The Crazed Growth Bird
“Ah…”
At the look of contempt on Lucia's face, the herb lover sank to the floor.
Did that shock her?
Honestly, Lucia had been a little scary just now. That expression of pure, genuine disgust.
If I were ever on the receiving end of that from Lucia… I'd probably want to die, honestly.
“….”
Lucia watched her for a moment, then simply turned and walked the other way.
She'll be okay, right?
Wanting to check on her condition, I worked my little sparrow legs as hard as they would go. Once I turned around, I could see the herb lover kneeling on the ground, head bowed, shoulders still trembling.
Is she crying?
It was her own karma, but I felt a little sorry for her anyway.
At any rate, I'd assumed this meant she was giving up on the elixirs for good—
“Hee, hehe…”
—until I caught sight of her face, brimming with euphoria.
Insane.
She'd transmuted being scorned by Lucia herself into pure joy. This woman was a madwoman of terrifying attainment.
So that's why her affection rating was so hard to raise.
Contempt her to her face, the way Lucia just did?
When I played the original game, there wasn't even an option like that. Probably because Chloe's heart was too kind for it.
“Master.”
I was still mulling that over when Lucia spoke quietly.
[Hmm?]
Lucia's expression was impossibly calm.
“I felt nothing toward that girl. I just figured it would be better to grant her request quickly, so I made that face. That's all.”
[…Is that so?]
“Yes. If she keeps coming to me with requests, that would be a problem.”
For an act, it had an oddly convincing realism to it, but I decided to let it go. The truth was Lucia's alone to keep.
We trained a while longer that day before heading back to the dormitory.
The herb lover was actually quite a famous figure.
The sole disciple of the empire's one and only elixirist. And with her master having died recently, she had now inherited the title of the empire's only elixirist.
The imperial family and every high-ranking noble you could name had courted her, but she'd come to the Academy declaring that she wished to pursue learning.
Looks more like a pursuit of pleasure than learning, but.
Anyway.
The next day arrived, and after spending our morning much like any other, before we knew it, lunchtime was upon us.
The cafeteria was packed with people. Lucia sat alone at a table built for ten.
Nothing out of the ordinary—except the students around us began to murmur.
“What's she doing? Isn't that the special-admissions girl?”
“No way. Is she actually trying to sit with her?”
Screeech.
Someone pulled out the chair beside Lucia. I wondered what kind of daredevil this could be—
“Hello, Lady Lucia!”
—and there was the herb lover, beaming brightly.
“Lady Lucia! Um, may I sit next to you?”
“No.”
“O-oh, of course…!”
Thankfully, she seemed to comply obediently—
“Then I'll sit across from you. Hehe.”
—by taking the seat directly opposite Lucia instead.
“Um, what do you usually do all day, Lady Lucia…? I heard you train an incredible amount—don't tell me you spend the entire day studying?”
“….”
Lucia ignored her entirely and soldiered on with her meal.
No, to be precise, she wasn't exactly ignoring her. Her eating speed had suddenly picked up. She was clearly aware of the girl, all right.
“Mmm… so you're a fast eater, Lady Lucia? I eat terribly slowly, so I'm always so envious of people who eat quickly…”
The herb lover carried the conversation entirely on her own. Even while being ignored, she cycled through one vivid expression after another. She had it bad for Lucia, apparently.
In the original, Chloe gets the silent treatment whenever she tries to talk to her.
It felt like the world had been flipped on its head—something about it was deeply strange.
“Wow… the special-admissions girl is actually talking to her like that?”
“That's Lucia. Maybe they fought and she made her submit?”
The reactions around us matched my own. The herb lover acting like that?
Not something you see often.
It might seem trivial, just eating together—but she wasn't usually that kind of person at all.
“…Um, Ray…!”
A girl with a brown ponytail addressed the herb lover.
“C-could I join you too…?”
“Hm?”
The warmth drained from the herb lover Ray's eyes in an instant.
“…I don't really care.”
The face that had been beaming moments ago had gone completely blank.
“Ah… s-sorry. I must have interrupted something.”
“No, you didn't interrupt anything. Sit if you want. Lady Lucia's about to finish anyway, and I'm leaving soon too.”
This was who Ray actually was. Unemotional. Expressionless.
Except, unlike Lucia, she'd equipped herself with a fairly gentle way of speaking.
“I mean, it's true I don't want to eat with you. But it's not like I hate it that much.”
…Gentle?
Well, she does answer you, at least.
Had the other party been Lucia, a slap would have already landed.
Anyway.
While the brown-ponytailed girl and Ray traded words, Lucia finished her meal.
Screeech.
She rose from her seat, returned her dishes, and hurried off.
“Ah! Lady Lucia! Let's go together!”
The herb lover trotted along behind her, and eventually the stalking carried them all the way to a secluded walking path.
Once Lucia confirmed no one was around, she spoke.
“…Ray, was it?”
“Yes! Thank you for remembering my name.”
“What do you want? You clearly have an agenda.”
Lucia was showing remarkably good will. Her expression was as calm as ever, of course—but the mere fact that Lucia was conversing with her was an enormous favor in itself.
“Oh… you caught me?”
Ray gave an awkward smile and continued.
“It's about repaying you for yesterday. The thing is… it's going to take a while before I can give you the elixirs…”
“….”
Lucia fell silent. She apparently had no idea what the girl meant.
I hadn't understood at first either, but—
Oh, is she talking about that?
I remembered what Ray had babbled while begging to be cursed at.
—I-I'm confident in making elixirs, so it'll definitely be useful to you, Lady Lucia.
Don't tell me that meant, curse me and I'll make you elixirs?
Is she out of her mind?
