The Crucial Point
"How can you say the most important thing right now?!"
Aiden shouted, unable to contain himself. Since he was a man who rarely showed emotional volatility, his sudden outburst startled the workers passing by, who turned to look in surprise.
"I don't know what you're imagining, Administrative Officer, but it is certainly not that."
"...Huh?"
"It isn't such a powerful force. As I mentioned, the deviation in individual ability is extreme. Even for the same person, the output varies each time. The duration of the effect is the same, and the methods of using the power are never identical."
Kalisa drew a firm line in response to Aiden's fuss.
"The ability of foresight, which sounds incredible, is actually quite different in reality."
"Be more specific."
"Some people suddenly see things in their dreams even when they don't want to. However, there are many cases where they don't know who the people or scenes in the dreams are, or what the context is. It means it's difficult to distinguish between a random dream and true foresight."
"But there must be some who are strong."
"That is correct. There are witches with strong foresight. Witches with abilities powerful enough to see the future of the person standing right in front of them."
"That sounds like a story that would make powerful figures drool."
At Aiden's words, Kalisa shook her head.
"Powerful figures want to know the specific time and situation they desire. But no matter how strong a witch’s foresight is, that is near impossible. At best, they are only reading a fleeting moment shown by the moonlight."
"So, you don't know if you're seeing three years into the future or ten."
"I've even heard that the future of people around that person suddenly appears out of nowhere."
"That's quite..."
"Ambiguous, isn't it?"
Kalisa gave a thin smile.
However, that smile didn't look particularly refreshing. Having confessed a heavy truth that the other party never asked for, and effectively asking him to take responsibility for them, she might be feeling like she wanted to bite her tongue and faint again, given her usual temperament.
But since this wasn't just for her own sake, she stood there desperately hiding her tears behind that smile.
She blamed her trembling limbs on the northern cold, as if she were shivering like an aspen tree.
Though Aiden was not one to take much interest in the private lives of others, he knew the difference between intentionally keeping distance and being oblivious. He was well aware of how precarious Kalisa’s current state was.
However, knowing that a woman as proud as her would not want her condition to be noticed, he simply muttered to himself, "To think we'd be talking outside on a day as cold as this," and pretended not to see her shaking arms and legs.
Kalisa knew better than to think Aiden was truly oblivious to her state. Because of that, her trembling gradually subsided.
Then, she added a somewhat self-deprecating remark.
"If this power were truly that strong, we wouldn't have been hunted unilaterally all this time."
"Are the other abilities similar? Emotional resonance, memory transfer. Things like that."
"Yes."
"Was much of it lost because of the Inquisitors?"
"Pardon?"
"Well, you said it earlier. Even with the same ability, the method of casting, the system, and the power level all differ depending on the user. I wondered if you had lost much of what was passed down while living in hiding."
"That might be the case."
"'Might' be?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like you don't even have a grasp of how much has been lost."
Aiden’s sudden observation left Kalisa struggling to understand.
What makes a witch a witch?
"It is simply an ability that suddenly blossoms. If I had to define it, it is true that it manifests more often among those who share blood, but that is not always the case. It might be easier to understand if you think of Spiritists. Just like a Spiritist who suddenly contracts with a spirit at some moment and borrows their power, witches are the same. One day, when they hear the voice of the moon, they realize their ability, as if a witch's seed planted inside them has germinated—."
"So, it's unmanageable."
"......"
He had no intention of being sarcastic toward the witches. He was simply stating his observations without filter. Listening to Kalisa’s explanation, Aiden finally understood clearly why the Magic Tower was thriving while witches were being hunted and fading away so helplessly.
A brief digression: Aiden was a man whose true calling was essentially that of a civil servant.
Why was he a natural-born civil servant?
Because he wanted a stable job?
Because he lacked any grand desires?
Because he knew how to be satisfied with small things?
Or because he was a human who felt a sense of efficacy in service and sacrifice for the public?
These reasons might have played a part in making him a natural civil servant, but they were not the absolute foundation. The biggest reason why he was a natural-born civil servant was this:
Aiden was a man who excelled at dissecting the structure of everything.
In other words,
'A group that failed at standardization.'
While listening to Kalisa, he had hit the nail on the head as to why witches had been so persecuted by a minor religion like the Sun Cult, rather than a major one.
This world is filled with countless powers that cannot be explained by science.
Druids, spirits, demi-humans, gods, magic, mana, fairies, undead—.
That’s just counting the major ones; if you include things people don't know well, like witches or vampires, you'd run out of fingers and toes.
However, among these, the groups that hold power in the light of day and live in luxury are fewer than five.
The Mages, who built magic towers everywhere and gathered colleagues to construct their own kingdom.
The Priests, who built temples and established their own gods, even going so far as to build a Holy Empire next to the Great Forest.
The Knights, who were recognized for their own honor and position in exchange for protecting the wealth and power of the nobles.
