Sage of the Stars (4)
It had been eighteen hours since Oscar began climbing this godforsaken mountain range all over again.
He was trudging through a blizzard zone where he couldn't see a hand in front of his face. His breath came ragged, his stomach churned, and sweet sweat poured from his mouth. With every gain in altitude, the air grew thinner, and now his legs were starting to go numb beneath him.
"……"
More than anything, he ached to lie down somewhere and rest. Thirty minutes—no, even five would do. Of course, that was all it ever was: a thought. Oscar's two legs never stopped, because the only thing he could rely on right now was himself.
"……Haah, haah."
An hour later, Oscar emerged from the blizzard zone and slowly pulled off his goggles. At the far edge of the snowfield stretching out before him, the observatory where the Sage of the Stars resided had finally come into view.
There was just one problem. A man stood dumbly in the middle of the snowfield, directly between him and it.
Of course. These kinds of ominous premonitions always prove correct.
Eighteen hours. He'd suspected as much ever since not a single ambush had come at him over all that time.
No fox is bold enough to poach a predator's prey on its own territory.
Oscar studied the predator—a man with long, unbound hair, eyes closed. The mana emanating from him was so heavy and dense that it seemed to swallow the entire snowfield whole.
Whatever route he took up this mountain, there was no slipping past that man's watch.
The man was, incredibly, a 6th-level mage. And yet something about him felt different—unstable, somehow, compared to an ordinary 6th-level. Oscar pinpointed the reason almost immediately.
He forced circuits into a body that wasn't ready for them. He's a bomb on the verge of going off.
If one insisted on a number, he was somewhere around level five and a half. Considering he looked to be in his late twenties at most, he was undoubtedly a staggering genius. At the same time, Oscar could guess why the man wanted to meet the Sage of the Stars. He wanted to learn the magic that could repair that ruined body.
But it's impossible.
Even drawing on every scrap of magical knowledge he possessed, no such spell existed.
Well—there is one way, if you insisted on counting it.
Abandoning every level of attainment he'd ever achieved, returning to being an ordinary person, and starting over from scratch. And even that came with slim odds, since the process of destroying the installed circuits could easily kill him.
"Hmm."
Just then, the man—having sensed his presence—slowly opened his eyes halfway. The gaze revealed beneath his lids was as calm as a frozen winter lake.
"……Seeing you in the flesh, you look even younger than I imagined."
"That's because I'm a greenhorn who only just turned twenty-one. So don't squabble with a kid—it's beneath you. Let me pass nicely."
At that bone-deep remark, the man laughed without a sound.
"Twenty-one, hm. A life with its whole future still ahead of it."
"Who can say? No one knows what the future holds for anyone. That's exactly why I intend to seize every chance that comes my way."
"Khek. I can't win with words, can I."
Oscar made his request to the man shaking his head.
"Please step aside."
"Sorry, but that might be difficult. I've got something I need to do too."
"……You'd best not push yourself. If you cast magic with that body, you could die."
"I know. The Order gave up on me long ago."
The man's voice was flat as he said it, and not a trace of regret or lingering attachment showed on his face. He asked:
"Tell me, young mage. What is your dream?"
"To become stronger than anyone alive, so that no one can ever touch my people again."
"You dream a harder dream than you look capable of."
The man smiled faintly.
"I had a dream too, once. To become the greatest mage in the world, just like Oscar Sage, and make something of myself. But once my body turned out like this, my dream changed. You want to know what it is now?"
"……Fixing your body, I'd imagine."
"Ah, there was a time when that was the dream, sure. But I threw that one away too."
Tap, tap. He drummed his fist against his own heart.
"There's only one thing I want. To live as a mage, and to die as one. That is all."
"……"
It was far too modest a thing to call a dream. Which probably meant he had no other choice left at all. Oscar's face turned bitter.
"So you've been standing here waiting all this time? For someone to come along and kill you?"
"That's right. And I refuse to die at just anyone's hands. I want to die at the hands of someone who'll one day become a truly great mage."
"……You're the worst person I've met in years."
The man cackled at the scathing assessment, sweeping his hair back.
"Come at me, mage."
Oscar drew up his mana, smooth and controlled.
His body may be wrecked, but the gap between us is still enormous. A head-on fight is hopeless. Whatever I throw at him, he'll never fail to withstand the sheer difference in output.
So the biggest weapon available to me right now is……
The natural environment. And not just any—a snow-covered mountain buried under an colossal weight of snow.
Clap! Mind made up, Oscar brought his hands together in a flash.
Gust Hand
At once, a pair of colossal hands surged up near the mountain's peak. They clenched into fists and slammed down into the ground—BOOM!
Rumble-rumble-rumble. With a violent shudder, the accumulated snow began cascading down the mountainside.
"Hooh. An avalanche. Not bad at all."
