[279] 2. The Trap of a Forced Choice (3)
"Hmph. Your mouth's still alive, huh? Why put on this clown show? Did your father promise to make you king later or something?"
"I told you plainly. I don't care."
Jion didn't even bother to listen and turned away, walking along the wall as he took in the waiting room's scene.
To be honest, today's demonstration surprised him too. He hadn't expected Orcamp to call for a real duel so soon.
But that only meant they were in a hurry as well.
Jion looped around the waiting room and came back to Shirone with a tempting offer.
"I'll send you home."
Shirone blinked in puzzlement.
"What do you mean?"
"You said you weren't interested in the First Prince's position, right? Then what you get from this demonstration is freedom. I'll give you that. No matter how well you hide from Kazra Castle, you can't hide from Teraze's eyes—our reach is worldwide. But if I send you away? Kazra becomes mine and you get your freedom. Good for both of us, isn't it?"
It was a sweet temptation, hard to refuse. But it wasn't a choice to make lightly.
They said Empress Teraze planted Jion to swallow Kazra. If Jion became king, Orcamp and Eliza would be killed—cutting off the royal line's legitimacy was part of their plan for the future.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Simple. Ruin the show. Whatever that archangel power is, just mess it up. Then tell the nobles the truth. Say the rumors were exaggerated, it was just luck, it's not some magic a nobody like me could perform."
Shirone nodded, understanding.
Today's demonstration was a political stage. Whether the nobles believed the lie or not, the moment they raised the white flag the game would be over.
What nagged at him, though, was Orcamp and Eliza's lives. Could he really allow that?
No matter how much they'd abandoned him, they at least kept him alive. Did he have the right to repay that scrap of mercy with death?
"Let me think. No—give me time to decide."
"Take all the time you need. You'll answer in the Colosseum anyway. Whichever you choose, Kazra will come to me in the end. Make a wise decision."
Shirone bowed his head and heard Jion's departing footsteps. His head was too tangled to pay attention, though.
Help Orcamp and he would spend the rest of his life hunted by Teraze's faction. Stay with Jion and Orcamp and Eliza die.
'What do I do? What exactly are they asking me to do?'
Woorin, having retrieved her pet cat from the waiting room, finished preparing to leave and came back to say goodbye.
"Brother, please stay strong."
Shirone lifted his tired eyes to look at Woorin. She probably knew about his dilemma, but beyond words of encouragement she offered no concrete advice.
He tried to convey his desperation with a pleading look, but she only tilted her head and smiled as if she didn't know anything.
Shirone kept his eyes on the floor, resigned.
What had he been expecting? There was no one in the castle who could really help him.
Woorin sighed softly.
"Haa."
Then, in a calm voice, she asked, "Do you want me to help you?"
Shirone looked up again.
Woorin was still beautiful, but the bright air that had been around her a moment ago was gone.
"Of course I could help." She took a couple of steps back, reestablishing distance. "But I might not. What matters is plausibility. Suppose there's a billionaire who owns one hundred billion gold. That person wouldn't casually give away one gold to just anyone—not because they're stingy, but because it lacks plausibility. If you handed one gold away for no reason, you'd have to hand one gold to everyone. You don't have the plausibility yet for people to feel they must help you. You have to create a reason why people would have to help you."
"What should I... do?"
"That's for you to decide. You might lose a lot in this demonstration. But it's also a chance to gain something far more precious. Make a wise choice."
With that, Woorin moved toward the door. The beautiful smile Shirone had hoped to see never returned.
Left alone, Shirone fell into thought and analyzed her last words at that moment of binary choice.
'I see.'
Losing a lot meant the material losses that would follow if he gave up being First Prince. Gaining something precious meant saving Orcamp and Eliza's lives.
If Jion became king, Woorin would have the plausibility to help him.
In other words: hand the throne to Jion and she'll guarantee your birth parents' lives.
'Alright. That'll do.'
Shirone decided to ruin the show.
Orcamp might be disappointed, but in the end Shirone would have done his filial duty by saving their lives.
The lamps in the ceiling lit and a raucous siren sounded.
Having sorted his thoughts, Shirone stepped into the elevator set into the wall. He pulled the switch and the lift clanked up toward the surface.
When it reached the top, there was only sealed darkness and an iron grate ten meters ahead.
It wasn't fully night yet, so the sunlight was weak, but the champions of old must have looked to the noonday sky and found hope in life.
The grate rose, and Shirone walked to the center of the Colosseum.
Jion had been right—a clown show. Countless eyes trained on him, and he felt stripped bare.
The target stood toward the setting sun. In a pinch it looked like a makeshift board—shabby, nothing special.
Not even a throwing stone—and they expected magic to strike that? If the intention was mockery, it was perfect.
The thought that there must have been infighting even over who would pick such a target made him snort.
