Your Paper Is Dope (11)
Your Paper Is Dope (11)
The Flare's corona of light punched through the frontal armor. A clean penetration. The audience seating transformed into a baseball crowd in seconds.
Mages who had come for the presentation raised their hands one by one, vying for the floor. While a janitor swept the debris Flare had scattered across the floor, the three of them had to field a deluge of questions.
How long had Flare taken to develop. Which parts of the paper were unclear—could they explain in more detail. Where had the concept of the three-dimensional scroll originated. How had a member of the Gold-Eye Tribe come to research fire magic. And so on.
Some questions led into others in relentless chains, like a job interview. Rote and Frey faltered at those, their lips twitching around answers they couldn't quite deliver.
That was the normal reaction. No one faulted an undergraduate for failing to produce a polished reply to a professor's question. In fact, the mere effort to say something was regarded as commendable.
But the golden-eyed girl was different.
Aether fended off the barrage of questions with ease. It was a defense of a caliber rarely seen even from a Ph.D. candidate on the verge of graduation.
Her nimble rhetoric forced fellow mages to retreat, clicking their tongues. Among them were Kleis and Meri.
The question-and-answer went on for an hour and a half. It was about time to wrap up the presentation.
That was when.
"In any case, who will hold the patent for the Flare Scroll?"
Someone raised that topic. The eyes of the audience turned toward the back of the dais.
The speaker was Kleis. She had held the patent question in reserve until the very end.
Technically, there was no leverage. No scholarly attack landed on the golden-eyed girl. The Flare that Aether had built was flawless in both theory and experiment. Yes—she would concede that much.
Then she would change her approach. She would buy Flare outright. She would purchase the patent and register it under the name of House Haspelt.
It was a thoroughly materialist line of thought. But Kleis had no margin left. This was the only way she could see to restore the prestige of a house that might otherwise collapse.
"The Flare patent? The patent rights are currently divided among the three of us."
Every form of Magic Arts vests copyright in its creator.
The same applied to Kleis. She herself had produced two top-grade fire-magic techniques: Corona and Chaser Flow. Anyone on the continent who wished to produce scrolls containing those two spells had to pay a fee to Kleis.
Flare was no different. Like any other technical patent, it could be bought and sold.
"How much... how much would it take? How much to buy the Flare patent...?"
A thousand gold coins? Two thousand?
No, that would be unconscionable.
It had to be on the order of ten thousand gold coins at minimum. That much was only proper, considering the amount the Second Prince had once offered Kleis.
Spending on the scale of ten thousand gold coins was not something even the Four Great Dukes could ignore. In wartime, an outlay of that magnitude might make an entire house stagger.
But from any angle, it was a deal where the gains far outweighed the losses. The damage could easily be recouped.
At Kleis's question, the three girls leaned their heads together and whispered. They appeared to need a conference among themselves.
Rote and Frey nodded in turn. The price negotiation was settled.
Aether spoke.
"From this moment, all patent rights to Flare rest with me."
"Didn't you just say the co-authors also held shares?"
"I had them transferred to me a moment ago. In exchange for buying each of these friends a drink."
Laughter burst from the assembly. Even Kleis let out a hollow laugh.
For the price that Flare commanded, to write it off with a single drink.
The other mages attending the presentation had long since started running their own calculations on Flare. Its projected patent value was at least fifty thousand gold coins.
But the words that followed wiped the levity from every face.
"I also intend to renounce the Flare patent."
The lecture hall froze. Silence. Even Meri, who had been half-listening to the Q&A with her arms folded, pulled her chair forward and leaned in.
"What does that...!"
"Student, think this over! You're kicking away a chance to sit on a mountain of gold with your own two feet!"
Sell the patent with your eyes shut, and a sum large enough to live on in idle luxury for the rest of your life would land in your account. An opportunity of that magnitude, and it wasn't a noble or an imperial—just a single commoner by birth, trying to kick it away.
Aether turned her head with untroubled eyes. The direction where Kleis stood.
At the sudden declaration of making Flare free, Kleis's thought processes had half-stopped. Aether looked toward Kleis as if her eyes were saying:
—Your thesis was awesome.
"...Th-that's absurd! What gives you the nerve to kick away unearned income when you don't even have money? Are you insane...?!"
Aether answered the outburst with a smile.
The smile of a stork looking down at a titmouse.
"I don't know whether everyone here might think I'm a fool or a sucker. But even if so, I'll say it like this."
"What...."
"Even at this very moment, soldiers and citizens on the northern front are being torn apart by magic beasts. And that isn't all. Prolonged war keeps raising taxes by the day, and the tide of want has spilled past the north—across the east, the west, the south, and even into the Capital."
"......."
