The seventh floor was a floor of rock.
Once you came out of the sixth-floor forest and down the stone stairs, the air turned cold all at once. Walls, floor, ceiling: everything was rough gray stone. Here and there stood old wooden pillars, left over from the days when people had mined ore down here.
"And that's the first exam requirement done," Celes said as she stepped off the last stair. "Reach the seventh floor."
"Now we just need twenty-one mana stones."
"Yes. ...It's awfully dark down here, though."
Celes conjured a ball of light at the tip of her wand. Luca lit [Lamplight] on his fingertip.
Side by side, Celes's light reached all the way down the passage, while Luca's little flame lit up nothing but his own finger.
"...Mine's enough, don't you think?"
"Yes. I'll put it out."
* * *
The old mine tunnels were on the east side of the seventh floor, just where Grun had said.
An old sign was nailed up over the entrance: DANGER: CAVE-INS. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. In the dirt below it were several sets of fresh footprints.
"Those belong to the ore diggers. They're less than three days old."
"You can tell that?"
"Scavenger habit."
Inside, the tunnel was narrow and twisting.
Luca went forward counting his paces with [Mapmaking], and the lines in his notebook multiplied. A side passage to the right. A shaft dropping away on the left. A side tunnel, caved in and buried.
After a while, he stopped.
A huge boulder blocked the way.
It must have come down from the ceiling. It was taller than a man, and it sealed off the passage completely.
In front of it, tools lay scattered across the floor. A broken lantern. A water flask with its contents spilled out. And a single long-handled pickaxe.
"A cave-in," Celes said. "It came down here, and they ran."
"Yes. ...This pickaxe is still fairly new."
The grip had been rubbed shiny black by sweaty hands, and the point showed the marks of being reground again and again.
Luca took hold of the pickaxe's handle.
◆ ◆ ◆
—Rock has a grain.
Just as wood has a grain, rock has lines running through it. Strike along them, and even the hardest stone splits clean.
His master hammered that into him.
He lays a hand on the wall and feels for the lines with his fingertips. ...Here.
A light swing of the pickaxe. Tok.
A crack darts across the wall, and a chunk of rock tumbles loose. Behind it, iron ore shows its face, gleaming dully.
"All right—"
That's when the ceiling creaks.
Sand trickles down. The lines in the rock are screaming.
Bad. Run.
He runs with the pickaxe still in his hand. Behind him, a roar fills the tunnel.
A falling stone slams into his arm, and the pickaxe flies from his grip. No time to pick it up. He keeps running for the way out.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Stone Reading].
Luca opened his eyes, still holding the pickaxe.
"...I think he got out. He was already running before it came down."
"Good."
Celes let out a breath of relief. Next to her, Luca's stomach growled.
Without a word, Celes held out a second piece of shortbread.
"Thank you. ...Celes, how much shortbread did you bring?"
"Twenty pieces. All for you."
"That's a huge help."
Munching on his shortbread, Luca looked up at the boulder in front of them.
A moment ago, it had just been a big rock.
Now it looked different. Faint lines ran across its surface, thin as the rings in a tree. And there was one spot where they all came together.
There.
Luca laid his hand on the boulder.
He felt for the lines with his fingertips, the same way the miner in the vision had.
"Luca? What are you going to—"
"I'm going to try something."
He swung the pickaxe lightly.
No force behind it at all. He just touched the point to the one spot where the lines met.
Tok.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then came a sharp crack.
A single line raced across the face of the boulder. It forked, and forked again, spreading through the whole rock.
With a heavy thunk, the boulder, taller than a man, split down the middle and toppled apart to either side.
Neither of them said anything.
"...It broke."
"I can see that!"
Celes's shout rang down the tunnel, and a little sand pattered from the ceiling. They both clapped their hands over their mouths at the same time.
"...All you did was go tok, right?" she whispered.
"Yes. It seems that if you hit a rock along its grain, it splits."
"Don't you 'it seems' me..."
