You're a Dead Man
Chris shrugged.
"And what truth did you settle on?"
"You're not Number Four, and you're not Number Five. You killed Seed, Number Four, and David, Number Five, took their masks, and you've been wearing them in turns—Seed one day, David the next. You mongrel. You piece of shit, X."
"That's quite a leap."
"We met and confirmed it."
"Who's we?"
"The Ring Binding mages of the Three Great Magic Towers."
"You lot are cats and dogs. And you held a meeting together?"
"The matter was serious."
"I find that hard to believe."
"The Three Great Towers compete. That doesn't mean we fight every day. When there's reason to cooperate, we cooperate. When a common enemy shows up, we close ranks and fight. We've done it for a very long time."
"I'm the common enemy? A mere Seed Cultivation mage?"
"You know the towers' taboo."
"Ah. That."
"We sat down and traded what we knew without holding back, and we learned there's a man going around pretending to be one of the Children of the Mask. We also learned that this unidentified bastard is holding a hot potato."
Chris was too busy thinking to answer.
Number One pressed him.
"You think you can run forever, since the mask can change your face?"
"Yeah. Seems that way."
"It doesn't. You'll be caught, and you'll die miserably."
"That the warning you keep connecting through the mask to give me? In the ruins you wouldn't even connect."
"I was too curious. Who is this bastard? Where in the world did he crawl out from? It's driving me mad."
Even with the Ring Binding mages of the Three Great Magic Towers putting their heads together, they apparently still hadn't worked out that the man playing Seed and David was Chris.
Why did they miss it? Because Tom wasn't at the meeting? Or because I used Seed Cultivation magic?
Everyone who knew Chris existed believed he couldn't use magic.
Is that why they couldn't make the connection?
"What are you?"
"Seed."
"Lying to the bitter end."
Stan decided the self-proclaimed Number Four had no intention of answering, and he changed the subject.
"So why the sudden change of heart? Why contact me?"
"Look at the window. Notice anything strange?"
Stan's voice rose.
"Number Two!"
The shout for Number Two sounded like a death scream.
"You killed him, didn't you?"
"What are you talking about? I don't even know who Number Two is. How would I have killed him? His window vanished all of a sudden, so I reached out to see if you knew anything."
He had meant, originally, to fish in passing for Number Two's mission. He suspected Number One was the one who had ordered the raid on the treasure Senfo Merchant Guild was transporting. Asking had just become difficult. Ask, and Number One would be certain he had killed Number Two.
I should cut this.
He was about to sever the connection when Stan spoke.
"Having fun making fools of the tower masters and the Ring Binders?"
"......"
"Think you're the only clever one, and the rest of us are idiots?"
"......"
Chris cut the connection. Stan's last words kept circling his ear.
You're a dead man. You're a dead man. You're a dead man...
All bluster.
He squared his shoulders and pressed the unease down. He still felt rotten.
Chris made his way to the Imar branch of Senfo Merchant Guild. Before he left for another country, he meant to confirm Art's safety one last time. He had planned to simply go, but somehow it weighed on him.
Should I at least leave him some money?
Around noon he headed for Imar Castle. Carriages stood in a line at the gate. The flags marked them as Senfo.
Where did they come from?
The freight on the wagons was in a wretched state, and strangely familiar.
That's what we were hauling.
The Imar branch, after Art's report, seemed to have spent the night recovering the cargo left abandoned in the wake of the mage's attack.
He waited until every carriage was inside, then passed the gate. The false identification he had prepared beforehand, and five coins with it, spared him any nuisance.
Chris spent without stint the silver that had passed from the freight wagons, through a mage, and into his hands. He cut a steak at a restaurant, drank tea at a café, and went to the theater for a performance. The sun went down while he idled. After a late supper as well, he strolled at his ease toward the Imar branch.
Cloaked in stealth magic, he headed for the porters' quarters. Art was telling the branch porters what he had been through. Seeing him whole and unhurt pleased Chris. He listened a moment, then left.
I won't be seeing him again. Live well.
He was about to step out of the branch when someone shot up from the branch manager's residence.
A mage.
Still under the stealth spell, Chris cast flight magic and pursued him. The man flew a long way, then came down in a clearing deep in the forest. He turned and beckoned toward empty air.
Chris glanced behind him before he meant to. No one was there.
Is he beckoning me?
The man pointed straight at him.
"Come down."
So it was me.
Chris released the stealth magic and lost altitude.
"You knew I was following you?"
He asked it as he walked toward the man.
The man nodded.
"Since when?"
"From the start."
Chris indicated the blood spattered across his robe.
"Whose blood is that?"
"The branch manager's."
"You kill him?"
The man nodded.
"Why?"
"Tight-lipped. Even so, I learned everything I needed to know. Did you kill Paron, by any chance?"
"Who's Paron?"
"There were burn marks at the scene. Did you cremate him?"
Each of them said only what he cared to say.
"And what scene would that be?"
"Who are you with?"
"Who burned Paron?"
"Your name?"
"You happen to know what treasure Senfo was moving?"
"A man who won't shed a tear until he's looking at the coffin."
The man swept his staff, and a fireball kindled in the air and began to swell. Chris raised a barrier across his front, then watched how the mana moved under his opponent's hand. He often stole a technique that way, in the watching, and so he had a habit of giving himself slack in a fight. This time that was a mistake.
He should have struck and checked the fireball before it grew to the size of a two-story building. Once it swelled and the man committed to a rush, Chris couldn't catch the thread of a counter and was driven back with nothing to answer.
