Following Mikiya's map, Waver and Ergo took a 1-hour car trip to a hill away from Tokyo's urban areas. Instead of telling Ergo where they were, Waver exposited the traits of the Yakou lineage. He recalled how their buildings were all black both inside and outside, and how all subordinates were black all the time. This seeming obsession with one specific color reflects a trait of the use of magecraft through a Divine Body: the god is the one who makes the calls. Their engagement with their magecraft is almost automatically an engagement with a god, so they must be a lot more methodical and have less power of choice than a Western mage. Waver asked for a break and took one of his gimmick cigars to recover stamina. The cigar also regulated his body temperature and could double as an aphrodisiac, but I doubt this will be relevant. Waver asked Ergo about his theophage hunger but Ergo answered they quieted down a lot since Mana read him a book. Waver asked about Ergo's personality changes, and the main thing Ergo focused on was how embarrassing his loss against Ruo was. Beating Wuzhiqi's clone made him feel invincible, but in the next fight, while he lost control, the red arms he got in this rampaging state were even stronger than the blue arms he beat Wuzhiqi with, and even with those he lost. That's the experience that replaced his innocence with more complex emotions, as shown with how despite all this embarrassment, frustration, and self-pity, he still rushed to save Ruolong from the box. Waver could relate to frustration over others being stronger. He then asked for Ergo's thoughts on Ruolong. Ergo was afraid, while also recognizing Ruo was telling the truth about being his former best friend. But most importantly, Ergo wanted to defeat him. After Ruo gets out of the box, Ergo wants a rematch where he wins. Ergo was more competitive than he thought he was. Waver saw this as a quality of Iskandar and encouraged him to treasure the feeling. 10 more minutes up the mountain, they found a wooden shack in the forest. There they meet Tobori Genma, the mask maker. Waver introduced himself, and Genma almost couldn't believe he was seeing a Clock Tower Lord that came all the way to Japan. Genma confirmed that he made all of the Yakou's masks and invited them in.
The interior of Genma's shack was filled with kagura masks. Masks used in rites to entertain the gods. Japanese gods are notoriously fond of the arts, festivals, and games, so people have all sorts of rites they perform when they need the gods to visit, give blessings, quell their rages, or more relevantly to Ergo's memory saturation and Gray's age stagnation, leave. Genma is surprised again by Waver's lecture, as he always imagined Clock Tower people would dismiss Japanese Mystery as worthless superstition, but Waver assured he was not wrong, there were a lot of people in his organization that did think like that. Before Genma asked Waver's business, he already warned that he won't take orders to stop cooperating with the Yakou. Genma was a dutiful man, and couldn't abandon his most regular customer no matter how much money a Lord can offer. But that wasn't what Waver was there for. He just wanted to commission an Ergo mask. Genma refused because he could tell at first glance that Ergo had four faces, all entirely different from each other. He was impressed and confused that all that could fit in one body. Ergo asked what the faces looked like, but Genma could only see Ergo's own face and the monkey face. The two Ergo still wasn't aware of were looking the other way. Genma asked exactly what the hell he was looking at, and Ergo dumped a complete recap of his situation, including his fears of eating Gray and Ruo, and his frustration over getting owned in the Ruo fight. Genma reacted with
the synopsis' opening quote. Genma understood what they were there for and complimented Waver for in his first visit already understanding what his masks were about better than the Yakou did. Genma couldn't make an Ergo mask, but that didn't mean he had no mask for Ergo. He took
a wooden box with a not yet designed mask. Genma's teacher said it was made of divine wood when he inherited it, but he didn't buy the claim because the material felt a lot more like ivory. It's a composite, but he couldn't tell of what. His theories when he was a kid were that it was taken from an oni or a mammoth's face. Either way, that's the only mask that can fit Ergo's inner face. A mask that can invite the gods in earnest, and ask them to leave. Waver asked what he could do to help complete the mask, but Genma already had everything. The Tobori clan existed to make masks for the gods, so he was basically accomplishing the clan's goal there. He didn't even demand payment. Ergo was really hesitant because getting the gods to leave would mean missing his chance to beat Ruo. Genma said that adjusting the mask would take time and Ergo had to wait by listening to his family's backstory.
