Witness
Dropping into a sit.
Sitting there in a blank daze, staring into empty air.
That was what Leon Lauderdale showed me the moment he arrived at the training grounds.
What in the world is he trying to do.
It was the weekend, yet the Academy training grounds still held a fair number of students from the Swordsmanship Department. Some were sparring among themselves; others were taking instruction from their seniors. Not one of them looked at Leon as if his behavior were strange. They must already have witnessed him like this more than once.
Amid that indifferent response, Leon simply sat. Now and then he stretched his legs out as if uncomfortable and resettled himself; when his eyes met mine he smiled with a cringing servility and bobbed his head, then abruptly glared.
"You'll keep your promise?"
"…"
Just then the old professor of the Swordsmanship Department—come looking for me though I had never called him—let out a sigh at my side.
"He's like that every single day. Truly, not one day missed."
Professor Brennan. In the original, he had been the ally who actively helped the protagonist's party. I wanted to hear what he would say, so I kept silent.
"Leon spends every lecture in a daze. And… only after the day's duties are over does he come alone to the training grounds and repeat that. He sits there like that, and only toward evening does he start swinging a sword by himself. Past midnight. On and on."
Meaning that when the sun rose, he went back to being vacant.
"The skill itself is… yes, outstanding. Against our top student. To be precise, since the boy became like this, there are times he spars with the friend who took the top rank back and wins—and times he is pushed back, helpless, by a junior of lesser ability."
"You don't sound as if you merely mean his form swings wildly."
"I can't get a hold of him. Leon. …I simply can't."
The dose my company gave Leon was two servings a day.
From the look of it, he swallowed one the moment the sun went down and began his training. Judging by what he had said to me earlier, he seemed to believe that if his skill piled up, he could receive still more of the drug for free.
Drunk on it, he would swing and swing inside a world that belonged only to him, and when the drug wore off after a few hours he would swallow the remaining dose.
And he's repeated that for more than three months.
He was certainly no ordinary man.
I could also tell what kind of drug user Leon was. He did not seem to be the dependent addict who took it because, without the drug, he had no way to go on living. By day he was merely vacant, and yet he still sat through lectures, sat his exams, and kept up an ordinary life.
It was only that the feeling of being high was so good, and a reason to live so hard to find outside those hours, that he craved the drug. Closer to the indulgent type. That sort was not easy to cut off. In some sense, it was harder.
Which left the question of what to do with him from here. Leave him in the Imperial Capital and he would inevitably come all the way to Thames Palace begging for drugs, so perhaps…
"Sir Allan."
Professor Brennan's low voice reached me.
"Why did you call for me?"
"I know you're a man bound for high places, but you were once someone I taught with my own hands, so I'll speak freely. That's all right?"
"Of course."
"…I have connections in the army, and I've heard things. They say a mage who might have been the greatest on the continent—an elf, no less than a Great Elder of Medellin—forgot his formulae, flailed about, and died on a sword."
"…"
Professor Brennan hardened his expression, watching my face even as he did, like a man determined to say what had to be said. A once-promising student reduced to this—he had reason enough to feel bitter.
It had not been I who first put Leon on the drug, but Anais's health syrup; and what Leon took now was not heroin, but morphine and ephedrine. I did not quibble. It was certain enough that I was the one who had set this in motion.
At that moment Leon suddenly kicked himself upright.
"You're nothing but opium, aren't you?"
With a fluid motion he drew his sword and settled into a ready stance. There was no one in front of him. Professor Brennan's face grew darker still.
"Of course the elves were our enemies… no. That isn't what I meant to say. But was it necessary to feed heroin even to a precious talent like Leon? Those things he keeps muttering—Dreamy and Thumpy—might that be the heroin? Mixing them and taking them together is what they call heroin, isn't it?"
"It isn't."
"If it isn't heroin, a person couldn't end up like that…!"
"…"
"There's even… people whispering that because young Leon was close with Her Highness Anais, Her Highness Siena ruined him on purpose. I take it for a conspiracy theory, but talk like that doesn't arise from nothing. Don't take it amiss."
So that kind of talk was circulating even among the professors. It sounded plausible—all the more so, considering the image of Siena, my liege in name.
Once the words were out, Professor Brennan himself flinched, as if he judged them excessively irreverent, and searched my expression. I had no thought of retaliation. I did intend to use the opening to ask him to look after Leon.
"Allan. No—Sir Allan. My intention is…"
"Pay it no mind. There's no need to worry, Professor."
"…Thank you."
Even now, Leon was still locked in a confrontation with someone.
I can't keep him at the Academy anyway.
