The Gold-Eye Tribe and the Human Race (4)
The Gold-Eye Tribe and the Human Race (4)
Ever since she had accidentally discovered the machine that refined uraninite, Akasha had been in rather high spirits.
The fact that House Saliere had figured out a use for pitchblende ore was not, in itself, a good thing. It meant that they might develop a weapon capable of felling not only herself and the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens, but even the Demon King himself.
But uncovering secrets like this was precisely what humanoid demons were supposed to do. A deep curve settled on Akasha's lips at the thought of reporting her achievements when she returned.
That didn't mean she could stop here, though. There was nothing more wasteful than stumbling upon a motherlode and leaving with only a single nugget of gold.
"I figured there'd be more. Should've known."
Late at night. She had been wandering the mansion to see if anything else was hidden beyond the refining device. Akasha, who had picked the lock on a storeroom, discovered something interesting there.
It was a large metal box shaped like a donut.
A familiar texture, a familiar shape. This was another one of the weapons her sister had built long ago.
"A tokamak?"
Supposedly, the Imperial language abbreviation for 'donut-shaped magnetic confinement device' came out to that name.
"Doesn't look like Count Saliere made it."
He'd hidden the pitchblende magic-stone refiner away in a secret location, but he'd tossed this into a storeroom? That didn't add up.
"Either way, it's a windfall."
She stroked the tokamak, a faint, bitter smile crossing her face. Her sister had probably built it and left it here.
She didn't know why it had been built and left here, but taking it to the Iron Tower would be beneficial. Akasha withdrew a work scroll from her bosom and channeled mana into it.
[High-Grade Unique Magic Scroll — Transparency]
[Mid-Grade Unique Magic Scroll — Weight Alleviation]
This was a scroll combination thieves often used when stealing things. No defensive magic had been cast on this tokamak, so applying the scrolls wasn't difficult.
"Good."
Having confirmed the scrolls had taken effect, Akasha closed the storeroom door and came out. Beyond the window, the typhoon was still raging.
Once the storm stopped, she would leave this place. She would head to the Iron Tower, summon the corps commanders, and inform them of everything.
"And..."
Before that, how about I needle that girl a little?
**
A few days later, roughly when the typhoon was beginning to weaken.
The two girls ate breakfast as usual, then read books in the study. Watching Rote repeat the exact same routine every day was becoming tiresome.
Akasha closed her novel and, for the first time in a while, fetched a book on magic arts. For someone of her skill, it was the kind of book she'd already know by heart, but her purpose wasn't to understand its contents.
[A General Theory of Advanced Fire Magic]
It really does look boring as hell.
As she casually flipped to a random page and pretended to read, she got a bite. Rote glanced her way, set down her own book, and spoke.
"Isn't it interesting?"
She was biting because a topic she liked had come up. At the girl's pure scholarly enthusiasm, Akasha subtly twisted the corner of her mouth.
"Eh, it's alright."
"Now that you mention it, don't you go to an academy? If you enrolled, you'd learn a lot of that kind of stuff."
"Why bother?"
Most of the academies built on the Arens Continent doubled as military schools. They turned incoming students who couldn't even handle low-grade magic beasts into graduates capable of confronting high-grade magic beasts by teaching all manner of combat magic arts.
"I can already take down a Fenrir. Why would I go there?"
"Ah, right..."
Rote shrank back, as if recalling the memory of their first meeting. Still, maybe because they'd spent a few days bumping up against each other, she was in considerably better shape than on that first day at the boarding house.
"But school isn't just a place to learn combat techniques. You study too..."
"I already learned the material from my sister ahead of time. It was manageable even through self-study."
"With skills like that, why did Aether even enroll?"
"How should I know."
Akasha let out a brief hum, choosing her next words.
"My sister was always fickle and ran away from home a lot. Especially when her research wasn't going well—she wouldn't come home for days. Then, as if she'd found some inspiration outside, she'd come back and finish the research in no time."
"She was doing research since she was a child...?"
"I mean, there are geniuses among humans and elves who start writing papers at ten, right? I'm not one, but my sister's that type. Even I think she's completely insane."
This was half a lie. Her sister's research had never hit a dead end.
It was a genius even the Demon King himself acknowledged. There was a reason that, despite her acting even more willfully than Jormungand, her comrades didn't ostracize her but rather hoped she'd return.
