The Dean's Bargain
Seranea had gone completely limp, not a shred of strength left in her body. She sat crumpled on the ground, still caught in my grip.
"Nngh—nngh!"
She thrashed against me, desperate to break free — but the face looking up at me had no power left in it.
"Seranea. You're clearly not a mage, so how did you suddenly become one?"
The first time I laid eyes on her, she had definitely not been a mage. I have the Third Eye. That much, I can distinguish without the slightest doubt.
She screamed at me, voice raw with fury.
"You came here knowing everything already, so what are you babbling about?!"
No, I don't.
"If I'd known everything, I wouldn't have grabbed you just now."
"Don't give me that nonsense!"
"I told you, I don't know. Who the hell are you?"
"How far must you mock this lady before you're satisfied?!"
This wasn't a conversation. It wasn't going anywhere. I had no choice but to let her go.
Seranea collapsed onto the ground where she sat. Then, trembling, she raised her arm to respond to me. It was a meaningless gesture — I already knew her mana was completely spent.
"Wolfgar, let's go."
"Is it over?"
"Yeah. I don't think there's anything more to see here."
She'd just suddenly attacked us, and we'd responded. We never had any business with Seranea to begin with. The one thing I'd wanted to know about was the Dawn Constellation, but she showed no intention of talking — and it wasn't something worth torturing her over. Torturing someone who hasn't even been confirmed as a villain isn't right.
Of course.
If she had been a villain, I would have made her spill every last scrap of information without mercy. But this Seranea aside — the previous Seranea had been a girl who truly knew nothing. Interfering any further without understanding the situation wouldn't have been proper.
When I looked back at her, she frowned right back at me.
"……The way your eyes keep drifting — you're not quite right in the head either, are you."
What's wrong with my eyes.
"M-My lord! How can you just leave that witch behind and walk away?!"
The forest keepers cried out in alarm the moment they saw we were about to leave.
Leave her behind? Let's get the wording right.
"I don't even know if this person is actually a witch. And more importantly, she's been neutralized."
In her current state, leaving her disposition to them wouldn't be a problem.
"I'll leave it to your original decision."
At the very least, Seranea was a dangerous person. Whether it was paranoia or not, she attacked anyone she laid eyes on without a second thought. She was the one who had burned people alive — that much was certain. And there had been casualties because of it. So I decided to leave the matter to their original choice.
The forest keepers hesitated, squirming where they stood, but eventually steeled themselves and began approaching to carry out what they had come to do. Wolfgar and I turned to leave.
Perhaps because the situation had taken such an unusual turn, Seranea's face finally registered that her life was in danger.
"W-Wait."
She rolled across the ground, her body refusing to move properly, and cried out. We paid her no mind. We were already ready to go.
As we turned our feet to leave the forest, she shouted after me.
"Are you truly, truly not an assassin sent to kill this lady?"
"I've been saying that from the very beginning."
Seranea's eyes wavered. At last, her face showed that she understood I hadn't come here targeting her.
The moment the forest keepers stepped forward to bind her—
BOOM!
Seranea's mana suddenly erupted like a roar. I spun around, startled. Her mana had been almost completely gone — how had she done that? And given that I'd severed the connection between her body and soul, she shouldn't have been in any normal condition.
The way she handled things earlier, too… she's no ordinary mage.
The forest keepers were swallowed by the roar and collapsed where they stood, consciousness gone. From the looks of it, they'd be out for quite a while.
So she still had a card up her sleeve.
She gasped for breath, chest heaving. Sweat beaded across her face — she'd wrung out every last drop of remaining mana.
"……Then won't you help this lady? I need power."
I looked at her for a moment, then turned my feet again.
"W-Wait just a moment — didn't I ask you to help me?"
There's no reason to go out of my way to help a stranger. And I certainly had no intention of helping someone suspected of being a criminal.
She finally collapsed flat onto the ground, truly out of strength. From that position, she stretched a hand toward me.
