The Infirmary's Unobserved Area (1)
Lionel von Valencia, Third Prince of the Empire, found the entire situation thoroughly disastrous.
As a second-year student at the Academy, he almost never crossed paths with his younger sister Iren. He knew full well how much she despised the imperial family.
So much so that whenever she was made to appear before their father, His Majesty the Emperor, she would fly into a fit and sob uncontrollably. Bearing that in mind, Lionel simply wanted his adorable little sister to enjoy her time at the Academy in peace. So he kept his distance as much as possible.
But perhaps he should have maintained some contact after all? Should he have taught her how to control the power of the imperial bloodline?
"Tch."
"Lionel, what's the situation?"
Department Head Alketo asked with his usual blank expression. Lionel let out a sigh.
"It's difficult. My affinity is fundamentally incompatible with Iren's."
Lionel's mana carried the property of water — just as Iren's mana carried the property of cold. Such was the nature of the imperial bloodline.
Ordinary people's mana was close to nothingness. Mana alone produced no effect whatsoever.
But the imperial family was different. Their mana contained a specific attribute. That was why they could construct independent worlds without ever speaking to the world itself.
And Lionel's water mana was all too easily frozen solid by Iren's cold mana.
"The infirmary is completely unobservable. If we try to force our way through, our entire bodies will freeze solid."
"Hmm. Colton. Any word from your assistant professor?"
Alketo looked at Professor Colton, who was trembling. Colton shook his head with a pale face.
"Nothing. She seems completely trapped inside the infirmary. Even the communication orbs won't connect."
"I was under the impression that Assistant Professor Narey had complete control over the infirmary."
"That's certainly true. Narey has practically turned the infirmary into her own magic workshop. If she wanted to, she could drive out even Princess Iren's spatial isolation."
"But right now the infirmary remains an Unobserved Area. Why is that?"
"Well…"
Colton avoided Alketo's gaze. He simply didn't want to speak of his assistant professor's peculiar tendencies.
"…It's out of respect, I believe."
"Respect?"
"As His Highness said, this phenomenon was caused by Princess Iren's emotions running wild. And Frey Katram is inside with her as well, from what I understand."
"And?"
"Surely something must have gone wrong between the two of them for this to happen. Perhaps Narey is waiting for the problem to resolve itself naturally."
"That's absurd."
It was Lionel who rejected Professor Colton's words.
"Once things have progressed this far, it means the situation is beyond rational control. Without external intervention, this Unobserved Area will eventually spread across the entire Academy! We must somehow make contact with Assistant Professor Narey!"
"Even if you say that, there's no immediate solution…"
"Ugh."
Just as Lionel was expressing his frustration, Alketo muttered,
"Well then, what do you intend to do about this? Duke Katram?"
"……!"
Everyone spun around in shock.
Standing there quietly was Duke Katram, who hadn't been present mere moments ago. His red eyes glowed with a blood-red light.
"Alketo, asking me something like this… You've gone soft."
"Of course I should ask you. The one trapped in there with Iren is a branch member of your house, isn't he?"
"All the more reason there's no need to ask."
"And why is that?"
The blood-red aura rising from Duke Katram's eyes gradually subsided.
"You still don't know that boy's true worth. As long as Frey is with her, the situation won't get any worse."
"Duke Katram! What are you saying?!"
Lionel shouted.
"You are currently Iren's guardian! And you're telling us to trust some mere branch family member who's only a first-year?!"
"Precisely so, Your Highness the Third Prince."
"How can you be so irresponsible?! I'll speak to His Majesty and have you stripped of your role as Iren's guardian!"
"Hmm. How long did you say the infirmary has been isolated from the Academy?"
"About three hours."
"Three hours, is it."
Duke Katram looked at the isolated wall with a peculiar expression. Then he summoned a chair and sat down.
Everyone except Professor Alketo stared at him in disbelief. Duke Katram spoke leisurely.
"Well, just watch."
"Give me a more detailed explanation of the situation."
Exactly what it sounds like. The moment you fainted, Iren went berserk, and the infirmary's space got severed from the Academy — turning it into an Unobserved Area.
"Then how is Professor Narey able to send me telepathy?"
I was in the infirmary too! But for some reason I can't get near you. If I hadn't already taken control of the place, I wouldn't even be able to send telepathy like this.
Could the words "infirmary" and "taken control" really belong in the same sentence?
I shoved the useless thought aside.
"How much time has passed?"
About two hours. Once it starts pushing past three, things outside the infirmary will get dangerous too.
"You mean the outside will gradually be swallowed into this space as well, becoming an Unobserved Area that can't be observed from the exterior?"
That's my analysis, yes.
"Haaaah."
