“Hey, Rinne!”
“Ah, my mistake.”
At the direct mage’s outcry, the knight entered the room pulling a tray with a face that didn’t look like a mistake at all. Since she was a knight pretending to be a maid, she would have easily noticed the fact that I was leaning against the door. Seeing her do that while knowing, they seemed to be on quite friendly terms.
Imitating an awkward expression, I picked up the utensils while watching the food being placed on the table. Like someone who had intruded without permission, the direct mage sat down without a word, pulling out the chair across from me. He propped his chin on his hand and stared intently at me, but I didn’t particularly care. Then he suddenly turned his head toward the knight.
“Aren’t you leaving?”
“……”
“Ugh, there she goes again, ignoring me.”
The direct mage grumbled, scrunching up the corner of his left eye. I had planned to just eat this meal and then draw a magic circle based on what I’d discovered in the room, but it didn’t seem like he’d leave easily.
“You’ve got plenty of time.”
“Me?”
I pointed to my chest area while holding my fork. I didn’t forget to act surprised while thinking of Alli.
“Yeah, you.”
“No…? I’m busy though?”
“Huh? You’re not doing anything!”
“I’m starting research in my room today. I stayed up all night yesterday reading books and kept pondering over it, so I absolutely have to do it today.”
When I firmly responded, the direct mage let out a groan. He seemed determined to say what he wanted to say. I hooked my fork over the plate and blinked slowly. My vision went completely dark, then filled with color, repeating the cycle. I feigned a puzzled voice.
“Do you have something to say to me?”
“That’s why I asked if you had time!”
“Ah. At the Magic Tower, asking if someone has plenty of time usually means asking if they have little to research.”
I don’t know whether that’s actually true or not. I’m just saying it might be so. Since Magic Tower mages stake their lives on research, if you ask them if they have time, wouldn’t they take it to mean that?
Mages are generally divided into Magic Tower mages and personal mages, and this difference is stark.
Magic Tower mages are mostly abnormal, while personal mages seem relatively normal. It’s a gap that only those who’ve met both types of mages can understand.
Compared to the Magic Tower mages I’d seen just moments ago, the direct mage was sane. So he probably had never been to the Magic Tower, and since he wouldn’t know whether this was a lie or the truth, it didn’t really matter.
“They understand it that way? I’ve thought this since way back, but that place is really weird. Magic Tower mages are really strange.”
As expected, his tone suggested he’d never been to the Magic Tower even once.
“Is that so?”
Since the setting was that I’d been stuck in the Magic Tower for several years, I just moved the conversation along with that one response. Leaving him to continue staring at me, I finished my meal. One bite, two bites, three bites. The more my hand moved, the more the plate showed its white bottom.
“Hey, Rinne. He’s finished eating.”
“……”
“You can glare at me all you want, but I’m not scared, you know?”
The knight couldn’t bring herself to throw a punch given her current position as a maid, so she just clenched her fist so tightly that veins bulged. Not knowing this, or perhaps not caring, the direct mage kept needling her.
The knight approached the table and as she cleared the plate, I felt her firmly stomp on the direct mage’s foot. The direct mage cried out “Ack!” but I pretended not to hear, concentrating on thoughts about the magic circle. I was too lazy to act out every little thing.
“I’ll be going now. If you need anything, pull the cord to call me. You, follow me out.”
Unlike the emotionless voice she’d used earlier, the muttered command to follow her out was chilling. It was filled with killing intent.
I wondered just how peaceful a life the direct mage had lived—he seemed unable to sense the killing intent and was just raising one corner of his mouth at an angle. With a mean expression, he only spoke words of refusal.
“Aren’t you leaving?”
“Yeah. I told you I have something to say?”
“Ah, yes. Then please finish quickly. I don’t like having people around when I’m researching.”
“You think I want to stay with you for long? I’m just going to say what I need to and leave!”
The grumbling direct mage opened his closed mouth as soon as the knight left the room with the tray.
“Why do you keep using magic everywhere you go? I don’t know what magic it is, but why is there so much unnatural mana clustered around you?”
This had become troublesome. Of course I knew that as a mage, he could read the flow of mana. However, I didn’t expect him to come ask about it so directly. If he had just reported it to the Duke instead, I could have researched the magic circle to return home while just being moderately suspected.
He looked determined not to budge until I gave him an answer. On top of that, he’d even brought a recording device and turned it on. Having become sensitive to even the slightest mana due to what I’d been through during my Hero days, there was no way I wouldn’t notice. I placed my hand on the direct mage’s hand that was on the table, and before withdrawing it, I moved my Divine Power.
“Might you have seen wrong?”
“What?”
