The Magic Lecture
Today's class was magic.
The lecture hall looked every inch a place where magic was taught — bookcases packed tight with grimoires, workbenches laid out for the laying of enchantments, and every other sort of arcane apparatus crowded in along the walls. It probably fell a little short of the Mage Tower. Even so, it had the bones of a place where one could actually learn magic.
"We haven't made any progress in magic yet. It's only the start of term."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Today's probably the first lesson."
Considering the age at which students entered Felione, weren't they learning this later than anyone would expect? Then again, this was magic taught in a place that took in nobles and elite commoners. Most of them had surely already picked up a fair amount on their own — whether that amounted to anything more than something to brag about, I couldn't say.
"I am Yuris, professor of magic and practical magic. From here on, I shall be the one teaching you."
Unexpectedly, the professor had a certain gloss to him. If the general-curriculum faculty were nothing more than figureheads propped up so people could rub elbows, this one at least seemed to mean it.
"The spell we will be learning today releases locks. One uses it to open a locked door, or a locked chest."
Ah. The lock-releasing spell. Unlock.
"Couldn't that be abused for crime?"
"An excellent question. It can indeed be turned to crime — but conversely, a trace of mana remains, and by that trace the culprit can be caught. For that reason it is used chiefly when one must open a locked door in one's own home and has no key. In other words, when undoing a lock that belongs to oneself."
The professor was answering a student's question. True enough. The spell got misused for crime, but the mana trace meant the culprit was easily caught. I'd pulled that little stunt more than a few times myself, which was precisely why, among the people who had actually learned it, there wasn't one who would really go and do such a thing. The class that studied magic was, by and large, the sort already handling a bit of money; they had no particular urge to go out and commit crimes on their own.
"I didn't come to Felione to learn something that simple."
"If you dismiss it as merely simple, or as the sort of skill only thieves would use, you would be mistaken. Releasing a lock is done by controlling mana — moving it in small, fine motions to undo the mechanism. It is an excellent spell for training one's control of mana."
It really was a simple spell. Out in the erosion zones, it was what you used to unlock the treasure chests and ancient relics you found there. The difficulty varied from person to person, though, because no two people carried the same amount of mana. The less you had, the easier it was to control; the more you had, the harder that mana was to handle, and one slip could smash a lock to pieces.
"Today's goal is to release the lock set before each of you — without breaking it."
So that was it. Practice in mana control.
"Hey. You lunatic."
"Yes, Hooligan Princess?"
At that, she crumpled that face of hers all over again, and prettily too. A shame, really, creasing a face so lovely. And all of it in the name of getting along. Perhaps Her Highness saw the matter differently.
"Do you even know how to do this? I was under the impression von Clyde was weak when it came to mana."
"Then is our princess capable of it?"
"I'm asking because I don't know."
What? She doesn't know something this simple? Strange.
"And what, precisely, do you know?"
"You really do manage to insult people on purpose without even meaning to."
I'd asked in earnest. Even on the first day of class, wasn't this the sort of thing one usually tried to know? Royalty were homeschooled, weren't they? She ought to have done some preparatory study before ever setting foot in Felione.
"Your Highness. I am not insulting you — isn't it simply the fact of the matter? I am not the sort of person who wounds others for sport. I only meant that people ordinarily do a bit of preparatory study."
"In other words, you wound them in earnest. Yes. I didn't. And why? Because unlike my brothers, I never had a tutor attached to me."
"What a tragic tale."
She stood well down the line of succession. Nothing to be done about it. Even if what I'd inherited was the blood of some roadside beggar, so long as I could firm up a footing for myself at Felione, I'd be satisfied with that.
"You've really attained a mastery of getting under people's skin, haven't you? And you do it without so much as a change of expression, which only makes me angrier."
"If that's how you took it, I truly am sorry."
"No — at least look a little sorry, or laugh, or something. Ugh, forget it. Just show me how it's done."
Even when I said it plainly, it didn't seem to land as an admission. Naturally enough. I had lived for nothing but playing the Hero, and before I was the Hero, simply staying alive had been urgent enough. At any rate, I poured mana into the lock.
Crack!
Ah. I'd put a little too much force behind it, and it broke. Too much power for a training piece, perhaps. But the thing must have been magically rebuilt from the inside out — the shattered scraps of iron began knitting themselves back together of their own accord, and the lock restored itself.
Right. So the exercise was built so that you had to release the lock slowly, and nothing else. There were plenty of spells that put a lock back together once you'd broken it; nothing difficult about that. The lock was small enough that I'd have to feed the mana in slowly.
"Why did you break it?"
The princess narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
"Aren't locks better broken, as a rule?"
"The condition is to release it. Not to break it."
What did it matter. Whenever I'd picked a lock, it had always been because something was urgent; I'd never had the leisure to undo one neatly and leave it whole. I let the princess's sneer roll off my back and tried again.
A glance around told me the other students were failing too, every last one of them. If I failed any further than this, the princess looked ready to write me off as incompetent. Not that I — of a house that wasn't even a magical one — had any business doing this in the first place.
Click.
On the second try, the lock opened. Fail once, and what follows is simple. The lock itself had been small to begin with, so once you grew used to it, it was easy — easy enough, for instance, that a light flick of the fingers would do.
"What? How did you open it that easily? You just flicked your finger."
"Ah. I'm hopeless at other magic. I only know a handful."
"Even so. When everyone else is failing at it."
I stole a glance at the other students. It was not a pretty sight.