Honestly. How were the abilities of the imperial bloodline this broken? To produce a phenomenon like this with nothing more than a torrent of mana…
Department Head Alketo's words suddenly came to mind — that no mage was superior to a member of the imperial family, and that a superior mage was, by that very fact, imperial material.
Certainly, if someone possessed an ability like this and magical talent on top of it, that alone would qualify them as a sovereign. At the very least, no foreign invasion would ever bring the nation to ruin.
An Unobserved Area, put simply, was a region that light could not reach.
The universe worked the same way, didn't it? The size of the cosmos visible to our eyes was the region light could reach — and given the universe's tendency to expand faster than light itself, everything beyond that was an Unobserved Area. A black box.
Right now, the infirmary had been placed by Iren's power into a state equivalent to the unobservable cosmos beyond the reach of light.
Of course, "beyond" didn't mean the space itself was any different from the universe we lived in. The space was identical. It was simply called an Unobserved Area because light couldn't reach it. From the Unobserved Area's perspective, the place we lived would appear as the Unobserved Area in reverse.
Used properly, an ability like this would make a nation invincible in defense. How do you breach a wall that neither side can interfere with? How do you even invade?
Iren's mana attribute was cold. That meant the principle was almost certainly this: she had "frozen" every information medium traveling between the outside and this place, rendering mutual interference impossible.
If my guess was correct, undoing the phenomenon itself would be quite simple. But that would only be a stopgap measure.
"I'll need to find Iren. Don't tell me the interior space of the infirmary has expanded as well?"
Seems that way. I set it up so that if I felt like it, I could expand the radius by about a kilometer.
"Just what kind of nonsense have you been getting up to in the infirmary?"
This was the magical skill of an assistant professor? Spatial magic was a field that even the continent's greatest mages struggled with — and some random assistant professor had installed a system like that in the infirmary?
I needed to stop dismissing her as a little kid.
"No, wait. That just made searching harder for no reason. I take it back."
What are you muttering about by yourself?
"Anyway, the fact that you can send telepathy means you can help me, right? Please help."
How? Mana detection is impossible. This entire space is saturated with Iren's mana.
"Saturated, sure — but the density isn't uniform, is it? What I need from you, Professor, is information on the properties of this space. The infirmary's characteristics."
You can track her in this space?
"Of course."
Unfortunately, I had spent far too long glued to Iren's side. After a month of constant proximity, I could sense someone's mana even across the span of two cities.
Even if Iren's mana filled this entire space, the densest concentration would still be her own body. Follow that, and Iren would be at the end of it.
Listening to Professor Narey describe the properties of the space, I set out to find Iren. Come to think of it — she went this berserk just from seeing me faint?
Iren had a surprisingly fragile side after all…
The moment that thought crossed my mind, a scene flickered through the ice-cold mana. I was lying unconscious with my head in Iren's lap.
Foam was pouring from my mouth while blood streamed from my nose — and then the blood ran back into my mouth, turning the foam into a bubbling froth of bloody bubbles.
Hmm.
No. Even I had to admit that would flip the trauma switch. First priority: never, under any circumstances, let her find out I fainted on purpose. If she discovered that, Iren might actually kill me.
Search! Just focus on searching!
Professor Narey's claim that she could expand the space by a one-kilometer radius turned out to be no exaggeration — the infirmary stretched on endlessly. There was no sign of the outside world; nothing but beds and medical equipment as far as the eye could see.
But if my theory was correct, just a little farther and I would find figures sitting among the beds.
"……"
"Just as I thought."
There was a little girl with blue hair cascading down her back, knees drawn together, face buried against them. She looked about ten years old.
I approached her.
"Hey, little one. What are you doing here?"
"……"
"Ignoring me? That makes me really sad."
The little girl flinched and jerked her head up. I was startled for a moment.
She looked so much like Lady Aylin as a child. And yet Iren's face was unmistakably there as well. Was I imagining it?
As I worked to calm my racing heart, the little girl — young Iren — cried out,
"No! I won't ignore you!"
"Haha, thank you. What were you doing here?"
"…I was hiding."
"Why? Playing hide-and-seek?"
"No. I… I have to hide, because then people are happy."
"Hmm. But I'd rather you didn't hide, you know?"
"Really? I'm not a bother?"
"Of course not. So how about we walk together?"
"Okay! I want to walk!"
Hop! Little Iren jumped down from the bed and took my hand.
This was Iren, and yet it wasn't Iren. More precisely, it was best understood as a fragment of Iren's consciousness — a thought-form.
When mana ran wild enough to create a space like this, something from within was inevitably scattered along with it. Put simply, the private feelings Iren kept buried had been strewn across this place.
My job was to gather those thought-forms and soothe them — while turning a blind eye to whatever secrets she wanted to keep hidden.
Well, consideration had always been a kind of hard labor, hadn't it? And I had no desire to treat Iren roughly.
Now then — time to go comfort a trembling princess.