[553] The Power of a Day (2)
* * *
D‑63 days.
The cutting wind of competition had blown through every graduating class, and Dorothy was no exception.
She usually wandered the school with a vague, spaced‑out expression and had been nicknamed the four‑dimensional girl, but the eyes reflected behind her large glasses as she tinkered with the tin doll were sharper than ever.
The tin doll she was repairing was named Hickory.
To a manipulation‑type Joner like her, it was as precious as life and the core of her magic.
"I need to evolve the algorithm."
She'd ranked high in Class Two after the first half of the graduation schedule, but Class One's threshold was still daunting.
Thinking that a few freshmen from Class Three had already been promoted to Class One kept her awake at night.
Linked through the Spirit Zone, Hickory began to clank and move around the room.
Working with algorithms meant controlling the process before the result, so she didn't need to run combat tests to check whether it worked.
The doll, rusty and battered, levitated its heavy body and lit its round eyes.
"Dorothy algorithm applied. Version 4.3."
A blaring siren sounded as Hickory's neck spun rapidly; a moment later it crashed to the floor with a rattle.
Dorothy watched the doll with its neck broken, her face going flat and expressionless again.
"..."
So annoyed she didn't even have the energy to pick it up, she crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over her face.
A strange groan leaked out from beneath the covers.
D‑61 days.
"More! Faster! You're too slow!"
"Uaaah!"
As Screamer poured everything into repeated strikes, the sandbag—reinforced with thick iron cores—swung heavily.
The leather bag had target circles marking strike points, with numbers indicating the order of hits.
"Is that all? How do you expect to be a champion like that!"
Pairoker, who'd volunteered as coach, bellowed into his son's ear.
Holding a key post in the Torimia Kingdom's heavy infantry and even holding a Colosseum pro license, Pairoker was a fighting fanatic with a record of twenty‑three bouts: twenty‑one wins and two losses.
After the shock of losing to a mage in a kingdom‑sponsored exhibition, he'd briefly left the fighting world, and the story of Screamer watching that pitiful match and deciding to enroll at the Magic Academy was famous in their family.
"Damn it!"
Screamer's face showed pain as he carried out Pairoker's iron‑fist project.
Seven consecutive strikes, which had to land within a split second, looped through thousands of cycles and showed no sign of stopping.
"Uaaah!"
The impacts rang out crisp, but Pairoker only grew angrier.
"Your accuracy dropped! More accurate, faster, stronger!"
It was an unreasonable demand when simply moving his arm was a struggle.
"Don't stop! Hit! Instill that sequence into your instincts so anyone hit will drop!"
Repeating the same motion endlessly made parts of his body feel as if they were tearing.
'How am I supposed to hit any faster from here!?'
Even as pain pushed him past his limits and irritation boiled over, Pairoker showed no mercy.
"Hurt? So what? I'm not hurting a bit, you know?"
'Should I really take him on right now!?'
"Want me to tell you something huge? No one cares about your pain. People don't even want to know how hard it was. A fighter who doesn't produce results is just a punching bag!"
"Uaaaah!"
Losing his bearings, Screamer slammed out a powerful blow and stopped, but the heavy sandbag didn't budge.
"Huff! Huff!"
He was so out of breath it felt like he might throw up.
"Who said you could rest? Hit faster!"
"…Just one minute. I'll rest for one minute."
Pairoker's face softened and his voice turned almost gentle.
"You want to get stronger, right? Want me to tell you how?"
When Screamer looked up, his father's face went demonic again.
"There's no shortcut, you idiot! Looking for shortcuts is just making excuses! Know why? Because getting stronger is so simple even a three‑year‑old can do it! Hit! Get stronger! Hit! Get stronger!"
'My arm won't move…'
The one‑minute break only made his muscles cramp.
"Can't do it? Then admit it! Stand aside and clap when the champion passes!"
"You damn—!"
Boiling inside, Screamer shoved the sandbag back to create distance, then lunged forward and unleashed another barrage.
"Do it properly! Accuracy! Accuracy!"
D‑59 days.
Sitting cross‑legged on a rock overlooking the stream, Shirone had grown even more gaunt over the past few days.
All he'd eaten was the herbal porridge Miro made, and because his brain was consuming every nutrient, his already light body had lost another three kilograms.
"I can't think at all."
He wanted to pull his brain out and throw it in the trash.
Except for three hours of sleep, this was his only rest.
At first he'd wondered if the training helped at all, but lately he'd realized it definitely did.
If he hadn't been given four hours of meditation, he'd have either collapsed from exhaustion or gone insane and killed himself.
"Nothing is trivial. You simply refuse to look."
He repeated Miro's words and stared at the scene before him, but he couldn't understand what he was supposed to be looking at.
"A leaf is hanging. The wind blows and it trembles."
He watched a spider building a web between the branches.
'What does that spider think about as it lives?'
He watched aimlessly until dusk began to fall.
'Night's coming. I wonder if the spider caught anything.'
