Chapter 112
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
It was five minutes earlier.
Waldrova Castle, study.
Mori was working there.
Her job was to document and archive the records collected from Hestia Village.
She also handled legal advice and access to records.
Though she was an A-rank talent they had been unable to recruit, she was now reduced to being Echidna's plaything.
-Lady Echidna.
“Hm? What is it?”
-Hugging me while I work is inefficient. It lowers my perfectly maintained work efficiency by 12%.
One rule had been established for managing her.
Do not allow her work-efficiency loss to rise above 15%.
If someone else had heard that warning, they would have thought, So I should only bother her when appropriate.
But Echidna, a witch starved for affection, was different.
“Then I still have 3% to spare?”
Her mindset was to push it as close to 14.99% as possible.
But if even that had gone properly, she would not have been a witch.
Echidna's excitement intensified even as she hugged Mori, and before long she cried out with a beastlike sound.
“Grrr, I can't take it anymore!”
She buried her nose in the crown of Mori's head.
“Sniff, sniff.”
-I recommend that you stop.
“Hnnng…….”
-Stop—
“Sniiiff!”
WHAM!
“Guhh!?”
A powerful blow struck Echidna squarely in the philtrum while she was absorbed in the scent of Mori's crown.
Echidna's body reeled violently before she staggered backward.
She finally collapsed, spilling onto the floor the books she had propped against the wall.
“Eeeek…… That's too mean. You didn't have to resort to violence…….”
Echidna rubbed her philtrum and shed tears.
Mori looked down at her with a strangely satisfied expression.
She quickly wrote something and held it up.
-That action just now increased my work efficiency by 5%.
“Really? Does Miss Mori have sadistic tendencies? Do you want to become a witch too? I can't allow you to become a witch~!”
-I have no ego. Therefore, I cannot become a witch.
Mori returned to her work.
Echidna also stopped acting silly and returned her attention to reality.
Books and documents were strewn across the floor.
It was a complete mess.
“Eee, why are there so many papers……?”
Knowing she would surely be scolded if she left it like that, she began cleaning up.
With a simple gesture, the scattered books and documents floated into the air.
As though turning back time, she returned the books to their places and neatly arranged the documents.
“Who could possibly read books like these……? They're not even interesting…… Huh?”
As she grumbled and tidied with her hands, Echidna noticed something tucked inside a book.
A square-folded sheet of paper caught her eye.
“This is…….”
Even the material was visibly different from ordinary paper.
It was magical parchment capable of absorbing mana.
Magical parchment among ordinary documents.
That fact alone was enough to pique Echidna's curiosity.
Echidna unfolded the paper.
“A magic circle……?”
Her words ended in a questioning tone.
“Is it?”
The pictographs embedded in the round circle resembled magic circles she often saw.
Yet many parts were awkward for magic-circle elements.
There was more than one or two things that did not fit textbook principles.
As she watched it, a curious idea occurred to her.
Despite suffering pain enough to break her nose, she smiled as if nothing had happened and called Mori.
“Mori~.”
Scratch, scratch.
Showing her magic circle, she said,
“Don't be so cold and take a look at this. What kind of magic circle does this look like?”
Scratch, scratch.
“It looks as though Regent Ferda drew it.”
Scratch—
Roll.
Mori's pupils shifted at the word Ferda.
She scanned the magic circle from top to bottom.
Then came several minutes of deep thought.
At the end of it, Mori gave her answer.
-I don't know.
“Even Miss Mori doesn't know?”
-No. There is no magic circle like this among the records I possess.
“If Miss Mori doesn't know…….”
Echidna knew what was in Mori's mind.
The Library of All Things, which recorded everything.
Not only humans, but most of the magic known on the continent of Serdes, down to its names, had been recorded there.
-There are three reasons I may not know it.
The first is magic that has not been recorded on the continent of Serdes.
The second is complex magic that cannot be recorded in the language of the continent of Serdes.
The third is magic created directly by the person in question.
Rationally speaking, the third possibility was the most likely.
Magic Ferda had created himself.
-Judging by its form and shape, the third possibility seems most likely.
“Right. At a glance, it looks like nothing more than a drawing…….”
That was what they called a magic circle that could not be used.
Mages who studied geometry sometimes stamped out magic circles on the off chance, but only one in ten thousand could be salvaged.
-Moreover, this cannot even be called a magic circle. It contains no geometric elements, and its form is unclear.
“Right?”
Even a magic circle dismissed as a mere drawing could make one think, upon careful study, that it might work, but Ferda's magic circle did not inspire that thought.
Unlike intricate and meticulous magic circles, this one was crude and inefficient.