"It's simple. Just do it with the feeling of drawing a thread out of your hand, more or less."
"How am I supposed to draw a thread out of my hand?"
"Then do it like letting water trickle from a bottle."
Did she not understand what I meant? Was she an idiot? Surely she could grasp at least that much.
Whether she had truly caught my meaning or not, she tilted her head with a complicated look on her face, then slowly poured mana into the lock.
"There's something catching on the inside of this, too."
"That part takes knack as well. You have to pop open the catch on the inside with mana."
"Then the thing you do by flicking your finger?"
"Better to think of it as a kind of command."
"A command?"
"You simply fix it in your head. Remember in advance how the mana has to flow for each type of lock, and then do it by flicking your finger and letting the mana out that way."
I looked at the princess's chest and flicked my finger.
Click.
Her lock came undone with absurd ease.
"That is how it opens."
"And what exactly am I supposed to do if you're the one who opens it?"
"A proxy Unlock?"
We'd just count it as something done on her behalf.
Whatever had soured her, the princess's face crumpled hard. She spoke with eyes gone cold and thin.
"I don't need that sort of thing, you know."
The party members I'd run with used to be delighted whenever I handled it for them. She'd had her fill of that, apparently.
"Professor. Could I have one more chest over here?"
"Lady Clyde. This is not a restaurant."
Right. So that was how it was. Even among the professors, a Clyde was that sort of existence — the sort that tried to solve everything by force, the sort that knew nothing but greed. That was a Clyde, as far as noble eyes were concerned.
The professor looked genuinely stern. What rumors had been circulating about Tatiana, that so many people were this wary of her? Fine. Let's see whether he stayed composed after seeing this.
I held up the two unlocked chests without a shred of shame.
"I opened Her Highness's chest by mistake as well, so I'm asking for a new one. Chef."
I said it with a tip of the head, and only then did the professor push his glasses up, startled.
"One moment — this quickly?"
"Yes. What's strange about it?"
"I had thought this alone would carry the class for three days."
This man. How many days of neglecting his post had he been planning?
"Well, there are other students, so that much— no. Wait. This is easy, isn't it? Easy enough that even I can do it, and I've handled nothing but a sword my entire life."
It wasn't a lie. In truth, I had been doing this from the first moment I laid eyes on it. As for the lock bursting earlier, we'd write that off as a touch of charm.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The professor was applauding now, lost in admiration.
"Lady Clyde. I see you in an entirely new light."
"Pardon?"
"I had taken you for nothing but a house of northern barbarians, and yet you possess such a gift for magic. Oh! The North, too, may now be civilized through magic—"
Eyes sparkling, the professor sank into a world entirely his own. It was an irritating thing to say. Strange — was this the will of the Tatiana living inside me? Irritation surged up. I had always been someone who registered this sort of thing poorly. So I, Tatiana, was Tatiana after all.
"May I kill this man?"
"Restrain yourself. You know perfectly well how they treat the North."
Laura checked me from behind. Right. Being dismissed as a house of nothing but brute strength and ignorance — that couldn't be helped.
At the frigid response, the professor seemed to realize he had misspoken, and he apologized while heaping on every florid phrase he could find. If he was going to grovel like this, why slight us in the first place?
After a long stretch of praise he seemed unable to stop giving, the professor set an enormous pot down in front of me.
"Excellent. Truly excellent. Lady Clyde — would you try this as well?"
"This? A pot?"
It was a huge pot, ornamented in some refined, luxurious style.
"A— a pot? No. This is a magic brazier. Breathe your own mana into it. Properly speaking, it is a device for determining how much mana one possesses."
Ah. So this was the academy model. The shape was different enough that I hadn't recognized it at a glance.
"When were you planning to use it in class?"
"Originally, I meant to measure the mana of whichever students stalled on the locks, and run the curriculum to suit."
Something about that sat wrong with me.
Fwoooom—
The instant I breathed mana into the brazier, a blue flame began to rise. What started as little more than an ember swelled and swelled until it swallowed the brazier whole and became a pillar of white fire. At the sight, the professor straightened his glasses once more and blinked.
And before long, with a sharp crackle, the brazier shattered.
"The brazier broke? What? Lady Clyde — you didn't use some trick, did you?"
"Shall I strip and show you? You were watching the whole time from right beside me. What trick would I have used?"
Was this really something to be so astonished by? At least the mage I knew — that bitch — had never been impressed by the likes of this. Or perhaps she simply hadn't been, being on the level of the next lord of the Mage Tower, and at this professor's level it was worth the gasp.
"Ah. It was simply so far outside my expectations. Forgive me, Lady von Clyde. To think that von Clyde harbored a magical prodigy of this caliber."
"So what is this pillar of white flame?"
"Er. At first, owing to the nature of mana, a blue flame rises in the brazier. Given time, however, a color sets in."
The one that mage had carried hadn't behaved like this. So this wasn't simply a measure of how much mana one held? One possibility came to mind.
"Each color corresponds to an attribute?"
"Perceptive indeed. Correct. One can thereby learn the attribute one possesses."
The professor flicked his fingers and smiled, thoroughly satisfied. By then the students' eyes had turned toward the brazier as well. Those who understood nothing of it simply stared, thinking it marvelous; among those who did, some watched with jealousy tangled up in envy, and some in open admiration.
And yet a small curiosity had begun to stir.
"And yet, as I understand it, mages handle magic of several attributes."
Then what meaning did this color hold?