Prosthetic Hand

Master Roxy had returned to the university last night, so I got up early the next morning. Today, she was going to teach me Miniature Magic to improve my prosthetic hand.

Master Roxy's workshop was on the second floor of the east wing, the second-to-last room at the end of the corridor. The door was wooden, with a small magic circle carved into the handle. My fingertips tingled slightly when I touched it.

I knocked twice.

"Come in."

When I pushed the door open, I almost thought I had the wrong room. Magic circle diagrams covered the walls. Some were drawn in ink, their lines as neat as print; others had been revised repeatedly in charcoal, wearing the paper thin. Stacks of documents filled the bookshelves. Several books had been read until their pages curled, and the gold lettering on their spines had nearly worn away. A workbench took up half the room, covered with metal parts, stone slabs with half-carved magic circles, and little bags of mineral powder. The air smelled of metal and graphite, mixed with the acrid scent of some mineral.

Master Roxy stood behind the workbench, carving something into a copper plate with a precision carving knife. Hearing the door close, she looked up and glanced at me with half-narrowed eyes.

"You're here? Sit over there." She pointed to a low stool beside the workbench.

I pulled the stool over and sat down. The chairs in the workshop were sized for children, so my knees were higher than the tabletop when I sat down.

People of the Migurd race always have the build of a fourteen-year-old, so the tables and chairs she usually uses must be this size too. They're a little low for me. Maybe this is what women mean when they say "forever eighteen," except Roxy is forever fourteen.

"First, let me see your prosthetic hand."

I held out my left arm. The earth prosthetic was dull and gray, a far cry from real skin. The fingertips had been worn down by frequent impacts, exposing the lighter-colored earth beneath.

Master Roxy took my hand and ran her fingertips over the surface of the prosthetic. She felt every inch from the wrist to the fingertips, then gently picked at the joints with her fingernail.

"Hmm... There are more problems than I thought."

She put my hand down, picked up a pen, and spread a blank sheet of drafting paper over the workbench. She quickly drew a diagram, precise despite her speed: the outline of a palm, the skeletal structure of five fingers, and a cross section of the severed arm.

"Look, your prosthetic hand is one solid piece of earth. It has no joints, no mana circuits, and no skeletal support." She drew a circle at the cross section. "The mana stops here, at the end of your arm. It can't reach your fingertips."

"I know. I was pressed for time in the labyrinth, so I only made the shape. I figured it would be enough if it helped me keep my balance."

"There are three things we need to address to make it truly become your hand." She marked three red dots on the diagram.

"First, the mana circuits. Miniature magic circles need to be carved inside the prosthetic to carry mana from the severed end to every fingertip. The circuit design has to balance transmission efficiency and mana consumption. Too thick, and it wastes mana; too thin, and it can't carry it."

"Second, the joint structure. At least five joint points: one at the wrist for rotation and bending, and one at the base of each finger for gripping. They can't be made of earth-it's too brittle. We need metal or monster bones."

She paused, then took a cloth bundle from a nearby cabinet and opened it to reveal several pieces of silvery-gray metal.

"I found this lightweight alloy in the university's materials store. It's hard enough and doesn't weigh much. Let's try it first."

"Third, control precision." She put the metal pieces back in the bundle, her tone turning serious. "I can help you design the first two, but you'll have to practice the third yourself."

Roxy said pretty much the same thing as that dwarf at the magic item shop.

"That's why you need to master Miniature Magic." She took five crystal balls from a drawer. They were the size of a fingernail and so transparent they were almost invisible, refracting tiny points of light under the lamp. "The training method that dwarf gave you wasn't wrong, but it wasn't fine enough. Enveloping one in mana without breaking or cracking it is only the first step. True Miniature Magic requires mana to flow precisely through an extremely small space, with neither too much nor too little."

"How much is the difference between too much and too little?"

"Micrometers."

"...How small is that?"

"Hmm..." She thought for a moment, then put it another way. "You can crush a stone now, but can you use mana to carve a flower into one? That's the kind of precision the prosthetic needs. Your mana has to seep into every crevice like water, without spilling out or leaving any gaps."

I understood the analogy. Master Roxy had always taught magic this way, breaking complicated things down into simple analogies and explaining them layer by layer. She hadn't changed.

"Come on, give it a try." She placed a crystal ball in front of me.

I held it between the fingers of my right hand and slowly poured mana into it.

The ball flashed, then cracked. The fragments fell onto the workbench with a crisp chime.

"Too much force." Roxy sighed and took another one from the drawer. "Try again. Your total mana is extraordinary, and you're used to releasing large amounts at once. Now you need to learn to hold back. Imagine pouring water into a cup. Just fill it; don't let it overflow."

