A sudden pop quiz.
Epherene first tried tackling it with her own ability alone.
However, from the very first sentence of the first question, the calculation—a mixture of countless numbers and circuits—was nearly infinite in length.
“Ugh…”
Epherene constructed a mana array in her mind. But something must have gone wrong, because—whoosh! Flames flared up in midair.
Just then, Grand Duke Kreto raised his hand.
“Professor. When you said we may discuss?”
Deculein answered briefly.
“Exactly as I said. However, I will ask whether you understood the contents.”
At that, Kreto quietly glanced at Rose Rio. But Rose Rio was already in a trance.
Iron-colored mana shimmered in her eyes.
They said mana itself became special once one reached the level of Ether. True to Rose Rio, a genius of refinement, even the aura spreading from her gleamed like metal.
“…”
Epherene lost herself in the sight for a moment, but then looked back down at the test paper.
And she began the full-scale operations and calculations. She wrote down the complex and troublesome formulas on the magic answer sheet.
“Epherene…?”
Suddenly, Drent called to her in a subtle tone. Epherene turned to look at him.
“What do you think of this?”
Drent cleared his throat once and showed her his answer. The beginning of the first problem was fairly similar to Epherene’s, but after that there were quite a few errors.
Epherene said,
“Yeah. Here, see? I calculated these two parts separately first, then joined them together.”
“Oh, really? I did it all at once.”
“Then it’s way too hard. Isn’t it better to make it easier on yourself?”
“…For me, splitting it up is harder.”
“I’ll do it for you. Look.”
“Sure.”
At Epherene’s words, Drent nodded.
And so, while the two spent time discussing it together—
Thud—!
Rose Rio suddenly stood and approached Deculein.
“Here.”
Then she handed over her answer sheet.
Deculein skimmed it and nodded indifferently.
“You pass. Go in.”
A new passage appeared where Deculein gestured. Rose Rio entered first, and the red-furred munchkin followed behind her.
“I am finished as well.”
“Me too~”
Next were Astal the addict, Professor Louina, Professor Relin, and so on…
For Epherene and Drent, who were merely Solda, it was certainly difficult.
“…Exactly half left.”
Epherene looked at the clock. Before she knew it, ninety minutes had passed. Beside her were not only Drent but Kreto as well.
“This part. I think this is the key circuit that purifies the mana. What do you think?”
“Yes. I think so too. Senior Drent, what about the calculation I asked you to handle?”
“Ah, I’m almost done.”
Like that, the three put their heads together, agonizing over it and dividing the labor for three hours.
Click—
Deculein’s timer rang.
“Time is up. Submit your answers.”
“Ah, yes!”
The three stood together and submitted their answers.
“…”
In the brief time he skimmed their papers, tension seemed to tighten around their necks like a noose, and sweat gathered in their palms.
“Epherene.”
Deculein lowered the answer sheet and looked at Epherene.
“Yes.”
Epherene answered quickly. Deculein pointed to a certain part of the answer sheet.
“Whose idea was the segmentation and joining of this formula?”
Segmentation and joining.
Separating the formula first, calculating it, then joining it back together with precision.
It was easy to say, but the difficulty was comparable to a bodily transplant.
If successful, it could save even a dying person. If it failed, it would either kill them faster, or turn them into a chimera with a monkey’s arm attached to a human body.
“Ah, I… It was my idea. These two helped with the calculations and dismantling the formula… and the joining was done by me…”
Epherene spoke a little timidly. Deculein looked down at her coldly.
So it was wrong. Drent and Kreto, having guessed as much from his reaction, let out sighs for no reason.
However, Deculein’s next words were—
“Excellent.”
It was praise none of them had expected.
“…?!”
Epherene, who had lowered her head expecting a reprimand, opened her eyes wide and looked at Deculein.
He spoke. His voice was as dry as ever.
“This technique will be of great use to you in the future, so polish it. You pass.”
“Nice!”
“Whew…”
Drent instinctively shouted in joy, Kreto let out a sigh of relief, and Epherene simply stared at him blankly.
“…”
She was confused.
In her entire life, this was the first time she had ever heard the word excellent. It was not an empty phrase or an exaggeration; truly, no one had ever said the sentence “you are excellent” to her.
And the first praise she had ever received in her life had come from Deculein, of all people.
Could even this be nothing more than an “appeasement”…
“Epherene! Let’s go!”
“…Huh? Ah, y-yeah…”
Drent pulled Epherene along. Dazed, she was led by him like a paper doll.
