And so, we began our date.
I’d said it several times already, but just because I called it a date didn’t mean I was talking about that sort of thing between actual lovers.
Spending a day together with someone of the opposite sex could be considered a date too, after all.
Of course, the very act of spending time together was only possible because there was at least some degree of mutual affection, but…
‘Anyway, it’s not like that.’
Of course, Lady Eladrien had told me that she liked me,
and it definitely wasn’t as though I disliked her either,
but I supposed the vow I’d recently made to protect Bell was weighing on my mind.
Of course, the words had come out before I knew it, and that vow had surely come from the pure desire to help her,
but still, wasn’t it something that anyone listening could easily take as a confession?
There was no particular rule of monogamy in this world.
But that didn’t mean it was fine to approach several women at once while harboring feelings for them.
If someone like that existed, I thought they fully deserved to be treated like trash.
And I was sure everyone else would think the same, not just me.
‘Ah, come to think of it… there is a way to handle this.’
A method to sort out my thoughts clearly had just occurred to me.
“Noona.”
“Mm?”
She, who had been walking beside me, looked up at me for a moment.
“No, no. Look ahead. Don’t look at me. You’ll bump into someone in front of you.”
“Okay.”
Once she faced forward properly and started walking again, I finally spoke to her.
“Lady Eladrien said so. That you like me, Noona.”
“Eh…?”
She stopped still and stared blankly at me.
In that brief instant, I had no idea how many thoughts ran through her mind, but her face began flushing red from below her neck upward.
White steam slowly rose from the top of Signica’s head.
Her eyes were spinning around and around, as if they had turned into spirals.
‘Cute.’
But,
cute was cute, and all, but wasn’t it bad for a person to end up like this?
Should I take her to a healing priest one more time…?
“Ela… Seriously, I told her not to say anything…!”
Signica turned her head away from me and whispered in irritation for a moment.
‘But honestly, even if she hadn’t told me, I don’t think I could’ve failed to notice after today.’
She had used the word date first, for one thing,
and there were the expressions I could see while we talked, and the emotion I could feel in her voice when she spoke to me.
Things like that were all revealing how she thought of me.
If anyone had seen her in person, they probably would have known.
That she liked me, and had feelings for me.
Anyway,
as I waited for a bit, she seemed to slowly calm down.
“Seriously… Fine. Forget it. Erase it from your head.”
“Pardon?”
“Forget it! I said forget it!!!”
“Y-yes.”
For now, I answered that I understood.
Then she glanced at me briefly before huffing and marching ahead first.
I could still see a faint trace of red in her back.
Her ears were still dyed red at the tips.
‘I’ll ask her later.’
I had wanted to make sure how she thought of me.
Whether liking me meant she liked me romantically, or whether she simply liked me because I seemed like a decent person.
But judging by her current state, it didn’t seem very appropriate to bring it up right now.
***
‘This place is…?’
The place we had been walking through until just now was the commercial district inside the Magic Tower.
All kinds of shops had been lined up on both sides,
but then the stores suddenly disappeared, and enormous trees filled their place.
In the end, we had walked right into the middle of a forest.
But well…
It was simply fascinating; I didn’t think we had taken a wrong turn or anything.
Magic Tower native vs. first-time visitor to the Magic Tower.
When you don’t know anything, the best thing to do is keep your mouth shut.
There must be something in here.
—Rustle.
Trusting her, I walked a little farther,
“Whoa…”
and an incredibly mysterious place revealed itself.
The path lined with trees came to an end, and a wide clearing opened up in the middle of the forest.
Overall, it was a place that brought to mind a quiet, tranquil atmosphere.
In the center stood a slightly large, old wooden mansion, with vines growing along its walls.
To the left of the mansion, a stream flowed gently from who knew where.
On the lawn surrounding the mansion, various flowers and well-tended grass swayed in the wind.
In any case, it was a truly beautiful, nature-friendly space.
‘But there’s no one here?’
It wasn’t as if I had seen any signs saying that entry was prohibited to anyone other than authorized personnel on the way here,
and to my eyes, it looked like anyone could enter this place.
So it was a little strange that there wasn’t a single person in such a beautiful place.
What was this? Could only Signica Noona and I see it?
As I looked around like that,
“What are you doing? Come in.”
She, who had already gone inside the building, opened the door and gestured for me to come in.
***
The inside of the building was, how should I put it… a private library? But with a café added in?
