Levitation Stone (2)
Levitation Stone (2)
Ian slipped the stone fragment straight into his pocket.
Then he called out to Danya, who was sniffing around in a corner of the room.
"What are you up to, Danya?"
"Nya-nyang! Ah, nothing, nothing? Just... taking a little rest, maybe?"
"Right. Anyway, thanks for helping out with the experiment today. Oh, and here. A reward, and a gift."
Ian tossed Danya a Mana Hell Root elixir, one of the spoils from their last undiscovered dungeon expedition in the northern mountain range.
Danya's eyes went round as she caught it.
"S-something this precious—a-all of a sudden! You should eat it!"
"I already ate one back then, so it won't do anything for me. Go ahead. Grade assessment starts tomorrow, right? Eating it now will give you the biggest effect."
The truth was, most of the heroines had already fallen out of the main combat force.
Developing an ally of Danya's caliber was in Ian's own best interest.
Danya looked deeply moved, nearly on the verge of tears.
"I-I'm really grateful, nya."
"Come on. No need for thanks between comrades."
Answering like that, Ian finished getting ready to leave.
Danya immediately asked again.
"Still, grateful is grateful! But where are you going?"
"The library. You can rest more or do whatever you like."
Whenever he had questions, the library was the place to go. No exceptions.
Ian waved at a flustered Danya and stepped out of the dorms.
And so, he arrived at the library.
The librarian was there, sitting in the same spot as always, turning pages.
Does she ever eat?
The thought flickered through his mind for a moment.
Every time he came, she was in the exact same posture.
Weekdays or weekends. Morning or afternoon.
Did she even attend classes? Was she actually a student? Could she be some kind of android doll? Don't tell me she's an AI?
But the idle speculation died quickly.
"......."
Sky-blue eyes glanced up at him, faintly annoyed at the interruption. Ian hurriedly stated his business.
"I'm looking for someone."
—Blink.
She closed and opened her eyes once, then pointed a finger downward.
Below the information desk.
In very tidy handwriting, a piece of paper declared:
[ No peddlers, love confessions, or romantic soliciting. ]
"No... I'm not here to confess."
The librarian's head moved slightly to the left and right.
A very tiny movement.
Naturally, Ian caught it perfectly.
He followed her slender, pale-white finger and looked down again.
Past the paper marked "Confessions Refused."
He spotted a sign that read:
[ Loans, returns, and book-related inquiries. ]
"Right. This is a library, so I suppose a librarian should only be consulted about book-related matters."
A very faint nod, nod.
Ian went on.
"But I'm not asking you as a librarian. I want to borrow your wisdom. I just have this feeling you'd know something about this."
Ian took a sheet of paper from the desk and sketched on it.
A rough portrait of the three-second-rule girl he had encountered before.
He held it out to the librarian.
"She gave off a strong researcher vibe. She's definitely visited the library a lot. Her face is something like this..."
Ian emphasized the dark circles under her eyes in the drawing.
"Average height."
—Blink, blink.
The librarian's translucent eyebrows fluttered like a camera shutter.
"I know her."
She handed him a note.
Roughly summarized, it said this:
Name is Christina.
Specialty is Magical Engineering.
Location is most likely the Magical Engineering student research building.
"Thanks."
"Wait."
"...?"
"There is, another."
"Huh?"
"A child, searching for you."
She passed him a sheet of paper.
"A Saintess Candidate. Aria delivered it."
... Aria Lumines Bell?
What did that woman want all of a sudden?
Ian took the note from the librarian and unfolded it.
It was incredibly crumpled.
The sentences, written in a hurried hand, didn't form a single complete thought.
"...This looks like it means nothing."
"Emptiness is also content."
At the librarian's words, Ian scrutinized the note again.
Fragments of letters that had tried and failed to become words.
Horizontal lines scratched out again and again.
Sections where too much force had punched holes through the paper.
An endlessly unstable, cornered state of mind transmitted itself perfectly.
The reason she had deliberately given this to Ian.......
I can roughly guess.
But he decided not to dwell on it yet.
He had too many things to deal with right now.
First, he owed the librarian his thanks.
"Thank you for helping. You really know everything, don't you?"
"Only the things I need to know."
Then why did you play hard to get earlier?
Ian considered prodding further but held back.
She had already buried her head back in her book.
[ I Was Rescued by the Tyrant Who Ruined My Family. ]
At least this time she was reading something more normal than before.
He conveyed his gratitude with a slight bow of his head.
◆
Magic, Knighthood, Priesthood, and Reconnaissance.
Beyond those four faculties, Lichten Academy housed various other research fields.
Exchange students and graduates who remained at the academy were the most common participants in these fields. Magical Engineering, in particular, was linked to nearby schools and constituted a rather large-scale research area.
The Magical Engineering student research building.
Is this really Lichten Academy?
From the outside, the building looked ready to collapse at any moment, prompting exactly that thought.
But inside, things were better than expected.
