The Ill-Fated Genius (3)

Delivery... delivery... delivery?

Oscar, who had been rolling the word around in his mouth, blinked both eyes wide.

"You mean delivery as in, ah, the business of transporting goods or letters, right?"

"That's correct. The White Tower's postmen can fly through the sky, so their delivery times are fast — and safe, too. The official name is Wind Rider..."

At that, Gordon, who had sensed something ominous in the air, clamped his mouth shut at once.

And that was the right call.

For Oscar's eyes had gone as cold as a sheet of ice.

"...Interesting. So you're trying to stall for time with nonsense? Give it up. Your men aren't coming either way."

"Wh-what? N-no, sir, that's not it at all!"

Gordon, badly startled, protested in a voice thick with indignation.

"It's written in the documents! Page thirteen! The fourth line!"

"..."

He flipped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to the page, and sure enough, it was all about the delivery business.

"...You're telling me the White Tower's business really is delivery?"

"Yes! I can swear to it."

"Ha."

The sheer absurdity of it wrung nothing from him but a hollow laugh.

What manner of mages had the White Tower's magi once been?

Beings who ruled the battlefield as they roamed the lofty open sky.

The world had likened their freedom and valor to dragons and eagles...

"...What? They fly through the sky... delivering packages?"

What was this, a brood of pigeons?

Just what did the ancestors develop Flight magic for, exactly?

Eyes blazing with twin flames, Oscar whipped his head around.

"Who."

"Sir?"

"I said, who — which bastard pushed through this farce of a business?"

"I-I understand it was the current Tower Master, Shasha Meist."

"...Damn it."

She's mine.

Oscar steadied his roughened breathing, then asked.

"So. Our people are now... riders?"

"Wind Riders, sir."

"Right. And despite doing all that, they still can't match the other towers' revenue? Why?"

"Well, to begin with, the White Tower staffs its Wind Riders with intermediate mages. They fly well, you see."

"..."

Not even novices — intermediates?

That was an insane decision.

Intermediate mages of 4th level and above commanded a far heftier price on the market.

'If anything, it would be far more profitable to simply hand them suitable commissions instead, no?'

Just as question marks crowded his mind, the next words reached him.

"Above all, the delivery fee is practically free, so it's known to run a constant deficit."

"...Oh, my head."

He turned those precious assets into a courier corps, and doesn't even charge proper money?

A business exists to make money — why is this side footing the bill?

Given the chance, he wanted to march straight to Shasha and ask. Just what was she thinking when she pushed through this nonsense?

'Moreover, with the White Tower fallen and its mages so few, even a monopoly would have a limit to the volume it could handle...'

Redirecting the intermediate mages toward commissions really did seem the more profitable path.

And above all, magic engineering and agricultural support sounded like money the moment you heard the words.

As for the Red Tower, it monopolized the state's subjugation commissions — naturally it sat at the very center of power.

'Revenue, influence over local communities, the number of high-level mages, on up through political clout...'

In every respect it paled beside the other Four Great Towers. Expulsion would have been well deserved.

Truthfully, he ought to be thanking the imperial family for their loyalty in overlooking things for twenty full years.

'Honestly, I don't even know where to begin.'

Worse still, barely seven months remained until the White Night Festival, the event honoring the White Tower's sacrifice.

Reversing the tower's standing within that sliver of time was all but impossible.

Just as one plan after another flashed through his mind—

"Hurk! Kgh!"

Gordon suddenly began foaming at the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mouth, his whole body shuddering.

At first Oscar took it for an act, but the symptoms pointed to death by shock.

'Must be from bleeding out too much.'

Sure enough, a glance down showed the floor soaked crimson.

Oscar was weighing whether to save the man or not when he spread open the ledger.

"Let's see now... arson, assault, robbery, illegal loan sharking — oh lovely, and contract killing on top?"

Well, well. A walking pile of refuse, no two ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ways about it.

Feeling no particular need to spare him, Oscar leapt out the window without a flicker of regret.

By the time his feet touched the ground, the room behind him was silent, even though he had already dispelled Sound Binding.

The dead, after all, tell no tales.

Back in his room, Oscar collapsed onto the sofa as if crumbling.

"Hoo... what the hell is wrong with this body..."

Why did it creak and groan from casting a handful of simple spells?

He muttered in a voice drained to the dregs.

"Wind Archive."

The unique grimoire that had made him the greatest mage in the history of humanity.

Vwoooong!

The fierce wind that had swirled around his palm circled once, then scattered feebly into nothing.

'...As I thought, unfolding this with this body is still beyond me.'

Then again, even in his old life he had only begun to fully master the spell from 7th level onward.

Making do, Oscar instead cast Scan across his entire body.

Try as he might, the state of the body simply did not seem normal.

'Once the scan finishes, I'll know what's wrong. A rough examination should take a few minutes...'

