Chapter 6
Translator: True Detective
Chapter 6: It's the Theory of Relativity, Isn't It? (2)
As Eleanor slightly touched the edge of my consciousness, the hidden world revealed itself.
Above the peaceful sky of the Empire.
'Fuck. What on earth is that.......'
Something is wriggling inside a purple rift.
What kind of creature is that?
No, can that even be considered a creature in the first place?
"Did you see? I am blocking them with my whole body so those bastards cannot cross over."
It is a very shocking twist.
So.
Does that mean she has been performing unpaid night guard duty for 1,000 years?
While blocking a cosmic-scale hole with her body?
What kind of worldview is this.
Is this really a romance fantasy?
Isn't this genre fraud.
Eleanor stared intently at me, clinking her chains.
"However, you are truly peculiar. This place is originally a sanctuary where only those with enlarged souls can set foot. No, a place of exile. Yet you opened the door of space and entered with that rat's tail amount of mana, and while maintaining your physical body at that."
I just entered because the coordinates got twisted while doing a physics experiment in the lab.
"This is an anomaly unprecedented in history."
I searched my memory to see if there was such a setting in
.
I don't know.
I don't think there was such content in the novel.
The title was clearly a romance involving flower language.
Where does a cosmic horror genre suddenly invading come from.
'Hmm.......'
From what I see, this is an area outside the main story of the original work.
Or it's a setting in the latter half that I didn't read.
"You, help me. No, you must help. My endurance here has reached its limit. If I collapse, the laughable Empire you lived in and everything else will all become a mana firework show and disappear!"
For a threat, the scale is too big.
Empire destruction!
"What am I supposed to do?"
"There is a way."
Eleanor took a step closer.
"Your eyes handling mana are much more precise than mine and...... heterogeneous. You are the only key that can end the cycle of this hellish breakwater play."
She doesn't seem to be lying.
Then the contemplation didn't last long.
First of all, I had to get out of here.
Besides, if the world is destroyed, my comfortable sofa disappears too, right?
Above all, what kind of result would come out when the knowledge of a 10th Hierarchy Mage who even experienced Ascension is combined with my physics knowledge.......
If it goes well, I might be able to perform cosmic-scale magic.
Academic zeal begins to slightly overtake survival instinct.
"Fine. I accept. Instead, if I escape, you will come in as my dedicated lab assistant."
"Assistant? I don't know what that is, but it seems to be an honorable position receiving a share of my authority!"
Eleanor smiled brightly and held my hand.
"Good, I accept! Just get me out of here!"
Eleanor Aeterna gave a fishy smile watching Rihan's receding back.
In fact, the absolute power she initially proposed was a kind of sweet trap.
If Rihan had said just one word that he would accept that power.
Eleanor would have passed her duty as a breakwater intact to Rihan and run away as a free body.
A kind of bomb passing.
It was finding a substitute she had waited a thousand years for.
It was the moment she had waited so eagerly for during the past 1,000 years.
But this strange boy rejected that temptation in a single stroke.
'......He's a crazy bastard.'
This is Eleanor's own form of praise.
Originally, mages are a species that cannot reach the truth unless they are terribly crazy about something.
But Rihan was on a different track.
Truly a monster of a different texture.
Eleanor recalled the afterimage of mana Rihan had tied at his fingertips.
'What absurd precision.'
The extreme of precision.
His technique where the mana conversion rate approached 100 percent, although momentary.
The possibility Rihan possessed was too huge to simply pass on power and run away.
'If it's this guy.......'
Eleanor looked down at her skinny hands.
The tragic cycle repeated for thousands of years.
This hellish cycle where a mage ascends and becomes a consumable of the world.
An existence that can smash it altogether has appeared.
Not becoming a breakwater to block the storm.
But a crazy genius who can annihilate the storm itself or use it altogether!
"Wait. You damn causality......."
On the lab desk.
Amidst the fragrant steam of freshly brewed coffee, a doll the size of a palm is sitting arrogantly with legs crossed.
A body that shines transparently.
Ragged clothes reproducing the attire of 1,000 years ago as is.
Even the arrogant eyes that intimidate a person at once.
"What are you looking at so much. Is my dragon face (visage) that wondrous?"
10th Hierarchy Mage.
Eleanor Aeterna's clone.
A magical entity so-called Human Shadow (In-young).
I pressed my temples and asked with a sigh mixed in my voice.
"......So, to summarize, you unpacked your moving boxes inside my body, right?"
What kind of unauthorized tenant is this!
Do you know how expensive housing prices in the Imperial Capital are these days!
To set up a leasehold right between my neurons without a deposit.
"Ahem, your words are harsh. Moving boxes to a pitiful woman who stepped on her homeland for the first time in a thousand years. At this level, I settled in a propitious site."
Eleanor's voice ringing in my head matched exactly with the lip movements of the human shadow on the desk.
Fantasy has good technology too.
If only science developed here, Earth probably couldn't even put out a business card.
She continued speaking while enjoying the heat rising from the coffee cup.
"In that sense, you, I need to find my Spirit Vessels."
"I don't want to."
I refused without 0.1 seconds of hesitation.
