Do You Like Meat?
Do You Like Meat?
In the end, I tampered with Aria Fontaine's magic until she had wrung out every last drop of her mana.
The students around her watched with open discomfort.
Every one of them was practically willing her to stop, but no one actually opened their mouth to say so.
One by one, I released the strands of her mana circuit that I had been holding. Her flow would no longer tangle.
At that exact moment, the mana crystal shot forward with a tremendous roar.
"Ah, it worked!"
Aria's face, which had gone deathly pale, finally regained its color. She looked like a corpse brought back to life.
The distance the crystal had extended was rather impressive. Aria bounced up and down, shouting in triumph.
"I won! I definitely won this one, no question!"
That was when someone reached out with a slow, deliberate motion and picked up the mana crystal. Long, slender fingers with nails as sharp as a witch's.
"......?"
As Aria met the eyes of that hand's owner, her expression steadily stiffened, then froze to ice.
She had apparently only just realized why the room around her had fallen silent.
"Hah.... Aria Fontaine."
Violet let out a deep sigh and fixed her gaze on Aria. Aria could only open and close her mouth soundlessly.
"I told you very clearly to wait and do absolutely nothing."
"......"
I watched Aria shrink in real time under the weight of Violet's presence.
Then, abruptly, I felt Trixie's gaze boring into me.
Our eyes met across the empty space.
Sweeping back her lake-blue hair once, Trixie wore an ambiguous expression and shifted subtly closer to me.
"How absurd were the professor's words that you'd pull this kind of—"
"I-I'm sorry...."
Aria was still being verbally pummeled by Violet. Amid all that, Trixie carefully parted her lips.
"You."
Her voice was cold and rigid, frozen hard. Utterly impossible to reconcile with the drunkard she had been before.
"Did you, by any chance, just do something?"
Her qi sense for perceiving magic is fairly refined, then.
It wouldn't have mattered either way to tell her the truth, but I gave her a slightly different answer instead.
"Sobered up yet?"
"......?"
Trixie turned my words over in her mind for a moment.
Then, apparently deciding it was nonsense, she promptly turned her head away.
◈
After class, the academy dining hall was unbearably noisy.
Students chattering, the clatter of utensils knocking together....
To my senses, it was absolutely not an environment fit for a meal, so in the end I gathered up my food and went outside.
I had intended to eat alone, but someone insisted on coming over and sitting beside me. A girl with striking red hair. It was Becky.
"What is this."
"I'm going to eat here too."
I considered it for a moment.
"Don't make a racket."
"......Where did that come from?"
But my warning had zero effect. Having downed a few bites of her salad, Becky began chattering away like a sparrow.
"Did you see that Aria couldn't even cast? I've never been so satisfied."
I gave her no answer whatsoever. Why the dining hall grilled meat this abysmally was currently my foremost concern.
"She was always going on about how she especially excels at support-type magic, so why did she keep failing the output? So satisfying. Satisfying. Completely satisfying!"
Then, suddenly, Becky scrunched up her face.
"Aria Fontaine~ that's a markdown~ don't you ever take a professor's words lightly~"
She murmured in a strange voice. It took me quite a while to register that Becky was imitating Violet.
This time, I asked.
"Do you have any guess as to why Aria made that mistake."
"Didn't she just mess up on her own? She was rambling something about... the gods placing a curse on her. Babbling nonsense like that. What god would bother?"
Becky, seeming to find her meal exceptionally delicious today, stuffed a fistful of meat into her mouth.
"That someone interfered with her magic? That's nonsense too. If that were the case, no one noticed? In a place packed with that many students."
I found it almost astonishing how that small frame of Becky's could pack away so much food. Had she perhaps mastered spatial magic?
Something else occurred to me, so I asked Becky.
"Until the day of the exploration assignment, are all the lectures like this."
"Like this?"
"I mean, do they only check scroll usage."
If so, I intended to skip the lectures.
I was never particularly fond of scrolls to begin with.
That was an influence from my previous world. Some wizards disparagingly called scroll-users "corpses who use magic," with a whole specialized vocabulary for the insult.
I'd have no choice but to participate on the day of the assignment, but I had no desire to attend lectures that were just scroll practice.
I had always lived my life that way. Not wasting time on anything I considered magically worthless.
"Nah, no way. Of course not."
But Becky shook her head vigorously.
"The exact announcement will be up tonight, but.... Ah, right. Plan, you need to be really careful, okay?"
Becky tapped my shoulder.
"About what."
"That Aria girl has it out for you. A little ridiculous, isn't it? She started the fight, and now she's the one holding a grudge...."
I quietly pictured Aria Fontaine in my mind. The image of her loaded down with earrings and piercings.
One-on-one was a given, but even if Aria gathered a group and came at me in formation, I saw no chance of losing.
So I let Becky's words go in one ear and out the other.
"They say Professor Violet loves pitting students against each other. When she was in charge of upperclassmen, she even made them fight magic duels."
"Don't engage, and that's that."
"You can't just not engage, and you can't avoid it. They say that professor factors all of that into your~ grades."
That one, I couldn't let go in one ear.
Because I had an agreement with Scarlett to secure the highest possible grade by the midterm evaluation.
"Even so, if you get a high grade, there's definitely a reward waiting. The seniors who earned high marks under Professor Violet, they're all flying high now. They get first crack at presenting papers, they do research at the Magic Tower...."
My ears were starting to hurt. I had heard more than enough of this explanation.
I selected a suitable remark, something capable of cutting Becky off.
"Do you like meat."
