Will (Part 1)
What would happen if I said, "Sorry, Kaya here did something weird to me, so I won't be able to take your commission, Count~"?
At the very least, he wouldn't kindly respond with, "Ah, I see. A shame — we'll have to hope for another opportunity."
Granted, since this involved the Fist King — an uncontainable, human-shaped calamity — there probably wouldn't be some massive penalty attached. But one thing was certain: I could not avoid our party's trust rating going into a vertical free fall.
So I explained everything to Kaya in detail, with the sole exception of the Count being the client.
This was an absurdly important commission, after all!!!
"Even better. That just makes you more desperate, doesn't it?"
"Are you being serious right now...?"
"No! Unni, isn't this going too far?!"
"Ah, you. Come do it with us while you're at it."
Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh!
"Gyaaaang..."
That was Lena, who had come to lodge a protest only to have all her mana sealed by Kaya's merciless Point-Strike, now staggering in place. It was the classic case of going to swat a fly off someone's shoulder and getting the fly glued on instead.
Kaya looked at the two of us — drained of most of our mana, standing there dumbstruck — and burst out laughing.
"So what! If we botch this commission, we just head to another city. Or hell, leave the North entirely! The world's a big place!"
"..." "...""
This wasn't some bluff of Kaya's, designed to make me feel even more cornered.
It was dead serious.
She genuinely did not care one way or the other what happened to my commission!
Only then did I feel the last thread of hope snap, and cold sweat began trickling down my back.
"...So. How do I undo this?"
When it came to meditation, comfort was everything.
To hell with complicated lotus positions — I simply stretched out on the floor and made myself comfortable.
Close my eyes and observe my inner self.
Deep breath.
"Hoooooh..."
"Your post-exercise muscle recovery speed is remarkable, I must say. It won't do to simply mimic the surface — I'll need to study your endocrine system as well."
"Hooooh..."
"I wonder if I could replicate the mana organ of the heart, too..."
Ugh. Kaya kept prodding me from the side, and I couldn't concentrate no matter what I did.
I cracked my eyes open and protested.
"C-could you keep it down a little?"
"Hm? This is my time, per the contract. All you have to do is stay still. And I'm really starting to enjoy this research."
"Damn it... doing weird things to people..."
I had no choice but to grumble and close my eyes again.
She was right — this was contractually her time to examine my body.
...Though undoing the Point-Strike was for my sake, mind you.
Still, undeterred by Kaya's interference, I held my focus stubbornly and examined my body — and some small progress emerged.
So this is the principle behind Point-Strike...
From the outside, the technique looked like nothing more than playing with one's fingers.
But wherever Kaya's fingertip lingered and departed, there was invariably something small left behind — something like a tiny needle.
Granted, it wasn't an ordinary needle. It was a bizarre one, packed with an absolutely absurd compression of mana.
And there's Will in there too...
Frankly speaking, even from the standpoint of psionics, the idea that embedding a few mana needles in the body would seal off one's mana was utterly preposterous.
Everything in this world operated according to some principle or other.
It wasn't quite on the level of what Kaya had demonstrated with her clenched fist, but those mana needles carried an enormous quantity of mana along with a formidable Will.
And the imprint within that Will was Restraint.
The needles are resonating with each other. So this is another way to use it...
The dozens of needles packed densely in around my Inner Heart were resonating with one another, amplifying their own power.
A force of mana and Will intertwined, flowing back and forth between the needles, sustaining a kind of formation.
Simply watching such a high-dimensional flow of power felt like a education in itself.
No—! This was no time to sit back and admire the view.
Remove these needles, and my mana would come back.
Focus.
"Work hard at it. You weren't lacking the aptitude for Will — only the environment for it to be cultivated."
"How long do you think it will take to undo the Point-Strike?"
"For an ordinary person, about a year. For you, maybe less. I'll keep applying the Point-Strike until you manage it, so don't you worry!"
"Hmm..."
True, I'd been handed an extremely difficult assignment . But looking at it another way, it wasn't all bad.
I'd have to grow stronger eventually anyway, so making progress while there was someone around to advise me was, in a sense, only natural.
The only thing that bothered me was the absolutely unreasonable time limit hanging over my head.
