My Master Is Still My Master
“What do you mean by preparing to leave?”
Evelyn’s voice was low.
It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t tearful, either. That made it worse. Had she raged or cried, I could have prepared the proper words and a suitable handkerchief as her master.
But Evelyn did neither. She simply held the record sheet from my desk and looked up at me.
— Record Note —
Once my independent operation stabilizes, I will leave the North.
That sentence sat in the center of the research lab like a shard of ice driven into the floor.
Karen cleared his throat very quietly from the doorway.
As befitted the commander of the Northern Knights, his eye for reading a battlefield was excellent. The problem was that this place had become a battlefield, and it was impossible to tell friend from foe.
“I’ll go check the outer perimeter.”
“Sir Karen.”
“As Sir Teore knows, the nights in the North are dangerous.”
“Right now my lab looks far more dangerous.”
Instead of answering, Karen simply bowed and withdrew. A loyal knight sometimes knew when to retreat and leave his superior on the field.
Once the door closed, the research lab fell silent.
Evelyn was still watching me.
“Master.”
“Yes, Grand Duchess.”
“Where were you planning to go without me?”
“It wasn’t that I intended to leave without you.”
“Then you were planning to take me with you?”
No. That would be even more dangerous.
Wandering the world with the sole daughter of the Northern Grand Duchy—a monster who had reached the 5-Circle in a single year—would not be a journey. It would be a walking calamity. Innkeepers in every village would exhaust their heating budgets, and the castle guards would spend their time frantically rewriting their wills.
I spoke as calmly as I could.
“Someday, Grand Duchess, you must learn to handle your mana without me.”
Evelyn’s pupils trembled, just a fraction.
“So you’re telling me to stand alone without Master.”
“That is a good thing.”
“And then Master leaves.”
Her tone was too neat. Beneath the excessively proper cadence, a deep, unreadable emotion coiled like a serpent.
Only then did I notice the white frost blooming along the edges of the laboratory windows. The heating artifact was working perfectly. The problem was not the temperature—it was Evelyn.
“Grand Duchess. My research lab is not a training ground.”
“I didn’t freeze it. I only made it a little cooler.”
“By Northern custom, there is little difference between the two.”
Evelyn did not smile.
Normally she would have pouted and grumbled, “Master can’t even understand Northern jokes.” But now she stood like someone who had momentarily forgotten how to smile.
I turned the record sheet over and covered it.
“My leaving and you being abandoned are not the same thing.”
“I never said I was being abandoned.”
“That’s how it sounded.”
“Master is sometimes too precise. I hate it.”
At last a faint expression crossed her face. It was too awkward to be called a smile—an expression painstakingly shaped to imitate laughter.
I rose from my chair.
“The more urgent issue right now is not the day I will eventually leave, but the people arriving here in three days.”
“The Magic Tower?”
“Yes. And they will not be bringing you a bouquet of congratulatory flowers.”
Evelyn’s hand tightened around her magic notebook.
“Aren’t they coming because I did well?”
“They are coming because you did well. But they are not coming to praise you.”
The Magic Tower was not an organization that admitted its mistakes. It was an organization that wrote “exception,” classified something as dangerous, and concluded that management was required. What they wanted was not Evelyn’s growth, but a justification to claim that their judgment from a year ago had been correct all along.
I unfolded the official document.
“The inspection targets are your growth records and my Correction Formula in its entirety.”
“Even your Correction Formula?”
“In their eyes, I am not a teacher who instructed a failure, but a man who independently proved a realm the Magic Tower could not interpret.”
“If it weren’t for me, Master wouldn’t have been dragged into this.”
“This is not your fault, Grand Duchess. The problem is the arrogance of those who judge the world through distorted eyes.”
“Then what will the Magic Tower call me?”
I fell silent for a moment. It would have been easy to soothe her with a lie. But easy words usually incur heavier debts later.
“It will likely be one of three labels. Abnormal excess mana entity. Independent surveillance subject. Or Potential Disaster.”
The tips of Evelyn’s fingers turned bone-white.
“Disaster?”
“Which is why we must ensure they cannot call you that.”
I folded the document again.
“Before they arrive with their labels, we will prepare our answer first.”
Evelyn followed my gaze as though clutching at straws, but the doubt in her eyes did not fully clear. Her stare kept drifting uneasily back to the record sheet on the desk.
Ludwig Arckenheim read the official document to the end from the head of the conference table.
His expression never changed as he read. Yet his fingers began to tap slowly against the armrest. The Northern Grand Duke’s way of restraining anger was usually quiet.
That made it all the more terrifying.
“So the Magic Tower is coming to judge my daughter.”
