Knight Wright was just about to speak when Dennis, who had been standing to one side, carried over two chairs and said with a smile to Ophelia, "Ophelia, sit down and listen. I'm curious too, you know. Word is he's a talent no less gifted than you."
Ophelia's manner stayed cold. She felt not a shred of goodwill toward her two brothers: Marshall was a stupid mad dog, and Dennis was a cunning wild fox. She was not naive enough to believe Dennis had come to tell her out of any real concern for her — he simply wanted to be there to fan the flames.
Still, Dennis had helped her, after all, so she gave him the courtesy of sitting down. Not because she had recovered a genius for herself — Ophelia did not care about that either — but because Adam was, to her, rather special.
Knight Wright laid the whole thing out from beginning to end. Ophelia showed no reaction once he had finished; she simply ordered the attendants behind her to carry Adam back to his room, nodded to the two of them, and left.
Dennis kept the smile on his face and rose to see Ophelia off, looking perfectly unruffled — only his clenched fists and the veins standing out on his neck showed how unsettled he was inside.
"This world really isn't fair."
Ophelia's party walked the roads of the manor. Everyone who saw her stepped aside, bowing slightly and standing to the side, straightening only after she had passed. That respect had nothing to do with rank; it was simple awe of strength and nobility.
She quietly instructed her maid: "Go to my room and bring me a tin of ointment that hasn't been opened."
The maid headed off in the other direction, envy filling her heart. She knew how precious her lady's ointment was — in the whole manor, no, in the whole Northland, only the lady and the Count were entitled to use it. It was a thing made by a Mage, and rumor said that while its raw material had been alive, it could tear a knight apart with ease.
Applying the ointment was of course not something Ophelia did with her own hands. After the knight under her command had spread it evenly over Adam's whole body, Ophelia dismissed everyone around her and sat alone in Adam's room, eyes closed, silently waiting for him to wake.
Night fell.
The secret medicine brewed from that unknown ingredient was formidably effective. Adam's wounds healed at an astonishing, visible rate; the medicine's power passed through his skin into his body and generated a gentle, benign energy. Supported by it, his cells began dividing at an accelerated pace, making up the body's overload in a short time, and then went on to nourish and restore his frail constitution. The coma that was supposed to last several days ended, just like that.
"High-quality nutrient detected entering the body. Cells beginning accelerated division. Organ strength, muscle power, blood activity, bone calcium — all increasing."
Adam cooperated actively with the medicine's power; his perfect bodily control let him absorb the treatment completely, and this one tin of ointment was worth hundreds of ordinary meals.
"Since you're awake, start training the breathing method. Compress your spiritual power. Use only your breathing frequency to vibrate your body." Ophelia opened her eyes and spoke to Adam.
Adam complied without a word of protest, beginning to breathe at the special frequency. Absorption of the medicine sped up another notch; the thick layer smeared on his skin dwindled rapidly, until all that remained was a thin film like black dead skin, which flaked away.
"Not enough." These were Adam's first words. A few more portions of benign energy like that and his body would reach the standard for training the breathing method, instead of blacking out as it had this time.
"Hah." Ophelia's response carried no readable meaning.
Adam sat up in the dark, reached around and tore the residue of the medicine off his body, picked up the new clothes folded neatly at the head of the bed and put them on, then sat on the edge of the bed without a word.
Ophelia had not looked away while Adam dressed; she had not shifted so much as an inch. Only after the silence had stretched on a long while did she speak: "Don't you have anything to say?"
Ophelia's voice was very soft, as though she were not asking a question but talking to herself, yet Adam heard the turmoil in it. He realized that the person before him stood on the edge of an eruption.
Ophelia's feelings were a tangled mess.
Though she was the Count's own daughter, she had not lived a happy life. Her mother's lowly status and early death meant she had never known a family's affection, and her father, the uncrowned king of the Northland, had no reason to turn his gaze on a laughable creature who was little better than a bastard daughter.
In the manor, her awkward status doomed her to an unhappy childhood. She was the Count's own child, yet treated no differently from a servant; and because she was the Count's own child, no one dared be her friend. Everyone shied away from her, and the only one who never deliberately kept his distance was Adam — an idiot.
In corners where no one paid attention, a filthy little yellow-haired girl sat beside a thin, big-headed boy chattering away, sharing food that had been hard to come by. That was the only warmth in Ophelia's cold childhood.
