[554] The Power of a Day (3)
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D-36.
From the day the sequence exceeded one quadrillion, Shirone's skill leapt forward with dizzying acceleration.
Eyes wide, he unfolded the series from one and it kept speeding up, surging into the quadrillions.
"Two quadrillion!"
He was counting, but it no longer felt like reading numbers.
It was like blood running through veins—numbers flowed endlessly through his mind.
"Three quadrillion!"
A massive insight that opened the threshold to a new realm sent Shirone's numbers racing without end.
"Four quadrillion!"
As the figures swelled, Miro—watching his training with rising emotion—felt a flicker of puzzlement.
"Huh? What's that?"
Shirone's avatar took the form of an angel with wings of light.
Normally, as the sequence advanced the afterglow of light faded and the contours became clearer.
But after four quadrillion the contours began to warp, and parts of the form actually collapsed.
"Is the change starting now?"
When you reach the state of unity with all things, the mind of transcendent wisdom can even affect the laws that govern things.
But the mere collapse of form didn't reveal what kind of individuality Shirone's avatar might possess.
"Gasp!"
Shirone drew a rough breath, trembled in shock, and crashed down onto both knees.
Miro stepped a little closer and asked, "How far did you get?"
"Stopped at five quadrillion."
Plain and unvarnished.
"A psychological brake, then."
He had internalized a technique of the sequence learnable at the quadrillion level and in an instant blasted past four quadrillion—but the thought that he'd only reached half his goal created a new limit.
"I told you before: don't cling. Only a flexible mind, like water, can break through limits."
"Yes."
Of course, if it were as easy as saying, failure would not exist.
"I'll try again."
Miro was pleased that Shirone's attempts no longer came with that pained sound he'd been making.
'His drive to succeed has overtaken his fear of failure.'
Failure, failure—an endless loop of failures.
But if you don't give up, those failures aren't failures forever; they're the countless experiences you need to reach success.
'You're doing well, Shirone. Someone who's never fallen cannot learn to walk.'
He wasn't training to earn sweet-sounding titles like "genius mage" or "monster-strong mage."
'Fail a thousand times. It's not shameful. It's something to be proud of.'
A mage trained to handle any variable.
'That will be your pride and the highest badge a professional can wear.'
Shirone's nose wrinkled as he stared, intensely focused, into the world of numbers.
'I will be a mage! I will, no matter what!'
D-34.
Dorothy's room was hot with fury and thick with the scent of pleasure.
On the bed she lay hunched under the covers, muffled sounds—hard to tell whether ecstasy or sobbing—leaking through the cotton.
"Aaah! Ah!"
By the bed, the scrap-iron doll Hickory lay smashed and scattered.
"Ugh! Aah!"
She'd thought it nearly complete, but at the last moment every kind of error erupted.
'Why now of all times? Why must they all break at once?'
Anger reached its peak and her mind twisted.
"Aaaah! Aah!"
Just as the lump in the blanket writhed like a grub, the door flung open and her younger sister stormed in.
"Hey! What was that noise just now? What did you break this time?"
The movement under the covers stopped. Her sister looked the room over with a scowl, like she'd known this would happen.
"Seriously, you psycho! You haven't shown your face once this whole vacation—what have you been doing? Do you even know how worried Mom's been?"
Under the barrage of nagging, Dorothy unfolded and sat up on her knees.
"…Get out."
Her face, buried in the quilt, was drenched in cold sweat.
"Before you tell me to get out, you should be quiet! Think about the people in the next room! Lying in bed all day—!"
"Get oouuuut!"
The scream tore from her throat and her sister flinched.
Her sister was normally unstable, but this hysteria was no joke.
"Ins…ane…"
When her sister bolted from the room and slammed the door, Dorothy pulled the covers back over her head and curled up again.
"Ugh! Aaaah!"
The muffled cries poured out from beneath the blanket.
D-23.
Sparks had been flying from Iruki's eyes for twenty minutes.
As vast amounts of data backflowed into the part of his mind calculating nuclear fusion, the tiny blood vessels in his eyes began to burst.
Iruki wept tears of blood, but still smiled.
'I can do it. Because I can.'
If success won't come, you hammer at it until it does.
Data began smashing into the iron barrier blocking the perfect formula at tremendous speed.
'Eventually it will open.'
Even if he didn't open it himself, it didn't matter.
A version of himself that had already succeeded, waiting beyond the iron door, would open it and come out to meet him.
D-21.
"Why? Why can't I get past here?"
Amy's face twisted with anger as she spun the Spirit Zone in sniper mode.
For days her sniping accuracy had stalled at ninety percent and wouldn't budge.
Checking her backup in the Crimson Eye, Amy found the stagnation point in her psychological data.
'How complacent. She's comfortable with it.'
Because the subconscious senses perfection as unnatural, she couldn't reach it.
'Your thinking is stiff! You have to break yourself down!'
When she spun the Spirit Zone, the two-kilometer sniper zone rotated at incredible speed.
Every time she fired a Fire Strike at a target, the air whined.
The flame, accelerating through an air tunnel, reached its target in just 1.3 seconds.
