The Sage of the Stars (2)
“Training, you say?”
Thud! Thud!
Amid the sweltering heat of the 13th Floor Workshop, Hagore paused his hammering and looked up with a question.
“Yes. It might take a little while, so I wanted to give you advance notice.”
“Hmm, well, fair enough. You were a mage too, after all.”
“……Pardon?”
Hagore studied the dumbfounded look on Oscar's face and let out a hearty chuckle.
“Ah, don't take it the wrong way. Of course I know that mages and knights alike spend their whole lives honing their craft. It's just that you somehow struck me as a fella who didn't need training at all. Now that I think on it, I can't for the life of me figure out why I felt that way about a green whelp barely at 3rd level.”
“I was almost offended just now?”
The reason Hagore had felt that way was likely that Oscar knew far too much for his age.
Knowledge is like water in a transparent bottle — no matter how carefully you hide it, the sloshing always gives you away.
“Come back next time a little grown, will ye?”
“I will. And by then, this girl will have changed a lot too.”
Oscar murmured the words as he gazed up at the skeleton of the colossal airship.
Ever since the People of the Wind had become a runaway success, the dwarves had thrown themselves straight into building the airship.
The White Night Festival was now only a few months away.
Factoring in time to finish the ship and run live tests, the schedule is tight…….
But the dwarves would manage somehow. They were the finest craftsmen in the world.
After all, if they couldn't succeed, then no one alive could.
“Travel safe, now.”
“I will. Take care.”
Leaving the 13th Floor, Oscar headed for the outdoor training grounds.
He'd received a tip that the two he was looking for were there.
“Too slow! Is that all you've got?!”
“Shut it. You're the one fighting like a… like a brainless maniac!”
Watching Kilian and Veronica spar, Oscar nodded to himself.
They really are both growing fast.
Kilian's attacks had become more refined than when Oscar had last seen them back in Baran City.
And the magic Veronica poured out had grown far fiercer than what he'd witnessed in Vince Territory.
The pattern is Kilian struggling to close the distance while Veronica bombards him with every spell in her arsenal to keep him out.
On paper, Veronica — with her High-Speed Chanting — might seem to hold the advantage.
But they were fighting in a training ground. A place with hard limits on space.
Wolf's Song.
Kilian's silver claws shot out like a coiled spring and quite literally tore Veronica's spell to ribbons.
Sensing the danger, she instinctively stumbled backward —
“Huh?”
Her foot came down on empty air just beyond the training ground, and she plummeted straight down.
“Wind.”
Whooom! A rush of wind caught her body, and Oscar drifted close.
Apparently mortified at being seen in such an undignified state, Veronica's face went scarlet.
“Wh-what are you doing here? When did you even show up?”
“Oscar. Did you see? I won.”
“Are you kidding me? If we'd fought anywhere other than the training ground, I would've won!”
“Hmm. Hard to say.”
He'd thought they'd gotten closer after the trip to Handel, but they were still growling at each other all the same.
But I suppose this is just how a couple of springtime whelps get close to each other.
When Oscar smiled fondly at the pair, they both recoiled in disgust.
“What's with that creepy look on your face?”
“Oscar. That's unpleasant.”
“……That's just mean.”
Shrugging off the sudden barrage of complaints, Oscar spoke up.
“Kilian. I know you've got great athleticism and you're confident in close combat, but your fighting style leans far too heavily on brute brawling. Training works best when you focus on what you're bad at, not what you're already good at. Don't neglect your magical practice.”
“Veronica. High-Speed Chanting is certainly a tremendous weapon, but the way you dump spells out wholesale like that doesn't actually feel all that threatening to an opponent. Try approaching it with the concept of distributing different types of magic evenly, narrowing down your opponent's options one by one.”
Wow. A truly masterful lecture.
What cosmic blessing did these brats rack up in a past life, to get lessons like this for free?
“No thanks. Studying magic gives me a headache.”
“……Easy for you to say. What would you know, being a lower level than me?”
Ugh, these problem children, honestly.
Still, he knew that for all their grumbling, they would both train harder than anyone.
Otherwise they never would have grown this strong in the first place.
“Anyway, I'll be away for a while, so don't either of you cause any trouble.”
“That's a strange thing to say. I have never once caused trouble in my life.”
“You're hilarious, you know that? You were the one causing scenes every single time. We just got caught up in it standing next to you.”
Oscar started to object — then stopped.
If the same person was present at the scene of every single incident, wasn't that actually a fair point?
“Ahem.”
Unable to muster a rebuttal, Oscar left the White Tower with slumped, sulking steps.
Countless rumors trailed after the Sage of the Stars — that enigmatic existence.
There were theories that he was a being created jointly by the Four Great Magic Towers, that he was a mage of some ultra-ancient civilization — at one point, word had even spread that he might be a dragon.
Of course, those rumors had all died away after they abandoned this world and fled.
One thing is certain: he has been helping humans for hundreds of years now.
Any mage who met the Sage of the Stars could learn exactly one spell from him.
That simple rule had held unbroken for the last several centuries.
Astonishingly, even after digging through every record from the White Tower's golden age, nothing turns up about what exactly he is.
The Sage of the Stars had only been discovered after the age of the Magic Towers began.
But the being himself was presumed to have existed since time immemorial.
Which was precisely what made him so unknowable.
Just what kind of existence is he, teaching magic with no purpose and no price?
Some had even come to revere him as a god.
In fact, quite a few devout followers made their homes on the snowy mountain where the Sage of the Stars resided.
