Who Could Possibly Handle Her
Ah. Maybe I should've just taken her up on postponing the presentation to next year for free.
Faced with the mountain of measurement data piled before me, I let out a helpless sigh. I hadn't exactly been a stellar student in my past life either. Trying to grind out both the paper and the presentation prep from absolute scratch in such a short time was enough to make me lose my mind.
The research itself was essentially finished. All that remained was to package the data into something presentable and draw a conclusion… except the sheer volume of labor required was staggering. And it wasn't even simple busywork—it drained focus, leaving both body and mind utterly spent.
Part of me wanted to dump the whole mess on Yulia… but I couldn't saddle a kid who was already buried in her own studies with something like this. This was my research. It was only right that I handle it. If things truly got desperate for time later, that would be the moment to call for help.
But hang on… once this is finished, it might not even fill a single page…?
I paused mid-thought, trying to picture the final version of the paper. For all the grandiose research goals about unveiling the principles and systems of black magic—a previously unknown world—the actual mechanism, once uncovered, had turned out to be surprisingly simple. In the end, there wasn't all that much that needed spelling out in the body of the paper.
Of course, if I wanted to, I could pad the introduction, the table of contents, and every other section with flowery rhetoric until the thing stretched out. But that didn't suit my personality in the slightest, and with my lack of writing talent it would only look shoddier the longer it got.
One page. Two at most…
Was a paper allowed to be this short? Especially one that was the first to properly define black magic? Screw it. I wasn't a scholar to begin with. I'd just claim the initial achievement and call it a day. Once I published the paper, other geniuses would flesh it out and reinforce the theory of black magic on their own—using the neodymium I'd already sold them at an outrageous markup, of course.
Just thinking about the money made me start salivating.
"Looks like the sun's coming up."
Stepping outside, I found the dark sky already tinged with red. I'd pulled an all-nighter without realizing it. The lab had no windows to let light through, so I'd completely lost track of time.
"Silvia, you idiot…"
Something was sprawled out in the garden, looking like an obstacle. Drawing closer, I found Silvia herself—sword still gripped in her hand, lying spread-eagle and sound asleep. She must have swung her blade through the entire night until exhaustion finally claimed her.
Her hand was tightly bound with cloth. Probably to keep her from accidentally unclenching her fist, dropping the sword, and having it fly back to me. Not that it mattered—I was awake all night anyway. If she lost the sword she could just come find me and draw it again. She must have done it so she wouldn't interrupt me mid-work.
"What a stubborn fool…"
I untied the cloth from her hand and gently opened her fist. With a soft whoosh, the longsword dissolved into a swarm of light and was absorbed back into me. Sleeping on the bare ground like that seemed like a good way to catch a cold, but the idea of someone as hardy as Silvia catching anything was almost unimaginable. So I fetched a pillow from the bedroom and tossed it over. Still unconscious, she instinctively nestled her head against it.
I was just turning away with a fond smile when—
"Mmm… Master… not there… ah… nn…"
"…"
furrows her brow, demanding to know what the hell she just overheard.
A sultry, melting voice I never in a million years expected to hear from Silvia's mouth froze me solid. She twisted and writhed in her sleep, rubbing her legs together as she rolled over—and planted her nose straight into my pillow. Then her eyes slowly fluttered open.
"Sniff… haah. Snnniff… haah. Snnnniff… mm… huh… ah…?"
She was still buried in my pillow, taking deep, greedy breaths when our eyes met. Her sleepy gaze snapped wide in an instant, every trace of drowsiness vanishing. Her pupils darted left and right as she pieced the situation together—then her entire face flushed crimson in a heartbeat.
"D-Did you hear that!?"
"Hear what?"
"Phew. So it was just sleep-talking… A-Ah, nothing. It's nothing…"
"I did hear the sultry little moans while you kept calling for Master, but I didn't catch anything el—"
"AAAAAAAH!!!"
She scrambled up like a ghost clawing its way out of a well, long hair flying wildly, and lunged at me. In a flash she had my arms and legs pinned and clamped a hand over my mouth. Only then did she carefully remove it.
