Agnes-Style Spirit Contract (3)
"W-wow…."
Spirits of wind.
Spirits of water.
Spirits of earth.
The moment Agnes laid eyes on every kind of spirit imaginable dancing and flitting through the air in a dazzling display, she found herself utterly entranced, her gaze helplessly trailing after their every movement.
Never before in her life had she come face to face with so many spirits at once.
Even in Professor Erin's secret garden, she had never encountered spirits in such numbers. Admittedly, most of the ones she'd met back then had been intermediate spirits, so in terms of rank, those had been the more powerful ones—but still.
It was a gathering place of spirits shimmering in every color of the rainbow, as if all the stars of the night sky had descended to converge upon this one pond.
For Agnes, who had spent a considerable span of her life obsessed with the idea of contracting a spirit, the sight before her was captivating enough to make her lose sight of her purpose entirely, if only for a moment.
…This is no time to be standing around gawking.
It wasn't as if she had no desire to simply watch the fairytale-like scene of newborn spirits gathering and mingling with one another.
But if she stood here staring blankly forever, she would squander the precious opportunity she'd worked so hard to obtain.
After all, the entire reason she had forced herself to conquer her fear and make her way here through this dark night was to form a spirit contract.
According to Lilith, today was the once-in-a-century day when conditions were most favorable for sealing a pact with a spirit.
It's not like I believe everything that woman says….
But a day as advantageous as this one surely wouldn't come around again any time soon.
Of course, she had learned through bitter experience exactly how unwelcome her own presence was among spirits—and she knew perfectly well that if she barged into their midst and tried to awkwardly ingratiate herself, she'd only be shunned for it.
And that was precisely why, in the moment she realized she was about to exploit a gathering of newborn spirits purely for her own benefit, she felt a twinge of selfishness.
Even so, to her, the alternative—the prospect of falling behind as a mage because she could never manage to contract a spirit, or of fumbling away an opportunity someone else had gone out of their way to create because of her own pathetic incompetence—was far more frightening.
Above all, she had no intention of failing the spirit communication lecture scheduled for this very semester.
-Hmmmm.
-Shhh-shk!
-Tok, tok.
Just as she'd been taught, Agnes suppressed the mana flowing from her body and began picking her way through the spirits, many of whom had not yet even taken full form.
At the appearance of an unfamiliar creature they'd never seen before, a fair number of the spirits turned their attention toward her.
For the first time in her life, Agnes felt as if she were the one doing the choosing.
…Naturally, that feeling lasted exactly one moment—because the spirits' reactions to her remained as cold as ever.
"E-excuse me…."
-Whiiiing!
The instant she opened her mouth, the wind spirits—the most sensitive of all to shifts in the air—dissolved into the atmosphere and vanished in the blink of an eye.
"W-would you like to form a contract with…."
-Pop!
The water spirits burst like droplets and disappeared the moment so much as a scrap of her body brushed against them.
"All I need is a contract, just a contract, please…!"
-Tap-tap-tap-tap!
Even the earth spirit, the only one who'd let her carry a conversation all the way to the brink of an agreement, took a single nibble of her mana for the contract and bolted like a shot.
"…Hnngh."
Perhaps this was a trial a little too cruel for a girl who had only just come of age.
Rejected over and over again, Agnes finally broke down, the tears she'd been holding back spilling over.
Spirits, contracts—none of it mattered anymore. She hated everything in front of her eyes.
No matter how beautiful the scene, no matter how many spirits had gathered, not a single one among all these children was willing to become her partner.
It's not like I asked to be born with mana that spirits hate, you know.
Agnes felt so small, so pitiful—a girl who couldn't even charm spirits fresh out of the cradle.
And so, curled up at the edge of the pond with her knees drawn to her chest, quietly sniffling, her heart snapped all too easily.
…Maybe I should just go home.
Realistically, staying here wasn't going to produce any better a future.
If the choice was between waiting to be turned down by every last remaining spirit or leaving now, while there was still a decent amount of fuel left in her lantern, the latter was clearly the smarter move.
After all, she would have to make her way back through this forest alone in the dead of night regardless.
With that thought, Agnes reached for the lantern she'd brought and moved to walk away from the Spirit Pond—
-Bonk.
'Ow!'
"…Huh?"
The instant she picked the glass lantern back up off the ground, a tiny voice reached her ears, and her gaze drifted naturally to the inside of the lantern.
-Hmmmmm.
'…That hurts! Can't you be a little gentler?!'
Inside the fist-sized glass lantern, a tiny flame spirit was peering out at her.
A newborn flame spirit, small and newly kindled, right there inside her lantern.
About an hour after sending Agnes off into the Dark Forest.
"She's probably arrived by now, I'd think."
Believing she should be reaching the Spirit Pond around about now, I murmured to myself as I stared blankly up at the night sky.
She was a character with formidable willpower, so surely she hadn't given up halfway.
For all that Agnes was supposedly terrified of the dark, I at least liked to believe she was tougher than that.