The man murmured his admiration as he watched the pure white wave bearing down on him. The judgment to offset his lacking attack power with the forces of nature was first-rate thinking.
"However."
Just before the avalanche swallowed him, a single thread of mana blossomed from the man.
"You picked the wrong opponent."
Crack-crack-crack! The surging tide of snow froze solid mid-descent, transformed into something like a beautiful sculpture of glass. And within that scene—time itself seemingly stopped—Oscar's eyes trembled with shock.
That's……
It was not the magic of the Four Great Magic Towers. The Blue Tower did have a school devoted to ice, but it felt nothing like this. Which meant the man was a wielder of unique magic.
"As you can see, my magic finds it rather difficult to show mercy. So……"
The man let the words trail off as he pressed one hand against the frozen avalanche.
"If you don't want to die, get out of the way yourself."
KRAKOOOM!
With a thunderous roar, the ice detonated into hundreds—thousands—of shards that came charging down like a flood. Countless fragments stained the sky, glinting like stars as they caught the sunlight on their way down.
Oscar gritted his teeth as countermeasures surfaced and vanished in his mind, one after another.
Defend? No.
A dozen or so shards might have been manageable, but there was no blocking that many. Worse, the instant he raised a defense, the initiative passed to his opponent.
Lose the initiative, and everything is over.
Even in a fight between mages of the same level, whoever held the initiative held an overwhelming advantage. Against a higher-level opponent, surrendering it meant certain defeat.
Then……
Two options remained: evasion or attack. Oscar chose both at once.
I punch straight through the front.
The moment his resolve hardened, Acceleration suffused his body.
"Hmm?"
Using Acceleration now? Did the boy actually intend to dodge all those thousands of shards? The moment doubt crossed the man's face—
"……Acceleration."
A second burst of wind coiled around Oscar's entire frame. Simultaneously, his figure vanished as if the ground had swallowed him whole.
Bat-bat-bat-bat-bat!
The space he'd just occupied bristled with jagged shards of ice buried deep into the earth.
Dodge what can be dodged, deflect what must be deflected.
The shortest path between himself and his enemy. Down that line Oscar sprinted without a flicker of hesitation, his eyes locked solely on the man ahead.
"……My."
Watching the young mage close the distance, the man was honestly awed. There was no faltering in those steps, no tremor in that unflinching gaze—the expression and movement of someone who trusted himself one hundred percent.
I had a time like that once too.
His body was broken junk now, but there had been days when he too shone that brilliantly. Days when he was dazzling enough to make everyone turn and look.
A hot surge. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of the man's mouth.
That was before I became this trash heap, of course.
All that, from casting a spell or two. But he had no regrets. Better to simply die than live unable to be a mage. The conviction he'd nurtured while guarding this snowfield hardened once more.
"I am still a mage."
Faded and worn though he was, his soul burned hotter than it ever had. The man unleashed everything he could muster against the young mage who had closed the gap in an instant.
"……"
"……"
A moment that lasted mere seconds in reality stretched out like an eternity. And then, having come within range, Oscar detonated every last drop of mana he possessed in a single burst.
"I'm sorry."
He apologized in advance. This was surely not the ending a man who'd craved a fair, final contest would have wanted.
"Cold Death."
What the man completed was a colossal spear of ice—a spell distilled with the essence of destruction, one that froze its target solid at the merest graze. What Oscar completed, on the other hand, was neither an attack spell nor a defensive one. To put it bluntly, it wasn't even a spell.
Whoooooosh!
It was nothing more than the raw release of every ounce of mana stored within his body.
"Khulgh!"
Exposed to that violent storm of mana, Oscar vomited black blood. His already hypersensitive mana circuits had tangled from the sheer density of mana compressed over and over. If this was what it did to him—with a sound body and intact circuits—his opponent needed no guessing.
"……"
The man stared blankly at the ice spear he'd created. Gulk, gulk. Black, dead blood welled back up his throat, his organs and circuits a ruin inside. The spear clenched in his fist scattered into a handful of dissolving mana. From the inside out, he was already collapsing.
"A shame."
The man murmured. Was even fighting as a mage and meeting a mage's end a luxury beyond his reach? His lifespan spent, he crumpled into the snow like a collapsing building.
"……"
What came to Oscar first wasn't the triumph of victory but the relief of survival. Not joy, but the guilt of an apology owed.
An old man was waiting at the observatory. It was a face Oscar had seen once before—the Sage of the Stars.
"You've had a hard climb. Forgive the abruptness of a first meeting, but there is one question I must ask before all else."
The old man fixed Oscar with a gaze steeped in profound mystery.
"Who are you?"
"I'm a 3rd-level mage of the White Tower, Oscar—"
"No, no. I'm not asking after the name of the shell you've wrapped yourself in. I wish to know the name of what lies within it. Allow me to ask again."
The Sage of the Stars delivered the staggering words with perfect calm, then spoke once more.
"Just who are you?"