“I want to find my family again… Hmm, that’s only natural. Of course you miss them.”
Raban chimed in with an appropriate line. After all, was wanting to reunite with those one could no longer see not a fairly universal wish?
Bolstered by Raban’s perfunctory—yet universal—encouragement, Shune began to speak about the question that had planted such an idea in her mind.
“That question rose up in a hazy dream.”
“A question?”
“Yes. About the power of magical girls.”
Oh?
For a moment, Raban wondered whether the magical girl had come to understand their privilege. That absurd mechanism of wringing mana out of the equally absurd power source known as dreams and hope.
Even pain, when used to extract black mana, produced abysmal yields. Yet they produced limitless mana from things like dreams and hope, emotions into which it was difficult even to mix intense feelings such as negative thoughts?
It’s not as if there’s some living mana-refining filter out there suffering pain proportional to the total amount of dreams and hope in the entire world.
If the magical girls had realized the academic principles of magic and were beginning to question those mascot bastards, that was a good thing. He would need to prepare a scheme to sow discord at once, so it could be used at a decisive moment to shake off the mascots’ pursuit—
“I thought that if it’s magic, shouldn’t it be able to bring people back to life…?”
Raban felt bewildered by Shune’s answer.
Ah, that kind?
Normally, she went around blithely smashing the Ivory Tower, Ochanja, or the Hikarius quarry, enjoying her destructive power.
And now she calmly voiced the sentiment, “Come to think of it, magical girls have high physical attack, elemental attack, speed, defense, and evasion, but no utility skills, so they’re actually a low-performance class!”
Her way of thinking was on a different plane entirely.
Raban recalled the sorrow of the true abyss-tier class known as black mages, with low attack, low defense, slow speed, and low evasion.
Had a certain commoner of the Demon Realm known Raban’s thoughts, she would have evaluated him thus: “That is not because black magic has low potential, but because you overvalue others’ abilities and undervalue your own while cosplaying as the weak. You truly are a mad, conscience-free monstrosity.”
In truth, however, Raban’s reaction was perfectly normal. No matter which black mage had been placed in this situation, it was obvious they would have cried, “Black magic is weak.”
Originally, the average perception among black mages was that black mages were weak and everyone else was strong, so they were allowed to be a little underhanded and petty.
But Raban was a professional deceiver. He knew how to tuck away the (unreasonable) absurdity and indignation he felt.
Naturally, he began laying the groundwork to extract more information from the magical girl.
“Now that you mention it, that is strange. When people talk about magic, spells that make love come true and the like are famous, aren’t they? In fairy tales, I mean.”
“I think I heard that the origin of the magic that creates our transformation costumes comes from Cinderella’s glass slippers and dress.”
Raban gave a subtle nod, bewildered by the Fairy Godmother’s peculiar tastes. Cinderella’s makeover could be called a transformation, if one wanted to call it that…
Did she mishear the ball as a brawl?
“Yes. Just as Cinderella received her pumpkin carriage and glass slippers, there must surely have been magic that operated on a different level from combat.”
After a brief silence, Shune worked her lips. Sensing a secret hidden beneath deep hesitation, Raban waved his hand.
To catch a big fish, one had to know when to throw out the bait.
“I told you last time, didn’t I? If it’s hard to say, you don’t have to.”
“No. It’s not that it’s hard to tell you, Teacher…”
Not me?
There were only the two of them here, Raban and Shune. Surely she wasn’t worried that Na Ihyeon outside would eavesdrop with magical-super-hearing.
“…I feel sorry to Papirun.”
A sudden gleam of life entered Raban’s eyes. He had thought it was a lost cause to find material to drive a wedge between her and the mascot, since this girl had been discussing the limits of magic and then, out of nowhere, bragging under the guise of humility by saying magical girls lacked utility skills.
To think an opportunity like this would truly come?
Calm down, Raban.
If he showed delight here, it would only make him more suspicious. Here, he had to pretend to be a good adult.
“If what you’re thinking about is connected to that furball friend’s secret, then I think it would be better if I didn’t hear it. I’m neither a model adult nor a proper counselor, but I do know that the best way to resolve doubts between friends is an honest conversation.”
“It’s not like that! It’s just… I know Papirun is doing his best, so I feel sorry saying I feel something is lacking.”
What Shune felt magical girls lacked was, in other words, based on a comparison with the Four Heavenly Kings.
In truth, that was only natural. To judge what was good or bad, one needed a comparison group. But Raban could not easily accept that the subject of that comparison was the Four Heavenly Kings.