Then perhaps I ought to induce him to withdraw, and settle him somewhere demon worshippers were likely to appear. They were not a group that showed themselves and operated in the open. Still, if events followed the original, they would begin their work in earnest in Repsdow, a city in the east of the Empire, the moment the Academy's winter break began. There was no guarantee things would follow the original, but as a matter of insurance, putting him there would be better than not.
It would not matter if he proved of no help.
At the very least, better than leaving him in the Imperial Capital.
With that decided, I simply left the training grounds. Barring some upheaval, I would not see Leon again.
I felt nothing so sharp as a sense of crisis. I had lost one genius, but the Empire stood firm. Having avoided war with the elves and preserved the nation's strength, the events to follow ought to be a little easier to meet. For the sake of my own safety, I was willing to lend my strength as well.
Send him far away, and forget him cleanly.
That was my decision.
But the upheaval broke sooner than I had thought.
The Academy headmaster had all but compelled me to take tea with him, and after that perfunctory interview I was about to leave the grounds when—
"Sir Allaaaan—!!"
Professor Brennan came running like a madman and caught hold of me. Eyes wide. A face twisted, as if he had seen something no one ought to see.
When I asked what was the matter, he pointed at the training-hall building instead of answering.
"What."
"You'll know when you see it. When you see it!"
In the end I was dragged back to the training grounds by force. The moment I arrived, I had to admit the old professor's fuss was not for nothing.
The grounds, deserted only a little while before, were now packed with a crowd. It was not only students of the Swordsmanship Department who had gathered; people I took for professors and staff were staring at the same place with startled faces. Their number was several hundred at the least.
Every one of them was looking at a single person.
Leon Lauderdale.
"I'm not lying. Why won't you believe me, why."
Eyes bulging, he was grilling some student who had nothing to do with it. But no one sneered. Because of the vivid aura wavering along the sword in his hand—a white aura, rocking unsteadily, and yet given form so clearly that the naked eye could make it out without effort.
What that meant was one thing only.
"Ha."
Leon had not been lying.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the hall.
In any normal circumstance, the whole Academy ought to have been swept up in the air of a festival. Festival might not even have been word enough. This was the moment a genius was born who had stepped into the realm of Master while still a student. The Swordsmanship faculty could expect honors across the board, and a fat subsidy from the Ministry of Education besides.
But the faces of those watching Leon were anything but bright.
"It's real…? He's just sprawled out there."
"How many times do I have to say it. I saw him use an Aura Blade just now. He was thrashing, screaming to bring President Allan right away, and he nearly went berserk—the professors held him back, and he barely restrained himself."
"Before graduation, how… how old was Deputy Commander Grant?"
"Then why is the mood like this?"
Only murmurs of that sort rose, now and then.
Ordinarily this would be a moment to rejoice without a second thought.
These people knew Leon too well, and so they seemed to recoil instead. In his first year, a student who padded out the bottom of the rankings; in the first half of his second, a genius who had suddenly distinguished himself; and now, an addict begging for Dreamy. Everyone appeared to understand that when the one at the center of antics like these reached the realm of the superhuman, it was not a moment for uncomplicated congratulations.
Honestly… I was just as stunned.
I thought it was a lie, to get the drugs.
I could not bring myself to believe it, but the scene I had just witnessed was not about to go anywhere. A manifested aura, wavering back into a heat-haze; then, at the sight of me, a no, no, and the aura blazing brilliant again. Leon had repeated that until exhaustion dropped him. Now he lay sprawled there, wearing an expression of deep satisfaction.
Like it or not, Leon was about to be remade into a figure who drew the attention of the state itself.
Cutting him off now… would be difficult.
A Master was, of course, superhuman. Short of a full remaking of bone and flesh—but once a man set foot in the realm, the body was said to strengthen by degrees. Looking at Marcella, a Master long settled in that realm, the change did not seem to reach as far as the limbic system. Even so, he could hardly be compared with an ordinary person.
It was still an ambiguous business, hard to size up. I was turning it over and over when Leon, as if he had gathered himself, pointed straight at me.
And spoke, slowly.
"I got this far because of the drugs, so give me more. Thumpy… ephedrine and morphine, you have to give me more. I didn't get this far without the drugs. I couldn't have. They only mean anything if I take them together, so you're going to have that ugly old man give me more. You have to."
Even now, all he sought was the drug.
At first I laughed it off, conscious of the people around us. Soon a subtle wrongness settled in. The eyes of everyone at the Academy had begun to turn my way—the old professor who had criticized me in a roundabout fashion, the headmaster who had come running in haste, the youthful students of the Swordsmanship Department. Every one of them.
"…Sir Allan. By any chance."
Hundreds of people, looking not at the one who had achieved something enormous, but at me.
It was not hard to guess what they were thinking.