Living Mana Stones
The next day, the five high mages put the camp to work repairing the magic circle. So many mana stones were consumed that the eyes of the camp's mages—Jerome among them—nearly rolled back in their heads.
"They're spending mana stones like water."
Jerome came up beside Chris and clicked his tongue. Chris was committing every step of the repair to memory, so he answered without really listening.
"Yeah. They are."
"They've used more than a hundred highest-grade stones! Do you have any idea how incredible that is?"
Honestly, he didn't. When Chris had learned Iron Body, he had swallowed a hundred and twenty highest-grade mana stones himself. Burning a hundred of the same grade to repair a circle of this size was hardly something to gasp over.
"Hard to say."
"And more than five hundred high-grade stones on top of that."
"Is that so?"
"You truly don't grasp how enormous this is?"
"Nope."
"I'm a fool for explaining it to an ignorant swordsman."
Chris answered in his head.
I'm a mage. A Seed Cultivation mage, no less.
A half-mage, his knowledge of magic shot full of holes—but his body, in exchange, was a Grandmaster's. A Grandmaster who could trade blows even with a mage of Ring Binding.
Restoring the tower had devoured heaps of mana stones as well. By now even Chris was sick of the sight of them.
If we don't walk out of those ruins carrying a staggering treasure, this is going to be a loss.
Seven days later, every preparation was complete.
"We go to the ruins now."
At Scott's declaration, the five hundred mercenaries and mages erupted in cheers. They whistled, flung off clothes, and made a complete spectacle of themselves. The hour had come at last to collect payment for long labor and longer waiting.
"Settle down. Hold your positions."
The five mages moved to the center of the circle. The remaining five hundred split into five groups and took their places along its rim.
Chris checked the positions of the five clusters and muttered.
"A pentagram."
It was. They occupied the points of a five-pointed star, and the leaders of each camp, Scott foremost among them, stood behind those points. The Scott at Chris's back nagged at him more than he liked.
Jerome was watching Scott as well. He indicated the robe Scott wore and the staff in his right hand.
"You were a mage?"
Scott nodded.
"That's right."
"Why were you hiding it?"
"I had a frightening enemy, so I concealed who I was and went around pretending to be a swordsman."
Scott grinned and added,
"I don't have to act like I'm not a mage anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because I'll be stronger once I've been to the ruins and come back."
An uneasy feeling crawled over Jerome, and he meant to press further. Then the high mage at the center spoke.
"Has everyone taken their place?"
"Yes."
"Prepare."
They set their hands upon the marked points.
Gavin, seated beside Chris, kept stealing glances at him, then whispered.
"Mister."
"What?"
Gavin hitched his pack higher on his shoulders.
"Why don't you have a pack? Do you have a magic tool—a spatial belt, a spatial necklace, something like that?"
"No. All I've got is this sword and the money in my pocket."
"Then if you find treasure, how are you going to bring it out? Carry it in your hands?"
"Can't exactly walk out holding it."
Gavin drew a small pack from inside his backpack.
"Mister, use this."
"I don't need it."
"Why not?"
"The way I see it, once we're inside..."
The people around them were listening. When Chris broke off mid-sentence, Jerome's curiosity got the better of him.
"Once we're inside, what?"
He and the other mages had their staves against the ground in place of their palms.
Chris swallowed, then said,
"It'll be dangerous, don't you think?"
"Dangerous?"
Chris pointed at the mages in the center.
"How do those mages look to your eyes?"
Jerome swallowed too.
"Like remarkable mages. Ring Binding, perhaps?"
"Right. Mages that remarkable, burning expensive mana stones like men who expect to die tomorrow, pouring all that effort into the Horace Ruins—the place we're about to enter. There ought to be treasures sleeping in there vast enough to drop your jaw."
Everyone who heard him nodded. Greed flared through them like fire.
Xavier said,
"That's why we swallowed unreasonable demands and worked our asses off. A high-rank mercenary like me, used for free—does that even make sense, damn it?"
Chris's expression turned serious.
"You've explored dungeons before, haven't you?"
A few of them nodded.
"What's in a dungeon?"
"Treasure."
"And what else?"
No one answered.
"Are you idiots? A dungeon has a guardian watching the treasure. Traps everywhere, too."
"Ah. Right."
"The finer the treasure, the finer the guardian, and the greater the danger."
"So?"
"So? What do you mean, so? The ruins are very likely an extremely dangerous place, and at least half of us are going to die."
Some took the point with a belated oh, of course. Others snapped that anybody could have told them that.
One of the latter said,
"We all know it's dangerous. You think we're going to give up and walk away now?"
He jabbed a finger at them one by one.
"You leaving?"
No one said they would. If they had been the sort to pull out at the mere word danger, they would never have joined the camp to begin with.
Gavin said,
"Everything you're saying makes sense, mister. But what does any of it have to do with you walking in empty-handed, without a bag?"
"I told you people are going to die in there. The packs on the dead, the spatial pouches—whoever picks them up owns them. Stuff the treasure in those. No need to go to the trouble of preparing a bag."
Gavin was impressed, in the worst possible way.
"Wow... Mister, you were thinking like that... You're a villain."
"Me?"
Jerome said,
"You are a villain."
Xavier agreed.
"Planning to strip your own companions before we even step inside. Kid, a villain would look at you and call you boss."
While they talked, the preparations came to an end.
