Was she already treading a fine line with the spirit? Did Nike’s surprise attack end up pushing the spirit to its breaking point? No matter the case, it was clear that time was of the utmost essence.
“All right! I’ll master it in a week!” Sita cried. “Five all-nighters in a row is nothing! I just can’t eat, drink, sleep, or rest, and I’ll devote all my time to practice!”
“Nope! No dice!” I replied. “You’ll pass out during the actual ritual!” I knew that Sita was trying to put up a strong front and carry her own weight, but I was afraid she’d actually stay up for a week straight.
“Not to worry, Mary,” Orthoaguina replied. “Five all-nighters in a row is a piece of cake for folks like us.”
“That’s not something to be proud of!” I snapped. “No all-nighters! That’s the rule!” Down with exploitation! This enterprise is of the people and for the people!
“Urgh, then I suppose we’ve got no choice,” Orthoaguina relented. “We shall use all the wisdom and knowledge in Kairomea to make Sita into the perfect singer!”
He clearly had a fire lit inside him—I could practically see the actual massive dragon clenching his fist with determination as the entire tower cheered him on. I’m not hallucinating, am I?
“All right, then! Sita! First, we must increase your stamina!” Orthoaguina declared. “Run a few laps!”
“Yes, my lord!” Sita replied.
“And you lot follow her!”
“Whaaaat?” I whined.
As Sita ran around the stage with all her might, Safina followed, and we had to run after them too. I was incredibly skeptical we were following the best training regimen, but regardless of that concern, we’d officially marked the start of our preparation for the concert that was to come.
Evening came, and we were exhausted by all the running around we’d done—and also we’d divvied up the singing and dancing parts—so we set up camp around the stage and decided to rest for the night.
I went to check on Noa to see if she was doing well. The stage was designed to create a ridiculously large sphere of water, so there was plenty of room for us to camp for the night.
According to Frederika, people from nearby come to watch when there are rituals, and they draw large, bustling crowds. I could believe it—it was easy to imagine a sort of dome seating structure being set up here. I was now needlessly worrying whether it was okay to camp where an audience might be sitting.
“My lady,” my maid said.
“How’s Noa doing, Tutte?” I asked.
“She’s not awake yet.”
“Sita, I’m sorry to bother you when you’re tired, but...”
I initially wanted to borrow the Book of Orthoaguina from Sita and visit Noa by myself, but she insisted that she wanted to tag along and came with me.
Noa was a chimera created by Nike, and I knew Orthoaguina was familiar with the technology that created her. Since he was the only one here who had the expert knowledge I needed, I felt he was the only one I could rely on to assist me. For Sita’s part, now that she knew how Noa had come to be, she could hardly consider herself uninvolved in her situation, so she wanted to accompany me. I had no reason to leave Sita behind anyway—the more expert eyes the better. Speaking of which, I also had Snow come along with me since she knew more about the unknown than I did. Plus, our camp was already set up.
“Hm, it sounds to me like she used a power peculiar to her,” Orthoaguina observed. “Perhaps that caused her to suffer from mana exhaustion. I suspect that she activated an impressive ability that sapped away everything she had.”
Once the fuss died down, Tutte told us of Nike and how, apparently, he’d targeted her. When I heard that my precious maid may have fallen victim to his machinations, I felt a visceral, downright ugly rage come to a boil in my heart.
Then Tutte explained how Noa activated an ability just in the nick of time that was all too familiar to me—I was positive it was a power to nullify Nike’s magic. While the conditions to use her ability differed from mine, it was now evident that people aside from me could nullify spells as well.
Feeling sure I understood what Noa had done, I asked Orthoaguina about the possibility of canceling magic. He claimed that while it wasn’t wholly impossible, it was infamously difficult to meddle with or negate a spell and thus was something almost never done. Of course, that just made me sweat buckets.
“When Nike laid eyes on Noa, he called her ‘a failure.’ I wonder if that has something to do with how easily she succumbed to mana exhaustion,” I suggested.
“A failure...” Orthoaguina murmured. “The question becomes, what exactly constitutes a failure in Nike’s eyes? I don’t think she’s as helpless as Sita assumes, but as we’ve seen before, I’m sure Noa will fully awaken if we give her some time.”
I heaved a sigh of relief that Orthoaguina’s analysis hadn’t changed.
“Hrm...” Snow mumbled dubiously.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t really know how to explain it. I’m not sure if it’s because she used up all her power, but when I see her up close, she’s... Hmm...”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific. Try putting it into words.”
“It just...feels weird. Something’s not right.”
“How so?”