The spider must have eaten something too.
It was obvious, but because he'd never examined it closely, it felt oddly interesting.
"Shirone, night training starts."
When Miro's calm voice spoke, his heart dropped like a stone.
Four hours outside hell felt shorter than an hour inside it.
"…Yes."
Shirone exhaled softly and followed Miro toward the training hall.
D‑55 days.
The annex at Torimia Palace was as splendid and vast as a noble's mansion.
Poni, the only royal at the Magic Academy, dove into the pool of the specially renovated annex.
When she surfaced dripping, the maids fussed with towels and stamped their feet.
"Miss, please rest today. You'll catch a cold if you keep going."
"I'm fine. That's enough for today. Go in and rest."
"But—"
"It's an order."
Startled by the cold response, the maids folded the towels and left the poolside.
"Fwooo!"
Poni swept her blonde hair along the part and entered the Spirit Zone.
As the propeller installed in the pool began to spin, countless whirlpools formed.
Her specialty was water; her field was torrents.
This training's goal was to completely counter the machine‑generated flow.
"I will get stronger."
Royals are noble, and so they don't labor.
But that privilege belonged only to the direct line; it wasn't a life goal for Poni, who could never ascend to the throne.
"Royalty. I don't need authority someone else gives me."
When she cast her torrent magic, the water flow shifted violently, and as the machine—set above its limit—pushed its power in, her vision flickered.
"I'll do it! I'll build my own authority!"
Foam rose on the surface like a pot boiling.
D‑51 days.
Shirone's numerical sequence finally began to breach the trillions.
At 1.2 trillion, the light of his manifestation shimmered brilliantly, and Miro watched the change cautiously.
"The change is definitely occurring. But it's still far from the singularity."
When one reaches the state of unity with all things, the individuality of the manifestation begins to influence the Laws.
So far they couldn't predict what that individuality would be, but the scale of change was considerable.
"Krrr!"
Through repetitive training, Shirone's number sequence stretched without end.
Passing one trillion into two, three—the scale of growth showed his talent, but the realm of wonder was still distant.
"Ugh!"
With a death rattle, Shirone dropped to his knees.
He thought he'd heard a thunk in his head, and then no thoughts came at all.
"Sob…"
His face fell into a mournful expression without him realizing it.
'It's hard. Too hard.'
He'd fought many battles, but fighting himself was an entirely different concept.
To conquer yourself is to kill yourself.
Between neither dead nor alive, he had to be even one unit better than yesterday.
He was as good as dead by the trillions, and he'd hit his limit.
"I don't think I'll make the time."
"That again? I told you not to think about it."
"My head's spinning. If I sleep a bit and wake up—"
"Do it!"
When Miro snapped, Shirone lifted his head, eyes full of hostility.
Miro's beautiful face now looked like a fearsome witch.
"You say there's no time and then want to sleep? Keep going. Everything else is delusion."
"I could really die."
"Don't act spoiled."
Shirone's mouth drooped in sorrow.
"When you think something's unfair, remember this: even now someone is training with the resolve that they don't care if they die. There are countless people who'd risk their lives, or sell their souls to demons, just to get stronger. There's no reason for you to hog the glory of victory with those people out there. If time is short, shorten your sleep."
He was already getting only three hours, but Miro's words were as sharp as a blade.
"It's fine, even if I cut an hour—"
"You won't die! You won't die, Screamer!"
"Uaaah!"
As if trying to drown out Pairoker's voice, Screamer screamed and pounded the sandbag.
But the more he did, the harder his father drove him.
"Don't rest on your talent! Don't be proud of merely trying! Fight only for yourself!"
"Uaaah! Uaaahhh!"
With the seven‑hit sequence repeating without pause, the heavy sandbag creaked and began to tremble.
'Getting stronger! Stronger than I was a second ago!'
Tomorrow's me will be stronger than today's me.
Gritting his teeth and thrusting his fists, veins stood out across Screamer's upper body.
D‑48 days.
Shirone forced himself not to lose his mind.
'4.3 trillion. 6.7 trillion. 11.9 trillion.'
A small thrill crept into Miro's previously impassive face.
'It's accelerating.'
It proved his mind and body were beginning to endure the training.
After passing 12 trillion, Shirone collapsed with a thud.
"Again. Start from the beginning."
"Uaaaaah!"
A harsh sound tore out of him as fierce emotion welled up, but like someone in a trance, his body obeyed Miro.
"Shirone, success is the sum of failures. Pile up failures and vault over the wall of success."
'14.4 trillion! 19.8 trillion! 24.6 trillion!'
Blood dripped from Shirone's nose, but Miro paid it no heed and looked upward, above their heads.
Where the haze of light rose, a golden angel spread its wings wide.
'The world is watching you. It's do or die. You can do it, Shirone. If I can, you can too.'
Ten days later, Shirone's number sequence broke the first target: one thousand trillion.
The time remaining before the Magic Academy reopened.
D‑37 days.