Episode 8. The Chantless Mage
“A mage who doesn’t chant?”
What kind of question was this? A mage who didn’t chant?
Of course, I knew. A being capable of manifesting power through imagination alone. Didn’t they often appear in the heroic epics of wandering bards?
And though the protagonists of such epics were hidden within metaphor, most pointed to the same figure.
…Though that was surely an exaggeration.
“Are you asking about a particular realm, Disciple?”
Magicians’ abilities were usually classified according to a system called “Tier.”
From 1st Tier, those who had just taken their first step into magic, to 7th Tier, which only one person in history was said to have reached.
The higher the tier, the more metaphysical, complex, and uniquely applicable the magic became.
Tier was not a clear-cut distinction of skill. The field of magic itself simply had not existed long enough for that.
Because mages of the same tier each had their own specialized fields, the tier system could not provide perfect explanatory power.
However, there was a commonality. The three elements of imagination, will, and chanting were essential conditions for all mages.
“That’s not it. I was asking if it is realistically possible.”
Professor Yulio read between the lines of Rike’s question. He let out a short guffaw.
“It seems Professor Abiya Peullin has played another prank, seeing how the Princess has come running in such surprise.”
With some preparation, making it look as though one were casting magic without any prior work was not particularly difficult.
And Abiya Peullin was someone who possessed both the skill and the mischievous streak for such things.
“Huh? No. If it had been another professor’s magic, I would have suspected a trick too. What I saw was a student’s magic.”
“Pardon?”
Professor Yulio did not understand immediately. The more he chewed over her words, the greater his astonishment grew.
“A student, you say?”
Dean Yulio first considered the method.
Deploying a silencing barrier to erase one’s voice, or delaying the chant itself… No matter how much he thought about it, these were not things possible at a student’s level.
“Who is it? Malrek Boldeuwin? No, that boy’s professor was always grumbling that Malrek’s progress was slow. Then Abichi Myulreo? He should have been put under house arrest after a huge fight with his professor. Then Gaseupelteu Rui?”
From Yulio’s mouth came a string of the names of students currently serving as head disciples.
Each professor’s head disciples were those closest to this semester’s Scala selection. Naturally, they were the students who possessed the greatest skill.
Dean Yulio remembered each and every one of them.
But no matter how hard he searched his memory, no one with such skill came to mind.
A mere student could not possibly fool a mage who had reached the caliber of the 5th Tier.
“The name is Binaeril Dalhaim.”
It was an unfamiliar name.
As Dean Yulio could not readily comprehend, Rike roughly explained what she had seen and heard.
“Some lowborn rabble brawling in the sacred Magic Tower…, *ahem*. So, a student who only transferred in recently?”
Then it was only natural that Professor Yulio did not know.
He did not commit every student who had advanced to memory.
“That makes no sense….”
Dean Yulio could not comprehend it with his common sense.
Had it been a report from another student, he would not have believed it.
But because it came from none other than her, Yulio could not dismiss the matter as a simple joke.
She was something of a mutant—a student possessing keener eyes for tracking mana than even the Dean himself.
Vaguely brushing it off by saying he would check the facts, Dean Yulio sent Rike away for the moment.
Then he immediately connected a communication spell.
“Yes, Dean.”
“Bring me all the documents the Magic Tower holds on a student named Binaeril Dalhaim.”
“Understood.”
Having relayed his instructions, he immediately cut the communication.
“A student who uses magic without chanting…?”
It was a story that sounded like a joke.
Separate from the information that would come in the paperwork, Dean Yulio felt he needed to meet this student named Binaeril at least once.
Submerged in a dream, Binaeril saw a familiar ceiling.
A corner room on the second floor of the Dalhaim mansion in Ruben. The room where he was born and raised.
His senses were awake, yet he could not move a single finger.
It felt as though sleep paralysis had taken hold.
With a creak and groan of the door, someone entered his room.
Binaeril had already guessed the visitor’s identity.
Though he had never seen the face even once in his dreams, it was the person he had resented his entire life.
The stealthily approaching footsteps seemed like those of someone trying to play a prank, yet also like a thief sneaking in to steal something.
The footsteps reached the bed where Binaeril lay, and the figure crouched low.
A rustling sound. He hid something beneath Binaeril’s bed, then snickered and ran off.
The true nightmare began then. A nightmare he had always known was coming but could never resist.
From outside the room, the clamor of weapons began to be heard.
The screams of servants, the roars of someone fighting back.
Between the sounds of sharp steel clashing, words like “heretics” and “the Order” burst forth sporadically.
But Binaeril could not move.
Soon, a crimson light began to shine upon the ceiling above him.
The cause was a blaze that had started beneath the bed.
The crackling flames gradually spewed foul smoke, and Binaeril still could not move a single finger.