"I want to get a high grade too so I can study abroad in a special region and.... Huh? What?"
Becky broke off mid-sentence and tilted her head. Instead of answering, I pointed at the meat with my fork.
"Ah, yeah. I like meat. Who doesn't?"
I placed more meat onto Becky's tray and rose from my seat.
So this was how you handled chatter.
...Environmentally friendly, in its own way, wasn't it.
"What the—. Why are you giving me this.... Huh? Where are you going!"
I ignored Becky's voice trailing after me. I had plenty to do today.
◈
The Magic Department general store—the place that most rapidly reflects the latest magic trends—is, merely to browse it, a delight for any mage.
Yet even in that pleasant place, there was one female student whose face would not soften.
"Oh my, Aria. Look at this. This wand ornament is so pretty."
Aria Fontaine paid no attention to Hailey chattering away beside her. No, to be accurate, she couldn't pay attention.
Plan.
That insolent commoner was Aria's sole and exclusive concern. Just remembering being marked down in front of everyone still made her teeth grind.
"They added new scrolls again. Aria, is there anything that catches your eye?"
Hailey thrust her face toward the thoroughly unresponsive Aria.
"Aria?"
"Ah, yeah."
Hailey shook her head, as if she knew exactly what Aria had been thinking about.
"Don't let it eat at you so much. How did you end up with mana stagnation at exactly that timing? That Plan guy really does have dumb luck."
"Mana stagnation...."
Like a cramp seizing up an arm or a leg, the phenomenon of mana tangling and causing bodily fatigue—mana stagnation. Even after hearing Hailey's reassurance, Aria's expression remained grim.
"Hmm, what? Wasn't it mana stagnation? That's how it looked to me."
"Huh? Right. It was mana stagnation. Definitely."
"Right? If Professor Violet had arrived just a little later, we might have gotten to watch Plan drop out."
She answered quickly, but Aria still felt unsettled.
'It was a little different from stagnation.'
Recalling the sensation from that moment, Aria unconsciously tensed, her back straightening rigidly.
Calling it mere stagnation was a gross misrepresentation.
She couldn't grasp the strands of mana needed to draw the formula. The flow that should have run smoothly scattered wildly. The circuit she painstakingly created was hacked and slashed apart.
And the onslaught of terror that she might never be able to use magic at all again. It felt, for a single instant, as if she had been struck with a massive disability.
'Could it have been.... interference?'
When her thoughts reached that point, Aria burst out laughing in spite of herself. She was so flustered that even she was entertaining thoughts like this.
Interference, by definition, presupposes that the caster possesses a higher understanding of magical power than the target.
'Plan, of all people, higher than me?'
She shook her head fiercely and swept the thought away. She rejected it entirely. The idea was flatly impossible.
Hailey grabbed tightly onto Aria's arm beside her.
"I'll buy you coffee! We'll drink it with Louis later. Aria, being this severe really doesn't suit you."
"Ah, thanks."
"Yeah. Now let's look at the scrolls. We have to prep for tomorrow's lecture, right?"
Linking arms, Hailey and Aria inspected the scrolls one by one.
Floating scrolls, throwing scrolls, volatile scrolls.... The variety was vast, and prices ranged just as widely.
At some point, Hailey's gaze landed on one particularly vivid crimson scroll.
"Oh~ I wouldn't recommend that one to a freshman~"
Just as Hailey was reaching out a hand to examine it, a fairy clerk suddenly appeared.
Hefting up a scroll larger than her own body, she continued.
"This is an extreme poison scroll, you see. It's the kind used to poison orcs to death, but if a human touches it by mistake, there are side effects."
"What kind of side effects?"
"You'll experience paralysis~ but if you're unlucky, you could end up in a vegetative state for life, so I don't recommend it for freshmen."
Hailey gulped and latched onto Aria.
"Let's not touch that one, Aria. Those side effects are a bit terrifying...."
Hailey furrowed her brow as if the mere thought was horrifying.
The two continued to wander the store. Abruptly, Hailey, who had been examining a Trivia, opened her eyes wide.
"Oh, the announcement for tomorrow's lecture went up. Earlier than I thought."
"Let me see. Look together."
The two girls' gazes settled on the Trivia Hailey had opened.
[ Mock Magic Battle ]
▶ Combat is an indispensable part of the competitive process. We aim to train students to demonstrate their best performance in actual combat scenarios.
▶ The results of the mock battle will factor into grades.
▶ Special Notes: Due to the upcoming exploration assignment, scroll usage has been exceptionally permitted.
*Personal scrolls may not be brought in. Three scrolls will be issued at random on the day.
▶ Professor Leonard will attend as an observer to ensure fairness.
Hailey nodded along.
"The seniors were right.... Professor Violet really does love mock battles."
Muttering that, Hailey suddenly directed her gaze outside the store. Her expression noticeably brightened, and she raised her hand high.
"Oh, Louis is here! Louis!"
Hailey went pattering out of the store, but Aria's feet remained fixed in place.
Aria Fontaine pictured Violet's lecture that would take place tomorrow.
And she pictured it again. And then, finally, she made her decision.
"Excuse me."
Aria called the clerk. The fairy appeared instantly, as if she had been beside her all along.
"Yeees~ you called?"
"Please wrap up that scroll for me."
A slender index finger pointed at the crimson scroll. The fairy tilted her head.
"Hmm~ oh dear, the extreme poison scroll?"
"Yes."
"Um.... does a first-year have a use for that...?"
"Of course."
Aria nodded, her expression cryptic.
"We have an exploration assignment coming up soon, you see."