A Surprising Discovery
In the blink of an eye, the children vanished, leaving Diane startled. She pointed inside the shop with her finger, her voice trembling. “W-wait, I’ll be back in just a moment!”
“Ah, yes, hurry along.”
“Thank you!”
Watching Diane dash off in a hurry, Ivan let out a soft smile. Even the other day at the café, I thought how lively both young ladies were—and how exhausting it must be for them. But now I see it’s more than that. It’s downright tough. It makes you wonder how they manage.
“Heh heh, children…”
“They look so healthy. Ah, thank you again for your help. It’s really thanks to Lady Idel that I’m able to do this, but it’s a bit sudden, so I feel a little embarrassed.”
“What’s there to be embarrassed about? It’s fine. Thanks to you, my disciple has finally been able to look at the spellbook in a while.”
Viled, with his usual light refusal, received the greeting and settled into his seat like an old man, then fell silent.
Despite his calm exterior, Viled’s inner thoughts were in complete chaos. The moment he received his master’s proxy message and returned to the shop to hear the story, that’s when everything went haywire.
‘Life Creation… The probability that he actually did something that insane is low, but the research topic and the way he handled it… it’s far too similar to those guys.’
When I looked at the curse placed on Idel, I felt the same way. Even if it was just a coincidence that time, if the same intuition keeps repeating, then it’s no longer a coincidence—especially in matters like this.
‘Even if I have to take on a little risk, I have to check. If those guys really start moving… then…’
“Ah, this is so ridiculously heavy. Master, I brought the spellbook…”
Unlike before, the young master, who usually looked sharp-tongued, was now awkwardly adding honorifics while staring at the old master’s face.
Watching that, the kind old man chuckled lightly, then slowly rose from his seat.
“Heh heh, yes. Let’s take a look.”
“Can I look too? If you tell me what to look for, I can read it! I might not understand everything, but…”
“Oh, you’re Delia’s sister?”
“Yes! My name is Jayana!”
“I see. More hands make better work, after all. If you find words like calculi, stones, hallucinations, or mind control in the spellbook, please set those aside and bring them here.”
“Eh? But it’s not about pregnancy or babies, right?”
Viled nodded, his wise eyes sparkling as he gazed at the wide-eyed Jayana.
“This old man has been settled in the Crow’s Nest for quite some time now. And even now, not a single word about anything like this has reached my ears.”
“Ah…”
Unlike Jayana, who looked a bit mysterious, Ivan immediately understood Viled’s words.
“Does that mean the probability that Farel was lying is even higher?”
“It seems the doctor advised us to keep watching, right?”
“But the priest…”
Ivan fell silent, his response dying in his throat. It wasn’t just because of the old sorcerer’s silence opposite him, but because he already knew the answer.
‘Nothing seen with the eyes is ever absolute.’
That was the phrase he always recalled when doing interviews. And the moment he thought of it, Ivan finally admitted he had been wrong all this time.
“……Hey, isn’t this the content you were looking for?”
Because the young sorcerer had found the very piece of truth he had been desperately clinging to.
His eyes, filled with urgency, landed on the unfamiliar words and illustrations drawn in the spellbook.
“Solitude…?”
“Eh, it’s a kind of binding magic… um, it uses the method of feeding insect eggs?”
“Feeding insect eggs? But even if you feed them, they don’t digest, do they? Just like if you eat an apple seed, you won’t get an apple from your stomach.”
“But ‘Simic’ is a magical creature, so it doesn’t die in that way…”
Sigmund, startled by Ivan’s sharp question, answered without thinking—and suddenly realized something felt off.
“Wait a minute. Why are we asking Master instead of me? I don’t even know if this is the answer yet.”
“Ah… you’re right. I got too excited… so then…”
As if out of habit, Ivan pulled a small notebook from his pocket and started scribbling something, his neck turning red. No matter how urgent it was, he had completely forgotten that the other party was a child.
