The Sixth Ring of Fire
Burren lifted his head from where he sat on the cave floor.
The walls and ceiling were carved with countless traces of swordsmanship — sword marks left by the swordsmen of the Heavy Martial Palace who had come through this place before him.
"Looks like graffiti."
Somewhere among them there might even have been a mark left by the first lord of the Heavy Martial Palace, but everything Burren could see now was as crooked and clumsy as a child's pencil scribbles.
Those weren't doodles, though. They were the remnants of serious, earnest sword training. The marks wavered the way they did because the flow of mana inside the cave was slightly warped.
So that's why training in here is supposed to be meaningless.
His second older brother had told him as much, once — that practicing in this cave wouldn't get you anywhere. Burren hadn't paid it any mind at the time. Now it was obvious. The misaligned mana generated in this place made it nearly impossible to gain anything from training. At best, you might temper your mental fortitude a little.
The only thing you could really do here was sit with a mild headache and kill time in a place where proper training was all but impossible.
"But…"
Burren clenched the hand he'd planted on the ground into a fist.
"I can't afford that."
My goal is that monster, after all.
A week had passed, and still the battle between Raon and Horaine wouldn't leave his head. Horaine was a genius who had become vice commander of the Battle Thunder Squad at a young age. To catch up to the Raon who had beaten a powerhouse like that, Burren couldn't afford to waste a single moment — not even here.
If that guy had taken a swordsmanship he'd already considered complete and pushed it even further, then he would surely be training without pause even in a place where the mana ran this crooked.
Burren steadied his breath, rose to his feet, and drew his sword. He settled into the new stance he had spent a year cultivating in the Lewin Desert, and his eyes lit up.
If I finish this, I won't lose even to Raon's sword.
The martial arts of the Lewin Desert, earned through the survival exam, was swordsmanship that went beyond any simple idea of strength. Master it properly, and it would become a fang sharp enough to sink even into Raon, who had reached Expert Peak-Class.
A low, hollow roar unfurled through the cave. The desert's killing wind — a gale that withered even sand to death — bloomed from Burren's hands with a deep, resonant power.
Raon did not so much as twitch, endlessly rotating the Ring of Fire.
Perhaps it was thanks to his Focus trait. As his thoughts narrowed, he gradually adapted even to this warped mana. The dizziness and the choking sensation were barely noticeable now.
And that's not the only upside.
By taking in mana that wasn't ordinary at all — mana that was fragmented and twisted — and purifying it, his progress with the Ring of Fire had climbed at an exponential rate in this short span of time.
A high, forging ring sang through him. All five rings were rotating in full, and at their tips, a new ring was taking shape.
"Hey, you brat!"
Just as he was about to pour himself into forming the sixth ring, Wrath's irritated voice exploded in his ear.
"Haa…"
Raon let out a sigh and cracked his eyes open. Wrath, draped in blue frost, was grinding his teeth.
"What in the world have you been doing for three days without eating or sleeping?!"
"Three days? It's been three days already?"
"That's right! This King has starved for three days enduring this hell! If you possess even a shred of conscience, get out of here at once and offer up a meal from the annex!"
"Move."
Raon gave Wrath a light shove as the little creature tried to cling to him, then unfolded the cloth bundle sitting beside him.
"That bundle…"
"What? You were the one who told me to eat this if I had to."
"You heard me say that and still ignored This King until now?!"
"Not ignored so much as… I couldn't be bothered."
He'd heard Wrath carrying on, but reacting only made the complaining worse, so he'd kept ignoring it.
"You're not the Monarch of Wrath. You're the Monarch of Gluttony, aren't you?"
"W-what nonsense is that!"
"A guy who goes on about gourmet cuisine begging to eat even this tasteless bread? That means you don't care about flavor. You just want your stomach full."
"T-This King is a noble Monarch of Wrath who loves the world of gourmet cuisine! To compare This King to that rabbit spawn — apologize at once!"
"A rabbit, huh…"
The same way Wrath called Sloth a bear-thing or a sleepyhead, Gluttony apparently gave off a rabbit-like impression. Not a boar — a rabbit. A surprisingly unexpected nickname.
That's information too.
True to his nature as a chatterbox, Wrath had a habit of spilling important details without even realizing it. If Raon remembered this, it would come in handy someday.
Raon gave a short laugh and picked up the Nadin Bread. It was round as a full moon and brown as a well-roasted sweet potato. It looked delicious. Tasting like nothing at all was the whole point of the thing.
"Hmm? It looks rather tasty, though?"
Three days of starvation had done their work. Wrath stared at the bread's appearance and drooled a stream of frost from his mouth like saliva.
"Does it?"