* * *
Beyond the split boulder was the wall the miner had been working on.
Every time Luca read the grain and touched the pickaxe to it, another fist-sized lump of iron ore dropped out and rolled to his feet.
"How many are you planning to dig out?"
"As many as fit in the basket."
"You won't be able to carry it home."
On their way back out of the tunnels, something tugged at Luca's [Sense Presence].
Down a side tunnel, something was gnawing on rock.
He peeked around the corner. It was a bug the size of a tortoise, with a thick shell on its back that looked like a slab of the rock itself.
"A rockshell beetle," Celes said. "Its shell is so hard that swords and fire barely scratch it. Normally you just leave them be and run, but..."
Before she could finish, Luca was already studying the shell.
It had lines in it too, just like the rock. And one point where they all came together.
Luca crept up with [Silent Step] and rapped that point with the pommel of his dagger.
Tok.
The shell popped open like a nut.
He drove his dagger into the soft back underneath. The rockshell beetle didn't move again.
Celes was frozen in place, her wand still raised.
"That's one mana stone."
"...The longer I'm in a party with you, the less common sense I have left."
* * *
That evening, Luca staggered back to the shop under a basket packed with iron ore.
He took it to the blacksmith, who paid five silver coins for it.
"Three for the map, five for the ore. That's more than you made off mana stones."
Grun shook his head as he counted the silver.
"You did become a delver, right?"
"Yes. A scavenger kind of delver."
The pickaxe had a name carved into the handle: Hans.
When Luca asked Nora about it, she found a record. Last month, a Rank Nine delver named Hans, an ore digger, had barely escaped a cave-in with his life.
"I'm going to go give it back."
"Good. Make sure you get a fat reward."
Hans hugged his pickaxe like a long-lost friend, and instead of paying a reward, he told Luca about another good spot for digging ore.
Luca carefully marked it on the map in his notebook.
* * *
Four days went by after they started going down to the seventh floor.
They were up to twenty-two mana stones.
"Eight more. And we still have ten days before the exam."
Celes jotted the numbers in her notebook at the rest stop in the mine tunnels.
Rest stop was a generous name for it. It was just a slightly wider rock chamber the old miners had used. An old wooden bench and a soot-blackened hearth were still there, and apparently delvers often stopped there to catch their breath.
Maybe that was why so many things got left behind there.
"Luca, you're picking something up again."
"A whetstone. It was behind the hearth."
It was a gray whetstone that sat comfortably in his palm, its middle worn into a shallow dip by years of use.
Luca sat down on the bench and closed his hand around it.
◆ ◆ ◆
—Shff. Shff. Shff.
Lay the blade almost flat. The angle: one finger's width. Bear down on the push. On the pull, barely a stroke.
On the far side of the campfire, his friends are asleep. Tomorrow they hunt the great boar on the eighth floor.
He presses the pad of his thumb to the edge. It doesn't catch. A little more.
Shff. Shff.
He holds the blade up to the light. The edge has become a single fine line of light.
"Good."
He slides the sword back into its sheath. He goes to put the whetstone back on the shelf behind the hearth, and it slips from his fingers.
It rolls off into the back with a little clack.
...Oh, never mind. He'll grab it in the morning.
He yawns once and burrows into his blanket.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Whetting].
"...I guess he forgot to pick it up the next morning."
"That happens all the time, doesn't it?"
Celes laughed and handed him another piece of shortbread.
Chewing on it, Luca drew the dagger at his hip. It was the old one with the leather-wrapped grip, the one he'd borrowed from Grun. He'd been using it ever since the gray bear, and the edge had gone a little dull and round.
He wet the whetstone with water from his flask.
He laid the blade almost flat. The angle: one finger's width.
Shff. Shff. Shff.
His hands moved on their own. Bear down on the push. On the pull, barely a stroke.
After a while, he held it up to the light. The edge had become a single fine line of light.
"Celes, could I have a piece of paper?"
"Paper? Will a scrap from my notebook do?"
