The Contract (2)
"'Yohan Damus is indeed an Oracle.' …There, I signed it."
"Confirmed."
Having finally affixed my signature to the humiliating, outrageously one-sided contract Lobelia had shoved in my face, my immediate thought was to arrange a meeting with Ariel. Unfortunately, that proved impossible.
"Her household seems rather preoccupied with the matter of her marriage to you," Lobelia remarked, waving a dismissive hand. "If you are truly desperate to see her, you are welcome to visit the Aether ducal estate."
"…I'll pass."
They say you have to enter the tiger's den to catch the cub, but there was no way in hell I was setting foot inside the Aether duchy. Just picture how that would look. The moment the servants laid eyes on me, whispers would fly—'Oh my, oh my! He must have come to see our young lady!'—and talking her out of this would become ten times harder. And if I did something to aggressively shoot those rumors down? That would trigger an entirely different disaster: 'How dare some backwater pipsqueak from Count Damus's house snub our lady?'
Either way, it was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Staying as far away as humanly possible was the only rational choice.
So… what was left for me to do?
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing…"
I had already met with Lobelia. Yuna had slipped out to dig up intel on the Aether Ducal House to give me some bargaining chips, but she had yet to return. My attempt to talk sense into Ariel had been nipped in the bud before it even began. And my father was still a long way off from arriving.
"Haah…"
I was usually the type who would happily lounge around and sleep all day, but now that I genuinely had nothing to do, a gnawing anxiety crept in. Attend classes, you say? Who attends lectures during an existential emergency? Besides, if I were the kind of model student who prioritized schoolwork at a time like this, I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
"Should I run a simulation in my head or something?"
Perched on the edge of my mattress, I tried to anticipate how things would play out once my father arrived. Even though I had summoned him, he wasn't coming to negotiate with me. This was a marriage between noble houses; his real intent was to meet with the other side face-to-face. After all, the Aether Duchy had tabled absurdly generous terms. Replying with a simple letter would have been borderline insulting.
Father's primary objective would undoubtedly be to steer this marriage toward a smooth conclusion. His opening move would be to cajole and butter me up. Not going to work. My job was the exact opposite: I had to convince him to tear the whole arrangement up and revert it to a blank slate. To be completely blunt, the odds were abysmal.
Tearing down the colossal wall known as the Aether Ducal House was practically impossible for someone of my standing. That was why I had enlisted Lobelia as an arbitrator, but…
"There's no way Lobelia will play along with what I want…"
That girl was greedy. She didn't even bother hiding her boundless ambition. Finding a mutual compromise? A resolution where everyone walked away satisfied? Nonsense. In negotiations like this, someone always had to surrender what they wanted.
"Which means…"
Thud.
Sitting upright for so long had my lower back aching, so I collapsed onto the bed. All right, let's think this through again.
"Maybe I should just…"
And then I fell asleep.
When my consciousness resurfaced, I found myself standing beneath a sky where the Milky Way flowed like liquid light.
In that instant, I recognized it as the recurring dream I had been having lately. By now, it had become a Lucid Dream. Blazing embers, shimmering starlight—and my younger self, painstakingly gathering those countless twinkling stars into his hands.
The scenery never changed.
At least, it hadn't until I stepped out of the audience and walked onto the stage.
"……."
I took a step toward the younger version of myself who was busily gathering the fallen stars. His little hands were already overflowing with brilliant light. They were so small that he couldn't possibly hold any more.
Slowly, the child turned and held out his star-filled hands toward me.
The moment I accepted them, the starlight dissolved and seeped into my flesh. Relieved of his burden, the child turned back and quietly resumed gathering the stars.
And with that, I opened my eyes.
When I came to, morning had broken. Judging by the birds chirping outside my window, it seemed I had slept straight through from yesterday afternoon to the early hours of dawn.
"Are you seriously able to sleep at a time like this…?" I muttered to myself.
The answer was a resounding yes. I had slept like a log. With my life teetering on a knife's edge, here I was, snoozing away like a pampered cat. I felt pathetic enough to shed actual tears.
"Good grief…"
Still, at least I had found something to do. I stretched, washed my face, and stepped out of the dormitory. I wasn't heading out to meet Lobelia or Ariel. Nor was I looking for Yuna.
Instead, after a very long absence, I made my way to the library.
Yes. Today, I intended to do something unheard of: study.
