A Successful Deal
There was no time to agonize over it. Knowing the temperament nobles shared, there was no chance any of them would be calling on the Magic Tower this early in the morning. Even if the master she so respected and admired had returned, the odds of the cold Lady Isabella dragging herself to a tower at the crack of dawn were slim. And even then, nothing guaranteed she would visit the same tower I was headed for—there were five of them in all.
With that settled, I hurried out of the dormitory and started running for the tower.
"Y-Young Master!! It's breakfast—"
I caught Ella calling something after me, but trusting it couldn't be anything important, I bolted out the door. Moments later it dawned on me that I'd left the scrolls I'd stayed up all night making on my desk, so I darted back in to snatch them up and set off running once more.
"L-like I said, Young Master!! Your breakfast!!"
Ella's voice chased me from behind, but I had my reasons—surely she would understand.
The Academy and the Magic Tower weren't so far apart that, with a bit of determination, I couldn't cover the distance in under five minutes. Even after those five minutes, it would still be far earlier than the hour when nobles came slinking out of their rooms, so there was no chance of crossing paths with Isabella. Having concluded as much, I resolved to quicken my pace even further and hurried toward the tower.
Isabella, meanwhile, was beside herself with excitement.
Word had arrived that her master—the man with a habit of up and vanishing to who-knows-where—was returning. To her, the word master carried a weight unlike any other. He was the one who, from her earliest years, had provided the fatherly affection her strict father never did, and the one who taught her the thing she loved more than anything in this world—magic—nurtured it, and guided her to realms she had never reached before.
Yet even Isabella, in such high spirits, sank into gloom the moment a certain memory resurfaced—what had happened between her and Jenison.
She had been far too proud of her own talent. The Isabella of old had despised nobles who looked down on commoners; she couldn't stomach even the sight of aristocrats who dismissed their fellow human beings for being of lower station. And at the same time, a faint sense of superiority had always lingered—that at least she would never stoop so low, which made her better than the rest of them. But in truth, she had been no different at all. She, too, had scorned Jenison just as contemptuously for lacking her talent, and had taken it for granted that her company was a blessing he ought to be grateful for.
Because of all that, she had spent this entire time avoiding him, of course, and the self-reproach had begun to eat at her. She could feel the confidence and boldness that had never once abandoned her slowly draining away.
Ugh... why did I do that...?
No matter how hard she tried to shut the thoughts out, they kept welling up. His face as he'd made some casual proposal, claiming he had business with her. The way his eyes had trembled at a single cold word of refusal from her lips. And yet, an expression that held not one trace of a crack. They kept stabbing at her heart, over and over.
But no amount of regret could bring the past back. He seemed to have already severed whatever affection he'd once held for her, and she, for her part, was too ashamed to even lift her head before him.
His misdeeds up to now had certainly not been right, yet the obsessive notion that perhaps it was she who had bent him crooked circled her mind without pause.
...Once the weekend is over... I have to apologize...
Even if the confidence she'd lost could never be picked back up, perhaps the guilt she owed him could at least be washed away. With that thought, she turned the question over and over in her mind—just how should she apologize when she saw him?
At last, I had arrived.
Before me rose that vast-seeming expanse of white. A warm hue that seemed to embrace everything, and at the same time a shade with something coldly ruthless lurking in it—a color of two faces. It soared high into the sky, and all around it I could see mages draped in white robes. Every one of them went about carrying either bundles of documents thick enough to pass for dissertations or their staffs, gripping them in hand as though the wood might double for a sword.
Honestly, the way the mages' gazes converged on me the moment I set foot on the tower's grounds was a heavy weight to bear. Opportunities to draw this much attention had been few and far between for someone like me, so I truly had no immunity to it whatsoever.
Shoving past the discomfort, doing my best to pin down my churning stomach, I went looking for the tower's receptionist to get help selling my magic items.
She seemed to know my face, because the sight of me made her frown—though a heartbeat later, as if to ask what business I had, she received me with a bright, practiced smile.
...Quite the professional, aren't we...
"Hello. What business brings you here today?"
"I've come to sell a magic item."
"...A magic item, you say?"
"That's right. Scrolls."
With that, I set down the scrolls I'd brought with me, and the receptionist, looking rather flustered, asked me to wait a moment and disappeared inside.
Had I waited ten minutes or so? The receptionist who had attended me emerged once more, and behind her came a handsome, well-aged man in his middle years.
The man looked at me, then at the scrolls laid out before me, and only then, apparently satisfied that I was indeed the seller, took his seat and opened negotiations.
"Greetings. I am Flon, manager of the White Magic Tower, and a mage in its service."
"A pleasure to meet you. I'm Jenison."
"I will come straight to the point. What is your reason for bringing these scrolls?"
