Becoming a Disciple
Grain let out a short, scoffing laugh and spoke as if he were teaching a child.
"With the magic towers' cooperation, we'll open the Gate of Heaven and ascend to the Middle Realm. In exchange, the towers' Ring Binders come with us."
"Didn't you say only mid-rank Ring Binding and above would go?"
"To raise morale, we'll brew Motaro and hand it out. Provided someone supplies the ingredients."
Julien cried out.
"I'll take full responsibility for procuring the materials!"
Grain winked.
"See? So how does this play out? The lower-rank Ring Binders eat the Motaro, promote to mid-rank, and leave for the Middle Realm. Every Ring Binder vanishes from the continent. And in the meantime, the Seed Cultivators who are quick on the uptake, sharp, and clever will do whatever it takes to reach the Ring Binding realm and come with us."
"Whatever it takes?"
"Stuff them full of Motaro, and they can become Ring Binders."
"If they become Ring Binders through a cheat like that, they'll have a hard time rising any further. They'd live out their lives as lower-rank Ring Binders..."
Grain cut him off.
"Impossible here, yes. But once they reach the Middle Realm, there's a way. So even the lower ranks will stake their lives on a fifty-fifty chance and try to ascend. Now, let's settle the conclusion. Every Ring Binder, and every clever Seed Cultivator on the verge of Ring Binding, disappears from the continent in a single stroke. At that point, even the knights can take a swing at the towers, can't they?"
Chris turned it over. If the empire and the kingdoms pool their strength, they really might break the towers. As the order is redrawn, the continent will drown in blood. And if it comes to that, every drop of it will be thanks to that damned monster of a mage. Then again, they might settle for some tolerable compromise. He hoped they would. Either way, the towers would no longer lord it over the nations as they once had.
The three Grand Masters put their heads together and muttered, and then Dwight spoke for them.
"The empire accepts the proposal."
"Wise choice."
The old man rubbed his hands together, thoroughly pleased.
"The hour to end the waiting draws near."
He was overcome.
Chris asked.
"By any chance, are you Sitta?"
The old man turned the question back on him.
"Why would you think that?"
"These are the Sitta Ruins, and you're their master."
"Sitta is the name of the man who built these ruins. He's dead now."
He seems to think it's just as well the man is dead.
"And your name is...?"
"Pardine."
"Why did you build the ruins?"
"Why ask a thing like that?"
"I was told a great mage of an earlier generation built the ruins before he died, so he could help the mages who came after. But once I learned what Motaro is made of, I started to wonder. Would he really? Would men who grind Seed Cultivators into medicine ever do something that selfless?"
"Your thinking is correct. What must a mage do if he wants to live a long time?"
"Raise his realm."
"Exactly. And here, the way up is sealed."
Chris understood.
"So the ruins were built to open the Gate of Heaven."
"Correct."
"Is that also why the teleportation circles devour so much mana?"
"It is."
"And Motaro is the bait on the hook?"
"Clever boy."
"Then every mage who entered the ruins and went missing—you caught them all and turned them into Motaro?"
"If you want to keep making bait, you need ingredients."
"You could have gone on that way. Why seek cooperation now?"
"Waiting any longer bored me. And the preparations are nearly finished."
"Are the people who built the ruins still alive?"
"No. All of them are dead. Fortunate for us."
"Why?"
"Because they weren't kind, the way we are."
Chris nearly snorted and caught himself. Grain still had a hand on his shoulder. Irritate the man, and there was no telling what he might do.
"You're kind?"
"That's only because you never met him."
He shuddered and went on.
"He was truly terrifying."
Fear clung to his voice.
So he really was afraid.
Shay cut into the conversation.
"What sort of people were they?"
"People of the Middle Realm."
Daryl said.
"So after the gate opened and closed ten thousand years ago, the mages left behind in our world built the ruins. To return home."
Pardine nodded.
"There. Curiosity more or less satisfied? Now get out."
With that, he lifted Stan's torso into the air and thrust a hand into the back. Chris frowned as Stan's limbs curled inward from the extremities and shriveled. Pardine absorbed Stan's Klpandi, then his mana, then his blood, and at last the flesh itself. With every draught, the body that had been nothing but skin over bone swelled. Muscle filled out, the skin smoothed, and a sheen returned to hair that had been dry as straw.
Thud.
Stan dropped to the floor, curled up like a rolled scroll.
Chris muttered.
"And here I thought you were making Motaro."
"I said it would be a waste to throw him away. I never said I'd make Motaro of him."
Grain released Chris's shoulder and drew out the Silver Key.
"Come on. Time to go."
Chris said.
"The Silver Key wasn't working, though."
"I sealed it so no one could leave before the negotiations ended. It works now."
As he said, a passage opened out of the ruins. Julien spoke up.
