Chapter 37
“I’ll show you the way. This way, please.”
“Thank you.”
This time too, it was a man wearing glasses. He was wearing the exact same robe, too. Robes really are this world’s equivalent of suits and padded jackets. Isn’t it perfect—a garment that’s damn comfortable, yet respectable enough to wear to formal occasions without anyone cursing you out?
The mage walking ahead of me spoke.
“You mentioned Erin’s magic, but our guild has no specialist in that field. Therefore, a seventh-star alchemist of the Magnus School, renowned for his knowledge of history, volunteered to assist us.”
“I’m honored.”
Fuck, a seventh-star was practically doctorate-level, wasn’t it? He had to be a mage who had worked at the guild for at least ten years.
I’d merely brought it up, so why had someone of that caliber come rushing out? I answered with Vector—Speak Solemnly, but I couldn’t hide my surprise.
“Here we are. He is waiting inside.”
The guide spoke as we stood in front of the building we had reached.
“Then I’ll be going.”
“Thank you for your trouble.”
After sending the guide away, I fastened my collar. The costume didn’t expose any of my bare skin, but there was no harm in being careful. My skin color alone made me stand out like hell.
Creeeak─.
When I opened the door and entered, the room felt like a principal’s office. An old man wearing glasses was sitting there, waiting for me. With his slicked-back hair and suit with a brown vest, he also looked a little like a butler.
“You’ve arrived. I’m Ouslate McLoyber.”
“Arthur Wayne.”
Since he was an old man and clearly high-ranking, I used polite speech as we introduced ourselves. He looked like a very gentle man.
“Please sit down. I’ll have some tea brought out.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll accept the sentiment. I’m not in a position to drink anything.”
Maintaining my solemn voice, I tapped my mask. That alone should have conveyed that my circumstances made it difficult to reveal my identity. Ouslate seemed to understand and gestured for me to sit.
Thus, we sat on sofas with a table between us.
“Then… given that you have your reasons, it may be difficult to begin with small talk (私談). Shall we get straight to the matter at hand?”
“I don’t mind. I’m sorry to take up your time, Mr. McLoyber, so let’s do that.”
“Thank you for understanding. You’re a well-mannered person.”
We exchanged a little perfunctory flattery, then moved on to the main subject.
For reference, in Britannia, people addressed others by their surnames only when acknowledging their authority and showing them respect. Put less charitably, it was a deliberate way of keeping one’s distance.
As someone once said, respect is the emotion farthest removed from understanding. Likewise, in Britannia, addressing someone by their surname was a manner of speaking that almost completely excluded familiarity. That was precisely why it carried an air of respect.
“I heard you came today because of the magic in ruins discovered near here… Is it the same ruin discovered by the Audumla Adventurers’ Guild?”
“You’ve heard about it already, so this should go quickly.”
He’d probably heard the gist of the news. Anyone from the Mages’ Guild would naturally be more interested in newly discovered ruins and the former hideout of a black mage than in a goblin dungeon.
“I found ancient Ulster’s Ogham script on the stone monument there. Here are the original text and its translation.”
I handed Ouslate the wording from the stone monument that I had copied into my notebook. He accepted it politely and read it.
“Hmm…. It appears to be writing left by the ancestors of those Ulsy bastards. Is there some problem with it?”
“Pardon?”
Ulsy?
‘Ulsy’ was a derogatory term for Ulsterians. It was a slur like Jap, Chink, Chon, or Ching Chong—the sort of ethnic slurs familiar to Koreans. In usage, it was closer to an Ulsterian version of Yankee.
To boldly spit out a word like that to someone he was meeting for the first time? That was damn rude and thoughtless. It was about as bad as telling someone you had just met that rap was nigger culture.
‘This bastard’s a racist.’
And not just a racist—a moron who couldn’t even hide his shitty thoughts.
So that was why he had remained stuck at seventh-star until he got this old: he was an idiot.
‘Other people reach fifth-star in their fifties, but he’s still seventh-star. That tells me everything I need to know.’