"It's already been a thousand years. The staff or rings you used must have long rotted and become soil, or even if lucky, they would be inside a museum showcase. How am I supposed to find them. I am a theorist and a dreamer. I hate field work."
Above all, my life right now is sufficiently satisfactory.
The title of Imperial Chief Researcher.
Fat salary.
And peaceful rest.
Throwing all this away to shoot Indiana Jones?
Whew, it's not something an intellectual should do.
Such a grandiose fate should be left to the novel's protagonist Yuna.
"No, my treasures are not that shoddy. I arranged for them to self-destruct if they lose mana, or fixed the 'concept' itself so they don't weather. I hid the true genuine articles with my own hands."
Eleanor snapped the fingers of the human shadow.
Of course, no sound was made.
But a clear bell sound rang inside my brain.
"For me to continue the role of breakwater, I need mediums containing my power. You also don't want your workplace to disappear like fireworks because the world is destroyed, right?"
Perhaps reading my thoughts, she stared intently into my eyes.
"The Imperial Family that grants you your stipend will disappear, yet will you still stand by with your hands behind your back?"
"......To play a hostage situation so cowardly. Isn't this totally a black company tactic?"
It was then, while I was pouting.
Bang!
"Rihan! Are you here?"
The lab door opened without notice.
Yveline von Estal.
Reflexively, I shoved Eleanor, who was arrogantly crossing her legs on the desk, into my sleeve.
At the same time, I opened my notebook and pretended to write differential equations.
"Please knock, my Lady. This is a Chief Researcher's office full of national secrets."
"What secrets. When you're always eating snacks."
At the bone-hitting remark, I paused my pen for a moment.
Yveline strode over without even hearing my rebuke with her nose.
Her eyes are shining much more seriously than usual.
"I thought all night about what you said yesterday. You said image is important but logic is the core, right? Controlling the energy generated when forcing particles to bond...... that thing."
Yveline stood in front of my desk.
She took a deep breath, then extended her palm into the air.
"Watch closely. Because I will succeed this time."
Mana begins to aggregate on her palm.
It's not the usual vast and rough mana.
Surprisingly, she was distinguishing particles in the air by layering mana like a very thin film.
'Uh......?'
My eyes narrowed.
Already?
It hasn't even been a few days since I taught her?
She was assimilating the physical properties I explained with her own senses.
Hydrogen and Oxygen.
She used mana to collide those two properties at the molecular level.
She attempts cooling by flowing the reaction heat generated soon after to another mana circuit.
Sizzle—!
A clear and transparent water sphere formed on her palm.
It is different from my failure that spewed 100-degree steam.
But that doesn't mean it's perfect either.
Because the surface of the sphere was trembling finely and a little steam was rising.
"......How is it?"
Yveline looks at me carefully.
Honestly, I admired it.
It's only natural.
An otherworlder who hasn't gone through the modern Earth's education system implemented the mechanism of molecular bonding with magic in a short period.
'She really is a genius.'
Whether it's the product of superior genes.
Or thanks to the genius setting the author painstakingly carved.
She is extraordinary.
At that time, Eleanor's voice rang in my brain along with a wriggling sensation inside my sleeve.
"Ho, that girl...... is a genius. Indeed a genuine article."
'Right?'
I feel somewhat proud that my disciple is being praised.
Is this the heart of a professor looking at a graduate student.
'It seems the Duke family isn't a Duke family for nothing.'
"No, it's not family influence. That child has a good eye. The sense to see the grain of mana and dig into the gap is innate. I don't know if she became like that by learning from you, but she is a talent rare to see even in my era."
Eleanor paused for a moment and added.
"However, in my eyes, you are more like a monster. Because a guy without even such innate sense is redefining the laws of mana solely through understanding."
Leaving Eleanor's praise behind, I applauded Yveline moderately.
"Not bad. It seems you finally escaped the Mandrake level."
"What? Mandrake? Do you want to die?"
Yveline pretended to throw the Waterball at my face.
But seeing the smile built on her lips, it seems she doesn't dislike it.
I calmed her down with a deliberately solemn expression.
"Efficiency is a passing grade. But the management of residual heat generated when deploying magic is still regrettable. The next homework is to calculate how to scatter the remaining heat after extracting energy. Is it possible by tomorrow?"
At my question mixed with provocation, Yveline's eyes flash.
"Got it. Wait. I'll do it soon!"
Yveline left the lab in high spirits.
'Except for the point that she is a villainess, she is quite decent.'
At that time, Eleanor popped out from inside the sleeve.
"That child...... her spirit is extraordinary. She would be flawless even if I took her as my disciple."
"She is my disciple, okay? Don't covet her. And let's go back to the main topic. Finding Spirit Vessels is absolutely declined. I'm not the type for dangerous field work."
"Rihan, did you say that child's name earlier was Yveline von Estal?"
Eleanor's human shadow walked leisurely on the desk like a ghost.
Then pointed in the direction beyond the window.
"You will have to go even if you don't want to."
"Why?"
"In that family's treasure vault, one of my Spirit Vessels is sleeping. And a very powerful one at that."
"......Yes?"
I almost spat out the coffee I was about to drink.