It's Not Over Yet (1)
Bloop. Bloop.
"……."
Oscar, still wearing his goggles and gas mask, had been glaring into the flask when he abruptly snuffed out the lamp's flame. The movement that followed—transferring the contents into a reagent bottle—wasted not a single motion or moment.
"Hm. Not bad."
What was it they said? Form is temporary, but class is permanent.
With the practice brew finished successfully, his heart felt considerably lighter.
Good thing I was worried about feeling estranged from a new body for nothing.
In cases like this, it was the head that remembered, not the body, as they say. It was also a blessing that the tools remained unchanged even after twenty years. If there had been any magic-engineering contraptions lying around, he'd have been fumbling helplessly, with no idea how to use them.
"Hah... hahk!"
Just then, Franc staggered into the workshop, lugging a sack bigger than his own body.
THUDD!
The moment he set the sack down, he collapsed flat onto the floor.
"Heh... hehk... my precious back..."
"Did you get everything on the list?"
"Not a single thing missing. I did well, right?"
Franc held out a crumpled receipt he'd fished from his pocket. Oscar checked the list and nodded.
"Good shopping."
"Hmph, naturally. I'm thirsty—got anything to drink?"
"There's a fatigue recovery potion, but—"
"Oh, that's the expensive stuff, isn't it? I'll take it."
Franc drained the potion in one gulp, and vitality bloomed across his face.
"Ohhh! Nice and warm. You made this yourself?"
"Yep."
"Where'd you get the ingredients?"
Oscar pointed behind him. "There were some left over in the cabinet."
"...Those ingredients were bought at least ten years ago?"
"It's fine. You won't die."
When you're young, you're supposed to build up your tolerance by scrounging stuff like that anyway.
Leaving behind Franc, whose expression had darkened dramatically, Oscar spread open the sack and let out a whistle of admiration.
"The ingredients are in great shape. I'll have to thank the shopkeeper later."
"Thank me, not him. The shopkeeper got angry instead, saying I only picked out the prime stuff and left him the dregs."
"With an eye like that, you should hang up your mage robes and become a merchant."
He'd be more than fit to run a merchant guild.
"Actually, if the White Tower ever falls, I cou—ow!"
Franc suddenly yelped and clutched his head. A pair of eyes, round as doorknobs, turned toward Oscar.
"Wh-why'd you hit me?"
"Sorry. You said the White Tower was going to fall, and my hand moved on its own."
It's reflexive. My knuckles just know.
"...You little—pretty sure you haven't lost your memories at all, have you."
Shooting a suspicious glare, Franc pushed out his lips and asked, "Anyway, so what am I supposed to do now?"
"You're offering to help?"
"Duh. Elder Fidelina said to give you a hand once the ingredient deliveries were done. Said you'd have a hard time alone."
So he acts like he can't wait to eat me alive to my face, but he worries about me after all.
Oscar didn't particularly need an assistant, but it couldn't hurt to have one.
Actually, this works out well. I've been curious about him anyway.
Little Oscar's journal had noted that the White Tower currently harbored a considerable number of 'problem children'—exceptionally talented mages, each missing a screw somewhere. One of them was the Franc Sirius standing right in front of him.
The journal said that simply whipping those problem children into shape would go a long way toward restoring the tower's fighting strength.
That assessment had come from little Oscar, whose insight was razor-sharp, so it couldn't be baseless. And of course, he could verify the details himself as they brewed the potions.
"Let's sort the ingredients first."
The two busied themselves for a while, and soon the ingredients were piled high in one corner of the workshop. Franc eyed the heap, pulled on his goggles and gas mask, and said,
"I noticed this when buying them, but every single one of these is a dangerous poison herb, isn't it?"
"Being poisonous doesn't mean they can't be used as medicine."
Black lily-of-the-valley, red dogwood berries, ghost mushrooms, and mirva leaves. The ingredients before them had been used as components of both poison and medicine since time immemorial.
"Now then, Franc. If we want to use these poison herbs, what's the first step we have to take?"
"Boil them in water, obviously. You've got to draw out the toxins first."
Correct.
You'd need to boil them for at least twelve hours, changing the water regularly, to fully extract the toxins these ingredients carried.
"But that method has one fatal flaw: it's not only the toxins that get drawn out."
It was the medicinal efficacy itself. The beneficial compounds—the very reason one went to the trouble of removing the toxins in the first place—flowed out along with the poison.
"With these poison herbs, once you've purged all the toxins, about 16 percent of the medicinal effect remains on average."
"Huh? That's it?"
Franc made a face of utter astonishment and clicked his tongue. "That does seem like a waste, but I guess there's no way around it. You can't use them at all without removing the toxins."
"And what if there were a method that extracted 98 percent of the medicinal effect, completely independent of the toxins?"
"Oh come on, that's impossible. If something like that were possible, you could monopolize the entire potion market and—"
"—and you could, couldn't you? Just like the White Tower of the past did."