Small laboratories lined both sides of the high-ceilinged corridor, and while zombie-like things occasionally stumbled out of them, they were all just exhausted humans.
The atmosphere was somewhat eerie and gloomy, but when Ian recalled the university labs from his previous life, it all made perfect sense.
"This is it."
A scrap of paper stuck to the door.
[ Chri□stin◎ ]
The scrawled handwriting was hard to make out.
But the half-heartedly applied tape and the red strawberry jam stain beneath it told him he had come to the right place.
And more than that—
— Boom!
Along with that sound, a familiar voice erupted from within.
Knocking would have been pointless.
"Cough, cough!"
The door flew open, and a girl covered in smoke and ashen dust burst out.
Was her original hair color auburn?
Pale skin, pronounced dark circles: it was the girl he had met back then.
The name the librarian gave him was Christina.
Christina spotted Ian and shouted.
"Oh! You're that rude guy from before!"
"You're the one who picks up dropped bread and eats it?"
An exchange that felt like a rom-com cliché, and also slightly off-putting, and then it was over.
Ian briefly replayed their first meeting.
Why am I rude?
Had he done something wrong?
Nothing came to mind.
"But why exactly am I rude?"
"Because you ignored the three-second rule!"
"No, that was...."
He started to say it had already been more than three seconds but gave up.
With this type of kid, he had a feeling she would retort—
"Are you saying you intend to refute my theory that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if picked up within three seconds?"
Something like that.
The types who did research in basement labs like this were always a little unhinged somewhere.
Fortunately, Ian was experienced in handling this kind of person.
A cracked ego from endless, hopeless research.
Just fill that gap a little, and they easily opened up.
"I'm sorry. I was thoughtless. You are right."
Attention and endless back-patting.
Tell them they're right without a hint of argument.
For researchers whose daily lives were filled with having every single paper argued against, criticized, and rejected, that was always what they desperately craved.
"...Hmm?"
The corner of the girl's lips curled upward as she folded her arms.
Then she said:
"There's no one else inside right now. Want to come in for a bit?"
"It would be an honor."
Grin, grin.
Smiling to herself, Christina shut the lab door the moment Ian stepped inside.
And then she immediately grabbed his hand.
"Come here."
She headed for a table in the corner of the lab.
She hopped up and sat on it first.
"This is a secret from everyone else, okay?"
Christina closed one eye and pressed a finger to her lips.
"I'm showing it especially for you."
She reached into her robe.
And pulled out a small stone fragment.
Just as I thought. Same as the one I found.
Christina placed it straight onto the testing stand at the edge of the table.
It hovered up slowly, tilting at about a forty-five-degree angle.
"Whoa."
Though he had already witnessed this phenomenon, Ian put on an appropriate show of surprise.
Right now, Christina's half-dead, fishlike eyes were glittering, brilliant as jewels.
"How is it? How is it! Isn't it amazing!"
"It is. But... how should I put this...."
As Ian's face fell into momentary thought, Christina narrowed her eyes.
"Hmph. You think it's a trick, don't you? This is a Floating Stone. Something that only existed in legends."
"Floating Stone?"
"Yeah. Honestly, I'd like to make it float more, but it's not easy. I'm working on several conditional formulas, and once I improve them, it'll probably float up completely."
At the appearance of the topic he had been hoping for, Ian's eyes gleamed.
His entire purpose here was that compound's conditional formula.
"That really is an impressive research project. I thought you were out of the ordinary from the moment we first met."
"Hehehe......."
Christina melted like butter under the stream of praise.
Sensing the moment, Ian asked.
"About that conditional formula...."
"Sorry, but I can't tell you something like that."
Her gaze sharpened into seriousness in an instant.
"Right. You probably arrived at it after hundreds, thousands of trials. My mistake for asking so casually."
"No, well....... I suppose it's natural to be curious? If anything, I feel kind of sorry that I can't give you an answer?"
Just as he expected. He hadn't thought she would hand it over readily.
It would have been stranger if she had.
Hm, but more than that.......
The fragment was slanting to one side.
Ian tilted his head.
"Is this as far as it floats?"
"Uh-huh. It won't float perfectly."
"It won't float?"
"Yeah. I've tried so hard it's almost painful, but this is the limit."
Ian searched his memory.
He didn't have to reach far back.
Because the stone fragment he had seen a few hours ago had been unmistakably floating upright.
Hm. Did the experiments with the other movement artifacts affect it earlier?
Worrying about that could wait. First, a demonstration.
Without a word, Ian pulled the stone fragment from his pocket.
"Earlier, it was floating completely."
"What? That's impossible...!"
He then placed it onto her testing stand.
Drifting upward.
The stone fragment hung perfectly still in the air.
"...H-how—how is this!"
Christina's eyes flooded with pure, undiluted astonishment.
"... What are you. N-no, who are you?"
Ian shrugged his shoulders where he stood.
Christina swallowed dryly.
Then she asked in a much softer voice.
"E-excuse me. Could you possibly tell me how you did that?"
Grin.
The corner of Ian's mouth curled upward.