Mentor
Mentor
Amelia Blanche's life of nearly a hundred years had been like a desolate wasteland.
A hundred years.
For that long, long time—enough for two generations to pass by human standards—I had existed only as the massive, heavy illusion of the Tower Master.
The mages of the Empire praised me as an immortal genius blessed with mana, and the powerful, terrified that a single gesture of mine might change national borders, bowed their heads at my feet.
Living like that for decades, the world was no different to me than a giant machine made only of formulas and propositions.
It was 15 years ago that a single crack appeared in it.
That day was a night when heavy rain fell as if to swallow the continent.
While researching ancient magic words with the sound of rain drumming against the Magic Tower's massive defensive barrier as background music, I detected another very faint vibration touching the outermost edge of the barrier.
It was too insignificant to be an intrusion by a monster or an assassin; just a tiny ripple, like a single rat scratching at the wall.
Normally, I would have sent a low-level mage or a guard golem to clear it away.
However, for some reason that day, I felt drawn to it, and for the first time in a while, I opened the door to my office and headed for the main gate of the Magic Tower.
When I opened the massive stone main gate, there was a child there.
Was he barely ten years old?
A small boy, soaked to the bone in the heavy rain and shivering, clutching a worn leather bag several times larger than his own body as if it were precious.
I can still vividly recall the eyes of that child looking up at me through his black hair, which was plastered to his cheeks by the rainwater.
That child's eyes were different.
Even as his lips turned blue from the cold, a fierce longing for the mystery of magic was shimmering within them.
"......Please, just look at this once. Tower Master-nim."
The child opened the leather bag he was holding and took out bundles of paper wrapped layer by layer in leather film to keep them from getting wet in the rain.
They were error notes where the child had personally transcribed and interpreted basic magic study books that one couldn't find in an ordinary commoner's household.
The formulas were crude, and his understanding of mana was terrible.
It was a natural result, as they were writings he had scribbled down alone, like headbutting bare ground without a teacher.
But what was surprising was the quantity. Traces of formulas written densely on hundreds of sheets of paper.
And the incredible intuition that pierced through the essence, glimpsed here and there between those crude formulas.
My first impression upon seeing it was closer to bewilderment that a very foreign part had arbitrarily inserted itself into my machine.
"The Magic Tower is not an orphanage."
Even though I coldly snapped at him, the child did not back down.
"I know. I did not come to beg. I came to sell my life to the Magic Tower."
Intrigued by that gaze, I eventually took the child's hand and walked into the Magic Tower. That was the beginning for Rion and me.
After accepting Rion as my disciple, my daily life changed completely.
The first thing to change was the scenery of my office.
My office, which had always been filled with only terrible silence, began to be filled with the sound of Rion turning the pages of magic books, the scratching of a quill pen, and the child's thin breathing.
The child absorbed the assignments I gave him at a frightening speed.
He mastered the basic mana circulation method, which would take ordinary apprentices three years to master, in just three months, and he often stayed up all night to solve the difficult ancient magic formulas I threw at him.
Watching that tenacious side of him, I gradually began to become obsessed with this child.
At first, I thought it was just academic zeal to foster a disciple with rare talent.
Next, I thought it was a sense of duty as the Tower Master to pass on my knowledge without reservation and raise him into a great mage.
But as time passed, my gaze was following not Rion's talent, but Rion's very existence itself.
It was like that when I would watch the child who had fallen asleep slumped over his desk after calculating mana formulas for three days and nights without sleeping.
When the child's hair fluttered in the dawn breeze blowing through the open window, I would unconsciously deploy my magic to raise the temperature in the room.
Once, when Rion was twelve, he secretly drank a top-tier mana acceleration potion that was in my office and collapsed with a high fever.
When I heard the news and rushed into Rion's room, I had to face a massive terror I had never experienced once in my entire life.
The child lying on the bed, groaning while leaving his whole body to the seething mana.
That desperate sight of him biting his lips until they bled, unable to even make a crying sound for fear of being abandoned by me.
My reason, which hadn't wavered once in a hundred years, evaporated in a single instant.
