11. Wonderland (3)
11. Wonderland (3)
Materials in hand, the troupe members threw themselves into decorating the villa.
Maya had been dragged outside for the first time in a while.
She shot a disgruntled glare at Ella, who was pulling her along by the arm.
Right in the middle of a crucial research breakthrough, too...
Two weeks had passed since their return from the hotel.
After that day, the amount of time she spent alone had sharply increased.
Aside from the occasional visit from Karen, she barely saw anyone.
Because the new research topic consuming her was as fascinating as it was esoteric.
Devolut.
Its true nature had been a riddle in academic circles for ages.
Over the past two weeks, Maya had devoured every paper on the subject she could find without leaving her room.
Many had tried to unravel its identity before her, but what they had actually uncovered was scant.
Otherwise, no matter how brilliant she was, there was no way she could have plowed through decades of accumulated research in a few days.
"Take over from here. I want one member in a Halloween costume for each wall panel."
Ella directed her to paint murals.
She wanted the villa decorated with eerie imagery to fit the festival.
Maya looked over the diagrams showing the troupe's costumes and set the brushes and paints in motion with her telekinesis.
Even as she worked, her mind refused to drop the research.
She methodically reviewed the points she had organized over the past several days.
1. Devolut is the causative substance of the Curse Plague.
2. Its structure takes the form of a quadruple helix.
3. The Alchemy Guild possesses a medicine called "Milky Way" capable of destroying Devolut.
4. It began spreading after the emergence of a demon called the "Plague Lord."
5. A man named Victor defeated that demon and received the title of saint.
Everything up to that point was public knowledge.
The next facts were known only to her and the Troupe Leader.
6. The Memorial Monument Saint Victor left in Tetromino Square was modeled after the form of Devolut.
7. The plaza's paving stones contain a code documenting Devolut's chemical structure.
And finally, not from a research institution but a recent leak from the Orthodox Church:
8. Devolut is linked to the "Black Magician."
Maya's fist clenched as the name surfaced in her mind.
Her memory was a curse in its own right.
It wasn't the so-called total recall the public gossiped about—she didn't remember everything.
But any image she had committed to memory, no matter how old, she could summon again in vivid detail.
She had been six months old.
When she'd wailed for her absent mother, her father had held her and wept, telling her that her mother was gone.
He was a man so cheerful you could almost call him frivolous. She had never seen him wear an expression of such despair before that moment, nor since.
To her young mind, the tragedy of her father's grief had struck harder than the fact that her mother had died.
She shoved those memories aside.
What she needed right now wasn't her own feelings about the Black Magician—it was factual information.
Regrettably, there wasn't much more to uncover regarding him.
He was a figure who had evaded a worldwide manhunt for over a decade.
The connection to the Curse Plague had only come to light recently itself.
Fortunately for Maya, there were two figures far easier to investigate.
Saint Victor and the Plague Lord.
For both, official records were abundant, and folk tales even more so.
Plenty of scholars had already combed through those sources, but Maya possessed something they lacked: the structural formula for Devolut. With that, she might be able to perceive things others had missed, just as she had with the monument in Tetromino Square.
She recalled the moment Wonderstein had explained it to her.
Had he known, even then, that the substance was Devolut?
The question was almost rhetorical.
He must have.
She had seen him cure the Curse Plague in Dvalchev with her own eyes.
A method more effective than the Alchemy Guild's Milky Way, and with far fewer side effects than the Orthodox priests' stakes.
He must have refined his research over and over to find a way to control Devolut.
He had even used it to heal people.
He must have used that power both when Zakanuba had attacked her and when Karen had been as good as dead.
Of course, it came at a cost.
She had watched him writhe in agony as he absorbed Devolut into his own body.
She had monitored his health closely in the days afterward for exactly that reason.
Relief had come when no serious abnormalities had appeared.
But perhaps she had read too many papers on the Curse Plague over these past two weeks.
The anxieties she had buried began crawling back to the surface.
Phrases from the literature flashed before her eyes—descriptions of Devolut's potency and danger.
Countless researchers who had believed they could control Devolut had become its victims. Scholars had died from undetected infections rotting them from within. Accidental releases had rendered entire regions uninhabitable.
And the Troupe Leader was carrying that same volatile substance inside his own body.
He had framed it playfully, saying it was to fix her Papilax, but by that point, he must have already known what it truly was.
Why had he taught her about it?
Perhaps it was a kind of wish.
A quiet hope that she would discover what he himself had already found.
"That wasn't what I asked for, but this pattern works too."
Ella's voice snapped Maya out of her reverie.
She turned her head.
Somehow, Wonderstein had arrived and was now standing beside Ella, both of them observing her work.
Maya looked at the mural she had just painted.
There, repeated a thousand times over the past two weeks in illusion form, was the shape she had built and erased again and again.
A double of double helixes.
Devolut.
The wall was packed with dozens of them.
Caught up in her thoughts, her telekinesis must have steered the brush on its own.
Maya stole a glance at Wonderstein.
