Chapter 55
I’m not sure this can even be called a memory.
As I examined the scenes in the mirrors one by one, a laugh slipped out before I knew it.
No wonder. Every mirror I checked showed only me learning magic from Grandpa.
My younger self wore a blank, emotionless face.
Looking closer, I saw the corners of my mouth were slightly upturned.
Lunaris had apparently not found that life all that bad.
...What? I thought there’d be some incredibly touching hidden past or something.
In truth, there wasn’t some twist like Grandpa having doted on me terribly.
Considering he spent all day teaching me magic, I guess I really did grow up being gaslit.
Even so.
Lunaris was always right by Grandpa’s side.
Wherever she went, she clung tightly to his sleeve and whined.
Quietly, timidly.
Suddenly, I felt something hot flowing down both cheeks.
I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand, only for tears to spill again.
This is probably...
because my eyes got dry from focusing for far too long, unlike me.
Mmm... well, if you count it as a memory, I guess it is one.
Come to think of it, I’d barely grown at all since then.
My height’s the same, and my chest is the same...
Did I seriously only grow hair?
And so I wandered through the dream for a while, meeting fragments of nostalgic memories one by one.
*
As expected, Miss Lunaris, I knew you would solve this problem.
The basement of a building located a short distance from Eltereon Academy.
Albert Marcelin, deputy commander of the Imperial Mage Corps, murmured to himself with a faint smile.
A faint illusion hovered in the darkness where his gaze rested.
Within the illusion was Lunaris, drifting through the world of dreams.
The ash-gray-haired girl was streaming tears as if reliving old memories.
That pitiful sight made Albert’s chest ache as well.
Of course, if he could read Lunaris’s thoughts, he would’ve felt something entirely different.
I had a feeling. She really is the child that man took in.
He had only doubted it for a brief moment.
Of course, the accusation from some black mage had planted the seed of doubt, but he had actually felt suspicious even before that.
There was no way a child raised by that man, who had sacrificed his life for the Empire, would be that lazy and wilful.
Come to think of it, girls that age usually went through a stormy, rebellious phase at least once.
Of course, he had never raised a child himself.
Still, he had once heard a rumor that a girl at the academy could steamroll three imperial knights(?).
Is that what they call puberty...
That laziness would end up being nothing more than a brief detour and a bit of rebellion.
Sigh... This is all your fault, isn’t it.
Deputy Commander Albert’s warm gaze grew cold as it slowly fell.
Beneath the dim light, the figure of a man tightly bound to an old chair came into view.
Ugh, ugh... uhhhhh...
The man had rolled his eyes back, foam frothing at his mouth as he trembled violently.
Because of your pointless rambling, I ended up suspecting poor Lunaris for no reason, that’s what I mean.
The man only let out a groan like a beast’s howl in reply.
Deputy Commander Albert looked down at him with an impassive gaze, then snapped his fingers lightly.
The man’s trembling body went limp on the chair like a puppet with its strings cut.
Ragged panting echoed through the basement.
You’d better answer properly this time.
The deputy commander slowly bent down, bringing himself to the man’s eye level as he continued the interrogation.
Now then, let’s start over with an easy question. What’s your name?
K-Krono... McDowell...
Affiliation?
B-Black magic... ori... s-sin... gh... khk!
The man’s face suddenly twisted as he stammered out his words.
His whole body convulsed as if in a fit, and then a rough cough burst out: khk!
Soon, a mouthful of dark red blood spilled out.
Deputy Commander Albert clicked his tongue and took a step back.
Looks like he’s under some kind of spell that seals the mouth.
Annoyed, he roughly rubbed his bloodstained shoe against the floor.
Fine. Then let’s ask something else.
Deputy Commander Albert smiled again.
That smile was eerily similar to the one he had worn while watching Lunaris just moments earlier.
Then tell me everything you know about witches.
*
The exam for <Basic Concepts of Magic Theory>, a class that didn’t cover the basics at all, was already on its seventh day.
This long exam, which had seemed like it would never end, was finally on its last day today.
Even though it was the weekend, the area around the main building of the Magic Hall was still crowded.
Did you try the last problem?
I took a crack at it, but a week wasn’t nearly enough.
I think I know how to approach it, but...
They really wrote a good problem. It’s satisfying to work through each equation one by one.
It was all because of the much-talked-about final problem, number 7.
And because Dean Raymond had said he would use his authority to award extra credit for this semester to anyone who got the answer right, every eligible student had gone after it.
Of course, most of them were so shocked by the horrific difficulty that they didn’t even last two days.
If it had just been a problem that was merely difficult, they would’ve cursed it out without hesitation.