Seventh-star was the fourth-lowest rank in the Mages’ Guild.
If I wasn’t mistaken, an old seventh-star mage was like a veteran administrative officer who had never earned a star. You could call him the mage equivalent of a career section chief who never made department head. It meant there was a problem with either his ability or his character.
He’d probably been caught taking kickbacks somewhere.
I wondered whether there was any point in consulting an asshole like this—he might spout completely baseless bullshit precisely because he was an idiot—but I asked anyway, figuring I had nothing to lose.
“Ahem, well, you see? The last time I was deciphering this inscription, I pronounced the cuneiform string in the middle. But even though I wasn’t circulating mana, the magic activated on its own from that short phrase alone.”
“…That would be the incantation ‘Pray to the Sky God,’ correct?”
The racist bastard stroked his chin and tapped his fingers on the table.
“Would you tell me how the incantation is pronounced? In the original language.”
“yáǵeswō deiwōm dyēus.”
I spoke while suppressing my mana so the magic wouldn’t activate. Thanks to having grown accustomed to handling the mana catheter inside my body over the past few days, it was easy.
“Pray (yáǵeswō)… I’ve heard that incantation at a seminar before.”
Ouslate pushed up his glasses and spoke.
“It is a kind of prayer passed down orally among the Ulsy bastards. A few scholars have taken note of the fact that Erin, a nation from the Golden Age of the ancient civilization, left behind not great relics or ruins but meaningless scripture like this.”
“That’s a very interesting story.”
Damn, he was desperate to advertise his racism every time he opened his mouth. I’d better be careful not to let him see my skin color, too. I didn’t want to be driven out under a barrage of salt, branded a (fake) Kitayan.
“But what do you mean by saying it has no meaning?”
“I mean exactly what I said. This magic is a spell still passed down orally among some Ulsy communities, but no matter how many times they chant it, it has no effect.”
Ouslate waved his hand dismissively, then recited the incantation with relatively accurate pronunciation.
“《Pray to the Sky God(yáǵeswō deiwōm dyēus)》.”
The incantation was correct, but just as with the sham priest Paragon, nothing changed in Ouslate’s body.
“…Do you see? Even after chanting the incantation and circulating mana, the magic doesn’t activate. This is proof that it has failed to take the proper form of magic.”
Ouslate laughed mockingly, as if looking down on the absent Ulsterians.
“Isn’t it ridiculous? This was a superstition believed by the ancestors of those Ulsy bastards. It seems that, in later generations, they realized their ancestors were idiots and hurriedly stopped passing the spell down orally. The professor who held the seminar apparently managed to find traces of it only among some remote tribe.”
“I see.”
I wanted to bring that Semmus bastard here. If he had been here, the white racist and the red racist would have fought each other to the death.
Ouslate gave an unpleasant laugh, then glanced at me.
“Therefore, even if you claim the magic activated, I honestly find it difficult to believe you. So I’d like to ask you plainly: what kind of magic is this, exactly?”
“It’s this kind of magic.”
Under his half-doubtful, half-mocking gaze, I chanted the incantation. I really didn’t want to use it if I could help it, but the situation was what it was.
“《Pray to the Sky God(yáǵeswō deiwōm dyēus)》.”
Kuaaaaargh!!!
The green mana showed an ecstatic reunion, like an old buddy I hadn’t seen in ten years, even though it had only been a few days since I last used it. It was almost as powerful as when it had first activated. Fuck, it wasn’t supposed to get stronger the longer I abstained, like I was on a no-fap streak.
“What do you think?”
I covered my body in mana coating and leaned back against the sofa. At the sight, Ouslate’s glasses slipped down his nose.
“…Wh-why does this work?”
Beats me, asshole.
I came here to ask him that, so why the fuck was he asking me and making a scene?
“M-may I examine your mana for a moment?”
Ouslate said that after pushing his glasses back into place. Examine my mana? I didn’t know what he meant, but I roughly guessed it was like a doctor examining someone by palpation, so I nodded.
