A Slave Merchant Professor… Talk About a Blow to My Pride
The palms of Pelia's hands, gripping both my arms tight, were perfectly smooth. They were unmistakably the hands of someone who had spent a lifetime holding a pen.
She was so tiny that even with both palms spread wide, she couldn't wrap all the way around my arm — yet the mana surging through it all at once hit with the force of some colossal monster.
“…Mm.”
Pelia's magic circuits wriggled like earthworms, and in an instant, they had seeped all the way into my heart.
My heart pounded as though it might burst from the overload of heat. My brain cells screamed at knowledge they couldn't comprehend.
I was dizzy. I fought desperately against the bile climbing up my esophagus.
Is this what mages feel, all the time?
Frankly, it was a bit much.
No — it was a lot more than a bit much.
“Ha! If you can't even handle this, what were you planning on taking from me? Hey, you scrub! All mouth, that's what you are.”
“Skill.”
I needed to find a way to respond before Pelia's mana blew my body apart from the inside.
“…What? Why are you trying to die? Hey, don't mess around! You cast up to the 6th tier and you're seriously telling me you're not even a real mage? Hey! Hey!!”
Pelia shouted in a panic, but I had no spare breath to answer her.
Partway through, I found a certain passage.
[Slave Exploitation] has risen to Level 2.
Current uses available: 2
Reuse cooldown: 22 hours
So the experience had accumulated enough for a level-up.
Good. That would do.
I activated Slave Exploitation, casting Yuri's high-grade anti-personnel blessing, [Tranquility], on myself.
Four magic circles sketched themselves onto the floor, and clusters of pale light poured down over me.
“Whew.”
My heartbeat settled. I slowed my breathing, steady and even, and straightened my slumped posture back up.
“H-how did you do that…? Good grief.”
Gradually, the pain faded to almost nothing. I could feel Pelia's mana flowing into me, steady and sure.
When every step of the process was finished, I clenched my fist. It felt as if a second set of veins had been added to my body — one where something other than blood surged powerfully through me.
My head still stung a little, though.
I looked down at Pelia.
“Is a magic circuit transplant normally supposed to proceed this recklessly? As I understood it, one must raise the resonance between the parties involved, and there are quite a few preparatory steps required besides.”
“No — I thought you were lying. Wait, are you actually a complete amateur? Hold on. I'll align the circuits for you.”
Pelia fiddled with my arm, and little taps of sensation ran through it like physical therapy. After a while, I felt considerably better.
“Try it.”
I circulated my mana lightly, and a strange, intricate line drew itself along my arm. It looked like the blueprint of a building.
“Received, confirmed.”
“Unbelievable. Hey, wait a minute. First things first — let me study you a bit. What exactly are you?”
“I'll have to decline. I have an urgent appointment. And from now on,”
I bowed my head to meet her teal eyes at eye level.
“Call me Professor.”
Pelia thrust her lips out in a pout.
“…Fine, I'll call you that, all right?! Professor!”
And with that, I left Pelia behind and walked down the corridor, the click of my heels echoing between the walls and the ceiling.
I stepped out of the Main Arena.
White sunlight tickled the corners of my eyes. And there, in the middle of it, she stood.
Yuri spotted me and broke into a smile that filled her whole face, her fluffy tail swaying gently.
“Orabeoni, congratulations!”
“Did you watch the whole lecture?”
“Yes. It was, mm, very impressive….”
Yuri shyly took hold of my collar.
“Let's go. There are plenty of places we need to stop by.”
“Yes!”
I took Yuri's timid hand and led her along. She froze for a moment, mouth hanging open in surprise, then quickly broke into a beaming smile up at me.
“Haah… hnn… hnngh.”
Having lost the contest and retreated to her private quarters, Pelia Alencia submerged her entire body straight into a bathtub full of ice water.
But the heat burning through her like a furnace refused to settle.
It was because she had handed over a full twenty percent of her magic circuit to a slave merchant.