‘Hot! Save me!’
He screamed, but it was only an inward shriek. Then someone burst into his room.
It was a different person from the first visitor.
The first visitor had radiated nothing but deep malice, but this one exuded desperation, as if trying to save him by any means.
The figure rushed over and leaped onto the bed engulfed in flames. Then she embraced Binaeril.
Curling her scrawny body up as much as possible to keep any part from being exposed to the searing flames, she tried to protect Binaeril from the inferno.
‘Mom, no. Mom!’
Young Binaeril was powerless.
As her body burned along with the bed, all he could do was cry and scream inside his heart.
“……Ha!”
At that moment, Binaeril awoke from the dream.
A fluttering book entered his vision.
—How noisy you are.
His entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
He realized his clothes were frozen stiff.
It wasn’t just his clothes. When he rose, his entire bedding was covered in frost.
“Wh-what happened?”
Only then did Binaeril realize he was trembling uncontrollably.
—How should I know? You did this while tossing and turning.
“Brr, cold….”
After changing into fresh clothes, he saw that even the floor around the bed was coated in chilly hoarfrost.
“I did this?”
—Yes. Look at how much mana you burned through. What in the world did you dream about?
It seemed even Veritas could not peek into his dreams.
“It’s nothing.”
There was no need to be honest about such things.
Binaeril looked around the desolate room and felt bewildered.
Until recently, he had been a perennial failing student who could not cast a single spell. To think he was now freezing his entire bed in his sleep.
Should he be happy about this?
Binaeril realized there was a problem with his condition.
“Can’t you do something about magic going off on its own?”
—It is power that follows your will; what could I do about it? You have to handle it yourself.
Veritas, the source of his mana, was of no help.
What Binaeril wanted was the result of three years of steady effort.
He had not wanted a power that fired off uncontrollable magic in every direction.
“I need to find a way somehow.”
He felt helpless because he could find no breakthrough.
Where did the problem start? What should he do first?
“…Let’s start with the laundry.”
Binaeril let out a small sigh.
“He cheated, I tell you! That’s right. It was magic, magic! He used magic! Report him quickly, you cowards. A guy like that deserves to be expelled!”
“What nonsense. Magic? I didn’t even see him chant.”
In the infirmary, Gillieon was boiling over with rage.
“And I looked into it—he’s from a Count’s family in Ruben? Your house is barely a barony, right?”
“Who cares about some backwater Count!”
“Anyway, it was magic. Right, that girl I’d knocked down and left on the ground. Wasn’t she helping him?”
“Say something that makes sense.”
It was an unconvincing story. Gillieon was simply rambling to protect his pride.
“You all saw it too. That Binaeril guy falling after taking a hit from me. There’s no way such a weakling could change so drastically in an instant.”
“Enough already.”
“He’s from some lowly baron’s family, but we let him hang with us just because he has some money, and he just keeps getting uglier. This is why kids born commoners are hopeless. They have no class.”
“Magic or not, we spent days helping you search, but you’re the one who lost. The more I look at you, you bastard, could you actually be a real illegitimate child?”
Gillieon could not open his mouth, choked by humiliation and absurdity.
The misunderstandings, or perhaps truths, already spreading like wildfire among his friends were beyond his control.
“I saw his dad before too, a total merchant. The way he groveled to my father was pathetic.”
“Grown up in a house that only knows how to count money, would he have any pride? He’s basically from the streets anyway. Honestly, I hated hanging out with him. He reeks of commoner.”
“Forget it. How much more time do we have to waste on a guy like that? I’m leaving.”
“Me too.”
It wasn’t as if Binaeril’s words became right just because Gillieon had lost the fight, but there was an implicit agreement among boys of this age: the winner was probably right.
Left alone in the clinic, Gillieon bit his lower lip.
The noble friends he had made at Elfenbein were his greatest assets.
Weapons to wield against his father and brothers who found him a nuisance.
“Damn it!”
In a fit of anger, Gillieon grabbed and threw whatever was at hand. He could not just accept defeat gracefully.
“Isn’t there some way? A way….”
A final method to land a blow on that bastard Binaeril and win back his friends’ trust.
“Yes, that’s right!”
A brilliant plan occurred to Gillieon, who had been brooding.
“Heh heh heh… all this talk of rule-breaking, you coward? If school rules matter so much to you, let’s fight within the rules.”
He had lost by a cowardly trick. Binaeril had used some underhanded method. Gillieon was consumed by that thought alone.
That meant there was no way he would lose on a fair and square stage.
There was exactly one way to officially prepare a stage where he could make Binaeril Dalhaim kneel and become the victor.
A stage where students pitted their magic against each other before a certified witness. A magic duel.
That was the only way for Gillieon to recover his honor.