The five mages at the center called up wind and set highest-grade mana stones all across the circle.
"How many of those even are there?"
Before Jerome could finish, the tower enclosing the circle began to hum.
"The spell is activating!"
Scott shouted.
"Put in your mana!"
The crowd answered him and poured mana out all at once—mages through their staves, the rest through their hands.
Chris felt the mana moving toward the center of the circle. Mana streaming from the stones laid along the channels was drawn into the center as well, and as it went it dragged the surrounding mana in after it.
The placement of those stones is exquisite.
The tower's wail grew louder, and the amount of mana it drank from the five hundred grew with it. As the current quickened, those of lesser skill clenched their teeth.
"Wh... when... does it... activate...?"
Gavin said it through chattering teeth.
"Who knows."
Chris had been suspicious from the start, so he had not sent his mana with Gavin's wholehearted fervor. He was only going through the motions. Even so, as time passed, more and more of it left him.
His expression grew grave.
This is taking far too long.
Drain a body of mana for this long and it takes damage. Some had already suffered harm they would never recover from. Gavin, one of them, had gone the color of a corpse.
"Scott..."
He cried it like a scream. Of everyone gathered here, he was the youngest. Being older did not guarantee greater skill, but the weight of years could not be ignored, and if one measured by quantity of mana, Gavin had the least of the five hundred. So he was the first to break.
"I can't... it's too much."
Scott said,
"Anyone holding mana stones, don't hoard them—use them. I'll pay you back double what you spend."
Gavin had no mana stones.
"Sc... Scott... save..."
Wrinkles began to crawl across Gavin's face as the last of his mana was sucked away. After the mana, his life force followed.
His skin went dry and lifeless, and the hair at his temples started turning white. An eighteen-year-old youth became an old man in an instant. His already bent back bent further; the flesh withered, and the body shrank in on itself.
"Guhk!"
Gavin coughed blood and lost consciousness. Even after his mind was gone, the circle's merciless theft of life force did not stop. It kept draining him after he died, after the corpse dried tight as a mummy, until the lifeless hair left his scalp and blew away on the wind.
Signs of catastrophe were breaking out everywhere. Cries to halt the circle, cries to be saved, rose from every side.
Jerome yanked out the high-grade mana stone Chris had given him in payment for magic lessons and screamed.
"Scott! You son of a bitch!"
Too late, he understood that activating the teleportation circle did not mean all five hundred of them would be moved to the ruins. Only those five mages at the center were going. Everyone else was nothing but a living mana stone, there to supply the energy the circle required.
"You can't use people this cruelly!"
Scott answered without a shred of shame.
"You're a mage, aren't you? This can't be the first or second time you've harmed other people. You don't get to feel betrayed."
They had already stepped into the privy and finished their business. The water was spilled. The five hundred had no way to take any of it back.
"Son of a bitch."
Swearing changed nothing. Jerome appealed to his companions.
"We have to get off the circle. On my signal, cut your mana all at once and fall back!"
He counted.
"Three, two, one!"
The others had all realized they had been deceived. Mana was tearing out of them without restraint, and companions were dying at their sides—there was no way not to know. So they answered Jerome and cut their mana. Or tried to. It was already beyond control. No matter how they fought to stop it, the mana kept leaving, and when the mana ran dry, life force followed.
People died in order of weakness. Even then, Chris still had room to spare. He kept a great store of mana in his body, and this much he could endure.
A little later, Xavier reached his limit.
"Jerome, save me."
Jerome was drowning in trouble of his own. He had no margin left to answer anyone else's plea.
"You can do it. Hold on."
Meaningless encouragement was all he had to give.
"Sid, save me."
Xavier turned his plea on someone else.
"Once those five mages transfer, the circle will stop. Endure until then."
Jerome said,
"Is that the only way?"
"As far as I can see, yes."
Jerome glanced sidelong at Xavier, whose hair had begun to go white, and then at Sid. His own hair was whitening just like Xavier's, but Sid was untouched.
"Sid. You've been hiding your skill."
Chris answered with a grave face.
"Hiding what? I simply never mentioned it."
The mana stone in Jerome's hand gave up the last of its mana and crumbled.
"Shit. And this was a precious one."
He pitched forward, muttering.
"Hoarded it until it turned to shit."
Thud.
His forehead struck the circle, and there was the sound of bone breaking. The hardest bone in the body snapping under an impact like that meant the theft of life force had already weakened it.
Xavier soon lost consciousness, collapsed, and died. He left a similar curse for his last words.
Aside from the five leaders of the camp and the five mages at the center of the circle, barely thirty people were still alive.
Chris had meant to wait until the circle stopped running. It did not look as if it would stop before every drop of his mana was gone, so he decided to pull his hand free here and now. He pulled—and his palm would not leave the floor.
Well, look at this.
He was genuinely startled. The others had failed to break free because their level was low, and he had trusted that he, being higher, could step away whenever he pleased. It was not that easy. He tried to cut his mana as well, and it kept pouring out.
Chris was in a bind. His mana would not obey him, so he could not use it to reinforce his body or amplify his strength. He understood now why the mages and the swordsmen had been so helpless.
But for him it was a bind, not terror. Even without mana's help, his body could put out more strength than an ogre.
Chris clenched his molars and hauled. His hand tore free of the circle. Even then the mana kept leaving. Feeling it cross empty air and stream away, he could not help but admire the work.
Remarkable.