The Fist King's Lifelong Wish
"You copied someone else's mana manipulation technique without permission, and you thought you could just use it?"
"...I apologize."
"No, I'm not talking about ethics. I'm saying it was far too dangerous."
Kaya, who had patched up my mangled arm with a messy assortment of bandages, sighed as she spoke.
"One wrong move and your arm would've blown clean off."
"Was it really that serious...?"
"You used it yourself, so you should know, shouldn't you? That's not a power just anyone can handle. That said... the fact that you actually pulled it off is impressive. Most people couldn't copy it even if I demonstrated it right in front of their faces."
Copying it in the middle of an actual fight... that really was absurd, wasn't it?
Kaya muttered this bluntly, then gave my carefully bandaged arm a light tap.
She'd meant it as a light tap, but even that was enough to send a sharp sting rolling through the limb.
I'd have to ask Noah to treat me properly once we got back to the inn.
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We left the sparring arena—which had been reduced to rubble in mere minutes—and returned to Kaya's house.
Kaya settled comfortably onto the sofa and gave Lena a detailed rundown of her impressions of the sparring session and the points she needed to work on going forward.
And then it was my turn.
But somehow the lesson seemed to be winding down, so I hurriedly voiced my thoughts to Kaya.
"...So you're saying you'll go get treated, then come back for more sparring?"
"It would be a waste of the lesson fee, wouldn't it? We've only sparred for a few minutes."
Forty gold coins per person was nobody's pet dog. It would have been far too much money to let it end like this.
But Kaya shook her head.
"Forget it. Even if a healing ability could fix the physical damage, there's no way it could restore your qi pathways too."
"Qi pathways? What are those?"
"Huh... you don't know about that part either? Qi pathways are..."
To put it simply, they were something like blood vessels of the body—formed within it in a mana-based sense.
Wait, my body had something like that in it?
If qi pathways actually existed, there was no way I wouldn't know about them...
When Kaya saw the skeptical expression on my face, she clicked her tongue.
"Tch. They're still in the formation stage, so of course you can't sense them. Ignorance and courage, what a combination. A guy whose qi pathways haven't even properly formed yet tries to copy my mana manipulation technique? You should be thanking whatever gods you pray to that your entire body didn't detonate."
"Kaya, ma'am! Are qi path... things forming inside me too?"
"No, you're a long way off. That's something that only happens to people who've slammed into the Expert wall."
"Oh... I've never heard about that before. Could you explain in more detail?"
"What am I, your schoolteacher? ...Ah. Right, I am your day tutor."
Kaya, who had been grumbling on reflex, froze mid-sentence and scratched her head vigorously.
"Fine, I guess I have no choice," she said, and opened her mouth.
I focused intently on this story I'd never heard anywhere before.
"Let me ask you one thing. What do you think of your own physical capabilities? Assuming you have a brain rattling around in that head of yours, you must at least know your body is different from everyone else's."
"Well... I'd say it's good. I consider it a far superior endowment."
A body finely tuned by future technology had never once betrayed me.
My muscles were as powerful and tenacious as a wild beast's, and my skeletal frame was unshakably solid.
My internal organs were sturdy enough that I'd long since forgotten stomach aches even existed.
My body's balance was so perfectly calibrated that I'd inadvertently become ambidextrous.
Kaya nodded in agreement.
"Right. Honestly, I've never seen a better body than yours. But has it never crossed your mind? How ordinary humans—no beastkin blood, nothing special—are able to become stronger than you?"
"Aren't you a beastfolk yourself, ma'am?"
"You idiot. I'm talking about everyone else. Not that it doesn't apply to me too. Point is, there are plenty of pure humans out there stronger than you."
"Hmm... well, I'd guess it comes down to differences in mana manipulation technique."
In truth, aside from when we were out on commissions, I'd done nothing but train at the inn, so I'd never laid eyes on any high-ranked guild members.
No—come to think of it, they mostly took long-term commissions, so they rarely showed their faces at the guild in the first place. And we didn't exactly have the connections to get an introduction, so I'd never met one.