-It is merely a drawing resembling a nonfunctional magic circle. I will conclude that.
Mori reached that conclusion.
But Echidna was different.
The more you know, the more you see.
Echidna was knowledgeable enough to create runes.
That was why her eyes saw much more.
“This one works.”
This crude, inefficient magic circle did work.
Mori turned her head and asked.
-Do you have any grounds for that?
“No grounds…… It's just a hunch…….”
-Then there is no point in discussing it.
Mori based her judgments on evidence from the Library of All Things.
Human intuition was not logical.
Responding to something illogical would only waste time.
Mori stopped paying attention to the magic circle and resumed her work.
And so, their question-and-answer session ended.
Echidna regretted the end of their conversation while looking down at the parchment and muttered.
“How does this work?”
Echidna questioned the intuition she had arrived at herself.
Tilting her head, she began to analyze it.
She rolled everything she knew around in her mind.
Matching the elements one by one, she peeled away the veil.
But strangely, the more she peeled away, the more a massive wall emerged.
A problem that could not be interpreted through logic and reason.
It seemed like an unresolvable theory, like the existence of Utopia or mana fatalism.
Echidna's eyes sparkled.
The fact that a mysterious and unknowable power dwelled within it excited her.
That excitement drove Echidna toward an impulse.
“Let's take it apart.”
Her curiosity eventually led her to the idea of dismantling the magic circle.
Dismantling a magic circle was a taboo that must never be committed without the creator's consent.
She thought it might anger Ferda, but her desire was so intense that she ignored even that.
“……I'll just touch it a little.”
Just a tiny bit.
Touching a single rune should not matter.
In terms of importance, it would be like taking out one gear for a moment to examine it.
Even as she said that, Echidna's finger touched the rune at the center.
The mana imprint engraved on the parchment was clearly transmitted to her finger.
Echidna copied the rune she felt and manifested it on her hand.
Now all she had to do was pull the rune apart and read its code.
She did not know until then.
That she would have to pay a price for her curiosity.
“Huh?”
At that moment, before the rune had time to react, it melted and flowed into Echidna's arm.
She felt something flowing backward through her mana channels.
“Huhhhh?”
Echidna panicked.
She made a sound like an innocent young lady, but responded quickly.
As a witch and a skilled mage, she blocked the rune being absorbed with fifth-tier barrier magic.
“Huhhhhh?”
But it did not work.
Her barrier magic blocked all magical effects of fifth tier and below.
The fact that it had failed meant the rune itself was sixth tier or higher.
That was impossible.
Runes humans could create and manipulate had a limit of fifth tier.
“Kheeeuk!!”
Echidna paid the price for her curiosity.
There was nothing she could do to stop it.
* * *
“Explain how this happened.”
Mori began writing down the facts she knew.
-Echidna touched a rune drawn in the magic circle and was consumed by it.
“You mean she was consumed by a rune she created herself?”
-You said it was a magic circle drawn by Lord Ferda.
“A magic circle I drew?”
Ferda frowned.
He had a feeling this was going to become troublesome.
‘Even so, it makes no sense for Echidna to die…….’
Ferda had stored away a few things, but none possessed enough power to kill Echidna.
It was even more impossible for it to happen with runes, her specialty.
Ferda cast his gaze to the floor, searching for what it was.
It was lodged precisely among the scattered books.
‘This…….’
Ferda knew this magic circle.
It was the magic circle Ferda had drawn when he was confused by mana.
It had looked so complex and crude that he had copied it and tucked it away somewhere.
‘She died after touching this?’
Ferda looked at the runes drawn on the magic circle.
There were seven runes in total, and Echidna had touched one of them.
‘From just one rune?’
It was difficult to believe by any common sense.
A fifth-circle witch.
To think that a skilled practitioner known as a rune maker had died to Ferda's rune.
“And? Did you see her die too?”
-After touching the rune, she showed symptoms of respiratory distress and then disappeared just like that.
“By the rune?”
-I don't know that much.
Mori made predictions based on knowledge.
Elements visible only to mages were apparently beyond her.
“A circle runaway, then.”
Ruri guessed that.
It was a hypothesis Ferda might have accepted as well.
It was something imperceptible at lower circles, but among mages of the fifth circle and above, it was a terrifying phenomenon that could never be overlooked.
“I don't think so.”
“Why not?”
“If a circle runaway had occurred, Mori, who was caught in the explosion, would have died too.”
A circle runaway was literally the same as turning oneself into a bomb.
Even if he cherished Mori terribly, he could not be sitting here so safely.
A tremendous vibration had occurred, but it had ended with nothing more than that vibration.
This was Ferda's theory.
“Someone cast magic.”
