How a Wizard Survives (27)
How a Wizard Survives (27)
The morning after I learned of my teacher's plan with Ash.
I woke up writhing in bed from a fierce ache.
"Aughhh..."
At least I was on leave, so not having to report for work was a mercy, but...
I hurt badly enough to doubt I'd recover in a single day.
Yesterday's muscle pain and bruises had ambushed me all at once.
"Let's have a look... this isn't pretty."
Ulysses came running at my yell, turned me over, and clicked his tongue quietly.
From what he said, the bruising was a deep blue mess.
Ash, after inspecting my body properly, recoiled beside him.
"Looks like an infection. Leave it like this and you'll be in real trouble. Didn't you get any treatment yesterday?"
"Watch closely now."
My teacher simply gathered his mana and shrugged.
Ash stepped aside, and he began touching my back.
A bizarre sensation: my mana was being invaded by his against my will.
The very same technique he'd used yesterday to cast magic directly on Chainfist's body.
Ulysses finished the brief treatment and caught my expression.
"What's wrong?"
"That technique... can I learn it?"
"Ah, this? Sure. I am glad to have something left to teach an Awakened One."
Ulysses nodded readily and extended his hand toward me.
Still lying on my side, I pressed my palm to his as instructed.
If I could bypass an opponent's Magic Resistance the way he did...
From that point on, the chef gets to decide whether to grill them or boil them.
Yet Ulysses, oddly, was dismissive of the technique itself.
"I wasn't keen on teaching you a flawed technique like this."
"F-Flawed?"
"I'll explain later. For now, this is Transformation Magic. And what you'd call an apex technique within it."
As expected, it was no ordinary skill.
I was quietly marveling when Ulysses's hand met mine.
"The name is Ultimate Mimicry. Sounds a bit grandiose?"
"Not at all."
The ultimate imitation, then.
Hard to grasp from the name alone.
Ulysses continued his explanation without pause.
"First, you read the opponent's mana characteristics through physical contact. Even I can't cast magic on a target without touching them."
"I see..."
Ulysses, our palms still pressed together, went on reading my mana.
Whether human or demon, mana reveals the traits of the individual.
The Mana Trace Examination conducted at the Inquisition Branch reads some of those traits.
"Then stage two. Using Transformation Magic, you mimic the opponent's mana. You alter your own mana until it matches theirs as closely as possible."
The mana I felt through our palms shifted abruptly, matching mine so closely that I could no longer distinguish them.
Startled, I reflexively tried to pull my hand away, but Ulysses had already interlaced our fingers.
With a pleasant smile, he finished the technique.
"Finally, you send the transformed mana into the opponent. Done."
"I—I tried to block it, but I couldn't."
Ulysses's mana pushed deeper into my body regardless of my will.
My teacher released his grip and nodded.
"Of course. It is virtually indistinguishable from your own mana, so your body and Magic Resistance mistook it for your own."
That was it.
No demon in the world, and no mage, resists their own mana.
A technique you could see coming and still fail to stop.
'This is insane. Isn't this basically invincible?'
Once you lay a hand on them, it's over!
Not that this makes Ulysses an easy opponent himself. Far from it.
As a Transformation Mage, he already possessed unmatched adaptability...
And thanks to Spatial Shift Magic, his mobility was overwhelming.
When things got rough, he could also endure attacks with Immobility Magic.
Yet Ulysses immediately revealed the technique's weakness.
"The catch is... if I can interfere with the opponent, the opponent can also interfere with me."
"What? Aaah!"
The flaw struck me a beat late.
Ultimate Mimicry demolished the wall separating the user from the opponent!
If you could interfere from one side, the opponent could interfere from the other.
If the opponent can't respond quickly, you can certainly hit and run...
But even accounting for that, it was undeniably dangerous.
"I never would have imagined that weakness."
"Well, even so, I've never been counterattacked so far."
That figured.
Hardly anyone, demons included, possessed Ulysses's degree of experience and instinct.