Because without her sister's technical skill, the Demon King's path of conquest could not be completed.
-Tak
After wetting her throat with black tea, Akasha continued.
"So once, I asked her where she'd been. And she told me I didn't need to know. Huh, what's gotten into her? I wondered, so I secretly tailed her one time. And there she was, loitering in front of the Haspelt ducal mansion."
"At the Haspelt mansion...?"
"If you head north from here, the main house comes up, right? It's near the Elankaya Mountains too, isn't it? Sometimes they gather medicinal herbs over there in the summer."
By this point, Rote's pupils were visibly wavering in real time. As if she'd suddenly developed a thirst, she picked up her hot teacup and began gulping down the liquid.
-Tak
"So... so why did she go there? What happened after that?"
"I didn't stick around, so I don't know. I figured she was up to something weird again and came back."
Akasha shrugged and held back.
There was no point in going into specifics here, only to have Rote grow even more wary of her—that would ruin everything. A truly rational decision.
Because it was obvious the other girl had no idea what to do.
**
After hearing everything Akasha said, a single word surfaced in my mind.
'Flare...'
It was the magic art Aether had completed. I'd learned later that House Haspelt had been researching this spell for three generations.
When I first heard that, Rote hadn't known what to make of it. After being told that this sort of thing happened all the time in academia, I'd managed to reassure myself and wipe it from my mind. Right—they just happened to overlap on a topic. That was what I'd thought.
That was definitely what I'd thought.
'My sister was always fickle and ran away from home a lot. Especially when her research wasn't going well—she wouldn't come home for days. Then, as if she'd found some inspiration outside, she'd come back and finish the research in no time.'
The words I'd just heard came back to me.
Rote narrowed her eyes and stole a glance at Akasha. She was sitting with her head lowered, looking absorbed in her reading.
"Fwaah."
No, maybe not.
The title of the book Akasha was reading was [A General Theory of Advanced Fire Magic]—of all things, a text closely related to Flare.
I rewound the past briefly. It had been roughly three months ago, right around when a full day had passed since I'd enrolled in the academy.
A war of nerves had broken out between Prince Clion the Second and Professor Kleis over Aether. The tableau of them both insisting that Aether follow their orders because they'd pay more money had been utterly ridiculous.
'As I thought, something happened before that.'
I didn't know what Aether had been up to before enrolling, but one thing was certain: she'd been entangled with those two.
'Let's set aside the perverted prince who can't resist a beauty...'
The attitude Professor Kleis had shown back then was incomprehensible. I'd wondered if she was just trying to earmark a graduate student in advance, but classes hadn't even started yet at the time.
More than anything, Professor Kleis had worn a rather urgent expression that day. Her face had looked as if failing to secure Aether here would seriously ruin something.
No way.
'The Flare that her house was researching... could Aether have...'
"Kuh-huk."
"What? Why are you cracking up all of a sudden?"
"N-nothing. It's nothing."
This was baseless speculation.
Even Rote hadn't known that her family had built a pitchblende refiner. Much less could Aether have possibly known about it.
Rote reflected on her own paranoid streak. Her father's old saying came to mind: "Do not doubt others without cause."
Suppose, by some one-in-a-million chance, Aether had known about House Saliere's secret research. Then why had she left the mansion right away? Come to think of it, it was Akasha who'd stayed here longer.
-Knock knock
"Um, the Count is asking to see the young lady's friend for a moment?"
An apprentice maid suddenly opened the door and entered, delivering that message. Akasha pointed at herself and tilted her head.
"Me? Why?"
"W-well, your friend sent a letter to the Count just a moment ago. Saying there was an urgent matter, and she'd like to meet briefly in his office..."
It was strange. Akasha furrowed her brow, and in the interval, Rote rose from her seat and countered.
"You're living in the same house. Why would you make an appointment by letter?"
"Right?"
"Ah, a-anyway, the Count said it was fine for Miss Aether to come to his office now...!"
"Sorry, but please tell him he must have confused me with someone else. I didn't send any letter."
"Ah... yes...!"
The door closed with a clatter. The briefly disturbed study reclaimed its silence.
"What a baffling turn of events."
"Sometimes the mail gets misdelivered like that."
It seemed like a trivial little incident. Akasha and Rote each stole a glance at the other's face and returned their focus to their books.
And beyond the curtains, the world was staining itself in seven colors.