* * *
The second lecture room, where only those who had passed gathered. The ground was soil, a stream flowed in the distance, greenery grew, and some kind of fireball floated in the air.
“One hundred passed. Fifty failed.”
It had been an open-book test that even allowed discussion, but fifty people, unable to write an answer or understand even a little of the contents, had failed. In three hours, one-third of the students had been eliminated.
“I judge the remaining one hundred to have understood the ‘basic content.’ I will give you an assignment.”
Assignment. As he said so, Deculein condensed the soil of the ground into the shape of an awl.
It was a spell called “Earthen Mold.”
“This is an exceedingly simple application of the earth-attribute spell, Earthen Mold. It is not a longsword, not a dagger, not an axe—merely a nine-stroke awl.”
Earthen Mold was a spell that shaped soil like a weapon, and it was usually linked with Telekinesis or wielded directly by hand.
“That’s right. Earthen Mold needs to be at least twenty strokes to become a usable weapon.”
At that moment, Rose Rio cut in. Since it was her field of expertise, she looked rather excited.
“A nine-stroke Earthen Mold is nothing but an awl. From twenty strokes, it becomes a dagger. Around thirty strokes, you can create an object sharper than a blade forged by most blacksmiths.”
“Correct.”
At Rose Rio’s addition, Deculein nodded.
“However, the essence of ‘pure application’ lies in the ‘extreme of the basics.’ Allen?”
“Yes.”
Allen, who stood beside him, handed him a mana alloy. Then Deculein grasped the awl made with Earthen Mold.
“If one applies magic purely, then even the output of an ‘extremely basic spell’ increases infinitely depending on the caster’s ability. As an example.”
An awl woven from a mere nine-stroke spell. Its sharp tip poked the mana alloy.
Crunch—!
In that instant, Rose Rio’s eyes flew open.
“This paltry awl has pierced mana alloy worth as much as five thousand elne.”
A hole had been made in the alloy. Greatly startled, Rose Rio reached out her hand.
“G-give that here!”
Deculein tossed the mana alloy with a flick. Rose Rio immediately made an awl with Earthen Mold and stabbed the alloy in the same way.
Clang— It only bounced off with a clear sound.
“No, what is this? How’d you do it?”
“I used Earthen Mold, but any spell will do.”
Ignoring Rose Rio, Deculein continued.
“If you pierce, break, or melt this alloy with a spell of fourteen strokes or fewer, the assignment is complete.”
The students, including Epherene, swallowed hard.
It was better than nine strokes, but fourteen strokes still belonged to the basics.
On the other hand, that mana alloy was… clearly for knights at a glance. If it cost as much as five thousand elne, it was at least mid-grade.
“If you cannot, you fail. The deadline is the next class. Now, then…”
Deculein snapped his fingers. The remaining one hundred students were slightly flustered.
They had thought today’s class was over with this.
“We will begin the theory.”
The theory still remained.
* * *
The ninety-ninth floor of the Mage Tower. In the circular office as large as a sports field, the Chairwoman and her dog were together.
“Professor Deculein! What brings you here?!”
Having come up as soon as the lecture ended, I held out a single document to her.
“Ooh! Is this the very thing Professor Deculein said he was researching?! That! Very! Thesis… is… it…?”
The Chairwoman, who had been speaking excitedly, suddenly stopped and looked at my face. Then she looked at the document I had handed her. Then she looked at my face again. Then she looked at the document again.
After repeating that simple action dozens of times, she slapped the desk with her palm.
“Aha~! It’s a dream!”
“It is not.”
“What did you say?!”
The Chairwoman covered her gaping mouth with both hands. Her face said, I’m extremely shocked.
“If this isn’t a dream… Professor Deculein! Is that skin of yours fake?!”
I silently looked at the Chairwoman.
Her reaction was unexpected. I thought she would giggle and chatter as soon as she received this thesis.
“Kyaaak—!” the Chairwoman screamed.
“You’re not answering! It’s fake! It is!”
“It is not.”
“If it isn’t, then why…”
As a lover of gossip, this should have been something she welcomed greatly, yet she did not look particularly pleased. Rather, the uncommon wrinkle forming between her brows made her seem quite confused and dissatisfied.
“…Professor Deculein! Professor Deculein! Professor Deculein!”
“Why are you calling me three times?”
“Are you really going to submit it like this?!”
Adrienne pointed to a certain paragraph of the thesis.
The very first page.
The part introducing the name of the [First Author].
“Yes.”
I nodded.
At that, the Chairwoman looked at the thesis again. This time, she practically pressed her eyes into the paper.
