Thirty-Two Times Gravity
Thomas spoke.
"The one climbing out in front. He's the fellow who was nearby when the prince died, isn't he? The one who couldn't even sense mana?"
William answered.
"That's him."
"And he went to prison for killing a servant?"
"He did."
"Then how did he become a Spirit Awakening mage? And what is he doing leading the climb?"
"Because he has no talent."
"No talent, and he's the one out ahead? How does that make any sense?"
"It's a trial that looks only at the body. He must have given up on being a mage and done nothing but train his flesh."
"Trying to become a knight?"
"That's how it looks to me."
"Win, and he might walk off with a high-grade mana stone and turn his back on the tower."
"He has no talent for magic. For him, that may well be the better path."
Lai was stuck on the tenth step. When Chris set his foot on the twenty-fifth, the boy turned away.
"I've got no use for a brainless contest of bodies."
He wanted to spit, but he swallowed it, all too aware of the mages around him.
Andy hauled himself onto the fifteenth step with painful effort.
"Chris is climbing well."
Envy boiled in his gut. A slave, of all people.
Douglas was trading places with him, now ahead, now behind.
"That man really means to become a knight."
His father was a knight, so he knew all too well a knight's inhuman stamina and strength.
Howard asked.
"You think so?"
"Yeah. If he weren't knight material, he couldn't climb like that."
He said it flatly.
"He's given up on being a mage."
Elder Perez scratched his cheek with fingers as dry and thin as winter twigs.
"A paltry showing, all told."
A mage of the Sikbae realm standing behind him bowed his head.
"These days, almost no mages put any effort into training the body."
"Is that so?"
"Since Elder Grain disappeared, the line of Body Mages has been cut. A regrettable thing."
At the mention of Grain, Perez's eyebrows twitched like a loach sprinkled with salt.
Alex glared at Chris and ground his teeth.
I have to kill that bastard.
Alex was standing toward the rear of the uppermost steps, so it looked as though Chris were climbing straight toward him.
Andrew came up beside him.
"Mind your face."
Alex answered curtly.
"What's wrong with my face?"
"You look ready to eat Chris alive."
"Me? I'm not."
"Not while you're grinding your teeth hard enough to worry they'll crack."
Alex lifted his chin and looked down his nose.
"So you've been watching me."
"Me?"
"You were observing me."
"I wasn't."
"You're lying."
"Why would I pay any attention to you?"
"Because I'm always ahead of you."
"Were you?"
Alex let out a short laugh.
"Playing dumb. I sensed mana first, and I entered Jenyeom first."
"The first is open to debate, and as for the second..."
Andrew trailed off with an odd look. Beneath the silence lay the rest of it: pour out resources like that, and who couldn't? Alex read the meaning and was about to flare when Andrew changed the subject.
"Do you know Chris well?"
"You think I'd know some slave like that?"
"You seem to know him quite well."
"Why do you think that?"
"You're still glaring at him. What kind of man is he?"
"A fool who doesn't know his place."
"Fool or not, he's strong. Look. He's already halfway up the stairs."
"That's his limit. He can't make the thirty-first step."
"You think so?"
"From the thirty-first step, gravity jumps to sixteen times level ground. Sixteen times is a weight even a Sword Master finds hard to bear."
At that moment Chris stepped onto the thirty-first.
"Son of a—"
The curse burst from Alex's mouth, and a smile settled on Andrew's.
"Counting the body alone, is he master-class?"
Chris sighed inwardly.
It really did jump to sixteen times.
Every ten steps, the gravity climbed geometrically. Chris, who had hoped it would rise by simple addition, swallowed the nausea coming up his throat.
This is insane.
The foot he lifted trembled.
Insane!
Thud.
His sole left the thirty-second step and came down on the thirty-third.
Alice spoke.
"He looks like he's struggling, doesn't he?"
Catherine nodded.
"Yeah. The fortieth step will be his limit."
Hailey spoke.
"Unnie, does this contest produce a winner every time?"
Catherine said.
"I don't know."
"Why don't you know? You entered the tower way before I did, unnie."
A vein stood out on Catherine's forehead again.
"First of all, I would like to point out that it was not way before. And this is the first Staircase Festival since I entered."
She stressed it once more.
"I'm watching it for the first time too."
The answer came from above. Linne spoke.
"There's a winner every time."
Hailey let out a gasp.
"Wow. It's this hard, and yet someone always wins. That's amazing."
Alice was impressed as well.
"I'm surprised there are that many strong mages."
Linne laughed.
"Winning doesn't mean a complete conquest. When the contest ends, whoever has climbed the highest is named the winner."
"Oh. That explains it."
Hailey nodded, satisfied.
"Have you ever seen anyone conquer all sixty steps?"
"I haven't."
Linne smacked Charles on the head as she spoke.
"What about you?"
Charles shook his head.
"I haven't seen it either, but I've heard of it."
"Oh?"
"When I was young, my grandfather told me Elder Grain succeeded in climbing all the way to the top."
"Your grandfather saw it himself?"
"No. He heard it from my great-grandfather."
Hailey tilted her head.
"Grain... was there an elder by that name? Do you know, unnie?"
Catherine shook her head.
"I don't."
Alice marveled.
"A mage who conquered sixty steps. He must have been extraordinary."
Charles said.
"Because he was a Body Mage."
"What's a Body Mage?"
"A mage who trains the body along with magic. We call those Body Mages."
Learning magic alone felt as if it would split her head open. And on top of that, training the body like a knight. Alice stuck out her tongue.
"Is that even possible?"
"Of course it's difficult. It's so hard that almost no one walks a Body Mage's path. It was that way in Elder Grain's time, and it's that way now. At present, the tower's Body Mages... I don't think there are any."
