CHAPTER 118
CHAPTER 118
Expansion of Notos
"Do you want a lot of servings?"
"Ah, yes. Please give me a lot."
Idnia also fermented ship biscuits and made use of them, so she would pack away whatever others did not eat.
Perhaps aware of this, the armored attendant handing out the food served Idnia generous portions.
This time as well, it was clearly ship biscuits made for disposal, prepared with every effort to ensure they would taste bad, along with fish waste porridge and vegetable waste porridge made from discarded ingredients…
Idnia took a spoonful and put it into her mouth, and as expected, it tasted like chewing wet corrugated cardboard.
The fishy smell that had been strong in the porridge had disappeared, but so had any umami or saltiness.
It felt less like eating food and more like consuming inorganic matter.
"You’ve extracted even the sugars and amino acids that were there."
"…Pardon?"
"So, even though ship biscuits are stored for long periods and may get eaten by insects and such, during the process of kneading flour and baking, the starch is inevitably broken down to some extent, so there should at least be glucose present. But that’s all been extracted. The insects with thin exoskeletons must have died as well."
Due to the powerful extraction magic, even larval insects without thick outer shells had their nutrients extracted and died.
Insects with thick exoskeletons resist extraction, so pests like weevils survive, but moth larvae and fly maggots that commonly infest ship biscuits are killed by extraction magic, as the glucose in their bodily fluids is drained away.
"Then is this a side effect of pest control magic?"
"Ah, no. It’s probably the other way around. Using pest control as a pretext, extracting sugars is the real purpose."
The world of the Awakening Girl Concert could be described as a kind of Arcane Belle Époque era. Magic technology had developed to the point where newspapers existed, and food supplies were not poor.
Oil could be extracted from cotton seeds and supplied cheaply as cooking oil, and crops from far away could be transported while kept cold using freezing magic.
And yet, sugar and sweetness were still expensive.
Of course, ordinary magicians would have no reason to waste mana extracting sugar from such foods. Extracting sugar from large quantities of ship biscuits and food requires tremendous magical skill, and if one possessed such skill, there were far more useful extraction targets available.
For example, extracting cooking oil from cotton seeds.
However, in Dunaise Academy, where there was an abundance of magicians, and an institution that seemed to carry a certain mission of feeding students unappetizing meals, such things were possible.
"It wasn’t that extraction magic was used to kill insects. The sugar that could be sold for money was removed, and what remained was served as students’ meals. The insect carcasses are still there, after all."
Idnia broke apart a ship biscuit to show the cross-section, where the dead insects were still embedded inside.
"Wow… that’s brutal. Brutal."
The other students, hearing Idnia’s explanation, now understood what had happened to their meal.
Since ship biscuits are made by kneading flour with water and baking it, during the baking process there are trace amounts of glucose, maltose, and even minute quantities of fructose.
If all those sugars are extracted, what remains is a dry structure of starch, fiber, and gluten.
Of course, when placed in the mouth and chewed, enzymes in saliva will break down the starch… but it is still far less tasty than the original food.
Even by then, the meals could already be considered to have pushed the limits of unpalatability, yet it turned out there was an even lower level beneath that.
Being tasteless was frustrating enough, but the Academy’s stubbornness in deliberately making food this unappetizing was even more infuriating.
To think they had used magic to strip away everything that could be considered flavor components.
It was nothing more than food-shaped residue.
"However… there are actually some better aspects to it."
Christiaan Dupon said this while seasoning his meal.
He admired Idnia and had been looking for an opportunity to speak to her, and now one had finally come.
"When I add seasoning, the flavor absorbs very well.
It seems that the structure was damaged during extraction, which allows the seasoning to soak in easily.
It’s not overly hard either. It crumbles well. I happen to have some seasoning left that I sprinkled earlier—would you like some?"
Because the structure of the food had been damaged during extraction, and the unpleasant-tasting components had also been removed, the flavors that interfered with seasoning were gone.
With seasonings such as sugar, garlic chives, basil, oregano, and salt, it became somewhat edible.
"Oh, I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine."
Idnia declined Christiaan Dupon’s offer.
She had eaten tea with fresh milk and bread in Vuremhyde’s laboratory, so she was not particularly hungry.
More than that, her interest at the moment was directed toward the underground market of the Notos dormitory, the source of those seasonings.
"Come, come. Seasonings here. Seasonings. Sugar available, sugar."
In the meantime, the Notos dormitory’s underground market was busily selling its goods.
However…
"Hm?"
Idnia noticed some of the Notos students speaking with other students and handing them seasonings.
'From the outside, it looks like they’re glancing around and passing packets of powder as if it were some kind of shady drug deal. It is seasoning, though… but how are they handling payment? It doesn’t look like anything is being exchanged. Could it be credit transactions?'
Idnia realized they were trading not with Aca coins or cash, but by recording debts in a ledger.
The method of trading on credit itself is not inherently bad.
But what if it becomes debt?
'So Lorenzo was fighting a completely different kind of battle. This is… not something to let your guard down about.'
At present, the dormitory store rankings were as follows: Euros, led by Idnia, in first place with 28 points.
