To Amon's surprise, when he did his best to follow the Old Madman's method, it actually worked. What surprised him more was that the first person to have the power of one body with two faces awakened in him was Link. By the time Link had learned most of the low-rank earth elemental divine arts—all that remained was to master them and learn to combine them in use—Metatron's power still showed no sign of waking.
Amon analyzed it carefully and concluded that it wasn't that Metatron's aptitude fell short of Link's. It had to be that he already had fixed notions about divine arts; to wipe those preconceptions from his mind and focus wholeheartedly on awakening the power of one body with two faces was no easy thing. Some things can't be un-thought simply because you tell yourself to forget them.
Link was an amusing case. He had never even known what divine arts or combat arts were, so Amon simply made him a "test subject."
He knew a bit of the crudest earth elemental divine arts, which put him at the stage of someone who hadn't yet crossed the threshold of the ceremony, but his accumulated groundwork was already quite sufficient. Amon didn't know what to teach him first, so he simply taught Link the miners' craft of Duke Town.
Link already knew some of it, so naturally a hint was all it took, and when it came to the ceremony to awaken the power, he succeeded in one go.
After that, teaching Link was easy. Amon started where he was already familiar, with earth elemental divine arts—Link had been fumbling at them on his own for years, so he was not short on "mana." Amon filled in the rest of the low-rank earth elemental divine arts, and soon Link could wave his bone club around and cast every kind of low-rank earth elemental divine art. Amon then taught him the simplest of the blessing divine arts, the healing art.
He couldn't wear the hat of "the god Amon" for nothing, after all—in a tribe like this, the healing art was the most useful thing there was.
Seeing that Link was about up to the standard of a first-rank divine artist, Amon told him, "To grasp divine arts better, or to use them in a crisis, you can use a staff. But when you're cultivating your mana day to day, or practicing how to combine different divine arts, try your best not to use the staff."
That was what the Old Madman had once told Amon, and Amon passed it on to Link—forgetting one thing: Link's bone club, set with an ordinary godstone, was nothing at all compared to Amon's staff. The warning was more or less unnecessary.
Amon was far more mature than an ordinary boy, and his temperament was absolutely steady, but he was a youth after all. His teaching divine arts to Link and Metatron looked, to outsiders, a bit like child's play. Link's success had been more or less a lucky accident—and Metatron's would be the same.
Metatron had had his doubts; preconceptions built up over years are hard to erase from the heart. But when he saw Link waving his bone club and casting all kinds of earth elemental divine arts, he was utterly convinced by Amon. Not a trace of hesitation remained; he threw himself body and soul into Amon's method, using the Eye of the Earth to awaken his power. About a dozen days later, he succeeded as well.
Neither Metatron nor Link knew that before he met them, Amon had only ever cultivated water and air elemental divine arts, and had only just begun practicing fire. The whole process of teaching the two of them was also his own cultivation. But Amon found that with the same divine art—earth elemental, say—he learned far faster than Link, so much faster that Link never noticed Amon was cultivating on his own while teaching him.
Only in a wild-folk tribe like this could Amon have gotten away with it so smoothly. Out in the wider world, an experienced divine artist would have seen through him at a glance.
Once both of them had awakened their power, Amon took the Eye of the Earth back, taught them a few low-rank divine arts, and left them to practice on their own, setting them certain requirements—freezing a layer of ice on the ground without any visible sign, and so on. Amon was only speaking off the cuff, from his own experience, but it made life bitter for the two of them. How could it be that easy? Those had been special trials an eighth-rank grand mage had set for Amon himself.
When the teacher himself is still muddling along, the students are all the more likely to land in trouble. One day, while practicing fire elemental divine arts, Link burned down his own house—burned it remarkably clean. Amon hurriedly taught him water elemental divine arts, for no other purpose than this: if something went wrong again, he could put out the fire.
Awakening the power of one body with two faces also awakens the desires of one body with two faces. There was no cold spring here to bathe in, so Amon took the blunt approach: every day they were to practice the introspective discipline of concentration, quietly feeling out that restless agitation without letting it master them—and if they truly had energy with nowhere to spend it, then go climb mountains and hunt!
The tribe was astonished to find that their honored chief seemed to have become a different man these days. He had turned into the fiercest warrior of all, leading the tribe's strongest young men into the mountains to hunt himself, and bringing back more game than anyone—it was breathtaking! Plainly, since the messenger of the gods had arrived, even the chief had been stirred by the gods' power, and meant to offer up game taken with his own hands.
As for Metatron, he was especially restless and irritable these days, always wanting to "duel" someone—but who in the tribe could beat him? So he kept challenging Link to "test his skill." Metatron was a mid-rank warrior, after all. With his staff, Link could cast his best earth elemental divine arts—the slowing art, the sinking foot art, the earth shield art—and tangle with him for a while, but once Metatron got in close, the result was a bloody nose and a swollen face.
After a few rounds of this Link quit, telling Metatron to go play by himself. Later Metatron put a proposition to Link, and Link, whose bones were already itching for a fight, was tempted. So the two of them came to find Amon.