Meanwhile, Rin was syncing a ruby with the ruby thrown inside Akira's box, while she and Gray enjoyed Suzurigi's sandwiches and discussed Akira's family situation. Gray related the Yakou to the Blackmore, for their ties to their land and demand for a special child to be the vessel for a greater being. They discussed their situation, with a lot of Rin teasing Gray for her lack of proactivity while encouraging her to push Waver into staying a teacher. Gray also thought about how much she liked Ruo's chaofan and determined she wanted to have another meal with him and Akira. Rin's ruby then started moving in the air, informing that the Yakou were starting the Black Chest ritual. No one had any time to waste.
Rin and Gray moved out.
Before Genma was adopted into the Tobori family, he was Yukinobu's older brother. Though by this point he has been Tobori Genma for far longer than he has been Yakou Genma. Mei and Akira used to visit his shack often as little(r) kids, and he knew neither of them was fit to be the successor. Mei always talked about she wanted to go to school instead of being homeschooled in the mountain as all Yakous did. On another note, the clan wanted to marry Akira to Genma, since his changing family names was very convenient for that. Ergo didn't react nicely to the thought of uncle-niece incest, and Genma added that it's far from the worst level of inbreeding the Yakou stepped into to thicken their special blood. There are even cases of father-daughter and grandfather-granddaughter incest in the family's history. However, Yukinobu was the greatest genius the clan had in centuries. One day, when Yukinobu was almost 6, he was seen walking midair. In Eastern Magecraft, flying is proof that you're a Xian, so that was huge. As the older brother, Genma was supposed to be the heir, but Yukinobu's talent was so many levels above that he was pushed to the top of the succession line. Seeing how he was basically nothing in comparison, Genma lost his ambition, but in exchange, found what he really wanted to do. Akane ordered him to stay in the mountain as Yukinobu's support, but Yukinobu vowed to be both the heir and the Black Chest in order to let his brother live the life he wanted to live, and that's also what spared Genma from the arranged incest marriage later on. Yukinobu was powerful enough to get away with making demands that went against the clan's will. As he left to become the Tobori's mask maker student, Genma promised to make the perfect mask for his brother, a promise he fulfilled later in life. Fast forward a couple of decades and Yukinobu started getting rejected by the Divine Body, and that's when he started leaving the mountain regularly to see the doctor. Due to living isolated for so long, Yukinobu fell in love at first sight with one of the first women he found. He married her and they got a house next to the Yakou's mountain, where they could live together without the wife learning that magecraft exists. That was the happiest phase of his life. Unfortunately, the rejection kept getting worse, so he was forced to divorce her and disappear instead of telling her about magecraft and trying to convince her it's a good idea to transfer the curse that was killing him to their daughter. And Yukinobu's shit luck didn't stop there. The Black Chest transplant failed, killing Mei. The Yakou did all they could to prevent this, but the transplant is dangerous by default. With Mei dead, they had to go for Akira. Waver retold the story Yukinobu told the last volume about Akira's mother neglecting and ultimately abandoning her, and Genma said there was no lie there, but it was an unfair telling because it was told from Yukinobu's perspective. He was a super genius with minimal contact with the outside world, so he didn't have a solid notion that what was easy for him could be impossible for others. When the weird spiritual phenomena started happening, Akira's mother hired a faith healer to give Akira a prayer. He was a pretty decent professional, but he still rot from the inside and vomited blood until he died in front of them. The mother lost it completely and was later found by Yukinobu wandering the streets and taken by Genma to a friend's psychiatric hospital.
