Year 931 of the Imperial Calendar, Thursday, March 20.
[ Level 9 clear. Congratulations. No further levels exist. ]
“Thanks.”
The result of devoting myself to training even on the day of the lecture.
I cleared the stage using nothing but 「Basic Telekinesis」, and as a reward, I obtained a bonus trait.
—the 「Telekinetic Artisan」—
◆ Grade
：Common
◆ Description
：The fruit of fierce training. Telekinetic performance increases by 11%, and mana consumption decreases by 11%.
──────
The description is simple, but to me now, it is more welcome than anything. I especially like that “11%.” As I grow, the value of this trait will only amplify.
I sat in my office chair and checked the clock.
10 a.m.
The lecture begins at 3 p.m. I have plenty of time, and there is no need for me to arrive early to today’s lecture. I just have to wait until around 3:30 and make my entrance when Allen gives the signal.
It was the so-called “Lecture 1 is self-study” that I had prepared with great ambition.
* * *
The third floor of the University Magic Tower.
Ipeulin let out a sigh in front of the A Class lecture room.
“Huu…….”
Inside is Dekyulrein. And I will be in the same space as Dekyulrein, listening to Dekyulrein’s lecture.
That alone is tormenting enough, but…… will Dekyulrein remember what happened at the lecture a month ago?
No, more than that, will he remember my surname?
Runa.
The surname of the mage he killed.
If the very target of my revenge cannot even remember that name, I feel like I would be even angrier, like I would go mad with rage.
What should I do? Must I even go through the trouble of making him aware of a crime he knows nothing about…… Such thoughts tightened around my throat.
“Ipeulin, what are you doing standing here?”
Startled by someone’s voice, Ipeulin jolted from her thoughts. A female classmate in a robe was tilting her head, looking at her.
“Ah, I’m just a little nervous. Go on in.”
“Right. Me too. I searched Dekyulrein up on the Wizard Board, and apparently he’s super strict. Though he is handsome…….”
Muttering, her classmate walked inside. Ipeulin, who had been standing still beside her, spotted another woman approaching from the hallway.
And for a moment, she was at a loss for words.
“……Ah.”
Whenever she walked, her well-kept golden hair rippled like a stream. A rose-like fragrance rose from her haughty bearing, and her soft refinement flowed naturally without any need to flaunt it.
She belonged to the class of people whose very bloodline was recognized as dignity—a being of the particularly sublime stratum in the pyramid called “nobility.”
The daughter of the Illeideu family, regarded as one of the most exalted bloodlines in the Empire.
Silbia.
Silbia Pon Yusepin Illeideu.
“…….”
She had already known that this noble young lady was her classmate, but Ipeulin took an aggressively guarded stance. She narrowed her eyes at Silbia and licked her lips.
Ipeulin hated Silbia. It was no simple emotion like inferiority. It was a long and tangled spite.
The Runa family had been local magnates in the Illeideu territory of ‘Juwhare’ since olden times. She seemed to recall they had even been relatives long ago.
—However, ten years ago.
Before she had even turned eight.
She remembered the eyes of Gilteon, head of the Illeideu family, glaring at her. She remembered the thuggish behavior with which he had surrounded the manor with territory troops, handling them like troublesome garbage.
She remembered that voice calling them lowly filth.
It was all because those bastards feared her talent, and her father’s talent.
But this is the Magic Tower, not their territory, and I am no longer a child. When it comes to pure talent, I am in no way inferior to that girl who walks around pretending to be so noble.
Above all, mages of the Magic Tower have no surnames or house names. They are called solely by their own names and talents.
Therefore…….
“……?”
As it turned out, Silbia only glanced at Ipeulin and immediately went inside.
There was not a hint of anything showing on her face. No emotion, and that in itself was natural. As if she had no idea who the person called “Ipeulin” even was.
*Swoosh—* Ipeulin, who had taken a kung fu stance all alone, awkwardly scratched the back of her neck and followed her in.
“……Huh?”
