How Much Did You Come Prepared For? - 1
With the expo right around the corner, a major incident had just exploded. Even I, the Headmaster, and Villar—people who had long since grown thick skins for ordinary trouble—were unanimous: this one was a full-scale bomb.
"It's true. My mana circulation has sped up."
I nodded silently at the Headmaster's dazed voice. That settled it. The Magic Lord's cookies worked regardless of a person's level of attainment.
"Incredible. To think a mere cookie could hold an effect like this."
The Headmaster lifted a cookie with trembling hands, still clearly unable to pull himself together. Given the scale of the revelation, I simply watched. Even I, a non-mage, was reeling—so how much worse must it be for a mage like him?
At the most unexpected moment, the most unimaginable incident had detonated. Who could have guessed that the Magic Lord, who had been quietly focused on her baking, would drop a surprise like this—not after the expo, but right before it?
It wasn't intentional, at least.
The trouble was, you couldn't even blame her. Even she hadn't seen it coming. It had been a pure accident.
Yesterday, the moment she returned from her weekly lecture at the Debate Club, the Magic Lord had thrown herself into cookie-making. After a full lecture she should have been tired, yet her face had been brighter than usual, so I simply let her be. There was no reason to stop someone from doing what they loved.
And then the cookies she had made, smiling from ear to ear under Luise's cheers, were set down in front of me.
"Baby, if you don't mind… would you taste them and tell me what you think?"
"Of course I will."
I nodded at once. Since the new term began, the Magic Lord had baked countless cookies—but she had always disposed of them herself, insisting she couldn't feed me anything less than perfect. This was the first time her cookies had ever been placed before me.
So I ate them gladly. I had even steeled myself to declare them delicious no matter how they tasted.
What the…?
The moment I bit in, something changed. The speed of the mana circulating through my body spiked.
It should have been impossible. A beginner just learning to handle mana might be affected by minor stimuli or potions, but someone like me—doped to the gills with every potion and magic under the sun—needed something extraordinarily potent for any effect to register. And yet a single bite of cookie had accelerated my circulation? To double its usual speed?
At first I wondered if it was a fluke. But after one cookie, then an entire plate, certainty settled in. This was no coincidence. I still didn't understand the principle, but every cookie the Magic Lord had baked carried the effect of a high-grade potion.
"S-so? Do they suit your taste?"
The careful way she asked almost made me laugh. Her expression wasn't the look of someone waiting for a reaction to a surprise potion. It was pure, earnest tension over whether the cookies simply tasted good.
I soothed her by saying they were delicious—while my mind raced. If even she didn't know about the mana-doping effect, and if the cookies she had carried to the Debate Club room had the same effect, then this absurd rumor would spread like wildfire.
Of course, grim predictions have a habit of coming true. Word of the Magic Lord's handmade mana-doping cookies spread at lightning speed. Which was why, even though it was the weekend, I was sitting here with the Headmaster, our heads pressed together.
"The problem is that it's right before the expo."
After a stretch of silence, the Headmaster spoke with a heavy sigh.
"Yes. I agree completely."
It was an unassailable point, so I agreed. Cookies handmade by the Magic Lord already carried absurd symbolic weight on their own. Academy mages—and outsiders, for that matter—would have been scrambling to buy them even without the effect. One to eat, one to brag about to friends who couldn't make it to the Academy, one to preserve under permanent conservation magic for display.
But if those cookies didn't just carry prestige, and instead packed an effect on par with a potion? An effect that could touch even a heavily doped swordsman and the Academy Headmaster, a great mage in his own right? That was intolerable. The higher a mage's attainment, the fiercer their hunger for mana. For even the faintest benefit, mages would wager their entire fortunes.
This place is going to be flipped upside down.
Wow! As expected of the Magic Lord! She had completely overturned the Academy.
No—not just the Academy. It felt as though she had overturned the entire continent.
"What do you intend to do now?"
I asked carefully of the Headmaster, who kept sighing while continuously eating cookies. How exactly did one control news that would send every mage into a frenzy?
"Silencing people is impossible. A full day has already passed, so the rumor has spread as far as it can. Trying to gag the students now would only confirm it for the visitors."
His answer, once again, was perfectly sound. Right. Clamping down on talk was impossible. Those walking embodiments of mania and initiative—mages—would have broadcast the rumor like megaphones the second club hours ended, and a megaphone that loud would have carried past the Academy, through the Empire, across the whole continent. A mage network was nothing to scoff at.
And if those Academy megaphones that had been blaring nonstop suddenly all fell silent at once, anyone would see it as a cover-up. Even outsiders still half-skeptical of the doping-cookie rumor would arrive at the Academy with absolute certainty.
I was going to lose my mind. Leaving them free to chatter was a problem, but shutting them up wouldn't help and would only spark accusations of student oppression.
Do we just leave it alone?
A major incident—and yet the only option was to sit still. It was almost tragic.