The Imperial Magic Society? The state of the continent? I didn't care about such things.
I held Rion in my arms all night long and pushed my mana into the child's body.
When the fever finally went down and Rion opened his eyes hazily to look at me.
"......Master, I was...... wrong."
When I heard that small voice, for the first time in my life, I felt gratitude toward God. That was how I first came to know the heart of a mother raising a child.
As time passed, Rion, who had turned fifteen, was no longer a little brat.
He had shed his boyishness, his shoulders had begun to broaden quite a bit, and there was more depth in the gaze he directed at me.
The day he completed the golem power source research with me and grabbed my hand, smiling brightly.
"Master! I did it! Your theory was right!"
That dazzling smile as he looked at me, rejoicing like a child.
Perhaps...... that might have been why, ten years ago, when Rion asked to become an adventurer to gain experience in the world, I gave him permission after refusing a few times.
It was a cowardly escape, trying to calm this growing attachment within me by sending him away for a while.
Amelia Blanche sat at the head of her disciple's bed and carefully moved her fingers.
Her gaze could not tear itself away from Rion's face.
Watching Rion's brow furrow slightly in his sleep, Amelia repeatedly reached out and stopped herself without realizing it.
Regular, faint breathing could be heard.
Finally, Rion had fallen into a deep sleep amidst the long tension and hellish fatigue.
Only after that regular sound began to fill the room completely did Amelia Blanche stop the hand that had been brushing back his hair.
"......Rion."
She called his name cautiously, but the young man did not answer.
Slide.
Her white fingers moved once again.
Her fingers touched Rion's forehead, then slid down the bridge of his nose and gently pressed onto the lips he had kept so tightly sealed.
A soft, slightly dry sensation.
The moment that sensation traveled up her finger and pierced her mind, Amelia swallowed a small moan without realizing it, overcome by a thrilling pleasure flowing down her spine.
"......Ugh."
Her body trembled.
A thrilling shudder flowed down her spine.
For a moment, the breath flowing out through the slightly parted gap touched Amelia's finger.
"......!"
Amelia was startled and pulled her hand away from Rion's face.
A strange heat that started at her fingertips began to pulse and knock against the inside of her chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
An excessively loud and heavy resonance.
Her white hand, which had retreated into the air, was trembling slightly.
The heartbeat that had ignited in her chest showed no signs of calming down at all.
Amelia clutched her chest.
The heat of her heart felt through her thin clothes was terrifyingly hot.
No way.
"......No."
A hypothesis flashed through her mind, and Amelia immediately mobilized all her reason to deny that hypothesis.
No. That can't be.
This is not romantic love. It is not some filthy love between a man and a woman.
I am Amelia Blanche.
It is merely an obsession close to maternal instinct, wanting to completely isolate and protect my child from such worldly, filthy emotions, having witnessed the dirty betrayal and corruption that those bitches inflicted upon Rion.
Yes, that is right.
Am I not the master who took this child in and raised him since he was ten, and a being no different from a mother?
Since that pitiful child returned after suffering all sorts of humiliation outside, it was only natural for me as a master to feel anger and pity.
It is just that my desire to protect him was expressed excessively, causing a misunderstanding.
That was the correct causal relationship between myself and Rion.
To harbor such filthy feelings, even for a moment, in front of a sick disciple, and a disciple whose heart has been completely broken at that.
Rion has already returned with his heart completely shredded due to their lust and betrayal.
He is in a pitiful state, having locked away his heart itself and calmly pushing away even the goodwill of others.
If I, who stand before such a child and claim to be his only sanctuary and master, were to reveal such filthy feelings.
If he were to find out that the master he considered his only light and mother was looking at him as a man.
The moment he realizes that the destination he fled to, escaping them, is just another form of lust, Rion might truly collapse.
"......Augh."
A suppressed moan leaked from between Amelia's lips.
It's a misunderstanding. It must be a misunderstanding.
I am the master.
Amelia closed her eyes.
I am this child's mother.
She engraved that proposition into her mind like a spell over and over again.
To suppress the heat rising hotly in her lower abdomen, Amelia circulated her mana throughout her entire body.