But at my answer, Kaya shook her head from side to side.
"No. For mana to exert force, your body has to be able to sustain it to a certain degree in the first place. Fine, I'll just tell you the answer. The secret to their strength is that their bodies themselves have fused with mana and evolved to a whole other level."
"...Body Metamorphosis?"
"Close enough. People who handle mana over long periods, and who have an innate physical aptitude for it, gradually find their flesh steeping in mana without even realizing it. When that happens, the body naturally transforms—by its wielder's own will—into something of an entirely different dimension. Broadly speaking, that mana organ you're carrying around near your heart is a similar sort of thing."
"I see...!"
I smacked my knee at Kaya's crystal-clear explanation.
I'd been racking my brain lately over how to grow even stronger, and Kaya had pinpointed exactly the territory where I'd been wandering lost.
Transforming the body into something else entirely... and here I'd been fixating solely on Willpower, the art of manipulating mana itself.
"Ah, your way isn't wrong, for the record. Strong will is essential if you ever want to become a true Master."
"Then which approach should I focus on for training?"
"That's... hmm. Let's pause the lesson here. I have something I need to say too. It's your fault the conversation drifted in the first place, you know."
"I'm sorry?"
"Hmm... where do I even start with this."
Kaya opened her mouth to speak, then clamped it shut again, as if something were catching in her throat.
I waited for her to continue, but after fidgeting and dithering for quite a while... she grabbed the bottle sitting beside her and tipped it back with a hearty swig.
Setting the bottle down hard, Kaya finally spoke, still hesitating.
"Let me say this up front. If you go around blabbing what I'm about to tell you—"
"Blabbing...?"
"I swear on the heavens, I'll tear you limb from limb."
"...Could you perhaps just not tell me, then?"
"No."
"..."
Kaya's I-will-murder-you-for-breathing-a-word attitude was dead serious.
How did I know?
Anyone bathed in a killing intent cold enough to make their skin crawl would think exactly the same.
"This doesn't follow any logical progression, but..."
"I'm a half-blood—half beastfolk, half human. My father was Bovine Beastkin. My mother was human."
"..."
Regardless of my reaction, Kaya abruptly began recounting her life story.
I genuinely had no idea what was happening anymore...
Wait, hybrids can even happen between beastfolk and humans?
"It's extremely rare, but it does happen. Usually it works like mine—the child carries some of the beastfolk traits their parents possessed."
"Horns..."
"There's one more thing I inherited besides that. What do you think it is?"
"? Hmm, let's see... no tail... no fur..."
I tilted my head.
I'd thought so since the day we first met—apart from the two cow horns on her head, there was really nothing unusual about her.
But Lena shot her hand straight up.
"Your physique, ma'am!"
"Ah..."
"That's right. Correct. This magnificent body is my father's inheritance, handed down to me whole."
Lena's answer was the right one.
That three-meter frame of solid muscle was unquestionably a body no ordinary human could ever hope to build.
Anyway, Kaya continued.
"No—in some ways, my body actually surpassed my father's. I don't know if you'd call it atavism or what, but before I'd even turned ten, there wasn't a single warrior in the tribe with a body better than mine."
"Whoa..."
"I'm grateful to my father. At least eighty percent of the reason I managed to survive wandering this brutal world is thanks to this body. But..."
Having gotten that far, Kaya shut her mouth again.
Maybe it was my imagination, but her face seemed to have flushed a little.
Was she drunk?
"...I want $#!$ too."
"I'm sorry?"
Kaya opened her mouth again and mumbled something, but her voice was so tiny that even my enhanced hearing struggled to catch it.
Where had that boisterous attitude from earlier gone?
I kept pressing her, and at last she bellowed at the top of her lungs.
"I! Want! A! Cute! Body! Too!"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
In the wake of Kaya's storm-like declaration, the house fell into a silence so frigid it was almost frightening.
Faced with words I couldn't begin to parse, I spiraled into a state of maximum confusion.
A cute body?
Come on. That had to be a joke.
"Laugh and you die. I will absolutely kill you."