Eh, worst case, I'll just tell the Count I can't take the commission and wash my hands of it.
It would cost us some trust, sure, but we weren't planning to stay in Bolston forever anyway.
What mattered now was training to wield Will!
This might even be the breakthrough I needed for the plateau I'd been stuck on.
I deliberately steered my thoughts in that direction and stoked my motivation.
As it turned out, despite Kaya's confident promises, I saw no particular results at her place.
Worse, once she'd finished examining my body for the day, Kaya declared that she needed to do her own training and shooed us out.
And so Lena and I had no choice but to return to the mansion.
"Mmmnnn..."
"Uuuugh..."
"...I've heard your situation. Shall I help?"
It was Noah, approaching us as we groaned our way through meditation, meals skipped entirely.
Help, hm... In stories like this, the protagonist is supposed to firmly refuse outside assistance and grow stronger through his own power alone, but...
"Help us, Noah-bot!"
"Ajusshi, you do say strange things sometimes... Anyway, please help us, Unni!"
When I'd quietly asked Amy about it, she'd told me the sewer commission would go active tomorrow evening.
We were truly pressed for time!
This was no situation for picking and choosing our battles.
But how, exactly, was Noah planning to help?
Noah raised her white staff with a smooth motion and spoke.
"I believe this staff may prove useful. Though we won't know for certain until we try."
"That's... the staff you got from the [Seed], isn't it."
"Yes. I've named it the Wand of Craving. I've run various experiments on it, and it has rather amusing functions."
SHLORP—!
At a flick of Noah's arm, the rigid-looking staff transformed into a whip in a single motion.
I'd seen this before, but... watching it now, she rather looked like the dominatrix of some SM club...
She wasn't planning to whip me, was she?
THWIP! Chomp!
Noah snapped her wrist and flicked the whip once.
Thankfully, she was not trying to flog me with it.
As if it had a will of its own, the white whip stretched out on its own and wound itself around me, binding me tightly.
I ended up trussed up like something in rope.
"This staff(?) has a mana-drain function, just like the original. The mana needles the Fist King planted are made of mana themselves, so there may be some effect."
"...Do you really have to do it in this position?"
"It's possible remotely as well, but the closer the contact with your body, the better the effect. Then, I'll begin."
Byoo-byoo-byoot!
With Noah's flat announcement, countless tiny [mouths] erupted from the surface of the whip binding my body.
Kind of gross?
There was a strange sensation coming from the parts of me touching the whip, too — it seemed mouths had formed on its inner surface as well.
Shuuuuuup...
With that oddly familiar sound — the very sound of air being sucked dry — the Wand of Craving began absorbing the aura from my body.
Thanks to Kaya's Point-Strike, the aura I had left was already scarce, and now even that was being siphoned away.
The ever-increasing wave of lethargy—the ever-deepening drain was agonizing.
But it was working.
Wobble, wobble...
Kaya's mana needles shuddered, as if they were about to be pulled out!
Perhaps because this was happening at practically zero distance, the wand's suction was no weaker than when I'd faced the main body back in the dungeon.
If it kept going like this—
TING!
But Kaya's preparations did not come apart so easily.
The moment the mana composing the needles began to disperse, the Will of Restraint imprinted within them flared even brighter — and locked the needles firmly in place.
Sensing that things had gone sideways, Noah retracted the whip back into its staff form.
"It seems this won't be solved by simply draining mana."
"So it really comes down to the Will, after all... I'll have to do this the honest way."
The shortcut had failed.
The solution looped right back around to square one.
I would have to wield Will the way Kaya intended, and pull the needles out myself.
But... what even IS Will, exactly?
Will. The faculty of the mind that strives to accomplish something.
I understood the dictionary definition well enough.
But handling it properly was an entirely separate matter.
No — wait. Was [Will] even something so detached from oneself that it had to be consciously controlled in the first place?
Thought is Will. That's how I'd always thought of it.
And that alone had been more than enough to reshape my blade aura with no trouble at all.
But if Kaya was to be believed, the reason I'd been able to create Sawtooth Sword Aura was not superior Will — merely an abundance of mana-related talent.
...Come to think of it, I may have been treating [Will] as a synonym for [imagination] all this time.
