Don't You Want to Live?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Time marched on in a blur of war preparations.

It was not only the viscount and Messi who found themselves buried in work. Frox, too, had sealed himself inside his laboratory and vanished from the world for days on end.

Under ordinary circumstances, Messi would have visited that laboratory every day to continue their work of deciphering the ancient texts. But strengthening the Ahental Knights had swallowed every spare hour, and Frox had simply slipped from his mind.

On the day he finally managed to raise Ramang as far as 0.3 Loud, the Viscount of Ahental made a request.

"Would you look in on Frox for me? He seems more at ease with you than with anyone else, Sir Messi."

And so, for the first time in a long while, Messi found himself standing before Frox's laboratory door.

Thump. Thump.

He knocked. No sound came from within.

The problem was that Kkyu's theory sounded entirely too plausible.

Messi eased the door open and stepped inside.

To his relief, Frox was perfectly alive. He was, however, staring into empty air and muttering to himself, so thoroughly lost in his research that the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

Messi let out a long sigh and sat down across from him.

Is he even eating properly?

He looked a little thinner than before. The type who skipped meals the moment there was no one around to nag him into it.

Messi waited to be noticed. He waited a while. When it became clear that Frox had no intention of registering another human being in the room, he decided that courtesy had its limits.

"Master Frox."

"...Hn? You—when did you get here?"

"A little while ago."

"Sorry about that. Once I sink into something, I have a constitution that simply will not let me surface."

There was a constitution for that, apparently.

"The viscount has been worried. He hasn't seen your face in days."

"Haha! I've been running myself ragged trying to be of some use to my friend's house, that's all."

"Of use...? Did you call in other mages you know?"

Messi asked with genuine hope. A surplus of mages would be an enormous advantage in the coming war.

Of course, gathering outside forces meant being squeezed for payment once the fighting was over. But that was a luxury of a worry, given their present circumstances.

Frox waved the notion away at once, as if to say, what did you expect from a pariah of the magical world?

"Hah hah. Mages belong in their laboratories. The world doesn't need more wretched specimens like me, getting themselves tangled up in wars."

"Then...?"

"I put together two items. I've been chewing over how to refine one of them further."

Frox rose from his seat and returned with a small ruby and a reagent vial.

Messi picked up the ruby first. Something had been engraved across its surface in exquisite detail. He traced it with a fingertip and recognized the pattern of a magical formula.

"A new form of magic scroll. I combined it with House of Ahental's Ahental Gemcraft."

"...?"

This is a magic scroll? But do we even need something like this right now?

Frox seemed to read the question on his face, and pressed on.

"I told you about mana array structures before, didn't I? Conventional magic scrolls have their formulas inscribed on paper, which means they have to be built on a solid-state array."

"You did. Gaseous structures are unstable and difficult to handle, but the magical effect is powerful. Solid structures are stable, but the effect is weak. Liquid structures, you said, take the advantages of both."

"Think of this as a liquid-structure magic scroll. Give it a shake."

Messi shook the ruby. Something sloshed inside. Don't tell me...

"Hah hah. That's right. I filled it with mana water. The formula engraved on that ruby is Fireball. Its destructive power should be two, maybe three times that of a conventional paper scroll."

Two or three times? That was an enormous gap. He understood now why Frox had spoken of helping with the war.

"What's more, gemstone is a durable material, so the failure rate in production is far lower than with paper scrolls. Paper is fragile. It can't withstand the mana and simply burns up."

"They'd be invaluable on a battlefield, too. A paper scroll is ruined the moment it gets wet or caked in mud. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A gemstone doesn't have that problem."

"You catch on before I even finish. I like that about you."

"Would mass production be difficult?"

"Easier, actually. A conventional scroll requires a mage to imbue the paper with mana and inscribe the formula stitch by painstaking stitch. That's why magic scrolls have always been expensive and rare. But this..."

"A gemcutter could engrave the formula, rather than a mage."

"Exactly. The only part that still needs a mage is filling it with mana water."

"The gemcutters have been idle anyway, with the war drying up their commissions. We could put them to work on this."

The advantages did not stop at one or two.

Messi was beginning to understand why the Viscount of Ahental had wanted Frox so badly. Even if someone handed you the source materials of ancient magic, independently researching them and turning out finished products like this was not a feat just anyone could pull off.

His gaze drifted to the reagent vial Frox had brought out. That, too, was surely something extraordinary.

"And this?"

"Ah..."

Contrary to Messi's expectations, Frox's expression soured. Something was wrong with it — and this, Messi suspected, was the culprit that had kept the man locked in his laboratory, clutching his head for days.

