The Oscar Award
“……Hey! Hey!”
“Hahh! Hahh!”
Jolted awake from his dream, Oscar shot upright and fought to catch his breath.
An inexplicable chill clung to him, and his whole body was already soaked through with cold sweat.
“Hey, you okay?”
A familiar voice came from beside him. Turning his head, he found Veronica's slightly worried face looking back at him in the pale light of the hospital room.
Oscar barely managed to steady his breathing before answering.
“Thanks. You woke me up just in time.”
The corruption of a dream was the thing he feared most about this curse. If Veronica hadn't been there, he probably would have witnessed something far more horrifying this time as well.
“A nightmare?”
“……Yeah. The kind that leaves a filthy taste in your mouth.”
“How bad was it, exactly? Was it about the fall this time?”
“No. Just old memories coming back.”
Perhaps because of the dream, everything from that day felt vividly alive again.
The dawn air he'd breathed at the edge of the cliff. The emotions of that day. The unwavering trust in the eyes of the subordinates who had looked up at him.
“…….”
Veronica opened her mouth to ask something more, but noticing the faint tremor running through his body, she stopped herself.
Old memories…… that would be the fire, wouldn't it?
The great fire at the Crucian estate. Even now, its cause had never been determined—a famous unsolved mystery that scholars and gossips never tired of speculating about.
……Some kind of trauma, then.
Honestly, she'd never imagined he had a side like this. He always seemed so arrogant, so overflowing with confidence.
But when she thought about it, it made perfect sense. His entire family had been wiped out in a single night. Of course it would leave scars.
Veronica turned her head away and muttered,
“Sorry. I asked without thinking.”
“It's fine. It's not your fault, really.”
Having steadied his emotions, Oscar shook his head as if to wave the matter off. If anyone was to blame here, it was the Nightmare Baron. Unless that rat bastard was dealt with, the curse would shadow him forever.
Just then, Veronica held out the day's newspaper.
“The article's out. Reporters are quicker than I expected.”
“…….”
Oscar took the paper and scanned the article.
The mages of the White Tower have succeeded in hunting the White Heavenly Silkworm. Once fully grown, this monster rivals the likes of a 5th-level mage or knight in power…… (omitted) …… The White Tower has announced that mages Veronica Frix and Oscar Crucian carried out the hunt. If true, the two are without doubt the heroes who saved Shilin overnight.
“'Heroes', huh.”
“How does it feel? With all the attention from this, we might even get some personal sponsorship money coming in.”
“Well……”
He understood her excitement perfectly. In his past life, he'd been just as swept up at that age.
Back then, simply being noticed by the world had set his heart racing and kept him up at night. He'd even felt that strange thrill, that trembling awe, toward the very word hero.
But now…… how do I put this. I feel absolutely nothing. It's almost startling.
If anything, he felt a flicker of resentment—probably thanks to that shit-awful dream earlier. And no wonder. The reward humanity's hero received for saving the world was the ruin of everything he loved: the fall of the White Tower.
“Surprising. You're not interested in being a hero or anything like that?”
“Not really. I'm more of a 'take care of my own people and that's enough' kind of guy.”
At least in this life, that was how he wanted to live. A life of pure, unbounded selfishness—looking after himself and the people of the White Tower, and no one else.
……Though who knew if it would actually work out that way.
“You have less ambition than you look like you would.”
“You're one to talk. You go ahead and hoard all that stuff.”
The moment he gave his listless reply, CRASH! The door to the hospital room burst violently open.
Maxim!?
“Oscar! You okay?!”
The man who stumbled in, gasping for breath, was none other than Franc Sirius, his pale blue hair disheveled.
“What, your closed-door training's over already?”
“Yeah. Came out and heard the news about you, so I ran straight here.”
So that's why he looked so grubby.
But appearances aside, the depth in his eyes had deepened noticeably. He could now, without exaggeration, be called a proper Level 4 mage.
Franc walked toward the bed and asked,
“What on earth happened? And…….”
His gaze slid sideways, and he blinked.
“Why is Beky here again?”
“……Hey. I told you not to act like we're close.”
“Why not? We are close.”
“We are NOT close! Not you, not me, not even a little bit!”
Veronica exploded, her face scrunching up in disgust.
“Do you have any idea how exhausting it was going around the Academy with you telling everyone we were friends?”
“Wouldn't know. Never told you I did, did I?”
“You little—!”
She was just raising her voice when she remembered there was still a patient in the room, and swallowed her anger.
“Whew. I'm done talking.”
“You're leaving?”
Veronica rose from her seat and headed for the door, then glanced back over her shoulder with a crooked look.
“What, did you expect me to stay and chit-chat with you two, all ha-ha and ho-ho?”
“A little?”
“I'd rather die. Let me make one thing clear so you don't get any ideas—you're not my friend either.”
Her eyes sharpened, regarding him like a rival across a battlefield, and then she suddenly asked,
“One question. Are you AAA?”
“AAA? What's that?”
He genuinely had never heard the term in his life.
Veronica stared at him hard, as if trying to gauge whether he was telling the truth, then furrowed her brow.
“……Never mind.”
With that, she walked out of the room. Oscar stared after her blankly for a moment before turning to Franc.
“Hey, Franc. Any idea what that meant?”
“No clue.”
Frankly, he felt a small wave of relief at that answer. So I'm not the only one who can't keep up with the kids these days……
“Anyway, start talking. What's this about becoming an instructor? What's this nutrient supplement business? And what's all this about hunting a Heavenly Silkworm?”
