Spring Day (2)
Spring Day (2)
I hadn't even used magic, but it felt chilling.
A wrong move and it might as well have frosted over in spring.
It had been a long time since I'd felt this level of threat in my life.
Normally you'd only feel this way when fighting the truly strong.
"…Instructor?"
It was roughly on par with Ayla's intensity.
That didn't mean my life was in danger.
Flora knew that perfectly well too.
But one careless mistake had landed me on thin ice.
So I tried to extract myself from the danger zone with a swift explanation.
"It gets a little complicated, so I'll stick to the essentials."
"Fine."
Before listening, Ayla turned her head and looked at Flora.
Flora, reading the room, cautiously opened her mouth.
"Umm, what's going on?"
"Nothing. Just because."
Flora maintained her silence again.
She knew that, in the current situation, staying quiet was half the battle.
I pulled out the key word chancellor and invoked the proverbial adult circumstances.
"You heard the dormitory was at full capacity, didn't you?"
"Yes. Of course."
"It's related. Ultimately, she had nowhere to stay immediately, and the fact that she and I aren't strangers played a large part."
I continued talking as I slowly walked toward Flora.
"That's why I became Flora's guardian. The chancellor is also aware and gave us considerable consideration."
Flora nodded vigorously, lending weight to the statement.
After hearing the explanation, Ayla looked a little embarrassed.
"I think I touched on a sensitive subject…"
The adult circumstances had clearly worked.
She seemed to have decided she couldn't push further, and her demeanor shifted.
The atmosphere had flipped in an instant.
I seized the momentum and wrapped up the situation.
"It's fine. Anyone can make a mistake."
"And the fault was mine anyway."
Flora, at the perfect moment, remarked that Ayla wasn't to blame.
She'd spotted the one opening nicely.
Ayla seemed to accept it, because she didn't say anything more.
Instead, she came up to me, stood on her tiptoes to match my eye level as much as she could, and then—
"Instructor, I've got a new goal."
"Didn't you say before that you wanted to get even with me?"
"I've added one more to that."
Ayla smiled brightly and said:
"I want to be with you, Instructor, always."
"What?"
"Huhhh?"
This time it was Flora who froze solid.
At first she blinked, as if she thought she'd misheard.
Question marks must have been popping up over her head.
She slowly turned her head and met Ayla's eyes.
"Ayla?"
"Yeah?"
"What does that mean? You, to the Instructor, right now…"
"Ah, no!"
Belatedly realizing what she'd just said, Ayla frantically cut Flora off.
Then she waved her hands wildly and scrambled to fix it.
"I mean I want to learn a lot from you up close!"
"Oohh~ is that what you meant?"
"I mean it!"
Flora's mischief kicked in, and she poked Ayla's arm and teased her.
Thanks to that, Ayla got completely riled up and started chasing Flora.
"With the Instruu-ctor, always~"
"Once I catch you, you're dead!"
"I wanna learn lots of things up cloose~"
"Hey!!"
A game of tag broke out around me.
Watching it felt strange.
It had been a long time since I'd seen Flora enjoying herself like that.
At the center of it was Ayla, who had become her friend.
She seemed to have given her an utterly ordinary bit of daily life, and I smiled without realizing it.
* * *
After parting ways with Ayla, I went back to the lodgings and continued analyzing the books from the library.
Having help was certainly easier than wrestling with it alone.
The materials and books the chancellor had selected detailed exactly the content I would need for upcoming lectures.
I'd floundered a little at first, but I quickly zeroed in on only what was necessary.
The conclusion I reached after analysis was simple.
"I wasn't supposed to teach live combat right away."
No matter how I looked at it, Gilbert and Camilla were obviously going to suffer if they were sent to the Magic Tower like this.
It was no different from building a sandcastle on sand.
They needed groundwork to solidify their foundations.
I needed reference data for something like this, and conveniently, we'd sparred during the lecture.
I'd already grasped the essentials in that short one-minute window, so I evaluated them one by one.
First was Flora.
For now, she didn't need anything in particular.
Flora would reach the next level only when she tore down the wall herself.
If that moment came, I intended to give her a push from behind.
Apart from that, there was nothing else to do but cheer her on.
Next was Ayla.
The highest priority was efficient Mana utilization.
Surprisingly, most mages encounter this problem at least once.
So when I gave her tailored advice and guidance, her Mana wastage improved compared to our first meeting.
As I reviewed the last lecture, I noticed a sense of incongruity that was hard to explain.
