The Sixth Sense
"Even this world of strings, visible only to us—the place I've named the Superstring World—has its own rules."
Ado Bale, once he slipped into his serious teaching mode, looked every bit the grand archmage Oscar had imagined.
"Rule one. Every object, every existence, possesses a number of strings befitting its size and form."
A few pebbles rolled across the ground flew up and landed between the two of them.
Ado Bale pointed at the smallest among them and asked, "How many strings do you see flowing out of this stone?"
"One."
"Correct. And the one beside it?"
"Three."
Even stones that looked identical carried different numbers of strings depending on their size and shape.
Oscar nodded along like an eager student. "So larger objects must have that many more strings."
"Of course. Then let me explain the second rule right away."
Rising to his feet, Ado Bale stood before a boulder several times larger than a man and said, "This rock has thirty-seven strings attached to it, but each one serves a different purpose."
"...Purpose? Don't tell me each string has a designated role?"
"It does. That's the second rule."
As he said it, he lightly plucked one of the strings.
Yet on the surface, the boulder appeared entirely unchanged.
"What separates one spatial mage's skill from another's is the ability to interpret the strings. When I pull this string, you must predict exactly what will happen. Go on—see for yourself."
Standing before the boulder, Oscar carefully examined it from every angle.
As expected, there was no difference whatsoever from before.
Wait—a moment.
As a sudden thought struck him, he knocked his fist against the rock.
Thoom, thud!
All he had done was pull a single string, yet the rock's interior rang out with an echo as if it were completely hollow.
"The core of an object above all—identifying, faster than anyone else, the string that can erase it. That is what matters most."
"...Are there no hints of any kind? Every string looks exactly the same to me."
"Didn't I tell you before? This is a magic that must rely on instinct alone."
Then he turned and looked at Oscar with eyes that were stern and utterly unwavering.
"You must arrive at it yourself. When you pull this string, it will feel as though such-and-such should happen—you must train until the scene painted in your mind manifests in reality exactly as you imagined it."
"That's absurd..."
The method of training was different from conventional magic from the very first step.
And that made it all the further removed from anything resembling a 'discipline' of study. A discipline, after all, demanded that any result be explained through logical, systematic means.
Instinct, then.
Gazing into Ado's unyielding eyes, Oscar asked, "You said something when I first entered this place—that you'd intended to hand this magic over to me anyway. Was that feeling, too, the basis for believing no one could wield it better than me?"
"It was. Train in this magic, and your senses develop abnormally fast. I call it the Sixth Sense. And when you stepped into the Starlight Library, that sixth sense of yours was screaming."
Ado Bale gave a faint smile. "I knew that someone like you could wield this magic at a level close to my own."
"..."
Under any other circumstances, he wouldn't have believed it.
No logic whatsoever behind it—just a claim resting purely on 'feeling.'
But weighing the difference between time out there and time in here, Oscar nodded calmly. "I'll be in your care for a while, then."
It seemed he would be staying here for quite some time.
Ado Bale had insisted it was all about instinct, but Oscar was skeptical.
...If I try hard enough, I feel like I could establish the rules these strings follow. Could it just be that Master Ado isn't capable of it?
To prove his hypothesis, he threw himself straight into experiments.
He gathered ten rocks from the forest and shaped every one of them into an identical form.
"There—same shape, same size, so... okay. Sure enough, the number of strings matches too."
As his nose climbed into the air, Ado chuckled quietly and encouraged him. "Pull them to your heart's content. That, too, will become your experience."
"Prepare to be amazed."
From the ten rocks, Oscar pulled only the strings that matched under the most similar conditions.
The result was a resounding failure.
Only two of the rocks had their cores removed.
Watching this, Ado Bale laughed heartily. "You really are a fool. Did you think I'd never tried something like that?"
"Well... but if that's the case, you're honestly saying it all just comes down to luck?"
"Not luck. Instinct."
Saying so, he plucked one string from each of the remaining eight rocks.
And sure enough, upon inspection, every one of the rocks was hollow inside.
"Hmm. It seems you're in need of some special training. What do you say?"
"...What kind of special training?"
"Oh, you. This is what I like about you."
Tap, tap. Ado Bale tapped a finger against his own temple.
"You rely far too much on the information your brain feeds you."
"Come on, that's not just me—that's perfectly natural for anyone."
Sight, smell, hearing, touch—the senses the brain perceives.
Humans judge any existence or phenomenon by synthesizing those streams of information. And naturally, the sharper that ability, the higher the praise one receives.
"I was always dull of sense by nature, which is why I awakened my sixth sense so quickly. But your senses are as keen as a well-honed blade, so I'm afraid I'll have to employ a slightly... drastic method."
"...That sounds unsettling."
"You're free to refuse. But there is no better way to cultivate the sixth sense."
Oscar had a feeling he knew exactly what was coming. The foreboding was so strong it almost felt like a sixth sense in itself.
"It's not 'live with every one of your senses blocked,' is it?"
"And why not? The loss and absence of the senses a human being has relied on their entire life."
Ado Bale smiled serenely. "It will grant you experiences and sensations unlike anything you've ever known."
"..."
He hadn't been joking.