Her situation only improved when, at ten, she revealed a dazzling talent — but in exchange, she could no longer get close to Adam. Not because of status, but because she could not control her own power; she was afraid that the slightest touch would kill this one and only "friend." Later, the training she required and the places she had to pass through were too dangerous, so she gave Adam work to do for her, and handed him a way of living that would keep him comfortable to the end of his days.
"Adam, how does an idiot who's been an idiot for sixteen years suddenly wake up, learn the breathing method with no one to teach him, and possess such powerful spiritual force? Should I be happy for you? Or have you been deceiving everyone all along?"
And me? Ophelia thought.
Adam sensed the intense emotion radiating off her, an emotion that ought to be called sorrow. Emotion had replaced logic in her thinking, and he felt he ought to explain.
"I..." The pronoun struck him as rather novel. "Come from another world."
Ophelia's expression became quite a sight — not astonishment, but mockery. "This is the Mage World, the Mage Plane," she said. "Ever since the great Prometheus, True Spirit Archmage, altered the world coordinates, and Anne Croft, Guardian of the World, sacrificed herself to sublimate the plane's essential nature, no otherworldly being has been able to descend of its own will. And now you tell me you're from another world?"
Adam's eyes flew wide. His spiritual power spread out in an instant; the information in Ophelia's words thrilled him. This was indeed no dull, monotonous world — there were powerhouses here capable of changing the world. Adam did not believe the world was changed by strength. It could only be knowledge. Only knowledge could change the world.
Under the agitation of Adam's spiritual power, wind surged through the sealed room and fragile materials nearly burst apart, yet Ophelia stood utterly unmoved, her tone all the more mocking: "What? Found me out, so now you want to fight me?"
Adam truly had no impression of her. When he had first arrived in this world it had been the hardest time of all: the viruses had been vast in number, occupying all of his memory, while the antivirus program crept along. He'd had no choice but to cut off external contact and seal himself in, or risk being overrun at any moment. That state had not eased until after he turned ten — which was exactly when Ophelia had been separated from him.
But since he had already begun explaining, Adam did not much care whether Ophelia believed him; as for exposure, that mattered even less. The ointment's help had been enormous, and if Adam wanted to leave now, no one in the manor could stop him. Besides — did the humans of this world seem to know a great deal about visitors from other worlds?
Unexpectedly, Ophelia seemed to lose all interest in his explanation at once. She rose listlessly to leave, saying as she went, "Forget it. It doesn't matter anymore. Since you have that kind of talent, then stay out of the squabble between my two foolish brothers. The Mage will surely come for you, and when he does, I'll fight for a chance for you."
After all, you've never truly hurt me. Giving you a chance is the most I owe you. Ophelia thought this with a touch of sadness.
"Remember — whatever you do, do not sign any contract." With that final warning, Ophelia left.
Adam sat alone in the room, sorting through information. The harvest this time had been enormous: he had not only grasped a way to cultivate transcendent power and begun to improve his frail constitution, but also learned something of the world's true nature. Most crucial of all, he finally knew that this was not a boring world — and that was enough.
He did have his doubts, though. The breathing method was a direct, crude sort of application — like drinking when there is water in the river, or using fire when there is fire on the ground — rather than first understanding the principle, then building, then applying it.
"The knowledge systems are not entirely identical. Preliminary judgment: spiritual power should be one of the fundamental forces, naturally occurring. Beyond spiritual power, No. 2 special energy, and No. 3 special energy, there ought to exist a medium; transcendent power is produced through the interaction of spiritual power and that medium."
"Current conditions and stored knowledge insufficient. Cannot observe the medium or resolve the true source of transcendent power."
Having established the observation task, Adam began training the breathing method on a small scale, controlling his intake of No. 3 special energy and strengthening his body in a gentle manner.
The knight's breathing method was at bottom an overdraft on the body's potential. Without a dynamic balance between external energy and the body's consumption, cultivating it was simply suicide. From this it followed that it was a backward, low-efficiency method — and by the same token, the knight's path had an end, and that end would be reached very easily.
From Ophelia's words Adam deduced that a Mage was a mighty profession far beyond knights, one that could even reach the point of changing the world through oneself. The fragile body of carbon-based life could never bear that; therefore mages must exist for the purpose of altering the essence of life or sublimating the soul.
Genetics and the occult? Adam murmured inwardly. In the end, he still lacked the data for any deep study.
Adam stopped the breathing method. Even at that small scale of energy intake, in under an hour his body had already shown an overload reaction. He found himself looking forward all the more to the Mage's arrival — and to becoming one of them.