Waiting (19)
As Theresia was just stepping out of the imperial palace, a female mage about her age came hurrying up beside her, her silver-gray bob whipping in the wind as she panted for breath.
"How did it go?"
"I failed... it..."
"Ah..."
At her closest friend’s gloomy answer, the mage let her shoulders slump and heaved a sigh. The method they’d been relying on had failed at last. They had tried it hoping, however slim the chance, that it might work even though they knew it probably wouldn’t, but disappointment was disappointment all the same.
"Sorry..."
"Huh? No, it’s fine. Why would you be the one apologizing?"
"Mm..."
And yet Theresia still looked deflated.
Her friend was precious to her. Her older sister had taught her that much. In truth, Adel, her only friend, was someone she was deeply grateful for. Adel had taught her many things and helped keep her away from dangerous people. She was always kind to her, and to Theresia she was more precious than most of her own family.
And this was Adel’s request.
"Your Majesty... that’s too much..."
There was no one else around, but Theresia still called the Emperor Your Majesty, just as she always had.
"It can’t be helped. Even the Holy Kingdom can be dangerous, after all."
Adel had been the one making the request, but now it was Theresia who seemed to be comforting her instead. The reason was simple: Theresia wanted just as badly as Adel to get outside the Empire.
No—she would have been content even if it wasn’t outside the Empire. She only wanted to get beyond the Emperor’s direct domain.
The Emperor boasted ironclad authority, so the lands under his direct rule and the imperial estates he controlled were considerable in size. But the Empire itself was vast, and by overall proportion those holdings amounted to very little. An empire was not held up by the Emperor alone, after all, but by countless nobles.
For Theresia, who had never once in her life stepped beyond the Emperor’s sight, the outside world was something to long for.
With her head still bowed, Theresia spoke in a flat voice.
"...My sister."
"Huh?"
"My sister... she went outside the Empire... right?"
At that, Adel jolted in surprise.
It was a subject she had deliberately been avoiding as well.
Once, she had been the family member closest to Theresia. But at some point they had drifted apart—Her Highness the First Princess, Wilhelmina. Whenever her name came up, Theresia always seemed to grow sullen, so Adel had avoided mentioning her.
Wilhelmina had been like that even before she ran away, and after she vanished so completely that no one could even see her face anymore, it was even worse. It had already been nearly a year since she disappeared. In a situation like this, Theresia only fixated on something else all the more fiercely.
"T-Tessa!"
"...Mm."
"L-let’s go see the teacher!"
"The teacher...?"
At Adel’s words, Theresia tilted her head.
The two of them shared the same teacher. They were friends, and at the same time, classmates who had become disciples around the same period, even if their paths into the Magic Tower and into magic itself had been different.
The mistress of the Imperial Magic Tower was their teacher.
The two of them were disciples of the highest-ranking figure in the tower—and of the strongest mage in the Empire.
"Yeah! Master said she was doing some interesting research this time! And she said she’d teach us magic, too!"
"Interesting... research... magic..."
Theresia’s eyes, reacting to those two words, began to sparkle.
Even as the fourth princess, she had already been a genius; after Wilhelmina ran away, her obsession with magic only deepened.
Theresia treasured three things above all else: magic, her longing for the world beyond, and the family bound to her by ties deeper than blood. That family consisted of three people—her sister Wilhelmina, her friend Adel, and her teacher Natalie.
The obsession that had once been fixed on the one lost member of that family had shifted, in the end, to magic itself.
"Mm... let’s go..."
"Right!"
They took each other’s hands and set off at a lively, skipping run toward the Imperial Magic Tower.
Even though they had already left the palace grounds, they were still deep within imperial property, but no one had any intention of scolding them for running. They were the mages who would lead the Empire’s next generation, and they were both favored by the Emperor—who would dare stop them?
The palace was not especially close to the tower, but Theresia and Adel used magic to aid their bodies and raced there without stopping. Once inside the tower, they greeted everyone they passed and used the magic circle to ascend to the top floor.
Unlike Adel, who greeted everyone brightly and with energy in a loud voice, Theresia only gave awkward little nods, but the people there were already used to her and returned her greeting warmly enough.
The two of them even got priority from the mages waiting in front of the teleportation circle, and before long they were able to meet the Tower Master herself.
"Master!"
"......"
"Hm? Haa, what is it this time?"
When her disciples burst in so suddenly, she was floating in midair. The book in her hand made it clear she had been reading.
"There she goes again, floating around."
"It’s bad for your... organs..."
"Shut up."
