Steel Weeds
The wraith closed in.
"Aaaagh!"
Chris screamed for no reason anyone else could see. To Sheikh's ears it was the shriek of a man in his last extremity. It wasn't. Chris had shouted to stoke his own strength.
The wraith bared its teeth. In the instant those blade-like fangs lunged to tear the grass apart, the Klpandi spun, carrying an edge sharper than any blade.
Chris roared inwardly.
Steel Weeds
My Klpandi is no ordinary weed.
The grass became steel and sheared the wraith. Severed it. Shattered it to pieces. As the wraith came apart, the backlash dealt a tremendous blow to Sheikh's spirit.
Sheikh's mouth fell open. No sound came. Tongue, windpipe, lungs—all of it had burned black. He could not manage even a final scream.
He collapsed. The black mage who had once drowned the land around Mick Magic Tower in terror paid with his life: the price of scorning his enemy, and of lounging at his ease on the excuse of protecting the magic circle.
With his death, the black smoke that had seized Chris's limbs dispersed. Still crouched, dragging his body back under his own control, Chris spoke to David. Through the mask.
Chris sprang up and drove his fingertips at David's chest. Crack. David's ring shattered.
This one has a magic tool too. Chris swore inwardly. Every stray and his brother carries one. I don't.
David came to his senses and shouted.
"So you're Number Four!"
Chris nodded and struck again. Fully awake now, David twisted aside and slipped the hand, then swung his staff at Chris's head.
"Why are you attacking an ally?"
Chris ducked the staff and drove his right foot up into David's flank. Thud. Few mages could win a close-quarters fight against Chris. David was not among that rare number.
Kicked in the ribs, David folded at the waist like a shrimp and retched. Chris kicked once more and sent the staff spinning away. Catching his breath, he said,
"You attacked first."
David glared at him, bitter.
"Because I didn't know you were Number Four."
"I warned you. Over and over. Don't attack."
David snarled.
"You should have said you were Number Four and asked for help!"
Even as he spoke, he worked a spell. A blade of wind slashed for Chris's throat.
Chris poured mana into his hand, swept it through the wind blade, and shattered it. Riding the momentum, he cracked David across the jaw. Thud. David went sprawling.
"Wait. We don't need to fight."
Chris slid a hand beneath his jaw and tore the mask away. It ripped free by force, and David's face was left a sheet of blood.
"We're on the same side."
He had realized he could not win, and now he was begging. Chris set a foot on his chest.
"David. First time seeing me, isn't it?"
"I've heard plenty. They say you're a compassionate man."
Chris leaned his weight onto the foot, and David rushed on.
"How did you know I was Number Five?"
"I'd already figured Number One would plant a spy inside Mick Magic Tower."
"And that was enough to pick me out?"
David shook his head.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Right. Without prior information, I wouldn't have."
"Prior information?"
"Unlike you, I connected to the mask often. You know how the ruins are cut off from the outside? If they aren't cut off, then the distance is vast. Vast."
"And that means...?"
"After you entered the ruins, the mask's fifth window activated. A few days later, mages from Mick Magic Tower showed up in front of me."
"That still isn't enough. There are seven of us. Picking the right one out of seven isn't easy."
"Number One said it."
"Number One exposed me? Impossible."
"He didn't do it on purpose. I just didn't let the hint go to waste."
"A hint?"
"Stan spoke well of you. Warm-hearted, he said. Kind."
Chris wiped his mouth and laughed.
"Heh heh heh. A mage of Mick Magic Tower, called kind? Does that even hold together? That's when I started to think something was off."
"Stan?"
"Looks like you didn't know. The Stan of Stan General Store is Number One."
"That's absurd."
"Stan crouched beneath Mick Magic Tower, spying on the tower and running his spies from there. Curiosity satisfied?"
Feeling the pressure on his chest mount, David shouted in a rush.
"Why would Stan give you a hint? That doesn't make any sense."
He was stalling with talk, and all the while he was preparing a spell—a spell to take Number Four from behind.
"Because he didn't know I'd become Number Four."
"What are you talking about?"
"Back then, I didn't know I'd end up tangled with Stan either. I couldn't even sense mana. I was still scraping along the floor."
Drawing the words out, Chris cast off his mask. His face came clear of it, and David's eyes flew wide.
"You—Chris..."
Chris stomped down on his chest. Stunned by the face above him, David never got the spell off. A single instant's lapse came due in full. His chest caved in, and he vomited blood.
"Ghk—!"
"So long."
Chris lifted his foot, pulled David's spatial pocket free, and flung it onto Sheikh, who was still burning. David fell across him and went up in flames.
"So much for the magic circle."
He had been careful, and this left him oddly hollow. Nothing to be done about it. Spare the circle all the way to the end, and the one who died would have been him.
Chris glanced over David and went to Harvey. Harvey lay face-down, not so much as twitching. He looked dead.
"I know you're alive."
