Second-Semester Classes (3)
‘Hurry! Go hurry up and contract with her! Lilith, you've got more than enough mana to contract with an intermediate spirit!!’
“......”
‘The whole reason I followed you to the Academy was destiny — destiny to meet that girl! So go on, go charm her, Lilith! Go now!’
The moment we laid eyes on a single sylph in Professor Erin's secret garden, Sally had erupted into a racket of excitement. Watching her attitude flip in the span of a heartbeat, an absurd emotion welled up inside me toward her.
‘If you contract with her, you'll get to see her every single time we're together from now on! So go! Contract with her! Hurry—’
“Are you out of your damn mind?”
‘……Huh?’
“Why is your personal agenda suddenly hijacking *my* spirit contract? There's a limit to how shameless you can be.”
‘Wh-what's wrong with that?! It's an obvious fact that wind and fire make a good match! She'd definitely boost my power just by being there! It's not bad for you either, Lilith!’
Even after I shoved the word shameless right in her face, Sally acted like she had no idea what she'd done wrong. Up until now I'd thought of her as merely noisy, if reasonably useful — but that single remark had just obliterated every good impression I had of her.
“You're basically a pedophile, you know that?”
‘Wh-what are you even saying?! S-spirits live far, far longer than humans do! I've lived dozens of times longer than you, and that girl over there is at least two hundred years—’
“Which is exactly why you're a pedophile *by spirit standards*. You don't think I know that anything under four hundred is a child among spirits?”
‘…H-how do you even know that— no, wait! That's not it at all! Don't go slinging insults around like that! You're not even a spirit!’
“Then go ask the Professor right now. She's a half-elf, and she's the one who cultivated this garden in the first place — she'd know a lot better than I do.”
‘No no no, don't! Fine, I admit it! I was wrong!!’
Apparently she had at least some shred of shame left, because it seemed she didn't want the other spirits finding out she was a lolicon.
Honestly, though — why bother telling a lie that would fall apart the second anyone pressed on it?
The spirit's face flushed hot as she registered exactly how ugly she'd looked just moments ago. A fire spirit, blushing — in more ways than one.
‘F-fine, I'll admit she's young! B-but "pedophile" is still the wrong word! Yes, I feel love toward her, but it is absolutely not a sexual feeling!’
“Well, sure. You spirits don't even have reproductive functions, so of course not.”
‘And it's not like I specifically *like* young spirits! That girl just happened to catch my eye, and she just happened to be young, that's all!’
“Do spirits not have sex offenders where you're from? A screwball like you — who exactly hauls you off? Hm?”
‘That's going too far! Way too far!’
The person who was *really* going too far could figure that out by looking at her own reflection in the water.
Though to be fair, in spirit studies terms, fire spirits are naturally drawn to wind spirits, so her desires themselves weren't actually all that strange. Fire spirits gravitating toward wind spirits, wind spirits feeling fondness for water spirits, water spirits wanting to cozy up to earth spirits — it was a kind of natural phenomenon.
What made me so fed up with Sally had nothing to do with any of that.
It was this brazen attitude of a high-ranking spirit lusting after an intermediate spirit who was, by her own kind's reckoning, still basically a child — and the fact that she'd developed a manic obsession with a spirit she'd laid eyes on less than ten minutes ago. That was what got under my skin.
And naturally, I had zero obligation to play along with her nonsense.
“If you like her so much, go seduce her yourself. Don't drag me into it.”
‘Th-that's impossible! The moment I approach, she'll bolt — obviously! What sylph in her right mind would just sit there while a salamander comes waltzing up?!’
“Oh, so you *do* understand why you should give up.”
‘C-come on, please! You could totally charm her, Lilith! If you put your mind to it, you could land any intermediate spirit you wanted — your mana is that delicious!’
…Well, given Lilith's Charm stat, it wasn't exactly an impossible proposition.
Her Charm would soon be brushing triple digits, and spirit affinity climbed right along with it. Contracting with one naive little sylph would be more than doable.
But there was something about this salamander — starting with her motives, which were about as pure as mud — that made me disinclined to do her any favors.
“Your intentions are far too filthy for me to help. That innocent girl would probably be far happier never knowing you exist. For both your sakes, why not just give up?”
‘Wh-why?! I'm not going to do anything weird, I swear! I'd be content just watching her from a distance! If contracting would strain your mana, I'll simply eat less to make up for it!’
“I overflow with mana anyway. Whether you eat more or less makes no real difference.”
‘Th-then let's contract right now! If you just contract with her, I'll contract with you too! Huh?! Deal?!’
“Um, no? You're a *high-ranking* spirit. Contracting with me is impossible in the first place.”
Contracting with a spirit worked a lot like signing a monthly lease. The whole system operated on the principle of building a nest of woven mana around your own body — that was what a spirit contract essentially was.
The upfront cost of constructing a nest livable for these spirits was steep, which was also why a high maximum mana pool was a prerequisite for contracting in the first place.
