I've Been Waiting for This Moment!
The time that had seemed as though it would never end finally passed.
Having finished selecting the magical tools, Catherine led the exhausted Karem and a sulky Mary out of the vault and back up to the top floor of the tower—her own laboratory.
And there, Karem felt something utterly... how to put it.
An indescribable sensation.
"Um, Lady Atanitas?"
"Shh. Hold still."
Startled, Karem froze like a scarecrow planted in a field the moment Catherine warned him, turning his gaze straight ahead while inwardly fretting over just what in the world she was doing.
At first, it gave him the chills.
Surely she wasn't about to blast him with magic right then and there?
It wasn't unthinkable—Catherine herself claimed to be a practical mage, and the small but fierce magical duels he had often witnessed between her and Olivier had left quite an impression on Karem in more ways than one.
But what Catherine was actually doing looked, to Karem's eyes, far too simple to be anything of the sort.
Karem stood like a scarecrow in the center of the laboratory while Catherine stretched a hand toward him and muttered something under her breath. And every time she spoke, Mary swapped out the magical tool Karem was wearing.
That was all. A simple process.
Yet if there had been even some visual change, he might have understood.
"Hmm, not this one either. Mary."
"Switching to the next magical tool."
Unable to make heads or tails of what was going on, Karem finally ran out of patience.
"No, Lady Atanitas. Just what is this all about?"
"Hm? What do you mean? I'm checking the effects of the magical tools."
"You're not even firing off any magic or anything. All you're doing is holding out your hand at me and muttering, and you call that checking?"
"Yes. Though it may not be visible to your eyes."
Answering her retainer's question kindly, Catherine once more extended her hand toward Karem. The ambient mana resonated with her own and was drawn into her spell formula, forming observation and analysis magic. She was continuously stimulating Karem with mana and carefully observing every reaction from the magical tools.
"The fire magic defense effect is certain, but the power is weak. Mary."
"Understood, Contractor."
Mary, who could also handle mana, approached Karem without complaint at Catherine's command and took out a defensive magical tool from her pocket—a gold necklace adorned with silver.
"Well, if you have complaints, you could always learn to handle mana yourself."
"But you said handling mana is a matter of talent."
"There are racial factors one is born with, but fundamentally it is talent, yes."
"I'm just a guy who can't handle mana at all, plain and simple."
"Then you'll have to look forward to your next life."
"How is a person who can't use mana supposed to live with that injustice?"
"Who knows. I cannot understand it."
As a brownie, Mary was limited to brownie magic, but she had been able to use magic innately from birth. In other words, there was only one person in the Mage's Tower who could not use mana.
That one non-mana user, Karem, was sulking.
Mary was sulking just the same. Ever since the day she had learned of the vault, she had been looking forward to the moment she could clean it—only for that attempt to be stopped right before her eyes.
But sulking was one thing, and orders were another. As a faithful brownie, Mary removed the bracelet from Karem's wrist, hung the necklace around his neck, and returned to her place.
Clink—when she took the bracelet in hand, it glittered. Sunlight that had somehow risen reflected off it and flashed across Mary's eyes.
It's about time I prepared the snacks.
And it was also time to tidy up the dishes after the tower's mages had finished their breakfast. Mary was about to call out to her two masters who were deep in concentration, then stopped short. Her eyes narrowed.
This is my chance.
A rare opportunity—practically the first—to make Catherine's snack in Karem's place. She had managed to reclaim control of the kitchen somehow, but Karem was still, under the title of Catherine's exclusive chef, cooking most of the food that Catherine and Karem himself ate. Plus Mary's share, for good measure.
Of course, Karem's cooking was delicious. But that was that, and this was this. The very idea that someone else was doing the housework when a brownie lived in the house was a reality Mary, as a brownie, simply could not tolerate. Yet a contract was the strictest of laws. Since Catherine had permitted it, Mary had no choice but to obey.
Of course, Karem did dump the bothersome tasks on Mary—whipping meringue, washing dishes, cleaning up afterward, and so on (all of which Mary welcomed with open arms)—but that was all.
Mary was dissatisfied. So she had always been watching for her chance.
And today. At last, that chance had arrived.
The whole calculation took 0.2 seconds. All that changed was the look in her eyes, and even that was brief, so Catherine, focused on the magical tools and magic, and the exhausted Karem noticed nothing at all.
Mary returned to her usual natural expression and demeanor.
"Contractor. Forgive the interruption while you are busy. May I step out for a moment?"
"Hm? All of a sudden?"
"Yes. It is about time to clear the dishes of those who have finished their breakfast."
"Ah, I had forgotten. Go on."
"Yes. Well then. Good work, Junior Karem."
Naturally. Without awkwardness. A bow. Tip-tap-tip. With a greeting and without showing her back, Mary hurried out of the laboratory on light steps and closed the door quietly so as not to make a sound.
Click.
"...Yes!"
Mary quietly cheered.
