A Freedom with No Exit
Chris studied the other mages' barriers. They were holding the things up without a break, if only to keep the mosquitoes off.
"They're using metal-attribute mana as well. Surely they don't all have metal-attribute seeds."
"Of course they don't," Hell said.
"Then why am I the only one with a problem?"
"Making use of a thing and taking it as your core are entirely different matters. Your seed isn't metal, and yet you're building the barrier with metal-attribute mana for a frame, so the power falls off. Metal is hard. You thought a barrier founded on metal mana would be hard as well, didn't you?"
He shook his head and went on.
"It isn't. Whatever the magic, its strength only rises when you set your own attribute at the core of the power."
"Ah."
The sound escaped Chris like a man struck by understanding. "So that's how it is?"
"It is. Once you can handle mana as you please, it hardly matters. You cannot."
Chris lowered his head. "Thank you for the lesson."
Hell clicked his tongue. "I'm hardly owed any thanks."
"Why not?"
"Anyone who has so much as reached Jenyeom — Thought Formulation — knows that much. Now that I think of it, you're a strange one. How is it you don't know?"
"As I said before, my duties kept me wandering outside, so I rarely had the chance to see my master. You have to look at the sky before you can pluck a star. If I couldn't even meet him, how was I to learn?" Chris sighed and pressed on. "I used to think that was why I never learned properly. Looking at it now, I suspect there was another reason."
"Another reason?"
"They never meant to teach me properly in the first place. I was something to use and throw away."
Hell made a displeased sound, wet with phlegm. "Our tower does not use its disciples and cast them aside."
Chris let his head droop. "Then why did you use me as bait? Did you never think of me as a disciple at all?"
Hell had no answer.
Chris walked on with his head hung low, the very picture of a wounded heart, and as he went he took the barrier's mana apart and built it again. Wood-attribute mana became the frame. Around it he bound metal-attribute mana and earth-attribute mana.
Well, now.
He swallowed the pleased sound. The barrier's strength had jumped, plain as day.
Another pulse rolled through, and Julien said, "So the seed is wood."
For some reason, that sat badly. Ah, damn it. He caught me. Inside Mick Magic Tower, a robe's color changed with one's attribute; look at the cloth, and you knew what a mage was. By that measure it was hardly a secret worth keeping. So why did it feel this foul? Am I being too sensitive?
Chris raised his head and studied him. Did he advise me about the barrier just to learn my seed's attribute? And if he did, what does he mean to do with it? Does he think he and I are going to fight? Chris had heard that knowing a seed's attribute gave you the advantage in a battle, and turning it over, he thought that was likely true. But Julien had no need to bother learning it. The man believed himself far stronger than Chris, and by that reckoning a seed's attribute was something he might know or not know. It would not meaningfully decide the outcome.
And yet he had worked his way around to it. Why? For what? Chris could not see the reason, and his caution sharpened. I need to be careful. He, too, thought Julien the stronger. He simply did not believe the gap was so wide. In the worst case, he told himself, flight was possible. No. He hoped it was.
They walked without rest until the sun went down. The trees had thinned to a startling degree. By the look of it, they had escaped the jungle.
"Over there!" Ethan shouted, jabbing a finger toward three o'clock.
On a low rise, the foundations of houses still showed here and there.
"Is that the man-made thing we saw from the sky?" Hell asked.
Julien gave a silent nod, and the mages of Hermann Magic Tower swept past him at speed.
Past the collapsed houses, a few intact ones still stood. Chris arrived late and watched the mages disappear into whichever house each had chosen.
"You're not going in?"
Julien folded his arms. "You first."
"If you say so."
Eight sound houses, as it happened. Of the two the earlier arrivals had left unclaimed, Chris made for the one on the right.
He pushed open a mold-flecked door and stepped inside. The hinges shrieked. Wary of a trap, he wrapped a barrier around himself before he entered, but fortunately nothing dangerous answered. He felt Julien peering in and shut the door. The light from the doorway died, and the house went black as pitch. He opened the window he had marked while the door was open and drew the moonlight in. It was still dark, but the eyesight that had turned inhuman after he completed Iron Body was more than enough for that.
A painting hung beside the window: a sun rising over a quiet sea. Hoping it might be a magic tool, he focused and studied it for a long while, then gathered a knot of mana and gave it a cautious prod. No reaction.
An ordinary painting?
Even so, on the off chance, he took it. A table stood beneath the painting, a chest of drawers beside the table. A bed occupied the right side of the room, and opposite the bed a chair lay tumbled. No walls dividing the space. A commoner's house.
He did not think a commoner's house would hide a treasure, but he searched every corner all the same. He opened every drawer and lifted the sheets. It struck him as odd that someone of the lower class would own a bed like this, so he tore into the mattress and looked closely. No treasure. Tapping along the ceiling and the walls, then digging at the floor, ate a great deal of time. When he finished and came out, the mages were waiting. The mood hanging over them was bleak enough to tell him they had found nothing either.
"What did you find?" Hell asked.
"Nothing."
"Mind if we search you?"
Chris let his displeasure show, plain as he could make it. "I'd rather you didn't."
At that, the Chukhwan-realm mages of Hermann Magic Tower — Ring Binding — closed around him in a triangle. Chris sighed and tossed them the spatial pouch at his waist.
