I Am Freedom
Having pinned Harvey down with a savage tone, David turned a gentle voice on Catherine.
"Even if it sounds strange, I won't blame you. It's all right. Go on."
Catherine began.
"There was so much property to guard that we employed a great many excellent knights, and one of them rose to the realm of Sword Master. I'm terribly pretty, you know."
The remark tacked on at the end had nothing to do with what came before, but no one disputed the claim that she was pretty.
"When I was little, cuteness was piled on top of that, and every knight adored me. I grew close to that man and heard him speak of Sword Masters. He said that once you enter the realm, all the waste accumulated in the body is expelled. At the time I only thought it was filthy and wiped it from my memory…"
"A Sword Master, then."
Catherine nodded—then shook her head.
Peter spoke.
"Well? Is that a yes or a no?"
"I think he was a Sword Master, and then became a Grandmaster."
"A Grandmaster!"
"Enduring sixty-four times gravity is something only a Grandmaster can do. And partway through, the waste changed its nature, too."
Alice looked at Catherine.
"You mean Chris, who already had a Sword Master's physique, gained enlightenment in the gravity trial and rose to the full realm of a Grandmaster?"
"That's what I think."
Harvey let out a scoffing little laugh.
"Taught into a Grandmaster—what, is the staircase his master? Say something that makes sense."
"No," David said. "Those children are right."
He pointed at Chris, who had finished spraying filth from his right hand and was now doing the same with his left.
"He's ascending to Grandmaster. He is a completed knight."
Meanwhile Randal was muttering as he watched Chris.
"Grandmaster."
"So the three Grandmasters on the continent become four," William murmured.
"Our tower will possess the fourth Grandmaster," Thomas answered. "The kings of the continent would have a fit if they knew."
"Unbelievable."
"Have any of you ever heard that those stairs help a Body Mage's training?"
"No. Never."
"I have. I let it in one ear and out the other at the time, but it was true."
"The stairs are better than most teachers. But why does that bastard keep jumping?"
"He seems to be working against the gravity and using it to do something."
"Then wouldn't he be better off climbing to the sixtieth step and jumping there?"
Watching Chris jump, it was plain he had strength to spare for climbing.
"Exactly. Why is he staying on the fifty-fifth?"
Andrew was thinking along the same lines.
Why the fifty-fifth step? Is there some special reason?
Thud. Chris kept jumping. The paths from both soles, up through the legs and the abdomen to the solar plexus, and the paths from both palms, through the arms, the shoulders, and the chest to the solar plexus, had come clean. No—clean was too small a word. His body had been entirely remade. Only one path remained.
It was a path he had never been able to feel until the paths of his limbs were purified: the fifth path, the one Tom had not carved with magic. It ran from the solar plexus up along the airway to the mouth. The instant he perceived it, the black spheres lodged all along that path rose clear in his mind.
Ah. So this was what Tom did with magic.
The work Chris ought to have carried out carefully, one piece at a time, Tom had hammered into his body all at once with elemental force. Because the proper order had been skipped so wildly, the training had been full of difficulty, and Chris had been made to suffer tremendous pain. It had been a merciless violence.
But now that violence had turned to fortune. By enduring agony no human frame should bear, he stood on the verge of the great completion of Iron Body. One hundred and twenty top-grade mana stones, and the mysterious power of the stairs, had made it possible.
He had borrowed the aid of top-grade mana stones to break forty black spheres. The five he had newly sensed—newly formed—he handled by his own strength, with no stone to help him. Mana rising from his limbs moved without the slightest check and struck the new spheres.
Crash. They broke apart like nothing. The mana raced on in a single torrent and shattered all five.
"Hurgh—!"
Chris retched. Black matter poured from his mouth, and a vile stench stabbed up his nose. The monstrous gravity seized the smell, though, and would not let it spread. It clung fast around the fifty-fifth step.
With the spheres dealt with, he peeled droplets from the black sphere at his solar plexus and drew them upward. A straight climb ought to have cost more strength than sending them out into the limbs, but his body had changed in the meantime, and it was not difficult.
Brown waste that looked like sewage left his mouth and spilled onto the floor. Gravity dragged it down faster than a flying arrow. It did not even splash.
Is it over?
Chris examined himself. No new iron track formed. No new black sphere appeared. The sphere that had begun the size of a fist—it had felt like a boulder, though in truth it had only been about a child's fist—had now shrunk to the size of a jawbreaker.
Get rid of this, and it's done.
He stamped harder. Thud. He leapt higher. Thud. The jawbreaker lurched in five directions, and five droplets burst free, bound for his limbs and his mouth. They poured in a rush along the iron tracks, now broad and solid, then fell and struck the stairs—thock, thock, thock, thock, thock. The droplet from his mouth landed across the fifty-sixth step and the fifty-seventh, but the other four struck the fifty-fifth. As the impacts went on, scratches opened in the stone.
