Chapter 641: A Cleansing Bath
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 641: A Cleansing Bath
“Hah. I’m exhausted.”
I wasn’t exaggerating; I was genuinely tired. Standard Magic was still magic, after all. Even though I was only teaching people who already had the basics down, forcibly engraving the spells into them by stimulating their nerves and pumping them full of mana was no small feat.
Maybe I’d been wandering around outside too much in this cold weather. Still, Standard Magic wasn't something I could teach out in the open. Having to do it in secret made it that much harder.
“Teacher. The bath is ready.”
“Oh, is it? Finally, I can relax.”
The housekeeper popped in to let me know. Welcoming the long-awaited news, I pushed myself to my feet.
The Mage Federation was a cold land, but thanks to magic tools, one could enjoy all sorts of luxuries. A hot bath was a prime example. Elsewhere, you’d have to chop firewood and build a fire to boil water, but here, a simple click of a magic tool was all it took for hot water to flow.
Of course, operating these tools required a stable source of mana—Alchemic Gold or Highcrystals. But the Mage Federation was the easiest place in the world to obtain Highcrystals, as the stable atmosphere and mana allowed them to be preserved for much longer.
Alchemic Gold, with its superior stability, was too valuable and was used as currency, while Highcrystals were used as fuel, forming the basis of their economy.
In other words, simply becoming a mage who could create Highcrystals was enough to achieve financial freedom. It was no wonder people were so desperate to become mages.
Standard Magic couldn't create them, but who knew? Standard Magic was still magic. One might reach a higher state and even awaken to white magic.
“Goodness. Why am I working myself to the bone like this? I must be the busiest person in the entire Mage Federation.”
As I sighed and prepared for my bath, the housekeeper puffed out her cheeks and retorted.
“You’re wrong! I’m the busiest, following you around and cleaning up after you!”
“Your work is all physical. I have to teach Standard Magic, give lectures, and manage you. I’m the one using my brain, so I’m the one suffering more. Why else do you think brainy jobs pay more?”
“But I’m the one doing more physical work! A bath is for relieving physical fatigue, so I should be the one to go first!”
“Hey, now. Know your place. A housekeeper should act like one and tend to her duties.”
I shut her down with my authority and stepped into the bathroom, sinking my body into the hot water.
The Celsius Territory was overflowing with clear water. Here, where magic for manipulating crystals was highly developed, they drew pure moisture from the atmosphere and controlled the water’s temperature using rules that went beyond the normal freezing and boiling points.
The freezing point is normally 0 degrees Celsius. In the Celsius Territory, however, it varied depending on the distance from the great magical houses blessed by the great Celsius himself. I’d heard it could go as high as 8 degrees. Using this principle, they could control the temperature of the entire territory simply by drawing in and discharging water.
Well, that too was a luxury only available to those with mana or Highcrystals.
“With Standard Magic, you might not be able to heat a whole bath, but you could probably warm up a bucket of water.”
Compared to white magic, Standard Magic was certainly child’s play. But even that was a long-held dream for some…
I was lost in thought, my head half-submerged in the water, when the bathroom door burst open and the housekeeper peeked her head in.
“Teacher! There’s a call for you!”
“It must be Senior Avant-garde. Bring it here.”
“Yes!”
The housekeeper, covering herself with a robe, scurried over and handed me a Resonance Crystal. I reached out a hand and took it. As soon as I slotted the crystal in, Avant-garde’s voice echoed out.
[Hughes! Are you okay? Are you safe?]
“Of course I’m safe. But did something happen? Your greeting is a little different than usual.”
Avant-garde usually asked if my research was going well or if I’d learned any new magic. Asking about my well-being all of a sudden… had something happened?
[Uh, um. It’s nothing! As long as you’re safe, that’s all that matters.]
“It sounds like it’s not nothing.”
[It’s really nothing! You don’t need to worry!]
The way he insisted so firmly made it seem like it was something major. Oh, well. I couldn’t know what he wouldn’t tell me. Mind reading wouldn’t work on him either.
“I’m curious, but there’s no way for me to find out from so far away from the Floating Castle, and it would be useless even if I did. Alright. I’ll hear the rest of the story when I climb the Gateway to Ascension myself.”
