35 Heroic saboteurs

Ray cast me a funny look.

“Why are you bowing to the statue?”

“I’m apologizing to Cornelius Sunclaw, of course.”

“It’s only a statue, Armen. That man is long dead. He would be, like, one hundred thirty years if he were still alive.”

“Barely older than Makler Vod, then! … Ray?”

The young necromancer was looking at the door as if he could see it. Under my quizzical look, he said:

“Let’s stop thinking for now and keep climbing—Crap, did I just give you an order?”

I was already climbing the stairs. I turned, amused.

“You didn’t. Apparently, the ‘let’s’ don’t count. By the way, Ray, it’s rare for you to stop thinking. Congrats.”

“… Thanks. Say, that shadow you swallowed… You’re not digesting it, are you?”

I chuckled.

“I’m not! It was stirring a bit at first, but now it’s calm. I think it understands we want to help it. Who would have thought that I would be helping a weird creature locked up in a legendary tower? That sounds like a real adventure, doesn’t it!”

“Well… Glad to hear you two are getting along just fine.”

I wasn’t exactly “getting along”, since I couldn’t really speak with the shadow, but somehow, I had that feeling that the creature was grateful to us, and that it was craving freedom.

How long had it been imprisoned in Yuutow Tower? I had no idea… But maybe more than a century. Its urge to get away from this place was contagious. I picked up the pace.

I began counting the steps. Ten. Twenty. Fourty. Then I realized the number of each step had been carefully engraved on the outer wall. Three-hundred-sixty-one… Three-hundred-seventy… Three-hundred-ninety-seven…

“Four hundred!”

Ray had fallen behind. He was out of breath. Only then did I notice that my qi-sensor was broken. It was showing «1175 Mz», more than forty “Mz” less than when we had met Oliver and Axel, and it wouldn’t budge from there. When I talked to Ray about it, he checked his.

“One-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-six millizohns.”

“Millizohns? So you read it like this, I didn’t know. Anyway, yours shows almost the same pressure. Weird. Maybe the qi pressure in that room was too high for the sensors?”

“Maybe,” Ray replied with a huff.

“I bet the real qi pressure must be pretty high: you’re panting like a boar.”

“Not at all. Huff… It’s this damn staircase. There’s no end to it.”

A problem of stamina? Come to think of it, Ray had never been very sportive. I shrugged, smiling, and waited for him before going on at his pace.

“So, you said that circulation method Kaspar taught me is helping me waste less energy? How so?”

“Huh… He didn’t precisely teach you anything, Armen. He just carved the path into you.”

“Ah, right. Electronic necromancy is amazing!”

“It can be flawed, too,” Ray replied, panting. “I still resent my cousin for using his technology on you on a whim. But what’s done is done.”

He hadn’t forgiven Kaspar, huh? Well, I hadn’t really either. But since he had taught me how to resist orders given by other necromancers than my master, I still was grateful to him.

At a thought, I suddenly straightened up.

“Ray! If only the same method could work with maths and chemistry…! Imagine it, Ray! A world full of circulation methods that make us all so intelligent that we don’t need to think anymore!”

We looked at each other, then I realized my last sentence made no sense at all.

“You’re too intelligent to think, Armen.”

I burst out laughing, then admitted:

“All things considered, a world like that would be awfully boring. I’m secretly proud of being a knucklehead.”

“It’s not a secret anymore.”

“I mean, I’m relieved to see other people know things I don’t.”

“The world would be in trouble otherwise.”

I smiled patiently.

“Are you picking a fight with me, Ray? Anyway, think about it,” I continued, inspired. “It’s, like, at first you’re scared of things you don’t know, just like that horror vacui my cram teacher talked about, and you want to learn all of it, but then you realize you can’t learn everything in the world, and you conclude that, as long as you understand the most basic things in life, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to control your qi, or make a computer, or whether the number pi is four point two or four point three.”

“Three point fourteen, rounding it down, great sage—you’re falling behind from so much talking, you know—but yeah, I think I get what you mean. Those ‘most basic things’ can vary depending on the person, though.”

For some reason, that made me think of Axel Sunclaw.

“One person, one worldview,” I cited wisely. And I happily caught up with him, adding: “But isn’t it weird? We didn’t pass anybody yet.”

Even though, before, we had been passing so many trainees… Maybe we had stayed in that room for too long and everyone had already reached the top or given up? Ray was grimacing.

“We’ll know why for sure once we get to the top.”