I then saw an expression that suggested he’d just heard the most absurd nonsense. I extracted Divine Power like a very fine thread and gradually stirred it through the direct mage’s mind, briefly stealing his consciousness. At the same time, taking advantage of that gap, I cast an illusion magic throughout the entire room. So that the unnatural mana would feel like natural mana.
“Sometimes there are people who make that mistake. There are times when the flow of unnatural and natural mana become similar. Would you like to read the flow again?”
“Uh, what…?”
The flustered direct mage opened his eyes wide and looked around. He turned his head so quickly that it made a sound cutting through the air.
“You’re not using it right now, are you?”
“Is there any reason I need to? The direct mage said I’ve been continuously using magic. If that were the case, could I suddenly stop like this?”
Meeting his narrowed eyes, I covered my naive expression with an indifferent one. I produced a voice full of appeal that gave the feeling I was speaking only the truth.
“The Duke said he would treat me as a benefactor, but is it okay to suspect me like this? I haven’t used any magic at all.”
The Duke hadn’t directly shown signs of suspicion. However, the direct mage, as if he’d never done this sort of thing before, couldn’t hide that he was suspicious of me.
To suspect and corner someone the Duke had praised as a benefactor. It was practically going against the Duke’s wishes. Whether his mind worked that far or not, the direct mage spoke a beat late.
“……That’s,”
“Now that you’ve finished your business, please leave. As I said earlier, I need to start my research right away.”
Cutting him off, I sent the direct mage outside while simultaneously removing the illusion magic I’d layered over the glamour magic that changed my appearance. Through the smoothly closing door gap, bewildered eyes followed me, but soon the door closed without any opening.
I went and sat on the bed, thinking. I really need to finish this quickly and leave this place. By the time a fair amount of time had passed since becoming a Hero, there was no need for acting. Rather than infiltrating to solve strange incidents happening in villages on the way to the Demon King’s castle, I was genuinely subjugating monsters and the Demon King. For the first time in a while, and to be acting in a way completely opposite to usual, it felt like my face was going to spasm.
Soon I shook off the thoughts filling my head and changed the subject. To the Dimension Travel magic circle I needed to complete as quickly as possible. Extracting mana like a thin stream of water into the air, I drew magic circles related to time and space.
Dimension Travel is crossing from world to world. The essential elements to achieve this through magic are three: time, space, and movement.
And while it’s not crossing worlds, Teleportation is magic that leaps from space to space by designating coordinates, and in the case of magic that briefly stops objects, it’s magic that adjusts time. If I disassemble and combine magic circles related to such time and space, an answer should emerge. It would take some time, but there was no other way. Creating a new magic circle from scratch required trying various things directly in the first place.
With dozens of magic circles floating in the air, I began separating them one by one. Various formulas and ancient languages filled the air in a chaotic manner. Even in the case of Teleportation magic circles, there wasn’t just one. There were quite a few formulas and ancient languages that could substitute for the formulas and ancient languages I mainly used. So even if they were classified as spatial magic, they didn’t all have the exact same formulas.
I declined lunch and dinner, concentrating on creating magic circles all through the night. Time and space were solely God’s domain. Even if God permitted small ranges, anything beyond that was not allowed. But trying to succeed at that in a relatively short time was making me feel like I was losing my mind. One formula looked like another formula, and that formula looked like this one—it was a disaster.
In the end, I completed about sixty magic circles, excluding the part where I needed to inscribe coordinates. I had no idea how to represent coordinates based on worlds. If I’d known this would happen, I should have taken an interest when I was a Hero. Staying up for the second night made my head hurt.
‘God.’
I tried calling out in case he might hear, but there was no answer. After pondering, I decided to try meticulously inserting a person’s conditions into the part where I needed to put coordinates. Even in the case of Teleportation, it’s possible to recall a target instead of coordinates and replace the coordinate part in the magic circle with something else. Of course, since it’s not detailed and is rather broad, there was a high probability of being moved to the wrong place. To prevent that, I concentrated and drew in conditions that would make it impossible not to meet Ruvlian. If I couldn’t go to my world, I just needed to meet Ruvlian, who would make accurate movement possible.
And so the next day, skipping breakfast and lunch, I experimented on my body with those sixty-some magic circles. There were dangerous moments where my arm would fly off or other close calls, but I healed everything with Divine Power. When I failed, I searched for the reason and supplemented the rest. When only the last magic circle remained and I was about to execute it, the power that had doubled in strength after crossing to this different world weakened, and at the same time, I felt the mana of another person creeping closer.
An uneasy feeling. As I backed away on guard, there was a tap. Something touched my back, and soon a suggestive voice whispered.
“We meet again, darling.”