Housework was endless the deeper you dug into it. It was not merely a matter of sweeping and wiping away dust. One had to scrub the dust caked onto wallpaper, furniture, and ornaments, remove stains with different methods according to their type, and wash laundry with different techniques and detergents depending on the fabric. Raking fallen leaves, tending the vegetable garden, preparing meals, clearing and washing the dishes—and so on. When the residents numbered more than several dozen, the housework truly piled up into a mountain in the literal sense of the word.
Realistically, doing it alone was impossible. Unless that "alone" was a brownie.
Through her contract, within the bounds of her contractor's "home" and limited to housework, Mary was someone no one could hope to match. It was no exaggeration to say she single-handedly propped up the entire Mage's Tower.
Collecting the dishes, gathering the laundry and distributing the finished loads, preparing the wash according to fabric type, and cleaning the dishes until they sparkled—all of it took her less than thirty minutes.
"Heh, heh heh heh heh heh."
Mary laughed in what she imagined was a sinister fashion as she brought ingredients out of the pantry and laid them across the kitchen. There was plenty of time. She could have taken the earlier tasks at a more leisurely pace. But Mary had finished them in a flash solely for this moment.
The other mages' snacks were egg tarts that had been aged a day in the cold room. All she needed to do was plate them with sweet whipped cream. In other words, Mary was fully prepared to reclaim the making of Catherine's snack.
After all, when it came to baking and pastry, she was better than Karem. That was a fact both Karem and Jigmeser had acknowledged.
Having passionately finished the dough, Mary set the bowl aside for a moment and pulled a wooden bowl and the Oak Barrel of Abundance from the lower shelf.
"Junior Karem. I'll be borrowing this, then."
Had Karem known, he would have shouted that this was betrayal. But Mary felt not the slightest shred of shame. After all, the owner of the hundredfold magic barrel—Karem himself—had told her she could use it whenever she liked and had even left it stored in the kitchen. In other words, she already had the owner's prior permission.
If he had any complaints, the one who had granted the permission should have made sure of the fine print. Thus Mary cheerfully stuffed the dough bowl into the Oak Barrel of Abundance and immediately pulled it back out.
"The dough's maturation is perfect."
She turned the dough out onto a flour-dusted table, kneaded it, enclosed a broad, flat slab of chilled butter, folded it repeatedly in alternating directions, cut it into uniform pieces, and loaded them into the oven.
What Mary was making now was, in her estimation, something unprecedented in Europa—something she had conceived after seeing the pastries used as pie bases or served as they were. She had named it puff pastry.
When she had secretly tested it in the dead of night while everyone slept, she had felt layer upon layer of soft yet crisp texture, as if clouds had been solidified and then fried in butter along with the air itself.
Of course, Mary did not think a single batch would be enough to topple the fortress Karem had built in less than a year. His original and captivating array of dishes and desserts had simply been too magnificent for her to indulge in greed.
Was his claim that he lacked confidence in baking and pastry just empty talk? Mary soon rejected the thought. Come to think of it, whenever Karem set out to make desserts, he almost always entrusted the dough to her or someone else. And on the rare occasions he made it himself, it was always something nearly impossible to fail at, like crepes or pancakes.
A rich butter aroma rose through the heat of the hot oven. Mary bent down and peered inside. The flat pieces of dough on the tray were gradually puffing up, already swelling to a size a little smaller than an adult's fist. And just as they were about to swell past the point of bursting—
"Whoops. Hup!"
Mary pulled the tray—hot enough to have been heated to several hundred degrees inside the oven—out with her bare hands, set it on a clean corner of the table, and immediately began cleaning up.
Scattered flour and stuck-on scraps of dough. While she was at it, she thoroughly cleaned and wiped the bowl used for the dough, the utensils, and even the Oak Barrel of Abundance. Only then did she stand before the somewhat cooled puff pastry.
First, the appearance: a little smaller than an adult's fist. An uneven, rounded shape that had puffed up with a soft pop, its rich and pale beige tones a harmony Mary could barely restrain herself from.
But the smell. The warm puff pastry, releasing a subtle fragrance of butter. She was certain that the moment it entered the mouth, the butter aroma trapped inside would explode outward and fill one's entire head.
Mary could guarantee it. After all, she had tasted it once before.
...Hah. That was close.
She barely managed to pull back the hand that had been reaching for the puff pastry. She had nearly committed the disaster of sampling the snack meant for her contractor first. Holding her breath to resist the temptation, Mary finally managed to put the tray of puff pastry into the cold room and brought out the day-aged egg tarts and cream.
Yes. Resisting on this side was rather easier. The cold egg tarts gave off no particular scent.
If I finish quickly and get the rest ready, that should be fine.
Mary was free of the butter's temptation. Or rather, the temptation itself was still ongoing. This time it was the egg tarts and fresh cream—a soft, sweet, and crisp combination. Just imagining the taste was enough to lure her. But compared to the butter-laden aroma of freshly baked pastry, well.
Without the slightest falter, Mary added sugar to the cream that would accompany the egg tarts and fill the puff pastry, then whipped it vigorously.
One bite and no one would notice... Ngh. Endure it, my inner instincts. You only just escaped temptation a moment ago.