With the second one, I tried to be as gentle as possible. The ball didn't crack, but the mana was unevenly distributed, bright on one side and dim on the other, like a lightbulb that had been squeezed out of shape.

"It's not even enough. You need to let the mana flow across the entire surface, not concentrate it in one spot." She traced a circle over the ball with her finger. "Like this. Follow the surface, and keep the mana concentration the same everywhere."

The third one was a little more even, but it cracked in less than eight seconds.

The fourth lasted seven seconds.

The fifth lasted eleven seconds. That was a little improvement, but still a long way from thirty minutes.

Roxy was very patient. Every time, she pointed out what was wrong: the mana was too concentrated here, a circuit had broken there, or the angle was wrong. Then she had me start over. She was a magic instructor at the university now, and this kind of repetitive training was easy for her, but her tone when correcting me was exactly the same as it had been eight years ago.

Honestly, this kind of precision training is more exhausting than casting several Saint Rank spells at once. But it really does help me.

"That's enough for today," she said after about twenty minutes. "An hour of practice a day will do. Mana precision takes time; you can't rush it. Trying to force results will only have the opposite effect."

"Understood, Master."

I gathered the remaining crystal balls and put them in a small cloth bag. When I looked up, my gaze swept over something in the corner of the workbench.

A picture frame. It was small and made of wood, with some wear at the corners. The photograph showed Master Roxy and a white-haired boy standing in front of a building. The boy wore men's clothes and sunglasses that hid most of his face, but I could tell he was short and rather slender.

The two stood close together. Roxy's head was tilted slightly, as though she were explaining something to the boy.

"Master, this photograph..."

Roxy's hand stopped.

She quickly picked up a diagram and covered the frame. She moved so fast it was as if she had been ready to hide it all along.

"It's none of your business."

"...Oh."

Her tone was perfectly flat. But when she turned away, I saw that her face was a little red.

A white-haired boy wearing sunglasses. Roxy teaches at the university, so she must know a lot of students. But that reaction... it wasn't how she'd react to an ordinary student.

I didn't ask again. There was no point asking about something Roxy didn't want to talk about. She was the kind of person who seemed gentle but was incredibly stubborn at heart. Once she decided not to say something, she wouldn't open her mouth even if you pressed her until dawn.

She turned back to the workbench, picked up the carving knife, and resumed carving the copper plate. The knife made a faint, rhythmic rasp against the metal.

"That's all for today, then. Remember to practice every day after you get home."

"All right. Goodbye, Master."

"Mm."

She didn't look up, but I felt that her attention wasn't on the knife. Its rasping stopped for a second, then resumed its former rhythm.

By the time I left the university, it was nearly dark.

The magic lamps along Sharia's streets had come on, casting pale blue light from their posts and making the stone pavement look like the surface of water. Several students walked past me with books in their arms, perhaps discussing magic theory.

As I walked home, I kept thinking about the photograph.

The white-haired boy with sunglasses...

Roxy said yesterday that there was a voiceless incantation user at the university named Fitz. He also has white hair and wears sunglasses. He's a member of the student council and Princess Ariel's bodyguard.

The white-haired boy in the photograph matched Fitz's description almost perfectly.

Could they be the same person? Is the boy in the photograph on Roxy's desk Fitz?

I stopped walking.

After the Teleportation Incident in the Fittoa Region, Princess Ariel had been sent to the Asura Kingdom. Paul had mentioned that the princess had a white-haired bodyguard who hadn't left her after the Teleportation Incident and had followed her all the way to Sharia.

White hair, red eyes, dressed in men's clothes, Princess Ariel's bodyguard.

The white-haired boy in the photograph. Fitz at the university. Princess Ariel's white-haired bodyguard.

Their characteristics overlapped, making it very likely that the three were the same person.

So Fitz is Princess Ariel's bodyguard... He's been protecting the princess since the Teleportation Incident, then followed her to Sharia and enrolled at this university. Roxy knows him because she teaches here too.

In that case, Roxy's reaction to hiding the photograph made sense. Fitz was the princess's bodyguard, so his identity was sensitive and not something she could casually let others know.

I stood in the middle of the street, looking at the lights on the university's distant spires.

My opponent in the entrance test is Fitz. Not only is he the princess's bodyguard, he's also a voiceless incantation user... Interesting.

I shook my head and kept walking.

There was no point thinking about it now. I'd meet him soon enough after enrolling. For now, I should take care of what was in front of me: improving the prosthetic hand, training in Miniature Magic, and the entrance test.

One step at a time.