"Which is why I have a favor to ask of the Audit Department Chief."
"Of me?"
The unexpected request caught me off guard. Was there something for me to do in this mess? Even the authority of the Audit Department Chief meant little once foreigners poured in by the throng.
"Since things have already come to this, I intend to promote it on a grand scale."
?
What was he talking about? Advertise it even harder? We already had more visitors than we could handle—we needed fewer people, not more.
Has he lost his mind?
I honestly wondered. The Headmaster who had once dreamed of a cozy little expo with, at most, a few noble alumni dropping by had finally snapped. Though, considering the humble fair had already evolved into an international exposition, it was almost understandable.
Regardless of my thoughts, the Headmaster pressed on undaunted.
"Everyone will be after the cookies Her Grace the Magic Lord made. That much is obvious. Supply will never catch demand."
"Yes, that's almost certain."
It barely needed saying. The Magic Lord had one body. The guests flooding in from every corner of the continent would number in the hundreds, thousands—perhaps more. Even she couldn't satisfy that insane demand.
"So let's call them a limited edition. An auction-format sale wouldn't be a bad idea either."
"…Excuse me?"
What was he saying now?
The improvisational speed and inventiveness that came with years of experience sat at a height no youngster could match. So the Headmaster's title hadn't been won at poker after all.
"If supply can never meet demand anyway, a limited edition is the better path. Sell them ordinarily and people will complain about the sell-out. Put them up for auction, and they'll only have their own wallets to blame."
"Ah. Yes."
"But we can hardly throw Her Grace's work onto the auction block without permission. Which is why I would like the Audit Department Chief to persuade her."
"Of course. That's the least I can do."
It was spine-tingling. Sell out under normal sales and it was the seller's lack of preparation. Fail to buy at auction and it was the buyer's empty purse. It was the kind of deranged capitalist logic I would have expected from the Golden Duke.
And yet he wasn't wrong. This was the Magic Lord's special mana-doping cookie. Who did they think they were, expecting to buy one casually? You needed a great deal of gold—and then even more gold—before she might, if she felt your sincerity, spare you a single piece.
"I don't mind, dear. I already don't have enough to give you. If selling fewer is an option, that's all the better."
Fortunately, the Magic Lord was not harboring any "I want to show my cookies to as many people as possible" sentiments, so persuading her was easy. The problem was that I would now apparently have to eat the cookies that would have been sold at the booth.
"Thank you, Beatrix."
Still, gratitude was gratitude, so I toyed with the Magic Lord's ears. The other club members were in class, so we were alone—which made it possible.
Petting someone's ears as a thank-you looked bizarre, but she oddly liked having her ears touched more than having her head stroked. Some elf racial trait, maybe?
"Hnnn…"
Proof enough: the moment I caught her ear, the Magic Lord melted into a puddle.
She liked it so much it made me happy too.
Ernesto Academy was more than an educational institution. It was all but a symbol of the Uven Alliance.
The great mage who had contributed immeasurably to binding five mutually hostile kingdoms of the Uven region into one. The mentor of Uven who, after those five kingdoms came to be called the Uven Alliance, devoted his life to the advancement of magic. A towering figure revered and worshipped under the name Mentor Ernesto.
An academy that bore his name was, by its very existence, the reason Uven existed—and living history itself.
"If Creplofen is the empire that holds the Mandate of Heaven, then Uven is the great power that holds the hegemony of magic."
As if to prove that pride, the third Headmaster of Ernesto Academy had left those words behind. The Empire was the strongest, and the only one of its kind—that much was conceded. But not even the Empire would surpass Uven in magic.
It was a teaching every mage of Uven carried in their heart. We hold the hegemony of magic. In matters of magic, we yield to no one—not even the Empire. We are the foremost magical power on the continent. That pride, we have never forgotten.
And so Ernesto Academy had competed and clashed with the Imperial Academy across long ages.
"Are the preparations complete?"
"Yes. We can depart at once."
It was simply a pity that, in my generation, that long rivalry had ended in defeat.
But what could be done? Once the Magic Lord had chosen the Imperial Academy as her home, there was no path forward. Only the resurrection of Mentor Ernesto himself would give us so much as a chance to challenge her.
Defeat cut deep—but for a mage, refusing to acknowledge inferiority and clinging only to pride was a blunder worse than death. Acknowledge what must be acknowledged. Secure what can be secured. That was the rational course.
"Let us go. The students will be looking forward to this."
Besides, losing to the Magic Lord was an honorable defeat. Even descendants who might resent the loss would, upon learning the opponent had been the Magic Lord, only say, "Well, it couldn't be helped."
This is a crouch for the sake of progress.
And if we could meet the Magic Lord in person, receive her teachings—and if we could secure some of those mana cookies that were already circulating in whispers—then a defeat like this was one I would gladly accept.
Just in case, I had brought ample funds. Enough to buy a respectable manor or a castle. It should be more than enough.