5. Mage Maya (6)
5. Mage Maya (6)
I caught it at once.
She was furious.
The corners of her eyes quivered, and her lips twitched.
Changes so subtle an ordinary person would never notice them.
But I'd spent years parsing 4K screens pixel by pixel back in the real world.
On top of that, Wonderstein's body had pushed every sense — sight, taste, hearing, smell, touch — to the absolute human ceiling. Reading her face was trivial.
'Now what.'
I'll admit the crude little result she produced caught me off guard for a moment.
But watching her struggle to shape an illusion, I saw the real problem: she had no idea how to actually use what she had.
Two and a half years from now — I knew that — she would develop an original form of Illusion Magic all her own.
And I knew exactly how she did it.
Right now, though, she couldn't even manage a simple cube without floundering.
If I showed her the method, I could use it as leverage to pull her into the troupe.
She'd always been someone who could coldly calculate a situation.
Even if the place was the Monster Circus Troupe, she might accept it.
I waited.
To maximize my odds,
I let her stew a little longer.
Just as I was mulling over when to step in, a quest notification popped up.
Maybe the system didn't appreciate a Demon King trying to recruit a hero into his party.
The intent was obvious.
*Sub Quest — Mage
: The hero must walk the path of the original story.
Objective
: Have Maya join the Silver Screen Circus.
Success Reward
: [Memory Disk No.1 Containing Wonderstein's Memories]
Failure Penalty
: None.
A silver disc hovered in the reward window.
Same as with the Ghost's Mask — once the quest was complete, I'd be able to reach in and pull it out.
A Memory Disk.
An item that showed up constantly in the original games.
Any time the game needed to deliver a chunk of backstory or world-building, a Memory Disk served it up.
Plenty of players loved how naturally the lore was woven into the setting. Others called it a developer crutch — this supposedly rare magical artifact, and yet Memory Disks packed with every scrap of trivia were scattered around like loose change.
-Among the denizens of the Abyss, no hunter is as cunning as the Sickle-Hound.
-My favorite of Christian's works is not Count Wolfenstein, but...
-My dead wife returned to life. That alone made me rejoice. But...
Monster data. Obscure world-building fragments. The tragic backstory of some corpse you loot in a side passage.
Who, exactly, was recording all this information onto Memory Disks for someone else to find? The TTT community had a running joke about it — "a bourgeois world where every household owns an MD player."
That was the game's willing suspension of disbelief, of course.
Not here.
Here, Memory Disks were genuine magical artifacts — rare enough, and not something just anyone could use.
And a Memory Disk containing Wonderstein's own past...
Curiosity stirred.
I'd pushed the Tril Trillo series to its absolute limits.
Everything from raw gameplay to every hidden story and scrap of lore.
Even after all that, Wonderstein was still an enigma.
A man who served as the final boss across an entire trilogy, and yet almost nothing about his life had ever been properly revealed.
I weighed my options, staring at the quest window.
This was a prequel with Wonderstein as the protagonist. Surely I ought to learn more about him.
The hero was a welcome sight, but at this point in the timeline, she wasn't a key player yet.
I had no compelling reason to abandon the reward just to deviate from established history.
Objective
: Have Maya join the Silver Screen Circus.
Help her get into the Silver Screen Circus.
Collect my reward.
That was enough.
The hero walks the hero's path. The final boss walks the final boss's path.
I closed the quest window.
Maya was still glaring at me.
An apology came first.
I removed my hat with deliberate courtesy and inclined my head.
"Frank Wonderstein. My apologies for the abrupt discourtesy. May I ask the mage's name?"
Of the three heroes, Maya was the coldest.
A knight, if insulted, would either brush it off with indifference or laugh it off in disbelief.
A thief would fire back on the spot or deflect with a joke.
A mage would simply ignore you and put up a wall.
Breaking through that wall came first.
"My name is Maya."
Her voice carried frost.
"A pleasure, Miss Maya."
"Why do you keep staring at me? If you're looking for a spectacle, you'll find better ones elsewhere."
Beneath the anger I could feel the embarrassment coloring her tone and expression.
Well, presenting that lump of bread dough as an illusion must have stung.
I raised a reassuring hand.
"I merely wished to offer a few suggestions."
"Are you an illusion mage?"
"No. But I—"
"Forget it. I don't need them. You're free to watch, but please don't speak to me. It's distracting."
She snapped that out and turned her full attention back to her practice.
I gave an awkward smile and spread my hands in a gesture of concession.
Didn't need my help?
Maybe she was right.
In the original story, she joined the Silver Screen Circus.
That was canon.
There was no real need for me to step in further.
Simply watching from the sidelines might be the correct move.
