“Dikaillen and Kagan Luna.”
······Sylvia’s words conveyed a memory to me. Scenes I had never known, and could never have known, surfaced in succession, like old film flickering past.
—My son. She was not a partner suited to you.
Dikaillen’s voice rippled out like a wave. The emotion it sparked spread in disarray, clawing through my chest.
It was the torrent that had once become Deculein’s trigger.
“······.”
However, I know.
That this, too, shall pass.
The history and facts of the past cannot exert any influence upon the me of the present. My ego, which is both Deculein and Kim Woojin, is designed that way.
Sylvia said,
“But you mistook it for Iliade’s doing. So you sent my mother that ‘Devil’s Letter.’”
In order to save his fiancée, Deculein sent the letter back to Iliade.
But it did not work. Cielia was already ‘dying’ from her own hereditary disease.
“I did.”
“······If you knew everything, why didn’t you tell Epherene?”
Kagan Luna. Deculein’s former assistant, and Epherene’s father. Many memories with him bloomed, one after another.
Was this the process of assimilating with Deculein?
“Dikaillen found the woman who was to become my partner unsuitable, and ordered Kagan to send the letter.”
I will accept this memory in its entirety.
However, as Kim Woojin, not as Deculein.
I will not revive even that long-buried grudge from so long ago.
“Though I do not know whether Kagan knew the true nature of that letter at the time.”
“······.”
“You worked hard, Sylvia. In your own way.”
Sylvia clenched her hand faintly. I placed my gaze on that small fist. Then I looked at her face again.
“Everything you said is correct.”
“Hmph.”
Sylvia sneered without expression. I tucked the “Blue Eyes” away inside my coat. I picked up the cane I had set beside the bed.
Now, this should be enough.
“Rest well.”
I rose to my feet. There was nothing more to say. She was an admirable child who had uncovered the truth about her mother through her own strength.
······However.
“Don’t go.”
A mechanical voice held me back. It was utterly dry, yet far too desperate.
I looked back at her.
“It’s not over yet.”
Her eyes were growing wet. Moist, glossy golden eyes stared straight at me.
“There are still things to say.”
Each syllable trembled faintly.
A parched voice, as though it might snap, barely continued on.
“There are many things you have to say to me.”
“······.”
Unable to endure her own emotions, she shook the blanket she had clutched tightly this way and that. Tears ran down her cheeks.
I merely watched.
“······Say it.”
The child was trembling. Like a bird soaked in water. Her growling breaths were already no different from sobs.
She spat the words out as though chewing them to pieces.
“I said, say it.”
“······.”
A child who had lost her mother to Deculein. I do not know what she must feel, with her enemy right before her eyes.
“I have nothing to say.”
Sylvia’s breath stopped for a moment. Her entire body chilled cold. The emotions that had been surging up stopped in an instant.
It was silent.
“Yukline does not make excuses. What remains are only facts. ······I killed Cielia.”
“······.”
Sylvia released the blanket she had been gripping. Then she glared at me. With hollow eyes, she muttered,
“I’ll kill you.”
This much would be a natural reaction. I nodded.
“Make the effort. You have every right to kill me.”
“······Ugh.”
A suppressed groan flowed through Sylvia’s teeth. In the cabin created by 「Aesthetic Sense」, the stove was still burning.
I spoke to her as she held her mouth shut tight.
“I will make an effort not to die by your hand, Sylvia. So that you can go on living.”
“······What—”
Leaving her behind, I opened the cabin door.
Whoooooosh──!
A fierce blizzard surged in. The whole world was buried beneath snow and wind, but there was nothing to hinder me······
* * *
Whoooooosh······.
A violently raging blizzard. Epherene was walking through it. The mud house she had painstakingly made had been crushed under the weight of the snow and shattered.
“······Good thing I learned it.”
Manipulation-type magic, which she had applied for following Deculein.
With 「Magnetic Field」, she blocked the blizzard; with 「Telekinesis」, she pushed away the snow beneath her feet as she walked.
Crunch, crunch— crunch, crunch—
“Huh?”
As she was advancing efficiently like that, Epherene suddenly discovered a cabin.
“?”
A question mark appeared above her head.
A cabin in the middle of a blizzard.
She could have simply passed by, or she could have suspected its identity.
However, Epherene walked toward it as though possessed by something.
The closer she approached, the warmer her body became. It was the warmth of the cabin.
“What is······.”
Epherene approached without a word and first pressed her eye to the window. It was to check inside.