But the problem was so perfectly crafted that everyone was praising it.
Everyone lamented that if it weren’t exam period, they would’ve held onto it and worked through it at length.
Even some upperclassmen from the Magic Department had dropped all their general-education exams and were devoting themselves to solving it.
It was that impressive a problem.
At this point, only three first-years were still in the main building of the Magic Hall, wrestling with the problem to the very end.
One of them was Princess Celestina.
Your Highness, are you heading to take the exam again today?
The guard captain asked the princess, who had just finished lunch, with a worried expression.
Of course. There are still questions left, and there’s still time.
But being locked in your room for a whole week is, well...
The guard captain was seriously considering filing a complaint with the department office.
This kind of absurd exam method was not education, but abuse.
However, contrary to his worries, the princess actually looked much healthier than usual.
I’m learning so much through this exam.
I finally feel like a real student now," Princess Celestina said with a bright smile.
In fact, the princess had spent the past week in high spirits.
She loved this environment, where she could forget every other distraction and focus entirely on the exam questions and on learning.
What’s more, the subject was magic, her favorite thing.
Every day spent working through the problems was delightful, and she was living through days so fulfilling they felt like a dream.
And so, cheered on by the knights and maids, Princess Celestina returned to the exam hall.
The moment she stepped into the private room, the hazy memory of the problem in her mind sprang back to life.
She had returned from reality to a dream.
Unlike the other two, who were agonizing over question 7, the princess was still clinging to question 6.
The thick exam paper was densely filled with tiny writing.
They were all formulas based on basic concepts.
It was an inefficient solution, like solving multiplication with addition, but the princess didn’t think she was wrong at all.
She hadn’t even questioned it. The exam time was long, and there was plenty of space to write out the solution, so she simply figured that was how it was meant to be done.
Most importantly, Lunaris had told her to solve it that way.
For that reason, the princess’s solution was meticulous and faithful to the basics.
It was probably the closest to the solution written on the professor’s answer key.
How far had I gotten again...
The princess quickly became absorbed in the problem.
She intended to keep working on the paper all the way until midnight, when the exam ended.
She wasn’t particularly anxious.
She thought she had already written an answer beyond her own abilities.
She considered the remaining time a bonus and enjoyed the problem at her leisure.
And so the hour hand raced ahead almost as quickly as the minute hand.
Equations filled the page densely.
She half-listened to the assistant’s worried voice telling her to make sure she ate dinner.
She poured mana into the carefully drawn magic circle...
And then, with less than five minutes left until the exam ended.
Done!
The princess let out a small cheer as she wrote in the final equation.
The moment she set down her quill, the densely filled exam paper suddenly floated into the air.
Letter by letter, the carefully written characters turned into a beam of light and began reassembling in midair.
In the middle of the slowly swirling sheets, the final problem that had been hidden away timidly peeked out.
Ahh...
Princess Celestina stared blankly at the sight.
As always, magic was truly mysterious.
The satisfaction of having solved it, along with a little regret, flickered in a corner of her heart.
Time... well, she couldn’t really ask for any more than that.
If only her skill had kept up just a little more.
She might have been able to make at least a little headway on the final seventh problem.
If Lunaris were here, she’d definitely have solved the last problem too, right?
She’d ask what kind of problem it had been when she got back, the princess thought with a bashful smile.
Just then, with a knock, the assistant opened the door and came in.
He stared blankly at the sheets of paper and the letters swirling around the room, then quickly came to his senses and said.
The exam is over. You’ve worked very hard for a long time.
Not at all. The proctors were the ones who had it hard, putting up with my stubbornness.
Once she cut off the mana connected to the exam paper, the sheets floating in the air were gathered back together into one stack.
I’m sorry, Your Highness.
The assistant said with a regretful expression as he took the answer sheet.
It looked like you were right in the middle of solving the last problem...
No.
Princess Celestina shook her head and continued.
I’m already satisfied just having solved this much.
The way she smiled bashfully as she said that was more adorable than anyone else in the world.
After the assistant left with the answer-filled exam paper.
Princess Celestina straightened her clothes and stepped out of the private room a moment later.
That was really nice...
Even though the exam was over, she still felt as if she were blissfully in a dream.
She wanted to meet Lunaris right away, compare answers, and ask her all sorts of things about the exam problems.
But at this hour, that lazy genius was probably in a dream of a very different sort.
Then, the door to another classroom opened.
One room was nearby, close to the princess; another was a little farther away.
P-Princess?!
Your Highness, long time no see... cough, you were there too? Edwin Belka.
They were none other than Edwin and Claire.
It was the moment the three first-years who had been clinging to their exam papers until the very end gathered in one place.