Moving (3)
Moving (3)
Just past the main gate, the visitor was greeted by a festival of flowers stretching along both sides of the path leading to the mansion.
"Wow..."
Ellia, who hadn't managed to close her mouth for a while now, sparkled with delight. She set Seo-yul down from her arms, took the fairy's hand, and crouched at the edge of the path to study the flowers.
"So pretty..."
The species and colors were all different. The blooming seasons didn't match, and their native regions didn't match, either... yet here they all were in the same spot, clustered side by side in quiet harmony.
It looked as if someone had cut out an entire fantasy landscape and placed it here, and I let out an admiring breath without meaning to.
Before Ellia, a profusion of different flowers bloomed together in cheerful harmony.
Ellia tilted her head as she glanced back and forth between two flowers. Her expression was half-remembering, half-puzzled.
"This white flower—is it edelweiss? The red one next to it..."
"Hibiscus."
"Ah, right! Hibiscus! That was the name!"
"The purple one next to it... agapanthus? They've got every kind."
Ellia, who'd been hemming and hawing as she fumbled with the names, clapped her hands at the reply.
"Huh?"
Then, as if sensing something odd, she turned her head. She looked at the one who'd answered her... not a person, but the fairy, Seo-yul.
"...Seo-yul, do you know all these flowers?"
"I saw them in a book."
Seo-yul answered with a face that was somehow ambiguous. As she kept tilting her head and examining her surroundings, her five-colored wings, now spread wide, rustled softly on her back.
"Wow, our Seo-yul's so clever!"
"Hee."
A peculiar little laugh as Seo-yul puffed up with a self-satisfied smile, and Ellia beamed as she gently stroked the fairy's head.
The two of them, both in bright-toned one-piece dresses with the lovely flower field as a backdrop—the peaceful scene was the kind you'd want to photograph right then and there. Ellia and Seo-yul looked exactly like an affectionate mother and daughter.
"Ha-yul, is something wrong?"
Hong Yeon-hwa, who'd been watching the scene with a vaguely dissatisfied expression, walked over to me as I stood there vacantly.
"No... I'm fine. My head just went blank for a second."
Apparently, standing dazed for a while looked strange to her.
I shook my head lightly as I answered, and she stepped in close and pulled me against her by the shoulders.
I leaned naturally into Hong Yeon-hwa.
"Hmph... if something hurts, tell me right away. I told you before, didn't I? Don't just suffer quietly and hold it in."
"Yes, I'll remember."
"Good, that's a good boy."
Maybe that satisfied her.
The dissatisfied look from earlier vanished without a trace, and Hong Yeon-hwa, wearing a soft smile, stroked my shoulder.
'...This place...'
While leaning against Hong Yeon-hwa and thoroughly enjoying the stroking, I chewed over the strange sensation that had been nudging at my body and mind for a while now.
'What kind of space is this?'
The magic that saturated not just the mansion but the entire grounds was deeply foreign.
Ordinary magic was similar to calculation. If you analyzed the spell formula, you could work out what effect the magic had.
Here, it was different.
There was no formula to interpret. Without any intention woven through a complex spell-formula framework, the will itself was simply dissolved across everything, like a painting.
The flowers spread riotously across this park held condensed will, too.
Bloom, bloom in your most beautiful forms, burst into full flower, drink deeply of vitality...
Answering that will, the flowers uniformly stood at their fullest bloom, brimming with dense vitality.
The barrier that unfolded around the grounds, centered on the main gate and the walls, was the same.
It was a will that blocked outside gazes and intrusion.
So powerful that even the Observation Authority couldn't easily inspect the interior.
The will lay even more strongly upon the mansion building itself. The building's interior was utterly beyond inspection.
'Key?'
Observation was working now.
I rubbed the key still in my hand. From the key, which had been trembling faintly until a moment ago, I felt a sensation as if something were connecting.
At the same instant, the barbs that had been raised as if to allow nothing from outside to cross lowered smoothly, and the tightly locked seal swung fully open.
It didn't end there.
The will that saturated this place answered me.
The throbbing headache that had been neglected, almost resigned to, started to subside. My body, aching from harsh training, gradually recovered.
The ground and the flowers, the blades of grass and the trees... everything belonging to life was drenched in vitality, and the mana here was remarkably pure and high in quality.
Breathing was easy.
As fatigue and pain faded, my condition naturally improved.
The Sky Wing Feather rustled like a fish returned to water.
My condition improved so much, I could almost mistake this for a place made for me.
"Snnf..."
"Hik."
When I unconsciously drew a deep breath, instead of clear air, Hong Yeon-hwa's fragrant scent filled my nose.
'Ah, right. I was leaning on her.'
I'd briefly forgotten.
"U-uhm... w-what's this all of a sudden?"
Having suddenly been sniffed, Hong Yeon-hwa flinched, then subtly pushed her chest forward.
.
.
.
We finished a quick tour of the garden and entered the mansion.
Then we spent a long while wandering the mansion, going over every corner.
It isn't an expression you'd normally use for a house, but this grand mansion was so enormous that calling it "wandering" didn't do it justice.
"Wow... didn't they just shove in everything they could think of?"
Hong Yeon-hwa, who'd been examining the mansion with us, spoke with a worn-out expression.
At first she'd carried an attitude of "wow, it's big," but faced with a mansion where, no matter how much ground you covered, a vast amount still remained, she was starting to look flabbergasted.
"A soccer field, basketball court, tennis court, movie theater, training hall, alchemy lab, mana measurement room... they've got literally everything."