And she was bewildered.
It was not a classroom but some kind of spacious gymnasium-like space. The ceiling was absurdly high, and the floor was littered with wells, trees, dirt, sand, gravel, and piles of scrap metal.
“Whoa. Isn’t Professor Dekyulrein’s class normally not like this? Interesting.”
“Right? There was nothing like this on the Wizard Board. Is it because it’s the first lesson?”
Unlike Ipeulin, who was only confused, the other mages wore expressions that were half-surprised, half-amused.
“Ah, guys. Look at this.”
One of them pointed somewhere. A signpost was stuck in the center of the space.
[This professor intends to gauge your abilities in the first lesson.]
[This place is filled with elements. You need only do whatever you can by your own power.]
“Huh……?”
Ipeulin approached, checked the contents, and furrowed her brow.
“What is this?”
What are we supposed to do here? Do whatever by our own power—do what, exactly?
But the other mages seemed somewhat used to this strange situation.
They must have had lots of classes like this at the Academy? I wouldn’t know, since I entered the Tower through self-study.
“……Ah, no way?”
Someone beside her suddenly muttered as if realizing something. She glanced over. It was Geharon, the son of a fairly famous archmage.
Ipeulin subtly sidled up to him.
“What is it? Do you know something?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I think it’s something like this?”
Geharon placed his hand on the ground. Water and dirt then clumped around his hand, forming a shape that rose up long and slender.
It was a mud tower.
“He told us to try anything, right? And this class is ‘Understanding Elemental Attribute Magic.’ So maybe he wants us to make something out of the elements here? Like, ‘Pure Elemental Handling.’”
“Ah~ that could be it.”
The majority of the mages, including Ipeulin, agreed with Geharon’s words. The lecture was titled [Understanding Elemental Attribute Magic] from the start, after all.
“Sounds easy then.”
Ipeulin laughed, swinging her arms.
What should I make? A statue? Or a tower?
Should I make it big? Or as elaborate as possible?
Anything should be fine.
Ipeulin habitually fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist.
An artifact her father had personally gifted her long ago. Now, it had become the “attribute” of the mage called Ipeulin.
The so-called—Artifact.
The most restrictive, yet most versatile attribute.
As long as the bracelet was by her side, she could freely handle “all elements.”
“I’ve decided on you.”
Debating which element to choose, Ipeulin soon sat near a pile of metal. She crouched to prepare her magic when someone tapped her back and walked past.
“Ow, hey, what the—”
Stumbling, she steadied herself against the metal and looked back. It was Silbia.
She cast a glance at Ipeulin as if looking at roadside trash, then continued on her way.
“……The nerve. Why bump into me? No eyes? Big feet?”
Ipeulin pouted and grumbled to herself. Then, with groans, she picked up the metal piles and gathered them in one place.
“Ugh, heavy.”
She dusted off her hands and placed them on top.
Huu…… a single breath to ready herself.
Then, with her eyes closed, she manifested her mana.
*Crackle—!*
Mana sparked and flared. Before her hands, her bracelet gave off a blue light, and *BOOM—!*
A small, ugly tower shot up.
“Hmm.”
She had only restarted magic three years ago, so she was still lacking in every aspect. Even so, this much was satisfactory for a demonstration.
She had the hang of it now; time to make it as big as possible, big.
“……Huh?”
That was when it happened. The size of the tower she had built suddenly *shloop—* shrank and was sucked away somewhere.
“Huh, where’s it going?”
She tried to block it with her hands, but it was useless. Ipeulin could only stare blankly, following the direction her tower’s remains were flowing.
“……Hah?”
Silbia. She was absorbing her tower as material to make some kind of statue. A hollow laugh escaped Ipeulin in an instant.
She was going to take it apart anyway, but what’s with her?
“Excuse me. What do you think you’re doing? That’s something I made.”
Ipeulin strode over. Silbia blinked at her a few times. Then she replied in a languid voice.