“Hm? Aren’t those Four Heavenly Kings fellows the ones whose job is to show up leading monsters and then run away shouting, ‘Kuh, damn it, how frustrating! You’ll pay for this!’?”
“By age, they’re not exactly ‘fellows’…”
Shune let out a dry laugh, but calmly acknowledged that magical girls had a far superior win rate compared to the Four Heavenly Kings.
And yet she feels something is lacking?
Raban’s question was soon resolved, for Shune began to elaborate in greater detail.
“The Four Heavenly Kings, how should I put it… They use things that feel like real magic. They transform into animals, and teleport.”
In truth, Raban wanted to ask whether, if they ran at full power and leaped past the speed of sound, that was not effectively teleportation, but he had a reason to play the part of a fine adult, so he endured it.
“…And in the case of monsters, resurrection is possible too.”
Shune immediately added the caveat, “Though it’s limited.” In the early days, when she had not yet grown accustomed to her activities as a magical girl, there had been plenty of times when monsters she thought she had defeated regenerated the next day and fought her again.
“But most of a magical girl’s magic is hitting and breaking things. I know very well that it’s a consideration meant to raise our physical abilities so we get hurt less, but…”
Still, she was saying that sometimes she felt it was a shame.
“Then in the dream, did it specifically point out that ‘shame’?”
“Yes. I heard something like a voice saying that if the fairies had abilities like the Ivory Tower, then wouldn’t they be able to bring back the people who disappeared?”
Before Raban’s reason could properly recognize the sentence, something like his unconscious mind burst out.
“Impossible.”
It was a deep-rooted conviction born of Raban’s experience.
Mainly, it was impossible in terms of mana. If there were a corpse in good condition and a soul sealed without damage, that would be one thing, but with absolutely nothing, to simply restore a living person from nothing?
It would be cheaper to create a new star and embed it in the celestial sphere. Unless one employed some expedient like a clone “based on one’s own memories.”
But in the end, that would be nothing more than something like my double. It could never become the person I truly wanted.
At his more decisive tone than before, Shune blinked. Raban reproached his tongue for spouting nonsense without his brain’s approval and continued speaking.
“White. You said your parents vanished in an instant along with the Naju Pharmaceuticals building, didn’t you?”
“Ah, yes…”
“If it were me, I would rather stake my hopes on the possibility that your parents drifted somewhere… yes, somewhere beyond the dimensions. To achieve complete resurrection without any catalyst would probably be difficult even if you gathered all the mana in Hikarius.”
Raban made the excuse that it was “a vague memory.” He remembered Naju Pharmaceuticals conducting some strange research, and as befitted a group that had been developing wicked black mana, they had also been researching necromancy.
Shune nodded blankly. Had Teacher just remembered part of the old memories he said he had lost?
Clap. It was a clap meant to refresh the atmosphere.
“At any rate! White, the voice in your heart is either a side effect of exposure to black mana, or the gloomy scheme of some wicked and eccentric fellow, or simply a natural phenomenon that occurred because you’ve been fighting difficult battles lately and started missing your family. Of these, I think it’s closest to the last.”
“What?”
Raban shrugged and attached a suitable explanation. First, the reason it was not the scheme of someone wicked was simple.
“Because if you ask someone like Papirun whether resurrection is difficult, he’ll explain it to you right away. It would be different if you were in a situation where you couldn’t trust Papirun, but seeing how sorry you feel even while telling me this, it seems the bond between you is strong.”
As for the reason it was not a side effect of exposure to black mana…
“Dreams caused by black mana aren’t that kind!”
Raban was certain. The protective magic those mascot bastards had wrapped around them had operated so intensely that it had ended at the level of an ordinary nightmare.
“So, Shune. Do not reproach yourself for lacking.”
“Reproach…?”
Raban nodded and continued. He spoke of the reason Shune had come to have such an impulse.
“You’ve become far more mature than you were when you lost your parents, and you’ve obtained a special power too. That’s why you unconsciously end up thinking it.”
If only I’d had the power I have now back then.
“But you can’t change the past that has already happened, so I think that thought ultimately led to, ‘If I become even stronger than I am now.’ But Shune, the tragedy that befell you is not your fault.”
It was the fault of the wicked adults at Naju Pharmaceuticals—in other words, it was probably his fault as well. At the end of his long encouragement, Raban murmured with a bitter smile.
“If you must resent someone, resent me instead of yourself. You don’t need to try to shoulder more responsibility than you are capable of bearing now.”
If she has any conscience, she won’t ask for more strengthening after this!