Magic Lecture (3)
Magic could be ignored. Push it to its limit, and the only place waiting for you was the Mage Tower, where no one lived but the dead.
As for me, I'd only ended up doing this nonsense because things had shaken out that way. Anyway.
"Let's be clear about this. Starting now, I'm giving you one hour."
"This is ridiculous! Who are you to order us around? The professor tells you to do something, and suddenly a young lady thinks she's a professor herself?"
I'd known at least one bastard like that would crawl out.
Steel hissed, and every stitch of clothing on the one who'd talked back to me was sliced clean away.
What was there to be so shocked about? The swordsmanship was skill I'd honed as Tati, yes—but knowing I was a von Clyde, they ought to have expected at least this much.
"Eeeeeeek!"
"I'm not going to kill you. I'll just do this. Young lady or whatever else you are, I don't discriminate between men and women—I'll strip you all the same, so remember it. If you want to keep a noble's dignity, scrape together a brain that doesn't even have wrinkles, put it to work, control your mana, and open that."
An hour passed that way. Even so, a few of them did manage to get through.
"One. Two. Three."
I walked slowly toward the cluster of noble young masters and young ladies, every one of them trembling. Of their own accord they bunched together and began to be herded into a corner of the lecture hall, and the sight of them shaking was thoroughly satisfying. The professor made no move to stop me, quietly pretending not to see. Tacit agreement, then.
"W-wait, Lady von Clyde. Let's talk this through. You aren't a barbarian! The von Clydes are the guardians of the North!"
Right. Right. Well said. The former Hero, Tati, had protected humanity, and Tatiana belonged to the guardian house of the North. But the words had to be set straight. I simply ran my eyes over them and curled the corner of my mouth.
"Guardians of the North. Not your guardians."
"D-do you have any idea what this cost?"
"You think a line like that works on me? And if word gets out that you couldn't manage a single spell and had every stitch of clothing on your body sliced off by Lady von Clyde, that only ruins your image further, doesn't it?"
Tattling wouldn't mean a thing anyway. Who would dare lodge a complaint against a von Clyde? Discontent toward me might well brew inside Felione, but that would differ from faction to faction. At the very least, I could steer the mood until it settled on one point: the greatest lunatic of the age, the one called Tatiana, was not to be touched.
Steel flashed. For starters, I sheared the outer coat away.
"Urgh. This is humiliating. Hnnngh."
"I think I rated those heads of yours a little too highly, so I've decided to lower my opinion. In one hour, I'll cut what's underneath as well."
It was mercy, in its own way. They didn't seem as clever as I'd thought, so I was simply meeting them where they were. Let me so much as catch sight of them again.
"Th-this is tyranny!"
One of them shouted it with what passed for courage, huffing and puffing. And what was I supposed to do with that? Tyranny? Where was the tyranny?
"Tyranny? What tyranny."
"It is tyranny! I am a princess of the Duchy of Pomeria! How dare you do this!"
The Duchy of Pomeria. I knew it. One of the countries clinging to the Empire's flank—nothing more than a land ruled by a duke, keeping its independence only because the terrain was so good at turning invasions aside. In the end, even Pomeria survived because the Empire took the monsters head-on with its whole body.
"The Duchy of Pokeria? And why should I care? A mere ducal princess, daring to raise her voice to an archduchess? Do you still think I was cast out of Clyde?"
"Eek? Y-you lunatic—"
For the word lunatic to leave a noble's mouth, the other side must have been thoroughly rattled.
"And by Felione's rules, commoners are mixed in and everyone is equal. So what use is that title of yours?"
It meant nothing here. At least on paper, by Felione's own rules, this was a place where everyone was truly equal. Commoner and noble, all of them—every one the same.
"Then the same goes for you."
"So, can you beat me?"
"Hnk."
Tears welled in the eyes of this truly pitiable young lady. Looking closer, the lock on the box in her hands was shaking violently. If she was already like this over so little, what was she going to do later.
"Before you start whining, you'd better think about what you've done. Look over there. Someone's already opened theirs perfectly."
At my words, the nobles' eyes turned toward a bob-haired woman in glasses. She'd been working at it diligently for some time, and her mana control seemed fairly decent. Perhaps her mana circuits were small. They did say the smaller the circuits, the easier the control.
"Y-yes?"
"Well. Seems you managed it on your own, somehow."
She looked as if she'd put real care into the work.
"Th-thank you?"
"Your status. Commoner, or noble?"
I could tell at a glance. But behind me stood the nobles who until a moment ago had been draped in luxurious coats, and to provoke them I meant to hear it from her own mouth.
"A c-commoner."
A smile drew itself across my lips of its own accord. Right. Right. A commoner. Perfect. These nobles, rotten through and capable of nothing but empty bluster, would be stung by that. I looked at them and let my eyes go half-lidded.
"Worse than commoners. The lot of you."
"——!!"
Couldn't stomach those words, could they? A few even jerked their chins up and glared at me.
"All you know how to do is preen in front of commoners, even here at Felione. Isn't that right?"
"——!!"
"Just drop dead."
I shook my head and condemned them, sneering, and sneering again, and slid Viola back into its sheath as if they weren't even worth drawing steel on.
Had I trodden on a noble's rawest nerve, at this point?
