Misunderstanding Takes Flight
The twisted mana bullet of pure chaos was complete.
This is… a bit much.
A grotesque spell, fifty formulas fused into one. It was hard to wrap my head around, and honestly, just looking at it was unsettling.
Casting time is… two seconds?
Given Lucia's current skill level, that was probably fair.
Hmm.
A mana bullet was supposed to be closer to instant-cast magic. During that first lesson, she and Chloe had deliberately fired slowly—in reality, they could have landed ten shots in the same span.
…That's awkward.
Two seconds? In that time, she could fire five or six mana bullets. It would be a different story if the power scaled up to match, but…
My mental simulation put it at roughly three times stronger. That was all.
Ah. So that's why nobody makes this.
Ordinarily, this is where I'd have abandoned the formula-fusion project entirely. But the original goal had always lain elsewhere.
[Lucia. Want to practice a new spell?]
The twisted mana bullet's formula sat right at the edge of what a birdbrain like me could parse. But even birdbrain-grade formulas became a different beast when you stacked fifty of them on top of each other.
"…The calculations don't take long. It's the comprehension part that's hard."
She burned an entire day on it without mastering the spell, so practice stretched on through the weekend, all the way to Monday.
Then, the evening after classes ended—deep in an empty forest, far from any prying eyes.
"…I'm ready."
Lucia spread her mana wide. In the blink of an eye, dozens of formulas traced themselves into the air, then compressed into a single whole.
—Vuuuuum!
Mana gathered above her head, swelling into a sphere of blue light several dozen centimeters across. And then it launched.
—KWAAAAAANG!
I had wrapped the impact site in a translucent barrier. Blue light flooded its interior, blazing like a contained sun. If anyone had been standing there, they'd have died on the spot.
"…That's not mana-bullet territory anymore."
Lucia stared down at her own palm. Was she having trouble believing what she'd just done?
[West Wind was stronger than this, you know.]
For reference, 'West Wind' was the wind spell that had disassembled that tiger a while back. Lucia and I had racked our brains together just to come up with the name.
Anyway.
Lucia spoke with something like awe in her voice.
"Of course it was. But… I only expanded the formula. I can't believe that alone produced this much power."
A mana bullet was good for shattering a small target. This was bombardment.
To be fair, its raw destructive force fell short of West Wind's.
Well, the balance works out.
West Wind took twice the preparation time and hit three to four times harder. This one traded raw power for a respectable casting speed. Good enough to see real combat use.
[I'll teach you other spells, one at a time, going forward.]
"…Yes, Master."
My spell repertoire was thin at the moment, so it wasn't feasible yet. But if I kept teaching her over time, wouldn't my magic alone be enough to cover every situation?
That would be nice.
My spells were overwhelmingly stronger than anything people commonly used, after all. By that point, Lucia would be stronger than Chloe.
Dreaming of that distant future, we made our way back to the dormitory. Dinner followed, then helping Lucia with her assignments, and suddenly it was eleven at night.
"…That's about as far as I can go tonight. I should sleep."
We lay down in bed together, facing each other, eyes open, gazes meeting in the dark.
What followed was silence.
Lucia's calm eyes held mine. Moonlight filtered through the gap in the curtains, caught in her hair, and made it gleam, impossibly lovely.
…What is she thinking about right now?
The question rose unbidden—and I banished it just as quickly. However this girl saw me, my purpose didn't change. I would live for Lucia. That was all.
The incident is tomorrow, isn't it.
Better to focus on what was about to land on us.
Forty-one random events. True to their nature as random events, only two things were ever fixed: time and place.
The incidents struck after sundown, in the evening—and always in the dormitory where Chloe resided.
I could just sit this out, honestly.
What the event actually was didn't matter. Chloe would be in her dormitory, and anyone who wanted to survive could simply hide out in the academy's main building. Sure, buildings occasionally got half-flattened, but as long as Lucia and I stayed together, that was survivable.
And yet.
Is that the right thing to do?
People would die. If I stepped in, I could save some of them. But doing so would put Lucia in danger.
I agonized over which choice was actually correct—and finally sent a thought her way.
[Lucia.]
"…Yes?"
Her eyes were half-lidded, already on the verge of sleep. I felt a flicker of guilt, but pressed on.
[…Say an event happens where people will die. You could stop it—but stopping it would put someone precious to you in danger.]
[What would you do, Lucia?]
She didn't hesitate for even a heartbeat.
"I think I'd go stop it."
[Why?]
I hadn't expected such a clean answer. I'd assumed Lucia disliked other people—yet here was a stubborn remnant of human compassion in her after all—
"—If an event's happening, that means there's going to be a battle, doesn't it? And if it's bad enough that people die… it would make good experience."
…A very Lucia answer. Not saving people—going because there would be a battle.
[Lucia.]
Thanks to her, the decision made itself.
[An event's going to hit the academy tomorrow. A few people are probably going to die.]