"Wait — seriously, just hold on! You're leaving like this? You had questions for me, didn't you?!"
Persistent. Ignore her.
Her eyes shook violently. She'd realized I genuinely had no interest in her. Before I knew it, she'd forgotten all dignity and begun wailing desperately. Just moments ago she'd been talking as if she were above us, and now her attitude had completely flipped.
"This lady was wrong in her attitude earlier! Please, at least hear this lady out!"
We were going to the capital to find Maria and save her. Starting with the matter of Leksan the magic tool, we already had plenty on our plates. We couldn't afford to get tangled up in anything more.
"Fine, fine! You're looking for someone, aren't you?"
Unexpected words came from Seranea. Whether she was just sharp or had some unusual instinct… we hadn't said a single word about Maria. How had she figured that out?
This is why mages are dangerous.
Perhaps because I reacted for the first time, pausing — she hurriedly cried out, clinging to the opening.
"What other reason would you have for walking into Grandheim of your own free will when the place is in complete chaos? There are only so many possibilities!"
Grandheim is in chaos?
That was news to me. We'd passed through nearby villages and hadn't heard anything particular about Grandheim.
But then again, she's a mage.
There might have been some kind of problem among the mages. Just looking at Seranea, she was being hunted by them. If something had happened in the mage world, ordinary citizens would have no way of knowing. The world of mages and the world of humans were different worlds, after all.
Just what is happening in the capital?
The three troublemakers were in the capital too. It would be a problem if they got mixed up in something unnecessary.
Seranea noticed my concern, and the corner of her mouth slowly curled upward.
"If — if that someone is a mage, this lady can help you find them!"
If it's a mage, she can help us find them.
Hearing that, my expression changed. Seranea would clearly be useful in rescuing Maria. And she seemed well-informed about the capital's mages. This was an opportunity I couldn't let slip.
There was just one thing I had to confirm.
"The forest keepers said you burned people alive. More than once."
The incident of people being erased while still living. I needed to know the full story. If she had sacrificed people for no reason… she was someone who went against my sense of justice.
She met the killing look in my eyes and let out a sigh. Her face showed relief just from the fact that I was listening.
"So that's what you wanted to ask. Those who were burned — they had all forcibly knocked out the owner of this body. It wasn't something I did on purpose."
"Forcibly knocked out?"
"That entire incident is the fault of this child's bloodline. From this lady's perspective, I was forcibly knocked unconscious, and when I came to, I simply burned the ones attacking us."
There's something about Seranea's bloodline? Just looking at the fact that this Seranea had been possessed, there was clearly a connection to mages.
"Of course, from her perspective, she wakes up every time to find the people around her burned, so I suppose I can't expect her to understand. But what else was I supposed to do? If I hadn't, this child would have died. That would have been inconvenient for this lady as well, so there was no other way."
The reason the other Seranea had never been certain about the incidents every time they happened. That was why.
"Alright."
I'd made my decision. Seranea would clearly be useful. And burning those people looked like self-defense.
"I suppose I can at least hear you out."
Seranea exhaled at my response.
"You're a difficult person to even have a conversation with."
She was the one who asked to talk first and then ignored me, so I hope she doesn't feel too wronged.
Praeon Academy, the school of fire. One of the two major academies that form the backbone of Grandheim.
Among the mages of that school, children who were not born with mana would occasionally come into the world. The academy would release such children onto the earth below. To them, anyone who wasn't a mage was meaningless.
The children released this way would live out their lives as nobles of Grandheim. Among them, a rare few would become mages under a mage's patronage, through vast quantities of mana stones and elixirs — but even that was only if a mage took them in. Most of them would never become mages, living in vain luxury until they died.
In Grandheim, such nobles were called the descendants of mages. The Silent Blood.
They could never become mages themselves, but as descendants of mages, they held power. And so they were treated differently from nobles of human origin, reigning as high-ranking aristocracy. In essence, they were foxes playing the master of a den with no tiger in it.