“Please, go ahead.”
“Yes. Excuse me. <Mana Observation>. ”
When he chanted the spell, something resembling a magic circle appeared over Ouslate’s glasses. The racist old man stared intently at my mana coating through it.
For fuck’s sake, could he stop staring already? It felt like some gay old man was leering at me. I tried to keep my expression from turning sour, then gave up. No one could see it behind the mask anyway, so I simply let myself frown.
“…Amazing. I’ll need to conduct research to know the details, but broadly speaking, it appears to strengthen the body.”
Ouslate spoke as he dispelled the observation magic. Only then did I relax my expression and ask:
“Among my acquaintances, I was the only one who could activate it. Do you have any idea why that might be?”
“…I see. From what I heard at Professor Hiromaine’s seminar, it does seem somewhat similar to the warriors described in the Ulsy oral traditions….”
Ouslate pondered while stroking his chin, then tossed me a glance.
“Pardon me, Mr. Wayne? By any chance, was there someone among your ancestors who took an interest in that culture?”
This bastard was asking whether one of my ancestors had hooked up with an Ulsterian, right?
This fucking shithead went looking for my ancestors because he couldn’t figure out the answer himself. Leaning back against the sofa, I openly showed my irritation.
“What an offensive misunderstanding. I am unquestionably pure-blooded.”
100% true. I’m a hardcore native Korean. Both my mother and father are Korean through and through.
They were so patriotic that when they told me to buy liquor for the ancestral rites, I bought Japanese liquor without knowing any better, got the shit beaten out of me, and was made to go hungry all day. Come on, Dad—how was a thirteen-year-old supposed to tell different kinds of liquor apart?
“I apologize. Given your unmistakably fluent Britannian pronunciation, it would be rude of me to make such an assumption.”
I didn’t know what pronunciation had to do with bloodline, but Ouslate bowed and apologized anyway. For a conscience-less old man, he had a remarkably full crown. What the hell was the God of Baldness doing? Why hadn’t he taken that bastard’s hair?
“The Mages’ Guild has researched this magic as well. However, most concluded that its formulas were structured in a way that could not constitute a magical structure. Even so, the fact that it activates is quite perplexing.”
Indeed. Very-fucking perplexing, you bastard.
I dispelled Beast Regression while clicking my tongue inwardly. In the end, he was just saying he didn’t know, sorry. Perhaps he noticed my irritation, because the racist old man spoke as though trying to change the mood.
“Of course, now that we have a case contradicting the conclusions reached until now, it would be worth researching. Even so, I remain somewhat doubtful.”
“What do you mean?”
“That is… if the magic has activated, what exactly is the problem?”
Ouslate wore an expression that said he had no idea what I meant.
“Are you anxious because you don’t know what the magic is? Or are you worried about side effects? Even if that’s the case, you could simply stop using it. Why, then, did you come to our guild?”
At that question, I took a deep breath. Fuck, we were finally getting to the point. I put every ounce of force into using Vector—Speak Solemnly.
“Actually… the side effect has already occurred.”
“…Yes?”
The racist bastard’s eyes widened. Then he quickly looked over my costume, which completely concealed my skin.
“Don’t tell me that outfit isn’t meant to conceal your identity, but….”
“No, that isn’t it. If it were a symptom I could show you, I would have shown it to you from the start. That would have made things go much faster.”
He seemed to think I had transformed into something like a Deep One from the Cthulhu Mythos. So I immediately denied that horrible—but not entirely impossible—idea.
“It’s difficult to explain, but as a side effect of this magic, I…”
I struck a dramatic pose and interlocked my fingers. When a man in an imposing costume and mask put on such an air, Ouslate swallowed hard.
It was lucky this bastard was a man. If he had been a female professor, she would have blasted me with magic under the pretext of sexual harassment.
In the heavy silence, I used Vector—Spoiler.
“My penis has grown larger.”
A whole fucking lot.