“The official term is inspection.”
“That word is even more unpleasant.”
Ludwig set the document down.
“Can we refuse?”
“If we refuse, they will be delighted. They’ll claim we closed our doors because we had something to hide.”
Karen spoke in a low voice.
“Then what should the Northern Knights prepare?”
“Do not draw your swords.”
At my answer, Karen’s eyebrows twitched.
“Even if the Magic Tower behaves rudely first?”
“That is precisely what the Magic Tower wants. If the North interferes with the inspection to conceal the Grand Duchess’s power, the rumor will give the Imperial Family and the Holy Kingdom every excuse to intervene.”
Ludwig looked at me.
“Then with what do you intend to stop them?”
“Records and judgments.”
“A very wizardly answer.”
“I apologize that it is less impressive than a sword.”
The corner of Ludwig’s mouth moved by a fraction. It was impossible to tell whether the expression was a smile or murderous intent.
I continued.
“There is only one question the Magic Tower wishes to ask: Is Evelyn Arckenheim dangerous?”
The air in the conference room grew cold.
Evelyn sat beside me, yet when her own name was spoken as if it belonged to someone else, her shoulders drew inward slightly.
“But the question we must create is different.”
“What is it?”
“Why did the Magic Tower’s basic formula misjudge Evelyn Arckenheim as a failure?”
Ludwig’s fingers stopped.
“You mean to change the subject of verification.”
“Yes. We must not prove the Grand Duchess’s power. The moment we do, they will label her not a genius but a disaster. What we show them this time is not firepower.”
I looked at Evelyn.
“It is control.”
“Then what should I do?”
Evelyn spoke cautiously. The voice reminded me of the one she had used a year ago at the Verification Ground. I did not like the sound of it.
“We will perform the smallest magic possible.”
“A candle flame?”
“No. Even that tiny spark is far too grand right now.”
That night, the training room held neither candlesticks nor training dummies.
Instead, a single tiny glass vial rested on Evelyn’s fingertips.
“Create one snowflake.”
“One snowflake?”
“Yes. Do not disturb the room’s temperature, the floor, or the flow of mana. Without any intervention from me, keep a single snowflake floating purely for ten seconds.”
Evelyn stared down at the glass vial.
“Isn’t that too easy?”
“Grand Duchess. The most difficult thing in the world is not using great power. It is using great power in a small way.”
“Master always makes simple things sound complicated.”
“And you, Grand Duchess, always turn simple things into major repairs for the training ground.”
At that, Evelyn finally smiled a little.
I stepped back and watched. I had prepared only a Shielding Formula at my fingertips—a safety measure in case of emergency. A master believes in his disciple’s growth yet cannot trust the building’s structural integrity.
Evelyn drew in a breath.
A white dot formed inside the vial. A tiny, delicate crystal. It was a success.
For exactly three seconds.
“Once independent operation stabilizes.”
The moment I unconsciously murmured the condition from the record, Evelyn’s eyes wavered.
Crack.
The snowflake inside the vial split into three branches. Dozens of ice crystals then burst into the air. They were beautiful, like a small constellation of stars, and equally dangerous. I instantly deployed the Shielding Formula and trapped the crystals.
Clink—!
The glass vial remained intact. Only a layer of cool white frost bloomed across its surface.
Evelyn drew her hand back.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to do it properly.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I did well, Master would be proud. But when I do well…”
Her words broke off.
I dispelled the Shielding Formula and took out a fresh, clean vial.
“This is not a technical issue.”
“But I failed.”
“Your mana is already listening to you. The problem is not the mana. It is the words you are saying to yourself.”
Evelyn offered no reply.
I spoke very slowly.
“The phrase ‘standing alone’ does not mean ‘becoming alone.’”
“Is that what you believe, Master?”
“Yes.”
“I still don’t understand it well.”
She cradled the vial that had never even shattered, as though claiming the failure inside it as her own.
“If I become perfect, Master will decide I’m all right.”
“Grand Duchess.”
“And then I will be someone who is fine without Master.”
Evelyn lifted her head.
Her eyes were not wet. Instead, she was smiling—a very small, strangely careful smile.
“Then… is it all right if I stay a little imperfect?”
A chill ran down my spine.
Outside the window, the blizzard hammered against the glass. In this quiet room that was neither laboratory nor training hall, I realized what I needed to correct before the Magic Tower’s inspectors ever arrived.
My disciple had begun to mistake her own growth for an enemy.
Evelyn gazed down at the small snowflake inside the vial and whispered.
“If I don’t become perfect…”
In the palm of her hand, one small snowflake refused to melt after all and
held on.
“Master will continue to be my master, right?”