Thud. The feet that had hit the floor sprang up with force. Thud. The longer he jumped, the higher he rose. Thud. Now his feet shot up to the height of his waist, and the shock dealt to the stairs grew worse for it. Thud. The waste falling from his hands and feet kept hammering the stone as well. Thud. Unable to endure, the stair cracked.
In that instant Perez shouted.
"The stairs are breaking! Stop the contest!"
The mages arrayed behind him took up the cry.
"Stop the contest!"
"Stop the contest!"
"I said stop the magic!" Perez barked.
"Stop the magic!"
"Stop the magic!"
By then the jawbreaker inside Chris had shrunk to the size of a fingernail.
Hooom. He felt it.
The gravity is weakening.
Without gravity's aid, removing the bead at his solar plexus would be hindered. He gathered every scrap of strength in his body and jumped still higher. Whether because the gravity had eased, his soles rose to the height of his chest.
Thud. He struck the floor and shot upward again. This time the gravity had weakened to sixty times.
Thud. Fifty-nine times.
Thud. Fifty-eight times.
By the time it had fallen to fifty times, the black sphere was tiny. Chris no longer peeled droplets from it. He hauled the whole of it upward, and his airway felt as if it were on fire.
Crash! The moment his soles struck the stair, the last remnant of the black sphere shot from his mouth. His insides felt gloriously clear, as if a blockage ten years old were finally sinking away. And in that moment he remembered the purpose he had forgotten.
Break!
Crash. The crack in the stair gaped wider. Gravity had dropped to forty-nine times.
Crash. By as much as the gravity fell, Chris loaded that much more force into his feet. His stomps became terrifying.
Crash. A splintering crack rang out, and the stair broke. Caught by the gravity, the sound failed to travel far and died.
Crash. The stair was no longer merely broken. It was caving in.
"Stop!"
Perez shouted and moved for the stairs. When the Spirit Awakening mages at the foot of the stairs had begged, he had not so much as pretended to hear. The stairs were being destroyed, and so he moved.
Thud. The fifty-fifth step had collapsed completely and was dragging on the fifty-fourth.
"You bastard!"
Perez set his foot on the sixtieth step, but Chris was not worried.
However great your magic, can you withstand this gravity?
He overlooked two things: that the gravity had fallen to forty-seven times, and that Perez's skill was tremendous.
Perez came down the stairs on an anti-gravity spell. The spell was not great enough to erase all forty-seven times gravity; sixteen times still remained. Even so, the flesh strengthened by entry into the Ring Binding realm shrugged off sixteen times gravity with ease.
Perez thrust out a hand.
"Got you. You little rat!"
The anti-gravity was not his alone to enjoy. The moment the gravity weakened to sixteen times, Chris flew far higher and slipped the reaching hand.
Soaring like a bird, he swept his eyes over what lay below. Alice and Catherine stood with fists clenched and eyes alight. Around them, mages of the Thought Formulation realm—David, Peter, Carl, and Harvey—gaped, struck senseless, mouths hanging open. At a distance from that group stood the Seed Cultivation mages: Randal, William, and Thomas. Thomas's face was at least composed. Randal and William wore every ugly shade of shock.
His gaze slid aside, over Linne and Charles, and to Lai collapsed beside them.
Why is that bastard Lai lying down?
Andy was visible nearby, and Douglas pacing just beneath the stairs. Howard had remained on the steps. He had not placed within the rankings.
Chris turned his eyes up the staircase. Handsome, infuriating Alex was swearing. Beside him, Andrew had a thumb raised. The rest of the mages were moving in a noisy flurry.
The telling was long. The moment was not. Gravity was pulling Chris down, and his gaze came to Perez last of all.
Perez waited with an arrogant look for him to fall. Chris thought,
I've done what I can. Now it's your turn.
As if the words had carried, the whole of Mick Tower shook. The entrance blew apart.
Boom. Pitch-black smoke gushed from the doorway. At that moment Chris hung close to Perez, close enough that Perez need only have reached out to seize him by the collar.
Chris, feeling something go wrong through his body, could not move a finger. Perez's attention, however, had already turned elsewhere.
Staff leading, he sprang up the stairs and thrust it toward the smoke.
"Tom!"
The cry shook heaven and earth. A mass of black smoke collided with him.
Boom. The impact flung Perez into the air. The black smoke that had just blown away one of the Three Great Elders of Mickclonia Magic Tower swept down the stairs and snatched Chris up. A roar burst from it.
I am freedom!"
Perez, who had scorned Tom on the comfortable assumption that a man locked in prison for so long could not be so very strong, ground his teeth at the loss he had taken in a single instant.
"Stop right there!"
Robes snapping, he gave chase.
Alex was struck dumb.
"What in the world is going on?"
Alice and Catherine, meanwhile, were slapping their thighs in sudden realization. The two of them spoke without words.
That was it!
Yes. That was what Chris meant to do!
He had pushed the two of them aside in order to pull off exactly this.
They understood that his bizarre conduct had been planned long before. They did not understand why.
Why do a thing like that?
Why on earth!