Magic Lecture (2)
The professor didn't seem to be lying.
I stole a glance his way. The chill from earlier had been packed away entirely, and he was flushed with excitement, nudging his glasses back into place as he spoke.
"Precisely. What that process indicates, however, is affinity for a given attribute. Red favors flame, blue favors water, and pale blue favors ice. Earth manifests as a brown flame. Holy power rises as a white flame, and the dark attribute as a black flame."
"Hmm. I see."
Put simply, the colors changed with the attribute.
"Of these, the great majority of people fall under red, blue, or brown. The rarest of all are the white flame and the black flame."
"Hmm. Black flame would be black magic, then."
Black magic had a gloomy air about it, so few people used it well, and there weren't many spells to begin with. The ones who bothered were unhinged cultists, the sort who reached even among black magics for what was forbidden. As for white flame, I had a fair idea.
"White flame belongs chiefly to the priesthood. Even so, most of the priests within the Church bear some other natural attribute. Divinity is not among them."
"So I'm an unusual case."
"Yes. A pillar of that magnitude would stir envy even in the Saintess."
With that, he drifted off into a mutter meant for no one. And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with it? The man dearly loved talking to himself. Were mages simply like this by nature?
That mage bitch in the Hero's party had been the same. Unless she was rolling around with Carn in the tent, she was the sort who muttered to herself more often than not. But that was a mage's affair.
I held my hand out toward the professor.
"Before any of that, give us Her Highness's box back."
"Ah. Of course. Yes, that should be done. I— ah, but."
"Yes?"
"Young Lady von Clyde, have you no interest in the path of a mage? Should you wish it, I could offer a recommendation to the Mage Tower."
The Mage Tower. The Mage Tower. That mage had hated the place too. She said they bound you hand and foot there—restraints in all but name, restriction piled on restriction—and that one was expected to burn oneself up on the study of magic.
"What I learn at Felione is enough for me. I've no desire to wear the Mage Tower's shackles."
At that the professor clicked his tongue, faintly regretful, and brought over another locked box. Our princess, newly in possession of it, looked suspicious in both eyes.
"To think I'd live to see that brazier shatter. Truly."
"What of it?"
Was a brazier cracking really so strange? Magic tools broke. That was what they did. And why cling to the ones in this place, of all places?
"No, it simply looked a little... crude. Not that you intended it, my lady. How shall I put it. Somewhat."
"Like I hammered it in with nothing but brute force?"
"Yes. Not that you yourself are crude. No, please don't misunderstand. I truly didn't mean it in the sense of being actually crude."
An incompetent princess was hardly in a position to mock me for being crude.
"Hmm."
Did I actually have a gift for magic? Had that mage bitch only been joking? This gun of mine, to begin with—hadn't it been using mana all along? I could even send holy-power rounds downrange under the name of magic bullets. I still preferred this. The people around me, I suspected, would not. And wasn't it better to fire something enormous, one shot at a time, than to bother with all those sprawling grand spells? Yes. That was better. I was, quite simply, rationalizing.
"What has you thinking so hard?"
"Honestly, I was starting to wonder if I might be a mage myself."
"Someone who hasn't learned more than a handful of spells, and listen to you. Do something about that professor's mouth."
The professor had put a little distance between himself and the princess and me, but he was watching this way all the same. Troublesome. He'd marked me, and firmly. The students who dreamed of becoming mages were staring holes through me as well.
Give me a break. This would not do. I had thought it would be enough to play the young lady faithfully and, with any luck, catch the occasional rumor of the Demon King. If the mages decided to fixate on me here, what was I supposed to do about it? I'd meant to dig in at Felione for a while. At this rate they would be calling me Tatiana the Mage.
"I'd rather be swinging a sword."
"Do you like swords that much?"
"Our young lady takes dozens of magical beasts in a single stroke of the sword."
Laura, ever the faithful maid at my back, puffed me up. Not that I needed the endorsement.
"Oh. Your swordsmanship must be exceptional, then. An extraordinary swordswoman, cutting down dozens at once."
"Cutting them down? What are you talking about."
"Pardon?"
"Cutting things down isn't in my dictionary. I destroy them."
The princess's face went cold. She didn't believe me. One Explosive Sword, and the whole lot of them would be swept away. It occurred to me, suddenly, that the arts of the Holy Sword weren't so different from a magic swordsman's technique in the end.
"You destroy with the sword, rather than cut?"
"Explaining it would wear out my mouth. I'll show you later."
Right now, dodging the eyes of those mage hopefuls was the urgent thing. Meet their gaze and they'd be asking me to join their party. Perhaps, once I'd secured my footing at Felione, I ought to aim at the Demon King by some other route.
And yet here came the professor again.
"Hmm. But if you finish so quickly..."
"Yes?"
"Splendid. Young lady, you will assist me."
What was this man saying? He wanted me to take on a nuisance like this? Some scheme to recruit me into the mages? Spend long enough in that miserable party—the one the Hero couldn't even lead—and everything starts to look petty. Mages, especially. The sort with a powerful reputation for slinging spells from the rear. I was in full agreement. Most of them were underhanded, and wasn't this professor, right now, trying to drag me into that same shabby company?