And the subject of my studies was none other than High-Tier Magic—specifically, advanced Illusion Magic.
The moment the student librarian heard the title I was requesting, they gave me a bizarre, up-and-down look. It was the quintessential 'Someone like you?' sneer. Honestly, wasn't that a bit harsh? I wasn't that hopeless.
The librarian looked down and scrutinized the student ID card in their hand. Emblazoned across it in bold, unmissable letters was the designation: Class F.
Fine, fair enough. I couldn't entirely blame them. When a bottom-feeder branded with the Class F mark walks in asking for an advanced spellbook, anyone would be suspicious.
"This book is exceptionally valuable," the librarian said flatly.
"I am aware."
"Please refrain from using it for anything other than its intended purpose. Such as a pot stand. The loan period is one week."
"I told you, I know."
"Why are you glaring at me like that?"
"No, it's just…"
You were the one looking at me like dirt first!
"…My apologies."
Whatever. If a fight broke out, I was the one who'd end up pulverized. The person on library duty was a classmate, and an elite from Class A at that. In a brawl, I was one hundred percent confident I would be knocked out in a single blow. Swallowing the contemptuous stare, I officially checked out the book.
I hadn't suddenly cracked open a textbook out of some newfound existential panic about my future. That dream last night had been visiting me with increasing frequency, which meant the time was rapidly approaching.
In the dream, I was a child with hands far too small to hold many stars. That was a metaphor for my talent. It signified that I was simply too weak and insignificant to dismantle and analyze the magic she had left behind.
Well, to begin with, my magical aptitude was practically nonexistent. To put it in perspective, I couldn't even cast a proper Fireball, the most basic elementary spell in existence. That was why my separated consciousness—split via Thought Partition—had to gather those stars by the handful so my waking self could retrieve them. And retrieving them meant undertaking the laborious process of internalizing them as my own knowledge.
That was why I needed to study High-Tier Magic. The critical question was whether I could actually put that knowledge to use. What good would it do if I spent all this effort deciphering the legacy she left behind, only to find myself completely incapable of casting it? Unless you were the original creator, no one truly knew what a spell did until it was unleashed.
"Illusion magic, huh…"
I might still be a dunce who couldn't even summon a decent flame, but when it came to Illusion Magic, I could manage spells classified up to the intermediate grade. If things went well, this might even let me knock on the door of the advanced tier. And from that, a few truths became abundantly clear.
"Just what kind of innate ability did you have…?"
The magic she had left behind belonged to the school of Illusion. And even High-Tier Illusion Magic couldn't hold a candle to the spells she had crafted. Considering that even the illusion spells created by an Archmage like Olga Hermod were graded as intermediate, what she had left was downright absurd.
"What was it you wanted to leave me?"
I had been dissecting her magic all this time just to uncover the answer to that question. Because on that day, I ran away. The only way I could ever piece together her final moments was through what she had left behind.
"Hmm…"
The moment I flipped through the pages, my mind swiftly deciphered about half of the contents. Yet, as expected of advanced magic, the culmination of someone pushing their innate ability to its absolute limit wasn't something one could master through mere reading.
"Does this mean I need advice from someone with actual talent from here on out?"
I had anticipated this early on, but there was a hard limit to what I could achieve on my own. I understood the material, yet the pieces wouldn't click together. It was like mathematics: even if you memorized the formulas, without that intuitive flash of inspiration, you had no idea where or how to apply them.
"Magic… magic, right…"
Naturally, The Cradle offered classes on magic. However, the curriculum here was broad and shallow. It wasn't designed for someone like me who needed to drill deep into a single specialized discipline. More than anything, my magical development was bizarrely warped. How could anyone properly instruct someone who couldn't cast a basic Fireball yet wielded intermediate illusion magic with ease?
How many people in this world could actually teach someone like me?
Two candidates immediately sprang to mind.
The first was Ariel Aether, the very person who had pushed me to the edge of an early grave.
"Yeah, definitely not."
Ask her for private tutoring when I was actively trying to break off an engagement with her? In that scenario, I had zero confidence I could keep an appropriate distance. Besides, a genius's perspective was entirely different from a mediocre person's. Being an exceptional mage didn't make you an exceptional teacher. In fact, I had already experienced her teaching firsthand: she had completely failed to teach me Fireball. Incompetent to the core as an instructor.
That left the second option.