'If it's not one hundred percent, it's meaningless!'
Dozens of targets detonated in simultaneous bursts.
D-19.
"All right, Screamer! Tear him apart!"
"Aaah! Aaah! Aaaah!"
The Screamer howled in pain, but his body showed no sign of stopping.
He had reached runner's high.
Pyroker watched his son pound out attack after attack like a man possessed and muttered in a hoarse voice.
"That's it, Screamer. Just like that…"
"Huh? What did you say?"
The Screamer, not having heard, snapped irritably, but Pyroker was simply proud.
'At last, he crossed it.'
There's a limit to getting stronger simply to beat someone and feel superior by crushing a loser.
'No—you can't become truly strong that way.'
Such base pleasures crumble easily before the vast suffering that lies ahead.
'Screamer, do you know why so many risk their lives to compete?'
Because they don't want to lose.
Because they can't admit they failed at something, they endure any pain.
'Become a mage, Screamer! Become the champion! That will be the greatest happiness of your life!'
"Dad! What are you doing!"
Pyroker snapped back and wiped his tears.
He was in such agonizing pain that without some encouragement he wouldn't hold on.
"All right, Screamer! He's finally in the groggy state! The champion's completely cracked! Go! Finish him!"
"Aaaah!"
D-14.
The psychological brake from having reached only half of one field didn't go away easily.
The sequence still clung to the five-quadrillion limit, and days passed like that.
'It's okay. I'm doing my best.'
Shirone wasn't anxious.
If he couldn't do it, he couldn't—that was clear-headed realism.
"Haha!"
Sitting on a rock by the stream to rest, Shirone suddenly laughed.
On the thirty-second twig of the tree across from him most leaves pointed downward, but one single leaf pointed upward.
'That's really funny.'
That he could laugh at the direction of a leaf nobody would notice was proof his thinking had become flexible.
'The spider built itself a big home. Good for it.'
A spiderweb, probably torn by wind or rain at least five times during training, hung between the branches.
'Persistent little thing. Right—last night the wind was strong too.'
Seeing the spider walk its web on thin legs filled him with warmth, as if the creature were content.
'It held on.'
A sudden shiver ran through him and his face crumpled.
"Oh? Huh?"
Overwhelmed by an uncontrollable surge of feeling, tears poured down his face.
'Ah, so that's it.'
Nothing is insignificant.
'Good. Good for you, spider.'
Even the tiniest creature—even a reviled spider no one looks at—contains a story as vast as a human life if you look inside.
'There is a path everywhere.'
Shirone's Spirit Zone opened and his angelic incarnation rose up.
When Elysion activated and the barrier between self and world dissolved—Miro's instructions forgotten—the number sequence began to race at enormous speed.
Three quadrillion, four quadrillion, five quadrillion.
The boundaries he had thought were limits crumbled, and the numbers climbed into higher realms.
"Six quadrillion! Seven quadrillion!"
As the angelic form collapsed further, Miro, watching from a distance, smiled.
'Everything in the world converges into life.'
No threshold, no transcendence, can surpass the fact of living.
'He wants to be a mage. That is also a life you cannot compare to another.'
Thinking he might reach it in time, Miro observed the changes in his avatar.
'What is that?'
Her smile suddenly hardened.
When the sequence racing through seven quadrillion rolled into eight quadrillion, the avatar's form wholly broke down and particles of light began to whirl in countless vortices.
The spectacle was dazzling to the point of dizzying, but it could not be called beautiful.
It was a grotesque shimmer that felt almost vicious.
'No, it's beyond that. Even standing before the sun would feel the same.'
Calling it vicious was a human yardstick.
Even without knowing what individuality the avatar possessed, the phenomenon transcended all human experience and provoked fear.
'What kind of singularity is this?'
Scenery bent as if space-time itself were warping, and countless afterimages overlapped.
'The change is becoming clear.'
Now that he had realized there is a path everywhere, he was close to the state of unity with all things.
'Just a little more and it should be enough.'
As curious as Miro was about Shirone's avatar and as fervently as she cheered the sequence on, the shimmering of light suddenly vanished as if someone had snuffed it out.
"Gasp! Gasp!"
Shirone snapped out of the trance, drew ragged breaths, sensed Miro, and turned quickly.
"Did you see that? I broke through! I reached nine quadrillion!"
"Nine quadrillion… the core of perfection."
Instead of the praise he'd expected, Miro bit her lip—only then did Shirone realize he'd disobeyed her order.
"Oh—sorry. I lost myself in the sequence…"
"No, well done. I thought you'd hit another wall even if you broke five quadrillion. Make the most of the remaining time and finish this."
"Yes!"
Filled with confidence, Shirone strode back toward the training hall.
Miro, however, still couldn't leave her spot and looked back at the rock where Shirone had been sitting.
He had nearly reached it, which made the moment all the more bittersweet, but to demand more now would be greedy.
'I'll be able to examine it soon. But what kind of avatar is that?'
The change in law that appeared as he neared the singularity was so strange that even Miro, the strongest of the prajna, could not analyze it.