“A mistake. It was so small I thought it was scrap metal.”
“……What did you say?”
Ipeulin’s brow furrowed.
Did this girl eat something wrong? No matter how much my tower looked like scrap metal…… no.
Wait.
An idea flashed through her mind, and soon she smiled, looking pleased with herself.
“Ah~ Miss Silbia. You know me, don’t you?”
Silbia didn’t answer and only looked up at the tower she had made. Objectively, it was far greater than Ipeulin’s.
“Hello? You know me. Why are you pretending not to?”
“…….”
Only then did Silbia’s gaze shift to Ipeulin. There was no emotion in those eyes. No—she was pretending there was none.
Ipeulin scoffed, covering her mouth with one hand and laughing exaggeratedly. Her curved eyes were sly like a fox’s.
“Aha~ I get it now~ Are you scared I’ll catch up to you~? I had a seven-year gap and only started learning again three years ago. Meanwhile, you received elite education from high-ranking mages all that time, and now you’re scared?”
Silbia looked at Ipeulin in silence. Her gaze sank even heavier and quieter. Though no emotion showed, it was precisely because of that her darkened eyes fell upon Ipeulin.
Silbia’s moist lips twisted, and an emotionless voice flowed out.
“I don’t know you.”
“You don’t know me? No, why are you lying? You’ve been speaking casually to me from the start. If you don’t know me, why speak casually?”
“You may not know, but I know your father.”
“……What?”
For a moment, Ipeulin wondered if she had misheard.
My father?
Did she just say my father?
“That impudent man. The self-styled noble.”
“…….”
“He’s dead.”
He’s dead.
There was no intonation or inflection in that voice. As though addressing an inanimate object, as though addressing someone who had never been alive to begin with—a voice as limp as a corpse.
Neglect—a disregard surpassing contempt.
Something inside her head *snapped*. Silbia turned away as she was, but mana was already welling up in Ipeulin’s bracelet.
As the enraged Ipeulin reached out toward Silbia—the mana took the shape of a ring and surged forward.
“H-hey! Behind you!”
At someone’s shout, Silbia only glanced back. A torrent of mana was surging. However, Silbia simply released her own mana to block it.
The two manas collided and subsided.
“……Ptoo! Hey. Hey, you bitch. What did you just say? Say it again?”
Ipeulin spat out the sand and saliva pooled in her mouth and snarled. With the thuggish air of a delinquent and cocky gestures, she rolled up her robe’s sleeves with practiced ease. Silbia watched her with a look that seemed to say, “Of course you would.”
“Insolent.”
“Insolent? Don’t you know they don’t care about status in the Magic Tower? No, want me to show you something more insolent?”
The next action was likely something even Silbia did not expect. In an instant, Ipeulin rushed forward and grabbed Silbia’s hair.
*Snatch!*
Seeing her own hair caught in both hands…… Silbia spoke, unfeeling.
“Let go before I cut off your wrists.”
“Go ahead and cut them.”
“…….”
“You bitch.”
Their conversation was terribly brutal, yet strangely, no one around them was paying attention to them.
“Hey, hey, hey! Look at that, that!”
Rather, a greater commotion was stirring.
*Kya, kyaaack—! Uwaaack—!*
Shouts and stampeding footsteps echoed loudly. Only then did Silbia and Ipeulin turn toward it.
“Huh?”
At the point where the two manas had clashed, a “void” had formed. A hole where mana and mana were entangled. It functioned like a vanishing point, sucking in the dirt, trees, wells, stones, and metals scattered all around.
“……What is that?”
Inside the narrow hole, everything crunched and ground against each other. The wood, stone, water, and dirt sublimated from the frictional heat, but the metals maintained their form, glowing red-hot.
“It’s going to explode, it’s going to explode! Hey, that thing’s going to blow!”
“Run, run——!”
Magical power compressed and contracted into a single point would, at some moment, explode and tear even metal apart.
If that void burst,
the metal would fire like bullets and pierce through the entire space.