"Why me?"
"I shall award you extra credit. Surely you wish to lay tremendous glory upon the North?"
"Uh. Well."
I scowled at the words he delivered while nudging his glasses up with a finger. Tremendous glory for the North. Was magic worth that much? Unlike the Mage Tower, hadn't the magic taught here always been a cut below?
"I am given to understand that you recently swung a blade and soaked a young master's trousers."
"That phrasing is unfortunate."
Why bring that up?
"In any case, magic is a discipline Felione itself champions as a pillar! To receive extra credit in such a field would be a fine thing, would it not?"
I'd already made a scene with a sword. Was he telling me to take the extra credit this way, at least, and hand the glory to Clyde? Fair enough. Let a young lady with a gift for magic come out of a northern house known only for swinging blades, and the story did change.
"That seems reasonable. I, too, find it unbecoming for Young Lady Clyde to monopolize knowledge in such a fashion. It isn't even a spell of her own devising. An unlocking spell, taught to the young masters and young ladies—what harm could there be?"
The princess flashed a kindly smile. On the surface, yes. That smile meant something else. While you're at it, do as the professor says. It was written all over her face. If I was going to back her anyway, I might at least scrape up some credit at Felione. I was already reigning here as a lunatic. Was this necessary? Too many eyes to simply refuse. Anything else, maybe—but why was I meant to teach something that had nothing to do with my trade?
"Understood."
"A few seem to be grasping the knack on their own. It would be best if you taught only the students who truly seem lost."
A glance confirmed it. Some of them genuinely didn't know, and some were trying to work it out alone.
"And you, Professor?"
"I shall draft the curriculum for the next class, and in the meantime offer tips and technique to the other students who don't understand."
In short, split the children between us and teach. Was he insane? Even granting mages their quirks, dividing a class with a student from the very first period? Or were mages nothing but eccentrics, every last one of them?
"Yes."
When Her Highness said jump, one jumped. In rank she stood above me, and if word got out that the young lady of northern Clyde had assisted a magic class at the princess's word, plenty of people would look at her twice.
Before I knew it, the professor had divided the students and was already dispensing something like tips on unlocking. I went through the boxes myself, right in front of the noble bastards staring blankly at me from the front row. Not one of them had opened a thing properly. Most hadn't even left a trace of trying. A few had locks spun every which way, as if flung aside—those ones had tried to solve it by hand. It was so absurd a laugh snorted out of me.
"Unbelievable."
The nobles groaned or wrinkled their faces at my reaction. The ones who couldn't had a reason they couldn't. They could manage perfectly well without anyone teaching them. They didn't need to stoop to something like this. That sort of thing.
"To think Young Lady Clyde would be teaching magic."
"Do you have a complaint? Noble dregs?"
I toyed with Viola at my hip. Carrying a weapon inside was normally forbidden. I had bent the Grand Duke's authority, just a little.
"Dr—dregs?"
"Shut your mouths and listen when you're being taught."
I said it cold, before they could bristle. Incompetent as they were, I had no choice but to help.
"Y-yes."
"I know you've got plenty of complaints about me. But you're nobles. Should you really be unable to manage basic magic?"
Whether they agreed or simply couldn't argue, most of them ducked their heads or looked away. I sighed, moved, and brought over the box from the lectern.
"I'll show you exactly once. Watch closely and copy it. You won't be able to work it from a distance at the start, so I'll simply channel mana."
I gave them a passable demonstration, the way I had for Irene, and put them through their paces.
I came to a realization. These bastards were impressively thick in the head.
I prided myself on having taught them as kindly as I could, kindly enough that even a brain without a single wrinkle might have taken it in. And yet these things—whether it was pushback against me, or whether every last one of them was simply that thick in the skull, there was hardly a soul among them who could actually do it.
"For crying out loud. It's this simple. You can't do it?"
I said it while undoing the lock I'd just been given by the professor. A snap of the fingers, that was all. Practice a little, and it came easily enough on its own.
"No, it—it isn't something that comes that simply."
"Th-that's right, Young Lady Clyde."
"Save the brains you waste cozying up to one another and use them now. Who is standing in front of you?"
The morons glared at me for the briefest instant, then whipped their heads aside under my eyes and answered in voices that crawled.
"Clyde."
"Younger sister of the Northern Grand Duke."
They couldn't even meet my eyes. They were shaking.
"Right. That's the idea. Unlike the lot of you, I come from a grand ducal house of barbarian stock, with no tie to magic whatsoever. And you're worse than that?"
"Eeeek!"
I drew Viola, drove it into the desk, and worked it this way and that. They were looking down on people, and not by a little. This was them looking down on me.
"Do I look like a joke to you?"
"No. Th-that's not— I—"
"You can look down on magic. Don't look down on me."
Unless they were ignoring me, sneering at me, and hadn't a scrap of spine left to push back with, there was no way they could fail at something this easy.
"Surely that rather puts the cart before the horse."
He'd been watching from the side—quietly, it seemed—and chose that moment to cut in. I ignored him.