I gave a small nod and stretched out my right hand.
"Let me try..."
"That's right. Just like that."
Read the opponent's mana characteristics, transform your own, infiltrate.
Working through the steps one by one, I managed to succeed.
But it was nowhere near the level I could actually use in a real fight.
"What, you pulled it off right away?"
"It took forever, though... and casting magic in this state seems far harder."
Ulysses had activated Ultimate Mimicry through fleeting, feather-light contact even amid a fierce battle with a demon...
I was far slower.
"A simple matter of proficiency. Don't overdo it for now—rest."
"Yes, teacher."
I shifted my position in bed, and sleep promptly washed over me.
I must have been exhausted from the day before.
The next morning.
About halfway recovered, I headed to work early and ran into a familiar face.
The painter I'd visited the day before the festival was lugging a large bundle, huffing under its weight.
He spotted me and went rigid.
"Ah, Inquisitor! The painting is finished."
"That was fast. May I see?"
I pulled the cloth off the painting he'd been holding up.
As I admired the painting that captured Katrina exactly as she'd looked in her dress, the painter, who'd been straining to hold the canvas up from behind, puffed with pride.
"I can confidently call it the greatest work of my life."
"Well, given who the model is, it would have to be."
Even as I said that and was about to slip him a little extra pay...
Reinhardt, arm still in a splint during his patrol, spotted us and approached.
Before we could say a word, he struck a pose and studied the painting with a solemn eye, then pronounced in a stern voice:
"Decent. Paint me one more exactly like it and deliver it. Only, leave this bastard out of the picture."
"N-No, don't I suit it well?"
"Not in the slightest. Far better without."
Reinhardt shook his head, scoffing lightly at my protest.
Thanks to him, the painting was promptly confiscated.
Apparently, a painter could not reproduce it exactly from memory.
Perhaps because I arrived later than usual, Katrina had come all the way to the branch entrance to meet me. When she discovered the scene, she practically flew into a rage.
Once I'd finally calmed her down, I skipped morning training on account of my injuries and headed for the library.
At present, most of the Reshutal Inquisition Branch's resources had been deployed tracing Ulysses's trail.
Katrina, seemingly quite unconvinced by Reinhardt's methods, grumbled, a rare sight from her.
"Chasing heresy with bizarre fantasies and delusions. What is this, a mystery novel..."
"Lady Katrina, you read those?"
"I—I merely glanced at one out of casual interest."
"Mystery novels... I like them myself. I wish this case would unravel as neatly as one."
A librarian named Wikia, who'd practically become Reinhardt's personal attaché, greeted us.
He had a pale, slightly gaunt look about him.
I questioned him very carefully.
"Say, Wikia. Have you ever heard that Ulysses, the Wizard of Change, has a disciple?"
"The Fire Mage mentioned something like that before he went into Cold Sleep. But that lead isn't being taken very seriously."
"...Why not?"
"The source is a mage, so the credibility is low. Mages frequently tell lies even after they're captured by inquisitors."
"Ah."
"Even if, by some chance, a disciple does exist, someone of Ulysses's caliber won't be held back by one. For all we know, the disciple may already have slipped into Reshutal without a trace..."
As I thought, this man was more capable than he looked.
I clicked my tongue inwardly and glanced at Katrina's reaction...
She was staring elsewhere.
I followed her cold gaze and found none other than Charlotte's face.
"...She hasn't gone back yet?"
"She herself requested to remain, saying she wanted to support the Reshutal Inquisition Branch."
When Wikia explained from the side, a crack appeared even in Katrina's expressionless face.
But it quickly returned to its usual state.
"Although Lord Reinhardt summarily rejected it, telling her to 'stop acting like a child.'"
Beaming.
While I took in Katrina's rare smile, Charlotte finally strode over to say farewell.
But the person she addressed the farewell to was a bit strange.
"Jaeger, it was a pleasure to meet you. I must return to the Winter Fortress now, but I'll visit from time to time. You take care too, Katrina."