"Asking the Chancellor right now would be completely shameless, though…"
With her kind temperament, Olga Hermod would likely pinpoint my specific flaws with ease. Unlike Ariel, she was a seasoned veteran who had climbed the ranks step by step. But she was busy. Inhumanly busy. Although the Cradle had resumed classes, the fallout from the recent terror attack was far from resolved. Until those fires were put out, Olga wouldn't be able to step a single foot out of her office. Pushing an elderly woman any harder felt cruel, but what could you do? Our proud Archmage was determined to see her students return to a normal academy life.
"The best paths always carry the steepest risks…"
Strictly speaking, there were third and fourth options, but I had already ruled them out from practical consideration. They involved other Archmages. While undeniably effective, they were just as lethal.
"…Faust would be the absolute pinnacle in this field."
The man who had grandly stomped all over the Cradle just a few days ago was revered as the Great Sage. Naturally, I kept that thought strictly hypothetical. I had no desire to court that kind of suicidal danger, and more importantly, I had no clue where that monster was hiding.
As for the fourth option, it was a wandering mage gifted with spatial teleportation.
In the end, this project had to be shelved. For now, I would have to push forward as far as I could on my own.
When afternoon rolled around, Yuna finally returned.
"I actually stopped by yesterday, but you were sound asleep, so I waited until after classes ended today. By the way, Yohan, isn't it getting a little dangerous for you to keep skipping class?"
"I'm still officially a patient. Medical leave is fundamentally different from unexcused truancy, so I'm fine."
"You only ever use your brain for slacking off!"
"Why, thank you for the compliment."
Yuna gave me an exasperated look. Come to think of it, she seemed to be enjoying academy life far more than I was. Well, if she liked it, good for her. Olga Hermod would probably be thrilled to see Yuna fitting in so nicely. Even if I wasn't entirely thrilled about it myself.
"So, did you dig anything up?"
"Yep! I found out who was behind pushing this engagement through."
"Oh-ho…!"
"Lady Ariel was the catalyst, of course, but…" Yuna clicked her tongue in distaste. Whatever had happened, it had clearly rubbed her the wrong way. Shrugging her shoulders, she continued, "It seems a man named Rascal Ether orchestrated almost the entire thing."
"Who is that?"
Never heard of him. As I've said countless times, I was merely a casual player of this game. I wasn't like those hardcore lore-hounds who spent days and nights memorizing every footnote of the storyline. When it came to minor background characters, even if I had seen their names once or twice, I rarely remembered them. At best, hearing their name might trigger a vague, 'Ah! That guy?' later on.
"He's the prospective heir to the Aether Ducal House. Lady Ariel stepped down from the line of succession entirely, and Duke Tronios has no intention of remarrying, so his inheritance is practically set in stone."
"I see."
Fortunately, even after hearing his name, no bells rang. He was probably nothing more than a piece of background setting.
"So, what kind of person is he? A villain?"
"Hmm…" Yuna seemed to deliberate for a second, then beamed brightly. "Yep! A terrible, rotten bastard!"
Was it because we had gotten so much closer recently? Her evaluation felt overwhelmingly colored by pure personal bias. Better ignore that entirely.
"So, Yohan…"
"Ooh, do you know how to deal with him? What should I do?"
"First, you have to pay my fee."
"Ah…"
What was she going to make me do? I waited tensely for whatever demand would slip past her lips. But she merely chuckled, brushing it off like it was nothing.
"Come eat with me! Your treat! Deal?"
"Does the cafeteria work?" Although, even if we went there, getting a proper cooked meal would be tough. They'd probably just hand us raw ingredients again.
"Nope! We're eating out."
"Eating out? Even if we head into town, would any restaurants even be open right now…?"
"There is one!"
Wait, why would there be one open? It hadn't even been two weeks since terrorists trampled the Cradle and everything around it!
"A company called Andva-something moved in super fast to fill the void!"
"…Wait, Andvaranaut?"
"Right! That's the one!"
I nodded along to the high-grade intelligence Yuna dropped with complete nonchalance. Everything made perfect sense now.
"So they're already making their move, huh?"
"You know them?"
"Roughly. Word is their merchandise is top-tier."
Andvaranaut. The ring that breeds gold. Well, nothing really surprised me anymore in this world, but… Andvaranaut was a syndicate plotting to overthrow the Empire by seizing control of its financial hegemony.
Good grief, what a lovely empire this is.
How on earth does this country have more terrorists than cockroaches?