"C-Could you please pretend you didn't hear any of that…?"
"For free?"
"Th-Then… what would you have me do…?"
"…"
Her face flushed even redder as she averted her eyes. From the look of her, she was quietly hoping for something. Leave it to a hardcore masochist… This was a woman who got excited over pay cuts. What kind of punishment was I even supposed to give her?
My vision went dark. It felt like standing before an impossibly high wall I could never hope to climb.
"First, get off me so we can talk."
"Ah! Yes! B-But about just now! It wasn't anything weird, I swear! You appeared in my dream, Master, and you kept… Ah! Right! Pay cut! You were docking my pay so I was sleep-talking about how I couldn't—!"
"The excuses are getting longer. If it truly wasn't anything strange, why bother asking me to pretend I didn't hear it?"
"…Ah."
Her mouth snapped shut. She let out a defeated little sound and froze on the spot. That was as far as the excuses went, apparently. She'd worked hard squeezing them out, at least.
"I understand. You're at that age—perfectly natural to have the occasional dream like that. All I can say is make sure you take care of those urges regularly."
"A-Auh… I-It's not like that, I swear…"
"Enough of that. What came of training so hard you passed out on the ground?"
"Ah, yes. I attempted to recreate the phenomenon that occurred during the battle with Lord Reinhardt, swinging my sword under various conditions. I was able to trigger the same effect multiple times."
"You managed to cut the past multiple times…?"
"Yes. But I doubt it is the result you were hoping for, Master. Rather than something I can control at will, the conclusion I reached is that it is completely random… which is rather absurd."
"…?"
Silvia hung her head, murmuring the report with obvious shame. She possessed the ability to cut the past—yet not only could she not control it of her own will, it was completely random? What in the world…?
"Random? What do you mean by that?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. I swung the sword approximately thirty thousand times, varying stance, breathing, direction, and so on. The blade interfered with the past on exactly five occasions. And across those five instances, I could find no pattern whatsoever."
"…"
Silvia's dismal report left me speechless. Five times out of thirty thousand. The odds were so abysmal that expecting it to trigger randomly mid-combat was pure fantasy. For all practical purposes, it was unusable. I'd gotten my hopes up thinking we might actually be able to weaponize it. The disappointment hit hard. Silvia looked just as crushed.
What the hell kind of useless ability is this?
Unlike reality, every single element in a game is foreshadowing. So the Past-Cutting Sword shouldn't be a meaningless ability either… but I had absolutely no idea how anyone was supposed to make use of something that activated completely at random with such an absurdly low probability.
Or maybe… it really is just a meaningless ability…
The moment that thought struck me, I remembered that this game was absolute garbage—worse than trash. Only in a masterpiece does every element serve as foreshadowing that eventually pays off. A dumpster fire like this one left Chekhov's guns lying around all the time and just insisted they were MacGuffins. I'd overestimated the original far too much. As if a game I gave a single point to could ever be a masterpiece.
With that in mind, it was almost easy to accept.
"It seems utilizing it in combat will be impossible after all…"
"There may still be conditions you haven't discovered yet. Keep training and investigating. And now that we know the sword cuts the past roughly five times in thirty thousand swings, be careful not to injure yourself."
"Of course I'll be careful… Just how much of an idiot do you take me for, warning me about something like that…"
She puffed out her cheeks, sulking for all she was worth. How much of an idiot did I take her for…? One look at her usual behavior would answer that question. I shook my head and turned to leave.
"As for the silence fee I mentioned earlier—I'll settle for one errand."
"Pardon? What sort of… errand…?"
"…Not that kind of errand, so wipe that hopeful look off your face."
"H-Hopeful!? When did I ever—!"
"Just wash that filthy pillow thoroughly and return it to my room. That's the only errand."
"Is my hair really that dirty…?"
"…You were rolling around on the garden dirt. Of course it's filthy."
"Ah."
Silvia's face flushed one more shade redder. The embarrassment must have finally hit critical mass—she simply crumpled and sank to the ground on the spot.
Who else but me could possibly handle this hopelessly lewd fool…
Heavy sighs kept escaping me without end.