"...I'm not laughing. See? Completely serious."
Under Kaya's murderous threat, I barely managed to drag down the corners of my mouth, which had been on their way up.
I'd assumed it was a joke and almost laughed.
Nearly died.
Kaya heaved a long, long sigh.
"Haah...... Yeah. I know. You think it's the ramblings of a lunatic."
"No! It's fine! There's nothing strange about it at all! I'd think any woman has thoughts like that!"
"You... think so?"
"Of course! If you're going to have a body at all, beautiful is better, right? Um... cute too, even."
"Exactly! I want to be cute too, dammit! And yet... and yet...!"
Thud! Thud!
Buoyed by Lena's encouragement, Kaya sprang to her feet and pounded her flat chest.
When her flesh collided, what rang out wasn't the sound of meat striking meat, but the clang of metal against metal.
Even without flexing, her chiseled pectorals rippled visibly through the thin fabric of her shirt.
A truly god-given physique.
But Kaya looked thoroughly dissatisfied.
"This godforsaken body does nothing but GROW, and refuses to SHRINK!"
"Couldn't you fix it with mana? You said yourself that some kind of Body Metamorphosis is possible."
"You think a human body is a toy you can just reshape on a whim?! It does NOT work like thaaaat!!!"
"My apologies."
I was cowed by the sheer madness in Kaya's roar.
Well, if it were something so easily fixed, she wouldn't be venting pent-up rage like this.
Kaya took a few deep breaths, barely managed to calm herself, and continued.
"I don't know what you two will make of this, but for me, this is nothing short of a lifelong quest."
"It's that serious?"
"...The shock of my first love telling me he didn't like women more muscular than himself—I still haven't forgotten it. Sometimes it shows up in my nightmares."
"..."
Such an aggressively domestic confession left me with nothing to say.
Kaya kept going, her irritation mounting.
"What's the point of money and strength?! Everywhere I go, I get treated like a man! Even when I tell them I'm a woman, they think it's a joke!"
"That's a shame..."
"Ah, though the 'Fist King' title does come in handy. I can pummel those bastards into paste and they don't dare make a sound. Well—if they get brave, I just turn them into half-dead pulp myself. It's the hassle that gets old."
"I see."
But why was she telling us—people she'd met only today—all of this?
When I raised the question carefully, Kaya pointed a finger at me.
"To be precise, it's because of you."
"Huh? Me?"
What did any of this story have to do with me?
I tilted my head.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After letting the heated atmosphere cool for a moment,
Kaya produced a tea set from somewhere, brewed a pot, and set it before us alongside a plate of snacks.
Speaking now in a calm, measured tone, she said:
"That thing you mentioned earlier—rebuilding the body with mana. It can actually be done artificially, too. At my level, a job like that isn't especially difficult."
"Oh, is that so?"
"But the body is an extraordinarily complex biological machine. Change it recklessly, and you risk side effects beyond imagining."
Huh? Then how do ordinary people go about transforming their bodies?
Didn't she just say it happened naturally?
Kaya answered my doubt in good faith.
"That works precisely because it uses your current body as the base. I made Body Metamorphosis sound grand, but in practice, all that happens is that new organs like qi pathways are added onto your existing flesh—or the quality of your muscle fibers changes."
"So in other words, the body's overall shape doesn't actually change."
"Right. You can adjust your outward appearance to a modest degree... and besides, there's no reason to go tinkering with a body you're already used to, so until now nobody's really had complaints."
But in my case, it would be different.
Kaya said this as she downed her tea in one gulp.
Even her thinnest pinky finger was too large for the teacup's handle, so she simply lifted the whole cup in her hand.
"Building an entirely new body, one that's unmistakably different from the one you have now—that's territory reserved for gods. Which is why I've never even dared try. But... what if there were an excellent blueprint I could reference? Wouldn't that change everything?"
As Kaya leaned her head to the side and fixed her gaze on me, her eyes glinted in a way that felt distinctly dangerous.
An inexplicable chill ran down my spine, and I shuddered.
She wouldn't. She couldn't possibly be planning to dissect me!?