Magic
The memory of that day felt like a dream.
Those cold red eyes looking down on her.
And that frigid voice, utterly devoid of emotion.
There won't be a second time, Lucia.
Every night when she closed her eyes in bed, the memory returned, and tonight Lucia had another nightmare.
"Hah! Haa... haa..."
She jolted awake drenched in cold sweat, gasping for breath.
It was a memory she could never forget.
As the second daughter of House Aster, she had never been treated like that before.
At first she had only been furious. She had never intended to let it go.
"..."
No one else remembered what had happened that day.
Not the servants who had stood at her sides, not a single detail of the circumstances—everything seemed to side with Iria.
Did you have a bad dream?
Iria's final words still seemed to linger in her ears.
Had it truly been nothing more than a bad dream? Or had following Iria around lately caused the memory to surface in that form?
"...How unlucky."
Lucia sat up and wiped the sweat from her brow.
Yes. If she simply dismissed it as a fleeting dream, everything made sense.
The scene from that day had been far too unreal.
Iria—whom she had dismissed as a hollow top student—had subdued her without even lifting a hand, knocked out the servants, and vanished in an instant.
There were too many strange points for it to have been reality. So her mind seemed to be casting a self-suggestion for the sake of its own comfort.
It was a dream. It wasn't real.
So forget it. Something like that could never have happened.
Only after reaching that conclusion could Lucia finally accept it.
"Right... There's no way."
The idea that a recommended student like herself could be overpowered by a mere classmate of the same year was absurd from the start.
If it had been real, Iria would have been meeting her for the first time that day—so how could she have known her name and called it?
That alone made it impossible. It had been nothing more than a brief illusion.
Which meant she needed to snatch the top rank from Iria as soon as possible.
Only then, she felt, could she escape this endless nightmare.
She had to crush her in reality—not in a dream—and prove that the memory of that day was false.
Iria.
Lucia rolled the name over her tongue.
"So... you can't use magic at all?"
"Yes."
Iria's reply was short. Rena scratched her cheek, looking awkward.
She had passed the entrance exam as the overall top first-year and enrolled in the Battle Magic department—yet she claimed she couldn't even cast the most basic spells.
It was a hard story to believe. Except...
"Wind!"
"Mm..."
Watching Iria wave her hands vaguely at empty air made it clear she really had no idea what she was doing.
A top student who looked like that? The image simply didn't match. But she was cute, so Rena decided to let it slide.
"So you want me to teach you magic? Me?"
"I can't seem to understand the class material very well."
Iria needed to learn magic.
Sitting as the top student of the Battle Magic department while unable to cast even elementary spells would only invite unnecessary suspicion.
The academy was a convenient place for her to gather information.
It guaranteed her identity, gave her access to the library, and let her keep watch over whoever the novel's true protagonists might be.
To achieve her goals without getting expelled, she couldn't neglect academy life either.
Rena smiled faintly and asked,
"You said you already took the magic aptitude test, right?"
Iria nodded.
The magic aptitude test was a simple examination that determined which elemental affinities a person possessed.
Most people received one of the five basic elements—water, fire, lightning, ice, or wind—but the especially talented sometimes awakened to several at once.
"I can use fire magic, lightning, and a little wind too. Fire's my strongest, of course."
Rena was one of those cases.
In an academy filled with prodigies, dual-element users weren't all that rare, but three elements was a talent found in only a handful of students.
She demonstrated a small flame, a spark of lightning, and a faint breeze in turn as she spoke.
"Impressive."
"Uh... yeah. Thanks."
Iria's reply was lukewarm.
Rena had hoped for a little more awe, but the reaction was so perfectly Iria that she found herself at a loss for words.
In truth, the idea of Iria's eyes sparkling with passionate excitement would have felt even more jarring.
Rena ruffled Iria's hair once and asked,
"So what's your affinity, Iria?"
"I think it's wind. I don't seem able to use several at once the way you can."
"Well, that's the normal case."
The standard for "normal" had gotten a little warped lately, but that was only because the academy's average was absurdly high.
By ordinary standards, Iria wasn't lagging behind at all.
Still... wind, huh.
Rena studied Iria and thought,
It doesn't quite suit her, and yet somehow it does.
In other words, wind matched Iria's image to a certain degree, while the other elements simply didn't.
Fortunately it overlapped with one of her own affinities, so she could demonstrate it herself.
"All right. Do you remember the basic incantations?"
"A little."
"Then watch carefully. I'll show you just once."