“Hoo…”
A deep breath, as if her breath had stopped.
“This is real?!” the Chairwoman cried, looking up at me.
“…Professor Deculein! Are you truly submitting it like this?! If I accept it, you won’t be able to revise this!”
“I know.”
“No! Are you sure you’re really Deculein?!”
The Chairwoman thrust out her finger. In an instant, a gale surged up and wrapped around my entire body.
Whooooosh—!
Weathering, a top-class formula that destroyed all magical and mana-based treatments cast on a target. The storm-like wind swept over my face and the hem of my clothes.
“…What do you think you are doing?”
After the five-second gust subsided.
I glared at the Chairwoman as I straightened my disheveled hair and clothes. The Chairwoman’s eyes grew as wide as gourds.
“…You really are Professor Deculein?!”
“Your suspicion was unnecessary.”
She cleared her throat.
“Then. That means I have to believe this… should I believe it?!”
I understood why she kept asking like this.
Because in this thesis was a major incident that the original Deculein could never have imagined, something he would not have done even if the world split in two.
“No, no matter how I think about it!”
The Chairwoman also traced that sentence with her finger.
“The First Author!”
Put simply, the [First Author] meant the “owner of the thesis.”
The name that appeared first on the very first page of the thesis, in the most glorious space.
“There are two of them!”
In that paragraph of my thesis was the name “Monarch Deculein.”
And beside it, placed at the same interval, was “Solda Kagan.”
“With Professor Deculein’s personality, how does this make any… hm?”
At that moment, the Chairwoman tilted her head.
“But the proof experiment hasn’t been done yet, has it?”
“Yes.”
To be precise, I had not been able to experiment.
My thesis was still only theory. To receive certain recognition, a practical experiment—in other words, “magic application”—was important, but I did not have that talent.
“For now, it is merely theory, but before long, magic application will be possible.”
Under me was Epherene. At most, it would take her half a year to grow enough to understand this thesis.
The application and realization of the magic would be her role.
“Well, it’s true that sometimes the theory comes first, and the experiment succeeds later!”
At that, the Chairwoman nodded while muttering strange sounds like, “Hm-hm—huehm—huuumm—”
“And well! You said it was the creation of a new pure element! As long as the contents are good, it should be recognized enough on theory alone! Then, Professor Deculein! Please leave now! I want to read the thesis!”
The Chairwoman took out a large, round pair of glasses from the desk drawer and placed them on the bridge of her nose. The glasses were bigger than her face.
“I hate having someone next to me when I’m studying! Shoo! Shoo!”
The Chairwoman waved her hand.
“Yes.”
I immediately got on the elevator and descended to the first floor.
* * *
Before I knew it, the night sky was studded with stars. I was heading for the Magic Tower’s parking lot when some greasy blond was leaning against the wall, watching me.
“You came.”
Ihelm. The man smirked as he spoke.
“Hey. I heard an interesting rumor somewhere. You gave your thesis to that guy’s daughter? Said you’d give it back if she understood it in a month?”
“......”
“Why’d you do that? What are you going to do if she actually understands it?”
“She won’t, anyway.”
“Aha~ I knew it. So you’re just messing with her? Letting her look at something she can’t understand anyway?”
I shook my head.
I didn’t like the way he talked. That frivolous manner of his, and especially that buttery tone that seemed to ooze.
“You’ve changed too. You didn’t use to do things like that.”
I started walking again. Ihelm fell in alongside me.
“Hey, Deculein. Doesn’t walking like this bring back old memories?”
“No.”
“Still, back then—hey, wait. Hey, you’re too fast!”
I widened my stride.
With my long legs taking great steps forward, Ihelm couldn’t keep up.
......
Ihelm clicked his tongue.
“Damn it. Why the hell does he walk so fast?”
That bastard Deculein was quickly growing distant. He wasn’t running, nor was he speed-walking, but his pace was practically magical.
“Well, whatever.”
There was no need to chase after him.
He seemed to have said everything he needed to say, and heard everything he needed to hear.
“Hey. You heard that, right?”
Ihelm looked at the great tree near the Magic Tower. Epherene, who had been hiding behind it, flinched.
“You heard, right? That he gave you the thesis knowing you wouldn’t understand it.”
“......I knew that ages ago, okay?”
Epherene revealed herself and first crossed her arms brusquely. At her needlessly prim expression, Ihelm’s lips twisted.
“If you knew, why were you hiding there? I thought you didn’t, so I asked on purpose for you to hear.”
“I had something to ask you.”
“What?”
