Escape: The Staircase Festival
Even a buffet turns stale after three years, so he had tried every combination he could invent. He split a roll, packed it with steak, lettuce, onion, tomato, and sauce, and dunked the whole thing in soup. Now and then a happy accident was born. More often the result barely qualified as food. Today's experiment was, at least, edible.
Chris was alone again. Hailey had eaten with him from time to time, but four days ago she had reached Thought Formulation and left the dormitory.
Lai, whom their cohort worshipped as a boy genius, had gone about boasting that he would be the first in Dormitory 1 to reach that realm. When Hailey stole the glory, he sulked for two days and would not leave his room. Yesterday he had found his old self again and was once more swaggering through the dormitory as if he owned it.
"Hey!"
From across the table, Lai flung a piece of bread.
"What?"
Chris answered without looking up. He could not be bothered.
"I hear you signed up for the Staircase Festival."
"I did."
"Sure, it's a contest of the body. That doesn't mean it's soft enough for a defective product like you to enter."
"And?"
"Don't embarrass our dormitory. Withdraw."
"No."
"Last place is an embarrassment."
Chris swallowed the last of the bread.
"I'm going to win."
Lai snorted.
"Have you lost your mind? You won't even make the first step, old man."
"Want to bet?"
"Gladly. One lowest-grade mana stone says you don't clear five."
"A moment ago you said I wouldn't manage even one. Funny how one turned into five."
"One was an exaggeration. Even a neighborhood mutt can climb a single step."
"You entering too?"
"Obviously."
"And why is that obvious?"
"If Dormitory 1's greatest genius sits it out, the festival goes flat."
Chris smiled, slow and pleasant.
"Isn't our dormitory's greatest genius Hailey?"
The jab landed. Color flooded Lai's face.
"I'll reach Thought Formulation within a few days myself."
"I seem to remember you saying that a year ago... Oh, right. Two years ago as well. And three."
Lai seethed, breath hissing through his teeth.
"When I reach Thought Formulation, I won't let you off."
Chris ruffled the boy's hair.
"By the time you get there, I'll be on holiday."
Lai slapped the hand away with a twitchy swipe.
"If you ever reach Thought Formulation, I'll sear my own hand."
"Kid. You don't throw words like that around."
"I'm not a kid. I'm grown."
For now the act was still cute. The down on his upper lip was soft enough to forgive. Give it two years, though, and Chris suspected the boy would be nothing but an irritation.
"Lai."
"What?"
"Before you become a mage, try becoming a person."
"What are you talking about?"
"Live decently."
"A mage's virtue is skill, not character."
Scripture read to an ox.
"I warned you, anyway."
"Worry about yourself, old man. Look at you, lecturing people. Pathetic."
Chris finished eating and stood.
"I'm winning this one."
"Hilarious."
He set his plate in the sink and went up to his room. Three years ago, the first time he had lain on that bed, it had felt wonderfully soft. Since then he had spent his nights grinding Black Spheres to powder through pain that set his teeth on edge, and now the room turned his stomach the moment he stepped inside. He wanted to burn the place down.
"Hoo."
He let out a long breath and drew out the spatial pouch he had brought from Donna's shop. He slipped a hand in, then pulled it back out. It hurt so badly that every time he reached for a mana stone, he hesitated.
"Sleep first."
Hailey had warned him that lying down right after a meal would give him acid reflux, but the pleasure of stretching out on a full stomach kept winning. Remembering that the left side was supposed to be kinder, he rolled onto it.
An hour later Chris woke and took out the last mana stone — the one hundred and twentieth top-grade stone. Astonishingly, Donna's pouch had held one hundred and twenty of them, and they had been the decisive help in his training of Iron Body.
The first time he used a top-grade stone, he had managed the feat of destroying a single Black Sphere. He had expected some seventy to remain once every sphere was gone. He had assumed the boulder-sized sphere at his solar plexus would consume about ten, and seventy was the number that arithmetic produced.
The estimate missed by a humiliating margin. The closer he drew to the solar plexus, the harder the spheres became to break. By the time every sphere but that one was gone, a single stone remained.
Chris turned the last top-grade mana stone over in his fingers, his face tight with regret. Once he had owned one hundred and twenty of them. A single wood-attribute top-grade stone was worth four hundred gold coins, which meant he had held a fortune of forty-eight thousand gold.
"With that kind of money I could have bought a title and had change to spare."
He could not have purchased a kingdom, but an estate would have been well within reach. Had he abandoned the thought of becoming a mage, he might have lived in comfort. At the time, walking out of the tower with the stones in hand had never occurred to him. He had been possessed by the compulsion to complete Iron Body, as if something had taken hold of him.
It was too late now. The sunk cost — forty-eight thousand gold coins — was too vast to abandon. Even if it killed him, he had to finish Iron Body and become a mage of the Seed Cultivation realm.
He turned his attention inward, to the last remaining Black Sphere. A formidable enemy. He did not imagine one top-grade stone would shatter it. That was a dream past hoping for.
"If I can even put a crack in it, that'll do."
He clenched his fist, opened it, and lay flat, staring at the ceiling. He set the stone on his navel and stretched his limbs long. Palms and soles opened wide, like sails catching the wind.
All right. Begin.
Fine mana from the top-grade stone pooled beneath his belly through the navel. Mana rising from both feet braced it from behind. What entered through his mouth and his hands gathered below the throat.