Rena closed her eyes and stretched a hand toward the empty air.
It was the process of drawing the mana flowing through her body outward. Her golden hair fluttered.
And then—
"See? Focus on the flowing mana and pull it outside. After that, you imprint the spell onto it."
With a short chant, a turquoise glow wrapped around her body.
The natural element of wind.
Rena gathered the breeze coating her form into her palm and sent it toward Iria.
A gentle wind brushed through Iria's hair. Not a strong gust—just pleasantly cool.
"I'm still clumsy with wind magic, so this is about all I can manage. In actual spars I mostly use it to deflect incoming spells. Want to try?"
Iria nodded.
She closed her eyes the same way Rena had and reached a hand into the air.
Finding the tiny traces of mana inside a body overflowing with Magi was no easy task.
Iria concentrated harder and drew the mana out to her fingertips. It was a foreign substance she had never truly handled before.
What was ordinary to others was alien to her.
After all, she possessed Magi—a substitute for mana.
That made it difficult. She struggled even at the most basic stage of locating the mana itself.
But—
"Focus, Iria. Not like that—handle it more gently."
Rena took hold of her hands.
Iria's unstable mana gradually steadied.
With Rena's help she managed to draw the mana outward.
From there everything flowed smoothly.
Draw the mana, imprint the spell, and manifest the element in the form of magic.
Whoooosh.
Just as Rena had shown earlier, a turquoise radiance swirled around Iria's body.
"That's it! That's the way!"
Rena cried out.
By the time Iria opened her eyes, the spell had already succeeded. She had engraved the sensation of casting magic into her body.
I think I can do a little more.
Once the mana was out, controlling it was not difficult. For most people it would have been hard, but not for Iria.
As always, she simply borrowed someone else's memories.
She wrapped the turquoise wind around her right hand. A fierce gale whipped up like a storm.
It was a far greater wind than anything Rena had demonstrated—vast beyond comparison.
"Iria...?"
This was not the skill of someone learning magic for the first time.
It was more refined than Rena's, sharper, and overwhelmingly more powerful.
Rena watched the spectacle unfold, half dazed.
Iria, wind swirling around her entire body, leapt forward in a blur and drove her fist into the tree ahead.
BOOM!!
The sound of a massive hole punching through the thick trunk exploded outward.
With a splintering crack the tree toppled, the sight almost unreal.
When it fell, Iria stood before the stump.
Had she really broken it with her bare fist? A tree that looked a full meter thick?
Rena rubbed her eyes in disbelief and hurried over.
"What did you just do...?"
"Magic."
"...?"
"A wind punch."
Was Iria actually a genius at magic?
Rena scratched her cheek, glancing back and forth between the fallen tree and Iria.
Well, that was why she was the top of the year. Rena had already known she was no ordinary person.
Outstanding physical ability combined with magical talent must have created an unexpected synergy.
"The wind's gone now."
Iria held out her empty hand.
"You must have used up all your mana. That output just now was way over the top, Iria."
"Ah."
Iria's mana reserves were not large. They fell far short of the academy average—well below even that of an ordinary person.
Using a spell of that power with such a limited pool meant her mana was completely drained after a single cast.
"How's your body? Not dizzy or anything?"
Iria shook her head.
"You're amazing, Iria. Most people collapse from exhaustion the moment their mana runs dry."
"Is that so?"
"Of course. Mana is part of what makes up your blood. If you push it to the limit, your skin can discolor and you get anemia symptoms. So be careful."
It was commonly called mana exhaustion.
Yet Iria showed not the slightest sign of it.
"But you, Iria... you feel a little..."
Rena hesitated for a moment.
Then—
"It's like your body is full of something else instead of mana. That's why nothing happens even when the mana leaves you."
"..."
"But that can't be right. You're human, after all. Right?"
Faced with Rena's pure, curious question, Iria could not answer right away.
Even high-ranking mages had never noticed her true nature—yet Rena was already suspicious.
Had she sensed it earlier, when their hands were joined while casting? For a brief instant Iria considered erasing Rena's memory.
She stopped herself. Erasing memories carried heavier side effects than most people realized.
The blank left behind lingered for a long time, and someday it would return as a vague sense of wrongness.
She could freely use it on people she would never see again, but Rena was different.
The moment Rena saw her face again, the erased memory would create some kind of dissonance.
So she left it alone.
For now it was only a faint suspicion.
"Shall we head to class?"
"Is it already that late?"
"Yes."
Still, she decided she should refrain from using magic in front of Rena for a while.