The Mountain Beyond the Mountain
Chris stopped the absorption and lay back on the bed. He sent the mana he had drawn in through his mouth and hands downward, probing the black sphere in his ankle. It had shattered into sixteen pieces. A gasp escaped him.
"Whoa."
Now that he had tried it himself, he understood what Donna meant when she said that mana stones were expensive, but you still had to buy the higher grades. The effect showed at once, and motivation welled up in him. Bracing himself for the risk of a brain hemorrhage, Chris threw himself at the challenge again.
With the lowest-grade and low-grade stones his mana ran dry after five attempts, but a mid-grade stone carried him through eight. In the end he split the sphere into thirty-six pieces.
"But how do I get this out?"
Grind it finer and absorb it into my body?
Chris shook his head hard. Even a rough look told him it would be bad for him. His instincts whispered that it was dangerous.
I have to draw it out along the mana pathways.
Following the path of Iron Body that Tom had drawn for him—etched into his brain with magic—Chris sent mana down to his ankle, seized one of the thirty-six fragments, and tried to drag it lower. In that instant he felt a pain as if the mana path were tearing. If a fragment of the black sphere went down as it was, the path would be ripped to shreds, and the damage would be irreversible.
Chris stopped at once.
"I have to crush it finer."
When the pain dulled to a heavy ache, he went to the bathroom, showered, and ate a hearty breakfast.
Lai sidled up beside him and picked a fight.
"I hear you haven't been training lately. Just playing around every day?"
"Me? No."
"You're shut up in your room all the time."
Lai set a hand on Chris's head.
"Heartbreak?"
He asked it with mock gravity.
"No."
"Yeah, right. I can tell just by looking. You still can't forget that ugly girl."
Chris peeled the hand off.
"Think whatever you want."
"Want me to introduce you to a woman?"
The question came out of nowhere.
"You know any women?"
"There's a widow in my neighborhood who's fifty any day now. How about her? She'd suit you."
Then he cackled as if he had told the funniest joke in the world. If someone his own age had sneered at him, Chris would have been angry, but this was a child not even half his age, so all that came out was a hollow laugh.
"They say you don't even bother a dog while it's eating. Go eat your food."
"You don't bother a dog because it'll bite you. You're not a dog."
"You sure about that?"
Chris yanked the boy's hand over and bit down hard.
"Aaagh!"
Lai snatched his hand back and screamed. The teeth marks stood out clear on his skin.
"Waaah."
Lai burst into tears and bolted out of the dining hall.
"A kid's a kid."
The sneering and the needling had called Alex to mind, but the sight of him crying like that made his age feel real. Even so, if he kept growing this way, he would turn into an adult packed tight with malice, just like Alex.
Moral education was urgently needed, but one thought of the temperaments inside a magic tower said it would never happen. From another angle, a rotten character like that suited a magic tower perfectly.
For several days he stayed away from mana stones and gave his ankle a rest. Even then he kept Iron Body running. He simply wasn't using the stones.
To anyone else's eyes he would have seemed to be loafing in his room, but Chris was working hard. His life had not been a long one, and yet this was the most fiercely he had ever lived it.
Mana ran along the iron path—the path carved into him by the secret art of Iron Body—and poured vitality through his body. The moment his ankle recovered, he took out a second mid-grade mana stone. He always faltered at this stage. The pain was bad enough to set his teeth grinding.
He swore five times under his breath, set the stone beneath the sole of his foot, squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his molars, and went at it.
Go. Crack! Go. Crack! Shit. Crack! Shit. Crack! Aaagh! Crack! Aaagh! Crack! Fuck this! Crack! Hurts like hell! Crack!
After the last attempt he toppled backward and let the bed take his weight.
"Haa."
The pain of a black sphere breaking was not something a man grew used to. If anything, it seemed to hurt worse every time. A nosebleed was a given, and even his eyes stung. In the mirror the fine vessels had burst, and the whites had gone red.
Thank heaven a vessel in my brain didn't burst.
He lay on the bed groaning until sleep took him. A cool touch on his forehead opened his eyes, and there was Hailey, laying a damp cloth across his brow.
"Did you...?"
"Did I what?"
"Never mind."
Hailey's face soured.
"You were about to ask if I like you, weren't you? If I'm looking after you because I like you?"
"Yeah."
"Mister, don't confuse pity with love."
Hailey clicked her tongue.
"You've lived long enough. You still can't tell the difference?"
"I've got a long way to go. The road ahead of me is wide open."
"Mister, what are you doing?"
"What do you mean, what am I doing?"
"Lai's been badmouthing you for loafing around..."
Chris cut her off.
"Badmouthing me?"
"Yes. Every day."
"What's his problem?"
"You bit his hand."
"Holding a grudge over that? For a man, he's awfully small-minded."
Hailey returned to her original point.
"I see it differently. Mister, you're learning something dangerous, aren't you?"
"Does it look that way?"
"Yes."
"Good eye. You're right."
"Mister, stop, if you possibly can. You'll die doing that."
Chris called her name, all warmth.
"Hailey."
Hailey's voice held no warmth at all.
"What?"
"If I die, will you lay a single flower on my grave?"
"No."
"Didn't you say I was pitiful? You can't even do that much for a pitiful wretch?"
"Mister, how can you be so ignorant of the way the world works?"