[…Yeah! That’s the spirit, junior! Get up here quickly!]
Though I couldn’t see his face, I could picture him beaming, chattering away excitedly. I really did need to get up there soon.
After finishing our small talk, I removed the Resonance Crystal. Beside me, the housekeeper stood shivering in nothing but a robe. I handed her the crystal and asked.
“Why are you just standing there shivering?”
“…Why do you think! It’s cold!”
“If you’re cold, you could have put on some clothes before coming in.”
“You’re undressed, Teacher! It would look strange if I was the only one fully clothed!”
“So it looks better for you to be in just a robe? What kind of picture are you trying to paint, exactly?”
Were we posing for a genre painting? Not that I had anything against it.
“Since you’re already in a robe, why don’t you come in?”
“C-Come in?”
“If you’re okay with it.”
“W-Well, it’s not that I dislike you, Teacher, but… I’m not mentally prepared…”
She was already in here wearing only a robe, what was there to be prepared for? As she hesitated, glancing at me, I spoke nonchalantly.
“Just think of it as attending to me during my bath. Otherwise, there’s no reason for you to be here.”
“…You’re the one who told me to!”
Clutching her robe, the housekeeper carefully stepped into the tub.
It seemed the sturdy and healthy housekeeper had also accumulated a fair bit of fatigue. Her stiff body relaxed as if melting into the hot water. Droplets of water trickled down her slightly flushed skin.
“To think you’ve been enjoying this luxury all by yourself, Teacher. That’s not fair!”
“What can I say? I’m just that good.”
At my reply, the housekeeper spoke as if she were dumbfounded.
“Wow, look how shameless you are. Your acting is so superb, you’d make a real actor cry!”
“The actor I know didn’t cry.”
As I said that to the actor right in front of me, the housekeeper’s atmosphere shifted slightly.
She had been a simple, hardy, and occasionally cheeky housekeeper. Freckles befitting a country girl lightly dusted her pretty face, and her braided hair spoke of a life of hard work.
Anyone would have seen her as a housekeeper who had chosen a life of toil.
But now, with her hair undone and trailing in the water, she seemed like a completely different person.
“Teacher.”
“Yes?”
“When did you know?”
Hilde, having momentarily set aside her role as a housekeeper, asked me. I answered honestly.
“From the very beginning.”
“I wasn’t even playing a specific person, I just showed up pretending to be an ordinary housekeeper. You shouldn’t have been able to tell!”
“You can say that, but what can I do if I already knew?”
“Haaah. I thought that might be the case. My disguise feels so pointless now.”
Hilde scooped up some water with a basin and poured it over her head. The water washed away the color of her hair, and the freckles covering her skin dissolved and vanished. It was like a caterpillar shedding its skin to emerge as a butterfly. Soaked in water, Hilde blossomed like a flower.
With a sulky expression, the undisguised Hilde splashed the water from the opposite end of the tub.
“It seems you’ve had a comfortable life, Father. Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling just to get by in this faraway land of the Mage Federation.”
“Still, I’m glad you seem to be doing well for yourself.”
“Aren’t you curious about the hardships I’ve faced?”
“I am. I was thinking I should listen to your story once things settled down a bit.”
“Tch. You weren’t curious at all.”
Of course not, since I’d already read her thoughts.
Lankart, who had come to the Duchy looking for me, had found Hilde disguised as me and brought her to the Floating Castle. But like me, Hilde was also banished from the castle and had come all the way to the Celsius Territory, a place of Advent, to make contact.
“Lankart was looking for you, Father, so I came here thinking I might find you if I followed the Floating Castle. I never imagined you’d be living the high life as a teacher with a woman by your side.”
“What did I do? I just hired a housekeeper, and you make it sound like I’m indulging in luxury and pleasure.”
“Hmph. And it seems you’ve found yourself another local mistress in the Floating Castle, besides me?”
“Senior Avant-garde? She’s a very helpful senior. I’m greatly indebted to her.”
“This is what’s so infuriating! You’re so slick, always walking that fine line, ready to slip away!”
Hilde discontentedly stretched out her leg and poked my stomach with her toe. In the clear water, her white leg, extending from beneath her robe, wavered blurrily.
