Levitation Stone (3)
Levitation Stone (3)
Ian's quarters.
Left alone, Danya blinked her eyes.
"...?"
She stared blankly at the elixir in her hand.
Elixirs of any kind were rare treasures. Danya knew this well, as such elixirs and spiritual items were one of the Catsnesia clan's main sources of income. Even a spiritual ingredient like wild ginseng commanded an astronomical price.
But the elixir Ian had handed over was on a completely different level. Just holding it, she could feel an extraordinarily pure immortal energy radiating from it. If she could absorb it properly, she would undoubtedly achieve a massive breakthrough in one go.
"Something this precious..."
Ian had tossed it to her like it was a piece of candy and then vanished. He hadn't even asked for anything in return.
Danya swallowed hard.
'As I thought, Ian is different from ordinary humans.'
Beastkin always lived on guard against being tamed by humans. To trust a human is to put a leash around your own neck and place the other end in their hand with your own paws. Danya had been taught that from childhood. A wariness etched into her instincts—yet somehow, that instinct seemed to melt away around Ian.
"Ah..."
She shook her head rapidly.
"Ian is a comrade. Let's not have any weird thoughts."
That aside, as she shook her head, she became acutely aware that the scent in this room was far too stimulating for a beastkin like her. Beastkin were not like humans, whose desires remained relatively constant. It so happened that these past few days were a particularly vulnerable time for Danya. The scent of the room's owner, permeating every corner, tormented her relentlessly.
Her eyes slid sideways, drifting toward Ian's bed. The blankets and pillow were arranged somewhat carelessly.
"I-I'm just going to tidy this up," she muttered.
Danya cautiously grabbed the edge of the blanket. The moment she shook it out, the scent hit her with an inescapable force.
— Sff.
"Nnn."
This was unfair. It felt like her brain was slowly dissolving. Why did that wretched Ian have to flirt with her like this, of all days? She wanted to roll around in here right this moment.
Such thoughts flooded her head. Danya's instincts screamed a warning: this was dangerous.
"I-I need to get out of here!"
Barely suppressing her urges, Danya bolted out the front door—and nearly collided with someone.
"Eek!"
"Nya!"
A shrill shriek rang out.
Long hair somewhere between gold and silver, clothes that screamed a trend-conscious noble lady at a glance. Even her modest chest somehow looked chic in that outfit. The stylish woman stood frozen in an awkward pose, her hand raised as if she'd been about to knock.
'Why would a woman like this come to Ian's place?'
The question surfaced in Danya's mind, but she shook it off quickly. After all, there was no way any woman would come looking for Ian.
"I don't know who you're here to see, but I think you've got the wrong place," Danya said.
"Hmm. Isn't this Cadet Ian Blackangus's residence?"
"...Nya?"
Danya clamped a hand over her own mouth to stifle the odd noise. Her shock had a simple cause.
'No, why would a woman like this be at Ian's place?' Because as far as she knew, Ian had no friends. Aside from Danya herself.
The same thought was running through the other woman's mind.
'What on earth is this cat, coming out of Ian's room?' Sylvia Laurent grumbled inwardly.
That morning, Sylvia had received a rare dessert from a long-time regular client. Eating it alone felt like a waste, and Ian's face—he was fond of tea—had popped into her head. She'd used it as an excuse to visit his place. She'd come ready to tease him mercilessly: Bet you've never tried anything like this, have you? Instead, she found some stray cat sauntering out of Ian's house, acting like she owned the place.
Oddly, it made Sylvia's blood boil.
'Could she be a secret girlfriend?'
Sylvia dismissed the idea instantly. There was no way Ian had one of those. A gold-digger, maybe.
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
"And who are you? As far as I'm aware, Ian has no friends. What exactly is your relationship with him?"
"...Ah."
Danya's words caught in her throat. What exactly were she and Ian? Friends? Or something closer—two people who had sworn mutual trust?
After a moment of awkward hesitation, she opened her mouth. "W-we're comrades."
"And what does being 'comrades' have to do with you being in his house?"
"That's because Ian invited me!"
Sylvia's gaze grew even frostier at Danya's reply.
"So Ian invited you, and you just scampered right along? Do you not know the rumors about him?"
"I know! The ones about him being a lecher are everywhere! But do you know what kind of person Ian really is?"
"Hah? Of course I know! I've investigated him thoroughly, you know! The rumor that he's a pervert who confesses to any woman he sees is just the start..."
For a moment, they traded Ian's bad rumors as if competing over who knew them better. Then Sylvia made the first jab.
"If you know him so well, I wonder why you're coming out of his place. Aren't you just a gold-digger?"
"A g-gold-digger? Then what are you supposed to be?"
Sylvia thrust out her chest with pride.
"I am Sylvia Laurent. You know of the Laurent Trading Company, yes?"
"...!"
Danya was somewhat surprised. Even for an outsider like her, she'd heard stories about Sylvia. That only deepened her suspicion.
"Then why would a woman like you come to Ian's house? What's your relationship with him?"
The previously confident Sylvia averted her gaze slightly. Defining her relationship with Ian in a single word was difficult.
"We're... business partners. Yes, business partners!"
"Hmm? You look more like a swindler to me. What's in that bag?"
"This is for a debt I owe Ian. A decent item happened to come in, so I brought it over."
"You could've given him that at school. Why go out of your way to come to his house?"
"I-It's perishable! I had no choice!"
