Chapter 066
Chapter Title: The Ancestor's Lost Magic
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A chilling silence fell.
The Lumerne students looked at Leo with confusion, while the Seirun students glared at him with hardened expressions.
“The interpretation... is wrong? What do you mean by that, student Leo Flove?”
Herdium asked with a smile.
But his eyes held a cold glint.
Watching him, Leo scratched his cheek and said.
“That magic won't activate.”
“Of course. This is an incomplete spell, so it was never meant to activate anyway.”
“Huh?”
Leo was taken aback.
He then realized that the gazes from Herdium and the other Seirun students were anything but friendly.
‘What does a kid majoring in Aura and summoning know about magic to be acting like that?’
Lunia also looked at Leo, dumbfounded.
“Ha! Just because you can use something similar to Star Magic, you've gotten arrogant! This spell is a legacy from our Ancestor that has yet to be deciphered! Countless elven mages have worked to restore it to its current form, and you're calling it wrong?”
The male elf student who had been beaten by Leo shouted in a fit of anger.
‘Ah... so this was a lost spell?’
Leo realized his mistake and wore an awkward expression.
Meanwhile, Lunia was bewildered by the male student's words.
‘Wait? Magic? I'm sure Leo used Aura and spiritual power.’
“Student Leo, you seem to have some knowledge of Star Magic. How interesting. I'm curious to see what Star Magic looks like through human eyes.”
Herdium offered him a piece of chalk, his voice cold.
“If our elven interpretation is wrong, would you care to show us yours?”
‘Tsk. I guess I have no choice but to show them.’
He hadn't considered that a basic Star Magic spell might still be undeciphered.
‘Then again, it's plausible they wouldn't know. Luna created this spell while establishing the magical system after Star Magic was first conceived.’
The Star Magic used by elves in this era was fundamentally different from what Luna had used.
This was because the true essence of Star Magic had been passed down not to the elves, but solely to Kyle.
‘I died before I could pass that essence on to any other elf.’
It was no exaggeration to say that the orthodox essence of Star Magic had ended with Kyle.
The Star Magic used by the elves today was merely a copy, restored based on the magical formulas remembered by Luna's disciple, Verchia, and the grimoires Luna had left behind.
‘It's amazing they've managed to reconstruct this much from incomplete sources.’
Given the circumstances, it wasn't strange that they were unaware of a spell considered basic.
It was only a basic spell by Luna's or Kyle's standards.
From the elves' perspective, it was a completely lost spell.
Leo, chiding himself for his mistake, rose from his seat and approached the chalkboard.
Meanwhile, the Lumerne students who saw this were horrified.
‘Ugh! Leo, why did you have to do that!’
‘If you, the year representative, get humiliated, it'll be a disaster!’
‘Gah! Professor Halind is shooting lasers from his eyes!’
Halind, who was observing from the back, also sent a murderous glare toward Leo.
Leo's actions had been that incredibly rude.
The students of Class 5 clutched their heads and groaned, while the Seirun students glared at Leo with expressions that said, "Let's see what you've got!"
Herdium crossed his arms and stepped back, watching Leo begin his interpretation.
The sound of chalk echoed quietly.
*Tak-!*
Leo began to fill in the missing parts of the broken formula.
In the process, he naturally used Star Magic formulas that had not been passed down to the current elves.
‘What kind of interpretation is that?’
‘It looks like Star Magic, but I've never seen an interpretation like it.’
‘It's a completely bizarre interpretation, isn't it?’
The Seirun students watched Leo's work with puzzled expressions.
Even Lunia, who boasted the best magical skills among them, looked bewildered.
‘Does a formula like that even exist?’
Among the Seirun students, not a single one understood the significance of what Leo was writing on the board.
In fact, the increasingly complex magical formula was making their heads spin.
Only one person, Herdium, was trembling as he stared at the board.
*Tak-!*
Finally, Leo put down the chalk and stepped back.
“I'm done.”
Halind stared intently at Leo, his arms crossed.
Knowing little about Star Magic, Halind couldn't evaluate Leo's formula.
Halind tore his gaze from Leo and looked to the side.
And then, he saw Herdium and his expression turned to one of shock.
Herdium's body was trembling.
The Ancestor's magic, which countless elven mages had failed to decipher for thousands of years.
A spell that had therefore been deemed incomplete.
And Herdium, who had spent his life researching this very spell, understood Leo's formula perfectly.
That's how he knew.
‘The spell has been completely solved!’
***
“Student Leo Flove. How on earth did you do it?”
Herdium had brought Leo and Halind into a small room adjacent to the grand hall and asked bluntly.