Even as she grumbled at their criticism, their teacher spun around and lowered herself to the floor. The green hair that had been drifting loosely around her face a moment ago settled neatly down her back.
Natalie, the mistress of the Imperial Magic Tower.
She had been a disciple of Robert, the previous Tower Master and the man known as the Archmage. Though she was old enough to be called a grandmother by age alone, she looked to be in her early thirties at most. Her sharp, petulant way of speaking only made her seem even younger.
"So what do you want, really?"
"Master... said... interesting... research..."
"What?"
"W-well, I heard you’d started some new research recently... hehe."
"Haa... so you peeked again."
"Wha—? N-no, I wasn’t trying to spy, I mean..."
Natalie listened to her disciple’s frantic excuses with one ear and let them out the other. It wasn’t the first or second time, so there was no need to waste effort listening closely. Of course, she wasn’t angry either. It wasn’t that she had gone numb; it was just research that could be shared with her disciples without any real issue.
"Fine. Both of you, come here."
"Yes!"
"Mm..."
The teacher led her disciples toward one corner of the room. The entire floor belonged to the Tower Master’s quarters, so the space was enormous, but because it was packed with books and research equipment, the area one could actually move through was rather cramped.
The three mages entered a room marked as the Third Research Lab. At Natalie’s gesture, the papers scattered across the floor all lifted at once and arranged themselves in neat order before her. As the letters were laid out in tidy rows, Theresia and Adel’s eyes followed them.
"This is...?"
"Reincarnation Magic..."
"M-Master. What is this?"
Looking at records that far exceeded anything they had imagined, the two of them were stunned.
"This is material from a witch I know. She managed to find someone who could use it, but the work stalled, so she came to me for advice. Conveniently, I’d been looking for something similar myself. As for Master... well, the previous Tower Master..."
Natalie’s head snapped around and fixed on Adel.
"There’s quite a bit of material on this subject in your grandfather’s study, too."
"In Grandfather’s study..."
At those words, Adel thought of her grandfather.
Not long after she was born, her parents were killed in war. Her grandfather had been the one to raise her and her brother himself. On top of that, he was a Tower Master and Archmage worthy of admiration as a mage, and a war hero besides. It was only natural that her feelings toward him were special.
The world said he had died during his research, but Adel did not believe it. No matter how cleanly the laboratory had been blown apart in the explosion, there were too many strange points. The magical surge at the time had been so intense that countless things could not be verified.
So Adel believed her grandfather was alive somewhere. And her teacher standing before her—the Tower Master, who had also been her grandfather’s disciple—seemed to believe the same.
"Where on earth do you think Grandfather is...?"
"Well, if it’s Master, he’s probably doing fine wherever he is."
It was a little beside the point, but it still seemed like the best answer she could give. She was in the same position when it came to not knowing the Archmage’s whereabouts. More than ten years had passed since the incident. He might have been alive then and dead now.
Still, Natalie wanted to help her precious disciple a little more if she could. Besides that, there was also something deeply satisfying about seeing the wealth of materials in her teacher’s study.
"Adel... hang in there..."
"Mm..."
To brighten the mood, Natalie changed the subject, and the three of them resumed talking about magic and research.
Before long, however, they heard a young man’s voice from one side.
"Tower Master~ Where are you~?"
It was a voice all three of them knew very well.
"Huh? Brother?"
"Hm? Adel, you’re here...? Ah, Tower Master. So you were here."
"Mm, yes."
The young man was Adel’s brother, three years older than her. Which meant he, too, was a grandson of the Archmage Robert. Because of that, he was acquainted not only with Theresia but also with Natalie. More importantly, he was a talented mage in his own right, skilled enough to become a disciple of the second elder of the Magic Tower, so they had continued to keep in touch.
"Adolf, what is it?"
Compared with the sharp but affectionate voice she used with her disciples, this tone was a little colder.
"Ah, well, there’s someone looking for the Tower Master."
"Someone? Then either send them up here or throw them out. Why bother asking me about it?"
"W-well..."
Even with her prickly manner, Adolf didn’t seem bothered at all.
Anyone who knew the Tower Master well knew her personality, and from the look of things it seemed she had been discussing magic and research with the others, which meant the interruption had probably been his mistake. Magicians were that sort of breed. But this, too, was important.
"They introduced themselves as Yueli Madluna..."
"...What?"
Natalie had briefly wondered who that could be, then suddenly remembered the face and identity of the woman who bore that name, and her expression changed in astonishment. The younger mages around her, seeing such a rare look on her face, found it fascinating—and thought, rightly enough, that she had every reason to react that way.