He didn't need to look far back—even in the era when he himself had been Tower Master, the potion market had belonged to the White Tower alone. As that fact dawned on him, Franc's eyes wavered.
"Don't tell me... you restored it? That method?"
"Well, something like that."
With that brief reply, Oscar gathered up four of the ingredients and approached the cauldron. Over the briskly boiling water, he laid an iron plate perforated with dense rows of holes.
"Franc. Do you know what a mandu is? It's a dish from Yeon Country."
"Of course I do. I've even tried them."
"Good. To make those dumplings, you need something called a steamer."
Steaming meant cooking ingredients with the hot vapor rising from boiling water. Oscar placed the ingredients one by one onto the iron plate, where hot steam was just beginning to gather.
"Like this, you see. It lets you cook the ingredients while minimizing damage to them."
Of course, leaving them any longer would have caused damage all the same, so Oscar counted one minute and twenty seconds in his head before retrieving the ingredients at once.
"There. The prep work is done."
"But wouldn't the toxins still be in there?"
"Right. That's what we remove now."
Oscar glanced sideways at him. "You can use basic magic, can't you?"
"...I'm not amazing at it or anything, but I can manage the basics."
"That'll do."
Nodding, Oscar drew his mana up in an instant.
"Air Drain."
WHOOOOSH!
The instant the spell activated, thick clouds of vapor were drawn out of the perfectly parboiled ingredients. Using his mana, Oscar pinned each plume of vapor in place in midair.
"Now, in this state, we isolate just the toxins drifting within the vapor."
"...How?"
"Like this."
Fwiiiish!
With a single pass of wind, the toxic components drifting in the vapor were cleanly swept away—much like laundering a dirt-stained shirt.
"The vapor that's left is toxin-free now, so all that's left is mixing it in the precise ratios. Red dogwood at 23 percent, mirva leaves at 47 percent..."
Each time his fingers flicked lazily through the air, the plumes of vapor divided themselves into their respective proportions and streamed neatly into the reagent bottles.
Click. Having finished everything, Oscar capped the reagent bottle and turned around.
"And there you have it—the remedy for the Cadena Flu is complete. See? Easy, right?"
"...Do you even know what that word means?"
"Stop whining and try making it yourself."
At those words, Franc's face fell like a shadow had passed over it. Standing before the massive cauldron like a ox being led to slaughter, he shut his eyes and groped through his memory.
Ugh, how did it go again? It definitely started with...
Air Drain.
WHOOOOSH!
Franc swiftly pinned the vapor emitted by each ingredient in midair, just as Oscar had.
Oh.
Oscar let out a small breath of admiration. Truthfully, this was not a feat a 3rd-level mage could usually manage after seeing it performed exactly once.
His mana control is a little unstable, but not bad at all.
At least on the surface, it was hardly different from what Oscar himself had done.
But I suppose that's where it ends.
After fixing the vapor in place, Franc could do nothing but squirm and groan. He kept shooting furtive glances over, like a puppy that desperately needed to relieve itself—somehow communicating a plea for help.
Unable to watch any longer, Oscar asked, "Why are you just standing there?"
"This is genuinely unfair. You know I can't do dual casting!"
Dual casting—the art of wielding two separate spells simultaneously. Normally, it took a mage of the 4th or 5th level to even grasp the principle behind it.
"Well, I suppose a genius like you figured it out early on, didn't you."
"I didn't grasp it because I'm a genius. It's an easy technique once you know the trick."
By way of comparison, it was rather like learning to ride a bicycle. Once you learned it, you could never forget it for the rest of your life.
Oscar asked in a coaxing voice, "Every time you try to use dual casting, your mana tangles up and flows backward, and it fails. Am I right?"
"How did you—!"
Before the startled Franc could get another word out, Oscar spoke.
"I'll teach you. Dual casting."
At the offer, the boy's ears perked right up. And no wonder—dual casting was a closely guarded secret that no mage ever shared willingly. Unless you were born into a mage family or took a high-ranking mage as your master, figuring it out on your own was the only way.
"...Seriously? You're not lying?"
"Serious. Like I said, it's easy once you understand the principle."
Oscar raised both fists, extending one finger on the left and two on the right.
"Now, you have two hands in front of you. Which of these is the better shape for using dual casting?"
"That'd be... the right one, obviously."
"Why do you think so?"
"You've extended your index and middle fingers. Two fingers—feels like dual casting would come naturally with them?"
"Correct. Then what do those fingers represent?"
"The number of spells? Since it's dual casting and all."
"Bzzt. Wrong."
Oscar let a light smile slip.
"This is where mages who fail at dual casting make their biggest mistake. Their entire focus is buried in the idea that they must complete two spells at the same moment."
"...Isn't that exactly what you're supposed to do?"
"No. If your direction is off from the very start, there's no way you'll arrive at the right destination."
With that, he gave his V-sign a gentle waggle.
"What these two fingers represent is mana."
"...Huh? Mana? Not spells?"
Stunned by the completely unexpected answer, Franc echoed the question in a daze.