The mages who foresaw that carnage hastily constructed barriers.
Trdrdrdrdrk······.
An ominous sound, as if something were being ripped away.
The cry of crumpling iron.
At last, a tremendous explosion swept through.
──!
“Mm!”
Epherene squeezed her eyes shut. The barrier shot from her bracelet enveloped her entire body.
And so she trembled like a penguin and prayed for one second,
two seconds,
three seconds,
four seconds.
Whoooooosh······.
The wind blew.
And then,
the wind stopped.
That was all.
“······?”
No matter how long she waited, the impact she had braced for never came. Finding that strange, Epherene, still trembling, slowly opened her eyes.
“······Eek!”
Startled, her whole body froze. A pointed piece of metal was hovering right in front of her eyes.
And yet, it was truly bizarre. It simply stood in midair without the slightest movement.
“What······ is this?”
It was not only here. It was the same in every direction.
The shredded pieces of metal, as if gravity had vanished, like pebbles drifting through space, merely floated there, caught in the bindings of the space.
······.
A belated calm seeped into the pandemonium, and the mages who had lost all strength simply stood frozen, looking around the area.
No one spoke.
No sound could be heard.
It was a world where the metal fragments that had surged up from the mana explosion drifted like clouds.
This miracle, impossible to explain in words—no, this miracle itself was what could truly be called magical (魔法的)······.
“······Did you do that?”
Epherene asked Sylvia. But this time, even Sylvia showed an expression for the first time.
Doubt, puzzlement, and surprise.
“Is it psychokinesis?”
“No. How could psychokinesis stop all of this?”
“Right? I just said it.”
Because it was such a wondrous sight, the mages immediately became interested. They quickly forgot the perilous situation from just moments ago and immersed themselves in analysis.
They peered into the metal, tapped it, and were about to try infusing it with mana when—
─Do not move from where you stand. Any of you.
A voice like a blade of frost echoed out. Its sharp tone seized the mages’ entire bodies.
Step— Step—
Overwhelming footsteps followed.
Gulp.
At the sudden appearance of a presence that seemed to press down on space itself, the mages swallowed. Cold sweat gathered on their backs. As if tree roots had bound their entire lower bodies······.
“Attention.”
A single word that controlled one hundred and fifty mages at once.
There, where all of them stiffly turned to look──
stood the professor in charge of this lecture, the one who had suppressed the recent situation with a spell cast in an instant.
Deculein.
“······You have done something foolish.”
Dressed, as always, in a sharply tailored suit, he swept his raptor-like eyes over the mages. That chilling gaze seemed to seize the hearts of the newcomers.
It was then.
The metals that had remained in midair until now finally began to move.
Shararararak······.
Countless metal fragments formed pairs and lines, drifting beautifully among themselves as if alive, as if dancing ballet, before settling neatly behind the professor.
Even until the very last moment,
Deculein did not move so much as a finger.
“Wow.”
“Whoa.”
Instinctive exclamations burst out here and there. Even Epherene, who normally recoiled at the very mention of Deculein, could not help but acknowledge it this time.
His magic was elegant.
Beyond elegant, it was artistic.
Ordinary people might think of it merely as “somewhat pretty magic,” but they said you could only see as much as you had learned. The mages, who had learned all there was to learn, could feel it.
It was manipulation magic so chillingly solemn, so piercingly beautiful, that it filled them with the overwhelming thought of whether they too might one day reach such a realm······ to the point that it seemed to cut into their flesh.
“The lecture is suspended. Only those who caused the disturbance will remain. The rest of you, leave.”
That elation (高揚感) quickly subsided. At Deculein’s wrath-tinged dignity, everyone lowered their heads.
Epherene was hesitantly about to follow when someone wearing a cone-shaped hat appeared from behind the tall Deculein.
“What! What happened?! I felt an incredible surge of magic!”
It was the chairwoman.
The chairwoman hopped about as she looked around the lecture hall, and Epherene came to clearly realize that she was fucked.