Weaving a mana nest required burning through a huge lump of mana all at once (the deposit), but once it was built, you only needed to spend a trickle of mana to maintain it (the monthly rent). So really, it was nothing more than a lease agreement.
Naturally, the higher-ranked the spirit, the more mana its nest demanded — which meant the pool of beings capable of contracting with one was severely limited.
You'd need a title like Sage, or Archmage, or maybe Tower Master just to qualify.
Even me — having dumped absurd amounts of leveling into max mana since level one — would need to reach somewhere around level thirty or forty before it became possible. Any earlier attempt would just squander mana for nothing and leave me collapsed from exhaustion.
So yes, contracting with a high-ranking spirit was an attractive offer — and at the same time, a completely meaningless one for who I was right now.
“If I had the mana to contract with you, maybe I'd consider it. But no matter how I look at it, it's a pointless offer for the me of today.”
‘B-but a provisional contract is possible! It doesn't eat anywhere near as much mana as a formal one, and upgrading to a formal contract later is way easier too!’
“Hmm…”
‘Please! It's my lifelong dream! Just contract with her, and I swear I'll behave from now on! I won't even wake you up when you're sleeping at night!’
…Not being woken up in the middle of the night is, admittedly, a fairly tempting offer.
And frankly, the provisional contract itself was an outrageously good deal — better than I deserved, even.
She was a noisy lolicon, sure, but for all that, she was still a high-ranking spirit. If I had her under contract, I could find some way to make use of her, one way or another.
Especially since one of my most reliable fixes for Lilith's chronic accuracy problems was attack magic delivered through spirits.
Feed mana to a spirit and have it strike directly, and I could overcome one of my most stubborn weaknesses at a stroke.
“All right, then. I'll give it a try.”
‘Really?!’
“But don't complain if it doesn't work out. My mana being tasty doesn't mean I can charm every spirit in existence.”
‘Yes, yes! Got it!’
“I'll be right back, so Sally, keep your distance from me while I'm gone.”
I pushed Sally far away from my side so the sylph wouldn't be frightened off for no reason, then started walking, slowly and without much hope, toward the intermediate spirit drifting on the breeze. If fortune smiled and the contract worked, wonderful. If not — well, so be it.
Agnes Elizabeth Blaze.
Only daughter of the Blaze Viscount family, and valedictorian of Luminor Academy's Magic Department. She was also Lilith's Spirit Studies lecture partner — and at that moment, she stood tucked away in a corner of the garden, quietly trying to untangle a miserable knot of feelings.
“…Hhh.”
Truthfully, she already knew all of it.
Knew that while her maximum mana was impressive, her affinity with spirits was abysmal. Knew that even if, on paper, contracting with an intermediate spirit should have been possible, in practice even low-ranking spirits flinched away from her. And knew, above all, that she was growing desperate about the whole business of spirit contracts. Every last bit of it.
‘Spirits have eyes too, you know. You don't actually think they'll just leap into a contract with you, Miss Blaze, do you?’
‘Through a spirit's senses, your mana smells like food that's gone off. If you want them to feel even a flicker of curiosity, you'll need to fix that whole unsold-inventory attitude of yours first…’
“…You didn't have to go *that* far.”
Rotten food. Unsold inventory.
For a girl raised as a promising star of the Elizabeth clan, drenched in her family's every expectation, that kind of acid assessment was something she had never once heard in her life.
And from someone who looked, on the outside, like such a pretty and demure girl — to spit those words out at her without a shred of hesitation.
Worse still, the content itself was a truth she couldn't refute, and that was the part that jabbed at her heart, over and over. No wonder she felt so wretched.
“I know. I *know*, all right.”
Only after wiping her tears in secret there in the corner was Agnes finally able to calm the tangle of emotions churning inside her.
And to acknowledge, too, just how childish her little power struggle with Lilith had been.
Either way, Lilith hadn't said any of it with the intent to torment her. If Agnes failed to contract a spirit, Lilith herself would suffer for it — their partnership bound them together, after all.
The advice, at its core, had surely been genuine concern. …It was simply that the advice had landed so brutally hard that Agnes had momentarily lost her reason.
But whatever else could be said of her, Lilith was a woman whose understanding of spirits ran so deep she could keep a high-ranking spirit at her side without even holding a contract.
If Agnes simply swallowed her pride and did what the girl told her, she could contract at the very least a low-ranking spirit — probably more.
And with the succession contest pressing in on her from every branch family of House Elizabeth, Agnes *needed* to secure her first spirit, whatever it took. For that goal, she could bury any petty, childish grudges as deep as necessary.
“That woman hasn't formally contracted with the salamander yet, either.”
Which almost certainly meant she was holding off on lesser spirits so she could aim straight for the high-ranker. If Agnes managed to contract even a low-ranking spirit first, in the meantime, she could claim — for now, at least — that she'd won.
That thought became the fuel that pulled Agnes back up from her gloom and set her on her feet.
And so it was only a short while later that she came face to face with Lilith — who, in the brief span of Agnes's absence, had finished contracting with the intermediate spirit.