[552] The Power of a Day (1)
Shirone, who had been trying to picture 10 to the 64th power in his head, suddenly spoke up.
"Is that even a number a human can count?"
"It's not a number. It's a realm."
Miro tapped Shirone's temple.
"A numerical sequence is just one way to expand the mind. If you can feel the surge of numbers precisely, you don't need to read them off one by one in your thoughts."
Shirone's number-sequence practice was already far beyond what ordinary people could do, so he understood that.
Taken the other way, though, Miro's words meant that unless he could feel them precisely, he'd have no choice but to keep reading them through.
"To sense numbers at the gyeong level."
Thinking it over, it didn't seem completely impossible. If he pushed his thoughts steadily at a speed that wouldn't shock his mind, he could eventually reach it. Speed could be trained later.
"There are seventy-three days until school starts. Your goal is to raise your manifestation to the state of unity between self and thing within that time. What you'll be able to do with it we'll figure out later, but it will definitely help your magic."
Shirone could be sure of that. It would be difficult, but if he succeeded, the strengthening of his mental power would be tremendous.
"All right. I'll try. Where should I begin?"
More than anything, Miro was laying out the map. That gave Shirone a little confidence—she wouldn't set him an impossible task.
"To reach unity between self and thing, what you have to do from now on is—"
Miro spoke as Shirone swallowed hard.
"Train like crazy."
Shirone took a moment before answering.
"Pardon?"
"You said something just now—was that your answer?"
"No, not that. I mean, like, what method—there are only seventy-three days—"
Miro snorted.
"Fine. I won't tell you to pretend you have more than seventy-three days. But Shirone, this isn't something you can change by wishing. Don't waste time thinking about what you can't change. If you've been given seventy-three days, you have to solve it within them."
Those words took his breath away.
"I understand the feeling. But that's a barrier of reality everyone faces. If you cross it, you win; if you don't, you lose. There isn't some miracle out there that lets you do it without paying the cost. It's always been that way, hasn't it?"
Shirone nodded heavily.
"You can do it. Believe in the power of a single day, Shirone. If you accomplish one today, in seventy-three days you'll have stacked seventy-three of them."
That, too, was plain truth.
"People like to focus on talent, but the truth is I reached where I am by piling up days, day after day."
That was at least consoling.
"The body is governed by the brain, and the brain is governed by the heart. The heart moves only while looking at results."
Miro pointed at Shirone's chest.
"When you reach unity, your manifestation will hit a singularity and become vastly stronger than it is now. Think only about that."
I'll succeed. I will make it happen.
Miro rose when she saw the change in Shirone's eyes.
"All right. If you understand, let's move on. Follow me."
They walked to a stream not far from the cabin. Miro knocked twice on a flat rock in the shade.
"Sit here."
Shirone did as he was told, puzzled—he'd expected some grand training regimen.
"What are we doing here?"
"Do nothing."
"Excuse me?"
"You can't do number-sequences all day. When you need to cool your head, sit here and look at the scenery across the stream. No number-sequences. No entering the Spirit Zone."
Shirone looked across the water. It was an ordinary mountain view, nothing special except for one crooked tree near the front. It felt pleasant, but a surge of unease came—he was afraid this might snuff out the resolve he'd just lit.
"Can't I just practice the number-sequences here?"
"No. And you can't rest anywhere else. Rest must be at least four hours."
The mountain breeze brushed his ears. Sitting and doing nothing for four hours, gazing at nature—could that be called rest?
"I don't think I have time for that."
Miro noticed the distrust on his face and let the corner of her mouth curl.
"You think it's meaningless?"
"Well, yes. Actually—"
Miro put a hand on Shirone's shoulder and looked back over the stream.
"Shirone, nothing is trivial. You just refuse to look."
You just refuse to look.
"Even a fallen leaf rolling in the wind, even a pile of trash shoved off the roadside—each one holds the story of the time it's existed. People are the same. Just as the years you've lived feel enormous to you, everyone else is living huge stories within the same span of time. Most people don't know that because they don't try to look."
"…I see."
Miro's words began to make sense.
"From now on you have to look into every part of the world. Only thinking as flexible as water can break limits. Every day, sit here and watch nature. Cool your head while listening to their stories. It probably won't be boring."
Do it. Believe in the power of a day.
Imagining his manifestation transformed after seventy-three days, Shirone clenched both fists.
* * *
At the Carmis main house's training hall, the sound of explosions didn't stop for a day.
The thousand-pyeong main training ground was normally only opened to station troops during clan meetings, but right now only Amy remained, training to the point of collapse.
"This won't do!"
A two-kilometer Spirit Zone in sniper mode spun like a compass, changing its bearing. Unlike the cross-shaped zone when a mage stands at the center, sniper mode places the mage at the end of a straight line, and the rotation's force was enough to numb the mind.
Targets flying outside visual range registered detonations, but her hit rate was only around sixty percent.
"What kind of sniper is this!"
To hit a fast-moving target you must add a time coordinate to the spatial coordinate. If targets with fixed patterns only gave her sixty percent, snipe a sentient being two kilometers away was nearly impossible.
"I'll maximize my organs!"
