The Sage of the Stars (3)
"Hah... hah."
His stamina and mana drained to the dregs, Oscar could only heave ragged breaths, unable to move for a long while.
The mountain had sunk into deep darkness, so black that he couldn't make out anything even a hand's breadth before his eyes. Only when the freezing sleet thinned did the green aurora draped across the night sky faintly reveal itself.
"...This is a complete pain in the ass."
Quite suddenly, he found himself missing his past life. Back then, he had reached the summit in a matter of hours using the Flight spell.
"Whew."
But what could he do? His current body simply wasn't up to that level yet. Casting Night Vision in both eyes, Oscar carefully swept his surroundings. Confirming no one was there, he dug into the snow to carve out a small burrow and slipped inside.
"...Mmm."
Every muscle in his body and every one of his mana circuits was screaming without pause. He gulped down an advanced potion like water, then pulled out another bottle and splashed it over his badly swollen legs. Only then did the pain subside and his head begin to work properly again.
Something about this is off, I tell you. Fine, I'm only 3rd level and an easy mark, but this is way beyond excessive.
It had already been twenty-one hours since he began his ascent. The first ambush, it seemed, had been nothing more than a trailer — four more attacks had followed in its wake. What's more, the higher the altitude, the stronger the challengers grew who came to snatch his invitation away. Among the last opponents he'd faced had been a 5th-level mage.
Relying on experience and sheer mana volume to make up for my lacking level works for now... but that has a clear limit.
He still had a full day of climbing left before reaching the summit. How many more ambushers would he meet in that one day — and how strong would they be? Oscar let out a long sigh.
Think about it logically. The more confident someone is in their strength, the higher up the mountain they'll be camped.
They had no reason whatsoever to slog and squabble at the bottom. If they simply waited near the peak, whoever won down below would come up on their own, carrying the invitation with them.
He coolly assessed his current strength.
...At my current level, I could manage against anything up to 5th level.
But no matter how he turned it over, 6th level was beyond him. Even if the opponent were utterly careless, it was impossible to bridge that overwhelming a gap in raw output.
Eventually, Oscar closed his eyes and sank into deep deliberation. Should he keep climbing the mountain as it stood — or withdraw and challenge it again someday, once he'd grown stronger?
"..."
He was certain that if he returned after reaching 6th level, he would reach the summit without fail. He'd already succeeded once in the past, after all, and there were only so many ways to stop a flying mage.
But it's already taken five days just to get here, and another day to climb the mountain itself.
He had promised the Viscountess one month. If he descended now and returned to Shilin, only twenty days would remain. He would be throwing away ten days with nothing to show for it.
Twenty days. Reaching 4th level in a mere stretch of time like that would be impossible even for me.
In his past life, it had taken a year and a half to go from 3rd level to 4th. Of course, with the Oscar-style Breathing Method, he could cut that down to half a year.
But I only reached 3rd level two months ago...
If he trained diligently from now, he could hit 4th level in about four months. Any other mage who heard that would shriek in disbelief — yet even that was far too slow for him.
Twenty-five days. Twenty-five days left...
After long deliberation, Oscar finally steeled himself and slowly opened his eyes.
I will not descend this mountain.
It was a decision that would have startled anyone who knew him well. He was the man who had repeated, time and again, that the courage to acknowledge one's own limits and fall back was essential to becoming a high-tier mage.
But I won't climb it either.
What Oscar had chosen was the third option.
This place is unique — the mana here is several times denser than anywhere else.
In other words, the finest training ground imaginable. The mana was abundant, and the brutal natural environment would work his circuits to their limits around the clock. Above all, training was always most effective when done on the edge of a life-or-death line, not in the comfort of one's own room.
The ambushers.
The enemies swarming all over this mountain would make excellent experience.
The peak where the Sage of the Stars dwelled was the closest place on earth to the heavens. No — depending on how one defined "the heavens," that peak might well have been called the sky itself. It stood so high that even the clouds passed beneath his gaze.
"Hmm."
Atop that peak stood a great circular observatory. A mysterious place that no one knew who had built, when, how, or why. Its resident was an aged old man whom the world called the Sage of the Stars.
"Whew... So this star is not the one either."
Once again today, the old man who had been staring into his telescope swallowed a deep disappointment. The star he had watched without moving for days on end had lost its light and faded away.
"A worry, this is. A day grows urgent, indeed..."
Murmuring nameless anxieties, the old man hung his darkened head and left the darkroom, the hem of his robe whispering over the floor. Sarrak, sarak. He moved to another room, settled onto the sofa, and stared blankly at the ceiling. Until a new star was born, there was nothing he could do but wait in silence.
Fwick, fwrrk.
Just then, a strange sound drifted out from the three-dimensional map floating at the center of the room. Recognizing it as the crackle of a fire being lit, the old man stirred faintly.
Ah, now that I think of it...
About ten days prior, he had sensed a new challenger entering his domain. A 3rd-level mage of the Harmony Sphere. He had assumed the man wouldn't last a few hours and had planned to teach him a suitable spell and be done with it. Naturally, far from expecting anything of him, he hadn't even spared him a flicker of interest.
And yet that one has held out all this time?
Curiosity piqued by the unexpected news, the old man drew closer to the stereoscopic map. As he studied the map suspended in midair, he gave one hand a light swirl. The region he wished to see expanded before him — and a question mark floated up in the old man's mind.