He quietly averted his gaze.
He had definitely seen it. He was pretending he hadn't.
And while Ella rattled off her various impressions of the work, he said nothing at all.
Was this his way of saying, if she wanted to call herself his student, she had to solve it on her own?
Maya felt her competitive drive blaze hotter.
Wonderstein saw the fire in her eyes and looked away.
Seeing those quadruple helixes she had painted, it was clear: her self-imposed isolation for the past two weeks was because of what had happened back then.
A genius like her had been so consumed by this problem that she had fallen into a Heart Demon. And instead of dropping hints or nudging her toward the answer—the considerate thing to do for her—he had blurted out the whole solution.
He hadn't realized until they were leaving the hotel just how much that must have deflated and angered her.
It must have felt like being deep into an exploration game, only to have someone standing next to you spoil every hidden location, every story beat, right through to the ending.
He had experienced that himself, courtesy of his viewers, so he understood her feelings perfectly.
In truth, he had never meant to throw the answer at her so blatantly in the first place.
His original plan had been to give her just enough—maybe stop at something like the periodic table.
With that as inspiration, she would have been able to overcome the Heart Demon on her own.
But excitement had gotten the better of him—it was so rare to find something he actually knew—and he had babbled it all out.
Not long ago, he had seen her walking down the hall with an armful of papers and journals.
The idea that the double helix was a genetic material hadn't been discovered by scientists until the late twentieth century.
Genius or not, figuring that out alone was too much to ask.
Yet he couldn't exactly compound her resentment by cheerfully chirping, "That's DNA, it stores genetic information!" either.
All he could do was watch.
Wonderstein studied her magic carefully.
Arno had told him about the symptoms a mage exhibited when trapped in Papilax.
He worried that digging into this might have caused her to fall into another Heart Demon.
Thankfully, she seemed untroubled.
With her telekinesis, she kept brushes and paints floating in the air, checking Ella's instructions through illusions and quickly adjusting the mural to match her requests.
Perhaps overcoming the Papilax had sharpened her abilities.
Her skill looked noticeably improved.
Reassured, Wonderstein stepped aside to let her concentrate on the painting.
"Shall we be off, then?"
While the troupe focused on decorating the villa, he had decided to make a trip into the city.
Several days prior, he had summoned a tailor to the villa to fit the troupe for custom Halloween costumes. Now, he was going to pick them up.
The Status Window did have a Costume Room Function, but he saw no reason to waste Devolut on something money could handle.
More to the point, the Costume Room could only duplicate an outfit he had already seen; it couldn't turn sketched ideas into actual garments.
"Let's hurry. There's a lot to do today."
Ella moved to follow him.
But he simply shook his head with a gentle smile.
"Which is exactly why you need to stay here, Miss Ella."
"Ah... s-so you'll be going alone...?"
Her words came out haltingly.
She already knew what he was about to say.
She was asking anyway because she didn't like it.
And right on cue, his answer matched her expectation exactly.
"No. Miss Clara will accompany me."
"Troupe Leader, the carriage is here!"
At the villa entrance, a young blue-haired woman who looked like she had yet to reach adulthood poked her head out and called to them.
"We'll be back shortly."
Leaving Ella standing motionless, blinking, he and Clara exited the villa together.
In the old days, Ella would have been the one to accompany him on an errand like this. But ever since Clara's arrival, she had taken over every task involving assisting the Troupe Leader.
Ella watched the two of them leave with a blank expression.
Clara was pressed right against Wonderstein's side, chattering away with an animated face.
Wonderstein glanced at her with a wry, awkward smile and shook his head.
They seemed close.
Clara.
Since she had joined, Ella's workload had shrunk considerably.
It had made things a lot easier for her.
But somehow, it also left an empty feeling.
In truth, she had been shouldering far too much.
Relaying messages to the troupe and handling the Troupe Leader's miscellaneous tasks were never duties meant for someone of deputy-leader rank.
Having a dedicated person for that role was the correct move.
Clara was a capable secretary who more than lived up to those expectations.
Maybe it was her experience as a student representative, but she was knowledgeable and full of ideas for navigating a wide range of situations.
Above all, she was completely unfazed by the troupe's appearances.
She seemed like a well-behaved model student who had never lifted a finger in hardship, but her personality was the polar opposite.
She had a slight crafty streak when it came to work, but by nature, she was easy to get along with and never put up walls between people.
The same mind that worked so quickly and intelligently on the job turned a little vague and scatterbrained in daily life.
She would take Sven's nonsense seriously, or answer Umon's questions with such off-topic remarks that she left them baffled.
And when she first arrived, she had wandered around the villa in just a t-shirt and underwear like she was still in a dormitory, until Yurakne dragged her off for a scolding.
Clara became the second student to receive dress-code education from her. The first had been Maya, who had worn the same clothes for an entire week.
This approachable side of her had helped her grow close to the troupe quickly.
The job of assisting the Troupe Leader, the role of softening the troupe's atmosphere—both had originally been Ella's.
Clara was excelling at both.