That's the first thing he asks? Then again, it was fair enough. Scrolls were difficult to make and harder still to mass-produce—anyone who showed up claiming to sell them was bound to look suspicious. All the more so when they knew exactly what sort of person I was. They probably assumed I was here with some other agenda. But what could I do? I really had come to sell the things.
"...I truly have come here to sell these."
"You don't appear to be lying. But we have no reason to buy your scrolls."
"That's rather hasty of you."
"Hasty, you say. I see no need to stock goods that are difficult to produce in quantity and priced so high they hardly turn a profit."
He wasn't wrong. Most goods sold at the Magic Tower sold well. In terms of quality, carrying them was as good as the tower itself vouching for them, and for the tower to stock something at all meant, from the very start, that demand existed. Which was precisely why there was no need to drag in an item that cost a fortune to produce and couldn't be mass-made—in a word, dead weight.
But there was something they didn't know.
"...And what will you do if I tell you I can mass-produce these?"
"...Young master. Lies do not serve one well in a business relationship."
"And I would be happy to prove that this is no lie."
"...Jeri."
"Yes!"
So the receptionist's name was Jeri. She looked rather stiff at attention—nervous, perhaps.
"Bring me a single sheet of paper."
"...A single sheet of paper, you say?"
"Yes. One sheet."
"Here you are."
Taking the sheet from her hand, he stood watching me, his eyes narrowing by slow degrees.
"With this paper, then—any scroll will do. I would like you to make one."
"...Any scroll at all?"
"Yes. Anything at all. You have ten minutes."
"...Ten minutes..."
"Even if you protest that it's too short, I'm afraid my hands are tied. If you're truly talking about mass production, then within this much time..."
"Five."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I'll have it made for you in five minutes."
His expression shifted by degrees into open disbelief, and brow furrowed, he opened his mouth again.
"Very well. If you can produce one in five minutes, I will personally take responsibility and sign a contract with you."
"However—"
"Should those five minutes pass, I cannot simply let the matter slide."
There was something secretly comical about the way he postured and blustered, but I didn't let it show. He had no way of knowing my talent. The rumors of a talentless delinquent had spread back when I was that age—most people couldn't be bothered to care what, if anything, I was capable of.
Swoosh— Before long, light began to be born at my fingertips. That light shifted through color after color, and exactly as my finger pressed against the scroll and moved, crests began to carve themselves into being.
Curves and straight lines laid down from the crest denoting the foundational spell. Glyphs signifying the reinforcement of power. Patterns marking the direction of travel. Even patterns notating duration. One by one, the crests drawn by a single thread of light slowly took shape, and in a span of not even four minutes, a scroll stood complete.
And when I glanced around, there were Flon and the receptionist, their faces frozen in astonishment.
"Ha!"
Something about the sight struck me as so absurd, so exhilarating, that a laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
"I apologize for doubting your ability... Certainly... at this level, mass production would indeed be possible."
"I-I'm so sorry!!"
However you looked at it, watching people older than me bow their heads this deeply left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth. I told them it was quite all right, and we returned to the matter of the deal.
"I am terribly sorry for the rudeness we showed... but would you be willing to enter into a contract with us?"
"Let's do that."
"Th-thank you!!"
"In exchange, the profit split will be seven parts to me, three to the tower."
"W-what?!"
"Is that unreasonable?"
"You must realize what an outrageous ratio that is..."
It was certainly a fair point. The tower needed its profit too, and a novice alchemist like me walking off with the lion's share was bound to stick in their craw.
But—
"As I understand it, scrolls are expensive enough as it is. Even at thirty thousand gold, the tower wouldn't be taking a loss, would it?"
"Even... even so..."
"If you'd rather not, then I'll just get up and—"
"I-I'll do it!!"
Watching him take the bait so beautifully, I answered with a faint smile.
"An excellent choice."
After wrapping up our perfectly smooth transaction(?), I stepped out of the tower—and immediately sensed the area around it buzzing with commotion.
I couldn't tell why, but a crowd had gathered nearby, and above all, the ecstatic squeals of the female mages rang out far too loudly for comfort. Some kind of event, apparently. I went looking for the cause, and at the very center of the commotion stood a certain someone.
The man who had laid the very foundations of the Empire's magical scholarship—a 9th-Circle mage who could stand toe to toe with the Chairwoman herself. On the battlefield, an object of terror to the demons; the man hailed as the dream of every mage alive.
Shoulders spread broad and square, a frame of a height you would never believe belonged to a mage. Hair gone utterly, starkly white. Beneath the mask of a benevolent old man—the butcher of the battlefield, and the hopelessly doting master who adored his disciple more than anything in the world.
The Great Sage. Prion Hybel.