Halind, too, was looking at Leo with astonished eyes.
Under their gazes, Leo paused for a moment, wondering what to say.
‘The best thing to say would be that I simply interpreted it.’
Claiming he was Kyle or that he had learned magic directly from Luna was something they wouldn't believe anyway, and something he shouldn't say.
“I have a great interest in Star Magic and have studied it deeply on my own. So I've been researching that particular spell for a long time.”
“This isn't a spell one can decipher simply by being interested in Star Magic.”
Herdium adjusted his glasses and asked sharply.
It was Halind who answered the question.
“Leo Flove is not merely a student with some knowledge of Star Magic.”
“Then what is he?”
“This student is an actual user of Star Magic.”
At Halind's words, Herdium's expression turned to shock.
“Star Magic? A human? Ah, no. It's not that humans or other races can't use it, but... at such a young age?”
Star Magic was a magical system created by Luna.
Over a long period, it had been refined and tailored for elves, giving it the disadvantage of being difficult for other races to use compared to other magical systems.
Even if one could use it, it required a high level of mana proficiency, making it fundamentally difficult for someone young to wield, and even then, its power would be halved.
‘And yet this student, at the mere age of fifteen, is using Star Magic as a human?’
“But even for a user of Star Magic, deciphering that spell... Could you explain the process of how you interpreted it?”
In response to Herdium's question, Leo began to write out his interpretation of the spell on a piece of paper.
As he watched Leo's demonstration, Herdium's eyes filled with ever-growing astonishment.
‘If the Ancestor herself had interpreted it, would it have looked something like this?’
Leo's interpretation was so natural and perfect that it prompted such a thought.
When Leo finally finished his explanation, Herdium took the paper, his body trembling.
“Student Leo Flove... this spell... what kind of magic is it? Have you ever used it?”
‘I've never used it myself.’
Leo scratched his cheek and said.
“It's a spell that makes flowers bloom.”
“Flowers?”
Halind and Herdium looked puzzled.
“Yes.”
“A-amazing. To think that this spell, from which so many elemental spells are derived, was simply one for blooming flowers.”
As Herdium mumbled in a dumbfounded voice at the Ancestor's eccentricity, Leo cast the spell.
A warm light bloomed from Leo's palm, and in an instant, a single flower was blooming in his hand.
“It's not just a simple spell for blooming flowers. During the Age of Calamity, flowers were nearly extinct.”
Herdium looked at the single flower blooming in Leo's hand.
“To make a flower bloom, you need fire and wind, water and earth. And light.”
Leo looked at the flower in his hand and chuckled.
“Perhaps flowers were something special to the Ancestor of the Stars?”
‘Look! Look! Kyle! I finally perfected the spell to make flowers bloom!’
‘Why would you create a spell like that?’
‘Why not flowers? They're pretty, aren't they? Someday, I want to bring back a world full of flowers. Do you want to learn it too?’
‘I don't need it.’
Looking at the flower in his hand, Leo recalled the old days.
He had been half-forced by Luna to learn it, but he'd never had a reason to use it.
‘To think I'd be using it in my next life.’
The spell that Luna loved and cherished the most.
A spell for blooming flowers that, as a basic spell, contained the essence of all the magic she had built up.
‘I wonder what expressions the elves would make if they knew that the reason Luna created Star Magic was to perfect this spell?’
Just as Leo was reminiscing about the past, recalling Luna's bright smile...
“Indeed! Perhaps this spell contains the deep will of Lady Luna, who so loved nature.”
‘No. She just liked flowers.’
Leo shook his head, watching Herdium interpret things however he pleased.
“In any case, student Leo. I need to speak with Professor Halind for a moment, so would you mind studying on your own like the other students?”
“Yes.”
‘I got through that without any trouble.’
Leo felt a sense of relief as he walked out.
“My student has committed a discourtesy. I apologize.”
“Not at all, Professor Halind! In fact, we should be thanking you! To think that our Ancestor's spell, which we believed to be incomplete, was actually a finished work! This is a major discovery!”
Halind gave a wry smile as he watched the genuinely delighted Herdium.
“This might be a long shot, but I have to ask...”
“...?”
“Student Leo Flove... by any chance, does he have any elven ancestors?”
“At Lumerne, we don't pay much mind to one's ancestry, so I'm afraid I wouldn't know.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I know this is presumptuous of me, especially since student Leo Flove is Lumerne's year representative, but...”
“...?”
“Would you consider transferring student Leo Flove to our academy?”
“...”
Faced with this unprecedented transfer offer, Halind could only stare at Herdium in utter disbelief.