Meeting Again
Grain set three specially processed torsos of Seed Cultivation mages into a great cauldron fitted with a spout like a kettle, packed in an assortment of medicinal herbs, and shut the lid. Divine Language was incised into the metal.
He kindled a fire with magic and set heat under the cauldron, feeding mana into the lid at the same time. The characters carved there shed a yellow light. The seal between lid and cauldron must have been perfect: no boil, no smell, nothing escaped. The pressure inside, by any guess, was enormous.
He kept the cauldron boiling for an hour. When he opened the sealed spout, a thick liquid shot out with a bang, like an arrow leaving the string. After draining the impurities that way, he sealed the spout again and drove the heat even harder. Two more hours of it, and sweat beaded thick across his brow.
"What are you doing!"
At the shout, Chris wiped the sweat from his face with a towel.
"You could wipe sweat with magic."
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to control mana? A little too much or a little too little and the Motaro is ruined. I don't have the attention to spare for that."
Then use the strength you're spending on talking.
Chris grumbled inwardly and kept wiping.
Another thirty minutes passed, and Grain cracked the spout just enough to bleed off the pressure.
Screee.
An ear-splitting shriek, and white steam blasted out. One look at it and Chris knew the batch had succeeded. When Motaro failed, the steam came mixed with black soot.
A little later Grain opened the lid and drew the Motaro out. Three Klpandi had gone in. Only one came out. That was the usual ratio.
They said there were Ring Binding mages who had torn apart and eaten three Seed Cultivators' Klpandi and still couldn't weave a ring. Even those mages could weave one if they took Motaro. Concentrated with special herbs, the effect was apparently that much stronger.
Watching it made, he liked Motaro even less. So this was why ogres and trolls recoiled from the stuff.
Humans are worse than ogres and trolls.
Chris cursed Grain in his head.
Footsteps, loud and deliberate, as if someone meant to be heard.
A guest?
Chris turned toward the cave mouth and snapped his head back at once.
Damn it. Tom and Donna.
The same Tom who had cracked the back of his head in prison, and Donna of the Brian Magic Store, were coming in.
Did they see me?
On the first day Chris trained Iron Skin, Grain had stripped off his mask and taken it, and he still hadn't given it back. So Chris was wearing his real face. Grain handled contact with the outside through a communication orb and a voice-bird, and Chris had felt safe — and now he had walked straight into the worst possible acquaintances.
He pulled the towel he had been using on Grain's sweat up over his head to hide his face and set about cleaning, thinking as he worked.
I turned fast. They couldn't have seen me.
The floor was a wreck from the impurities that had blasted out of the spout, and the stench was vicious. Chris gathered the residue with magic and dumped it into a barrel, then hauled the waste away with his back turned, as naturally as he could, on Tom and Donna.
"You send Motaro to the other Ring Binding mages by courier and magic circle. Why call us here in person?"
Tom's voice alone was enough to irritate him.
Bastard.
"You're Eight-Ring, aren't you?"
"Yes. We made progress at the Horace Ruins."
"You know one Motaro isn't enough to make an Ultimate Mage?"
Tom's face tightened.
"How many do we have to take?"
"A genius, two. A gifted one, three. An ordinary talent, eight. A dullard can eat them and still get nowhere."
"An ordinary talent can't become a mage. They shouldn't be in the standard."
"A high mage far above me, if he poured an entire nation's resources into it, could make even an ordinary talent into a Ring Binding mage."
"Has there been someone like that?"
"I've never seen it. I've heard of it."
"Who?"
"It happened in the Middle Realm. I could tell you and you still wouldn't know the name."
"Did you summon us to say we have to put up twice the mana stones and twice the Seed Cultivation mages?"
"That much I could have sent through the communication orb."
"Then what do you want?"
"Work with me."
Chris's gut clenched. If the two of them worked here, he would have no way to keep his identity hidden. Reason said being found out shouldn't bring disaster — he was Grain's disciple, and no one could lay a hand on him. His instincts kept warning him otherwise. Stay hidden.
Tom's voice went sour.
"You mean work under you?"
"Once you take Motaro and become an Ultimate Mage, you'll be my equal in rank. I can hardly order you to be my subordinate."
"Then what?"
"You'll be working under the master of the Horace Ruins. Or of the Burnoa Ruins."
"And what does that gain us?"
"You held a Gold Key and profited handsomely from it, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Work under a master, and you'll profit the same way."
Tom was not so easily led.
"Be specific."
"You think reaching the Middle Realm is the end? No. It's a new beginning. Where your starting line sits decides the life that follows. Work with us and you can raise your realm quickly. The danger drops, too."
Donna frowned.
"Danger?"
"Here, Ultimate Mage is the ceiling. You can't climb any higher. But that has its own advantage — you can live as you please, however the mood takes you. Want to be a king, you can be a king. Want a thousand pretty men in your retinue, you can have them."
"I have no such hobby."
"Good. A mage ought to be that way. A mage must not settle for the world as it is. You keep the will to improve, and you raise your realm until you die."
The voice that had heated up went calm again.
"Climb to the Middle Realm for that, and the sky opens — and you meet mages stronger than we are. One misstep and you die screaming. If the two of you mean to live content in this world, you don't have to serve an administrator. Enjoy yourselves here, grow old, and die. But if you have ambition, then let's work together."
Tom and Donna looked at each other and whispered in Thought Language. Then Tom spoke.
"If we work under a master, will you teach us how to make Motaro?"
"Of course I'll have to."
Grain put on a show of suffering and pounded his lower back.
"Making Motaro is going to break my spine."
"Very well."
