60. Below (Patreon)

No way.

A thousand doll bodies lined up below him. All of them looked exactly as Rosamund had after she’d degraded, at least in their base form. Smooth porcelain. Ball joints. Their eyes shut, they stood in perfect ranks. Their faces differed, as did their hair, but they all wore the same uniform and carried the same two swords crossed on their backs. Ike furrowed his brows. “Why that uniform…?”

“It’s the uniform of one of the large sects on the far side of the Abyss,” Tana offered. She looked at Ike. “We feared that the sects were planning an attack on the city, and went to the Brightbriar Sect to offer a warning, but…” She trailed off. Pain flickered in her eyes.

“But we were waylaid along the way,” Ket finished, stepping in to finish.

“Then, the city lord doesn’t know?” Ike asked, startled.

Tana shook her head.

Ket pursed his lips. “We were unable to deliver the message,” he said, but no more.

Ike glanced at Ket, then back at the army. His brows furrowed. Rosamund—the fake one—looked just like these things. At least in general form. Was she a plant? A spy? A replacement? Did I do the city lord a favor by destroying her?

Or is it a very common shape? Maybe all kinds of mages create doll clones, and these are just standard doll clones.

Or maybe…

Ike shook his head. There was too much. Too many questions in his head. I need to learn more. Right now, I’m just making wild guesses. I still don’t know why the city lord took a fake Rosamund out of the Abyss, or conversely, why my Rosamund was a fake to begin with. I mean, hell. Maybe he took the real Rosamund out of the Abyss, after I did him the favor of defeating the fake…I don’t know. Really, I should just say I don’t know what the hell is going on with Rosamund and the city lord.

Figuring that out will unlock so much, but I have no idea how to learn anything more about Rosamund or the city lord. I’ll just have to keep going and see what I can discover.

Ket glanced at Ike. “You’ve been silent for a while. Have you seen something like this before?”

Ike hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I…just dumbstruck by all this. I’m just a kid from the slums. All this cities attacking cities stuff is way over my head.”

It’s not that I don’t trust Ket and Tana. I don’t, yet, but that’s beside the point. More importantly, all my ideas right now are wild guesses. I don’t want to cloud an actual investigation with nonsense.

Besides, I don’t really want to reveal Rosamund. She’s my ace in the hole, the reason I can still fight right now, aside from eating monster meat and absorbing monster cores. If I reveal her…well, it’s not like I think Ket or Tana will betray me. No, the problem is, all it takes is one slip-up on their part, one casual mention of her to the wrong person, and my ace in the hole becomes a huge burden. Down here in the Abyss, where you have to swap to lunam or stop being a mage, I’m willing to bet people would die to have something as handy as Rosamund’s head. And I’d rather not have to stave off all the mages in town as a lowly Rank 1.

Monster meat… Ike looked over his shoulder. He’d have to go back and collect the rooster, and maybe dig up some of the other chicken later. If nothing else, the rooster was definitely worth the walk. Based on the amount of mana its core had given him, its meat was sure to be rich as well.

Plus, now that I know there’s a town, I can sell some of the excess chicken. I’m sure there’s mages who would be more than happy to eat some mana-rich meat.

His brow furrowed. He looked at Ket. “The monsters down here have mana, not lunam. How?”

Ket lowered the branch, once more obscuring their view of the doll army. He shrugged as he led them away. “Monsters process magic more primitively than humans do. We humans need mana, or need lunam. As far as I can tell, monsters just absorb ‘energy,’ and their bodies then turn that energy into whatever they need.”

“Humans can’t do that?” Ike asked.

Ket shrugged.

Tana stepped up, looking Ike in the eyes. She walked backward for a few steps, backing down the forest path. “No. Unfortunately, as Ket said, humans have more sophisticated cores and mana paths. It means that we need a particular kind of energy to use magic. Actually, what you’re absorbing from monsters isn’t mana or lunam, but instead that primitive magical energy. The monsters take the refined form, lunam, and lower it back to its primitive form, energy. You can then absorb that energy whether you use lunam or mana, and process it into whatever your body needs, be that mana or lunam.”

“Why don’t we do that? It sounds useful,” Ike commented. He ducked a branch, pushing leaves out of his way.

Tana shook her head. “You know how monsters generate skills in their own bodies, that we then take and use in ours? It’s like that. Monsters’ bodies are built in a way to process any kind of mana, but in return, they can only ever learn the skills their bodies are built to learn. Humans, on the other hand, can use any skill, as long as we’re compatible with the skill in question. We don’t have to be born with bodies that know how to cast fireballs in order to cast fireballs; we can absorb a fireball skill at any age and learn to cast fireballs. But in return, we need to use a more refined type of energy—mana or lunam—to cast the skill. It’s a trade-off.”

“So if we used raw magic, we’d only be able to cast whatever spells we’re born with…kind of?” Ike asked, a little lost.

Tana wiggled her head back and forth. She turned back around to watch the path. “More or less.”

“And humans are born with no skills, so we’d be able to cast nothing. But Loup was born with the ability to eventually form lightning skills inside her body, so she can use raw magic to cast lightning,” he surmised.

“Yes.”

“I think I’m getting it, now,” Ike murmured.

“If you aren’t, I’m sure Tana will be happy to help you out,” Ket said with a chuckle. “It’s been too long since someone’s been willing to put up with her lectures.”

“Lectures? I’m just trying to have conversations about theoretical magic. Is that too much to ask?” Tana said, shaking her head.

Ket chuckled again. He gestured them on. “It’s not much further to the town. Let’s keep going. At this rate, we should reach home before nightfall.”