The Ice Mage's Silent Gift
Aina von Frost.
The great archmage personally overseeing the northern borderlands of the Orwen Empire. Eldest daughter of the Northern Archduke, known to the northern folk as the flower of the north.
Born the eldest among one son and two daughters, she had been entrusted with the entire family legacy since her only brother was away. She had long since entered the doors of Sephirion Middle Academy.
Since the Frost family’s founding, every member born into the house had possessed a congenital talent for ice-binding magic several times stronger than anyone else’s.
Aina herself had reached a considerable level in that same ice magic.
Her talent was so extraordinary that even her own elder brother—designated successor to the family—could not easily surpass her.
She might have been the one chosen as heir if she had wished it.
Yet Aina von Frost cared nothing for power, nor for noble succession.
Anyone who knew her could guess her interests at a glance from her character alone.
What she loved was magic. Nothing more. Only the single, burning desire to train ice magic to its absolute limit.
Looking at it that way, her personality might not be so different from the one standing before her. They might even suit each other perfectly.
Her usual quiet, cool demeanor did nothing to dim her eyes. She sat with both fists pressed tightly against her chest, heart beating wildly as she listened with rapt attention to every word Free was teaching her.
He had given her the perfect transcription of his own secret vision magic.
After he finished explaining the principle, Aina closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath, letting the air escape from her lungs.
“Huuu…”
“How is it? Did you understand everything?”
“Yes. Not a single thing missing. I’ve memorized every syllable of the chant word for word.”
“…Impressive. Honestly, I thought I’d have to repeat it a few more times. Good memory, huh?”
“Thank you. For teaching me.”
“What’s a fair payment for that?”
“Yes. I’ll give the rest right away.”
Aina answered, then raised her hands in front of her chest.
Blue light and icy chill coalesced inside them, gathering into a single point before blooming into a soft sky-blue grimoire.
It was her own complete tome of all magical knowledge.
Next, she began the incantation.
“Summon.”
With a short partial chant, two grimoires unfurled their pages and materialized in a shower of brilliant light before her.
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
The two books she received were even more luxurious in appearance than the one she had already been given—the second and third volumes of the Most Efficient Mana Cultivation Method.
With these, the last thorn in his side had been removed.
For him, who relied mainly on high-consumption silent-casting spells, it was a joy beyond words.
A true boon.
“Then let’s finish the contract we talked about earlier.”
“Yes.”
Aina had already been told what the contract entailed.
Free cast the spell.
“Contract. The terms are that you will not reveal any information about the magical girl I taught you—written or otherwise.”
“Yes. I accept the contract.”
A single ray of light entered her heart in acceptance.
“Is that all?”
“Yes. The contract is now sealed. If broken, your mana heart will collapse.”
“Understood. I have no intention of telling anyone anyway.”
“Good. Then I’ll take my leave.”
“Yes. Goodbye.”
She followed his words without question.
She would surely go back at once to practice the magic he had shown her.
Free turned his steps toward the dormitory.
Dear Aina,
The contract is sealed. I will not reveal the magical girl’s secrets. I swear it on my life.
— Free
“Unexpected harvest,” he thought. “I set the contingency just in case. When I get back, I’ll learn this mana cultivation method myself.”
It was not something that could be unraveled by ordinary means.
Forcing it would tangle the mana flow and risk death.
Back in his room, Free spent the entire night reading the books Aina had given him cover to cover.
Since it was a single-occupancy room, he could focus in total silence.
*
The next day.
Tweet—tweet—
Bright morning sunlight slipped through the curtains of the dormitory, accompanied by the cheerful chirping of sparrows.
Free, who had been sitting cross-legged on his bed, slowly opened his eyes.
Thanks to last night’s hard work, he had not only understood the theory but had fully mastered the Most Efficient Mana Cultivation Method.
“I did it. I’ve perfected the Full-Body Mana Breathing Method using every line in the three volumes.”
Now, inside his body, ambient mana was being drawn in through every pore and refined into pure mana at an astonishing speed—several times faster than any previous method.
That refined mana was being stored in his second heart, the mana heart, building at an incredible rate.
“…She did me an incalculable favor.”
He was speaking of Aina.
Because the cultivation manual she had given him transcended anything he had imagined.
“…”
Free stood and clenched and unclenched his palms, staring at them.
“This is no ordinary grimoire. At the very least, it’s top-tier.”
He had already deduced that much.
“…Just who is she? Even among imperial nobles, having a method like this… Could she be the highest nobility?”
He continued to speculate about her identity.
“Whatever. It’s none of my business. The most important thing right now is to cultivate the habit of continuously absorbing ambient mana using this method—naturally, as if breathing. I have to reach that level of proficiency.”
He felt the urge.
He had no choice but to act.
Compared to the low-tier methods he had used before, this one held tens—or even hundreds—of times the value and performance.
Moreover, he no longer needed to sit in a restricted location with eyes closed. He could absorb external mana naturally while living his ordinary life.
Impure elements were filtered out with near-perfect cleanliness.
“Incredible performance. If I keep going like this, by the time I graduate from middle school, I might end up with mana reserves hundreds or even thousands of times what I have now.”
Yet there was one thing Free did not know.
A truth that even he himself remained unaware of.
Even Aina von Frost could not continuously absorb external mana in daily life using this method.
Even if she followed the book exactly, her body’s mana capacity would not be able to endure it, and she might accidentally break it.
Breaking would mean the veins through which mana flowed would simultaneously tear apart—an irreversible disaster.
Free, however, had achieved something astonishing.
He had mastered the technique so thoroughly that, without knowing why, he absorbed ambient mana continuously and safely through every pore and breathing organ.
He did not know the reason, but the secret lay in the sheer size of his own veins and the enormous capacity of his soul.
Free’s body.
Free’s soul itself was an absurdly vast vessel.
It had become the perfect container for mana.
And that perfection was tied directly to his previous life.
His only wish in his previous existence—before death—had been to learn magic.
That wish had been granted through the process of enduring countless layers of deathly darkness in the realm of the dead.
The soul had become incomprehensibly oversized and naturally expanded.
It had been sent back to the surface after a hundred years in absolute darkness, its size enlarged beyond all natural intention.
Free was no longer an ordinary human soul.
His body now held a soul that was steadily becoming something transcendent.
His slowly strengthening soul was constantly receiving direct and indirect stimulation from the spells he had learned, growing and expanding in real time, however minutely at first.
And Free had no awareness of any of this.
He remained completely unaware that his true boon was the soul itself—the one that had passed through death once before.
“Ah, it’s already late. I stayed up all night and now I’m starving.”
He muttered to himself, though it was still early.
He could go eat before classes began.
Chattering nonsense as he went, he simply walked toward the academy’s dining hall reserved for resident students.