"Huh? Ah... ah, safe travels."
As if Katrina were an afterthought, Charlotte extended a handshake to me.
Our postings were different, but technically she outranked me, so I had no choice but to accept.
Fortunately, Katrina showed no particular reaction.
Once I'd finally seen Charlotte off, I worked hard coaxing Katrina into having teatime.
Normally, given her disposition, sneaking off during duty hours was something I couldn't even dream of...
But when I groaned about my injuries as an excuse, it passed with surprising ease.
While I busily demolished the refreshments, the librarians were analyzing Ulysses and Reinhardt's conversation from the royal palace down to the individual word.
Ulysses's impression must have been so vivid that the Holy Knights on the scene seemed to recall nearly all of it.
"Th-They're working hard."
"Ulysses did not seem like the type to lie about his own intentions."
"If they go that far, it might genuinely prove helpful."
Katrina reluctantly granted the librarians a scrap of acknowledgment.
At the thought of Ulysses, her expression shifted.
Left to herself, she murmured in a dreamy, distant voice.
"Creating a world where mages no longer come into being..."
"That's a grand statement."
"Indeed. For all we know, he could be hatching some absurdly vast conspiracy."
"Every time Ulysses appeared before people, he caused enormous incidents. Though most of those were about foiling demons' schemes."
While Katrina lightly shook her head, Wikia interjected without an ounce of tact.
From the look of it, he seemed incapable of keeping his comments to himself.
Then again, we were the ones holding a tea party in the archives.
I was just about to toss out a casual remark myself, when one of the branch's guards came sprinting across the drill yard at full speed.
Considering he was openly disrupting the training inquisitors, the matter had to be unusually serious.
"What in the world is going on!"
"An inspection!"
Katrina shot to her feet and dashed out breathlessly as the guard shouted his answer.
At the word 'inspection,' the librarians sprang into motion on reflex.
"Damn it, everyone hide everything!"
"If we get caught now, it's not just one or two problematic documents..."
"An inspection? Do we even get those?"
"We receive kingdom funding, so of course we do!"
The librarians shouted back, near hysterical.
Katrina joined them, muttering fretfully.
"An inspector for the Inquisition Branch is appointed directly by the royal house... surely they aren't trying to take revenge on my uncle, not even now?"
"There's no way any person could be that petty—"
I had started to say, but as I pictured the king of Reshutal I couldn't quite deny it with certainty.
Just then, a group of people appeared at the entrance.
The inspectors wore black, a stark contrast to the Heretic Inquisitors.
Yet the person at the front of them was waving an arm wildly this way.
"Hm? That's..."
"Angelica?"
We spotted an unexpected face at the head of the inspection party and froze in bewilderment.
Hadn't the Einhold Family returned to their territory?
Now that I looked, the rest of the inspection team were all Einhold retainers.
"No matter how you look at it, assigning the inspection to Einhold—!"
"Has he truly lost his mind..."
The librarians bristled at the king's choice of personnel.
King's Mages or not...
Handing an inspection of the Inquisition, which hunts and executes mages, to a mage.
This was practically picking a fight out in the open.
But knowing even a little of Reinhardt and Hector's friendship, the situation looked different to me.
Even if the king and the family head pushed for it, Hector would never have agreed.
What kind of place was the Inquisition to begin with?
Given the nature of inquisitors' duties, inspectors experiencing 'regrettable accidents' and vanishing from the world was far from unheard of.
I'd never heard it directly, but you didn't need to be told.
And sure enough.
The moment Angelica faced Reinhardt, who'd come out to greet her, she dipped her head.
A greeting so impeccably courteous that even I, watching, felt almost proud of her.
Reinhardt accepted a letter, presumably from Hector, and read it on the spot.
"...I see. So this is less an inspection than support. I will be in your care for the time being, then."
"I am the one who is in your care, Your Excellency."
Having finished the brief greeting, Angelica approached at a quick pace.
Katrina, after somewhat calming the librarians, faced her with an uncomfortable expression.