Raon smirked and bit in. It was as tough as chewing a clump of rubber bands, and there was no flavor whatsoever. The long-familiar scent of his previous life pulled a laugh out of him.
"Rrgh—"
Wrath clearly had not expected there to be genuinely no taste at all — and that the rubber-chewing texture would be just as advertised. He stretched his mouth wide as if he were about to be sick.
"T-this is a sin! A sin against food itself! To eat this and smile?! You really are a fiend!"
Raon had lost count of how many times a Demon King had called him a fiend.
"It's edible enough."
He chewed every last scrap of the bread and swallowed, then patted his stomach. Satiety flooded in all at once. The taste was wretched, but the filling effect was the real deal.
"A bread that exists solely to fill the stomach… what a terrifying food. What horror is this…"
Wrath shuddered from head to toe as he stared at the Nadin Bread. Raon had seen plenty of faces on him by now, but this was the first time the little creature had looked genuinely frightened. Whether Wrath was a gourmet or a glutton, Raon still wasn't sure — but an idiot? That much was certain.
"Hm?"
He drank some water and was about to set the Ring of Fire turning again when two sets of footsteps approached from outside the cave. There was an unease in those familiar steps.
"Took them long enough."
Raon circulated Glacia and dropped the temperature in his left hand, turning it a pale pink as if it were frostbitten. Because the Ring of Fire had purified the mana inside his body, he could operate his aura for a short while.
He composed himself and waited. Two faces appeared abruptly around the corner: Chief Administrator Urek and Training Instructor Leff.
"H-huh?! H-he's ali—"
"A-are you all right?"
The two of them took one look at him sitting there, perfectly calm, and their eyes flew wide as if they'd seen a ghost.
"Of course I am."
Raon smiled faintly and nodded, and their faces went even paler, as if they'd been pasted over with white paper.
"Kh…"
"Th-there's no way you're fine. There's no way you wouldn't feel that nauseating warp in the mana while sitting in here…"
Leff, who had been approaching slowly, twisted his face and clutched his chest. The warped mana rising from the cave was turning his stomach.
"Leff. Shut your mouth."
Urek clamped a hand over Leff's mouth and stepped forward. He had felt the warp as well; his lips were pressed into a hard line.
"You're truly all right."
"It's a little queasy, but as a Zieghart swordsman I ought to be able to endure at least this much."
"A-a little, he says…"
"Mm…"
Leff chewed on a fingernail. Urek said nothing for a while, then forced a composed expression onto his face and nodded.
"Fine. Three days have passed, so endure the remaining eleven well."
"Understood. Although…"
Raon put on a faint smile and met their unsteady pupils.
"Why did you come here? This is a two-week ordeal. Showing up like this interrupts the training."
"You insolent little—!"
"…It's a verification procedure. Accidents happen inside the caves from time to time."
Urek held back the glaring Leff and offered the explanation.
"I see."
Those trembling lips made the lie obvious. Raon gave a short laugh and nodded anyway.
"Then would you please leave? I have this so-called ordeal to continue."
"Very well. We'll see you later, then…"
Urek was withdrawing, teeth clenched, when his gaze fell on Raon's left hand and his eyes narrowed. His pupils flashed for the briefest instant. Then he collected the still-dazed Leff and headed for the exit.
Just as I thought.
Raon watched their retreating shadows and smiled to himself.
You were right.
The fact that those two had come looking told him that the other caves weren't warped anywhere near this badly — exactly as the self-proclaimed gourmet Demon King had said. Urek had tried to keep his expression in check, but Leff's panicked face had rendered the effort meaningless. Those two had chosen this cave specifically to make him suffer.
It had helped him instead.
The place they'd picked to torment him had turned into an enormous windfall. In three days, the Ring of Fire had grown more than it would have in three months of ordinary training.
"Wait! Did you put frost in your hand to deceive those fools?"
That's right.
"Then when you sparred with that pathetic one, you were faking the pain too?"
I was. This way they'll decide I'm weak to frost, and when they come for me later, they'll use it.
When in reality, frost was what he wielded at its strongest.
Raon pictured Urek's face and smiled, cold and thin.
"You're insane. Your head has truly gone off the rails…"
Wrath muttered that the boy was an uncanny little monster and clicked his tongue.
You did well too. You sensed that the mana warp in the other caves isn't nearly this strong.
"Ahem! That is the greatness of This King. This King can sense the energy not of the neighboring caves, but of places far in the distance."
Praise, for once, went straight to Wrath's head. His ears perked up.
"If you feel gratitude toward This King, then leave at once. Go out and get the pineapple girl's pie…"
"Shall we get back to it, then."
Raon felt the two of them leave the cave, sat back down, and closed his eyes.