She had designed it in a flawless structure and raised it as meticulously as a grand building — only to have it forcibly deformed and torn out. The side effects were only natural.
She had been prepared to transfer the circuit for a long time. Ever since the duel had become binding, in fact.
If she lost and failed to pay the price immediately, the slave merchant might seize on the pretext to make some additional demand of her. Or so she'd told herself.
“Hnn.”
She knew the truth. It was an excuse.
In reality, right now, Pelia was glad.
Deep in some corner of her heart, she had been wishing for someone to steal her magic away from her, just like this. Because as time went on, she could feel herself slipping away, with ever-greater clarity.
But she could never abandon her magic of her own will. Any mage who had once opened the door to the next tier became addicted to that pleasure and could not stop. All the more so the higher the tier.
With each tier they climbed, mages lost themselves a little more and grew obsessed with some strange purpose.
Exactly like the Empire's Emperor.
They went mad. Truly, literally mad.
In Pelia's case, her obsession had fixed itself on stimulation of lunatic intensity. Both physical and mental.
She was, comparatively speaking, one of the ones who suppressed herself and practiced restraint. Which was exactly why everything irritated her so.
“Still, having lost this much of my circuit—”
At the very least, I won't reach the 8th tier before I die.
It was territory already known to be beyond human reach anyway.
Pelia had always been afraid.
Afraid of losing herself and being devoured by magic. Afraid that at the end of that road, she would cease to be human and become nothing but a weapon.
Fighting was frightening.
War was frightening.
When the slave merchant had lectured on that theory, she had been horrified. Right up until then, she had thought of him as nothing but a scrub.
That was the sort of creatures slave merchants were.
Strong only against the weak, groveling before the strong. Lacking any martial might of their own, they leaned on mercenaries and made their money through illegal means alone — so they had no common sense and no morals.
Cowardly, despicable wretches, without even the strength to back it up.
But he was different.
He understood the dangers of magic. While securing his victory beyond any doubt, he had presented a theory that left the world itself untouched.
He was no ordinary man, not by any measure.
Which was why she hadn't believed for a moment the claim that he'd never even become a proper mage — and when he had truly, genuinely almost died during the transplant, she had been shocked to her core.
Granted, he had cast a blessing on himself, but if Pelia hadn't responded with everything she had in that moment, something catastrophic would surely have happened.
“…I'm just glad he survived.”
Ha. But either way, he is a magic scrub — that part's true, isn't it?
And I lost to a guy like that. Wounded pride, honestly.
Slave merchant, that man.
Slave merchant.
Slave merchant Professor.
Pelia shoved her head under the water of the bathtub and blew a long, furious stream of bubbles from her mouth.
“Ahem, ahem. I'm sure Master's lecture went well. Time to get ready, then.”
Tia tied on an apron in the kitchen. With no other students presenting for culinary arts, she had been paired with the graduate research division.
“Recipe's set, tools checked, spices all here, prep work's nearly done. Just need to bring out the main ingredient.”
Tia stepped into the storeroom at the back of the kitchen, heading for the protein that would be the centerpiece of today's dish.
“Uh…?”
At the sight that greeted her, Tia swallowed hard, startled.
The inside of the storeroom had been wrecked beyond recognition.
Everything from fish to cabbage — every single food ingredient — had been shredded to ribbons and strewn across the floor, rendered utterly unusable.
“What? Why—”
Gritting her teeth, Tia cast a detection spell, searching for traces of whoever had run rampant here.
True to her caliber as a superb mage, she drew a single clue from traces so faint they were almost nothing at all.
“Huh?”
Tia checked the result again and again, unable to believe it.
But the result did not change.
There were no other traces. Only one person had entered this storeroom. A solitary act of vandalism, beyond all doubt.
What lingered in Tia's hand was a faint trace of blue — an aura of frost.
“Luca…?”
Tia called her name out into the empty air, hollow and lost.
— The fourth duel! From the Hall of Earth, Swordmaster Jukmak — versus — from the Hall of Wind, Temple Knight Allister Summerfield!
