A Clue
From the moment America paid out of the national budget for the right to learn magic, teaching it freely to just anyone had become distinctly unappealing. And for good reason—when one party had already settled the account with state funds, handing the same knowledge out for free to someone else would have been a violation of fairness.
Even as a human she had been that way, but after becoming a dragon she had grown especially attentive to matters of equity and balance. Perhaps it was simply that the image of dragons as guardians of equilibrium, as sovereigns of the middle realm, had settled too deeply into her bones.
In any case, that was the situation when she formally began teaching magic to humans.
"Call me Instructor Lia."
"Yes, ma'am! Instructor!"
"First, drink this. Don't ask what it is. Don't try to smell it, and don't try to taste it."
The trainees were issued Mandragora extract that America had obtained through formal trade with As. Naturally it was not the undiluted concentrate. Even the elves, who had been drinking the stuff like water for thousands of years, could feel a surge of mana from a single cup of the pure extract—it was that dense with power.
No one could say what would happen if a human who had never once touched mana in their life—whose body might not even possess the circuits for it to flow through—downed the raw thing. Best case, it failed to digest and came out the other end. Worst case, the body simply necrotized on the spot. They had already confirmed as much through live experiments on rats.
What the flasks contained, therefore, was Mandragora extract diluted to one part in a million—precisely the lowest threshold that would leave life and limb intact while still being capable of inducing some kind of change.
Following her orders, the trainees pinched their noses, grimaced, and knocked back the mystery liquid in one go. As expected, nothing happened right away. She had anticipated as much, so it left her largely unmoved.
If she had wanted to mass-produce mages overnight, she would have accepted the risk and raised the concentration. But America did not want that, and neither did she.
Dosing them steadily over time was the best option available. And so, without knowing what they were swallowing, the trainees simply kept drinking it in silence, day after day.
One day passed, then two, then three. By the time a full week had gone by—
"Ugh—?!"
—someone finally awakened to mana. Astonishingly, the first to do so was neither Arthur of Special Forces nor the black-ops veteran John Doe, but Vincent from the research institute.
He had never driven his body to its physical limits. He had never lived through experiences that brushed against death. He was simply a clever young man. No one would have predicted that he would be the first to sense the nameless energy flowing through his own flesh.
"W-what is this…?"
"Mana. Magical power. Ether. Call it whatever you like. The essence is one and the same."
"Essence? What do you mean by that?"
At Vincent's question she curled her lips into a grin and kindled a flame from her fingertip—nothing that could be dismissed as a lighter or a stage trick. The fire rose of its own accord, shifting through color after color, and the trainees' eyes went round with disbelief. Only then did they seem to grasp what they had been gathered here to learn.
"The power to rewrite the laws of the world at will."
An ability that had never once existed on Earth.
"What you are going to learn is magic."
After Vincent awakened to mana, the remaining two succeeded in turn. Looking back, she almost wished she had shown them magic from the very beginning.
Once all three had awakened, she taught them the magic system she herself had created—the Circle Magic System that the elves and dwarves of As learned from the moment they were born.
"Gather mana in your heart and form a single ring. Succeed, and you are a 1st Circle—an entry-level mage."
"…May I ask a question?"
"What is it?"
In the middle of her lecture on Circle Magic, Vincent—the first to awaken—raised his hand. True to the science-minded type who had a remark for everything under the sun, he had begun to ask questions.
"Why does the circle have to be formed in the heart? Even if it weren't the heart…"
"The heart is the wellspring of life. Forming a circle there is what lets you circulate mana freely through the entire body."
"Wouldn't it be more convenient in the long run to turn the whole body into a vessel from the start? Rather than creating an extra weakness in the heart—"
Vincent's questions were exactly the sort a freshman who had just stepped onto campus might fire at a professor. She dimly remembered asking her own professors the same kinds of things back when she was human, and only now did she truly understand how those professors must have felt.
At the time she had worried she might be annoying them. Standing on the receiving end, she found it was nothing of the sort—quite the opposite. How could it not be a pleasure, watching someone walking the same path of study display such curiosity?
So she drew on everything she knew and answered him with genuine care.
"You have a point. But that would demand long years of research and study. Not an achievement your generation is likely to accomplish."
"I see…"
"Don't take it too hard. The mere fact that people who think as you do exist means humanity's future holds endless possibilities—"
There was, however, one problem with people of Vincent's temperament.