While Ivan covered his mouth with the back of his hand to hide his embarrassment, Viled, who had been staring at the spellbook, opened his mouth.
“No, you found it well, Sigmund.”
“Eh?”
“Using Simic for binding magic is indeed forbidden black magic, but… you put your head to good use. If you do it right, you could have deceived the doctor and the requester alike. Those guys really…”
Still muttering to himself, Viled suddenly turned to Ivan and asked, “Journalist, do you know how priests and sorcerers diagnose pregnancy?”
“No, I don’t know that field well either.”
“Priests and sorcerers detect pregnancy through the presence of foreign energy inside the body. The reason is that there is no energy in the world that is completely identical.”
Whether it was mana or holy power, it didn’t matter.
“If I could see it more precisely, it would be feeling the life energy of a living being.”
“…Does that mean looking for traces of a ‘living being’ that has a different energy from the mother inside the body?”
“Exactly. And the magical creature called ‘Simic’ that Sigmund mentioned…”
“It has a different energy, so it can hide it from the eyes of priests and sorcerers. I understand, grandfather. Then what does that mean about deceiving the doctor later?”
Idel, who seemed eager to move on quickly, urged Viled to speak again.
“That would only be true before hatching… um, no. You two are too young to hear this.”
“Eh?”
“Ah, I see. Understood.”
Now you’re calling us children because it’s too late?
Idel, having roughly grasped the situation, looked around and let out a light snort.
It seemed that only Jayana hadn’t understood what Viled had said in that moment.
Staring at Jayana’s rolling eyes, Idel shrugged her shoulders calmly.
‘Is this fortunate?’
What good would it do for a child to learn something so terrifying?
“Well, anyway, according to what grandfather said, that uncle lied again, right?”
“That’s right.”
Idel crossed her arms and blinked, then turned her head toward Ivan.
“What are you going to do about that side?”
“Ah, after organizing what you said into materials, I plan to discuss it with the count. And Lady Callia too.”
“After that?”
“Since it’s a highly likely hypothesis, I’ll need to prepare for a negotiation with Prince Farel. Ah, but I’m not in a rush. If it’s true that he used the black magic of solitude, Prince Farel could also be in danger.”
“I’ll accept that.”
Ivan was momentarily stunned by the word he had never expected to hear from a child.
“……Eh, yes?”
“That’s a rather dull and unimaginative perspective. Is this really the best?”
She threw the words at him as if she were writing for a living, then brushed her hair back with one hand.
“You threw down a challenge to me, so there’s no way I can just let it slide like this.”
“What? What does that have to do with me?”
“Lying so brazenly when even a child could catch you? Hah!”
Even though no one had thrown a challenge at her, Idel seemed to be in the middle of her own world, already engaged in an epic duel with Farel.
The adults fell silent with the thought that children should just be accepted as they were, but Sigmund, enraged by the word “just,” shot back at her words.
“Hey, say it straight? Just because it’s a child, the spellbook and the analysis of the spellbook are nothing to scoff at?”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that. Let’s say so.”
“Not ‘give me that,’ but ‘it’s true.’ This moron…”
“Moron?”
“…A cute friend like a puppy.”
Sigmund quickly turned his head away from the gaze Jayana was giving him and secretly clicked his tongue.
‘Wait, why does she look like that while watching us fight, even though we’re close?’
Isn’t that how friends are supposed to be?
Sigmund shook his head, saying he couldn’t understand the thoughts of those kids at all, while Idel, who had been thinking for a long time, opened her mouth again.
“I just thought of something good.”
“Something good?”
“Of course, we need to water down Prince Farel. And to do that, we’ll have to use that side.”
“…Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. You, Ivan Earnest.”
Idel placed her hand on her hip, pushed her eyebrows up, and pulled the corner of her mouth into a tilted smile.
It was a mischievous smile worthy of the second son of the rumors.