Nothing Much, But How About Some Mana Stones?
"I don't have much to offer — nothing worth bragging about — but how about some mana stones?"
Linea Judith trailed Ian Darkest like a shadow the moment he left the Academy.
At a safe distance, of course.
She could not afford to be caught following him. The mere thought that even watching him from afar might one day be forbidden filled her with a quiet, gnawing dread.
Seorigol
A weathered signpost looked ready to crumble at any moment. Linea could not bring herself to step inside the fief. Instead, she slipped into the nearby woods.
She had grown so familiar with the place that she already had her favorites: a spot with a clear view of Ian's house, another where she could watch people come and go, and quiet hollows where she could rest or close her eyes for a while.
So she prowled the edges of the territory, standing guard against any danger that might befall him — a catastrophically powerful monster, for instance, or something even more perilous: the approach of a beautiful woman. It was all she could do.
She was circling him in that restless way when it happened.
Ian suddenly walked out beyond Seorigol's borders. A moment later, his presence vanished as cleanly as a mirage.
"…!"
Linea panicked. She drew up her mana and scoured the surroundings, but not a trace of him remained anywhere — as if he had never existed at all.
W-what if I lose him again…? What if I lose him all over again?
Old trauma seized her by the ankle. Her heart began to hammer with dread, and cold sweat slid down her spine.
Six hours.
It had already been more than six hours since he disappeared. Anxiety curdled into terror, and she was teetering on the edge of full panic when —
Faintly, so faintly, Ian's presence flickered back into reach.
It was like a dying ember catching flame again — a single thread of hope pulled from despair.
Linea did not hesitate. She ran straight toward the source of that presence, never once forgetting to erase every trace of her own.
Carefully. Silently.
Which was why she arrived a little too late.
She could only watch, helpless, as the ground gave way beneath his feet and he plummeted into the pit below.
"No!"
On pure instinct, Linea stopped time.
In that frozen sliver of the world, she alone could move freely.
The place he had fallen into was a strange cavern studded with mana stones that glowed a soft blue — but none of that registered. Her vision held nothing except Ian, lying where he had fallen.
"A-are you okay? Ian?"
Blood was spattered across the ground. With trembling hands, Linea checked him over — whether he had hit his head, whether his neck was broken, whether his back was all right, whether any joints had dislocated.
She pressed and smoothed her palms over him as gently as if she were handling fragile glasswork.
Thankfully, aside from a few scrapes and a little bleeding here and there, he did not seem seriously hurt. Only after she had checked even beneath his clothes did she finally let out a breath of relief.
"Huh…?"
Then it hit her.
She was touching Ian's bare skin as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The warmth of his body. The firm feel of muscle. And… his scent.
Linea's face flooded scarlet in an instant.
But her hands kept drifting slowly over him all the same. Whether she was still examining his wounds or simply craving the feel of him, even she could not have said.
Her fingertips traveled down his solid torso, past his abs, drifting lower toward his hips — and that was when something sticky met her touch.
Blood, seeping from his side.
Linea snapped back to herself and began healing the wound with a localized time-reversal spell.
Using temporal magic for something as mundane as first aid would have made any other mage of the Tower faint from the sheer extravagance and inefficiency of it. But for Ian Darkest, it was more than worth it.
For him, she would give everything and still not count it a loss.
"Cough, cough… Damn it. What kind of rotten luck is this?"
Sprawled at the bottom of the pit, I hacked and brushed the dirt from my clothes. I had used Hardening, but the sudden fall still hit hard.
A bluish glow filled every direction. At first it was so bright I could barely see.
When I finally got my bearings and looked around, I doubted my own eyes.
"…Mana stones?"
The walls, the floor, even the ceiling — large and small blue mana stones were set into them like jewels. The very mana stone mine Serin had searched so desperately for. And not just any deposit: an open-pit vein of staggering scale.
My mind went blank for a second. Uncontrollable excitement and joy surged up through me.
"First things first… stop the bleeding."
I forced the thrill down and tore a strip from my clothes to press against the wound in my side. And then —
"Huh?"
For the barest instant, a strange wrongness brushed over me.
"The bleeding… stopped?"
Miraculously, the blood that had been pouring freely a moment ago had vanished without a trace. Even the torn skin and the scrapes elsewhere on my body had smoothed back to normal.
"What the hell? Did I pick up some recovery ability I don't know about?"
I tilted my head — and somehow the air around me seemed to carry a faint, pleasant fragrance.
Did mana stones always smell this sweet and soft? And clinging to the collar of my fallen coat was a single strand of pink hair I had never seen before.
Not animal fur. Definitely human hair.
…Must be my imagination.
I was still turning the inexplicable over in my mind when a frantic voice shouted down from above.