On our way up, all we met were statues, wall paintings, and more steps. The tower was deserted and quiet. Like a ruin. Since it had no windows, I couldn’t help but imagine we had been teleported somewhere else, far away… Maybe that room was a teleporting portal? Or maybe Cornelius’ statue was more than a statue and…

I stopped raving when, at last, we reached the top.

On the last landing, I was welcomed by the watchful eye of a smiling statue clad in white and wearing a golden crown. Even before reading the plaque, I somehow knew who it was: Water Li, the founder of Yuutow Tower. Since his sworn brother Ashkabell opened the path, it was only natural that Water Li closed it.

I turned to the door. It had no handle. Worst, it was locked from the outside.

“The hell?”

I glanced around. There were no more steps going up. We had definitely arrived at the top. Did they forget about us?

I hit the door with my fist. Reaching the last step, Ray took a deep breath and looked around before commenting:

“Maybe we should just go down.”

“Go down?! No way!” I hammered the door. “I want to see the view from up there. There’s no way we have climbed all those steps for nothing! How could they forget about us?”

Ray’s face had darkened.

‘I just hope they didn’t find out about us,’ he whispered in my mind.

I gasped. About us? Did he mean the instructors could have found out that he was a necromancer? That I was an undead? I would have paled to death if that were possible.

“You mean, they know…”

Ray shook his head energetically.

‘No, I have no idea. I didn’t want you to hear that. Now that our necro-bond has grown, it’s harder for me not to share my thoughts with you. It’s kinda exhausting.’

“Then just share?” I suggested.

‘Like hell I will.’

My lips stretched into a mocking smile. The shadow had started stirring at my sudden nervousness and was pushing inside my mouth. I swallowed it back then stated:

“I’m gonna break down this door, wait and see.”

I took a running start, just beside Water Li’s kind statue, before dashing toward the door. I heard Ray’s thought clearly:

‘It’s made of iron, moron. It’ll be painful just watching you crash into the door…’

That only made me put in even more effort. I rushed to the door head-on and was about to crash… when it suddenly opened, and I saw the setting sun falling into the vast ocean. In my impulse, I hit the balustrade, several meters forward, bent over under the shock, and… Abruptly, Gorka Soulberg, who was standing by the banister, swiftly moved, held out an arm, and stopped me. Were it not for his quick reaction, I would probably be enjoying the weirdest and craziest view of all right now. As my savior withdrew his arm, he grazed mine, and a thin streak of his lifeforce ran through my body. Something weird happened in the space of a few seconds: a totally different landscape flashed across my mind. A green mountain, a sakura, a temple engulfed in mist… Meeting Gorka’s black, dead eyes, I snapped back to reality and stepped back, speechless. What…?

“Holy Sacred Blessed Gods!” At the exclamation of Addison Salas the Viral, I turned, startled. The crystallographer, who looked generally so composed, cursed in Yanganese and locked the door immediately after Ray walked out, glaring at him. “We told everyone in the tower to go back and climb down! You two! Didn’t you hear the message?”

I looked at Ponytail, amazed. Even in Yanganese, he spoke so quickly it was hard to catch his words. Except when he was invoking the gods, I thought, amused.

“You reckless brats! You could have died if the qi pressure system had started working again! The challenge was over the moment we announced we had a technical problem. Do you two think you can just do away with our instructions?!”

Under Addison’s scolding, Ray looked away, embarrassed. I cleared my throat, putting up a forefinger.

“But, instructor, how could we know? We didn’t hear the message.”

“It resonated in the whole staircase and was repeated several times,” he retorted. “There is no way you didn’t hear it.”

What could I reply to that? If we didn’t hear the message, that was probably because we had been in the room of the dark flame at the time. But I couldn’t tell him that. Actually… that system failure was a bit too much of a coincidence. As the realization slowly dawned on me, I turned to Ray in dismay.

My master joined his hands and slightly bowed, muttering:

“We’re sorry to have worried you, sir.”

He added mentally:

‘That just confirms my doubts. That shadow was being used as an energy core to maintain the qi pressure system in this tower.’

I twitched. So… by freeing the shadow, we had just destroyed one of the most famous locations on earth.

No big deal. Yeah, no big deal at all!

Maaan, I sighed inwardly. Our feat would probably be seen as a crime by the Nyomin. Still… I didn’t regret it. That poor shadow didn’t deserve such a horrible treatment.

Humans can be so cruel without even realizing it.

Ray nodded. Did he hear my thought or was he just nodding to himself?

Anyway, why did he keep to himself that our qi sensors were, in fact, working just fine? We had been climbing the last two hundred steps under a total normal qi pressure. Geez. Not only had we missed the chance to show off our skills in this challenge, but we had even disobeyed the Heroes’ instructions and sabotaged the training.