"From now on we will test the qualities of the First Prince candidate."
A test of the First Prince candidate's qualities. A fitting pretext for a circus.
Shirone bowed to Orcamp and spoke.
"Your Highness, magic is a powerful force. There is a risk the target could be damaged. I ask for your understanding in advance."
He meant that the precious target might be destroyed. It was a pointed remark to those mocking him.
Orcamp caught his meaning at once and backed him up.
"Do not worry. The target is merely a pretext. As long as you can demonstrate your skill, it matters not what you do."
Shirone felt a small triumph at getting one over them, but that was all he could manage.
A little ashamed, he faced the target. Everyone fell silent as he focused and cast Halo.
A light, fierce as a star, embedded itself in the air and began to move, slowly tracing a vast circle.
It had to be as large as possible.
Amy had told him after their two-thousandth duel that Halo could shock those with acute senses. If so, it would reach someone among this crowd.
It might be a meaningless resistance, but unless he did everything he could he couldn't create any variables.
When the Halo completed, a splendid luminous ring appeared.
Amy quickly scanned the crowd.
First, Reina frowned. If she felt pressure from the Halo, her schema sensitivity must be considerable.
The nobles, however, remained calm. Most nobles at the very center of power were administrators by trade—far removed from schema or the Spirit Zone.
Those who guarded them were different. One and all bit their lips desperately.
'Huh, these are definitely strong individuals...'
Jion and Woorin didn't seem particularly shocked.
Having expected nothing from the start, Amy looked toward Orcamp's side.
More precisely, she fixed on the tall man standing behind Orcamp.
Many experts were present, but no one showed as much tension as that man. Even now he kept his right hand covering his face, as if he couldn't get used to it.
'Damn it! That startled me.'
Arius decided to believe in the existence of the soul. When the luminous ring was born he felt something in his head fly outward. It was a horrific shock.
Since entering the Magic Seven, he had never been mentally stunned for more than a second. This surprised him.
'He's manifested the Immortal Function as a form. Is that the Nephilim's basic mental framework?'
Having finished analyzing the Halo's form, Arius waited calmly. He planned to discern its mechanism in this demonstration and find a way to uncap it. As Ataraxia began to accumulate, his eyes glinted fiercely.
'It's begun! The first is a binary choice. Based on base-2?'
With the first magic circle embedding at the Halo's center, a shower of light poured forth.
The nobles admired the spectacle, but Arius cataloged every concept that accumulated into Ataraxia without missing a single one.
'Algebra. Mushō geometry. Multi-operation equations. Vanessa's theorem. Spherical integrals. Aizen relativity. And that—Hagel's paradox?'
As concepts stacked into Ataraxia, his thoughts began to overload. His head felt like it would explode.
When the accumulation passed the midpoint, the zeta function appeared—one of humanity's cutting-edge concepts, a hypothetical formula thought to contain the universe's blueprint for finding prime-number patterns.
Arius stopped trying to think. Or rather, he could no longer think.
From the zeta function onward everything was unfamiliar, pouring into the Halo at terrifying speed.
Analysis impossible.
'Goddamn it...'
When the accumulation finished, Ataraxia was born as a resplendent, integrated concept. It was the reality of a super-magic amplification circuit no human could implement.
Arius shuddered with defeat.
He'd only understood sixty-five percent of the entire circuit. Compared to Shirone giving up at the seventeen-percent point when he was possessed by Ikael, it was a remarkable level of insight—but lacking even one percent still meant not knowing.
Shirone stared at the Ataraxia hovering before him and thought. From now on, his life would change depending on what he chose.
After about ten seconds, the nobles who had been watching intently began to lose interest.
They knew how crucial a single second was in real combat and were simply disappointed in Shirone's clumsiness.
"What are you doing? If you're going to do it, do it—if not, stop."
"Indecisive type. Or do you need more preparation?"
The nobles who commanded great mages had no patience for a student-level demonstration. As murmurs rose here and there, Jion added his voice.
"Haha! Rumors always get exaggerated. How many high mages are in the castle? What could a mere mage hopeful prove with this?"
Those who seemed to belong to Teraze's faction chimed in as well.
They let the mood be controlled by them, and Jion looked down at Shirone with arrogance.
Everything was set. All that remained was for Shirone to confess his inadequacy.
Shirone listened to the voices from all around. Most were Jion's cronies, as he'd expected.
'Yeah, give it up. He's far too strong for me from the start.'
Shirone let his shoulders slump and opened his mouth.
"I..."
The first word of a major announcement left his lips, but the nobles' chatter continued.
Realizing his voice was too small, Shirone inhaled deeply and filled his lungs so everyone could hear.
'Wait a moment...'
Then, suddenly, an odd thought rose—an impulse that came from his body rather than his head.