Sixty-Fourfold
Chris sent the tenth droplet all the way down into his left foot, then switched. It was time to scour the right and build it anew.
Thock.
The eleventh droplet raced the iron track of his right leg, burning away dregs and impurities as it ran.
Thock.
The thought of shattering the stairs vanished from Chris's mind.
Thock.
Only one idea held him now: deal with the black sphere at his solar plexus, and remake the body.
Thock.
The fifteenth droplet scoured his right leg and rebuilt the flesh.
Brown and black sludge had turned both his feet slick, and it ran down the steps. Every eye could see it. Linne, seated on Charles's shoulder, turned her head away.
"I can't look."
Lai came around about then and stared at the stairs.
"What the—! Mister shit himself! They say when you die your asshole opens and it all dumps out. Is he dying now?"
Charles rapped him on the skull again, and the boy fainted once more.
Alice stamped her feet, crying.
"What do we do? What do we do?"
She looked wildly in every direction, then ran for David, the only one she had even a little acquaintance with. Catherine chased after her.
"Alice, stop right there!"
Alice clung to him.
"Mage, please. Save Chris."
David cut her off, cold.
"No."
She only clung harder.
"Please. Save him."
Carl stepped into it.
"Saving Chris is impossible."
"Why?"
"The gravity up there is sixty-four times normal. You can't climb it."
"If we used magic..."
Harvey sliced the words off, icy.
"You can't use magic on the stairs."
He went further and lectured her.
"You already knew that. A mage doesn't lose their reason just because they're desperate."
Peter spoke. His voice, at least, was kind.
"Even if we could cast, sixty-four times would still be impossible."
Alice's eyes swung to Randal and the other Seed Cultivation mages. Carl saw where she was looking.
"Even a Seed Cultivation mage would be hard-pressed to break the magic interference and bear sixty-fourfold gravity. Spell or no spell, it's impossible."
He sighed, then added the rest.
"And even if they could bear it, I doubt they'd go to the trouble."
"Then who...?"
Carl pointed to the elder above the stairs.
"Elder Perez could break the interference and save him."
Alice started toward him and stopped. Reaching Perez meant climbing sixty steps. She had no such strength. Neither did any mage at the foot of the stairs, taken all together. She shouted.
"Elder! Please save Chris!"
Perez did not stir. Despair took her, and the tears came harder. Catherine's eyes were wet as well, but she was more rational than Alice.
"We turn it off!"
"Turn what off?"
"The magic interference on the stairs, and the gravity amplification! Shut them off!"
Yes. If the magic laid over the stairs vanished, she could climb up after all and bring Chris down.
"Turn the magic off! End the trial!"
The Spirit Awakening mages around her took up Alice's cry.
"Turn the magic off!"
"End the trial!"
"Turn the magic off!"
The shouting shook the plaza.
A short Seed Cultivation mage glanced at Perez and spoke.
"Shall we halt the trial?"
Perez's lips parted, and a warning slid out between them.
"Hssst."
It was the sound of a snake flicking its tongue. The short mage read his meaning and took one step back.
There is always someone who cannot read a room. Another mage missed the signal.
"I believe it would be best to shut the magic off."
"Leave it."
"Elder..."
The shout froze the air behind the crown of the stairs.
Alex rejoiced in that frozen silence. No more half-wits will come crawling out, begging to save Chris.
He felt respect for Perez. The man was on an entirely different plane from Elder Richard, whom he served. Yes. If you're an elder, you ought to be at least this much. He cursed Richard in his heart. Stingy little wretch.
Chris was cut off from all the uproar. He was walking a road that belonged only to him. Next, the right arm, he thought, and stamped—and the foot came down lighter than before. His legs had changed so thoroughly they might have been made anew. The strength to throw off the gravity had grown. His body felt light.
At this rate, I could jump on both legs.
At first the whole sole drove the step. Then only the big toe.
Whoosh.
Both feet rose to the height of his knees. An instant later the body tempered by Iron Body dropped, laden with mana.
Boom.
This time it was a boom. Not only in his mind—under his feet as well. The droplet that broke from the black sphere at his solar plexus was larger than the ones before. It climbed his torso, crossed the shoulder, and shot down his right arm. Burning the dregs and waste from an arm was harder than from a leg. A droplet bound for the legs had gravity's help. One bound for the arm first had to fight its way up to the shoulder, and gravity stood against it.
Boom.
A boom hit harder than a thock, and that meant a greater vibration. Riding that vibration, the droplet from the black sphere ran back up the iron track.
Boom.
Black matter burst from his palm.
Boom.
As time passed, the black turned brown.
Boom.
The brown deepened.
Boom.
Sprayed from the palm, the brown matter caught the eye even faster than the sludge soaking his shoes.
"What the hell is that bastard doing?"
Alex clutched his stomach and laughed.
"He's shitting out of his hands."
He hated Chris so much, was so revolted by him, that his mind could crawl only toward the worst reading. Andrew, neutral where Chris was concerned, was still thinking like a rational man.
"Who in the world shits from their palms?"
