The Staircase Festival
A company of mages came out of Mick Tower, and behind them appeared the jailer, Jake. Chris was glad to see him. If the jailer wasn't minding the cells, breaking out would be that much easier.
Of all the mages who had emerged, the most striking was a gaunt old man, little more than leather stretched over bone.
Catherine pointed at him.
"Who's that?"
The men around her racked their brains for an answer worthy of a beauty, but no one won the glory of supplying it.
Someone else did. From the top of the stairs, Andrew — the genius who had been second among Chris's cohort to reach Jenyeom, the realm of Thought Formulation — shouted down.
"Elder Perez! Bow your heads!"
Mages of the Jenyeom realm bent their necks, and even those of Sikbae, Seed Cultivation, did the same. Chris lowered his head and ground his teeth.
That bastard.
That's the elder who ordered every suspect killed.
Alice whispered.
"That's him, isn't it?"
"Yeah. That's him."
Honestly, what he wanted to say was Yeah. That bastard. Catherine spoke.
"So that's what he looks like."
He looked, at a glance, like a man with no kindness in him at all. Catherine wrote on Alice's palm.
Maybe his temper's so foul it won't let him put on any weight.
"Shh. Careful."
He had been told, until the words left calluses on his ears, that a mage called an elder was a monster, and that one had to be careful around such a thing.
That's why I'm writing it.
"He might be watching."
Catherine flinched and turned the talk elsewhere.
"It's been a while since I've seen Andrew."
Alice lifted her gaze to Andrew on the stairs. The distance between where the two of them stood seemed to match the distance between their realms, and the taste of it was bitter.
"Right. He seems close with Elder Perez, doesn't he?"
"He does."
"The greatest genius of our cohort, as expected."
Lai shoved his way into the conversation.
"Among Dormitory 1's intake, I am the pinnacle."
Chris said, "Hailey's the pinnacle."
Lai rolled his eyes.
"You stay out of it."
Chris clicked his tongue.
"You stay out of it. A little brat, running his mouth like that..."
"Shut up, old man!"
Catherine ignored the yapping boy.
"Andrew is the best, I'll grant that, but it's strange. He's always half a step late."
Chris asked, "What do you mean?"
"Alex sensed mana first, and he reached Jenyeom first too. There's something off about it."
"I see."
At that moment Alex caught his eye. He had been standing behind the mages gathered around the elder higher up the stairs, out of sight, until he slipped out to the side and showed himself. Alice seemed to have spotted him as well. She pressed in close beside Chris and whispered.
"Alex is glaring at you."
"Yeah. I know."
Alice covered her mouth.
"Run."
He had to leave today anyway. Chris answered without a fight.
"All right."
She must have expected him to refuse, because she checked again.
"Really?"
"Really."
All at once Alice grew urgent.
"Ten years from today! Let's meet in the biggest square in the capital."
"Why ten years?"
"By then I ought to have reached Jenyeom too."
"All right."
"You promise?"
"Yeah. I promise."
Just then Mick Tower began to thrum. A moment later the ground shuddered underfoot, as if an earthquake had struck. Catherine startled and jumped.
Howard put on an oily smile.
"They're about to start the contest."
Andrew declared it.
"The Staircase Festival begins. Contestants, step forward."
Chris caught Alice's hand, gripped it hard, let go, and turned toward the stairs. Catherine and Alice spoke.
"Win."
"Beat them."
Howard said, "The victory will be mine."
He blew Catherine a kiss.
"I shall dedicate my win to the lady."
Catherine had been through this sort of thing often enough to let it pass, but Lai flared.
"The win is mine."
Howard snorted.
"Go drink a little more of your mother's milk and come back."
"You drink more, greasy prince."
"Little brat. Your tongue's a gutter."
"Old bastard. Your tongue's a cesspit."
Catherine wasn't paying them the slightest mind, and still the two of them squabbled.
Chris stood at the foot of the stairs and set his Iron Body to work.
"Contest, begin! Go!"
Chris set his first foot down among the crowd, and felt it.
Heavy.
The weight was as if his body had doubled. His mass could not have doubled in an instant, which meant the gravity had increased.
Increased or not, this much was nothing. Chris started up the stairs. Andy, Howard, Douglas, and Lai set foot on them a beat late.
Andy grumbled.
"Hard from the very first step..."
Lai sneered, obnoxious as ever.
"This much, a strength-enhancement spell would make easy—"
The eyes of the boy midway through his incantation wavered.
This time it was Andy who sneered.
"You strut around calling yourself a genius, and you didn't know that during the festival you can't use magic on the stairs?"
Howard joined the mockery.
"It's a contest of bodily strength. Of course you can't use magic. What a lacking little thing."
Lai's face went red. Pride stung, he was biting his lip when a cheer came from behind.
"Lai, hang in there!"
He turned, and Hailey was waving.
She came to see me.
Buoyed by the cheer, Lai found his composure and moved his feet. Hailey had not come to cheer the boy. She had only come to watch the contest, but she didn't bother correcting his mistake. She made her way over to Alice and Catherine.
"Hello. I'm Hailey."
Catherine returned the greeting.
"Yes, hello."
"You're friends with Uncle Chris, aren't you? It's nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too."
Catherine looked at the yellow robe she wore.
"You're a Jenyeom mage. Please, speak comfortably."
The magic tower fixed rank by realm of magic. A Jenyeom mage like Hailey could therefore speak down to a Gyesin mage — Spirit Awakening — like Catherine. She could go beyond speaking down to her and give her orders outright.