"Ahaha... it is a bit big. It'd take days just to look through it all."
"A bit big? This?"
"It's colossal..."
The scale was so staggering that even Seo-yul, who usually bristled at anything Hong Yeon-hwa said, agreed with her for once.
I let out an awkward laugh too.
The mansion was three stories above ground and two below.
It was laid out in a U-shape, divided into the central building where we were, the west wing, and the east wing.
The central block functioned as a sort of main hall, packed with everything needed for daily life.
For reference, you could fling open any room and start living in it immediately with zero problems.
The countless rooms were already furnished and equipped, and perfectly clean.
The bed I casually tested was luxury-tier, far better quality than the dormitory ones. I lay down for just a moment, and my mouth genuinely fell open.
The west wing was crammed with every recreational facility you could think of: a soccer field, basketball court, tennis court, movie theater...
The east wing held facilities for martial arts and magic, of course, plus alchemy and metalsmithing.
All the facilities were maintained by that strange magic from earlier. Thanks to that, nothing was out of order.
"This isn't even the only building—there are more behind it, aren't there? When are we supposed to look at those?"
Amazingly, it didn't end here.
At a slight distance from the grand mansion stood several annex buildings.
They weren't on the same scale as the main mansion, of course, but by my standards they were still staggeringly large. Frankly, I had the feeling you could invite every cadet in Siyoram and still comfortably house them all.
Besides that, these sprawling grounds also contained a park, a botanical garden, and even a cultivation plot that looked like it was for growing medicinal herbs.
The estate was so vast that we couldn't possibly roam around inspecting everything.
So for now, I simply released a whole swarm of nature-inclined spirits. Maybe because this space was overflowing with vitality and mana, the spirits themselves gleamed with delight as they scattered off to explore every corner.
"Who just hands over a place like this..."
"Right...?"
I nodded at Hong Yeon-hwa's muttered complaint as she dropped onto one of the many sofas in the central building's first-floor lobby.
When they held out the key with a placid face and said, "This is the key to the mansion," I'd pictured something around the scale of the residence Baek A-rin lived in.
That already seemed more than generous, so I'd accepted—only for it to turn out to be this preposterous property.
[Still, there's no need to see it all today.]
The place was too vast to cover in a single day.
[Shall we unpack everything here?]
[I could keep carrying it, but we'll need to move it to each person's room now.]
Whatever the case, I'd already accepted the key.
I could return it, saying it was too much... but for now, I had no intention of doing so.
"Ah, we need to pick rooms, come to think of it. I completely forgot while we were looking around."
At Ellia's exclamation, I opened the subspace.
A large portal tore open. I caught the luggage that spilled from the opening with the Sky Wing Feather and lowered it to the floor.
"Which room are you using, Ha-yul?"
As I was pulling out and setting down the luggage, Hong Yeon-hwa sidled over and asked in a pointedly casual voice.
"Me... I haven't decided yet. Still, I was planning to take the one next to Seo-yul's if possible."
"Ah, next to Seo-yul... huh? Where are you going?"
I'd finished setting out all the luggage.
After checking once more in case I'd missed anything, I straightened up, and Hong Yeon-hwa tilted her head.
"Yeon-hwa, and Ellia, please rest for a bit. I've got to start cooking now."
"Right, you mentioned a housewarming. Who's coming, again?"
"Ah... my master, Professor Liana, Baek A-rin, and Senior Lee Ji-yeon..."
"Lee Ji-yeon? You invited Ji-yeon, too?"
"Ah, yes."
"...Really?"
Hong Yeon-hwa, who'd cut in mid-sentence, wore an oddly ambiguous expression.
"What's wrong?"
"Ah... it's nothing."
"?"
Either way, I had plenty to do as well.
Conveniently enough, tomorrow was the weekend, so we planned to hold the housewarming as an evening meal.
That meant I'd be making a lot of food. The kitchen was already perfectly set up, so all I had to do was start cooking.
And, before I began cooking, there was one more place I needed to visit.
.
.
.
In a corner of the grand mansion's east wing, there was a firmly shut room.
On the outside, nothing set it apart. Like every other door here, it was a dark brown wooden door that felt heavy with age.
'The lock is strong.'
I couldn't inspect the interior. Even now that I was connected through the key, the inside was difficult to examine with Observation. Even though the rest of the will in this place had lowered its guard, this room maintained its boundary.
It was a conspicuously strict ward, so it had drawn my attention immediately.
I'd meant to visit this place from the moment I sensed it.
This was the building said to have been the Headmaster's residence in the past, and even now, rumors circulated that the Headmaster was in seclusion here.
For such a place to be this heavily guarded...
'Hmm...'
I stood before the door for a moment in thought, then took the key from my chest and held it to the door.
Tremble— the key emitted a vibration.
— Click.
'As I thought.'
There was no keyhole, but the sound of the lock releasing came the moment the key drew close.
This key was indeed the access pass.
From the start, the key itself seemed to be the usage authority for this mansion.
I pulled the doorknob.
— Creeeak...
The door opened with a strange sound of grinding hinges.
At the same moment, the boundary enveloping the room melted away, and its interior came into view through Observation.
'...This is?'
The interior was a kind of study.
But it was astonishingly vast. Dozens of times larger than it had appeared from outside. Spatial expansion magic must have been applied.
Bookshelves crammed against the walls and an immense, countless number of books.
And...
'A portrait?'
Observation picked up a large portrait hanging on the wall.