He handed over two Gold Keys.
"These will take you straight to them."
"We're going together. Why two keys?"
"Visit both ruins. Meet both masters, and choose whichever you prefer to serve."
"We have a choice?"
"Of course. Meet them, and if neither suits you, you may refuse."
"And then we become Motaro ourselves, is that it?"
"We don't run an organization that crudely. We value free will."
Tom and Donna used the keys on the spot and crossed over into the ruins. Only then did Chris straighten.
"I'll go empty the waste barrel."
Burning it here would raise a foul reek, miserable to endure. Even driving it off with wind, the smell somehow lingered.
"I'll wash up a little while I'm out."
He buried his nose in the crook of his arm, sniffed, and shuddered.
"It's soaked into me."
"Go on, then."
Chris left the cave, emptied the barrel, and ran. He meant to cross the back mountain and get clear of Mick Magic Tower entirely when a voice came down from the air.
"Got a transit pass?"
Grain's voice.
Damn it.
Chris stopped and looked up. Grain was lying prone on the air as if it were a mattress, drifting as comfortably as a cloud.
"A transit pass?"
"Cross the barrier without permission and the tower gets an alarm. You know that."
"I'm Ring Binding."
"I helped my master raise that barrier back when I was training at the tower. With your skill, you can't leave without tripping it."
"We'll see when I try."
Chris started toward the barrier.
"Running?"
"No. It's stuffy in there. I just wanted a little outside air up my nose."
"Truly?"
"Yes. You're keeping my precious mask, Master. Where would I go?"
Only then did Grain seem to remember. He smacked his own forehead.
"Ah, right. I was holding your thing."
He drew the mask from his robe and dropped it. Chris snatched it out of the air and put it on. He hadn't known that wearing the mask could feel this welcome.
"Thank you."
"Mask's returned, so ease up and don't run."
"I told you I'm not running."
"I believe you."
He said he believed him, and drew his staff and swung. Three black needles formed and dropped toward the tops of Chris's feet. Chris tried to pull his feet clear. In that instant Grain warned him.
"Dodge, and I'll cut the feet off."
Chris couldn't move them. He only curled his toes.
Thud.
The three needles punched through his shoes. He pulled them off and looked. Three black dots were set into the tops of his feet.
"You said that once Iron Skin was complete, even a master's aura couldn't cut it. So what is this?"
"I corrected that later. It isn't quite that far."
"Then why exaggerate in the first place?"
"Otherwise you wouldn't have trained so hard. And this is a kind of curse magic."
"So Iron Skin can't stop a curse."
"You learned Iron Body, and you still burn in fire and cook in lightning. Iron Skin isn't all-powerful either. If it could block every attack, I'd have learned it myself."
"Master, you said you were weak to pain."
"For a merit like that, you endure the pain."
Chris wet a finger and rubbed at the black dots. They were etched in like a tattoo and would not come off.
"What does it do?"
"Wherever you are, it sends a signal so I can find you."
"The world of magic truly is vast and profound."
"Isn't it."
They looked at each other and smiled.
"I really have no thought of running."
"I believe you."
Under Grain's eye, Chris took his walk, then went back to the stinking cave with every curse he knew turning over in his head.
Meeting Again
Grain gilded his own face at every opportunity, forever reminding anyone in earshot what a wonderful master he was. After teaching Cober Circulation, though, he had given no further instruction at all. Not a word about magic, and he would not teach how Motaro was made. He assigned nothing but menial chores.
It was the same now. He packed the freshly made Motaro into a small wooden case that gave off a faint fragrance and handed it to Chris.
"Take this to Elder Richard."
Chris had lived eleven years at Mick Magic Tower and still didn't know where a single elder kept his residence.
"Where does he live?"
"How would I know?"
"You have to tell me where he lives if I'm to deliver it."
"I baked the bread. Must I put it in your mouth as well? A trifle like this, you handle yourself. Useless. Not a lick of sense for the work. Not a lick."
Chris took the Motaro.
"Yes. I'll handle it. And since I'm going out anyway, I'll look around a little."
"Look around?"
"It's my first time at Mick Magic Tower. I thought I'd see the sights."
"No sleeping out."
"Yes."
Permission granted, Chris came out of the cave. He walked with a constant eye on his surroundings — Grain might well be following — then took to the air with flight magic and made for a stretch where the houses stood few and far between.
He came down onto the road and was ambling along when a middle-aged mage, handsome to a rare degree, strode up and barked at him.
"This is the residence of Seed Cultivation mages. Not a place a Spirit Awakening mage walks into as he pleases."
An ordinary shirt and trousers, and the man had taken him for Spirit Awakening.
"Pretty boy. Don't you know my face?"
"You dare speak down to me? Where do you think you are!"
The handsome mage raked him with a displeased eye. While he looked Chris over, Chris looked him over in turn.
A brown robe. A Seed Cultivation mage with an earth-attribute seed, then.
"Pretty boy, I talk down to you because I can."
The flat reply told the handsome one that something was wrong. He asked, suddenly defensive.
"Who are you?"
"Your father."
"What!"
"A joke."
One joke, and the caution vanished. He turned into an enraged boar.
"Have you lost your mind, you bastard? You want to die?"
Chris closed the distance in a flash and gave the man's neck a light pat.
"Didn't you see me at Grain's welcome ceremony?"
Only then did the handsome mage recognize him.
"Th-th-the one who was behind him!"
His voice shook without mercy.
"That's right. The one walking behind him with his head down was me. Know what we do for a living? We grind up arrogant bastards like you and make them into Motaro."
"Y-yes. I know."