"I'm in a hurry, so if you've a spare Motaro, please give me one."
Grain handed one over with open-handed ease.
"Thank you."
Julien took the Motaro and went out beaming. The mages filed after him, and the knights followed.
Whether the key Grain had used was a special one, a long while passed after the passage opened, and still it refused to collapse.
"We should go too."
Grain floated the frozen Seed Cultivator into the air, caught Chris by the hand, and started walking, pulling him along. On the way Chris flicked Stan's head up with his foot, caught it, and said.
"I'll go on my own."
"Why?"
"I don't get along with the towers. I'll act independently. I've also got a pet to find."
"A pet?"
Chris glanced about for the mole. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere. It must have fled during the fight.
His feelings were hurt. I fed it, housed it, protected it—and the moment things got dangerous, it abandoned its master and ran.
"Mole, where are you?"
Under the pretense of searching, Chris quietly shook off Grain's hand and opened the distance.
"Hold it."
Grain closed the gap in an instant.
"Going separately is a problem."
"Why?"
"Because I think you'll run."
How did he know? Chris's stomach dropped.
"Come on. Why would I run?"
"Those quick, rolling eyes, and the fine beads of sweat on the bridge of your nose, are telling me exactly what's on your mind."
"That's because I'm scared."
"Do I frighten you?"
"Of course you do."
"Afraid or not, it can't be helped. You have to travel with me."
"Why?"
"Because you're a Body Mage."
"Is that a reason?"
"I told you. I'm a Body Mage too."
He stated it flatly.
"There is no mage in this world whose body has been refined as far as ours."
"And so?"
"Congratulations."
That sounded ominous.
"For what?"
"On becoming my disciple."
Grain dragged the unwilling Chris out of the ruins by force.
For a long time Chris had nursed the wish to study in earnest under a capable mage. Grain was not that mage. He had no desire to take as his master a man who ground other mages into medicine.
And yet...
After a round of browbeating, with a modest measure of violence included, Chris became Grain's disciple. And so he was taken to Mickclonia Magic Tower.
He set foot once more in Mick Magic Tower, a place he had believed he would never see again. A vast crowd of mages came out to welcome the great mage's return with fervor. Only Perez wore a sour face.
Grain rose into the air and delivered a grand address to his juniors. The heavens this, opening the way above that, a new age something-or-other, eternal life and so on. Chris let the whole of it go in one ear and out the other.
When the welcome was over, the two of them moved to the lodgings the tower had prepared: a cave deep in the mountains. Chris looked around the hollow and muttered.
"Dreary."
Grain shot back.
"I find you drearier."
"What did I do?"
He pointed at the cloth bundle in Chris's hands. Stan's severed head was inside it.
"Is it normal to walk around carrying a dead man's head?"
"Master, I'm a 2-Ring."
Chris stroked the bundle as he went on.
"A 2-Ring brought down a 5-Ring. I didn't ambush a badly wounded man from behind, and I didn't mob him with a pack. One on one! Head-on! Fair and square! I fought him and I won. This is the greatest success of my life. I can't just throw away the proof of it."
"And that means you carry it around?"
"I meant to mount it on the wall once I had quarters. I'll step out and prepare it."
"Do as you like."
Chris turned his back on Grain, who had begun digging a pit in the center of the hollow, and went outside. He made his way to a running spring, unwrapped the bundle, and took out Stan's head. Freezing it had kept the rot at bay. There was no foul smell, and no maggots seethed in it.
Chris peeled the mask from Stan's face and tossed the head aside like trash.
Fwoosh.
He spoke an incantation, and flame leapt up and burned Stan's head to nothing in an instant. Then he sat by the spring and washed the mask clean. He could have washed it with conjured water, but since he was already out, he used the spring. Somehow that felt cleaner.
He laid the mask he had peeled from his own face over Stan's. A faint light seeped from the seam, and the two masks fused into one.
Chris picked it up and felt it over. Aside from a very slight increase in thickness, nothing had changed.
"Strange, I'll give it that."
He put the mask on and connected. Inside the world of the mask, only two windows still floated.
◈ Two other windows — absorbed by Chris
◈ One window — existence erased by the fiend Tenbo
On impulse, he spoke.
No answer.
Still no answer.
He didn't seem inclined to answer.
He kept his silence.
Chris spat out the decisive word. The spy's name.
Just as expected, a stifled scream came back.
Then a trembling voice.
That knowledge had thrown every magic tower on the continent into an uproar. Among the Seed Cultivators, those with weak backing, and those whose advancement had stalled until their limits showed plain, had all been locked away. Only the ones lucky enough to have been outside at the time, or quick enough to vanish, barely escaped the disaster. Hunters then appeared who made a trade of running the fugitives down, and betrayers of their own colleagues sprang up in droves.
Before he could finish, the other cried out.