"Is that just an excuse to get inside his room? Besides, you could've sent an employee."
Guilty.
Sylvia's eyes flickered away again. She murmured as if an afterthought.
"Let's just say Ian has done so much for me that I had to bring it in person."
"...?"
"He helped me so much that the deputy head of the Laurent Trading Company can't easily repay it. So I'm paying him back little by little like this."
Danya wasn't particularly quick on the uptake, but she read Sylvia's intention immediately. The woman was preening, flaunting how much Ian looked after her.
Danya's eyebrow arched upward. 'Hmph! Ian has looked after me plenty too!'
Oddly, she absolutely had to beat this woman. But how? As Danya stewed in thought, a single idea flickered through her mind.
"...Well, those dessert gifts are nice and all, but I think Ian would like a blanket more."
"Excuse me?"
"Ah~ didn't you know?"
Danya smiled slyly into Sylvia's flustered eyes, a foxlike curve crinkling her own.
"Ian's bed blanket is really worn out. Next time, get him a new one. He'll like that."
Sylvia's eyebrow trembled faintly.
'Hmph! A hundred years too early to lecture me, human!'
The corner of Danya's lips ticked upward.
◆
Meanwhile, in Kristina's lab.
Staring at the levitating samples Ian had brought, Kristina cried out.
"I-I definitely dropped this only a day ago. How in the world did you improve it so quickly?!"
"Why are you suddenly using formal speech?"
"Because I only use formal speech with people smarter than me!"
Polite only to the intelligent. What a unique concept. Kristina seemed to be one of those researchers with a slightly eccentric streak.
"The color and properties are completely different from my samples. How did you make this? Ah... but you wouldn't just tell me, would you?"
Kristina's expression darkened on its own. She seemed to be jumping to the conclusion that Ian would demand something from her in return.
"With this level of improvement, it's essentially a brand-new creation. It's on a completely different plane from the pebbles a water flea like me made."
Now she was utterly dejected. Ian let out a light sigh and picked up one of her stone samples.
"Mind if I try using one of these?"
"Huh? Sure. It's just a stone chip a water flea made anyway. Help yourself."
"Quit the weird talk and watch closely."
Ian promptly rolled up his sleeves and sat at the workbench. First, he sliced the stone chip thin. Then he extracted several metallic elements from the surroundings.
'The difference between her stone and the one in my room is probably this.'
While experimenting with the teleportation device, Ian had used various metallic components—potentially altering the fragment Kristina dropped. Focusing on that, he brought his extraction and transmutation skills to bear.
Watching from the side, Kristina's eyes flew wide open.
"Th-this is absurd. What kind of ability is that? To manipulate metal so freely..."
"Shh."
"Hrk!"
The materials he was handling were high-grade. He needed total concentration just to extract and manipulate trace amounts.
After finishing the sample treatment—
"...Done."
As Ian exhaled, Kristina, who'd been clamping her mouth shut, lit up.
"This is unbelievable. Such perfect ability. Sir Ian, you are a born alchemist. You must pursue alchemy! With me!"
"Shouldn't we check these first?"
Ian held out ten different stone fragments. These were samples with varying ratios, reflecting the conditions in his quarters at the time.
"Y-yes!"
Kristina carefully placed them on the testing table, handling each as if it were a jewel. Her eyes, which usually looked like dead fish, shone a boundless blue in that moment.
Watching her solemn, meticulous movements, the memory of who she was hit him in a flash: Chris Sierra. A genius alchemist destined to make a name for herself as the story progressed. The information had come to him late for two reasons. One, he'd known her as Chris, not Kristina. Two, none of her research results had ever included a levitation stone like this.
'She probably failed to achieve full levitation.'
In contrast, the samples Ian had touched were floating perfectly in midair.
"!!!"
Her eyes filled with shock. Three of the ten samples hovered in the air, and one of them was fixed aloft almost perfectly.
"It's fl-floating... floating..."
"Yeah, it's floating."
"Ahaha... It's floating. Really floating..."
Honestly, Ian had expected Kristina to be more elated. By tampering with the samples right in front of her, he'd practically handed her the recipe. But her expression was rather complicated. One moment she'd look elated, the next crestfallen. Then she carefully posed a question.
"If it's not too forward, may I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Why did you show me this? With this level of completion, you could have easily pressured me into handing over my own recipes instead."
It was perhaps natural to feel a sting of wounded pride. Having a stranger breeze in and solve a problem she'd researched and tried to improve thousands of times—it would hurt anyone. As she said, he could exploit this chance to snatch her recipe away, but—
'That's not the move.'
Ian shook his head.
"My interest lies purely in applying this. Yours, I imagine, is in making an even better levitation stone."
More importantly, this "levitation stone" was fundamentally different from ordinary minerals. Its performance could be refined with further research. And Ian planned to use it to develop a mobility ability. In other words, Kristina was a magical engineer who could upgrade his skills.
If he could put a legendary magical engineer to work for him, a recipe he'd stumbled upon meant nothing. Ian believed in her skills. Her failure to develop the levitation stone was simply a matter of lacking the right trigger. So Ian intended to become that trigger.
"So let's cooperate. I'll support whatever you need."
"...Okay."
Tears welled up in Kristina's eyes.
"I'll work hard."
The first phase of the grade assessment was only a day away. Her support would undoubtedly be an unparalleled asset.
Kristina clasped Ian's outstretched hand with both of her own.