"Hey! Hey! Raon!"
Wrath shook his head wildly, as if this were absolutely not allowed — but Raon had already shut his eyes and sunk back into the Ring of Fire.
"This King is done with rubber bread, I tell you!"
"J-just what is that guy?"
Leff's head trembled, as if he couldn't make sense of any of it.
"The more sensitive you are to mana, the harder that cave is to endure. I don't understand how someone at Expert Peak-Class can last in there!"
They had gone in after three days of no sign of him, fully prepared to clear away a corpse. The brat had been perfectly fine. No — his complexion was even better than before he'd gone in.
"And that expression of his was completely at ease."
Urek pressed his lips together.
"Like he was mocking us."
"Th-that's…"
"He didn't just look fine. His eyes were clear, like he'd realized something. He's adapted to that warped mana. Thanks to you, that damned brat is going to get even stronger."
"I-I'm sorry…"
Leff bowed his head. He had gone and done something he hadn't been ordered to do, and it had ended up helping Raon. There was nothing he could say.
"What if we drag him out now? If we make up an excuse…"
"Pointless. His suspicion would harden into certainty."
"Urgh!"
"That's why you shouldn't have done something unnecessary!"
The longer Urek spoke, the more Leff's shoulders shrank, like an octopus dropped in boiling water.
"Haa…"
Urek looked back at the first cave Raon had entered and let out a long breath.
Looks like we poked the wrong one.
Experience had taught him that you did not touch people like that. And if you had no choice but to touch them, you finished it for certain.
Still. It wasn't a total loss.
That pink hand he'd seen a moment ago had settled it. The injury from Horaine's frost a week ago still hadn't healed. Raon's weakness was frost — that much was certain.
At least now I have something to report to the Palace Lord.
Urek's eyes sank cold as a sheet of ice.
After Urek and Leff left, Raon did not open his eyes even once. He kept the Ring of Fire turning. Amid five rings that collided and crossed without end, he crafted a small, thin new ring the way a glassblower works a bottle.
A little slower.
When you made a new Ring of Fire, it could not be allowed to strike the ones already completed. The more rings there were, the harder a new one became to form.
Slow is fine. Just go straight.
The way a cicada nymph endures nearly eight years underground before it climbs into the light, he shaped the new ring with painstaking care, threading it past the five that meshed like the gears of a clock. He discarded every stray thought, kept the existing rings rotating, and poured his entire spirit into creating the new one.
Beginning and end. The two ends of a Ring of Fire that had seemed as unreachable as eternity itself began, slowly, to draw toward each other.
This is the moment that matters.
If the new ring grew too long, the odds of striking an existing one would spike. Like a master potter at the wheel, he raised his concentration even higher and refined the new ring.
A high, searing ring cut through him. The fifth Ring of Fire spun violently and clung to the new one. He twisted the forming ring finer than a hair and barely slipped past it. Cold sweat soaked his back with every crisis he scraped through. His whole body had to be drenched by now — but there was no room to feel the stickiness. A single small mistake wouldn't just shatter everything he had built. It could tear him up from the inside.
A deep thrum rolled through him. Just before the two ends of the ring met, another crisis arrived. The first ring and the third resonated together and pressed down on the new one.
Let it flow through.
He passed the warped, incoming mana straight into the new Ring of Fire. In a flash the ring curved, shedding the pressure.
Now!
Crisis was opportunity. In the instant he slipped free, Raon drew in a massive surge of mana and stretched the beginning and end of the sixth Ring of Fire long.
A clear, ringing note sang out. The new ring connected as smoothly as a line drawn in a single masterful stroke, cut through the twisted mana, and began to turn.
A vast, rolling resonance. Six Rings of Fire sang together, and the pulse that burst from them crossed his mind and raised a colossal thrill, as if the sky itself were splitting open.
A tremor ran through Raon's entire body. He clenched his fists. A shock of pure exhilaration pulled a laugh out of him on its own. He hadn't reached Master — not quite — but he was certain of this much: the enormous wall that had been blocking his path had crumbled nearly in half.
"Urgh!"
Wrath, who had been sulking in silence over how terrible the bread tasted, saw the messages and his mouth fell open.
"Y-you steal everything from This King's true body, and you have the nerve to act like you're the one granting it?! You damned system!"
Stats, at least, Wrath insisted were all his, and he hopped up and down in outrage.
But Raon, who had opened his eyes, wasn't looking at the messages. He wasn't looking at Wrath. He couldn't tear his gaze from the cave wall. He swallowed a dry throat.
"What… what is this…"
The graffiti-like sword marks that had been spread across the entire cave — those ancient traces — were flashing with golden light.