Devouring the Demon King's Mana

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The crystal stayed dark. Ren Hoshino had stared into it for so long that the black seemed to have soaked into his eyes, and even after the examiner lifted it out of his hands he kept seeing that empty spot where the light was supposed to be. "Next," the examiner said, already scribbling on his slip, and Ren stepped down from the platform with his fingers still curled around a crystal that was no longer there. The tests ran every weekday, Monday through Friday, with one group of applicants each day, and Thursday had been his group's turn. There was no arguing with a schedule.

Ten minutes earlier that same crystal had blazed gold for the boy who now stood at the front of the crowd, and the whole test ground had cheered until people went hoarse. Daichi Kurogane had passed the way other people walk through a door. His father, a squad commander in a grey coat, had watched from the officials' stand with the face of a man whose expectations had simply been met, which made sense when you thought about it, since Daichi had been taught by squad instructors since before he could read. Ren had spent those same years scrubbing pots at the orphanage.

Now Daichi was crossing the grounds toward him with the examiner's paper pinched between two fingers, and the students and parents had already begun to drift into a ring around them, the way people do when they can smell a good story.

"Hoshino," Daichi called, pleasant and loud enough for the back rows. "Don't rush off. Everyone wants to hear your result."

Ren tried to step around him, and Daichi shifted into his path so easily that it looked like an accident. He unfolded the slip and read it out. "Ren Hoshino, sixteen years and eleven months, no awakened mana. Nearly seventeen and not a spark. The examiner says it's the first blank record in the district's history, so congratulations. You're going to be in the archives."

The laughter came from every direction at once. It came from classmates he had shared lessons with for years and from parents who used to smile at him when he carried their shopping home from the market, and Ren's face went hot all the way to his ears. He opened his mouth to answer, and before a single word came out Daichi leaned in and spat his gum straight into Ren's face. It landed warm and wet on his cheek, and the crowd roared.

"Don't you dare speak," Daichi said, his voice low enough that only the front of the ring could hear. "Not until your mana can be traded for a loaf of bread. Until then, you're air."

He straightened up and softened his tone into something that sounded kind, which was the worst part. "Hey, I'm not a monster. Everybody knows the orphanage can't keep you past eighteen, and the streets are rough on people who can't cast. My squad always needs someone to carry the gear. When you get hungry, come find me, and I'll spare you a loaf."

Somebody at the back shouted that Ren could carry his shoes too, and the ring of people laughed harder than before.

Ren looked toward the officials' stand without meaning to. Commander Kurogane was watching the scene the way a man watches strangers argue over a bench, with no interest in stepping in, and that hurt in its own way. What hurt more was standing at the edge of the crowd. Master Ishida had raised him since a family the whole city respected left him at the orphanage door as a toddler, and now the old man was holding his cap in both hands and staring at the dirt. For years he had told Ren that mana would wake when it was ready. Ren had lost track of when he stopped saying it, but he knew the quiet that had replaced it, and he was standing inside that quiet right now.

Daichi patted his shoulder twice, the way you pat a dog you have decided to be generous to, and walked back toward the stand with his friends around him. The crowd broke into groups talking about their results and the squads they hoped to join, and not one of those conversations had room for Ren.

He headed for the gate because it was the only direction left. Two officials in dark coats stood beside it talking quietly, and he caught pieces of what they said as he passed. "Still nobody for the Vessel Rite?" one of them asked. "Would you volunteer? You drink the weapon down and it takes you with it. Six districts have asked and not one hand has gone up." "The tyrants will be at the eastern provinces by winter." "Then somebody had better find a fool soon." Ren barely heard it. It was the kind of talk the whole city had been repeating for months, and it slid past him and settled somewhere at the back of his mind.

