The Dragon and the First Mana Stone
"You handled it reasonably well. Of course, that was only possible because Miss Ha-yan was at your side."
"Even without Ha-yan, I would have handled it fine on my—"
"Without Miss Ha-yan present, you would have simply stuck that man's neck under the guillotine without a shred of evidence, would you not?"
"Tsk..."
It was the evening of the day after I had handed the spy over to Rhea.
The moment I got back from school, she came straight to me and briefed me on the follow-up. She opened with a string of grumbling that was less an evaluation of yesterday's mess than a performance of one, but the real point of the conversation was what to do with the spy.
"The disposal itself was simple. Complete memory wipe at the underground facility, a new profile, mana stripped, and deportation overseas. That was the extent of it."
"That's more decent than I expected. Ha-yan asked you to do it that way, didn't she? Be honest—you never planned to go that far on your own."
"Of course not. Because of Miss Ha-yan's request, I even set him up with a generous bank account so he could live properly there, and I fabricated an entirely new set of memories for him."
"Ha-yan's problem is that she's too kind for her own good. You could have just lopped his head clean off and been done with it."
"Please do not say things you do not mean. Ah—but why are you alone today? Did you not even have dinner at Miss Ha-yan's house?"
Having cleared most of the company's work over the weekend, I had an unusually empty evening. As I finished the last of the paperwork—the hiring confirmations for the ordinary interviewees, everyone except yesterday's spies—Rhea looked at me with open curiosity.
Fair enough. Normally at this hour I would have long since abandoned any pretense of company business, eaten at Ha-yan's place, spent the evening cuddling, and only drifted home once it was nearly time for bed.
Before I could answer, Rhea seemed to flip through a mental calendar and arrived at the answer herself.
"Ah. I see. Final exam season has already come around. Miss Ha-yan is stuck in evening self-study, then?"
"Yeah. I offered to help her study, but she said it'd just break her focus. She's got a homunculus with her, so nothing major should happen."
"Nurse Yang Ho-jin is still at the school clinic anyway, is she not? I was under the impression she always remains on standby during exam periods."
"Exactly. That's why I came back alone. I didn't want to bother Ha-yan while she was already grinding through it."
I had been living without much sense of time, but the days had been racing past. The fact that finals were already right on top of us drove that home with painful clarity. For me—a great dragon for whom studying was meaningless—it was nothing. For Ha-yan, who was aiming at a highly competitive university near our school, this final exam was one she simply could not afford to throw away.
"Ugh, seriously. If she'd had to prepare for the magic evaluation at the same time, Ha-yan would have actually lost her mind."
"That, at least, you handled well. From what I have looked into separately, the majority of adult mages cannot even use teleportation magic."
"Of course they can't. If they could, why would those old fossils bother setting up a separate magic circle just to get into their own Antarctic base? They're the type who never do anything inconvenient if they can help it."
I snorted, finished the last of the company work, and stood up from my seat.
"Anything else?"
"No. There is nothing unusual in the foreign investment trends either, so things should stay quiet for a while. All that remains is for you to prepare for the magic evaluation."
"Okay. I'm heading up, then. You get some rest too."
"Understood. Thank you for your hard work."
Anyone who only ever saw Rhea and me sniping at each other might think we brawled like a pair of fighting dogs, but most of the time it passed just like this—smoothly, without incident. Both of us had been around long enough to know how to keep things ordinary.
I started walking home at an easy pace, then a thought struck me and I changed direction.
"M-Master?"
"Hey. Good work, everyone. The mana stone's inside, right?"
"Ah. Y-yes. It is inside, but..."
The place I had turned toward was the basement of the company building. The other homunculi had naturally assumed I would be coming in with Ha-yan; when I walked in alone, they looked a little flustered. I had only ever received reports from Rhea about this place—actually coming down here by myself was something I had not done in a very long time.
The regular employees upstairs had already gone home for the night, but the underground space never went dark. The homunculi organized themselves into shifts and kept the place running around the clock. The moment I set foot there without any scheduled reason, a low murmur rose around me.
"It's Master! Master! I can't even remember how many years it's been!!"
"No way—no waaay. My friend from the previous shift asked me to switch and I said yes, and now this happens? What luck!"
"Photo! Photohhhhh!!"
"Well, this is a new experience."