As soon as I entered, I saw machines and various tools used to make drinks right in front of me,
and tables and chairs were placed here and there.
If you passed that area and went a little deeper inside, bookshelves were arranged all over the place.
‘Who is that?’
There was only one employee, an elderly grandfather.
He had neatly groomed white hair and wore a white shirt, and he had a kindly appearance that made it obvious he would dote on his grandchildren.
“Oh… It’s been a long time, Miss Signica.”
“It has, Old Man Aldric.”
After exchanging greetings with the old man,
“This is Evan. He recently joined our party.”
she introduced me to him in my place.
I watched for the right moment and greeted the old man politely.
“Hello. My name is Evan.”
“Hoho… It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Aldric, the owner of this humble place.”
And so, we exchanged greetings.
After that, Noona and Aldric resumed their conversation, asking after each other and the like.
Listening to them from behind for a moment, it seemed they had known each other for a long time.
I left the two of them to talk for a while and made my way to the study in the back.
Rather than just standing there awkwardly, I figured it would be nice to look around inside or read a good book if there was one.
And so, as if bewitched, I drifted into the study.
***
There were more kinds of books inside the study than I had expected.
At a glance, the categories seemed to cover various fields such as society, economics, and science,
but when I actually read the contents or looked at the subtitles, they were all related to magic.
For example, if it was economics, it felt like “The Influence of a Mage’s Magic on the Economy.”
The contents were more interesting than I had expected.
For instance, when something needed to be stored cold, in the past, people would probably have mainly used ice or underground storage facilities.
But those involved a lot of distribution processes and fewer people than expected handled them, so there was a strong sense of monopoly.
Then, as magic developed and magical refrigerators and the like were invented, entire industries changed to match the new technology.
I wasn’t an expert in economics, so I didn’t know for sure, but that was roughly what the contents seemed to be.
‘This is fun.’
Until now, whenever I read books, they were usually safety rules written in blood.
For example, say I had to go scout Dungeon A.
By now, the inside of the dungeon would have changed a great deal, but even so, just in case, I would often read the various pieces of information written by the people who had gone there before.
‘Dungeon A does not have a second floor. It ends at the first floor. If you happen to find a door leading to the second floor, immediately turn around, do not look back, and walk backward along the exact path you came from.’
Aside from the occasional bizarre entry like that, most of them didn’t contain particularly interesting information.
But,
the contents of the book I was reading now didn’t change frequently like dungeons did,
and there was little possibility that the information would change. It satisfied my curiosity and interest,
and at a glance, it was full of useful information.
For example, the fact that 1+1=2 wouldn’t change unless something extraordinary happened, right?
It wasn’t knowledge that would become useless someday after I read it.
Was it because of that?
—Flip. Flip.
I devoured knowledge, reading every book I could get my hands on.
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed like that.
I had been so immersed in the flood of knowledge that I couldn’t pay attention to such things.
‘But…’
Among the books I read, there were some here and there that were related to magic itself.
For example, books about how to use mana or basic magic that could be used even without Circles.
I didn’t know if it was because my level was upper Expert, but when I read them, I roughly got a sense of how to do it.
I couldn’t remember who it had been, but someone had once told me I should learn magic.
“Hmm…”
Should I give it a try?
“Hooo…”
First, I took one deep breath.
Then I began sensing the natural mana spread widely around me, not aura.
Whenever I handled aura or swung a sword, I always took a breath before doing so.
Doing that made me feel calmer and more focused, somehow.
Anyway,
from the moment I had already felt aura once, and had even handled it before,
handling mana, another form of intangible energy, might be difficult depending on the person, but…
“Oh… It worked?”
At least in my case, it wasn’t particularly difficult.
From here on, it was slightly similar to aura.
First, I gathered only the parts related to fire from the mana, and during this process, I imagined something related to fire.
The reason I specifically chose flame was because my aura itself dealt with fire, so I thought about it often,
and perhaps because my judgment helped quite a bit, imagining something related to fire wasn’t that difficult.
‘Now I just need to focus, properly extract only the mana of fire, and then amplify it…’
—Fwoosh!
“Oh…?”
And so,
I lit a small flame above my index finger.
“It worked!”
I shouted in joy, ready to savor this moment and show it off,
“See, Old Man? I told you he could do it.”
“Hmm… It seems this old man’s eyes have grown quite dim.”
but behind me, Signica Noona and Aldric were already watching me and talking.