Go.
The stone's mana launched and struck the enormous Black Sphere at his solar plexus.
Crack!
The mana of his legs drove in behind it.
Crack.
Mana drawn through his hands and mouth hammered down from above.
Crack.
Chris swore.
This is going to kill me.
It was not ordinary pain. The blow landed at the solar plexus, yet every corner of his body hurt. A headache arrived on top of it, as if his skull were splitting open. It felt as though a woodpecker had nested in his brain and was pecking at the bone.
And the Black Sphere did not take so much as a scratch.
Damn it.
He cursed the sphere, cursed Tom, cursed the magic tower, and cursed the world. Even while he swore and damned everything, the mana kept striking — stabbing like a spear, clubbing like a mace, chopping like an axe.
When the pain had climbed high enough that he might have fainted, the top-grade stone's mana was spent. Chris clutched his chest like a man in the grip of heart pain and groaned, and through it he examined the sphere at his solar plexus.
There was a mark. The size of a fingernail.
"Damn it."
The emptiness was so complete that he simply laughed. Laughing shook his chest, and that hurt worse.
Festival day dawned. Chris finished breakfast early and steadied himself. If things went according to plan, he would turn his back on the magic tower today.
Walking toward Mick Tower, he felt several anxieties, and in the end they settled into two.
First: could he break the fifty-fifth step?
Second: could he trust Tom?
If Tom broke out and then ran off alone, Chris would be the chicken left behind.
Plucked bald and straight into the pot.
It was still early, and the plaza before Mick Tower was quiet.
Eleven years ago, he had taken his first step in this very place. The weight of it was almost too much to hold.
As time passed, people began to gather, first one by one and then in twos and threes. Mages of Spirit Awakening were the most numerous, as expected, though mages of the Thought Formulation realm appeared often enough. Mages of Seed Cultivation showed themselves now and then as well — proof that this was no festival one could dismiss.
Chris spotted Randal, Thomas, and William, and hid himself in the crowd. They were the ones who had killed his peers in Lion Pavilion.
What are those bastards doing here?
He saw David, Peter, and Carl. Harvey was loitering as well. Sensing someone come up behind him, he turned at once.
Howard, Douglas, and Andy — the three he had met after reading a recruitment notice for attributeless Spirit Awakening mages on the mission board — offered small bows.
"It's been a while."
Andy asked, "Have you had your attribute judged since then?"
Chris looked at them, alive and perfectly intact.
So they didn't join Harvey's experiment.
"No. I couldn't get it judged."
Admitting the failure seemed, oddly, to please them. From their reaction he guessed they had failed as well.
"You?"
"Same."
"Did you try?"
"I tried with a metal-attribute Evaluation Paper."
Andy looked regretful.
"I should have bought wood."
He was pinning his hopes on wood.
"What about you two?"
Both shook their heads.
"We still haven't saved enough to even try."
Evaluation Papers for special attributes were extremely expensive.
Howard rubbed his hands together.
"Win the Staircase Festival, and I can buy one."
The winner received a high-grade mana stone as a prize. Tenth place or better earned a mid-grade stone, and fiftieth or better a low-grade one. Even a finish inside the top one hundred brought a lowest-grade stone, which was why so many Spirit Awakening mages entered.
Douglas took it up.
"I'd be satisfied just making the top ten."
Howard encouraged him.
"You can make the top ten."
Andy did not think so. Too many old hands were circling this festival, mages who had been stagnant for years and knew exactly how to hunt it.
"I'm aiming for the next chance."
The festival came only once every fifteen years, but that still left him time enough to try again.
Chris said, "Why do they even hold a festival like this?"
It struck him as strange that a magic tower devoted to the worship of magic would stage a contest of the body.
Howard answered, "At the Spirit Awakening stage, a knight outstrips a mage. They say the festival was made so we wouldn't fixate on magic alone and would train the body as well. I heard that until two hundred years ago, it was far larger."
"Why did it shrink?"
"This is a magic tower. A festival for training the body was never going to sit well with them."
Douglas said, "Look. It's Catherine."
Every gaze followed his finger. Catherine was entering the plaza with Alice.
A sound escaped Chris. Seeing the two of them hurt.
I won't see them again.
He fixed their faces in his eyes. Neither had reached Thought Formulation.
Alice spotted him and came over. He meant to slip away, then simply waited.
"It's been a while."
Alice smiled as she spoke.
"Yeah."
The answer caught in his throat.
"You here to compete?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Catherine and I came to watch."
Catherine stepped in beside them.
"We're too frail. Enter, and we'd only be eliminated."
Something no bigger than an acorn popped out at her side.
"Hello, miss."
It was Lai of Dormitory 1.
"And who are you?"
Catherine asked. Before Lai could answer, Chris said, "The brat from Dormitory 1. One of your admirers."
Lai's face went red.
"Please don't believe him, miss. He's an idiot."
Howard jabbed Chris in the ribs.
"Introduce us."
Chris said, "Howard and Douglas, of Dormitory 2. Minor nobility, both of them, with unusual attributes they still haven't identified. And this is Andy. Andy's from our year, so you already know him."
Catherine and Alice gave perfunctory nods. Alice tugged at Chris's sleeve.
"Let's go somewhere quiet and talk."
Chris refused, gently.
"The contest starts soon. I can't leave."