“Well, simply put……”
Oscar condensed everything from the past stretch of time into the shortest explanation he could—from the lecture he'd opened all the way to how he'd ended up hunting the Heavenly Silkworm. Having heard him out, Franc nodded.
“Ah, so that's why the students I ran into on the way here had all gotten so much better.”
“They've still got a long way to go.”
With the coming Night of the Magicians in mind, he'd have to drive them even harder.
“You're more passionate than usual. Not like you. What, you got your eye on the Oscar Award at the White Night Festival or something?”
“……?”
What award?
For some reason, embarrassment came flooding in from all directions at once. Praying desperately that he'd misheard, Oscar asked,
“What did you just say?”
“That you're more passionate than usual.”
“After that.”
“Ah, when I asked if you were going for the Oscar Award?”
“…….”
Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, his left ear was perfectly fine.
“What kind of award is that?”
“The Oscar Award was created by His Majesty the Emperor to honor Oscar Sage, the 17th Tower Master of the White Tower, who fell after slaying the Great Emperor. It's awarded at the White Night Festival to the mage who achieved the most outstanding feats over the past year. It's the dream and the goal of every mage alive in this era.”
“……Ah. That old man, seriously.”
Oscar pressed a hand to his burning forehead.
“He made something that embarrassing. Just to make people cringe.”
“……Why is your face the one burning?”
Franc gave him an incredulous look, then went on.
“Anyway, realistically speaking, it's going to be hard for anyone from our tower to win the Oscar Award. It's never happened once in the last twenty years.”
“……Never once in twenty years? Not a single time?”
“Yep. Not once.”
Franc counted off on his fingers.
“Let's see. Red Tower took it seven times, Yellow Tower and Blue Tower six each? And the Black Tower won it exactly once.”
“…….”
While the other towers traded the award back and forth—even the Black Tower had claimed it once, and yet the White Tower had never won a single one?
No wonder it was a miracle they hadn't been kicked out of the Four Great Magic Towers already. You could hardly not raise a fuss about special treatment.
“Seriously, though—the thing's got 'Oscar' right there in the name, and no one from the White Tower has ever won it……”
These useless juniors. Raising my blood pressure again.
The skin beneath Oscar's eyes twitched.
The Oscar Award, huh.
The name left something to be desired, but wasn't it the perfect stage to announce that the White Tower had risen again after twenty years?
After a moment's thought, Oscar asked,
“Does the winner get anything else besides the award itself? Is it all just honor?”
“Of course not. The winner gets granted a private audience with His Majesty the Emperor.”
“Oh.”
Oscar's eyes gleamed.
It would come wrapped in all sorts of ceremony, but essentially it amounted to an open window to ask the Emperor for whatever he wanted. Knowing that old man's personality, as long as he didn't get too greedy, he'd grant just about anything.
In a word—winning the award meant bagging both rabbits at once: honor and profit.
If I got the chance to speak with that old man alone……
He turned the idea over briefly, then gave up. He still didn't know.
Whether he should reveal his identity, or keep dealing with everyone as Oscar Crucian. After all, there wasn't a single person he could say with certainty he trusted one hundred percent right now.
Honestly, if I'm lucky I get written off as a lunatic, and if I'm unlucky I get dragged straight to an imperial laboratory and experimented on until I die.
Even if he told them secrets only Oscar Sage could know, he doubted anyone would simply take him at his word. During the war, the demons had used exactly that kind of trick plenty of times to worm their way into the imperial household.
The Oscar Award—for the mage with the greatest achievements of the year……
Thinking about it coldly, restoring the cure for the Cadena Flu alone probably wouldn't be enough to win it. The good news was that several months still remained before the White Night Festival. If he stacked up a few more substantial achievements in the meantime, his odds of taking the award would climb.
Well, even if this year's slips away somehow……
Starting next year, he'd devour it every single time. No exceptions.
Franc, who had seemed ready to stay up the whole night at his bedside, finally headed back to his own room at midnight.
That guy really is a handful.
Alone at last, Oscar lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Not to sleep.
Afraid of defiling his precious memories, avoiding sleep as much as possible had long since become habit.
He began replaying the battle with the Heavenly Silkworm in his mind.
To think Trinity's recoil would be that brutal…… not testing it beforehand was my mistake.
Even as he identified what needed fixing, a solution surfaced.
The fundamental answer is still building up my body.
Shoulders strong enough to absorb Trinity's recoil. With those, he'd never have to worry about this again.
But unfortunately, shoulders like that couldn't be forged through short-term training.
Which means I have to resort to a workaround……
And a mage's workaround, in the end, was magic itself.
Oscar set about inventing, on the spot, the spell the situation demanded most.
Air Cushion as the base spell. Then I raise the shock absorption rate, and……
With the spell's schematic floating before his eyes, he hammered away at it for hours through the night. At last, having completed the new spell, he immediately put it to the test.
“Hm.”
He scrutinized the results, painstakingly revised a few components, and only then allowed himself a satisfied smile.
This should do nicely.
By his calculations, the final impact his shoulders would have to bear was down to 32% of what it had been. That little, and pulling the trigger would never again mean blowing his shoulder apart.
It'll hold up for at least two or three shots.
Six shots in total, counting both shoulders. And if some opponent could shrug off even that much fire, then failing to finish things before then was his own fault for not planning ahead.
Right. So what should I work on next?
As Oscar rolled over onto his other side, wriggling around while refining yet more spells, a man revealed himself at the Mana Power Plant—where the traces of that ferocious battle still lay starkly exposed.