“So. Father. What are you doing, having come all the way down from the Floating Castle?”
“I’m teaching people Standard Magic.”
“That’s what you’re doing now. I’m talking about your ultimate goal, Father.”
“Ultimate goal? I don’t really have one.”
At that, Hilde’s eyes narrowed slightly. She clutched her robe and crossed the tub toward me. The water, reaching her chest, rippled. In the narrow tub where it was hard to look away, the skin visible through the gaps of her damp robe caught my eye.
Hilde came right up to my face and asked.
“Really? Truly, with no goal at all. You’re simply volunteering your time to teach Standard Magic?”
“For now, that’s about right.”
“Even though you know that Standard Magic is the black magic that the Mage Federation despises?”
I knew it well. But that was from the perspective of the order.
“Hilde. I’m not as profound as you all think.”
“Hmph. That’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve heard all day.”
“No, it’s true. The reason I taught Standard Magic to the common people is that I thought they needed it.”
Hilde, now right in front of me, tilted her head.
“The talented children needed teaching that suited them. So I gave it to them. They were able to awaken their mana sense and get one step closer to white magic.”
“Yes. You did.”
“But the children without talent can never grasp it with such a short period of teaching. If I spent a long time and effort on them, they might become white mages, but I won’t do that. It would be like forcing them to change when they don’t desperately want it.”
That wasn’t education; it was modification. To change someone according to my own will, without regard for their wishes, would be putting the cart before the horse.
“However, they need magic to survive in this cold and harsh land. They need it to operate the magic tools. In that case, Standard Magic can be a pretty good alternative.”
In the Mage Federation, where magical rules governed the land, even a little magic could have a great effect.
It was always better to have more tools. Even if one of them was Standard Magic. It was an obvious point, and Hilde seemed to accept it, but there was another problem.
“But, Father. The Celsius family and the Floating Castle won’t allow it.”
It was a natural question.
Standard Magic was black magic. It was considered taboo in the Mage Federation and many other nations around the world. Only a country as rootless as the Military State would permit such a technique; elsewhere, simply learning it was punishable by death. Hilde was pointing this out.
“The Mage Federation is a nation of white magic. To them, black magic is a stain on magical civilization. They will hunt down and eliminate not only you, Father, but everyone who has learned Standard Magic. It’s a technique that is not tolerated by this order.”
“Then they can just tolerate it, can’t they?”
“What?”
I wasn’t trying to challenge the order. Nor was I trying to usher in an age of barbarism.
I was simply saying that the order, too, is just a tool.
“Why must I be the one to change? Can’t the order change instead? The order isn’t some eternal, absolute existence. Compared to the order, which has changed with every region, every country, and every flow of history, humanity has remained far more constant.”
I am the King of Humans, but I am also a petty criminal. The rules I’ve broken are countless, and I leap over the fences of law with a scoff.
In truth, it would be more accurate to say that I have remained the same while the laws have arbitrarily drawn their lines.
Though I may have lost my power and become insignificant, I am a conceptual being. I might change if humanity changes, but I will not be changed by humans. That is the resistance and homeostasis inherent in the human species. Lacking power, my ability to protect it is insufficient, but I nevertheless adhere to being purely human.
Because I am the King of Humans, not the King of Order.
“Hmph~.”
Hilde gave me an endlessly mischievous and audacious smile, as if she found me amusing. She moved a little closer and whispered in my ear.
“You know, Father. After meeting you, a wish has blossomed within me.”
I knew. I had read it. And I was contemplating it.
Was this a wish I could grant? A wish I wasn’t sure I should grant.
“You are so very ‘human,’ Father. You don’t care for absolute values that never fade or virtues that never tarnish. You only ever consider the hearts of people.”
Of course. Value is what humans assign, and beauty is what humans judge. Without humans, there is nothing.
It is so difficult to state such an obvious fact.
“Yuel gathered all the good things in the world to create her nation. But in that nation, there was only one thing missing: faith in people. Was it because she had Clairvoyance? Was it because she saw all the filth and ugliness of humanity? If they weren’t watched and bound, they would twist and ruin everything.”
