I Have Too Many Superiors - 1
They call it unique magic like it's some grand thing, but really, it's nothing special. Any mage who creates a spell that never existed before, one that activates only through that mage's particular way of handling mana, and that only those the mage personally taught can even half-imitate—that's what they call unique magic.
Yes. Nothing special at all. It's fucking special. And when the unique magic in question belongs to the Magic Lord herself, trying to put a value on it is enough to make your head spin. Plenty of the continent's top-tier mages would crawl on all fours all the way to the Magic Tower if it meant they could learn one of her unique spells.
The principal standing beside me had already aged enough to rein himself in; if he'd been even a little younger, he would have charged straight at Luise on the spot.
I'm going to lose my mind.
And from the principal's reaction, one thing became crystal clear. The fact that Luise could use the Magic Lord's unique magic was a secret even the Academy's own headmaster hadn't known. A secret belonging to Luise alone that no one else in the world had discovered. Well—no. The Magic Lord herself would know, of course.
She must have been the one who taught her.
Unique magic developed by someone else isn't something you can casually copy. Even in the vanishingly rare case where someone arrives at a similar idea and creates a similar unique spell, it still ends up looking completely different because it follows that creator's own mana techniques.
But the magic Luise had just used was unmistakably the Magic Lord's. How many times had I seen that spell with my own eyes? I'd even cross-checked it with the principal, so there was zero doubt. It was definitely the Magic Lord's unique magic. I would stake my resignation letter on it.
"Do you have a moment?"
"Let's go right away. This conversation is going to take a while."
I casually put the question to the principal, and he nodded at once, looking just as lost as I felt. We needed to talk this through properly.
Before turning toward the principal's office, my eyes met Luise's, still standing on the sparring grounds. She beamed and waved, so I answered with a smile of my own. Yes—winning deserved a congratulations.
I just really wish she had won with some other magic.
Only the principal and I sat in his office. Even the secretary had set down the tea and left immediately. Anything concerning a Duke, no matter how trivial, could not be allowed to leak.
"The one silver lining is that the magic Student Luise used isn't widely known."
"A blessing in the middle of a disaster, then."
The Magic Lord's absurd talent had gifted her with quite a few unique spells. Thankfully, the one Luise had just demonstrated ranked among the least famous of them. Had it been even slightly better known, the sparring grounds would have exploded into chaos.
Still, I let out a heavy sigh under the sheer hopelessness of it. A blessing in the middle of a disaster was still a disaster. The girl I had written off as a harmless, gentle capybara turned out to be connected to a Duke.
Just my luck.
From my perspective, a powerless imperial prince and a foreign prince who would become king the moment he graduated were far less terrifying than a Duke. Every single one of the Dukes was, in one way or another, not entirely human.
"At the very least, we need to understand the relationship between Her Excellency the Magic Lord and Luise."
"Wouldn't it be best to confirm it with the person involved?"
The "person involved" the principal meant was, of course, Luise. Neither of us possessed the courage to march up to the Magic Lord and ask her anything directly. Who knew what would happen if we walked into that on our own two feet?
"I was under the impression Her Excellency the Magic Lord has neither children nor disciples."
In the silence that followed, the principal muttered the words like a lament. Having a student connected to a Duke wasn't a problem in itself. The Iron Blood Duke doted on Margreta as if she were the light of his life, and she was enrolled at the Academy without issue. The current Crown Princess—daughter of the Duke of Victory—was an Academy alumna as well.
The problem was getting smacked in the face with the truth while knowing nothing. If we had known from the start that Luise was tied to a Duke, the shock would never have landed so hard. And of all people, the Duke in question was the Magic Lord—the one figure who seemed to have zero connection to the Academy, and whom we had fervently hoped would stay that way.
Our meeting with the principal ended in nothing but mutual self-pity.
In the end, I'm the one who has to ask her.
And so the task of questioning Luise about her relationship with the Magic Lord fell to me. It felt so natural that I only noticed after I had already left the principal's office. The kind of duty-dumping so smooth it was like breathing. This, then, was experience?
The closer I got to the club room, the louder the noise became. The members had already gathered, which meant I wouldn't have to go hunting for Luise. Nice.
"Oh, Advisor! You're here!"
Opening the door only to be greeted by Ryutis was a mildly regrettable development.
"Yeah. Looks like everyone's already here."
"We were about to throw a little celebration among ourselves. We were just about to go looking for you since you were nowhere in sight, and then you showed up!"
I scanned the club room and saw the ovens already hard at work. They had decided to cook the after-party food themselves. Diligent in the strangest places, these kids.
"You all did well. I didn't see the written exams, so I can't speak for those, but your practicals were excellent."
I sat down and offered a few appropriate words of praise. They had suffered through the exams on top of today's shock, after all. Of course, the ones who had suffered more were the two sacrificial lambs and the unexpected third victim who had gotten hit by unique magic.
"Haha, thank you. But Luise was even more incredible than the rest of us."
"Agreed. She pressed her opponent hard with a magic I'd never seen before."
