“So, what do you intend to do?”
Inian was curious about Raban’s intentions. At present, the only force in Hikarius that could be called hostile to Raban was the band of Ochanja led by Charles—or presumed to have been led by him.
Before the appearance of the “real” Ochanja, there had been two factions that had mistaken Raban for an Ochanja. The Ivory Tower and the guardian fairies’ aggro had now shifted to the real Ochanja.
Even so, Raban did not relax, and put a few more safeguards in place.
With the Ivory Tower, he had established a connection in advance by having Inian appointed as an external advisor, making it possible to prevent unnecessary clashes.
As for the guardian fairies and magical girls, in truth, Raban had never regarded them as hostile forces to begin with.
Once, when Inian had asked about magical girls, Raban had answered like this.
“Hey. Those are like special events where you die if you touch them.”
Raban gave a gaming example. The example he brought up was a game from his home planet, Earth, but since Inian’s line of work exposed her to all sorts of cultures across dimensions, it was not difficult for her to understand.
In games, killing monsters and being killed by them was only natural.
But what about terrain features? Spikes placed in platform games to adjust difficulty. The embodiment of the simple rule: “touch them and you die.”
To Raban, magical girls were like those spikes. Rather than “monsters” capable of hostile action, they were beings closer to indestructible “background scenery.”
Unless he prepared some countermeasure against the Mother Fairy’s terrifying (social) ultimate move, the magical-girl-ification beam, they were beings he must not fight.
That did not mean he had neglected countermeasures against magical girls.
After the real Ochanja began intervening, Raban had spread blood-vessel familiars thinly and widely beneath Hikarius’s sewers.
If an attack began right away, he could expand the blood-vessel familiars a couple of blocks away and use them to divert attention.
Furthermore, as of today, he had gained a new point of contact in the form of the magical girls’ maintenance officer, so Raban’s own survival stability had improved greatly compared to before.
Inian expected Raban to choose “maintaining the status quo” or “watching from the sidelines.” She thought he would let them fight among themselves and focus on harvesting negative thoughts.
Raban pondered.
“To be honest, I’d been thinking I should clash with Charles at least once, sooner or later.”
“…For a coward like you to say something like that—are you mentally sound?”
To become an excellent black mage, one needed an appropriate level of fear. In vulgar terms, black mages who “showed off” had short lives. Therefore.
“I like the word coward. It proves that this body is a more exemplary black mage than anyone else.” “But I cannot tolerate being mocked as a coward!”
After hearing Raban’s nonsense, Inian felt reassured. Seeing him spout such deranged drivel meant his mind was exactly as usual.
“What is your real reason?”
“This isn’t fair. Some of us had to make out with man-eating plants and suffer like dogs just to squeeze out a single drop of black mana. And he’s been enjoying an uncontested business environment?”
Raban trembled with rage and envy.
Charles had no proper business competitors. The Ochanja had been somewhat similar, but had he not acquired and merged all of them into his own enterprise?
He was effectively a deranged market disruptor who could monopolize an entire planet’s negative thoughts—someone who, if he had been on Raban’s Earth, would have been slapped with antitrust laws dozens of times over.
“…I’m not trying to defend Charles, but are you not counting the magical girls?”
“He’s been fooling them just fine until now! Those lazy guardian fairies. If an evil black mage was lurking in the shadows, they should’ve sliced him up right away!”
Inian sighed at the character of that cosmic-class petty little man, as broad as a mosquito’s proboscis and as deep as ditchwater.
“Well. It’s not as if I was planning to look into him simply because I didn’t like the sight of him. The strategy Charles chose is the best one at this point, but it has a problem.”
“What problem?”
“The fact that a full restoration of trust is practically impossible.”
At the gaze of the Archduke of the Demon Realm, which strongly demanded an explanation, Raban shrugged.
“It means he’s been stained with suspicion. Once a stain has set in, it’s hard to return to pure white. Even excluding doubts about Charles’s personal good and evil, his foundation’s operations will have to be monitored, won’t they?”
It was an uncharacteristically rational analysis. Inian asked in return, “Then?”
“You mean that before distrust places restrictions on his movements, there’s a chance he’ll do something during the spare time created by the kidnapping?”
“Probably. And I’m going to interfere with that.”
“Do you have a way to find Charles?”
Raban smiled confidently.
“You see, blood relations tend to share fairly deep common traits in sorcery.”
If it was a blood relative of Nachalsu, there was only Na I-hyeon. Inian looked at Raban with an expression that said, Is this bastard serious?