“!”
She flinched in surprise. A cabin where the stove burned warmly. Inside it were Deculein and Sylvia. Sylvia lay on the bed, and Deculein sat on the chair beside her.
Their voices leaked through the gap in the window.
Sylvia spoke first.
—I know everything.
—······What.
—That you killed my mother.
It was a conversation she should not hear. Epherene quickly tried to step back, but her body would not move.
As if she had been fixed in place by magic.
—It was because of the Devil’s Letter. When that letter swept across the entire continent, Yukline and Carla stepped in.
The Devil’s Letter. It was a legend Epherene knew well, too. But why were the two of them talking about that letter······.
—One of its victims was—
—My fiancée.
“!”
Epherene’s eyes flew wide open. She hurriedly tried to leave this place. But her body would not move.
It was no metaphor or exaggeration. Her body had literally “hardened.”
—Someone sent the Devil’s Letter to my woman, and she died. Pointlessly.
—I know. Who did it. Who sent the letter to your fiancée.
Even as the conversation beyond the glass window continued, Epherene was forced to listen to Deculein and Sylvia’s past.
An incomprehensible power held her legs in place.
“Why is this······.”
Just as the bewildered Epherene struggled to lift her foot—
—Dikaillen and Kagan Luna.
A familiar name rang in her ears. Epherene’s entire body froze stiff, and her irises widened. She naturally looked at Deculein.
—I did.
Kagan Luna.
It meant that her father had delivered the Devil’s Letter to Deculein’s partner.
—If you knew everything, why didn’t you tell Epherene?
For a moment, Epherene’s mind went blank. Heat rose along her back. She could not close her parted lips, and the conversation between the two of them spun uselessly in her ears.
Kagan Luna······ Devil’s Letter······ fiancée······.
—······Dikaillen found the woman who was to become my partner unsuitable, and ordered Kagan to send the letter. Though I do not know whether Kagan knew the true nature of that letter at the time.
At that very moment.
The unidentified pressure lifted.
Epherene staggered away from the cabin, then fell backward onto the snowy ground.
“What······.”
As she muttered like someone whose soul had left her body, someone approached.
Crunch— crunch—
Footsteps sounded, and a shadow fell from behind her. Goosebumps rising, Epherene lifted her head.
“You saw it.”
It was Sylvia.
Epherene could not understand. Sylvia had definitely been inside that cabin.
“You······ how?”
“Stupid Epherene.”
Familiar words. After murmuring them like a whisper, she waved her hand toward the cabin. Then the scenery over there flew away emptily, as though scattered by the wind.
“······.”
It had been Sylvia’s magic.
To the dazed Epherene, Sylvia spoke calmly.
“It was one hour ago. The truth, without a single falsehood.”
“······.”
“Get up, idiot.”
At those words, Epherene slowly rose. There was no strength in her legs. It was hard to stand on the slippery ground.
“······Why?”
Epherene asked blankly. Sylvia looked at her. She saw the moisture gathered in those round eyes. She saw her whole body trembling like bare branches.
“You’re asking why I told you.”
Sylvia asked back like that. Epherene nodded haltingly.
“Of course. Of course I am.”
Then a large snowflake landed on Epherene’s face. At that ridiculous sight, Sylvia looked up at the sky.
The world had turned hazy.
It probably was not only because of the snow. No, perhaps it was because of the snow.
Whether tears, or snow, whichever it was.
Sylvia looked at Epherene again.
“I think I’m jealous of you.”
“······What?”
Epherene first calmed her trembling heart. Maintain composure as a mage. Act as rationally as possible. Exclude confusion. If she was shaken simply because she was shaken, she was no mage······.
“Sylvia, you. Do you really love the professor—”
“Yes.”
Sylvia cut off Epherene’s words. Then she confessed with a more direct word.
“I love him.”
Epherene could not maintain her composure at all. She herself had just heard the conversation between Deculein and Sylvia, and Deculein had clearly said that he had killed Sylvia’s mother······.
“Uh buh muh······.”
A stammering sound. The blizzard that had been raging madly stopped at some point. The sky cleared, and silence settled.
Sylvia continued quietly.
“And I hate him. More than anyone else in this world.”
Epherene looked into Sylvia’s eyes. The emotions she held, the heart contained within them, Epherene did not dare to fathom.
“Because the only person who has my emotions, who ever will, is that professor.”