"I'm ignorant?"
"If you die of side effects while training in the magic tower, the mages take the body and use it for research. They dissect it. They experiment on it. They don't make graves."
Chris went blank.
"They do that?"
Thinking about it, it seemed likely.
"Of course they'd use me for experiments."
"If the corpse goes to a healing mage, it ends at the dissection. But if it goes to a dark mage..."
Hailey gave a thin shudder.
"Death might not be the end. It could be a new beginning."
"All right. I'll try not to die."
Hailey let out a soft breath of a laugh.
"Yes. Don't die."
"How did you know I was hurting? Did I scream?"
"No. Evening came and you hadn't come down, so I came up. You never miss a meal, not even if the sky splits in two. Lai..."
The way she trailed off nagged at him.
"What's that brat Lai saying?"
"That you're a glutton."
"Haha."
Chris laughed.
"Sounds just like him."
"There's still time. Go down and you can eat."
"I'm all right. I'll skip it today."
Hailey's expression turned grave.
"You turning down food... you really must be hurting."
"No. Thanks to you, I'm all better."
"Be careful."
Hailey went down, and Chris checked his body. The black sphere in his ankle had nearly turned to powder. From where he lay, he roused Iron Body. Mana that had risen through his mouth, both hands, and the sole of his left foot descended toward the right. It trickled down in stingy spurts, like the stream of an old man with a badly failing prostate, and the moment it touched his ankle it became a river. The river swept the dregs of the black sphere down with it.
"Nnngh."
A groan slipped out of him. Not a groan soaked in pain, as before, but one soaked in pleasure. The relief was as cool and thorough as voiding long-impacted stool, and the stench was every bit as foul.
Chris sat up and looked down toward the source of the smell. The sheet by his sole was stained black.
He had thought of the black spheres as something lodged in the mind's eye. They plainly affected the body, and yet he had still taken them for a matter of the mind—and to his astonishment they had sprung out into the real world. The black sphere had one foot planted in reality.
Chris sent mana to his ankle. It came and went, leaving a clean, refreshing feeling behind. Before the ankle was opened, mana had squeezed through a pinhole; now it ran down a water pipe. Then it struck his calf and bottlenecked.
A mountain beyond the mountain.
Chris looked at the two black spheres blocking his calf and swallowed a sigh.
Get past the two in the calf and there was one in the knee. Deal with that, and he would meet the beads in the thigh. Clear the three in the thigh, and he would have to handle the black sphere in the pelvis; pulverize the two in the belly on top of that, and he would come face to face with the final boss at the solar plexus.
The left foot was the same. The spheres sat in nearly the same places as on the right. It would have been nice if the two paths shared the black spheres in the belly, but they ran separate roads until they converged on the black sphere at the solar plexus.
Both arms were identical. Starting from the wrist, he would have to smash ten black spheres before he was through the elbow, the shoulder, and the chest. Forty of them, across the four limbs, had to be destroyed.
If he only had mana stones, those forty looked solvable. The bead at the solar plexus, though—no, that thing deserved to be called a boulder—he could not even bring himself to face it. It was too big, and too hard.
Chris rolled his ankle and murmured, putting hope into the words.
"You cross a mountain one step at a time."
One step, then another, and in the end he would cross the mountain at his solar plexus. He believed that. No—he hoped for it. Desperately.
Clearing the black sphere in his ankle had cost three lowest-grade stones, two low-grade, and two mid-grade. He believed the three mid-grade mana stones he had left would be enough for the two black spheres in his calf. A single mid-grade stone was stronger than two low-grade, or three of the lowest.
To put the conclusion first, he had miscalculated. Three mid-grade stones were not enough to finish even the second black sphere. The ones in the calf were harder than the one in the ankle.
If the difficulty keeps rising the higher I go, won't there come a point even mana stones can't handle?
If so, the solar plexus would be hell.
Chris worked for a month without the help of mana stones, and confirmed once again that he had been right. Without them, it was absolutely impossible.
I need mana stones. But how do I get them?
Chris paid a visit to Brian Magic Store.
"Ma'am, good to see you."
He squeezed out the biggest smile he could manage and set it on his face.
Donna answered flatly.
"What do you want?"
"It stings, you asking me that. After everything between us."
"And what exactly is between us?"
"We're close. We've traded a fortune."
Donna's face turned as kindly as it used to be.
"Buying mana stones?"
"Yes."
"How many?"
"I need high-grade."
"A high-grade elemental mana stone is a hundred gold coins apiece."
Donna sounded impressed.
"They say even a grub has a talent for rolling. You've got a knack for making money."
Chris scratched the back of his head, awkward.
"About that... could I put it on credit?"
Donna picked up a broom.
"Out!"
The broom cracked across Chris's backside.
"Ma'am."
"I said out!"
Donna was a grandmother creased all over with wrinkles. Stretch the truth a little and she looked past a hundred. You would think an old woman like that couldn't hurt much, swinging a broom, but Chris really hurt. His backside felt as if it had caught fire.
"I'm going. I'm going."
Chris bolted outside. Then he turned back to Donna, who was spitting after him.
"Heartless old hag. You didn't have to spit."
"Khak."
The moment he saw her gathering phlegm as well, Chris fled, flinging a curse over his shoulder.
"Keep being that spiteful and you'll get what's coming to you. You might even die."