"Then what is that?"
"My father serves as a mayor, and—"
"Ha."
Alex cut the sentence in half with a sneer.
"A mayor. That was all?"
"I am aware that your father is a marquis in possession of a vast domain. That, however, was not something he earned. He inherited it because his father was a marquis, just as your grandfather inherited it from his father before him. Kindly do not sneer at a station my father spent his entire life acquiring."
Alex kept sneering.
"What you inherit is far greater."
"And why would that be?"
"The blood is fundamentally different. The blood! That's why it's greater."
Andrew let out a sigh.
"You and I are built upon frames of thought so different that conversation is impossible."
"So. What about this mayor?"
"There are many lords around us who covet our city."
That was the end of it. Andrew said nothing more.
"Hey. That's all?"
"You can't finish a sentence like that."
"Conversation with you holds no interest. There is nothing to be gained from it, and beyond that it offends me, so I have no wish to mix words with you."
"I don't want to talk to you either. I won't speak to you again, so finish what you were saying."
"Very well. I will say it. Protecting a city requires force. We do have a few 9-Ring mages, but most of the strength that guards our city comes from knights."
"Knights, even? How precious."
Andrew swallowed a sigh. Talk with this one produced sighs more often than not.
"We sought to recruit a sword master, but his price was too high, so the decision was changed: we would raise one. I watched that process from the side, and becoming a sword master is no easy matter. As difficult as the climb from Thought Formulation to Seed Cultivation... no. More difficult than that..."
Alex couldn't hold himself back.
"You're setting some half-wit knight beside a mage? Ha. I haven't the breath for it."
Andrew had no patience left. He shut his mouth.
"Hey. So?"
Andrew gave him nothing.
"So what happened, then?"
Andrew never opened his mouth again.
The brown matter Chris was flinging caught the sunlight and showed clear. It dazzled a great many eyes and drew them into frowns.
"What is that?" Peter said.
"Doesn't look like shit," said Carl.
"Compost?" Harvey offered.
"Compost doesn't come out of a human body," David said. "If that isn't shit, then whatever's under his feet isn't shit either..."
Alice was paying less mind to the foul stuff leaving his hands than to the fact that he was jumping.
"Catherine, Chris is jumping. He's hopping on both feet!"
Marching in place had become jumping in place. At her words the Thought Formulation mages looked at Chris anew, and their eyes went wide with shock.
"He's throwing off sixty-fourfold gravity and jumping?" Harvey was aghast.
David was startled as well.
"His soles are coming all the way up to his knees."
"The stairs aren't broken, are they?" Carl said.
Peter mastered his surprise and calculated with a cool head.
"Look at what's spraying from his hands. It's striking the steps at a frightening speed. If the stairs were broken, it wouldn't fall like that."
"You're right. Take that without a barrier and it looks fast enough to punch through bone."
Alice's tears dried in an instant.
"Chris isn't hurt, is he? Nothing's wrong with his body? His brain's all right too?"
"He seems fine," Catherine said.
If something were wrong, he couldn't jump like that. Alice caught her sleeve.
"Then why on earth is he doing it?"
She asked only because the not-knowing was unbearable. She expected no answer. Astonishingly, Catherine had a guess.
"Is it that? Yes. That's it."
Peter and the other Thought Formulation mages had heard the two women.
"You know something," Peter said, interest sharpening.
"What?" Harvey demanded.
Catherine's face was set.
"I don't know every reason Chris is doing this. I do think I know what that waste coming out of his body is."
"Waste?"
"Yes. Waste."
A thought struck David, and horror came with it.
"Hell."
"What is going on?" Harvey asked.
"Did your master never tell you?"
"Damn it, I'm dying of this. Quit circling and say it straight."
"He said that when one rises to Seed Cultivation, impurities leave the body."
"I know that. But there's far too much of it. The color changed from black to brown, and—"
"When a Seed Cultivation mage rises to Ring Binding, the body is rebuilt, and the matter that sloughs off is expelled. Matter the body doesn't need. Matter that does it harm..."
Harvey recoiled.
"You're saying that bastard reached Ring Binding?"
"A Spirit Awakening mage, to Ring Binding... to Ring Binding..."
David shook his head hard.
"No. This doesn't make sense. It can't happen."
"Right. A man who doesn't even know his attribute. A man for whom Thought Formulation is still a distant dream, skipping Seed Cultivation and going straight to Ring Binding. Impossible."
"Yes. Exactly," Carl said. "That isn't magic. Chris isn't walking a mage's path. So it's something else."
"If you judge by the body alone," Peter said, "you could argue he has reached Ring Binding."
He looked at Catherine.
"What was it you meant to say? Finish it."
Catherine swallowed, then opened her mouth.
"My father operates a large merchant guild. It may not stand among the five greatest in the kingdom, but it is large enough to rank within the ten."
Harvey snapped in irritation.
"Stupid bitch. Why are you suddenly talking about a merchant guild?"
Catherine had always been afraid of Harvey. The moment he slapped her down, her mouth shut itself.
David glared at him.
"Shut your mouth."