Andy raised a hand on the eighteenth step.
"Damn it. Shit. To hell with this."
He carefully turned himself and faced downward. Douglas meant to follow him down, but Howard stopped him.
"Hold on."
"It's hard."
"Hold on anyway."
"Why?"
"Even if you can't win, place inside the top hundred and you get a mana stone."
"There are more than a hundred people ahead of us."
Counting them, it came to about a hundred and fifty.
"Some of them will get greedy and fall."
At that moment the man climbing to the thirty-first step second after Chris clutched his foot and toppled. In the fall he smashed his right arm against the stair; the bone looked broken.
"Look at that."
The Spirit Awakening mage with the broken bone crawled down the stairs on all fours.
"If we hold out, people will drop."
The problem was that even here the gravity was four times normal, and holding out was hard. As breathing grew more difficult, Douglas shook his head.
"I quit. I quit."
He went down the stairs. Howard watched his friend descend, then stepped up onto the twentieth.
A few more, and I can make the rankings.
Chris was making a lonely ascent all on his own. Step by step, he came to stand before the forty-first.
Andrew grinned at Alex.
"A moment ago you said Chris couldn't make the thirty-first step, didn't you?"
Alex bit his lip and gave no answer.
"What about the forty-first? Think he'll make it?"
"He won't."
Alex raised his voice.
"He absolutely will not!"
At that moment Chris's sole left the fortieth step and reached for the forty-first. Every eye locked onto his foot.
As the foot rose, the gravity surged. It trembled violently. His right sole touched the forty-first step. To stand fully upon it, his left foot had to come up and set down beside the right.
"Hah!"
Chris drove out the shout, then drew mana in through his mouth and through every limb except the left foot still planted on the fortieth step. Mana whirled through his whole body and lent him strength, then drove down into the left foot and burst outward. Strengthened muscle and expelled mana threw the gravity off.
Thock.
At last his left sole stuck to the forty-first step.
Thirty-two times gravity.
Chris took the wave of it with his whole body. He had fully conquered the forty-first step.
Andrew shouted in surprise.
"He did it! He did it! You were wrong again. Wrong!"
While Alex cursed, cheers and applause poured up from the foot of the stairs.
"Chris, you're doing great!"
"Go all the way!"
"Conquer it!"
The Spirit Awakening mages whistled, clapped, and cheered. The mood was feverish.
Tears welled in Alice's eyes.
Chris!
The Chris who had been scorned for being born a slave, and treated as a dunce because his progress was slow, was being cheered. She was overwhelmed.
None of that roar of encouragement reached Chris's ears. He was locked in a struggle with gravity.
His eyes hurt as if they might burst from his head, and his ears were stuffed shut. A little blood was coming from his nose. The back of his head felt heavy, as if someone were dragging at it. Even so, Chris moved his feet.
I'm used to pain.
Pain like this was nothing beside what he had felt breaking the Black Spheres. Trivial. But the body's strength was a separate matter from pain. Enduring well did not free muscle from gravity's grip.
What kind of pervert ever thought to crank the gravity this high?
Keeping the spell running must be burning through an enormous quantity of mana stones.
The magic disruption was probably drawn from the disruption formation laid beneath the prison.
Chris thought it through.
The prison's magic disruption will have weakened.
Still, not enough for Tom to break out.
He lifted his head and stared at the fifty-fifth step.
I have to break that...
Even if the Black Sphere at his solar plexus were gone, it looked as if it would still be difficult.
Carl, a mage of the Jenyeom realm, let out a sound of admiration.
"Whoa. That's impressive."
Peter agreed.
"It is."
Harvey was sour about it.
"He's a worthless fool who gave up the path of magic. Nothing special."
He disliked Chris for having interfered with his work. It displeased him that someone he hated had become the object of all this fervor.
David spoke.
"Whether he's worthless is separate from the fact that impressive is impressive. What's the most gravity we can handle if we bring magic to bear?"
Carl answered.
"If I use magic, about sixteen times."
Peter said.
"About sixteen times for me too."
"Right now Chris is enduring thirty-two times. He's even moving under it. Purely in terms of bodily strength, he's upper-tier even among Sword Masters. Of course, since he never learned swordsmanship, he'd lose if he fought one. But that alone is remarkable."
"Add magic on top of that, and he'd be outstanding."
Harvey sneered.
"The problem is he can't use magic."
"Harvey, how much gravity can you withstand?"
"Seventeen times."
"And if you had to endure it with your body alone?"
Harvey was a man who had built a wall between himself and physical training.
"Twice."
Only then did Harvey grudgingly admit it.
"Damn it. It really is impressive."
A similar conversation was passing among the Sikbae mages. Thomas spoke.
"Ha. He's holding thirty-two times?"
William said.
"His physical talent is truly exceptional. That one should have become a knight."
"What about raising him as a Body Mage?"
Before William could speak, Randal answered first.
"His mana is a complete loss."
"Is it? That's a shame."
"And there's no one left to teach a Body Mage."
"True."
With Grain, the line of Body Mages at Mickclonia Magic Tower had ended.
"How many times gravity can the two of you withstand?"
Randal answered.
"With magic, about thirty times. With a magic tool's help as well, thirty-four should be comfortable enough. You?"
"About the same. William, what about you?"
William thought for a moment, then spoke.
"Even using a magic tool, thirty times is my limit."
From near the top of the stairs, Andrew looked down, his eyes glittering with excitement.
"He's made the forty-sixth. Now the forty-seventh. The forty-eighth. Good God, the forty-ninth."
Alex snapped.
"I have eyes too. Stop the commentary."
From below, Charles bellowed.
"That's the kid who worked in our smithy!"
Linne picked it up.
"And I was the one who promoted him!"