Being made from my mana, of course they felt boundless affection toward me—but the quality of it was different from the goodwill I had felt from humans in the company lobby a few days earlier. Human affection had always carried a faint undercurrent of coolness toward Ha-yan from some of the women. That was just part of being human, and I had learned to let it pass. The children here, though, moved according to my commands without condition. If I told them to die, they would end their own lives without a second of hesitation—and none of the others around them would even try to stop them.
Anyway. Enough of that.
I gave a quick wave to the homunculi who were practically bouncing on their feet at the sight of me, then headed for the vault tucked into the corner of the underground space.
Whirrr.
As the automatic door slid open, a homunculus who had clearly already heard the commotion outside pushed her glasses up and greeted me.
"You're here? What a surprise. No word at all beforehand?"
"Yeah. Work's done, and I just felt like I'd been neglecting things a bit too long."
"That's always been your way, Master. Even after you made me right after Rhea, you handed my entire basic education off to her."
"Let's leave old stories in the past."
"Ufufu. Understood. Please, come inside."
Rhea had been the first homunculus. The one sitting alone down here was the second—Sia.
In a lot of ways, I had designed Sia as Rhea's opposite. Where Rhea was active and handled most of the company's external affairs, Sia ran the deepest core of the company: the magical matters that absolutely no one outside of me and Ha-yan's family could ever be allowed to know about. Their looks were opposites too. If Rhea was a cool beauty with long, flowing black hair, Sia had pure white hair cut to her shoulders, black-rimmed glasses, and the kind of face that belonged with a book in her hands. Even her way of speaking was different from Rhea's sharp, needling style. She rose slowly from her seat and guided me in.
Even though they all ran on my mana, I made a point of treating them with respect. I had created them, yes—but they already had their own selves.
...Or so I had been taught by Ha-yan's mother, in a process that was officially "education" and unofficially something closer to brainwashing.
Following Sia deeper into the vault, I found a vast space filled with objects that looked like ancient relics of every kind, all carefully arranged. A few homunculi who seemed to be doing inventory checks noticed us, gave a small bow, and went back to work. Further in, I felt my own mana.
"Hehe. I've never received an object with mana this powerful before, so I used a little of your mana as well, Master."
"Ah, you don't need to mention that. You're handling things just fine on your own."
"Thank you. The item you're looking for is further inside. As Master, you won't trigger the perimeter alarms, so feel free to examine it as you like."
"Okay. Got it. Thanks."
After Sia's bow, I stepped alone into the small chamber. She had not been exaggerating about using my mana—the defenses were locked down so tightly that not even the other homunculi could approach, only Ha-yan and me.
And inside, sealed in a glass case reinforced with mana, was the mana stone that had made my blood run cold the last time I saw it.
"Still the same ominous feeling. No other dragons around to tell me what this is, either. Awkward."
I carefully lifted the mana stone into the air with magic. The research team had not been able to identify the source of that sinister mana, but they had at least confirmed that it was mana belonging to Earth.
This planet had enough ambient mana for mages to cast spells, but nowhere near enough for that mana to condense into stone. The farther you got from human populations, the higher the levels climbed—which was exactly why those old mage fossils had built their base under Antarctica, the emptiest place they could find. Why else would they freeze their bones off down there?
The homunculi working outside ran on mana stones, true, but those were artificial ones I had made from my overflowing dragon mana. For a human to create even a fingernail-sized mana stone, they would have to pour in every last drop of mana they would ever have in their lifetime. That was why those lunatic old mage fossils had never even tried.
Anyway.
Even our research team—which I considered fairly high-level—had failed to properly identify this ominous mana. That said, it was not as though the mana was corrupted, or that touching the stone would twist the mana inside me. You do not think dumping one bottle of ink into the Pacific would turn the whole ocean black, do you? It was more like that.
Still—where had it come from? Why had it changed like this? And why, of all places on Earth, had this mana stone been found in South Korea, on the grounds of our school? On top of that, there was the other mana stone Takanashi had found. I had no idea what was going on across this tiny strip of land.
"Ah, screw it. I don't know. I'm going to go see Ha-yan."
She would be finishing self-study soon. I set the mana stone back into its glass case and left the vault. Sia, who had noticed me coming out rather quickly, asked,
"Hmm? That was fast."
"I just went in for a look. I don't know what it is either."
"There are things even you don't know, Master?"
Sia sounded genuinely surprised. I made a slightly awkward face and answered,
"Being a dragon doesn't make you omniscient."
With that, I cast teleportation toward the school where Ha-yan was waiting.