"Before I entered Tillet, I came from exactly those circumstances. I was at the level of scraping by on a single corn soup bought with two donghwa."
Not many in the room identified with Aether's story. How could they? Most of the attendees were of noble birth. Only one person nodded: Meri.
"From a commoner's perspective, income stays flat or shrinks while the taxes collected only increase. So I thought: at this rate, won't the imperial treasury run dry? To stop that, I believed there was one clear answer."
"Which means...."
Only then did the other mages begin to grasp the thrust of her words, one by one.
"Yes. Reduce military expenditure. Flare will be manufactured in scroll form, so if I forgo the payment beyond the scroll's production cost, this war can be brought to a swift conclusion."
"Even so, renouncing a research patent of this magnitude is something you'll surely regret! If that's the case, you'd do better to sell the patent to someone else...!!"
"...Professor Haspelt. One does not patent the sun."
Her eyes, as if steeped in brimstone, turned toward Kleis.
Commoner and noble—such distinctions held no meaning here. This was Tillet Magic Academy.
That was right. A Magic Arts academy. A school that trained mages, filled exclusively with mages.
The scientist spoke.
"From this moment, Flare is the common property of the continent."
**
Kleis trudged back to the manor.
It was the ducal family's private residence in the heart of the Capital. Though detached from the main house, making it little more than a villa, to Kleis it was her sole refuge.
"You have returned."
She acknowledged the butler's greeting with a silent nod.
She stripped off her robe and tossed it aside without a care. Even a five-year-old in a noble household would not commit such a breach of decorum.
Not just the robe. Her staff, her bag, her witch's hat decorated with dried Rosemary leaves—she flung them all aside and went into her room.
She drew a mana cigarette from her shirt and lit it. The taste was foul. The acrid smoke stabbed at her tonsils and she could never breathe evenly, reduced to hacking.
"Lady Haspelt, this was in the postbox."
The butler Houston handed Kleis an envelope. It was fairly thick toward the bottom. She scanned the address, but nothing was written on it.
"I do not know who the sender is."
After a brief hesitation, Kleis extracted the contents.
A video film reel.
Since the ducal residence possessed a magically operated video projector, identifying the film's nature was not difficult. Kleis went to her room, loaded the film into the projector, and waited.
A vast expanse of snowfield unfolded before her eyes. From the composition, the person filming had shot from an elevated position.
A colossal monster scattered snow-dust as it revealed itself. Its size was hard to gauge, but its shape was captured vividly on the film.
A creature that looked as though a lobster and a scorpion had been ground together in equal measure, a magic beast primarily inhabiting snowfields.
"Homarus...."
It was a foe Kleis had faced many times. Its carapace was not as formidable as Gargantua's, but it was tough.
The head region, in particular, deflected fire bullets no matter how many were fired. To safely subdue a Homarus, you had to start by breaking every leg. That was the orthodox approach, without a doubt.
With a thunderous boom, the Homarus's head blew off. Dense smoke replaced the space where its head had been.
"Th-this... this is...."
Kleis had seen this phenomenon once, earlier today.
"That Homarus...."
Footage of a Calamity-class magic beast collapsing to a single Flare. The Flare in the footage appeared far more lightweight than her own.
The era had changed. The age had arrived when even a nine-year-old child, once they learned the method of use, could contend with a Calamity-class magic beast.
The world swayed left and right. Kleis staggered as she tried to rise, then collapsed into the chair in front of her desk. The high-grade hardwood chair creaked, then stilled.
Kleis slammed her head against the desk.
And raised it.
Slammed it down again. Raised it.
Slammed.
Raised.
Once, twice, three times, four times.
Each time her head fell, the years passed.
One year, two, three, four.
Her own five lost years.
No groan escaped her. She had no strength left to make one.
With her forehead still against the desk, Kleis twisted her fingers into the ends of her hair.
"......."
What if—what if she had not sold Aether to the prince. Could she have at least held the role of corresponding author for Flare?
What if.
What if she had treated Aether just a little more like a human being. Would she, in that other world, have been standing there smiling together with the golden-eyed girl?
"Hn...."
What an utter fool. In exchange for ruining three years of one girl's life, she herself had been robbed of five. This too must be a punishment dealt by the Goddess.
"Excuse me, my lady...? A telephone call has come in...."
As she lay with her head buried without end, someone knocked at the door. It was Bella, a maid of the household.
She had come carrying the landline receiver. Kleis reflexively lifted her head and rose to her feet.
The line was connected. Through it came a low ringback tone.
[Kleis.]
Ah. It had come at last.
A voice familiar, yet impossible to grow accustomed to—the voice of her own blood.
With a trembling hand, Kleis took the receiver the maid held out. A single phrase she could not bear to speak tore through her lips.
"...Father."