In the outdoor dueling ring built so passersby could stop and watch, Jukmak stood tall with spirits high. When he touched the tip of his long sword against his opponent's in a salute, the duel began.
“Mr. Jukmak! G-go get 'em!”
Yuri cheered, her face tight with worry.
After a few exchanges, the sword energy Jukmak swung sheared straight through the divine protection of the opposing knight. The blow landed, the knight couldn't hold his ground, and he toppled backward onto his backside.
— The winner: from the Hall of Earth, Swordmaster Jukmak!
The crowd showered applause on his clean victory — and over a 3-star third-year student, no less. Jukmak came back to me, bowing at the waist as many times as he could manage.
“Oooh… my back's gone and given out…! Professor, Miss Yuri — did I do well…?”
“Your skill has improved tremendously! Remarkable.”
“Hehehe, it's all thanks to Master Lucas teachin' me so well, it is…!”
Jukmak had been receiving consistent sword instruction from Luca. It seemed the influence was showing good results.
“By the way, Professor.”
Jukmak leaned his face in close to me.
“Has Master Lucas perhaps got somethin' weighin' on her mind these days?”
“Something on her mind? Did she seem unable to focus on her lessons?”
“Quite the opposite, sir. Her spirit's got far too much force behind it now. She seemed dreadfully impatient, she did. And that's the surest way to spoil a thing that should have gone right.”
“I hadn't heard anything of the sort. Yuri, do you know anything?”
“No, we haven't had much chance to talk lately either….”
“I see. Well, your instincts are rarely wrong, Jukmak. I'll look into it. And a fine match — well fought.”
“Hehehe, it were nothin' worth… oh, no, I mean — thank ye kindly!”
I clapped Jukmak on the shoulder and moved on toward the next student's presentation.
“Mr. Jukmak must have trained really hard. The moment he draws his sword, he's so much faster than usual, isn't he?”
“There's a sense only swordsmen can feel. Something like that.”
“Really? How fascinating…. I tried sensing it a little while ago, but I couldn't tell at all. I keep looking into what subject I should take for my graduation exam, but….”
“You don't want to take healing arts anymore, do you?”
“Ah… yes.”
Yuri's ears drooped slightly.
Both Luca and Tia wanted subjects outside of swordsmanship and black magic, but for the two of them, it seemed to come less from aversion than from simple fatigue with those fields.
Yuri, though — with her, I got the distinct sense of outright rejection toward healing arts. Her specialty, martial arts, she hadn't rejected outright.
“…Hmm.”
Come to think of it, in the original story, the three of them had each specialized in swordsmanship, black magic, and martial arts. The lich's black magic was more or less in the same lineage as magic, admittedly.
“Then where did Yuri's healing arts come from?”
The original story's Beast King had never once used a healing art. She was a being who had tempered her martial arts to the absolute limit and nothing else.
Well, they were such versatile children that nothing they did would strike me as strange. Tia's cooking skills were already at a considerable level, after all.
It had reached the point where I could hardly believe these three and the original story's Four Heavenly Kings were the same people at all.
“There's still plenty of time, so let's take it slow and work it out together.”
“But I don't want to be a drag on your plans, Orabeoni…. What if I'm the only one who fails the Opticulum?”
“Haha, that's not going to happen. I believe in you.”
“Ah… yes!”
Yuri answered with renewed energy.
I had complete faith in all three of them. Judging from the presentations I'd seen, the students of the Earth House had each chosen their subjects well, too.
There was only one lingering concern: Princess Ashlee.
Ashlee still hadn't settled on a subject. She hadn't participated in any presentations at the Silver-Blue Festival, either.
“Who's presenting next?”
“Tia's turn.”
“Ah, Tia's…. That's culinary arts, right?”
“Right. Word is she developed a new buff-granting menu in collaboration with the research students and will be unveiling it today. It's just about time to get peckish, so let's go try a tasting.”
“Yes! I can't wait.”
I felt Yuri's hand quietly steal back to my collar.
“Today too… it's Tia and….”