"...Hm?"
And small wonder: there, in the freshly cleared snow of the mountainside, stood a tiny cabin.
Fwrrk, fwick. The sound he'd heard earlier was a mage sitting before the cabin, roasting rabbit meat over a campfire.
"No... don't tell me he's been living on this mountain? How on earth?"
For once, the old man wore an openly bewildered expression. In the several hundred years he had spent on this peak, he had never once seen the likes of him.
The mages who entered his mountain generally fell into three broad categories.
Weak mages, moderately skilled mages, and monsters.
Weak mages never make the summit. All they can take away is a scrap of small knowledge. Moderately skilled mages claw their way to the top somehow, and they carry off knowledge that is reasonably useful. And then there is the final category — the monsters. They arrive at the summit without breaking stride, and they take with them knowledge that will shape the whole course of their lives.
But then... what in the world is that one?
He had clearly taken the man for a weak mage, yet now that the lid was off, he was somehow holding on. He might even make it to the summit. The Sage of the Stars decided the fellow must simply be an extraordinarily lucky soul.
Had he met the puppets, he'd have failed long ago... now, what are they doing?
He checked on the puppets he had stationed all across the mountain — the ones the world called the faithful.
"Eh?"
At the same moment, an involuntary groan escaped his lips. Of the one hundred and eight puppets in existence, all but twelve had been destroyed.
So it wasn't luck that kept them apart — he met the puppets, and survived them?
By all appearances, the man was an elegant young noble who looked as though he couldn't last two hours in the mountains. Yet somehow — how?
The moment that question began filling his mind, the old man could bear it no longer. Without quite realizing it, he gestured toward the back of the room. The sofa dragged itself across the floor to his side, and he sat down upon it, waving his hand once more.
I must see a full record of everything that one has done since entering my mountain.
Only then, he felt, could this situation possibly make sense.
Settling into a leisurely posture, the old man gazed at the screen unfolding before his eyes. He became the most thorough of spectators, watching the young mage climb his mountain. Now and then he paused the image, or rewound to a scene he wished to see again, murmuring his admiration.
Oh — quick situational judgment. The moment he sensed the puppet approaching, he played dead.
Even the details are flawless — regulating his heartbeat, mimicking bodily convulsions. It's almost perverted, how complete it is.
It's been some fifteen hours since he entered the mountain... and his Acceleration and body-heat spells show no sign of lapsing. His mana reserves are staggering, and there isn't a single drop wasted.
What impressed the old man most of all, however, was the young mage's mental fortitude.
Even the most rigorously trained soldier wavers before relentless cold and the terror of ambush.
But this one never wavered. It meant that in any situation, without exception, he could hold fast to his own convictions. Perhaps that was why the old man found himself thinking that the young mage was, at times, like a glittering star.
"..."
That brilliant shimmer — the kind one could only ever feel from a newly born star. How could it radiate from a human climbing up from the very bottom of the world?
Curiosity burning in him, the old man moved to the darkroom and began reading the constellation of Oscar Crucian.
"..."
At the same time, the old man's expression hardened, and his gaze wavered. He had been reading the stars for hundreds of years, and never once had he encountered anything like this.
How... this cannot be.
Looking at the star, he understood. He knew who this was.
Oscar Crucian.
The star he had once pinned his hopes upon — a man who had blazed with a brilliance brighter than any other. Which was precisely why he remembered it all the more vividly. He had grieved, deeply, the day that star burned itself down to ash and faded to a dull ember.
But then — how?
That star was shining again. Blazing hot once more. More furiously than ever before — as though it were furious at having ever been allowed to fade, more radiant than any star around it.
If that one's star burned so brightly, why did I never discover it until now?
After long pondering, the reason was obvious. He had long since stopped casting his gaze upon things that had already faded. He had poured all his attention and expectation — all his water — onto the newly born, glittering stars alone.
"..."
Long after that, the Sage of the Stars went on gazing at the star of Oscar Crucian.
"Hooh, hooh."
Racing across the snowfield from dawn, Oscar moved as quick and light as a snow leopard. As proof, without even casting Acceleration, he snatched a mountain hare out of mid-zigzag in a single lunge.
Kyiiing! Kyik!
Watching the rabbit struggle in his grip, Oscar gave a small, amused smile.
"Sorry about this."
He released it without a trace of regret. After all, he'd only caught it to play with for a moment — part of his training. Watching the hare vanish swiftly into the white, he casually downed a bottle of potion.
"Khh."
It had already been half a month since he entered these snowfields. In that time, quite a lot had changed for him.
A mana-rich place really is ideal for training, no question.
First of all, his mana reserves had grown considerably — the fruit of absorbing densely concentrated mana twenty-four hours a day. On top of that, fighting off the ambushers who came calling every day had raised the quality of his muscles and circuits by a wide margin in a very short span. If he trained here for another two months — no, even one more month — he could reach 4th level without a doubt.
"..."
But he had no such luxury. Five days had been spent getting here, and half a month had passed on the mountain — the time left to him was not generous. Above all, no more ambushers had come since yesterday.
Which means it's about time I started climbing.
Looking up at the peak visible far above, Oscar stretched out his body lightly. Today's condition: perfect.
"Well then — shall we head up?"
Bidding farewell to the little cabin that had grown strangely dear to him, he began to climb the mountain once more.