“We've arrived, sir.”
At the coachman's words, Oscar stepped down from the carriage.
The reason he'd taken a carriage at all, rather than flying, was that the entire region was nothing but unpaved backcountry.
“……Whew.”
As he exhaled, his white breath bloomed up like frost.
The snowy range of Tungrim lay five days' ride by carriage from Shilin.
Just as he remembered, this place — also known as Starlight Mountain — was saturated with mana.
“H-h-h-c-cold…….”
The coachman, who had climbed down without thinking, huddled with his arms crossed and shivered violently.
The air of Starlight Mountain gnawed at the skin so sharply that all he could think of was getting home as fast as humanly possible.
“M-Mister Mage. You truly mean to climb that mountain in this weather? The elevation is a full 9,200 meters!”
Call it 5.7 miles.
Oscar gazed up at the pure white peak and nodded.
“I came here to climb it, so climb it I shall.”
“Please take care of yourself, sir. When shall I come back for you — every five days?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Then, since I've been paid in advance, I'll allow up to thirty days. That means I shall return a total of six times.”
“See you then.”
No one could say when he would come back down from that mountain.
In his past life it had taken him a mere two days, but there was no guarantee it would be the same this time.
Besides, this time…… even meeting him at all might prove a problem. I'd better brace myself.
Wearing a coat enchanted with cold-warding magic, a mask, and goggles, Oscar began the ascent.
About two hours up the mountain, sleet began to swirl around him.
……This really is harder than it used to be.
When he had visited this place in his past life, he had been a 6th-level mage.
Naturally, he'd been far stronger than he was now, and he remembered racing up the mountain with the Fly spell.
“……”
Five more hours of climbing, and every step sent his feet sinking deep into the snow.
Trudging upward through drifts high enough to swallow his calves was no easy feat, to put it mildly.
WHOOOSH!
Worse, the icy gales that swept through at regular intervals wormed their way between even his tightly bundled layers, stealing his body heat bit by bit.
“……”
How many more hours had he walked?
Mana signatures began to register all around him, one after another.
One, two, three…… the count grew with every passing hour until thirteen signatures bloomed at once.
But the sleet whipped so violently that it obscured his vision, and none of them could be seen.
……The faithful, is it?
Nearly all the mages who dwelled on this snowy mountain were followers of the Sage of the Stars.
And needless to say, almost none of them had ever actually been granted an audience with him.
Most of them are just nuts squatting up here on the off chance he might deign to meet them.
But there was a faster, easier way to meet the Sage of the Stars than waiting on such an empty hope.
Stealing someone else's invitation.
Of course, he'd heard the stories himself.
The trial that the holder of one of those invitations had to overcome began the moment they set foot on the mountain.
……Even this part is different from my past life.
Back then, no one had dared approach him, let alone attack. Not one.
They had only watched him from a distance with covetous, hungry eyes.
Hah.
Now he must have looked laughably easy, because every one of them approaching him didn't even bother hiding their hostility.
They were filled with nothing but greed — to kill him and plunder the invitation like a trophy.
Not that I can fight every last one of them.
Oscar immediately drew his mana up and mimicked the crack of a gunshot.
BANG!
A single rifle crack split the snowy mountainside, and Oscar shrieked and collapsed into the snow.
“Gah— khh…!”
His heartbeat dwindled to the faint flutter of a dying man's, and his body broke into light convulsions.
Until then, the mountain had been silent, as if nothing at all were happening. Only the whisper of drifting sleet brushed past his ears.
“The invitation, the invitation……!”
Unable to endure that still, pressing silence, someone moved first.
In an instant he was upon the corpse, hand outstretched —
CRACK!
An ice spear flown in from far away skewered him through the side.
“G-gahk……!”
From that moment, the faithful began moving in earnest.
Concealing their positions as best they could, they set out to secretly hunt their quarry.
“……”
Holding his breath and stilling every trace of presence, Oscar focused on the mana signatures shifting on all sides.
Twelve, eleven…… oh, is that a love shot? Nine left.
As the faithful thinned out at a rapid clip, two of them caught his eye.
Both 4th level.
They were evidently a cut above the rest here, because the other faithful kept dying in flight, trying to run from them.
“So it's just you and me after all.”
“Tch. Stating the obvious.”
The two men, having cleaned up every other rival and now facing each other, completed their spells near-simultaneously, neither willing to be a heartbeat slower.
One hurled a spear of ice; the other pulled the trigger of a gun silenced by magic.
“You… son of a…….”
The winner was the ice mage.
With a beatific smile, he offered his rival a parting salutation.
“If you're ever born again, don't rely on such petty tools. A mage ought to fight with magic, as is only right.”
Glancing around at the snowfield stained red in patches, he walked toward the young mage's corpse.
With every step, his heart began pounding as if it would burst from his chest.
So the day has finally come — the day I take it. The invitation.
It had already been over four years since he'd put down roots on this mountain, all for a single meeting with the Sage of the Stars.
Only a handful made the climb each year, and those few were never pushovers — hence the long wait.
But.
The final victor was going to be him.
The moment he bent down to roll over the young mage's corpse, face-down in the snow —
Bang.
A tiny hole, bored by wind, opened in the ice mage's forehead.
A fleeting, hollow emotion flashed across his eyes, and the newly crowned victor crumpled lifeless into the snow.
Oscar rose from his spot, brushed the snow from his clothes, and — as if nothing at all had happened — resumed his climb up the mountain.