"Shall I take my clothes off, too?"
He had meant it as mockery. Every one of them nodded.
"Well. I'll be." He was past astonishment. "Fine. Wonderful."
He stripped to his underwear and threw the clothes over. Ethan stepped forward and rummaged through the spatial pouch. Hector went through the clothes. Out of the pouch came a single painting and a bundle of travel rations. A few gold coins and silver coins turned up in a trouser pocket.
Pearson took the painting, drew a dagger, and split it down the middle. Then he shook his head. "An ordinary painting."
"I told you I didn't find any treasure," Chris said, protesting.
The three mages still ringing him offered no reply.
"Why didn't you put a security spell on the spatial pouch?" Ethan asked.
"Pouches like that cost a fortune. And I don't have anything valuable."
"You crossed the Albar Kingdom selling an enormous quantity of equipment and buying magic stones by the heap," Hell said. "And you have nothing valuable?"
"I used them all."
"All of that?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Do you know what my personal creed is?"
"I don't."
"Hoard it, and it turns to shit."
Hell let out a short, incredulous laugh, as if he could not quite believe what he had heard.
"In keeping with that creed, I absorbed every magic stone the moment it came to me." Chris put the searched clothes back on and took the spatial pouch back as well. "Satisfied now?"
The ring around him broke.
"This is the Horace Ruins, isn't it?"
"It seems so."
"I've fulfilled the Mana Oath. You'll acknowledge that?"
Hell nodded, looking thoroughly unsatisfied. Chris declared it.
"Then I am free."
Hell did not argue. "Yes. You're free."
Chris walked off wearing a brilliant smile. A moment later he came back with the face of a man who had stepped in dung.
"I did say you were free," Hell said, sneering.
Chris scratched his cheek, at a loss. "How do I get out of the ruins?"
No one answered.
"Mage Julien. How does one leave the ruins?"
"You'll have to find your own way."
"Please teach me the method."
"No."
"Damn it."
Chris dropped onto the ground. His mood had all the dignity of a grown man's cock.
Julien headed for the house he had searched. "We'll sleep here tonight."
The mages of Hermann Magic Tower agreed. "Let's."
Out of sorts, Chris scrubbed his face with his palms, then went into the house he had searched and linked to the Mask. The window for Number One, left as empty space the last time he had gone in, had appeared anew. Every other window that had been marked before was gone. That settled it: the Mask could not join the inside of the ruins to the outside. And Number One was certainly here.
Where was Number One? Had he found the treasure?
Chris cut the link and stepped outside. "What if I run into him?" he muttered.
Hugo caught the words spoken to no one. "Who are you talking about?"
"The mages who came in ahead of us. Mage Hugo, what will you do if you meet an elder of the tower?"
"I am an elder."
"Even among elders, the one-ring and two-ring sort don't seem to get much of a welcome. Will they be glad to see you?"
"Hmph."
He snorted and went into a house. One by one the others vanished, until only Chris was left on the empty ground.
"If you're going to drag a man here by force, the least you could do is tell him how to leave."
He grumbled his way around the place, turning over the wreckage of fallen houses and digging at the earth. Then a chill crept over him. He turned his head. From inside the open doorways, several pairs of eyes gleamed like a wild animal's.
"If any treasure turns up, I'll hand it over, so kindly stop watching me. Must you make a man this uncomfortable?"
The doors slammed shut with a racket. Chris wandered a little longer, picked up a stone of a suitable size, pillowed his head on it, and slept.
Perhaps six hours had passed when he felt someone touch his arm. His eyes opened at once, and he was on his feet. Julien was coming toward him.
"What is this?" Julien asked, kicking at the magic spread over the ground.
Chris answered through a stretch. "I laid it down in place of an alarm spell. If something strikes it from outside, it sends me a signal."
"Why this primitive method, instead of an alarm spell?"
"There are too many mages here better than I am, so using magic feels a bit awkward. Like putting on airs in front of an earthworm."
One of Julien's eyebrows climbed. "Do you know why they suspect you and watch you?"
Chris scattered the magic he had laid before sleeping. "They were always suspicious sorts. I don't take it to heart."
"No. It's because the way you act falls outside what's normal."
"I don't behave like an ordinary man because I am not an ordinary man."
"Special, are you?"
"Yes. I am not average."
"Good. Then I'll look forward to this special quality of yours."
Chris sat on a foundation stone, drew the ration bundle from his spatial pouch, and tore off a piece of jerky. Chewing, he asked, "Would you like some?"
"No."
Julien produced a pill and swallowed it. Chris watched it with open interest.
"A meal-replacement pill. The kind they say you live on when you shut yourself in a cave and train for decades."
"First time seeing one?"
"Yes. Why? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Never having seen a pill isn't ordinary either."
"I told you. I'm not ordinary."
"Want one?"
"No. I'm fine."
"Why?"
"It might be poisoned."
"Hahaha."
Julien laughed, clutching his stomach. "Why would I give you poison?"
"You're a mage."
As if that were answer enough, Chris tucked the bundle back into the spatial pouch and stood. Brushing the crumbs from his hands, he put on a breezy air.
"They say a walk after a meal is better than any tonic. Care to walk with me?"
"Walk all you like. By yourself."