"This is... potable mana water, as it happens."

"...?"

Frox had said it with difficulty, but only one thing came to Messi's mind.

A mana potion?

Thanks to the memories of a modern man, he recognized it at once. It was the sort of thing that turned up constantly in games and fantasy novels.

"So if you drink this, you gain mana... is that what you're saying?"

"You could put it that way."

"..."

This man had a habit of mentioning earth-shattering things as if they were nothing at all.

"If you can replenish mana just by drinking it, doesn't that make mana cultivation methods meaningless?"

"It's artificially gathered mana. You can't accumulate it in your mana hole."

Frox corrected the misunderstanding at once and began to explain the potion's actual purpose.

"When a knight exhausts the mana in his mana hole, he is hit with a wave of depletion — a serious collapse in his condition, yes?"

Messi knew that all too well.

In order to demonstrate the dangers of the Einhartz Mana Cultivation Method, he had forced a display of Lavish Sword Intent before an audience of nobles. The crushing exhaustion that followed had lasted more than a day. He understood the risk intimately.

"This is what you drink in that moment. The instant it goes down, your mana is temporarily replenished. But it is mana with a time limit. You cannot stop it from leaking back out of the body. The point is to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠give you a window to get your condition under control."

It was quite different from the mana potions Messi had known. A question rose immediately.

"What happens if you drink this and go back into combat? Can you actually use that mana?"

"Could I say? I haven't tested it for that purpose. I conceived the whole thing after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠watching you suffer that severe depletion, you see."

Frox had noticed the exhaustion Messi suffered after demonstrating Lavish Sword Intent. Messi had managed his expression with practiced skill, but Frox was a mage. He knew the symptoms of bodily mana deficiency far too well to be fooled.

"From what I gathered, you awakened to mana only recently. If you found yourself short of it on a battlefield, it could cost you your life. Knights have trained in mana cultivation for years. They are skilled at rationing their mana with prolonged combat in mind. You are not. You are going to need this."

So it had been a research product made for Messi.

Even Messi was taken aback by the thoughtfulness.

Right. We assumed he was just a lunatic obsessed with magical research... maybe we had him wrong.

"Thank you for thinking of me."

"Think nothing of it. If you don't come back from the war alive, who is going to finish interpreting the rest of those research materials?"

"..."

Still, the fact that Frox had made it with him in mind remained unchanged.

Messi decided to try it immediately. With Frox's permission, he drew his sword and set about recreating the conditions of that earlier depletion.

Lavish Sword Intent flared several times in succession. The moment that body-hollowing exhaustion began to creep in, Messi downed the contents of the vial.

It actually filled!

But there were several differences between what he had imagined and what he now felt.

First: it only restores as much as I had accumulated through mana cultivation.

Second: the density is different from my own mana.

The mana he had built himself had a dense, springy quality. This felt loosely clumped, like cotton candy. And like moisture boiling off a pot, it was already beginning to dissipate, bit by bit.

He quickly invoked Lavish Sword Intent once more.

Bang!

It works!

There was a difference in power compared to his own accumulated mana, but it was unmistakably distinct from a swing at the Brave Stage. This was Lavish Sword Intent, without question.

With this, I can hold out even if my mana runs short for a while.

Messi's face brightened. Frox, for his part, looked as though a considerable weight had lifted from his shoulders.

"I take it you like it. I had been thinking of refining it a little further before giving it to you."

"It's already this well made. What more were you trying to improve?"

"Well, you'd know better than I would, having just drunk it. I wanted to slow the rate at which the mana leaks away. And the absorption rate varies depending on the drinker's realm — I was trying to even that out, so it would work uniformly regardless of individual disparity."

A Great Magician, laying bare the flaws of his own mana potion without a shred of vanity. Most people treated their creations like their own children. Finding fault with them did not come easily. Frox was different.

"...I think I'm starting to understand how you became a Great Magician."

"Hah hah! Finally grasping my greatness, are you?"

If he could just drop that particular quality, he would seem a good deal more like a Great Magician...

But the spirit of a man who refused to be satisfied, who constantly reached for something better — that was in him. A very human sort of respect rose in Messi, whether he wanted it to or not.

Having barely managed to join the diplomatic envoy on its return to Krombell Territory, Rowin was coming to understand that his life had been turned completely upside down.

He had been locked up for a little over ten days, nothing more. And yet the world that greeted him upon his release was bitterly cold.

"Here you are."

He had unpacked in a cheap inn room and waited. A Krombell knight brought him a meal. He reached for it — and the bowl was cold.