He skipped the orphanage, because it would be full of boys celebrating and Master Ishida would arrive sooner or later with that tired face, and Ren was in no shape for either. Instead he took the road down to the shore, where nobody went because the tide was rough and the sand was littered with broken shells. He sat on a rock and scraped the last of the gum from his cheek, then pictured what a year or two would look like, with no family and no mana, while every boy from his class learned to protect the weak and he learned which bins behind the market had the least mold. His throat tightened, and he pressed his palms into his eyes until colors bloomed behind them.

He had been sitting there long enough for the tide to reach his boots when he noticed something pale at the edge of the water, farther down the beach. It looked like driftwood at first, but when a wave rolled it over he saw a hand.

Ren ran. The man on the sand was so old that his skin looked like wet paper stretched over bone, and his white hair was tangled with seaweed, and his chest barely moved. Ren dropped to his knees and shook his shoulder and asked if he could hear him, and all he got back was a thin wheeze. Then he saw that the old man's mouth had fallen open, and resting on his tongue was a glowing red orb about the size of a plum.

He knew what it was because the school covered it in the year before the tests. A mana core. A sorcerer who died with power still in him sometimes carried one that stayed alive after the body gave out, and the textbooks warned against touching them in the same bored tone they used for everything else. Ren had never imagined he would see one, let alone kneel in front of it.

The orb pulsed, and he felt the heat of it against his face, more power in that one small thing than the crystal had shown for anyone all day. He thought of Daichi's smile. He thought of the officials' stand and of a grey coat with his own name stitched on it.

"Take it," a voice said, low and friendly, and it seemed to come from somewhere behind his ears. "Look at what you're kneeling beside. Tomorrow you could stand in that crowd and nobody would dare laugh. A squad, a coat, a place at the academy, all of it one swallow away. And the old man is finished anyway, so why let it fade?"

Ren never stopped to ask whose voice it was. He reached into the dying man's mouth, closed his fingers around the orb, and swallowed it.

It burned the whole way down, hotter than anything he had ever eaten, and then the heat burst outward and his back arched off the sand. Thick veins swelled along his arms and neck, dark cords pushing so hard against his skin that he thought they would split. His teeth clenched. The edges of the world turned red, and when a wave washed over his hands he saw his own eyes in the water. They had always been green. Now they burned red and bright, and they looked as though they belonged to someone else, someone looking out through his face.

Panic took over. He clawed at his throat and tried to bring the orb back up, gagging, but nothing came. At the edge of his blurring vision he saw the old man's chest, which had been fluttering all this time, rise once more and then stay flat.

"Stop," the voice said, and now it was loud, so loud and so near that it felt like someone was kneeling right beside him. "Ren. Breathe with me. It's done, and you don't want it back."

He tried to breathe with it, in and out, while the voice kept talking, calm and even, telling him the worst was over and that sleep would help. The red narrowed to a single point and went out, and the sound of the sea went with it.

When he opened his eyes it was dark. Stars had come out over the water, and the tide had crept up until it soaked him to the waist, and every muscle he owned felt tender and strangely full. He sat up and found the veins on his arms had sunk back down, leaving only a faint darkness under the skin. A few paces away the old man lay with the water lapping at his sleeve. His chest was flat and his face had gone grey. He had stopped breathing, Ren realized, sometime after the core left him, and there was no telling how long ago.

"There you are," the voice said, warm now, almost amused. "You slept most of the evening. Good. Listen, because this part matters. You can pass that test now. You have more power in you than half that crowd put together, and tomorrow is the last day of testing, so the crystal will be waiting. I'll be with you every step of the way. I'm only here to help."

Ren leaned over the water and looked at his reflection. His eyes were green again, but for one heartbeat something red flickered in them, and then it was gone. He had no idea whether the examiners would allow a second try, but for the first time all day that felt like their problem.

A grin spread across his face before he knew it was there.

He got to his feet, wiped the sand from his palms, and turned up the road toward the city. Tomorrow was Friday, the last day, and for the first time since the crystal went dark he was looking forward to it. Somewhere behind his ribs, something that was not quite him seemed pleased.