Among them, the Magic Tower is particularly unique. While priests and knights move in collusion with the nobles—the so-called "Blue Bloods"—the mages succeeded in creating their own class that rivals the Blue Bloods.
The most absolute contribution to this was the standardization of magic.
The Magic Towers built across the continent standardized magic. They divided the hierarchy of mages and organized the magic that could be learned at each level. They created training methods, formalized magic, separated branches, shared each other's achievements, and completed a system for joint research.
The moment individuals became a collective, money and fame poured in endlessly. That is how the Magic Tower succeeded in building its own kingdom.
'The gap between them and other groups with supernatural abilities must be due to this.'
Listening to the story of the witches, Aiden speculated. He thought that perhaps the actual magical ability of the mage who built the first Magic Tower might not have been that great. He thought that because his individual ability wasn't great, he might have built the tower to protect himself within it.
'It was lucky for the mages, at least.'
An individual without a focal point, no matter how brilliant, ends up as a personal glory and cannot change the society they belong to. In the end, it is the system that changes society.
"I know we are a burden. Even if you refuse... I won't feel bitter about it."
To Aiden, who was lost in thought, Kalisa offered an excuse for refusal rather than making excuses for herself. She had naturally resigned herself to the situation, as someone who was always used to giving up.
"......"
At the sight of his valued subordinate, Aiden’s rebellious spirit flared up.
"Is land to settle on the only thing that matters right now?"
"......"
"That's not it, is it?"
At Aiden’s question, Kalisa’s eyes widened in a sudden surge of emotion. The Inquisitors were strangling her brothers and sisters every minute, every second. How could she say that land where her colleagues, standing on the brink of life and death, could sleep with both feet stretched out for even one night wasn't important!
'They say a monk can't cut his own hair, and she's doing the same.'
Aiden barely suppressed a dry laugh at that intense gaze.
Usually, Kalisa would have caught on to something from Aiden’s words and immediately derived the correct answer.
"Handle the village yourself. The North is full of wanderers everywhere, so what does it matter if one village of witches is formed?"
"......Pardon?"
"But that’s not what’s important right now. Can you wake up now?"
"......"
"Even if you build a village and live together, how long do you intend to hide? What was it? The revelation of the goddess or the decree of the moon—."
"It is the voice of the moon."
"Right, that. You said that if you hear that, a person who was an ordinary citizen until yesterday suddenly becomes a witch."
"Yes."
"Then, no matter how much you build a village in the North and hide, the newly born witches will be chased again by those guys called Inquisitors or whatever. Am I wrong? Or did I think about it wrong? Was all you wanted just for your few dozen acquaintances to be safe?"
Having already organized the tasks in his head, Aiden pushed Kalisa without hesitation. Gentle comfort? He would have done that if it were efficient. But what would move Kalisa was not such lip service, but the pressure to force her stopped brain to start turning again.
"Create a focal point for the witches."
For now, he intended to provide at least a guideline.
"We don't have anything like a Magic Tower in the North anyway, so there's no need to worry about what the mages think, right?"
Needless to say, the Sun Cult was out of the question. They were the ones who didn't even look this way, spouting nonsense about the North having weak light energy or lacking the Sun's blessing.
"No matter how I think about it, the power witches have doesn't seem inferior to the mages' magic."
Aiden preferred the witches' abilities, which seemed to touch on the mental plane, over the flashy magic of the mages.
"How about 'House of Witches'?"
"Pardon?"
"Mages have towers, so 'Magic Tower'. So, witches have houses, 'Witch House'...?"
"If that's a joke, it's despairing, and if it's serious, I'm handing in my resignation."
"Sorry."
Unfortunately, his naming sense was quite lacking.
"But are you serious?"
"About what."
"About going beyond just accepting us, and bringing us into the light."
"Of course."
"The political burden will be severe. The Sun Cult will have a fit, and the Magic Tower will try to pull strings from behind."
"The North didn't grow this big with anyone's help to begin with. Since we received nothing from the start, I believe it won't shake just because someone tries to shake it."
"...There is something that must be done before creating a focal point for the witches."
"Something that comes before that?"
"I think I should start by binding the marginalized together."
At Kalisa’s words, Aiden finally smiled. It was a smile that made the hearts of those who saw it feel refreshed.
'Now that’s the look I know.'
The red-haired aide, the most level-headed, rational, and reasonable of his three adjutants. She was also the meticulous and persistent worker whom the lower-level staff at the Administrative Welfare Center feared the most.
So, the "work of binding the marginalized together" that Kalisa just mentioned was exactly that kind of thing.
A discarded land.
A solidarity of the persecuted and displaced who gathered in a land no one cared about.
Since this was an extension of what Aiden and the North had been doing all along, it was nothing new to those who had settled in the North. However, even if it was something they always did, it needed labeling to truly take flight.
'The union of the underdogs.'
The First Prince would be drooling over this, wouldn't he?