"…I see."
[Do you want to be there?]
Lucia answered with quiet conviction.
"Yes. I want to go."
I still didn't really know Lucia. Not deeply, not yet.
But this should be fine.
There was no special reason. I just… had a feeling it would be okay.
We wrapped up the next day's classes without a hitch. With a fair stretch of time left before the event, we killed it practicing magic, then made our way to Dormitory Three, where Chloe lived.
And then it was nine o'clock sharp. The incident was moments away.
Better hurry.
Random events were pure, unfiltered protagonist-bullying. A background extra could be shredded the instant one began. Which meant—
Wait outside Chloe's room.
In the opening phase, staying near the protagonist was safest. If the heroine got ambushed and died at the start, that would be a problem. Early on, she was nearly untouchable.
[There's a door at the back of the dormitory.]
"I see it. It's padlocked."
[Break it and get inside at exactly 9:04.]
Lucia nodded without a trace of doubt.
The academy forbade entry to other dormitories. Go through the front door and you'd be tossed out—hence the need for a proper stealth sequence.
Even I'm getting nervous.
Several scouting runs had confirmed it: the dormitory's patrol patterns matched the game exactly. And with my triple-digit hours of stealth-game escapes behind me, infiltration was trivial.
I ran the patrol routes through my head as we waited. Then—
[Now.]
—CRACK!
Lucia shattered the lock and slipped inside.
[Take the stairs straight ahead, up to the second floor only.]
[The guard on the third will hear the noise and come down.]
Right as we reached the second floor, footsteps sounded from above. Any hesitation, and we'd have been caught.
[Now turn left into the corridor. You can walk normally from here.]
A long hallway later, we arrived at the main hall. Another staircase waited there.
[Ignore it. Straight down the opposite corridor you'll find another set of stairs—take those to the first floor.]
Lucia followed my instructions without a flicker of doubt.
First floor. We paused, feeling out the surrounding mana. Chloe's and Lucia's strides in the original story didn't quite match, so I couldn't pin the exact timing down—
—Shhhh.
A wave of mana vanished from sense.
[…Now. Up to the fourth floor, fast.]
No variables. We hit the fourth floor clean. Turning right here would have brought us to Chloe's room, but—
[Let's stop here.]
We'd simply wait at the head of the stairs. Getting any closer meant opening her door, and that invited complications.
As we waited for the event to ignite, Lucia spoke up.
"…You really are incredible, Master. Dodging the guards using nothing but mana currents."
I literally memorized the patrol schedule.
Telling her that would be awkward, so I just humored her.
[You'll be able to do it someday too.]
"…I'd like that, if it were possible."
Lucia stared down at the floor, lost in thought for a moment.
Does that have something to do with why she wants to get stronger?
Her obsession with growing stronger bordered on excessive. I knew she had a purpose. I just didn't know what it was.
Nothing I can do about it.
All I could offer was my support.
[Lucia.]
"Yes?"
[Whatever happens, don't worry. If anything appears that tries to stand in your way, I'll clear it out of the path.]
"…"
Her eyes were searching for me when footsteps echoed down the corridor.
"…Lucia? What are you doing here."
A woman with violet hair was glaring daggers at her. The eldest daughter of Marquis House Ardy—Veronica.
"You're in Dormitory Two. Why come to Three in the middle of the night? Do you have some kind of agenda?"
She advanced on Lucia step by step, venom laced through her words.
"Don't tell me you're planning to kill another person, like last time? You think your family will cover for you again?"
"—!"
In an instant, the light in Lucia's eyes changed. What radiated off her was bloodlust. The air between the two women turned razor-edged.
Mana.
Something stirred outside—
—KWAAAAAAAANG!
The wall blew apart in a massive explosion. I threw up a barrier around us—but too late.
"…!"
Veronica was swept away in the collapse. Lucia and I, shielded by my barrier, tumbled down the stairwell and came to rest trapped on the flat landing between floors. The staircases up to the third and down to the fourth were both buried under rubble.
Is she okay?
Veronica lay unconscious on the floor. Sure, she was hostile to Lucia, but letting her just die would be going too far. I checked her condition.
[…Looks like she's just briefly knocked out.]
I relayed that to Lucia, and she suddenly beamed at me.
"I knew it. You really are my Master."
[Huh?]
Was she talking about how I'd thrown up the shield at the last second? Fair, I suppose—without it, she might have been buried under there…
"…So this is what you do when the stealth run gets blown. Noted."
…What?
"Escalating the incident's scale to cover it entirely. That never even occurred to me."
And then it clicked. The words I'd spoken just minutes ago:
If anything appears that tries to stand in your way, I'll clear it out of the path.
Lucia continued, her expression as composed as ever.
"The timing of your barrier, right after Veronica got swallowed by the debris, was impressive. You'd calculated the exact moment when only I would come out unharmed, hadn't you?"
…She had badly, catastrophically misunderstood something.