Behind them, Boreas, which had captured the escaped magical experiment subjects, was in second place with 23 points.
Zephyrus, where Isolde and Rudolf were mainly operating shops, held third place with 16 points.
Notos remained in last place with 9 points.
At the start of the semester, it was assumed that Zephyrus, with its large population, would have the advantage, yet somehow Euros, the least populated, had taken first place, with the others trailing behind.
However, the Notos dormitory was putting more effort into academy exploration and smuggling than into the shop system itself.
And… their activities in the shadows were now bearing fruit.
"Ah, I’d like some seasoning and bread as well."
"Yes, thank you as always. However…"
When a Zephyrus male student raised his hand, a Notos student approached and began to take out goods, then hesitated.
"And the payment?"
"Ah, just put it on the tab. You think I won’t pay? I’m a proper son of a count family. My word as a noble carries weight far beyond that of common folk."
'The sixth son, though? I’ve heard he’s been mismanaging the family business as well.'
The Notos student thought this and sneered, but at that moment, Lorenzo, who was seated, signaled with his eyes to go ahead and provide the goods.
"Yes, yes. Thank you as always. Ah, and we’ve got something good coming in this time."
"What? What’s coming in?"
"Candy. We’ll be selling it cheaper than the academy store, so please make use of it."
"Wow, the southern folks really are skilled. They manage to bring things in. I’m looking forward to it."
The Zephyrus student said this and generously applied seasoning to his meal, forcing himself to eat.
"My goodness. So this is the only way I can swallow it. Damn it. I can’t eat this anymore without it."
And Lorenzo watched that scene with keen interest.
"So, what is the current state of the ledger?"
"Yes, a considerable number of students are using our underground market instead of the academy store."
"It’s because we’re selling at lower prices than the store. However, among the items sold at the store, there are some we cannot easily distribute, like freshly fried donuts, so we lose competitiveness there…"
"As for methods, we could try cornering the market by preemptively buying up stock, but then other students would catch on. We recommend avoiding hoarding fresh pastries."
Lorenzo’s subordinates offered their opinions.
Lorenzo seemed to find their reasoning sound and nodded.
"There’s no need to provoke hostility or suspicion. What we have now is sufficient. So, among the students who lack cash and are buying on credit—how many are there per dorm?"
"Zephyrus has 12, Euros has 3, Boreas has 8. The number is gradually increasing."
"Hm. At that rate, we can soon start running a gambling operation."
The students under Lorenzo’s leadership in Notos began to gradually dominate others economically through the underground market.
They traded goods and placed others in debt.
Then they tempted indebted students into gambling, using debt relief as bait to have them bring in friends. By expanding the network in this way, they could rapidly increase their influence, regardless of the academy store.
'Originally, I intended to persuade Duchess Idnia to cooperate to secure academic standing as well. I never expected that Euros would take first place instead of Zephyrus or Boreas.'
At the start of the semester, Lorenzo, as well as Karl and Rudolf, had firmly believed that Euros, led by Idnia, was the weakest.
So they planned to align with Euros to gain an advantage in future academy competition, but to their surprise…
The Euros, which they thought would be the weakest, surged ahead into first place.
Thanks to that, however, Lorenzo was instead able to steadily expand his influence from the uncontested position of last place.
'How disgraceful. At the start of the semester, I confidently proposed cooperation to Duchess Idnia without knowing better, yet in the end, Notos has fallen to last place.'
After lunch, Sadia’s class awaited.
"Now then, today we will learn a magic that sends telepathy over long distances. It is a whispering spell, an invocation of telepathic speech. First, we’ll start with one-way message transmission."
This too was a spell with extremely low mana consumption.
Many people wished to learn it because it was useful in everyday life, but mastering it was far from easy.
"The incantation is quite difficult. It is ‘Guit-Sok-Mal’."
"What? Guit?"
Everyone struggled with the pronunciation. For Idnia, it was simple enough to make her want to sigh.
'It’s just “whisper,” isn’t it? Well, the “gwi-sok” part would be awkward to pronounce in the Eldar language system. The incantation itself is easy for me, but the issue is that this is a low-mana spell….'
Would the magic Vuremhyde had placed on her function properly?
Idnia practiced magic during Sadia’s class with her partner from Boreas, a young man named Bolson, and tried sending him a telepathic message.
[Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please raise your left hand.]
"Ah, yes. Yes…"
Bolson, somewhat overwhelmed, raised his left hand.
Thanks to the magic Vuremhyde had placed on Idnia, it worked well despite consuming almost no mana.
'Hmm. I hate to admit it, but Professor Vuremhyde’s magic is impressive. It certainly works well. Well, between Magram, who tried to squeeze money out of me, and Professor Vuremhyde, who at least wants to win the Wizard Ball… I suppose Vuremhyde is better? He even gave me bread, after all.'
Idnia felt a sense of relief that the troublesome pulse-type mana problem had been neatly resolved.
Vuremhyde’s attitude—giving her something in exchange for asking her to win the Wizard Ball—had irritated her, but given how much she had suffered from the pulse-type mana issue, her current sense of relief more than compensated for the dent to her pride.