Hilde’s playful smile softened. Her lips drew a gentle arc, as if recalling something precious, as she murmured.
“But you, Father, are filled with faith in humanity. What kind of nation would a person like you create? What would happen if you brought back the very thing the Military State cast aside?”
Hilde pressed herself against me, her voice as heated and moist as the bathwater. Through the thin, clinging robe, I could feel her burning desire. It was as if I could feel her heart beating.
“I will help you with all my body and soul, Father. I will offer everything, my spirit and my body, to the King of Humans.”
She was clinging to me desperately. She desperately wanted something from me.
If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have lured the Elder in my place back in the Duchy.
And instead of returning to the Military State, she wouldn’t have stayed in the Mage Federation, waiting for a me who might never have come.
“Please, show me.”
What did it feel like to become someone’s wish?
Hilde was purely looking forward to what I would do. What I intended to do was her wish. It was a very easy thing to do as she desired.
*
“Th-There is no record of him in the guest rooms.”
The mage belonging to the Celsius family answered with a troubled look on his face.
He was a mage skilled enough to enter a great magical house, a man who reigned at the top of the pyramid. Possessed of a brilliant intellect, he was full of confidence and arrogance.
“Elisha said he would be here. She said she got him a room in the Celsius family mansion. He’s a man named Hughes. Have you really not seen him?”
However, a true ‘chosen one’ from the Floating Castle was different.
Before Shei, the girl who called the Celsius family’s greatest prodigy, Blue Tower Master Elisha Celsius, by her first name, and who had descended wrapped in immense mana, he could only be deferential.
The gap between his self-image and the reality of having to bow his head was unfamiliar, making the mage’s demeanor awkward and stilted.
“My apologies—no, I am deeply sorry. However, the Celsius family keeps track of all personal information of mages visiting from the Floating Castle. If there is no record, then he has not visited.”
“Is that so…? Alright. If Hughes shows up, let the Blue Tower know.”
“But I don’t even know who that is…”
Ignoring the grumbling mage, Shei leaped into the air. A gust of wind from Chun-aeng propelled her upward.
Soaring a hundred meters in an instant, Shei looked down at the sprawling Celsius Territory and muttered.
“Strange. He should be here.”
She had taken a short break from the Floating Castle to come down, but she couldn’t find Hughes. The Blue Tower Master, Elisha, had said she’d prepared a room and facilities for him, but it seemed Hughes had taken a detour. Having come for nothing, Shei looked around.
“What is he doing? He should have at least left a way to contact him.”
Should I look for him? The thought briefly surfaced.
Shei had the Seven Colored Eyes. If she used them to search the Celsius Territory, she could find him in no time. It would be a bit of a hassle, but still.
Or she could just throw money at the problem. The Celsius Territory was full of mages, and with the Advent, there were many merchants and wanderers. If she just paid them, she could quickly find out Hughes’s whereabouts.
Or, she could ask a sound-type mage to create a sound loud enough to cover the entire territory.
Several methods popped into her head at once. Her body moved to try one of them immediately. Just as the seven colors began to tint her eyes, Shei abruptly stopped herself.
“…Tch. What a useless thought. That makes it seem like I’m desperate to find Hughes.”
She had no urgent business with him. She had just come to see him on a whim. Shei, who was in contact with the Shrine of the Divine in the Floating Castle, was doing far more important work than Hughes, who was preparing for the Gateway to Ascension.
The Floating Castle was in an uproar right now. Because of the Advent? That was part of it, but it was also because of a guest who had arrived with the Advent.
The return of the relics of Saint Rene. An envoy demanding their return was stirring up trouble in the Floating Castle.
She had come to tell him in person, thinking it was news Hughes would be curious about. But for him to not leave any way to be contacted… Shei turned her head with a displeased expression.
“Hmph. If he doesn’t hear about it, it’s his own loss.”
I want to find him. I want to see him. But I shouldn’t. Hughes is busy. To become whole, he needs more wishes. The hearts of more people—
Complex, scattered thoughts intersected. Before she could even process them, Shei muttered stubbornly.
“Just you wait if you can’t even climb the Gateway to Ascension. I won’t let you off easy.”
After one last glance at the Celsius Territory, Shei returned to the Floating Castle.