Prologue
A burned field, stretching to the horizon.
The two of us were charred black and wrecked from head to foot. I lay sprawled face-down in the dirt, and Sasha gave me a smile like a sunflower.
“Kah-kah-kah! Still a long way to go, greenhorn.”
We’d both taken enormous damage. We’d just finished throwing our best-kept techniques at each other, and even so there wasn’t one shadow on that smile.
The man really is a monster…
Beaten, I managed a wry smile of my own.
“So this is what it comes to, and without the Otogi Fantasia at that.”
There were only the two of us out here, with Merlin standing a little way off. She was thoroughly put out that I’d lost. She looked like she’d been sucking on a lemon.
“…You really are a monster.”
At that, as though I’d genuinely wounded him, Sasha shrugged.
“Hmph. Had your magic not gone out of true partway through… you were much the greater monster of the two of us.”
“You’re the last person in the world I want to hear that from.”
“It’s simple fact. I was overwhelmed at the outset. All I did in the end was seize the moment you came apart.”
“…And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it.”
So that was where things stood: my master and I had just finished a contest of magic… A duel, rather. I’d wanted to take the measure of my own strength now that my magic aptitude had been treated, and I think Sasha had wanted to see what I looked like at my real full power. Two people both climbing toward the summit of their art—and there’s no time like the present.
The upshot was that I’d been beaten flat into the ground, like I said. Sasha was grinning about it.
“Mm. With the shackle of magic aptitude gone, there’s no word for you but Thunder God. To wield Level 11: Four Emperors alone was splendidly done.”
“What surprised me is that you can use a Level 11 that isn’t a summoning spell. I had no idea that was even possible.”
“One keeps one’s trump cards hidden.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d opened the fight by putting up Level 11: Four Emperors straight away, and he’d answered it with something called Level 11: True Undead Emperor Sasha, a technique that looked for all the world like he’d made it up on the spot. The sight was a bolt from the blue, frankly. Watching that world-overturning piece of sorcery unfold in front of me, I very nearly cried.
Where I had the advantage was speed of construction in the high-level range, so the opening went the way he said it did—my way. Only, also as he said, my way was strictly the opening.
“Even so. That speed of yours at Level 9 and above, the one that looked like the Fierce God himself, lasted… what. Five minutes, near enough.”
“So, master. Straight out: why do you think my magic aptitude dropped back to zero partway through?”
“Hmm…”
Sasha thought it over for a moment, then nodded to himself.
“A magical Hayflick limit.”
“That’s an extremely classical piece of theory to reach for.”
“Well. I’m more or less the incarnation of classical magic.”
“…Er… that’s from the Book of the Wheel of Law, isn’t it? The fragments of a treatise that came out of the ruins of the ancient magical civilization?”
“Indeed. You know the reasoning behind why human beings age?”
“There’s a ceiling on how many times a cell can divide, and the telomeres in the genes get shorter each time. That was it, wasn’t it.”
“Correct. The shortening of the telomeres on the chromosome. Each time the DNA is copied in cell division, the repeating sequence at the chromosome’s end loses fifty to a hundred bases from the tip.”
“A telomere is a candle, and aging is it burning down. It’s the first piece of theory anyone who wants to stop aging or stop dying runs into—you did, and I imagine the Fire God Emperor did too.”
“The little brat and I both worked through necromancy, so our case differs somewhat, but the groundwork of the reasoning is near enough what you describe.”
“So what does that mean?”
“The magic circuits in the brain are reversible, granted. But drive them hard enough inside a narrow enough span of time and they reach their limit in the same manner. Like a candle.”
“…Mm.”
“The magic circuits of the brain multiply and refine magic the way cells divide, with magic aptitude for their medium. Ordinarily a man’s own reserves run dry long before he approaches that limit, so the problem never shows itself. You aren’t ordinary. Your aptitude, your reserves, your technique… frankly, your brain can’t keep pace with them.”
“The firepower’s too high, so the candle burns out early?”
“Just so. Put it as plainly as it can be put… and it’s simply running out of stamina. Your brain was optimized for a body with zero magic aptitude in the first place, so in a sense nothing else could be expected of it.”
“Meaning—” he said, and shrugged.
“Your circuits reach their ceiling, your magic stops multiplying, and your aptitude falls back to zero… That’s the shape of it. As you stand, you’re the strongest man alive for a strictly limited time.”
“…A superman for a single instant, then.”
“The road to the summit isn’t walked in a day. And it would do my reputation no good to be overtaken by my own disciple quite so easily.”
“Kah-kah,” he laughed, and he was genuinely delighted about it.
This man truly can’t stand to lose… It made me laugh too, though mine was still the wry kind.
“So, master. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Take your time, and let what’s inside your head grow accustomed to being a head that has aptitude… That’s the surest road.”
“There’s Bridget to think about, though… I’m not really in a position to be that leisurely about it.”
“No. I imagine not… There may well be more creatures out there of the Fire God Emperor’s sort, and it inconveniences me too if you don’t make yourself stronger. This is no moment to be standing on my dignity as your master.”
Then, unusually for him, Sasha turned serious and sank into thought.
The truth is that his last fight had been a hard one by his standards—desperately hard. Or rather, by any ordinary measure he couldn’t have won it at all. He’d forced a result out of it by sheer improvisation, which is nearer the mark. In a life as long as his, an experience like that can hardly come around often. Put that way, the serious expression made sense.