Yueli Madluna was the name of one of the former Hero’s Party, the spirit user who had once been a companion of the Archmage Robert.
"Yueli... Lady Yueli?"
Stunned by an identity she had never imagined, Natalie stammered as she spoke.
She was about twenty years younger than Natalie, but she had once been one of Master Robert’s companions. She was one of the war heroes who had led the conflict against the demon race to victory, and a woman who had been officially listed as missing until now. No one could have possibly predicted such a sudden appearance.
"What should we do...?"
"...For now. For now, bring her up—no, I’ll go myself. I’ll go get her. Where is she now?"
"The twentieth-floor VIP room."
If it was really her, then this was nothing short of a major event. But if she was an impostor, then the punishment would be so severe that mere execution wouldn’t begin to cover it.
"Let’s go."
Yueli did not sit in the chair and wait. Instead, she turned toward the window behind her and looked outside.
The blue sky, flecked here and there with patches of cloud, and half the capital spread out beneath it, all rested clearly within her blue eyes.
It wasn’t her first time here, but it was still an astonishing sight. It really did deserve its reputation as a building twenty floors high. And yet this still wasn’t the top floor. The claim that it was the tallest and most scenic building in the world seemed perfectly justified.
"It’s been a long time since I was here."
The tower itself was only a matter of years ago, but I think the last time I came all the way in here was about twenty years back.
"If I’d been unlucky, I could’ve gotten caught, you know~."
Yueli had wandered across the continent searching for Valdes, hiding her identity with the power of spirits.
The Magic Tower had been one of the places she searched. Back then, the magical compass installed in her womb hadn’t even worked properly, so she had no choice but to poke around everywhere she could. In the end, it had all been for nothing.
"Hmm. Maybe I should ask them to make me a Spirit Tower or something later."
Oh? That’s not a bad idea. We could gather a lot of tasty prey that way.
"Shut up. No more eating spirits. Spirit users should be fighting power for our Valdes."
......
The ancient spirit was dumbfounded.
Who was it that had once said it was pretty fun and gone around hunting spirits together? She had fallen for that dreadful demon prince far too hard. If she could have gotten away from Yueli, she would have left on the spot.
"Why aren’t you answering? Are you going to eat them or not?"
...Fine. I won’t eat them anymore.
"Heh heh heh, good answer~."
...Tch.
As they chatted softly while looking down from the window, she sensed movement behind her.
"Ah, looks like they’ve come."
The moment Yueli turned around, the door to the VIP room opened and Natalie stepped inside. The second she saw Yueli’s face, she froze in place.
"Y-Yueli...?"
"Long time no see, Natalie."
The instant Natalie laid eyes on Yueli, she could tell she was real.
The faint yet immense aura of a spirit master drifted through the room. Even though she was suppressing her power, it was still like this. It was a level of strength unlike any spirit user Natalie had ever seen.
Another proof was her face. Because of her even more dreadful personality, Yueli rarely met outsiders, and even as a member of the Hero’s Party her appearance had never been properly known. But the Yueli standing before her now was exactly the same as before.
"You haven’t aged..."
"Thanks to the spirits, my body hasn’t changed much. You look about the same as you did back then, too, Natalie."
"Well... it’s partly my level, but I’m also just very interested in this sort of thing."
A complicated, bitter expression crossed Natalie’s face.
No matter how anyone looked at it, Yueli’s face hadn’t grown younger—it felt unchanged. Which meant Yueli had possessed that much power even in her twenties. Even with a contract to a powerful spirit, it was a frightening level to reach.
Natalie herself was among the top handful of mages on the continent, but she was no longer young, and the fact that she’d been born into nobility and received abundant support had certainly played a large part in that. Yueli, too, had been born to nobility—but Natalie also knew her family had been wiped out in war.
The two women with faces that seemed too young for their age soon sat down on the sofa.
"I heard you’d gone missing. What brings you here?"
"I’ve been wandering around all this time. But now I want to settle down."
"Settle down..."
It was better news than she had expected.
By power and status alone, Tower Master Natalie ranked among the top ten in the Empire. She simply never used that authority for anything beyond magic-related matters. Even so, she knew enough about the Emperor’s dream of conquering the continent.
If she could bring Yueli into the fold, it would be a tremendous boon to the Empire. More than that, it would also minimize the sacrifices of promising young talents like Theresia, Adel, and Adolf.
"What can I do to help?"
"Hmm... ah."
Yueli spoke as casually as if the idea had just occurred to her.
"How about opening up a professorship at the Imperial Academy?"
That was the goal she had come here with, on Valdes’s orders.