Ayla's Mana wastage didn't seem like a chronic problem or a habit.
If so, the method I'd taught her would turn out to be nothing more than a stopgap.
Was there something I didn't know?
I had to go back to square one and pinpoint the cause of the Mana wastage.
Lastly, Gilbert and Camilla.
These two needed an alternative means to fill the three-year gap.
In the old days, I would have just grabbed whoever set the exam and interrogated them, but now that I was in league with the Empire, that was difficult.
If there was a silver lining, it was that all the previous exams were fully documented.
For now, I planned to use these documents as the core of my instruction for the two students.
I decided it would be best to adjust my approach based on the results of the investigation Alcyone was conducting.
"Let's see here."
I fell into thought as I looked over the notes I'd scribbled everywhere.
I searched for a method to solidify their foundations.
A Crash Course was out of the question—it would be a disaster if it reached the chancellor's or the Magic Tower Master's ears.
On the other hand, if I followed the standard curriculum, they'd never finish the Magic Tower practical in three months.
The method was proven but slow. I needed something groundbreaking.
"Ah, I wasn't planning to do this."
The only remaining path was a grueling one.
I decided to make use of high-purity Resistance Stones.
Resistance Stones had an excellent ability to absorb Mana and were used in many places.
They were widely applied in Magic Devices and the Empire's core facilities.
While everyone else utilized Resistance Stones in all sorts of ways, I had focused on a different property.
The fact that Resistance Stones absorb Mana didn't mean their capacity was infinite.
They had the property of ultimately shattering once their absorption limit was exceeded.
I'd devised a training method that exploited this property to the extreme.
1. Prepare a Resistance Stone and decide on a target timeframe.
2. Steadily inject Mana into it until it breaks.
3. If you succeed, shorten the timeframe.
4. If you fail, analyze the reason and try again.
5. Repeat this process relentlessly.
It seemed like a perfect method by which anyone could grow stronger using a Resistance Stone, but it had one fatal flaw.
The flaw was that most Resistance Stone mines were located in border regions where danger always lurked.
In practice, you had to risk your life to mine them, which had sent their value skyrocketing.
In short, to become stronger, you had to accept the inefficiency of pouring in colossal sums of money—but that was a worry that didn't apply to me.
Before I was imprisoned, while I operated in the Gray Zone, I'd discovered quite a few undeveloped mines in secure locations.
If I sold just the mining rights, I'd rake in enough money to live on for a lifetime, but I decided to use at least one of them for a good cause.
I resolved to draft the mining plan with Flora tomorrow, then dragged my heavy body toward the bed.
"I'm exhausted…"
I lay down on the bed just like that and stared blankly at the ceiling.
I flipped over and tossed and turned, and then my gaze fixed on the desk.
"…?"
Suddenly, the Crystal Orb on the desk flashed.
When I'd first arrived here, I'd suspected they'd left it lying around for communications, and that guess had been correct.
In fact, leaving it as a mere decoration would have been stranger.
I immediately sat on the edge of the bed and fixed my eyes on the Crystal Orb.
It flashed in a peculiar cycle, announcing a message.
I figured out what that meant in an instant.
"A security code?"
It wasn't a public code designated by the Empire. It was an Imperial communication code.
The characters corresponding to each signal were already in my head.
Usually, the cipher changed on a regular cycle, so I hoped that I, with a three-year gap, could still understand it.
Fortunately, I could decipher the first word.
Intelligence Bureau.
Next, the second word was Demons.
The Crystal Orb lit up in rapid succession, spat out the final word, and then went dark as if nothing had happened.
Once I combined the words, their intent became crystal clear.
'Intelligence Bureau, Demons, summons, forest.'
It was obviously a summons because of the incident that had turned the Slums upside down.
I'd been running around the Empire all day, and now I'd have to go out again.
"We're all public officials, and yet this place alone is lightning fast about work. They could spend that time lifting Artifact restrictions instead."
I yawned wide enough to split my mouth, then threw my coat back on.
Standing in front of the mirror, I roughly checked my appearance.
In contrast to the clothes, which didn't have a single small stain, the exhausted face staring back at me was its opposite.
Before leaving, I ran through a simple mental checklist.
I would be meeting with personnel from the Intelligence Bureau.
Would I see Welton again?
If I didn't meet him, I'd likely encounter someone whose name wasn't in the documents.
We would exchange the necessary information and disperse quickly.
Making up my mind that if anyone started spouting nonsense, Intelligence Bureau or not, I'd just turn right around and come back, I stepped forward.