When is a person most impulsive and most daring, feeling that he fears neither heaven nor earth and would blunder into any disaster? Exactly the state Link and Metatron were in now: they had just gained power such as they had never possessed, and their bodies were full of restless energy with nowhere to spend it. Metatron thought back to his close call at the pool last time and felt thoroughly unwilling to leave it at that; he wanted to drag Link back there again.
Last time he had held off three big iron-armored beasts all by himself, and it was said that the iron-armored beast king was only worth a few big iron-armored beasts put together. Now he had learned divine arts, and with Link—who could use divine arts too—helping him, they ought to be able to take care of the lot. As a child he had heard the old legends of heroes who challenged all kinds of monsters; now his blood was up, and he wanted to imitate the heroes in those stories.
Link was the steadier of the two. He wanted to go as well, but he was afraid something would go wrong. The two of them talked it over and decided that if they brought their teacher Amon along to hold the fort, then surely nothing could go wrong? So they came to coax Amon into going with them.
Hearing his two students' plan, Amon frowned and asked, "And what exactly are you two thinking of doing? Going to dig for droppings?"
"It's a trial, that's all," Link answered. "There's no other opponent to be found in these mountains."
Metatron added, "We can mine ore sand while we're at it. Clear that place out, and let the tribesfolk dig up the horsehide-steel ore sand and smelt it into blanks—a small piece of it is worth a lot of money out there!"
Amon countered, "The ore sand settled around the pool where the iron-armored beast king lives must be the finest refined-iron ore there is. But if you kill all those iron-armored beasts, won't there be no ore sand left to dig later?"
Metatron shook his head. "Who said anything about killing iron-armored beasts? We're just going to try our hand. If we can manage to drive them off to one side, we'll come back with the tribesfolk and dig up the muck—and that way we'll be able to gather even more ore sand later."
After all that back and forth, Amon actually let himself be talked into it. A taste for strange adventures is simply the nature of youth; Amon's steady temperament was, to a great extent, forced on him by his circumstances, which had left him no choice but to endure. But when there was room to be playful, he was quite playful. Amon was already an outstanding second-rank divine artist and a second-rank warrior as well, yet to this day he had never tried out what his own skills could actually do, and he wanted to find out.
And lately Amon had troubles of his own. For all the lively bustle of teaching his two students, his second-rank divine arts and second-rank combat arts had both reached their most refined level, yet there was still no sign of advancing further. According to the Old Madman's guess, so long as he did not take a wrong path, the next thing he would face was the trial called "firmness of faith," and passing it would make him a third-rank divine artist and a third-rank warrior at the same time.
But what exactly is such a trial? How will it come? Amon had not the faintest clue. The trial before me is "firmness of faith," and I don't even know which god I'm supposed to believe in—so how am I supposed to pass it? On top of that, the Old Madman had told him to watch the sky in the east and wait for the rolling thunder, saying that he would only see the next message after a disaster arrived.
For days now Amon had seen nothing unusual in the eastern sky. He was waiting for the prophesied disaster, but since it was a disaster, he did not really wish for it to happen; his mood was tangled and contradictory, and for no clear reason he felt restless and could not settle. Since his two students had come up with a plan for some fun, then he might as well go along to clear his head—and try out his own strength at the same time.
Amon was still cautious, and asked Link about the iron-armored beasts. There were only four big ones in the pool; the iron-armored beast king generally did not come out during the day, and even if it did, it was about as strong as the four big beasts combined. He did some quick figuring in his head—the three of them together would be enough to handle that—and only then did he nod.
Link volunteered to lend Amon his staff. Neither he nor Metatron knew that the refined-iron branch in Amon's hand was itself a staff; even a grand divine artist could not have told, so their eyes had no chance at all. Amon of course said no, and gave the Eye of the Earth to Link to use, just in case.
They also discussed how their tactics would fit together: Metatron would of course be the meat shield, standing up front and taking the hits; Link would cast divine arts behind him to cover him, tying down the iron-armored beasts so they could not be ambushed. Amon would hold the high ground and oversee the field, focusing on the iron-armored beast king—if the king actually showed itself, he need only drive it back with divine arts. If they could do that, it would prove they had a chance of leading the tribesfolk here to gather the rich horsehide-steel ore sand.
When they set out, Amon picked up his refined-iron branch and, out of habit, slung his leather pouch over his shoulder. He had not planned to bring Schrödinger along, but the moment the cat saw Amon heading off with the pouch on his back, it naturally leaped onto his shoulder, clawed the pouch open, and crawled inside—its movements light and practiced.
The three men and one cat went down the mountain, passed through the jungle, and came again to that pool. It was noon. A horseshoe-shaped cliff curved around the deep pool; looking closely, at the center of the cliff just above the waterline there was an opening, half of it sunk beneath the water. That should be the iron-armored beast king's den.
Amon quietly climbed to the highest point of the cliff. Metatron stood on the slope at the mouth of the path near the pool and drew his sword, about to make his move—when Link, behind him, said with a show of swagger, "Hold on, don't move. Watch me!"