Even the cheapest elixir was worth tens of millions of won in cash. Just how enslaved to her desires did you have to be to hand over something that precious?
“Actually, I meant to make them for you right away, but I got hurt yesterday, and when I went home, my maid put me under house arrest. Uuu…”
“…Hurt?”
Lucia hadn't cared what Ray said, but at the word hurt, she finally opened her mouth.
“Yes. I just went straight home yesterday, but it seems I got wounded somehow without realizing it.”
She rolled up her right sleeve.
A scar—deeply gouged as if by a bear's claws—covered her arm.
She didn't notice this?
Did she have some kind of pain-nullification magic on? Not noticing that defied all reason.
Before I could even get a word of objection in, she went on.
“Anyway. I won't be able to make the elixirs after all. I'm truly sorry, Lady Lucia…”
She suddenly drooped, looking dejected.
…Then I'll just go find the ingredients myself.
That was the standard play in the original game.
[Lucia. Can you ask her something for me?]
I sent the telepathy with full confidence.
Evening, after every class had ended.
I flew straight to the forest.
My goal: to hunt down the ingredients for the recipe the herb lover had described. Naturally, I was searching alone. Lucia was busy preparing for exams.
Besides—
I'm faster on my own anyway.
That was the only way I could dart through the air at full speed while combing the terrain.
Flap, flap.
A light beat of my wings lifted me into the air, and the forest spread out beneath me in full view. Countless trees and thickets of undergrowth.
…I can find them, right?
Herbs don't radiate mana. Tracking them by mana signature was impossible. And searching by sight was a lost cause—they were simply too small to spot.
A blessing would be nice right about now.
Treasure hunters. The principle behind it was complicated, but the long and short of it was that having one made finding herbs easy. That was how Chloe and the herb lover located them without trouble.
Whereas for an untouchable pariah like me, blessing-less and cursed, herb hunting came down to pure luck.
But who am I?
The Sword Saint Grand Magic Bird.
Herbs were nothing I couldn't handle.
Let's finish this and get home.
Whooooosh!
With that mindset, I kicked off into high-speed flight—and hours blurred past until dawn broke.
“Chirp.”
Herbs found: zero.
The Sword Saint Grand Magic Bird was useless.
At this rate, I was no better than a feral sparrow on the street.
…No. This is a matter of location.
Being lumped in with a common street sparrow? That much I refused to accept. It was already dawn, but I swore I would find these herbs if I had to stay up the whole night doing it.
Wheeeew!
I tore across the forest at top speed. How long had I been flying?
Huh?
I spotted something odd.
The cave beneath the cliff—where I'd plundered the hidden piece from the elf. Its entrance was sealed.
At a glance, it looked like any ordinary cliff face.
Hmm.
I could smell the hidden piece.
Pop.
I fired off a mana bullet immediately, and it dissolved just before touching the wall.
…Mm.
A memory from before surfaced. The sealed room I'd been trapped in before meeting the elf—the area around the door-opening button had been exactly like this.
Back then, I went inside and just pressed it.
Unfortunately, this was no door. The message was clear: break it down.
Bird Strike would do the job, but—
Nuclear fusion, initiate.
I wanted to break it with a little more style, so I gathered the hydrogen scattered around the area and cast my alchemy magic.
KABOOOOOM!
A violent explosion tore through the wall, blasting it wide open. The blast radius was only a few meters, but I was satisfied. Demolishing a wall with nuclear fusion—the very thought of it was delightful.
Anyway.
I surveyed the area beyond the shattered wall. A purple portal, sitting at the center of a cylindrical tunnel bored into the rock.
It was only supposed to open once. So why was it still here?
As the question deepened—
I'll know once I go in.
The Sword Saint Grand Magic Bird knew no fear. I flung myself at the portal without hesitation.
Whuumm.
I looked around. An ordinary forest, thick with grass.
No fog?
Then this wasn't the place where the elf had been. And given the extraordinarily high mana density, this wasn't Academy grounds either.
Must be a hidden area nobody found in the original game.
I steadied my racing heart and walked forward slowly. There was an exit portal behind me, after all. The plan was to bolt the moment anything felt off—
Huh?
I found one of the very herbs I'd been hunting all night.
It wasn't even hidden. It just sat there, smack in the middle of the path, bold as brass.
And as I ranged around the area, more herbs turned up one after another. I stowed everything that looked remotely important into my subspace, and by the time the count of herbs found had climbed into the triple digits—
I was standing before a tower.
Welcome to the Tower of Time.
Time remaining: 7 days.
Will you enter? (Max. 2 people)
A blue window bearing that message floated before my eyes.
…It's showing up NOW?
The Tower of Time. Of all the growth events original-game Chloe experienced, it was fair to call this the single most important one.
And in my current situation, no less?
There were roughly two weeks left until the exams. But entering the Tower of Time froze the outside world for a full seven days. Within that window, you climbed a ten-floor tower, accumulating nonstop real-combat experience—and clearing it came with a hefty reward on top. It was a flatly broken event.
On its own, that much already guaranteed enormous growth. But—
Elixirs.
In the original, the Tower of Time appeared at the start of second year. Chloe would have, at best, one or two elixirs—usually she climbed the tower with not a single one.
All because of the herb lover's affection rating.
Lucia's, by contrast, was already maxed out. And those hard-to-find elixir ingredients? Herbs were lying around everywhere near here. Normally, by second year, players either no longer needed herbs or had so many they were handing them out for free.
But right now, I'm a first-year, aren't I?
Mana sensitivity, control, computational power…
Climbing the tower with an entire arsenal of elixirs equipped? In first year?
Chloe, you'll have no elixirs at all.
The Academy's first exam.
I was going to steamroll it.