Chris flipped him over and brought their faces close. Harvey had heard David speak the name Chris, and still he could not believe it. That idiot, who couldn't even read the attribute of a seed, could not possibly have beaten his great master.
"That face... your face, right now... it's fake, isn't it?"
"No. It's real."
"No. It isn't true."
It was not allowed to be true. He would never accept that he and his master had been brought down by something no better than a worm.
"I told you. I'm Chris."
"You're an ancient mage, aren't you? You've taken Chris's body. That's it, isn't it?"
"Believe it or don't. Nothing I can do."
Chris reached out, and Harvey begged with everything he had.
"O great mage of the ancient age, spare me. I'll do anything you command."
Chris took the spatial pocket, killed him, and laid the body atop David. Watching the flames roar, he muttered,
"Can the magic circle even be repaired?"
He could not do it himself.
"I'll have to wait for someone new to come in."
Would such a day ever come? There was no way to know.
The three mages burned down to bone fragments. Sheikh's spatial pocket—presumed to hold a considerable fortune—turned up among the remains, scorched black. The robe had kept it from crumbling to ash, but the heat had ruined it all the same. The mouth of the pocket hung open, and that did not bode well.
Whatever's stored in there had better still be intact.
Clinging to that hope, Chris reached inside. Mana stones. He drew them out: more than two hundred top-grade stones, though half, regrettably, were ruined. Heat had poured in through the open mouth.
He swallowed the loss and kept what was whole. David's and Harvey's spatial pockets yielded mana stones as well, but in quantity and quality they were nothing beside Sheikh's.
He gathered it all and erased the traces of the fight. Sheikh's ruined staff and Harvey's he carried to an empty house and burned. David's staff he tucked at his waist.
After that he set the mana stones beside him and absorbed them one by one while he treated his wounds. Remnants of the wraith that had invaded his Thought Space still lingered, and clearing them took a full three days. Purging the black smoke's lingering harm from his body took two more.
He repaired the damaged iron tracks within him as well, and restored the injured tissue. His body had been torn up because he had circulated compressed magical power to hold the wraith off.
Mana breathed life into the flesh, roused its vigor, and made the body strong. Magical power—mana worked and compressed—was another matter: rough, ferocious, and violent. Force it carelessly into the body, and it did damage.
That was why a mage stored magical power in the Thought Space and the Klpandi, never in the organs or any other part of the flesh. When the Thought Space ran dry, they drew the mana kept throughout the body back into it and converted that into magical power. If even that was exhausted, they pulled mana in from outside—less potent than mana already sorted and stored, and slower besides, which made it of little use in a fight.
Mages did not carry staffs for nothing. A staff was a spare Thought Space, though of course the quantity and quality of magical power it could hold fell short of the real thing. It was also why mages refused to acknowledge a Spirit Awakening practitioner as a mage at all. Without a Thought Space, they could not hold magical power.
To complete Iron Body, Chris had processed mana all the way to the stage just short of magical power and used it to strike the Black Spheres. His body had paid dearly. More than once, he had barely survived. Now the flesh was so tough that circulating magical power no longer injured him the way it would another mage. Compressed magical power was different. Compressed magical power had damaged even a grandmaster's body. That he had avoided a fatal wound was fortune enough.
Restoring the damaged places with the pure mana of the stones, he turned it over. If I hadn't thrown up a barricade of compressed magical power, the wraith would have eaten me.
By that measure, Sheikh had not lost to a mage. He had lost to a grandmaster.
Against something as dangerous as a wraith burrowing inside, wouldn't it be wise to practice running magical power through the body? Compressed magical power was one thing. Ordinary magical power, he thought, ought to be manageable.
What about knights?
A knight kept mana in a mana warehouse and drew it out when it was needed. Reach the realm of master, and they converted mana into aura. They wouldn't circulate aura on the inside, would they? Do that, and the mana channels would be ripped to shreds.
Even after his body recovered, he kept absorbing mana stones and pushed his realm to the very limit of Seed Cultivation. His insight into Seed Cultivation was already sufficient; all he had to do was feed mana into the Klpandi. In that way he used up every stone he had taken.
Even so, fifty top-grade mana stones remained in hand—the ones he had received in exchange for information given to Tower Master Hal. He was saving them for the day the magic circle was repaired.
If Seed Cultivation burns through this many stones, what will Ring Binding cost? The old complaint, that a mage was a hippopotamus with an appetite for gold, finally felt true.
The next day Chris went to the scorched ground. However he looked at it, he could not repair the circle himself.
A newcomer has to come. Otherwise he would be stranded in the ruins. Other mages longed to enter this place. Chris wanted the opposite. He wanted out.
Could a newcomer repair the magic circle? He chose to hope. Anyone who can get in here has to be a formidable mage. Of course they could repair a circle.
From then on, the tedious wait began. He did not know the secret of ascending to Ring Binding, so he could raise his realm no further. He passed the time drilling fire-attribute magic, and he waited.