"That's right. Think about it. A mage who can't use dual casting draws up his mana as usual, then suddenly splits it in two right at the moment of manifestation—how could the flow not tangle and choke? That's an advanced approach only for people who've already gotten comfortable with dual casting."
"In other words, someone who can't walk was trying to run?"
"Exactly. The orthodox way to practice dual casting is to prepare two streams of mana from the very beginning. This is the mana for spell A, that is the mana for spell B. Only when you set up the streams like that in advance does the flow of mana stay untangled."
"Oh..."
Franc's pupils trembled faintly. Once he heard it, it was such a simple—and at the same time, such an obvious—explanation.
"Why on earth did I never think of this before? The cause of every single failure was the mana flow tangling up."
"Impatience."
Oscar answered the unspoken question outright.
"You want to master dual casting a day sooner, want to get ahead of everyone else. But then when would you ever find the time to look back and carefully pick apart your mistakes? You just charge in mindlessly, again and again, until it works. Then somewhere around the 4th or 5th level, your head cools down and you finally figure out this method. It's not just you—almost everyone does it that way."
Which is probably why they say the hasty traveler should take the long road around.
Oscar shrugged. "Well, I've taught you the whole method. Give it a try."
Franc, who had been sitting with his eyes closed in concentration for a long while, slowly opened them.
Prepare two streams of mana from the start, draw them up in turn, and then...
Complete each spell.
It was an utterly unfamiliar concept, yet Franc instinctively controlled the two streams of mana. And naturally, unlike every attempt before, the flow tangled not at all.
The result: Franc stood staring blankly at the two spell circles unfurled before his eyes, then muttered,
"...What the hell. It was this easy all along?"
"That's magic for you. Everything looks easy once you've succeeded."
Wearing a somewhat hollow expression, Franc asked, mystified, "Wait, then what exactly is so special about this technique that everyone hides it away and refuses to teach it?"
"Spite."
A mage who had only grasped the technique at the 4th or 5th level hated to hand it to his juniors for free. That grudge had hardened into something like tradition. To Oscar, who had already lived one lifetime, it all seemed nothing more than childishness.
Useless stubbornness and pride, every last bit of it.
On battlefields thick with the smell of blood, traditions like that had no place. To survive until tomorrow, you had to share your secret techniques and put your heads together, every single day.
That's the kind of culture today's White Tower needs, too.
Not hollow customs and empty formalities, but active teaching and a free exchange of knowledge. Oscar looked at Franc, who had helped him fasten that very first button, with genuine pride.
"Well done. You've clearly got real talent. Honestly, I didn't expect you to succeed on your very first try."
"Well, that's... your explanation was just that good..."
Embarrassed, yet so delighted he could hardly contain himself. So this one's weak to praise, huh?
Oscar chuckled and glanced at the clock. "Right, now that you can use dual casting, let's get back to making the remedy."
Thanks to Franc's absorption speed being far beyond expectations, the ingredients were used up in no time.
"...Hahk, hah. I'm dying. I did well, right?"
"You did. Good work."
Franc, who had been wringing out his mana all day long, flopped onto the floor the moment the work was finished. Oscar, who had thrown himself into the task alongside him, gave the reagent bottles one final inspection with merely tired eyes.
Five hundred fourteen bottles in total. Not bad.
More than enough to negotiate with Archbishop Baldwin. Just as a pleasant smile was creeping across his lips—
"Oscar!"
BANG!
Maxim flung the workshop door open hard enough to break it off its hinges, his face grave.
"We've got a problem."
"What is it?"
In answer, Maxim simply held out a single sheet of paper he'd brought with him.
The Blue Tower and the pharmaceutical corporation New Tech were confirmed entering Shilin one hour ago. Presumed objective: a meeting with Archbishop Baldwin.
"It seems... we were one step too slow."
"......"
Well, of course.
A man of the archbishop's standing wouldn't have been stalling for time without some contingency prepared.
The Blue Tower and New Tech. So those two were Baldwin's backup plan.
Withdrawing his gaze from the report, Oscar spoke. "It's certainly not welcome news."
"This is no time to be spouting calm platitudes. If those people have already signed a contract with Archbishop Baldwin over the remedy..."
"Then the remedy we've made becomes useless."
Even if this remedy were superior in effect, the Church would have no reason to court the White Tower's enmity by contracting with them while the fashionable Blue Tower was already at the table.
Maxim patted the shoulder of Oscar, who had hung his head, and offered what comfort he could.
"Cheer up. Bad luck strikes everyone now and then. You can earn money some other way."
"...No. It's not over yet."
"But there's nothing left we can do..."
"There's exactly one thing we can still try."
As Oscar slowly raised his head, his eyes gleamed like those of a man who knew nothing of surrender. Maxim, momentarily overwhelmed by that gaze, asked,
"One thing? What do you mean?"
"A speed race."
"...A speed race?"
"Yes."
With a face more serious than any Oscar had ever worn, he hurled out a thoroughly absurd question.
"Elder, your flying speed. It's faster than most carriages, right?"