“Are you saying you intend to draw blood from that negative-thought nuclear reactor? If you make such a bizarre request, the meager trust you have built up until now will evaporate.”
Raban snorted. The way he went “Hmph” with a sneer greatly irritated the Archduke of the Demon Realm.
“Ah, you don’t know? As the person in charge of the counseling room, I have a responsibility to clean.”
“…?”
“I gathered the hair that fell out while cleaning.”
For a moment, Inian failed to understand Raban’s words. So right now…
“It was annoying to sort them by type, but silver hair is a pretty eye-catching color. Once I deliberately collected it, it gathered quite well.”
“…You insane perverted bastard!!”
***
After scuffling with the commoner of the Demon Realm, who had slandered him as a pervert for reasons unknown, Raban eventually had no choice but to realize the limits of his ability.
“Damn it, you intellectually deficient demon…”
Even after she entered magical girl form, there was no sign that her muscle strength had decreased. No, considering the average strength of the magical girls Raban had witnessed so far, perhaps it was only natural for her strength in magical girl form to be high.
Inian glanced down at the sprawled-out Raban once, then poked him with the tip of her foot.
“Ah, what now? If you’ve relieved your stress enough, go to your room and sleep.”
“Did you not say you would also scrape up the magical girls’ personal information during today’s counseling?”
“White is Syune Heidel.”
“And Black?”
“That’s the problem!”
Raban sprang up and summarized his conversation with Magi Black for her. The point was, since she had eaten mugwort rice cake, she was definitely someone who had visited the counseling room, but he could not narrow down who it was at all.
Inian, on the other hand, found her expression growing stiffer the more she listened.
Somehow, the more the clues gathered, the more they seemed to point toward an ominous truth.
“Wait a moment. If we organize what has been said so far, Magi Black is someone who frequents the counseling room, is unused to polite speech, and is wary of outsiders?”
“Except for the frequenting part, that’s right. I didn’t just hand them out to the peer counselors; I fed them to any kid who came by the counseling room.”
Cold sweat ran down the nape of Inian’s neck. No matter how she thought about it, Magi Black was…
“Is that not Na I-hyeon?!”
“Where did that come from all of a sudden?”
“Think it through slowly. Na I-hyeon was the very first person you fed mugwort rice cake to, was she not?”
Raban nodded reluctantly.
“That’s true, but when I brought out the mugwort rice cakes in the counseling room, the kids came over and snatched bites one by one. If you count only the number of kids who ate some, it easily goes over thirty.”
Was this what confirmation bias was? Inian massaged her temples and struggled to correct that black mage’s perception of reality.
“Does Na I-hyeon usually speak to you politely?”
“No. She uses casual speech with almost everyone. According to the rumors, a senior once tried to discipline her, saying, ‘How dare a junior speak casually to me,’ and got torn apart down to his soul for it.”
“If you have any tact, do not bring up those rumors in front of Na I-hyeon. And that child—because her social isolation has intensified, she keeps her distance from outsiders, does she not?”
“She does, right?”
“Then is she not the strongest candidate for Magi Black?”
“Hah!”
Raban reflexively snorted. It was a black mage’s instinct to want to oppose any opinion presented by a demon with whom he had made a fraudulent contract.
“Think carefully. With just that much…”
“Just that much…”
Raban shut his mouth. The more he chewed it over, the more persuasive the hypothesis became. Seeing Raban’s expression gradually be erased, Inian launched an additional attack to refute him.
“Did you not say that you absolutely could not understand how Na I-hyeon and Magi White could have become friends?”
As far as Inian knew, there was only one circumstance in which such a thing was possible.
Of course, excluding external influences such as hypnosis and brainwashing, the way Raban would think as a black mage.
“When they fought together, risking their lives against a common enemy. In short, if they became comrades-in-arms, would they not be able to overcome deep-seated prejudice and build a friendship?”
The question was whether Na I-hyeon and Syune’s friendship might have originated from the experience of fighting together as Magi Black and Magi White.
It was an extremely persuasive hypothesis.
“No! Impossible!”
But Raban knew the most likely problem with this persuasive hypothesis.
“You saw it too! How much and how deeply negative thoughts have accumulated within Na I-hyeon. If she were made into a magical girl, she’d be a defective product at risk of going berserk at any moment!”
It was a cry that unless the Mother Fairy had gone insane, there was no way she would choose Na I-hyeon as a magical girl. But Inian could not understand Raban’s protest at all.
“Do you think someone who uses a spell like a magical-girl-ification beam would be sane?”