Sylvia’s emotionless voice trembled for the first time. No, she had been drenched in tears from the very beginning.
“I’m going to kill that professor.”
“······.”
Epherene, who had been sitting on the ground all this time, rose to her feet. Then she shook her head. It meant she would not let that happen.
Epherene did not want Deculein to die, nor did she want Sylvia to become a murderer.
“Yes.”
Sylvia nodded as though she understood.
At that moment, Epherene vaguely, faintly, came to understand what she meant.
“Maybe I want you to stop me, too.”
From the sky where the snow clouds had cleared, slightly clear sunlight descended. Broken clusters of light scattered like fragments.
Shaaaaaaa······.
A wind that had begun blowing at some point disheveled Epherene’s hair. Epherene closed her eyes for a moment, then quietly opened them.
“Sylvia?”
A call that received no answer. Epherene looked all around, but Sylvia had already vanished. Like an illusion, or a mirage.
“······Ah.”
And then, belatedly, the aftershock surged into Epherene’s heart.
“What am I supposed to do if you leave like thiiiiiis······.”
Flop— She collapsed onto the ground.
* * *
—Whoa, that blizzard scared the hell out of me.
—Was that an event too?
—As expected of Yukline. How do they make a blizzard on a lake?
Epherene arrived at the training hall. Two hundred mages were drying their snow-soaked robes while chatting about this and that.
“······.”
However, in Epherene’s mind, only that conversation still flickered.
—Dikaillen found the woman who was to become my partner unsuitable, and ordered Kagan to send the letter. Though I do not know whether Kagan knew the true nature of that letter at the time.
Had it been her father’s mistake, or had it been his wrongdoing?
However, more than either of those two, Epherene’s reason focused on the inevitability.
The reason Deculein had no choice but to hate her father.
Whether it had been a mistake, or wrongdoing······.
“I’m sure everyone enjoyed the blizzard. Ah, from now on, I’ll speak casually. Got it?”
The endless anguish and contemplation were cut off by Yeriel, who appeared on the platform. Epherene looked up at Yeriel.
She spoke as if the blizzard had been a Yukline event.
“Then we’ll now begin the Yukline magic training in earnest, but first, I’ll introduce the mentors! Now~”
At that, the curtains of the auditorium were drawn back. Beyond them were the mentors for this training. Epherene looked at their faces. Roserio, Gindalf, Luina, Ihelm, and······ Deculein.
Deculein.
“They’re quite evenly spread across the Eight Schools, right? You’ll choose one of these mentors and spend your training schedule with them.”
There were eight of them, one for each main school. Epherene was a mage who had majored in the four schools of Destruction, Support, Manipulation, and Transmutation, but there was no need to ask which of them she would choose.
“Now~ then. Everyone, choose!”
*
······The two hundred mages were divided among the Eight Schools. However, there were only four people in my Manipulation school.
There had clearly been twenty mages whose main school was Manipulation.
It seemed they had run off to other schools.
I was rather displeased by that, but the valuable ones had gathered in their own way.
“You chose Manipulation.”
“······Yes. Professor.”
First, Epherene, my direct student.
“Haha. Of course I, no. Here, you are the superior. Ahem. I, Lumiere Creto, have always watched Professor Deculein’s path with great interest.”
Next, Sophien’s younger brother, Grand Prince Creto of the imperial family.
“Me too, me too~ As for me, as for me~ I really looked forward to this day~ The day I would meet you again, Professor~~”
And “Maho” of the Principality of Yuren, whom I was meeting after a long time.
Lastly······.
“······Fuck.”
“Laili” of the Red Garnet Adventuring Party.
That woman, Yulie’s cousin, had been glaring at me with extremely dissatisfied eyes since earlier. As for the reason, of course I knew it.
Because she was Yulie’s cousin.
“······Hey.”
I knew that, but that reaction grated on me.
I spoke to Laili, who was snorting like a train.
“Lower your eyes. You are here as an invited guest.”
“······Ah, yes~ Yeees~ Yeees~”
Laili bent at the waist sullenly. I gestured to the four of them.
“Follow me. The first item on my training schedule is ‘training.’”
The place I guided them to was a cylindrical mana-gravity machine.
It was for demonstrating mana in a place where gravity was more than ten times normal. It was an extreme training tool created using the natural mana of this lake island.
“Laili. You first.”
I pointed to Laili first.
Not because she was the most ill-mannered among those four, but because the magical ability visible through 「Vision」 was the most outstanding······.