Whatever they did, they thought first and acted second. Admirable in a scholar; less so in a disciple.
While he bogged down in the questions and contradictions that sprouted every time he tried to memorize a single spell, Arthur and John Doe—the sort who simply did as they were told without overthinking—had already succeeded in learning magic.
"Incredible. If we could have used something like this in the field…"
"This water—can we drink it?"
"Uh—uh, yeah…"
Watching the other two succeed at practical application while he was still floundering in theory, Vincent finally grew desperate. He shoved his thoughts and questions aside as best he could and threw himself into practice.
In the end, all three of them entered the ranks of magic within a week of awakening to mana. Even with an elven elixir and the finest magic instructor As had to offer, that was no small feat.
It was proof enough that they had not been gathered here out of mere loyalty to their country. Loyalty, yes—but talent as well, and of a rare order. Geniuses who had climbed to the summit of their respective fields and polished themselves to a mirror finish.
Watching them, she smiled with quiet satisfaction and let her mind drift to the distant past—to something that had happened in As. In those days she had only just invented magic, and she had wanted to share the miracle with others. She had learned as a human that knowledge left to stagnate goes rotten.
Unfortunately, the countless beasts of As lacked the intellect to master so elevated a discipline. Even the elves and dwarves she had gone to the trouble of creating were no different; it had taken them years simply to take their first steps into magic.
Humans, it turned out, were another matter entirely. Was it because she herself had been human before becoming a dragon and forging magic? Or was it some unique faculty of the human race?
Perhaps this choice would one day return as a blade at her throat. Her lifespan bordered on eternity, and across that vast stretch of time a humanity that had continued to advance might well raise a civilization capable of hunting dragons without breaking a sweat.
Even so, the present delighted her.
Yes. Grow like that.
A clue that might pierce the limits that had held her stagnant for over a thousand years could yet be found among them.
And if they could only surpass those limits…
The existence of the other world As was treated as top-secret even within the United States. The president himself had not known the gate existed until Astria—regarded as the master of As—requested a summit.
Even now, after As had been disclosed to various high-ranking officials, its security classification remained at the absolute highest tier.
In other words, information on As and everyone connected to it was guarded as jealously as the codes in the nuclear football the president's detail carried at all times.
And it was under those circumstances that NSA intelligence officers found some extremely troublesome photographs circulating on the internet.
"…Isn't this Codename D?"
"I'd love to say no… but it sure looks like it."
Photographs of Astria—the king of As, who had been lodging at a classified safehouse and had not once set foot outside it—were drifting across social media.
Granted, her appearance was so far beyond ordinary reality that most people dismissed the images as AI composites and paid them little attention.
From the agents' perspective, though, the mere fact that her likeness was loose on the internet was enough to set their teeth on edge.
"What do we do? Scrub them?"
"…If we delete them too blatantly, we might trip the wrong sensors. Just throttle the platform algorithms so the posts don't get promoted."
"Yes, sir."
The best they could manage was to keep the photographs from spreading widely—and even that could not be done too openly.
NSA operations were under constant watch by the secret services of every major power. However brilliant their defenses, they could not claim with certainty that there was not a single gap.
So the agents adjusted the platforms' AI algorithms and quietly starved Astria's photographs of attention. And then—
"Huh? Wait—these photos…"
"Something wrong?"
"…These were taken before Codename D ever crossed over to Earth."
"What?"
While sorting the material, the agents realized the photographs predated Astria's official arrival on Earth.
In other words, they had been taken at a time when she should not have been on this planet at all.
Handled poorly, the matter could escalate into a full-blown diplomatic incident with As—far too large a judgment for a field agent to make alone.
"…Wipe everything. Hack the uploaders' phones and format the data."
"Sir? That burns one of our zero-days."
"Is a zero-day the problem right now? I've got to go see the Director."
"…Good luck, sir."
"Bastard. Won't even offer to help."
They compiled the information and reported Astria's movements up the chain to the Director.
The Director studied the material his subordinates had brought him, deliberated for a moment—
—and in the end the report reached the president himself.
President Ronald, upon receiving it, simply—
"Ahahahaha—!"
"…Mr. President?"
"Quite the little hellion of a young lady, isn't she!"
—burst out laughing as he looked at the photographs.
That was all he could do.
Laugh.