I imagined a chainsaw to make Sawtooth Sword Aura... and when I copied Kaya's mana manipulation, I pictured atoms.
That blend of imagination and training had served me pretty well until now.
But suddenly, it occurred to me that these very habits might be holding me back.
If the methods I'd relied on so fondly hadn't been tempering my Will at all... then I clearly needed to walk a different path.
"Oh! I think I've got it!"
Nine hours had passed since the Point-Strike.
Nearly midnight now, and after her long meditation, Lena had finally shown some results.
I rushed over and examined her — Kaya's mana needles were roughly half extracted, overall.
How on earth had she done it?
Despite my insistent questioning, Lena just mumbled vaguely.
"Uh... I dunno. I just... thought about them coming out, I guess?"
"Hmm..."
Hearing her explanation helped not at all.
What was the difference between me and Lena?
I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.
As I wracked my brain, Noah — who had been with us for her own research into Will — tossed out a remark.
"Perhaps try thinking a bit more simply?"
"Simply?"
"Given that Lena has achieved some degree of success, [Will] may not be such an alien power after all. It likely shares common ground with [thought]."
"But... it doesn't work for me?"
No matter how much I thought about the needles coming out, the needles showed zero intention of moving.
All I could feel was the Will Kaya had embedded in them, and nothing else.
Noah, apparently having already thought this through, answered my question smoothly.
"Then... think even more simply. Not 'pulling out the needles' — but perhaps the act of pulling out, in and of itself, is the correct focus. Or maybe you need to simplify it even further than that."
"...That makes sense."
The moment you think "the needles are coming out," your mind inevitably drifts into an image of needles being extracted.
Could that be a kind of impurity?
If so, then purging stray thoughts and concentrating only on the pure thought itself might be the way to refine one's Will.
"Alright. Time to try again."
It was faint, but having grasped a clue, my motivation stirred back to life.
Determined to fight off the sleep pressing in on me, I deliberately sat down on the hard floor and closed my eyes.
For all my confidence at the start, things did not go smoothly.
I was no peerless genius; dropping into a state of selfless absorption and wiping away every stray thought in one stroke was genuinely difficult.
Actually, strictly speaking, since I had to sustain a specific thought, I needed to achieve something arguably harder than selflessness itself.
Each time I quietly opened my eyes, an hour or two had slipped by, so I was concentrating in my own way... but I could tell this wasn't going to cut it.
"Zzz..."
"Oh, for—"
Somewhere along the way, Lena had fallen asleep — I could hear her soft, steady breathing.
My concentration was broken yet again.
I should have known better when Kaya said it so confidently... this was really no ordinary feat.
As I suffered, Noah — who had been practicing something or other of her own — spoke up.
"I believe there may be a workaround."
"Another one?"
"The problem right now is maintaining a state of focus... isn't it?"
"That's right."
"There was a method we used in the old laboratory to train short-term memory retention in the Chimeras. It might be of help."
ZZZZZRT!
Noah spread both hands apart, and between them, blue currents of electricity crackled back and forth with a sinister buzz.
Electricity?
What exactly does she intend to do with that?
"A method of manipulating bioelectric current to temporarily boost the brain's concentration. It originally required dedicated equipment, but I have the relevant data... and I can use Magic as well, so I believe I can manage something. What say you?"
"...And you're going to press that against my head?"
"Yes. Rest assured, the voltage is low despite appearances."
"Damn it. Fine. Do it."
I didn't even ask for the details.
Noah would never do anything dangerous to me.
This was a choice she'd made after weighing safety in her own meticulous way, so it was more than trustworthy enough.
It did bother me that I was resorting to a shortcut mere hours after swearing off them for the honest path...
But since when was I a purist? If it's a cheat or a workaround, if I can use it at all — I use it. That's the rule.
"Then I'll begin. Please relax."
Her fingers brushed through my hair—
Noah offered her lap as a pillow, and her long hair brushed against my face, tickling.
But I had no time to savor the sensation. The instant Noah's fingers touched my temple—
A tingling current flowed in!
BZZZRT!
Eeeeiiii...
Along with a jolt of stinging pain, a ringing rose in my ears.
My consciousness was fading—