“Let me see… There are a number of artifacts called the Souls of the Demon God.”
“The Souls of the Demon God?”
“The Book of the Wheel of Law has any number of fragments in it that aren’t generally known. A good many people keep them hoarded away, since they can be turned to the pursuit of eternal life.”
“…I see.”
“Myself among them, naturally. And in those fragments there’s a discussion of the magical Hayflick limit, and of what may be done about it.”
“And what may be done about it is a Soul of the Demon God…?”
“That is the way of it. The Ten Sages built the ancient magical civilization, and in that age they made the ultimate spiritual lifeform. The Demon God. You’ll have heard of it in fairy tales.”
“The one that splits the earth open and swallows the sea?”
“A forbidden power that ran wild and came near to bringing the ancient magical civilization down with it. Its limbs and torso and head were each sealed away separately, and where they lie nobody knows. Its soul was divided without number into crystals of pure magical energy and scattered across the world… So it was written.”
“And what does that give us?”
“Take one of those souls into your head and let it serve as your magical medium, and you pass beyond the magical Hayflick limit… Your stamina simply stops running out. I’ll give you a copy of the fragments; the finer reasoning and the method you may work out for yourself.”
“…Except, master—I’ve never so much as heard of a Soul of the Demon God, and I know a few things. How would anyone go about finding one?”
“They pass through markets now and again as crystals of magical energy, with nobody the wiser. Otherwise they sleep in ancient ruins.”
“So I search the ruins of the ancient civilization, or buy one at some magical-implement auction?”
“Hardly any reach the market. And as for the ruins… that sort of site has been dug over and over. If you mean to find one, you’ll have to take on the ruins scattered through the Unexplored Territories.”
The Unexplored Territories… I swallowed hard.
“By the Unexplored Territories you mean the world outside where people actually live?”
“Quite so—exactly as it sounds. Continents across seas that mankind has yet to reach. Or else the astral worlds. The underworld. The heavens…”
“Going by ship, that’s a year there and back. And reaching an astral world with your body intact… would take a vast amount of time to prepare for.”
“Before you concern yourself with that: whether across the sea or into an astral world… I know of nobody who came back from either in any decent condition. Either they died where they stood, or they came back with their minds badly contaminated, and injuries fit to cost a man his limbs. No sensible account could be had from them.”
“They’d be respectable mages, though, if they were acquaintances of yours.”
“Most were less accomplished than you. Though a few were about the equal of you with your aptitude at zero.”
Then, with a grave look, he went on.
“So I’ll say it again. Whatever it was they met out there, every one I know of came home with his brain rearranged by magic and his body broken, a living corpse past all recovery.”
“…So realistically it’s beyond me as I am.”
“While you carry the handicap of your aptitude, at least.”
A dead end in every direction… I sighed. Besides which, I had Bridget to find in the first place, which meant this was hardly the moment to go touring the ruins of the ancient civilization like the host of my own explorer show.
Which brought me to Merlin, who’d been listening in silence all this while.
“Merlin?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“About Bridget. The thing I asked you to look into—where does that stand?”
“I’ve been following the Fire God Emperor’s movements and making what inquiries I can, but… it’s heavy going.”
“Heavy going?”
“His trail runs into the Unexplored Territories you were speaking of just now, and there it stops…”
“…Ah. Of course it does.”
“There’s a great deal about how he came by that much power that the Gate of Solomon alone doesn’t account for. Something happened to him out there… most likely.”
A dead end on that side too… I was on the point of hanging my head when Sasha clapped his hands together, and when he spoke there was a nasty little smile on his face.
“Ah. Yes. About the Souls of the Demon God. There’s one easy way to lay hands on one.”
“How so?”
“The thing is, in the end, a crystal of peculiar and enormous magical energy.”
“…?”
“You’re all bound for the magic academies’ world tournament, are you not? That’s the prize. Billed as some manner of ultra-grade alchemical material.”
“…I’m sorry?”
“The tournament committee will know nothing of its provenance, naturally, nor of what it can be made to do.”
“How do you know about it in the first place?”
“I’m a very senior figure of the Magic Society. The students’ tournament doubles as the entertainment at the Society’s annual assembly, and the invitation came by carrier pigeon just now, details and all. The catalog of prizes was set out in full.”
Now that he said it, of course it was. He’s so thoroughly a fixture of my life, and has such specific kinks, that I tend to look at him a certain way—but then and now, the man is a mage of the very highest class.
“In that case, though… I’m a little uneasy.”
Merlin tilted her head at me.
“Uneasy, Ephthal-sama? What troubles you?”
“That it’s all arranged a bit too neatly…”
“Too neatly?”
“The thing is sitting exactly where I happen to be going. And immediately after all that business with the Fire God Emperor… at that.”
“…True. When you put it so.”
As Merlin nodded, Sasha turned a challenging look on me.
“Oh… I don’t take it for coincidence either. Well then, brat? Will you take fright and run?”
Merlin laughed that off, and met my eyes with a composed, level look.
“Whatever has been arranged, obstacles get beaten flat. That’s what Ephthal-sama does. Is that not so, Ephthal-sama…?”
And when she puts it like that, there’s only one answer to give.
“Yeah. That’s right, Merlin. That’s how I do things.”