"Why is this food cold? Heat it and bring it back."

"Have Sir Roatan warm it for you. Ah — but you did abandon him in a death trap, so that might prove difficult."

"What?"

A snicker. And what are you going to do if you glare at me? the knight's sneer said.

Rowin considered drawing his sword, then thought better of it. Reacting would only make him look more ridiculous. He trembled, then forced the words out.

"Get out..."

"Yes, yes. I'll take my leave, then."

Once, this was a man whose name Rowin would not have bothered to remember. Now that same man swaggered out of the room after talking down to him.

The moment the knight was gone, Rowin bit down on his lip until he tasted blood.

"Damn it...!"

This was how House Krombell treated those who were not the heir.

More rigid and more steeply hierarchical than other houses, Krombell was a family in which a single powerful patriarch held every rein of authority. As a result, blood that failed to become the heir was, in the vulgar phrase, "pruned." They endured every insult and humiliation imaginable. Other houses were watching, so they were kept alive — but only just, treated as ornaments with a pulse.

No one in Krombell offers loyalty or respect to an ornament.

That was what the knight's attitude had meant.

Rowin knew his father well. The man did not give second chances. When you were in his favor, no one treated you better. Once you were out, it was over.

In short, Rowin was finished.

Is this cold food... my future from now on?

On a noble family's table, cold food did not exist. Only leftovers were allowed to go cold — the kind of scraps servants lunged at for a single bite. The knight had been announcing that this humiliation would be Rowin's everyday life from now on.

His appetite vanished. Rowin opened the window and hurled the entire bowl out.

A cold wind blew in. The weather had been growing warmer — so why was the wind this chill?

Bark! Bark! Bark!

Stray dogs came running at the food he had thrown. They looked, to him, exactly like the knight from a moment ago.

He sighed and reached to close the window — and one of the dogs suddenly collapsed.

A yelp. A choking gurgle.

One after another, the dogs dropped to the ground, convulsed, and died vomiting blood.

The color drained from Rowin's face.

"Oh, fuck..."

His heart plummeted. If he had taken even a single bite of that food, he would have died just like those dogs, coughing up blood.

Having brushed past death by sheer chance, Rowin sat on the edge of the bed with a complicated expression and turned his memory backward.

Someone had predicted this exact situation. And that someone had been from House of Ahental.

Some other-race. The one who had stood behind Ereb even at the auction house.

Right before Rowin's release, that one had come to him, unannounced, and said—

What kind of bullshit was this?

Rowin wanted to strike down the other-race spouting nonsense in front of him, but his hands were empty. And behind the other-race stood Ereb and his guard knight.

"Ereb. Going to miss me, are you? Putting this other-race up to spouting garbage like that."

"Miss the likes of you? Don't make me laugh. You're not even the heir anymore."

"What?"

He had prepared himself for it while locked up, but actually hearing the words was a different kind of blow. And it was Ereb delivering them. Rowin chewed his lip.

"I-is that true. I'm not the heir?"

"They proposed a marriage alliance for Erena. Said they'd marry her to your youngest and hand over the Einhartz Mana Cultivation Method. And they're making your little brother the heir."

"The youngest...? They're making Roel the heir? They're throwing me away?"

"You lunatic. If it were you, would you leave some bastard who set fires and robbed people in someone else's territory as your heir?"

"..."

The world went dark in front of Rowin's eyes.

"You dumb son of a bitch, this isn't the time to fall apart over that. Keep this up and you're dead."

"...What the hell have you been talking about this whole time?"

"My name is Messi. I would like you to hear me out, Young Master Rowin."

Messi's expression was serious — too serious. Rowin had no choice but to nod.

"War will break out between Ahental and Krombell soon. We refused to hand over the Einhartz Mana Cultivation Method."

"Are you insane? I'll give you this — you've got guts."

"The problem is that Krombell has far too little justification to start a war. Your family's reputation was already scraping the ground because of you, Young Master Rowin. And now the aggressor is going to declare war on the victim? It cannot be done."

Rowin was not a complete fool. He understood what Messi was saying.

"What you're saying is... they'll kill me to manufacture that justification?"

"More precisely, they will kill you and pin it on Ahental."

He was right.

That was exactly the kind of man his father was. And now that Rowin was neither heir nor anything else, his father was the kind of man who would have him murdered and call it a service to the family.

What better justification for war was there than the death of an heir?

So I wasn't being released. I was being sent to my death!

Rowin felt the strength leave his legs and sank to the floor.

That was when a sweet voice reached him.