Amy refused to give up. The key was to speed the sniper mode's rotation and shorten the time Fire Strikes took to reach their targets.
"One path!"
She drove another razor-sharp focus into the needle-thin center, and her mental power multiplied.
"Hrrrgh!"
The two-kilometer line whipped around once. Thirty-two targets registered on that pass. Predicting every target pattern, she cast Fire Strikes in all directions, and sixteen explosions rolled in a moment later.
Faced with an accuracy lower than before—fifty percent—Amy withdrew the Spirit Zone and dropped to her knees.
"Hah! Hah!"
She wanted to think she'd hit the limit of her mental strength, but a burning frustration boiled inside her.
No one is flawless. If she couldn't pull this off in sniper mode, even if she graduated she'd remain just an ordinary mage.
"One failure is the groundwork for success. Two failures are the family's shame."
Muttering the family maxim, Amy rose, eyes aflame. That recent failure had been perfectly backed up in her crimson self-image memory.
That was why the Carmis family had no tutors.
* * *
D‑69.
Three hundred meters below the capital Merkodain's mansion, a bunker meant to guard against map-class weapons and city-destroying magic had been installed. Stocked with supplies for over a hundred people to survive three years, it was here that the family head's son, Iruki, was brazenly attempting a detonation magic.
"Now!"
Iruki, sitting in his room with his eyes closed, lifted his lids and electricity sparked in his pupils. At the same time the air in the bunker trembled as if something were about to happen.
"Detonate!"
He leaped up and shouted, but the expected quake never came, and Iruki slumped back onto the bed.
"Actually trying it is harder than I thought."
The magic he was attempting didn't even have a name yet—a catastrophic detonation magic like nuclear fusion, possible only because he had two Spirit Zones.
"Are you here today too?"
The family head, Albino, walked in. Iruki barely looked up, lost in thought.
"Well, is your plan to blow apart the Merkodain mansion, steeped in our ancestors' breath, going well?"
"No results yet. It's getting irritating."
"...."
Albino watched his son for a moment and snorted.
"Don't overdrive. The brain's durability can't handle the speed of your neural circuits. You'll shorten your lifespan."
"I don't care. As long as this succeeds—"
"That's exactly my point. I get the feeling your life will end before you succeed. That would be stupid."
Iruki sprang up.
"What did you come for? Aren't you busy?"
Albino smiled.
"No matter how busy I am, I have time to see my son."
"I have no time to see you. Leave. I need to reestablish the theory."
Iruki waved his hand and went to the blackboard, its surface marked by countless erasures and rewrites. As he feverishly scrawled formulas with chalk, Albino said, "The human brain is an amazingly well-made organ."
He paused in his writing.
"Huh? What did you say?"
"It's so well made that it can't always tell the difference between direct experience and imagination. Whether you actually eat or just imagine eating, the brain's electrical patterns are basically the same."
Iruki finally turned.
"Interesting phenomenon, isn't it? But this is science. There's a saying: if you want to succeed, imagine the moment of success. The brain will align itself to that."
Iruki blinked rapidly.
"That's… something people say."
Albino raised a hand and left the room. Iruki turned back to the board and began frantically erasing the formulas.
It's not too late. Start over from today.
* * *
D‑65.
Numbers raced like mad through Shirone's head.
"No! Too big!"
The point wasn't to read thoughts but to make thoughts themselves run. Once they passed a hundred billion, his brain felt like it was twitching.
"Slow down. There's still time."
Miro's voice didn't sink in. Several days had already passed and he'd only reached a hundred billion. At that rate, crossing into the gyeong range by orders of magnitude made no sense.
"Ugh!"
Around 120 billion his mind rebounded.
I've been counting numbers for eight hours already…
Miro tried to console him. "You still went much further than yesterday. Try again."
"I can't today. My head feels like it's going to explode…"
"Do it."
At times like this, Miro's voice grew cold as ice.
"You're not there yet. A day is twenty-four hours, and only fifteen have passed. Minus four hours' rest, that's eleven hours left."
Shirone had weathered a lot, but breaking his limits in real time was unbearable pain.
"But… I get tired too, you know."
"That's none of my concern."
Shirone gathered his resolve, but Miro stayed stern.
"Don't fool yourself, Shirone. This is training to make you stronger. No one is forcing you to become strong. If you want to give up, pack up and go home right now."
"I'm not going back."
"Then do it. That's reality. Is it unfair? Do you ask whether you have to live suffering like this? Want me to tell you why?"
Miro's voice hardened.
"Because someone else is doing it."
The venom left Shirone's eyes.
"What you don't want to endure, someone else is enduring now. That's competition. I did it, Gauld did it. Sein, Julu, Pllu—all of them climbed by enduring that pain."
Shirone ground his teeth.
"Don't think those above you got something by chance. They suffered as much as you did. So don't whine about limits. If you don't want it, then quit."
Shirone's gaze snapped back to life and he let all the frustration in his gut fly out.
"Huuuu!"
It was so hard he felt like he might die, but he didn't want to give up, so he had no choice but to endure.
"Hang on! Just a little longer!"
And so another day was stacked on the pile.