He began reading the documents he had carried out of Gordon's office — the file on Oscar Crucian.

"Hm?"

Surprise surfaced on Oscar's face.

Going by the text alone, the boy sounded like some tremendous prodigy.

But the Oscar Crucian he knew was a greenhorn mage who hadn't escaped 1st level until the age of twenty.

Blinking, he read straight on to the next passage.

"Huh. So he really was a genius."

Then why was someone that extraordinary still stuck at 1st level...?

Rustle.

The swelling question dissolved, along with a dizzying jolt, the moment he turned the page.

"...This guy is a Mana Deficiency Syndrome patient?"

Oscar's face hardened like stone.

If this were true, then even he could do nothing about it.

Even drinking elixirs in place of water every day, one would remain a beginner mage for life.

'So that's why, all this time...'

Oscar gazed at the face reflected in the mirror with quiet pity.

This would have been a despair far too vast for a mere twenty-year-old to shoulder.

To understand magic better than anyone alive — and be unable to cast a single spell of it.

'If he had never understood it at all, at least it wouldn't have hurt this much.'

The moment he sighed out his sympathy, the mana scan completed itself.

"...Display results."

Oscar's face slowly contorted as he examined the results hanging in the air before him.

'What is this.'

The cause of the illness called Mana Deficiency Syndrome was a simple one.

Twenty physical circuits, which every human being is born with — mage, knight, or neither.

Because those circuits had twisted and knotted upon themselves, the circulation and accumulation of mana itself failed to occur.

Naturally, even a lifetime of training would leave one hovering at 3rd level at best.

'But... this is different.'

On the surface it looked strikingly similar to Mana Deficiency Syndrome, yet the underlying cause was entirely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other.

'I'm certain of it. Someone bound these. Deliberately.'

The circuits had been tied fast, leaving them unable to perform their proper role.

If only these knots could be undone, the body would return to a normal state in a single stroke.

Oscar bit down hard on his lip.

"What kind of bastard would do something like this..."

As a mage, and as a senior and an elder of the craft, he was furious.

Someone's scheming had upended, root and branch, the life of a mage whose future should have burned brighter than anyone's.

"..."

After analyzing the circuits in silence for a while, Oscar reached his conclusion.

'I can do it. It won't be easy — but I can.'

The vicious knots binding this boy, the shackles he must have cursed a thousand times.

He could sever every last one of them.

'And once these are cut and he reaches the higher levels...'

Whoever had twisted these circuits into this state would betray a reaction soon enough, on their own.

Screech!

Oscar rose from his seat and approached the bookshelf.

'Going by Franc's account, this boy was a problem child who drowned himself in drink.'

But what if that had been a face manufactured on purpose?

What if, knowing that someone had clogged his circuits and set sights on his very life, he had played the wastrel deliberately?

'If this kid were a genuine genius, he would have realized long ago that he wasn't actually a Mana Deficiency Syndrome patient.'

Then his fall into illegal elixirs made perfect sense, too.

With no way of knowing who had bound his circuits, or whom he could trust.

He would have had no choice but to try breaking his own shackles.

'Here's hoping he kept something like a journal.'

Fortunately, the shelf held a good dozen or more extraordinarily thick notebooks.

Their covers were worn soft and shabby — these had been opened far more than once or twice.

Drawing one out, Oscar blinked.

"...A Reinterpretation of Basic Magic?"

Rustle.

He had turned the pages in a lighthearted mood after reading the title — then he stopped short.

...

It was a grimoire.

A treatise on the White Tower's basic spells, annotated throughout with Oscar Crucian's own thinking.

There were even several basic spells of his own devising, invented from scratch.

"...This is remarkable."

By the time he finished the book, he understood why the boy had been called a genius.

No exaggeration — where theory alone was concerned, that insight of his rivaled Oscar's own.

Look no further than the improved Wind Shield the boy had proposed in these pages.

'This is essentially the same concept as the Wind Shield I use.'

Twisting the enemy's attack trajectory to forcibly carve open a gap in their guard.

The very technique he had used against Bart only hours ago — a spell entirely different in concept and principle from the conventional shield, which had been confined to pure defense.

'He even filled the margins with his own thoughts on how to use it ideally in every possible situation.'

How much labor had been poured into this single volume.

How many nights of agonizing lay behind each of these annotations — a mere glance was enough to tell.

"..."

And that was precisely why he could not dismiss it as some primer of basic magic.

Spells that to anyone else would have been mere foundations, trivial stepping-stones to pass through and leave behind —

to this boy, they must have been every spell in the world.

Rustle, rustle.

Oscar stood where he was, turning the pages in silence.

The crooked script the boy had left behind seemed to shout from every line.

That he had never given up.

That even as a defective product no one would call a proper mage, he had worked harder than anyone alive.

Harder than anyone.