***
The next day, Maya stopped in her tracks the moment she saw the man standing beside her table.
The man who'd kept trying to talk to her yesterday.
Frank Wonderstein, was it?
He'd shown up first thing in the morning and was waiting for her.
"Good morning."
He beamed at her, thoroughly pleased about something.
What a man with no pride.
Who comes back day after day after a girl young enough to be a student gives him the cold shoulder?
Maya ignored him and got to work.
Run through the fundamentals with a few cubes, then once a crowd gathered, move on to proper shaped constructs.
She truly was a genius.
In a single day, her skill had improved dramatically.
The cat now looked plausibly like a four-legged creature with fur. The windmill's blades visibly turned. The carriage didn't quite have rolling wheels, but it moved as though it were being pulled. The swing defied gravity with eerily constant velocity, but its form was unmistakably a swing.
"Heh heh. Impressive. I can see why you turned down my suggestions."
"...I told you not to speak to me."
Her voice was cold, but her mood didn't seem as foul as it had yesterday.
Nobody in the world dislikes being praised — especially when the praise is for something they've worked hard to produce.
"I look forward to seeing your skills improve even further tomorrow."
"What does that have to do with you?"
Maya turned her head sharply and left the tent.
And the next day, Wonderstein was waiting for her in exactly the same spot.
The smile at the corner of his mouth hadn't budged.
Strange man.
Maya gave up trying to understand him.
She shot him a single glare, then sat down and repeated what she had done the day before.
And the day after that, too.
And the day after that.
And the day after that one.
Every morning, Wonderstein stood by her spot and waited. Every afternoon, he stayed until she was done.
Wonderstein marveled at her passion and her talent.
This wasn't yet the magic she would one day develop in the games, but her ability was climbing fast — fast enough that it was hard to believe she was the same person who'd stood here just days ago.
At last, a fully realized cat prowled around his legs. The windmill turned as though caught by a real breeze. The carriage raced along, its wheels now clattering convincingly. The swing swayed with visible give in its ropes.
"Truly remarkable."
"It's still lacking."
The same cold expression. The same flat voice.
Even so, Wonderstein could tell she was equal parts embarrassed and quietly proud.
"About a week left until the opening ceremony, isn't it? Do you think you can get recruited?"
"I don't know. And frankly, Mr. Wonderstein, you might want to worry about your own circus first."
"Ah, I have a very capable Deputy Leader. There's nothing left for me to do. That's why I'm out here every day, enjoying myself."
"I'm starting to feel sorry for that person."
"She's about your age."
"...Well, at least now I know for certain which troupe I should never join. Thank you for the useful information."
Still, familiarity had bred something. Over those few days, they'd begun to have real conversations.
Once she'd realized there was no mockery lurking behind Wonderstein's smile, she'd started responding — little by little.
More than anything, she'd been lonely.
She had come here hoping that performing before an audience — whether from pressure or something else — would trigger a sudden leap in ability.
That hope had died on the first day.
The world was cold.
No dramatic transformation. No breakthrough. Only effort piled on effort, one step at a time.
Those first few days had shaved chunks off her self-esteem.
She'd been top of her class at the academy. When had she ever had to endure clicked tongues, disdainful glances, open ridicule?
The closest thing she had to comfort was a circus troupe leader with nothing better to do than loiter.
For Maya, who had always stood aloof, looking down on the world while it gazed back up with reverence, even the experience itself was foreign.
"The Silver Screen Circus arrives tomorrow, I hear."
Maya flinched visibly at Wonderstein's words.
The Silver Screen Circus — the pinnacle of Illusion Magic application.
"Good luck. Isn't that your goal? Getting in there."
She drew a small, sharp breath.
Wait. Had I been that obvious?
"I never said that."
"Every illusion mage has the same dream."
She let the breath out quietly.
Right. Of course. How would he know?
He was right — her goal was to join the Silver Screen Circus.
Though for a different reason than he imagined.
That was where her father and mother had met and fallen in love.
She wanted to be selected on merit alone.
The next day, Maya arrived wearing a mask.
She had no desire for some high-ranking troupe official to recognize her face and pick her for the wrong reasons.
The tent blazed with the heat of illusion mages pouring everything they had into their work.
Ninety-nine flames streaked through the air. A horde of martens scurried about. A tin giant lumbered past.
News of the Silver Screen Circus's arrival had everyone pouring still more fervor into their illusions.
Then the tent flap was pulled aside and a figure stepped through.
Swathed in a white robe with a silver cloth covering the face — impossible to tell whether the person was man or woman, young or old.
Wonderstein knew exactly who it was.
He was a character from TT1, after all.
The leader of the Silver Screen Circus.