“If a magic circle had manifested, wouldn't you say so?”
“Of course.”
A magic circle was an element Mori could see as well.
“But if it was a witch bearing the name Filiaz, that would be another story.”
Blue light flickered in Ferda's eyes.
More than simple things began to appear in his vision.
“As I thought.”
A trace of mana remained where Echidna had been.
But the trace did not merely indicate mana's manifestation.
Ferda infused the hazy shape with magic power, coloring it clearly.
Ruri was startled when she saw it.
It was shaped like a rose.
“Is this rose-like thing a mana trace?”
“It's a mana signature that only high-tier mages can use.”
“Then do you know whose it is?”
Ferda nodded.
It was an unforgettable signature.
“Lucy Filiaz.”
The first witch.
Only she could leave a signature like this.
That meant she had intervened as far inside the castle as this to take Echidna away.
To make that intervention, she had greatly disturbed the magic circles in the castle.
“Does that mean…… you are saying she infiltrated from outside? The barrier around this castle wouldn't allow someone to use magic on this scale, would it?”
“She had already implanted a magic circle inside her body. Activating it only required a little stimulation.”
All that was needed was a tiny spark to light the fuse, and Lucy Filiaz had intervened to provide that spark.
“Since she's a Filiaz, it must be the magic circle Big Sister engraved to retrieve that corpse.”
Killing a witch was difficult.
They might set aside a life vessel or use a duplicate to keep their true body safe, but ultimately they lived under Big Sister's protection.
If she could even penetrate an impregnable dragon's nest, what barrier magic could possibly stop her intrusion?
“Echidna was an excommunicated witch, though. Does that protection apply to her?”
Unlike the others who hated men, Echidna loved men.
Her ideology did not align with theirs, so she must have been excommunicated, but why would they retrieve her corpse?
Ferda answered simply.
“What you have in your head doesn't care about your origins.”
Whatever the case, she was one of the continent's few most precious artisans—a rune maker.
Ruri nodded as though she found that reasonable.
“They're vicious. Witches, I mean.”
“It's not just witches.”
I was the same.
Ferda could not take his eyes off the trace.
“There's one thing I still don't understand.”
“Is something bothering you?”
“It ended too cleanly.”
All she had left behind was a rose-shaped trace.
Other than that, nothing around it had been affected.
That was why it was strange.
“There's no way a witch would end things this cleanly…….”
“She only infiltrated, after all. Wouldn't it be difficult for her to leave anything more behind?”
Ruri had a point, but Ferda did not intend to overlook it.
After thinking it over, he asked Ruri,
“Has everyone inside the castle been evacuated?”
“Yes. They'll be standing in front of the inner gate like frightened meerkats.”
“Let's go there.”
Ruri looked puzzled.
Could there really be an answer among them?
Ferda looked at the people gathered below the stairs.
Among them, he saw Jed and Penelope casually yawning.
“Jed Swallow.”
“Yes?”
Ferda crooked a finger, ordering him to come over.
He walked to Ferda's side with an expression full of annoyance.
“You were from the Swallow clan, weren't you?”
“That's right.”
“You must have made passes at the women working in the inner castle too?”
“What?! Do I look like some guy who can't get by without women?”
Jed grew indignant.
Ruri shot him a disgusted look.
“You are exactly that sort of man, aren't you? Every time I pass your room, those damned cries of ecstasy never stop.”
“Huh? That probably wasn't me, it was Jeje—mmph!”
“Shut up. The adults are talking.”
“So, what's your answer?”
“……I make some inquiries, that's all.”
Jed scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
Ferda ignored that and gestured with his chin toward the people gathered below the inner castle.
“Among the women gathered there, is there anyone you've never seen before?”
“Even so, I'm not some shameless bastard who memorizes every woman's face in the inner castle. Huh?”
“What is it?”
“There's one woman whose face I don't know.”
Just one.
There was a woman whose appearance had escaped even Jed's radar.
An ordinary woman stood in the direction Jed indicated.
She had an ordinary, featureless human appearance in every respect.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. I've never seen her in this castle before.”
Jed was certain, and the disgust in Ruri's expression deepened.
Ferda walked toward her.
“The regent is coming down!”
“Everyone, show proper respect!”
Seeing Ferda descend, the people shouted and all knelt.
Ferda's eyes were fixed solely on the woman Jed had indicated.
Ferda crossed through the middle of them and stood in front of her.
Seeing Ferda standing before her, the woman raised her head and greeted him.
“I’m honored to meet Regent Waldrova—.”
Fwoosh—!
The woman could not finish her greeting.
Before that could happen, a mana orb formed on Ferda's finger pierced her forehead.