It started small.
Flare. Flare. Flare.
Fist-sized flames dropped out of the enormous fireball.
Cute.
Even then, Chris still had room to spare. Wings sprouted from the orbs of fire, beaks formed, and they turned into birds. Then they swept in like a storm.
The booms came one on top of another.
Dozens of firebirds slammed into Chris's barrier. It blotched, melted, and broke. Before a bird could touch him, he hastily wove a fresh barrier around himself and set the grass in motion. The instant the blades tried to coil his enemy's ankles, the man lifted a little off the ground.
A gesture, and part of the fireball overhead split away, as if someone were ladling flame with an enormous dipper. The fallen fire spread across the ground and burned the grass before it could reach him.
If the grass burns, there are still the trees.
Chris kept the firebirds off with his barrier and moved the trees around them. Branches stretched long and lashed at his opponent.
A portion broke from the great fireball and burned the branches. He didn't stop there. Jets of flame shot out in every direction and turned the surroundings into a sea of fire.
Chris stuck his tongue out at the viciousness of it. The forest favored him; he carried a wood-attribute seed. By starting a wildfire, the man had turned a ground that helped Chris into one that worked against him.
"Hey!"
Chris bellowed.
"You start a forest fire, and then what? You'll kill every animal out here!"
The man laughed at him openly.
"You lunatic!"
The assault grew fiercer still. Between the ceaseless firebirds, fire arrows poured down, a hundred at a stroke hammering the barrier. It didn't break, but some of the impact carried through. Had his body not been a grandmaster's, he would have been in serious trouble.
After the arrows came a wolf. The wolf of fire raked the barrier with its forepaws and finally tore through.
So I have to use my body after all.
That magic couldn't finish it, that he had to move his flesh, sat bitterly with him. Chris compressed the air wrapped around his fist and smashed the muzzle of the fire-wolf as it lunged to bite.
A heavy thud.
The fire-wolf's head cracked and scattered. With the Swallow's Dance—begun at Calmer Manor and perfected under Count Tren—Chris slipped the firebirds and the fire arrows. The birds his footwork couldn't evade, he shattered with his fists.
"A Body Mage, then."
The man said it with open contempt as he worked the fire. Chris didn't answer. He closed the distance a little at a time. The wildfire had fouled the air terribly.
A tiger, a lion, and a bear burst from the fireball—the beasts said to be the strongest of the carnivores.
The fire-bear reared onto its hind legs and swung its forepaws. A hit from those paws looked likely to crush a man's head before the flames ever finished him. The fire-tiger circled slyly behind and swung at his back. The fire-lion struck from the flank.
Chris thought it over.
This bastard's stronger than Randal.
Stronger than Paron, too. Set aside the mages who had reached Ring Binding, and he was the strongest Chris had fought yet.
Not so strong he couldn't be beaten. It only rankled that he had given up the first blow and been stuck on the defensive ever since.
Chris leapt straight into the fire-bear's chest, slipped the forepaws, and drove his fist home.
Another thud.
The fire-bear's chest blew open. Flame dropped from the fireball overhead and filled the hole.
The tiger coming at his back he stopped with a barrier thrown up in haste.
Thud.
The fire-tiger's kick reduced that barrier to rags. The lion rushing in from the side he let pass by dropping into a crouch, and as its belly slid over his head he stabbed and ripped with the edge of his hand. The fire-lion's underside split in two.
Once he had slipped the three beasts' opening rush, he drove both hands into the ground. Earth surged up and tilted into a slope, and the fire-beasts tumbled backward.
"You handle magic well without a staff."
He offered the praise while stirring his own. Chris laughed.
"I grew up without much of anything, so a staff never felt natural."
"No. You're not using a staff because you're hiding who you are. You're not even wearing a robe."
Chris's clothes had burned to ruin. Fire had caught while he tangled with the beasts. He stripped them off and flung them aside.
"I've got nothing to hide."
"Liar."
Firebirds burst from the fireball again. Hundreds, this time. They raged down from the sky while the three beasts charged from below.
Chris stamped the risen earth flat. Soil poured down like a landslide and buried the three of them. With the beasts buried alive, he blocked the birds behind a fresh barrier and fixed his eyes on the air above.
The fireball had poured out countless birds and arrows, and great beasts besides. By rights it should have shrunk. It was no different from the start. As much as broke away, new flame formed to hold its size.
How?
Ambient mana kept flowing in to maintain its bulk.
Then I only have to cut off the surroundings.
Chris moved his mana and wrapped it around the fireball. His opponent felt it, and his face tightened.
"Shaping mana by will alone. You truly are no ordinary man."
Chris kicked off the ground and flew. Around his outstretched right fist he wound mana, compressing it again and again, as if he had pulled on dozens of gloves one over another.
"Hah!"
He dove into the enormous fireball and punched.
A crack like splitting stone.
The fireball hanging in the air—the matrix of the fire magic—shattered to pieces. In that instant the shattered flame turned to blades and cut him.
Chris threw up a barrier first, then vented the mana of his Thought Space from the pit of his stomach and spread it through his whole body.
The blades born of the broken fireball were not one or two. There were thousands of them. They kept coming without pause, and Chris was driven to the wall.
After the storm of blades finally ended, the fight sank into a lull. Chris looked at his burned skin.
"That stings."
At that, his opponent laughed.
"My name is Felix."
"Why the sudden introduction?"
"I lost. You've earned the right to know my name."
Chris indicated his own skin, ruined by the burns.
"I won?"
In that moment Felix vomited a rush of blood.