At the mention of magic, Later smoothly picked up where Ryutis left off. Well of course he'd never seen it. If even he recognized the spell, we would be in real trouble.
"She was impressive, yes."
Thankfully the conversation had drifted onto Luise's magic, giving me a natural opening. I couldn't just blurt out, "So what's your relationship with the Magic Lord?"—but I could circle around it.
"I'm no expert in magic, but that was a pretty unusual spell. I'm curious where she learned it."
I tested the waters lightly. She had kept the unique magic hidden until today, so she might still refuse to talk about her connection to the Magic Lord. On the other hand, she had just revealed the secret she had been guarding. She might be willing to reveal the relationship as well. Her answer would tell me which way she was leaning.
"I learned it when I was little, from a mage. She said she was a wanderer. We met by chance near the manor."
Wanderer. A word the Magic Lord loved to throw around whenever she abandoned her post and went roaming. Whenever the mages of the Magic Tower tried to track down their missing Lord, they apparently heard the word "wanderer" dozens of times.
"She had blue hair like Later. Do all blue-haired people turn out to be amazing at magic?"
"An amusing hypothesis."
Luise laughed with a bright hehe, and Later answered as if the whole thing delighted him. I, however, could not laugh.
The Magic Lord is white-haired.
If the hair had been blue instead of white, then she had approached Luise in disguise. Which meant Luise herself probably had no idea who had taught her magic.
Damn it.
The contents of the dumped quest had just been rewritten. Instead of asking Luise about her relationship with the Magic Lord, I now had to ask the Magic Lord why she had taught Luise magic in the first place.
An unknown disciple of the Magic Lord attending the Academy was a headache, but still manageable. The Magic Lord raising a disciple while actively concealing her identity, however, was not something we could brush aside.
A special asset—a mage, and one personally taught by the Magic Lord—had been cultivated somewhere completely off the Empire's radar. There was no guarantee this was the only case. It raised the possibility that special assets the Empire knew nothing about were scattered all over the place.
And I'm the one who has to ask her about it?
The sheer horror of the situation made my mind go blank. Even receiving contact from a Duke was enough to make my heart pound, and now I had to initiate contact myself? And essentially say, "Hey, looks like you've been up to something shady"? Holy shit, the difficulty setting was broken.
Should I just toss this to the Ministry of Special Affairs?
The thought flashed through my mind in complete seriousness.
And the more I considered it, the better the idea sounded. Issues involving special assets like mages properly fell under the Ministry of Special Affairs. Broadly speaking, this entire matter was their jurisdiction.
Right. I belonged to the Ministry of Finance. A proper civil servant sticks to his own lane and doesn't go poking around in other people's work. Experts exist for a reason.
My long-overdue communication with the Chief of Intelligence went about as poorly as possible.
"Have you finally lost your mind?"
"It's a mage-related issue, isn't it?"
"That's not a mage issue—that's a Duke issue. Don't shove it into some weird category and dump it on me."
The Intelligence Chief, who had taken the call with perfect calm, immediately and violently rejected the whole thing the moment he learned it involved the Magic Lord. The Intelligence Division was already overworked without anyone touching them; the last thing they wanted was a Duke-sized bomb dropped into their laps.
But what was I supposed to do? I didn't want it either. Did he think I was sitting around with free time overflowing?
"It's not something we can just ignore. For all we know, disciples of Her Excellency the Magic Lord could be scattered everywhere."
"I understand it's a serious matter. But why are you asking the Intelligence Division about it?"
"Do you have any related information?"
"Ha."
The Intelligence Chief let out a short, disbelieving laugh, and I felt a twinge of embarrassment. Deep down I had already expected the answer would be no. The five Dukes stood above even the nobility—the Emperor's most loyal arms and partners. Even the Intelligence Division could not gather information on a Duke without an imperial order.
Still, I had asked just in case the Emperor had issued some instruction concerning the Magic Lord. Apparently not.
After several more rounds of back-and-forth, the Intelligence Chief finally exhaled a small sigh and nodded.
"I understand how the Audit Department Chief feels. You're already monitoring key figures at the Academy, and now Her Excellency the Magic Lord is involved. Of course you have no breathing room."
"Thank you for understanding."
"The Intelligence Division isn't exactly swimming in free time either. You know that as well as I do."
"Of course."
"Anyway, I'm the one in the Imperial Capital, so I'll look into possible methods. It's not as if we can expect much from an Audit Department Chief stuck out in the provinces."
Clicking his tongue, the Intelligence Chief at last accepted my desperate plea. As expected of the Chief of Intelligence. I had believed in him.
And that faith was shattered into a thousand pieces the next morning the moment I checked the message waiting in the communication orb.
Made every effort, but circumstances did not permit. Express my regrets. — Chief of Intelligence, Ministry of Special Affairs
At first I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Then the next message arrived, and everything became clear.
A short message that didn't even bother identifying the sender. But given the circumstances—and that particular way of speaking—there was only one person it could be.
That son of a bitch Intelligence Chief.
He said he would look into methods.
And that method turned out to be slamming a direct line from the Magic Lord straight into my face.