Ado Bale really had used magic to seal off Oscar's sight, smell, hearing, and touch completely.
Worse, on the grounds that he didn't look enough like an ascetic, he'd wrapped a blindfold over his eyes a second time for good measure.
Hmm.
Oscar, who had been sitting blankly on the dirt floor, slowly rose to his feet.
Then he walked forward without any real direction, only to freeze after a few steps.
...Was the path this way, again?
He had tempered body and mind his whole life, yet the simple blocking of his senses was enough to crumble his certainty. Until now, a path had been nothing more than something he saw with his eyes and walked down if it happened to be there.
Do I really have to go this far?
His movements cowed, Oscar's stride shrank from the very first step.
Every sense had been severed—yet his perception of pain alone had been amplified dozens of times over. Even a simple stumble at this point would surely be followed by an agonizing aftermath.
Just as Oscar had been pacing in place for what felt like an eternity, a lightbulb flashed on above his head.
Ah—could the answer be mana?
Thinking it through, it was only natural. Every one of his physical senses was currently cut off.
Then through what medium was he supposed to receive information from the outside world?
Only one answer surfaced from that question: mana.
Come to think of it, Scan works that way, and even basic mana detection. These are abilities I've already been using without a hitch, aren't they?
The moment he began surveying the surrounding terrain through his mana and set off walking—
Smack!
"Argh!"
A stinging slap—hard enough to make his eyes spin (not that he could see them spinning)—cracked across his forehead.
At the same instant, Ado Bale's voice, carried through message magic, rang through his mind.
Wrong approach. That is simply manufacturing artificial replacements for your old senses through mana.
"Then what am I supposed to do? Live out my whole life like this until I get used to it?"
...Hmm. That wouldn't be so bad either.
"I'm sorry, what?"
Collide. Break. Shatter to pieces. That fear will be what leads you into a new world.
With those parting words, Ado Bale's voice was heard no more.
A month had passed since his senses were sealed.
Oscar was running through the forest.
Naturally, he wasn't sweeping the terrain with his mana anymore.
"...!"
A sharp alarm blared inside his skull.
The instant it did, Oscar stopped mid-stride—then walked slowly forward.
His body caught on a protruding tree root, tumbled across the ground, and a wave of tremendous pain washed over him.
"Kgh."
At first, the pain had terrified him.
Unable to see even an inch ahead, unable to hear a thing, even a single step had been frightening. Back then, he had stood rigid, dreading the distant agony that might arrive at any moment.
Of course, even now, groping through the darkness was frightening, and falling, tumbling, and crashing into things still hurt.
But these days, he felt he was beginning to vaguely understand what Ado Bale had meant.
This, too, is adaptation.
Hundreds, thousands of injuries, breakages, and bruises had forged his understanding of pain and fear. That sense had begun to etch itself into his body, into his very cells.
It was an absurdly brutish method, but lately he felt he understood what the old man meant by 'instinct.'
This feeling that sometimes rings through my head.
It was a kind of warning—a signal.
From that day on, Oscar ran through the forest every single day. At the start, merely escaping the forest took a full day, and his falls blew past four hundred without breaking a sweat. But with each passing day, his completion time and his fall count both began to shrink.
And naturally, so that he could never memorize the course, he changed his running route every day.
"..."
Pat, pat!
As he ran through the forest, Oscar shifted his upper body lightly in response to the warnings flooding in from every direction.
Perhaps because he'd chosen an especially treacherous route today, his sixth sense was issuing more alarms than it ever had before.
"Hooh, hooh."
He counted the time in his head.
From the moment he set off to the moment he burst out of the forest: a mere three hours.
A time made possible only by acceleration magic and a full-tilt sprint.
And in all that headlong speed, the number of times he'd fallen or crashed into something was exactly zero.
"...Ah."
At the same moment, a light so bright it stung his eyes burst upon him.
Oscar squinted against the brilliance he hadn't seen in who knew how long.
"Just as I thought—you have a gift for this."
Ado Bale, wearing a gentle smile, was standing beside a massive boulder.
"Care to give it a pull?"
"..."
Oscar walked up to the boulder and slowly closed his eyes.
And he began to empty himself of every scrap of information. The soft dirt beneath his feet, the great tree that had cast its shade over him—even Ado Bale, who was surely watching him at this very moment.
"..."
Then, within his mind, he conjured the world of strings.
In that world, among all the strings Oscar perceived with his senses, only one burned bright.
Without a moment's hesitation, he pulled it—and slowly opened his eyes.
The great boulder sitting before him showed no visible change whatsoever.
Clap, clap, clap.
Presently, the sound of Ado Bale's applause reached his ears. He was looking at Oscar with an expression of deep satisfaction.
"To fully awaken the sixth sense in a mere five months. What an absurd little monster you are."
"...You were attacking me with magic off and on today, weren't you?"
"None of your moaning. You dodged them all just fine. Congratulations—you are now a proper spatial mage. Ah, of course—"
He glanced up and down Oscar's body with a smile.
"That includes becoming a 4th Level as well."
Four lines of mana circuits pulsing within Oscar's body.
It was the most certain proof that he had become a 4th Level Intermediate Mage.