“I can’t explain it well, but Lily and I can see, like, mana and souls and stuff like that, right?”
“Like how you mentioned you could see mana residue before?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure if Lily knows what she’s doing, but thanks to her, this girl has stabilized a fair bit. Still, every now and then, I feel like her body and mana waver—like there’s this disconnect somehow.”
I had absolutely no idea what to do with this sudden bombshell Snow had so casually given me, so I passed along what she said to Sita and Orthoaguina in the hopes they’d have any ideas.
“Disconnect...” Orthoaguina muttered. “Grr... As I’m not physically there, I’m unable to sense such elements. Perhaps I’d be foolish to be chagrined that divine beasts were more sensitive than I was to matters of the soul, in any case. I can assure you I evaluated Noa’s condition to the best of my ability despite overlooking this matter.”
“I know,” I replied. “I do not fault you or anything of the sort. But please, do tell me if you have any insights on this topic.”
“Frankly, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a phenomenon such as what you’ve described. If we’re to discuss this in greater depth, perhaps I should begin by asking you if you’re familiar with theories on the source of mana?”
“U-Uh, could you give me a brief and simple explanation, please?”
“Impossible. Now, listen closely.”
But before Orthoaguina could jump into a complicated ramble on a topic I knew very little about, Sita jumped into the conversation. “It’s actually a popularly debated topic in Kairomea,” she said. “Some people assert that mana comes from the body, while others claim it comes from the soul.”
“Wait, it’s not from the body?” I asked.
“If it did arise from the body,” Sita continued, “then it begs the question: What part of your body could you strengthen to improve your reserves of mana?”
I had no idea. I thought everyone was just sorta...born with their mana, I guess? It never occurred to me... What do you need to train to increase your mana? Honestly, I didn’t even know you could increase your mana. I was born with an absurd amount to begin with, so I’ve never really thought about it.
I consulted my manga knowledge to eke out a cliché guess. “Um, your mind?”
“Oh? No wonder they call you a holy woman, coming up with that so quickly,” Orthoaguina said.
Honestly, I’d thought it was a pretty common trope, but that apparently wasn’t the case in this world, as both Sita and Orthoaguina were looking at me with awe. Crap. Did I screw up? I felt like hastily trying to come up with an excuse here would only make me dig my grave deeper, so I settled for gesturing them to move the conversation along.
“The next question, then, is what is the mind?” Orthoaguina continued. “I’ve theorized that it must be the soul.”
“Put simply, under that theory, mana and the soul would be linked,” Sita explained. “Of course, we have no way to prove the hypothesis, so it remains a theory.”
“It pains me to admit, but as I mentioned earlier, the soul is in the domain of the gods. Us mere mortals are not allowed to casually step into such territory.”
“Wowee... You Kairomean folk sure are serious about your academia.”
“What kind of reaction is that?” Orthoaguina growled with suspicion. “Do I sense some mockery in that tone of yours?”
“I-It’s just you! I was just ever so deeply moved. You guys really are amazing with your brainpower.” All I’d done was give my earnest reaction, and now here I was doing damage control for it! But freeing my foot from my mouth hadn’t been anything new for me lately...
“My lady, please lower your voice,” Tutte scolded me as she heard me yelp loudly, prompting me to swiftly clap my hands over my mouth.
“I-In any case, topics on the soul can be left to the divine beast, I suppose,” Orthoaguina said, lowering his voice as well. “The best thing for now is for her to get some rest.”
I had no other solution to offer. I didn’t want to say anything more and inadvertently change their opinion of me any further, so I simply nodded while keeping my mouth covered.
“Okay, then I’ll practice my singing a bit before I head for bed,” Sita said. She tried to tuck the book away and leave.
“Hey, now,” I warned her, swiftly grabbing her hand and preventing her from leaving. “Go back and sleep, okay? I bet you’ll use an excuse like, ‘Whoops, it was morning before I knew it,’ and try to pull an all-nighter.” Now that I’d spent a decent amount of time with her, I’d sort of come to know how she thought.
“B-But...” Sita mumbled, not really able to deny I’d hit the nail on the head. She looked glum. I couldn’t blame her for her anxiety, but it was never a good idea to push yourself too hard.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “Besides, you practiced only a bit today, and you’ve already gotten most of the melody down. You can do it if you try, and you’re not in this alone. Let’s work hard together, okay?”
“Precisely!” Orthoaguina said proudly as though his own child had been praised. “That’s exactly so! Sita can do it if she tries. When she became chief librarian, she—”
I feared that his praise would cause me to pull my own all-nighter, so I quickly closed the book on him, making a rather memorable end to our night.