The Steel Weed
Chris's Thought Space was vast and abundant. He was certain it surpassed that of any Thought Formulation mage he had ever faced in the tower.
Wind moved through it, and the grass lay down beneath the wind. He wanted to lie on that grass himself, but within Thought Formulation his own figure was nowhere to be seen. The lack of it stung. I want to go in there. I can't.
"Ah!"
Before he knew it his lips had parted, and a cry of wonder slipped free. Entering the Thought Space myself. That's germination.
Germination, which had felt so far away, drew near with sudden clarity, and he felt it: his realm had reached the very peak of Thought Formulation. Tom had stressed, time and again, that once Iron Body was complete he could step straight into Seed Cultivation. The man hadn't been lying.
But there was a problem. Mind and body were both ready to rise into Seed Cultivation, and still he didn't know the method. The tower surely possessed one, yet Chris did not, and Tom had never taught it either.
Never in his life had his senses woken like this. His mind had never turned so sharp, his body had never been in finer condition, and his momentum was excellent. Luck seemed to be running with him, too. At a time like this, you pushed. You climbed into Seed Cultivation in a single breath. Miss the chance, and the realm would slip out of reach; catching it again would mean a long, bitter grind.
Chris was frantic. He had already burned through half his high-grade mana stones. Think. Think.
He ransacked his memory, down to the most trivial remarks he had traded with mages at the tower. He hadn't spoken much with the mages of Mickclonia Magic Tower, and what talk there had been was worthless. These bastards are useless.
Swallowing the bitterness, he turned his thoughts another way. The conversations he had shared with Tom in prison seemed likelier to help. While he chased them, half of what remained of the mana stones vanished. A quarter was left.
He steadied the impatience rising in him and replayed those talks, and in that instant something rang clear. Tom had said it. We don't build the mental image on the flesh. We make it with the mind, and connect it to the soul afterward.
Chris fixed on the last of it. Connect it to the soul. This is it.
He was certain that was the key to Seed Cultivation. Certainty, though, was not a method in his hands. The soul was not something you could see, and not something you could grasp. He held only a clue. The soul. I have to find my soul.
His soul was invisible. He could not feel it. Wait. Dark mages command souls. So a soul has substance. It's something the eye can see.
Not only mages. Ordinary people saw ghosts, too. When he had worked at Montgomery Smithy in the tower, quite a few of the people he met claimed to have seen one. The words of Ogi, from the transit-pass workshop, had felt especially real: a woman-ghost drenched in blood, drifting through empty air.
Chris held the thought. I can see the soul.
The thought left his mind and rose, and he felt it. He saw it. More precisely, he felt that he had seen it. The moment you feel it, it changes. The moment you see it, it transforms. Tom had called that the heart of Laphunian Tower.
The soul Chris believed he had felt and seen was bright and warm, like the sun. He recalled another line Tom had named essential. Imagination becomes reality, and will manipulates reality.
With his heart, Chris spoke to the soul. Seed.
A response came. The soul stirred. Seed.
If someone asked how thought, mind, and soul differed, there was no explaining it in words. But they were different. Chris felt that they were different, and saw that they were different. That was enough.
A seed fell away from the soul. It rode his thoughts down into the mind and settled in the Thought Space. A new passage had opened between soul and Thought Space, but the moment the seed touched the ground, the passage closed.
Chris thought that if he opened that passage again, he could climb to a still higher stage, so he fought not to lose the sensation of the moment it had stood open.
The seed that entered the earth drank mana with a terrifying hunger. It germinated and began to grow, and in the growing it absorbed a great deal of metal-attribute mana.
Chris focused on the Klpandi born of that germination. He had heard that a Klpandi's shape varied wildly from person to person, and he had imagined his own would be a tree. It was not. His Klpandi was a weed.
Even if it could not be the World Tree that had created the world, he would have been glad of a great spreading oak. Disappointment settled over him. A weed. I'm a weed.
Thinking again, though, he understood. He really had lived like a weed. Born a slave, he had crawled along the ground, and even after entering the tower he had suffered enormously. Search the whole country and you would not find a mage who had endured what Chris had endured. Understanding did nothing to dull the sting. He felt slighted, and he felt the loss. Is "joy comes after suffering" just an old saying after all?
Even while he despaired, the weed grew lush and fast. Before he knew it, a weed as tall as a man stood bolt upright. The light of the artificial sun grew hotter, and the wind blew harder, yet the wind could not shake the Klpandi. The other grasses of the plain bent with it. The weed sheared the wind instead.
What?
Startled, Chris focused on the Klpandi. It was no ordinary weed. It was a weed wrought of steel.
Chapter Three: The Weed
1. Camp
A single dandelion was painted on the inn's sign. Chris opened the door and swept the room with his eyes. Scraps of unidentifiable food lay scattered across the floor, and clumps of dust rolled in the corners.
"Here for a meal?"