"Iaaaan! Are you okay-nyang?! Are you alive down there-nyang?!"
Anya. She was stamping her feet at the rim of the pit, beside herself with worry.
"I'm fi—…ne?"
Before I could even finish answering, someone leapt straight down into the hole.
"Kyaaaaah!"
Aurora. She hit the ground in a cloud of dirt, landing hard on her backside and tumbling across the floor.
"Miss Aurora? Are you all right?"
"I-I'm fine… More importantly… whoa…"
Had she jumped down out of pure concern for me?
Unexpectedly loyal of her. But what she did next blew my expectations clean out of the water.
Aurora forgot she had even fallen. Her eyes lit up like a madwoman's as she stared at the mana stones all around us.
The usual hesitant stammer vanished. Fast, passionate words poured out of her without pause.
"Th-this is…! The purity looks like at least thirty-five percent or higher! The particle uniformity is excellent, and the mana conductivity is top-tier! Th-these are… these are truly exceptional mana stones! The kind you might see once in a lifetime, if you're lucky!"
Right. She was a mage.
In the ghost stories she had always come off clumsy and timid in ordinary moments, but the second magic entered the picture, a real professional streak showed through.
Just thinking about it made my mouth water.
If I could recruit specialized talent like this into the fief, it would be no small gain. Less about her current ability and more about her growth potential — exactly the kind of hero Seorigol needed.
Aurora could not contain herself. Expert knowledge about mana stones spilled from her in an unbroken torrent.
"The current trend in mana stone refining is impurity removal via flotation, but I believe a more systematic approach is possible! If you pulverize the stones extremely fine before flotation, then run them through multiple stages of micro-filtration to push the purity to its absolute limit — and as for the mana loss that occurs during that process…"
Eyes blazing, mid-tirade, she suddenly seized me by the shoulders.
"I-Ian! No — Lord Ian!"
What the — she nearly gave me a heart attack.
"I heard you're the lord of this place! Please… please let me research these mana stones! I don't want anything else! If you just give me the chance to study them, I swear I will extract the finest, highest-grade mana stones on the continent and offer them to you! Please? I'm begging you!"
Her eyes were almost pleading.
Inside, I was cheering.
This felt like a two-for-one deal that had rolled in with the whole damn vine still attached.
A mana stone mine — and an expert to go with it!
Meanwhile, another figure was on the road to Seorigol.
His name was Albert — longtime escort knight and devoted retainer to Roella Amelia. He had dedicated his entire life to the Amelia family and to Lady Roella, and would not have begrudged even his own life if it meant serving her.
At present, he was bound for Seorigol to carry out one of Lady Roella's more baffling orders.
Deliver several of the family's finest mana stones to the lord of some obscure fief called Seorigol — one Ian Darkest.
But why…?
Albert swallowed the question. By everything he had dug up, Seorigol was a barren wasteland with nothing to its name. Why send such precious stones — stones that alone would fetch tens of millions of rené — as a gift to some nameless lord of a place like that was beyond him.
Surely… Lady Roella hasn't developed romantic feelings for this Ian fellow…?
He shook his head hard.
Impossible, he told himself — and yet, if it turned out to be true, he had no intention of leaving Ian Darkest alone. Albert had lived with his eyes fixed on Lady Roella alone, and he would never welcome another man drawing near her side.
With that tangled knot of feelings, he arrived at Seorigol.
What met Albert's eyes was even shabbier and more pitiful than the reports had suggested. The so-called lord's office was a ramshackle hut that looked ready to collapse, and the interior was thick with dust and cobwebs.
This is supposed to be an office? I'm speechless.
Perhaps Lady Roella had simply wanted to offer charity to this beggar of a fief.
Pity, is it. What a wretched, pitiable man.
The thought softened Albert's expression a little. Forcing a generous smile, he lifted the box of mana stones from the carriage and held it out to Ian.
"Am I addressing Lord Ian Darkest? By order of Lady Roella Amelia, I have brought a small gift."
Go on, then. Shed a tear of gratitude. I'll watch every second of you being overwhelmed by this precious gift.
That was what Albert expected as he looked at Ian. Instead, the reaction threw him completely off balance.
There was no rapture or joy on Ian's face — only a faintly awkward discomfort.
"Ah… a gift of mana stones, I see…"
Awkward…? Why on earth that look?
Ian scratched his head, hesitated a moment, then rummaged in his desk drawer and set something down on the table with a solid thunk.
"Well… you've brought me such a valuable gift, so I ought to offer something in return. Our fief doesn't really have any proper specialty goods. This is about all I've got… but if something like this is acceptable, would you take it?"
Albert's eyes went round.
What Ian had pushed forward was a chunk of supreme-grade mana stone — far larger, and glowing with a far more brilliant blue light, than anything Albert had brought.