Believe me, part of me wanted to go with her out of sheer worry—but I knew perfectly well that the contract would never happen with me tagging along.
If I were anywhere nearby, the spirits' aggro—including that of the very 'flame spirit' meant to be born at her side—would inevitably swing toward me instead. All of it.
Soon enough, that girl will be coming back with a little one that looks exactly like me~.
"That's right. And honestly, these past few months of drilling you so you'd be ready to contract a spirit on exactly this date have been brutal."
Still, I never saw it coming~. Handing that girl a lantern made from an ember plucked straight off my own body—talk about thinking outside the box. My master really is as sharp as I'd expect from the one I chose~!
"…Well, it's not like I particularly want Miss Blaze failing and then coming back to take it out on me."
And given that she stood a solid chance of becoming the main damage dealer of the Hero Party, I wanted to shore up her specs as reliably as I could.
The lantern I'd handed Agnes to carry was never just an ordinary lantern.
It was kindled from a stray ember that had drifted free of Sally's body—in other words, a lantern with a slightly elevated spirit affinity.
Of course, merely carrying a high-affinity lantern didn't transfer that affinity to its bearer, so Agnes was still going to get the cold shoulder from most of the spirits.
But if she managed to tend that lantern carefully all the way to the Spirit Pond, everything after that would likely unfold as smoothly as a boat down a stream.
A bond with a spirit.
Ordinarily, this was something nearly impossible to cultivate before ever contracting one. Unless something miraculously serendipitous happened—something like my campaign of demon-purging alongside Sally, for instance.
But if you spent a full hour exploring a pitch-black forest alone together with a lantern raised from a tiny ember that carried a spirit's power…
Then when that ember matured into a full-fledged spirit, it was only natural for it to feel a faint bond with Agnes, the one who had been closest to it the whole time.
What's more, because Sally's ember carried such high spirit affinity, the unstable mana swirling in the pond would find it far easier to coalesce around it and take form as a spirit.
The moment Agnes came face to face with the gathered energies of every spirit at the pond, the system practically guaranteed she'd walk away with a contract. It was as good as locked in.
Good grief, this one quest is a colossal pain in the ass to clear.
Playing as the protagonist, you'd simply walk with Agnes all the way to the Spirit Pond and coach her through contracting a spirit on the spot, right then and there.
After all, with the goddess-blessed protagonist standing beside her, even the spirits couldn't help but drift over, curiosity piqued.
From there, a little smooth talking from the protagonist, and one or two of the young spirits would eagerly seal a contract with Agnes on the spot.
The problem was that Lilith—me—had no way of pulling off the protagonist's trick.
If I so much as set foot in the Spirit Pond alongside Agnes, the overwhelming majority of the spirits would flock to me.
Seriously, what kind of spirit with what bizarre tastes would choose to eat a rotten egg when there's a moist, fluffy steamed egg custard sitting right next to it?
If I stood there flaunting the gulf in our appeal right in front of Agnes, I'd only wreck things for her. Nothing would get done.
So instead, I drilled her again and again on how to contract a spirit entirely on her own, and then—cruel as it sounds—I more or less shoved her out into the Dark Forest at midnight.
Under the current circumstances, this was the only way to put a spirit in Agnes's hands.
And above all, this method had one decisive advantage….
Agnes gets to start her first contract with a flame spirit.
In-game, the spirit that best unlocked Agnes's potential was the wind spirit, thanks to its excellent synergy with fire magic.
Next most serviceable was the earth spirit—though in that case, Agnes was technically the one playing support.
And the water spirit? The compatibility was outright disastrous. Unless both she and the spirit grew in absolutely perfect lockstep, their attacks would end up tripping over each other.
And yet, funnily enough, the flame spirit itself—the single best match for a fire mage—apparently couldn't be contracted at the Spirit Pond. I'd never actually played through that part myself, so I couldn't say for certain.
My theory was that the pond simply had no seeds from which 'fire spirits' could be born.
In a small pond long untouched by human footsteps, it was only natural for the seeds of earth, water, and wind spirits to spring up.
But the seed of a flame spirit could only be found in an ever-burning flame that never withered—which meant it could only be sourced from rare places like the black rock canyons where the dwarves lived, or a flame dragon's lair.
…Or, alternatively, from an ember spat out by a high-ranking spirit old enough to have lived that long.
Having Sally around sure paid off this time.
Just as I was mulling all this over while staring blankly at the mouth of the Dark Forest, a girl with red twin-tails came quietly stepping out from between the trees.
And circling endlessly around her was a flame spirit that, to anyone's eyes, had clearly just finished sealing its contract.
'Agnes! Looking forward to working with you! The name you gave me is SO cool! It's the best!'
"…Yeah. Looking forward to it too, Infernosillia."
'Yeah! Me too, Agnes!'
Apparently her incurable chuunibyou naming sense had survived all the way through the moment of the spirit contract.
…Well, as long as the two of them were happy with it, who was I to complain?