Young masters and young ladies alike, as if their tempers had finally snapped, seized the boxes in both hands and began driving their mana in earnest. So furiously that blue mana—visible even to my eyes—poured out and started wrapping the boxes whole. How humiliating must it feel to lose to a commoner, that they were all but awakening and wringing out every last drop? They'd collapse from exhaustion afterward. Not a bad thing.
Like that: immerse the box in mana the way you'd dunk it in water, and of course the mana flowed all the way inside the lock as well. Learn to control only that, in that state, and it wasn't difficult. Bring out the whip, and you hand over a carrot as well. That's the way of it.
"Oh. Not bad. Like that—push the mana deep into the hole."
"?"
"Don't you understand? Keep it in there and stir. Do that, and you'll learn control."
At my words, several faces twisted. Fair enough. Unless you held a considerable store of mana, this sort of work was grueling.
"That phrasing is a little open to misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding how? This isn't even a magic tool. If it's a lock, putting it in and undoing it is exactly right, isn't it?"
Whatever about my words displeased them so, there were an unusual number of frowns. The metaphor, put simply, was this: fill a bath to the brim, toss the box in, and open the lock. That kind of feeling.
"You don't have time to wrinkle your faces, do you? Keep pouring mana like that and you may well exhaust yourselves and collapse."
"Someone already has, though."
The eyes of the nobles—who looked exceedingly lazy—turned toward the young master on the floor. I gave him a few light taps with the tip of Viola. He really did seem to have gone down. Well, truly exhausted, faking it would be impossible. That was that. But looking closer, there were a few whose eyes sparkled as they watched the one who'd collapsed.
"Maybe fainting would be the better option?"
Right. I'd been wondering when that line would show up.
"Nonsense."
Steel flashed. I cut through the fainted one's inner clothes as well. I hoped that when he woke and found his body stripped, he'd be delighted with the view.
"You're cutting the clothes off someone who fainted, too? A-aren't you a demon?"
"A demon? The demons are you lot. Hours at a single lock, and you can't pick it—turning people's stomachs. That's a demon."
How could they fail at even this and flounder so miserably? In an age when the magical arts were advancing, they ought to have at least the bare minimum of knowledge. Truly disappointing.
"Lady Clyde. You don't look like that at all. You're terrifying!"
"I said the professor's stomach would turn. Anyway, continue."
The few who burned out had their clothes cut on the spot. After that—whether because they'd seen what happened, or simply because they didn't want to be stripped—students appeared who poured their mana hard, but not to excess, filling only the inside of the lock. Mostly the women.
Of course. Fail, and the clothes come off. If nothing else, a young lady would have to bite down and hang on, if only to spare herself the shame. Which meant they were in more of a hurry than the young masters.
Then, for the young masters, should I aim lower? In the end, the most important thing in a noble house was the male head continuing the bloodline. Cut that line, and wouldn't the matter be settled? Hm. That was going too far. For now, I'd only watch.
"The young ladies are pulling ahead. You young masters, the ones who ought to lead your houses—are you going to be content getting outdone by young ladies over a single spell at Felione?"
I laughed as freely as I pleased at the young masters still vaguely debating whether to bother drawing their mana out at all. Roswell noble society was, after all, a world that set men above. Even for the young masters, this remark would be hard to swallow. Speak plainly—speak crudely—and the bodies sold off in political marriages for the profit of the house were getting ahead of the very people meant to lead those houses. The words would land as something of a shock on them, too.
"Hey—who said we can't do it?"
Indeed. Our young masters seemed to dislike watching the young ladies pull ahead. Some clenched both fists. Others stared at their locks with fire in their eyes, as if they meant to crush them in their grip.
Well then. Time to drive a word in.
"If you can't manage even something this simple, there's no need for you to carry on the line. I'll cut it clean off."
I said it while staring straight between a lazy young master's legs, and the lot of them flung themselves at the locks like madmen.
"Eeeek!"
Right, right. That was how they ought to react. If they didn't want it torn off, that was exactly how they ought to react.
In the end, coercion of this sort—rule by fear—yielded fine results. Young ladies and young masters alike, all of them except those who had collapsed from mana exhaustion, wrapped the boxes themselves in a mass of mana in a flash and then, all at once, picked at the inside of the keyhole. And yet—
"Most satisfying, Lady von Clyde! You have no idea how ashamed I was today. To think I believed the idle rumors about a young lady like you, and looked at you through prejudiced eyes!"
The magic professor shed tears of pure emotion.
"Not at all."
"If you would lend a hand from time to time, for the advancement of humanity's magical studies, I would be most grateful."
With that, the professor lavished praise on me several times over.
Hm? He wanted me to help advance humanity's magical studies?
This, I couldn't brush aside. If we were to drive back the Night and gather the strength to crush the Demon King's army, magic was, in the end, an essential discipline. At the very least, you could wrap mana around a sword or a spear and strike with it. The study of magic mattered.
"Hmm."
"What are you thinking about so intently?"
The Scamp Princess seemed to grow anxious the moment I did anything at all.
I wasn't thinking of anything much. If every noble at Felione joined hands and became a mage, shoring up those frail bodies of theirs, and drove the Night back from the vanguard—wouldn't the commoners who had resented the nobility all this time be moved to tears, and follow after them?