Even among the Silent Blood, power struggles existed. They may not have been able to become mages, but they were the center of power in the human world. Fighting over their own piece of the pie mattered to them too.
Recently, a fierce war had broken out among those Silent Blood. Seranea was the daughter of a marquis house — one of the Silent Blood factions that had lost. And so she had fled in the night, and was now being hunted by the victorious faction.
Originally, she would have been captured and long since dead. But a mage who had possessed Seranea's body had changed the situation.
"The owner of this body inherited the blood of this lady — the next dean of Praeon."
The next dean of Praeon.
Cernida Praeon.
The one currently possessing Seranea.
"The next dean…"
"Do you have some idea now of who this lady is?"
I'd be able to get a complete picture of the mages staying in Grandheim. Good thing I listened.
"……Somehow, I get the feeling you don't appreciate this lady's capabilities in the slightest?"
"The moment you lost to me, your capabilities became a thing of the past."
"Urgh."
However strong she might have been in the past, that didn't matter. The reality was that Cernida's current combat power was below mine.
"Is it Praeon that's chasing you?"
"……That's right. More precisely, this lady's disciples."
"Your disciples are chasing you?"
"There was a great upheaval among the mage academies. This lady's disciples were blinded by it."
She let out a sigh and covered her face bitterly.
"The ones I raised from childhood… in the end, they're mages too. I should have understood what it means to raise a tiger."
Her situation looked difficult as well.
"So that's why you possessed Seranea's body?"
"Most of the bloodlines connected to this lady have already been eliminated. This was about the limit of what blood remained."
Possessing someone by descending through a bloodline… there really are some strange magics out there.
"I'll say this in advance — if you want me to fight Praeon Academy, I refuse."
I know my own level. There's no way I'd survive going head-to-head with the school of fire.
Seeing my reaction, she snorted.
"You do fight in a rather peculiar way. But do you really think this lady would ask you to fight Praeon? All this lady wants is for you to stay by my side and protect me until I recover my power."
"Protect you from Praeon."
"I wouldn't even ask for that. And to be honest, given that those bastards haven't shown their faces even after things have come to this, they've probably already lost interest."
A bitter look crossed her face. The end of a master betrayed by her disciples.
"What this lady is asking you to protect me from is not Praeon, but the Silent Blood who are after this child. Those wretches keep chasing her, so I haven't even been able to generate mana — I've been wasting it all for nothing."
She shot me a sidelong glare. From the look of it, she was pinning the blame on me for wasting her mana fighting me this time as well.
Should I just leave her?
The moment I thought that, she immediately looked away. Sharp as a tack, this one.
"So protect this lady from them. In exchange, I'll help you find the mage you're looking for."
A proposal to protect her not from mages, but from the Silent Blood. Not a particularly difficult offer.
Alright. Deal.
"Then get on my back."
"Huh?"
"You can't even walk looking like that, and more importantly, you're slow."
I had no intention of lingering in Eldviorn. If I was going to take her with us after she'd already exhausted herself fighting me, carrying her would be faster.
She seemed to understand that, sighing as she quietly climbed onto my back.
"Beaten by an apprentice mage who can't even use magic… what a sorry state this is."
"What are you talking about. I can use magic too — one spell."
Instant death magic, no less.
"And what would that be. You were blocking mana in some strange way. Is that it?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ha. You little shit."
She grumbled and squirmed this way and that, but it was useless. My current body wasn't about to be shaken by the mere weight of a woman.
More importantly.
"Wolfgar. Training resumes."
"Oh!"
"W-Wait — training?"
Cernida, who had been fuming, asked back with a startled face.
"Training is training."
"Mm. Training is training!"
Wolfgar agreed.
"What kind of nonsense is that—?!"
The moment her face twisted in incomprehension, the two of us took off running. Then we used our legs to clash against each other.
"AAAAAAAH! YOU INSANE BASTAAAAARDS!"
Her scream rang out from behind me, but I ignored it.
Our training doesn't end just because someone new gets added.