Celes tore a corner off a page and held it out, letting it flutter.
Luca touched the blade lightly to the edge of the paper.
It went straight through.
Without a sound, the paper fell into two pieces. He hadn't pushed at all. He had only touched it.
They both stared at it.
"The Boss might be angry with me for this."
"Why?"
"It cuts so well now that I feel like it isn't the Boss's dagger anymore."
* * *
On the way back that day, near the mouth of the tunnels, they found one more lost item.
Wedged into a crack in the rock was a slender wand. Its tip was cracked.
"That's a mage's wand," Celes said, leaning over to look. "A practice one from the Academy, too."
She pointed at the handle.
"There's the brand of the Royal Academy of Magic. One of their students must have come down here for field training."
Luca closed his hand around the wand.
◆ ◆ ◆
—A chant is how you build a spell out of words.
Flame. Gather in my hand. Become searing heat. With every phrase, you shape the mana inside your body a little more.
So if you cut words, you can't finish the shape. That's what everyone gets taught.
But that's wrong.
"You just have to build the shape first, Teacher."
A slow breath in, and the flame starts taking shape inside. Gather it. Heat it. Sharpen it. All of that, before a single word.
Then only the very last word, out loud.
"—Pierce!"
An arrow of fire flies from the tip of the wand. It hits the rock wall and bursts.
With a sharp crack, the wand splits.
"...I did it. But the wand couldn't take it."
"No, it couldn't. But you pass. It's been three years since I've seen a student pull that off."
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Short Chant].
"A short chant...!"
When Luca told her what he'd seen, Celes leaned in close.
"That's a technique they teach in the Academy's advanced course! Before my family fell on hard times, I was going to enroll there, you know."
"I'll try it."
Luca turned to face the tunnel wall.
He breathed in, and built the shape inside his body as he did. Gather it. Heat it. Sharpen it. Exactly the way the student in the vision had.
Then just the last word.
"Pierce."
Fizz.
A spark of fire the size of his thumb shot from his fingertip.
It was his usual fizz. Except that, with the whole chant down to one word, it was frighteningly fast.
"That's fast...!"
Celes's eyes went round.
"It's still your usual fire arrow. It's no bigger."
"My mana's a one."
"But it's fast. A flash in the eyes that comes flying after a single word? For whoever's on the other end, that's a nightmare."
Celes fell silent, deep in thought, for a while.
Then her head snapped up.
"Luca. Explain how you did that again."
"Um. It's like, before you put anything into words, you build the shape of the flame inside your body first. Gather it, heat it, sharpen it."
"Before you put it into words..."
Celes raised her wand.
She closed her eyes and drew a breath. She held still like that for a moment, and then began her usual chant.
"Flame, gather in my hand. Become searing heat, and pierce my foe!"
A fireball burst against the tunnel wall.
Luca had been counting in his head.
"Seven."
"What?"
"It usually takes you about a count of ten. That one was seven."
Celes looked down at her wand.
Then she cast it again. Seven again.
"...I can't cut all of it. My head can't hold the shape all the way through to the end. But I can build about half of it ahead of time."
"That's amazing."
"The amazing one is that student you picked up."
But even as she said it, the corners of her mouth kept curling up.
"Three seconds. Three seconds. That's three seconds less my front line has to hold out. Do you understand what that means?"
"Yes. In three seconds, I can take down two fang wolves."
"You don't have to measure it in wolves!"
* * *
That night, Luca tried to give the dagger back to Grun.
"I sharpened it, and now it cuts too well."
Grun took the dagger and held the edge up to the lamp.
He studied it in silence for a while. Then he ran the pad of his thumb along it, gently.
"...Huh."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. Twenty years, and this is the first time this old thing's shone like it's in a good mood."
Grun pushed the dagger back into Luca's hands.
"Keep it. It's your dagger now."
Luca took it in both hands.
The fine line of light along its edge caught the shop's lamplight, and shone quietly.