Luckily, Addison didn’t insist. He only said that our thoughtless behavior was unworthy of people wishing to enter the WHO, to which we obviously couldn’t reply that we had no intention to do so in the first place. We kept silent until he waved us away saying:

“Go down the outer escalator. Gorka Soulberg, thanks for your precious help. Your qi affinity is amazing, as usual. Unfortunately, from what you said, it seems the problem will be harder to fix than expected. Please go down and rest.”

Without a word, my creepy savior turned to calmly walk across the tiled floor. I followed him with Ray, glancing around at the beautiful dome and the adorned columns. Everything was shining with orange reflections under the setting sun. The view, beyond, was breathtaking. The ocean was sparkling in the distance, overwhelmingly vast. It felt as if I was standing in the lantern room of a gigantic lighthouse. To the northwest, I could see Phoenix City in its whole, a sea of sand-colored, small houses covering the large, hunchbacked island. To the east, the sky was growing dark. And far below, Yuutow Island was a mix of fire and night colors.

I would have wanted to stay longer to really enjoy such an inspiring view, but well… At least I had got to see it. I turned my attention to the young man with long, black hair that was walking at his own, slow pace.

“Er… Gorka?” I called him. “I would have fallen to my doom if you hadn’t been there. Thank you for saving me.”

I fell silent, surprised, as Gorka Soulberg kept walking toward the escalator. Was he half-deaf? I tried again.

“SORRY IF I’M BEING LOUD!” He winced. The shadow inside me gave a start and made me choke on the next words. “URGL, RSH, I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME!”

Under my mask, I coughed and swallowed back the shadow.

Gorka finally half turned his head to me, and a faint smile flickered on his lips before he nodded imperceptibly and turned his back to us again. I thought he was going to keep silent, but as he stepped on the escalator, he sighed:

“No worries. I’ve saved you as a reflex. By the way, I’m not deaf.”

“…! SORRY!”

His face said something like, “You already apologized beforehand, you know”. Or was it more like, “You’re still being too loud”? Raising tired eyes to me as the escalator started rolling down, he yawned:

“I don’t even know you, so let’s leave it at that.”

As we stepped on the escalator, Ray and I exchanged a glance. I smiled with my eyes and said:

“I’m Armen Moon. And he’s Ray Styxer. Nice to meet you.”

“…”

“So you were helping Ponytail with the qi pressure problem, weren’t you? You must be very skilled.”

“…”

“Did you figure out why the tower stopped working?” Ray asked.

“…”

“Maybe he’s just tired,” I whispered to Ray.

‘Let’s hope he’s tired enough not to suspect us,’ Ray replied mentally as we kept going down in silence. ‘Gorka Soulberg is from the Soul Clan, one of the most powerful clans in the Nyomin. They’re known for their excellent qi control and their deep knowledge of white energy in general. There was a time when my dad studied their research very closely, like, he got so interested that he did only that for months. After all, one of their most secret techniques is said to allow them to control souls.’

Control souls? I gasped. Wasn’t the purpose of necro-cores precisely to control the souls of the dead? Then…

‘They’re not necromancers, though,’ Ray added, maybe guessing my thoughts. ‘They control the souls of the living. Also, according to my dad, they cannot control the soul of someone who isn’t willing to be controlled. It’s like establishing a pact: the consent of both parties is needed. Unlike us, their pact can be undone, orders are not as absolute, and above all, the underling will not die if his master dies. Basically, that’s why the Soul Clan’s techniques are legal while necromancy is not.’

Gorka’s long, black hair slightly undulated under the wind. His skin was as pale as mine. Such a frail complexion… yet he gave off strange, powerful vibes.

“The Soul Clan…”

At my thoughtless whispering, he turned his head, raising his eyebrows. He held my gaze, and I ended up nervously looking away at the distant sky.

“Wh-What a beautiful sunrise, don’t you think?!”

Amusement flew through the necro-bond. I looked at Ray askance. Oh, come on… What was he laughing for? We had just arrived at the bottom, and to my surprise, Gorka walked away saying softly:

“A beautiful sunset indeed.”

After a silence, Ray burst out laughing. I pouted at him.

“What? Sunset, sunrise, what’s the difference.”

“Just about twelve hours? Hahaha!”

I rolled my eyes. Well, I was glad to see Ray in a good mood. He didn’t seem to feel very guilty about the tower. That only showed how much he cared for the shadow we were helping… But exactly what was that creature, anyway? A creature whose dark energy had been used to create high qi pressures for a century…

Not even Ray seemed to know.