Genma mused some about the inherent tragedy of magecraft, with so many sacrifices being constantly made for the sake of something that can lose its value at any moment. He asked for the Lord's perspective on the dilemma, but Waver thinks he asked the wrong guy, as he is the least talented Lord ever. He was just a guy struggling against both the system's and his own worthlessness to feel like has the right to dream and to like magecraft. Genma recalled the two geniuses he knew, Yukinobu and Shiki, mused about how life doesn't give special treatment to the talented either. The story was over and the mask was sculpted. Perhaps an even better mask than the masterpiece he made for his brother. Genma told Ergo to use the mask to interact with the gods however he wanted to. He could use it to ask the gods to leave, but he could also use it to get their help in his goal of winning against Ruo. Genma was fine even with his mask being used as a weapon against Yukinobu and his mother. All he commented was that Ergo had a great teacher and shouldn't use the mask to betray his teachings. There's a recurring theme in this chapter of doing what you want despite the complicating circumstances, as shown both in Gray's being encouraged to do so by Rin, Yukinobu pushing his will to allow Genma to push his, and now the decision Ergo is being asked to make with his mask.
The next scene is Ruo inside the empty darkness. He called Akira and got no response. He knew from the get-go which god the Yakou used but still didn't know which version of the god it was. But Akane using the Ibuki dharma tipped him to the fact his presence is considered an impurity they need to exorcise. Ruo's theophage hunger distracted him and he started thinking about Ergo. He won the first round because Ergo wasn't up to his full potential, but the simulations he was running in his head against full power Ergo were less favorable. He could win some of the battles, but his imagination wasn't all that reliable since he didn't know who the Atlas god was. Still, Ruo keep imagining his waltz with his only companion like a lovesick schoolboy (Sanda's choices of word here) until Akira woke up. She still wasn't too conscious because the Divine Body was starting to take root in her soul. Ruo never took her out of Tokyo because he was afraid the god would react and overwrite her. The plan was to just run around the city until he regrouped with his teacher. Still really mad the gambling addict used him for a bet, by the way. He recommended Akira tried moon-viewing to keep her stable (the same meditation method Ergo has been using to control his hunger per Waver's recommendation in volume 1, if you recall), but she wasn't good at it. Ruo tries using Yuepozhou (can't tell what the spell is IRL because all material about it on Google is in Chinese but it seems to be something to exert influence on one's soul) to spread his Od as moonlight aura, reaching Akira to detect and safeguard her soul. Sometime later, he detected someone arriving.
Rin was driving a Ryougi SUV to the Yakou's mountain (Suzurigi can authorize lending a car, apparently). It was covered in a giant cube of miasma when they got there, confirming Gray's feelings that the Yakou resembled the Blackmore. The borders of the cube were a barrier preventing things from entering the Bounded Field. Rin used a Pseudo-Edelstein wind spell to split the miasma, opening a path for the SUV. The mountain got angry and tried to knock trees on the car, but Gray opened her door and started dispatching them with her Battering Ram. They reached a row of black toriis and left the car. Gray asked for the name of the mountain and Rin revealed it's Mt. Kuchinawa.
Genma delivered the sculpted mask. It's the same smooth surface as before, just with some lines carved on it, but that simple work took all that Genma had. He looked like he got sick and aged 10 years. Genma stopped Ergo from putting on the mask, warning that his mask had a will of its own. He took off the mask piece he wore over his right eye to show that he had no skin because when he was young, he put on a flesh-taking mask just for fun. Normal masks, like the one the Yakou use in their magecraft, are temporary faces, but Ergo's mask wasn't that. Once he wears it, that will be his new face, so Ergo should only wear it when he's sure of what face he wants to make. Ergo asked Waver if his progress was of any use as a hint for Gray's case. Waver didn't answer and shifted the subject to Genma's payment. Genma said again that he didn't need to be paid, but Waver couldn't bring himself to accept such an amazing item for free. He told Genma that he was hired by Mikiya to save Akira. Genma took some staggering steps and sat on a swing he built to give Mei and Akira a distraction when they came to his shack. He made his final comments on the contradiction between Waver's wishes to pursue magecraft and to treat people right, using the same unreachable star analogy from Avalon le Fae, and finally accepted Akira's rescue as his payment.
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Originally Posted by Rafflesiac