A clerk came over and asked.
"Will you be staying the night as well?"
Chris pointed at the stairs.
"Are the rooms on the second floor?"
"Yes."
"An acquaintance should have taken a room."
He pressed two coins into the clerk's hand and went up. The stairs were old and creaked badly.
Room 3, where Agent No. 1 was said to be staying, lay in the farthest corner. He approached the door and knocked carefully.
"Come in."
Chris opened the door a crack and looked inside. An old man with a bleak face to match the barren room sat perched on the bed. This is Agent No. 1? He didn't look particularly dangerous. It is him, isn't it?
Chris stepped over the threshold. Unsure what footing to take, he hovered, and the old man spoke.
"Sit there."
A single chair stood near the door. Chris pulled it over and sat.
"Not much of a room."
The only furniture was a bed and one chair, and the room itself was cramped.
"We won't be staying long."
The old man tilted his head.
"You've changed your face. Your voice, too."
So he had seen Cyril's face before.
"I slipped out of the Albar Kingdom army without leave. I thought it best to change."
The old man nodded.
"When a cover identity changes, changing the face is the rule. The voice as well. Is that why you aren't wearing a robe?"
"Yes. I disguised myself as an ordinary man."
Chris had neither robe nor staff. Only a newly bought sword hung at his waist. The robe had been full of holes and unfit to wear about, and he had lost the staff while moving a corpse. The spatial pouch's security was broken, and he had no valuables worth storing, so he saw no need to carry it. If Agent No. 1 saw the pouch and asked why it was damaged, he would be at a loss for an answer. He had sold it on the way.
"A mage throwing away even his staff. Thorough camouflage."
"Whatever the reason, deserting the army is a fact, so this time I took pains to be thorough."
"You didn't have to go that far."
"If I don't show at least this much sincerity, you won't trust me with anything important, will you, Elder?"
"Elder?"
"I should play the part."
The old man laughed.
"Fine. Call me Elder."
Chris put on an eager face.
"What do you need me to do?"
"The ruins really are important."
"I know."
"No. You don't properly know."
"Then teach me. I'll listen closely."
The old man spoke with a hard edge.
"When you reach the site, you follow orders. No exceptions. Don't look down on the captain just because his level sits beneath yours."
So the one in charge out there is only Thought Formulation.
"Can't I take command?"
"No."
"My realm is higher. Why...?"
"If you don't like it, walk away."
Having come this far, he couldn't say he didn't like it, and he couldn't say he was quitting. That was the problem. Agent No. 1 would not sit still.
How strong is Agent No. 1?
Chris had put Cyril at Seed Cultivation. Spies he judged to be around that same realm had been meek and obedient toward Agent No. 1. The only one who could make mages of such arrogant temperament bow and scrape was a mage of higher realm. So Agent No. 1 was Ring Binding.
Chris tried to take the measure of the old man's skill. It stayed vague.
"So you don't want to."
The old man pressed him.
"No. I'll follow your instructions."
"You promise?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The old man handed him a ring.
"Keep it on. Now that I think of it, I don't see the ring you were wearing."
Chris gave him the answer he had prepared.
"I sold it to buy what I needed to bind a ring."
The old man clicked his tongue.
"Tsk, tsk. A spare life, and you... what a waste."
"Binding the ring comes first. It couldn't be helped."
In that moment some current brushed past his body. It was like a wave, and like a wind. What is this? What trick is this?
"When you said you were binding a ring, I took you for reckless. Your realm has deepened quite a bit."
From those words Chris understood that the man had inspected his skill. What kind of magic is this? It seemed like magic, and it didn't. Can magic read another person's realm?
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Definitely better than before. Still not enough to bind a ring."
"Before, it was worth attempting."
"You failed, and your realm slipped back."
"Yes. From now on I'll act with more care."
"Off you go."
"Where should I go?"
"The ring will tell you. Once you're well away from the inn, pour mana into it."
Chris took his leave and stepped outside. He forgot to feed the ring and kept walking, turning over the wave that had swept through his body. Peeking at someone's realm without permission was rude.
"So he took me for a fucking nobody."
Even so, he had no complaint. Chris had learned magic through experiences exactly like this.
"Mana came rolling in like a wave... No. It wasn't mana."
It had brushed past too briefly, and at too unexpected a moment, for him to feel it properly. So he couldn't analyze it. A few more hits and he might have gotten a feel for it, but Agent No. 1 didn't seem likely to try again. They wouldn't be meeting again, either. Nothing good came of spies seeing one another too often.
Chris gave up on the wave. There was too little to work with for any result to come of it, and thinking further would only give him a headache.
Belatedly he remembered the ring and slipped it onto his finger. When he poured mana in, a white arrow rose from the ring's black gem and pointed northeast.
Chris walked after it. Northeast became north, then west, then northeast again. He followed its directions for three hours. By now he ought to have reached the destination, but the arrow was still moving.