“What was the relationship between the three of you?”
“......What?”
Ihelm frowned. It was an honest reaction.
Epherene snorted and asked again.
“My dad, Deculein, and you. What was your relationship? If you don’t tell me that, I won’t be your witness either. If you want something, you have to give something in return.”
“......”
“Am I wrong?”
Ihelm’s mouth fell half-open, as if he were dumbfounded. He stayed still like that for a moment, then let out a small sigh and chuckled.
“Fine. We were friends. Me and Deculein.”
“......Friends?”
When Epherene asked back, he corrected himself. As if questioning it.
“Were we friends?”
“What is that supposed to mean? What about my father?”
“A lackey.”
“......You son of a—”
“Ah, kidding, kidding. Hahaha!”
Seeing Epherene’s face twist like a demon’s, Ihelm burst into laughter.
He clutched his stomach, even tears faintly gathering at the corners of his eyes.
Epherene crushed the road surface under her heel.
“I told you not to laugh!”
“Sorry, sorry. Right.”
Hoo! Ihelm took a deep breath and continued.
“We were, in our own way, equals. Your old man was under Yukline’s skirts.”
“Skirts?”
“Yeah. His head.”
Ihelm tapped his own temple.
“Your old man captured Yukline with this one head of his.”
At those words, Epherene fell into thought for a moment.
Captured Yukline...... It was a slightly ambiguous sentence.
“If my father’s theory fascinated Deculein—”
“Hey. Is Deculein the only Yukline there is?”
“What?”
To the bewildered Epherene, Ihelm showed a wide, mischievous grin.
“That kid Yeriel over in Hadekain is also a Yukline, and Dikaillen, the Aether mage who died ages ago, was also a Yukline, and the two women who married that Dikaillen were also Yuklines.”
“Ah...... Then—”
“No. Shh.”
Ihelm suddenly placed a hand over his mouth.
“That’s enough for you to hear. Any more than this and your neck will be in danger. Yukline is a great house, you see. If you learn more, they might kill you.”
“......Professor Deculein would kill me?”
“The House of Yukline would.”
Epherene opened her eyes wide and looked straight at Ihelm. Ihelm met her gaze and said,
“So, make sure you become my witness. If you have evidence, present it without fail. Well, that’s assuming you have any evidence.”
“I do.”
In that instant, Ihelm’s expression hardened. It sank coldly, like a snake.
He asked again in a low voice.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“......The contents are a secret.”
“A secret?”
His arrogant face crumpled. Like the wrinkles on a dumpling.
“Are you messing with me? I need to know what it is so I can coordinate my story with—”
“They’re letters I exchanged with my father. I’ll bring them to the hearing that day. And there’s nothing I need to coordinate with you about. Your name isn’t in them at all.”
At Epherene’s bold words, Ihelm was momentarily at a loss. With his mouth firmly shut, he made a bitter tsk sound.
“......Fine. So that bastard ignored me too.”
Ihelm roughly swept back his hair and nodded.
“Anyway, got it. Letters. That’s good evidence, so make sure you use it properly. I’ll back you up, so just charge right in. Rewind isn’t a house that loses out to Yukline that badly, either.”
Ihelm spun around and walked away.
His back swayed in the moonlight as if he were drunk. Watching him, Epherene let out a sigh.
“Haa......”
She still didn’t know whether this was the right path, whether it was truly the correct way. Perhaps it might be wrong. Completely wrong, even.
──However.
If, even like this, her father’s name could be remembered in the world of magic. If it could avoid being forgotten. If the humiliation her father had suffered in the Magic Tower could be reversed.
If she could proudly make it known that she was her father’s daughter.
“......Dad.”
Epherene took the thesis out from inside her clothes.
Deculein had said, “If you understand it in a month, I’ll return it to you,” but that had been impossible from the very beginning.
He had never intended to return it in the first place.
“Isn’t it strange?”
Therefore, if, as Ihelm had said, I was Deculein’s Achilles’ heel.
If I could ruin him. If I could really cut his legs out from under him.
“I should be happy. I should be jumping for joy......”
Epherene felt a mist-like emotion welling up inside her.
It was a strangely bitter feeling.
“......”
Was it because of the future version of herself she had met someday?
She was not happy, nor sad, nor relieved. Her mouth simply tasted bitter.
What was this, a canker sore?
“......Let’s steel my heart.”
Epherene murmured quietly.
“Let’s steel my heart......”
Her voice rose into the night sky.
Her vow, lacking confidence, circled in the air like breath before scattering. It was swept up and broken apart by the cold wind.