That he loved magic.

"..."

The rims of his eyes reddening for no good reason, Oscar found himself turning the final page.

There, written in ink not yet dry, was a short inscription.

With that plain, unadorned sentence, the book ended.

But Oscar could not shake off its lingering echo for a long while.

'A mage who stands before a great trial, is it.'

He knew, after all.

This boy had known everything — yet could tell no one of his situation, and had shouldered it all alone.

"Oscar Crucian..."

The young mage who had refused to bow to a cruel fate, and had walked a lonely road in uncomplaining silence — a brave pioneer.

Closing the cover, he murmured in a low voice.

"I so swear, in the name of Oscar Sage, 17th Tower Master of the White Tower."

The dream you could not see through to the end — he would fulfill it in your stead.

The ones who so savagely snapped your wings and locked you in a cage —

he would make them pay that debt, in your stead.

The sun had risen.

Yet Oscar had not slept a wink, having spent the entire night poring over a dozen-odd volumes.

'Tired, certainly — but thanks to that, I've gone through every single research journal Oscar Crucian left behind, without missing one.'

Calling their contents to mind, he wore a bitter expression.

His impression could be summed up in one line: admirable and astonishing, yet heartbreaking.

'Because nearly every one of those studies remained, in the end, unfinished.'

Of course, that much could not be helped.

Even a painter of consummate genius cannot render, with any accuracy, a landscape he has never once laid eyes on.

That Oscar Crucian had produced this much research from imagination and inference alone was, frankly, astounding.

'But don't you worry.'

He understood, perfectly, the direction and intent behind every study the boy had left behind.

All that remained was to bring those countless unfinished works to completion.

He was still deliberating over which research to tackle first when—

"—Ahem, this is an announcement from the broadcasting room."

"...!"

Startled, Oscar looked up at the small machine mounted on the ceiling.

The voice was unmistakably issuing from there.

"Communication magic...? My mana code was cracked that easily?"

He had been rotating his code by the minute — hadn't he?

No answer came back to his warily voiced question.

After waiting a moment, Oscar gingerly climbed onto a chair and inspected the speaker fixed to the ceiling — and only then did he relax.

"Phew, and here I thought... so this is another one of those magic engineering contraptions."

Living in this world had become remarkably convenient.

To be able to reach someone one-sidedly like this, without even knowing their mana code.

'Laboratory 4202, was it?'

Leaving the room, he took the mana elevator straight up to the 42nd floor.

Thankfully, the elevator had existed back in the old days too, so there was nothing to be startled by.

Knock, knock.

"Enter."

Inside, he found Elder Maxim buried beneath a mountain of paperwork.

Oscar moved to offer a warm greeting — and just barely stopped himself.

'That elder I saw in the infirmary... was Maxim, my junior?'

He had learned it while Franc explained this and that in the sickroom.

Maxim Bisk.

A junior who had entered the White Tower a few years after him.

Steadfast and scrupulously diligent, a talent whose future had been worth watching.

'That kid grew up and became an elder, huh.'

It had been an endearing thing to watch — the boy trailing after him calling "Senior! Senior!" only to end up, in time, trailing after him calling "Tower Master! Tower Master!"

A fond smile settled at the corner of Oscar's mouth.

'He looks young. He must have worked hard at it.'

That was one of the highest compliments one could pay a mage — the richer a mage's mana reserves, the slower his aging.

Maxim, after all, had to be in his late forties, yet looked barely in his early-to-mid thirties.

"How's the body?"

Maxim asked offhandedly, his gaze pinned to the documents.

"Fine... ah — no. Yes, quite well, sir."

"You look it."

Thwack. A document landed on the desk.

"You put three men in the infirmary at a tavern, then killed the boss of the Gordon Family and his enforcer. Anything to say for yourself?"

"Yes. There were reasons for it."

Oscar laid the money pouch and the ledger on the desk.

Maxim gave them a brief glance.

"And what's this?"

"The commission fee. What those men were paid to have me assassinated."

"...Did you just say assassinated?"

In his mildly startled eyes was a silent urging — explain, and in detail.

"Yes. The elixir was laced with poison. When I noticed it belatedly and went to take the matter up with them, they tried to kill me."

"Hmm."

Maxim nodded after checking the contents of the pouch and ledger.

"It does plainly record a murder-for-hire. And the sums match exactly."

He had told the unvarnished truth, with only his possession left out — there would be no grounds for suspicion.

As expected, Maxim spoke.

"In and out of taverns day in, day out — you must have piled up enemies. I'll close this case as justifiable defense, on my authority."

"Thank you. Ah — and, if I may, one small favor?"

"...You, asking for a favor. That's a novelty. What is it?"

And to Maxim, who wore a look of open surprise, Oscar brought out the words he had been waiting for a chance to say since the day before.

"I wish to meet the Tower Master."