Hailey shook her head.
"You're much older than I am."
The tower put realm first, but it did not ignore age entirely. If the gap was within about ten years, casual speech came easily; someone of a parent's generation might still be shown respect.
A vein stood out on Catherine's forehead.
"Not much."
"Yes, you are. You're much older than me, unnie."
Catherine wanted to snap, You little brat, how old are you? The yellow robe on Hailey stopped the words.
"A Jenyeom mage, though..."
"I just think it's a bit much, mages who talk down to people more than a hundred years older than they are, just because their realm is higher."
"What! A hundred years!"
A giant came up beside them.
"Chief, over here. You can see well from here."
Charles from the smithy had come to watch. Clinging at his side was Linne, the smithy's owner. She was so short she looked like a cicada stuck to an old tree. Linne grumbled.
"Wherever I go, I can't see."
"Hup."
Charles lifted her and sat her on his shoulder.
"Can you see now?"
Linne broke into a raspy cackle.
"I can see. There's Chris. He's in the lead group."
From below, Hailey asked, "You know Chris?"
Linne looked down.
"He worked at our smithy for a little while. And which mage might you be?"
"I'm Hailey. I shared a dormitory with Uncle Chris."
Meanwhile David, Peter, Carl, and Harvey had their eyes on the lead group. Carl spoke.
"Shall we make a bet?"
Harvey took him up.
"What kind of bet?"
"Only one bet worth making here. Who do you think wins?"
David cut in.
"Chris."
Harvey's face soured.
"How does a retard who couldn't even get his attribute judged win anything?"
He had worked up his nerve and put out a commission to gather subjects for his experiments, only for Chris to bolt without a backward glance and leave the whole thing a failure. Frightened by that reaction, every last one of them had refused the experiment. From that day, Harvey bore Chris a grudge.
Carl said, "He still hasn't managed it?"
"No."
Peter said, "And yet he's climbing the stairs well."
Harvey snorted.
"Magic's sealed, so he must have trained his body."
Carl said, "Thinking of changing trades and becoming a knight?"
Peter said, "If he still doesn't know his attribute, he might. But David — why do you think Chris is going to win?"
David swallowed what he meant to say, and did not let it out.
Randal was watching him. And an elder who ordinarily scorned the Staircase Festival had come to spectate.
Chris started to set his foot on the eleventh step, then drew it back. From the eleventh stair the gravity had grown about twice as strong again. Beside him, a man who had gone up ahead was gasping. Chris had strength to spare, but he copied the man, breathing hard, and stepped up onto the eleventh stair.
Surely it won't keep doubling.
If it does, reaching the fifty-fifth step will be no simple thing.
Forget breaking it. I might not even get a foot on it.
He gathered himself and climbed, one step and then another. Mana that had entered his body swept through him, resisting the gravity, and the mana that moved down into his legs lent strength to the muscle. Before he knew it, he was pulling out in front.
For his size and his stamina, Lai was holding his own.
I'm a genius!
The boy climbed on spite and grit alone. But willpower was not enough to carry him against gravity this strong. He gasped until his tongue lolled, and then he looked ahead. Chris was moving on in front of him.
"That moron... that retard... that imbecile..."
He could not believe it.
A genius can't lose to a fool.
"Aaaagh!"
Lai dragged up even the strength he'd had as a babe at the breast and climbed. And on the cursed eleventh step, he broke. The gravity surged the moment he set a foot on the stair above and nearly snapped his bones; he put the foot back down and wept.
Me... the genius of the century... losing to a dunce.
It was infuriating. It was unfair.
Howard barely made it onto the eleventh step.
"Careful. The gravity's gotten stronger."
Douglas and Andy climbed up after him.
"Aigoo. This is rough."
"I'm going to lose my mind."
"Damn it, Chris has taken the lead."
"How is he climbing like that?"
The three of them gaped at how well he was doing. They had been polite to his face, but in their hearts they had taken him for a moron who couldn't even pass the judgment itself, and the shock ran deep.
"This isn't right."
"It doesn't make sense."
They wanted to deny what they were seeing. But they could not deny a fact set in front of their eyes.
Alice clenched a fist.
"Chris is in the lead!"
Catherine said, "He must have been training hard all this time."
Charles of the smithy let out a great booming laugh.
"It's because he tempered that muscle at the smithy."
Linne rapped him lightly on the head.
"All he did was haul loads in the warehouse. What tempering?"
"Anyway, work muscle built by hauling beats the muscle of a mage who's done nothing but magic training shut up in a back room. Wouldn't you say?"
"You can't use magic on the stairs during the contest, so maybe."
Chris caught his breath on the twentieth step.
If the gravity doubles again, that's eight times level ground.
Hoping it would not, he set his foot on the twenty-first step. A groan broke out of him.
"Ngh—!"
His senses told him the gravity had doubled once more.
God.
He could still manage, for now. At the fifty-first step, he had the feeling he would be in real trouble.
His mouth had gone bone-dry.
Does anyone actually win this festival?
A knight would have to enter — a master, at that — before there'd be a winner.
A mage of the tower could never do it.
Randal was staring at Chris. A backward student who could not even have his attribute judged was climbing at the front.
There's definitely something to that one.
That's why Richard, one of the Three Great Elders, is watching him. Even Perez, famous for a backside that never leaves its seat, came out to look.
What is it? What could it be?