you only have to find it again. You have the strength for that, don't you?"
A superpower that lets her handle water as she pleases. A fine power, suited to slaughter and just as suited to assassination. Water is a more dangerous substance than it looks.
Victoria stared straight at me, then suddenly pulled me into a hug.
"Bell, you're the best!"
Victoria lifted me clean off the ground, and I had to take a spinning turn through the air. I felt, in my own body, the strength that had smashed a sahuagin's skull. After a few revolutions overhead she set me back on the ground and caught my cheeks in both hands.
"Thank you."
Then she stepped back a few paces, stretched, and smiled with a face grown a shade brighter. Seeing it, I was glad. My words seemed to have soaked in very well.
Please. Give me a great deal of warmth.
Victoria Vett.