Chapter 85
#Chapter 85: Librarian Ernst (6) - The Green Trauma
Private dorm room.
Eris scanned the page of the book she'd been reading once more.
The protagonist is trapped by the betrayal of a trusted companion.
All the existing allies have fallen or been tied up elsewhere, and the protagonist is already near her limit.
Then, in a true life-or-death crisis, the villain the protagonist had once defeated appears and saves the protagonist.
The villain mocks the protagonist as pathetic, and the protagonist rises again, resisting that villain.
Two blades that had once been pointed at each other now point in the same direction.
And—
[─Please look forward to the next volume!]
“Aaaaaagh!!”
Eris clutched her head and screamed.
If any student who only knew Eris’s usual cool, mysterious demeanor saw this, they would think they were seeing things. It was fortunate indeed that the soundproofing in the dorm room was excellent.
Eris lamented with a despairing expression.
“Why, why on earth! Why are all the books that man gives me like this?!”
Cutting it off right when the heroine is about to confess!
Cutting it off right when the protagonist awakens a new power!
Cutting it off right before the protagonist, who'd been getting treated like a pushover all this time, gets revenge on the villains who'd been running rampant!
Every single time, the story was snipped at just the right moment, and from the reader's perspective it was enough to make their insides twist and their whole world collapse.
If it weren't entertaining, she'd just have tossed it aside, but because it was entertaining, it was all the more malicious.
“Haa.”
After letting out a long sigh, Eris turned her gaze and checked the clock.
There was still some time left before classes at the institute began, but it was an awkward hour to sleep.
Since she didn't feel tired at all thanks to the effects of the grimoire, she finished getting ready a little early and left the dormitory.
“Oh my, Eris. You came out early.”
Institute entrance.
A middle-aged woman with a gentle air greeted Eris warmly when she saw her.
Eris bowed politely.
“Good morning, Professor Whiston.”
“Class hasn't started yet, so you can just call me Mary like before. If you hate calling this old lady 'big sister,' then I can't help it.”
At that informal yet subtly pointed remark, Eris gave a bitter smile.
Mary Whiston.
One of the many professors at Aldridge Institute, and like Eris, one of the disciples who had studied magic under the Great Mage Delphinaris, taking on the role of elder sister among them.
The disciples of Delphinaris, tangled up in various interests, couldn't exactly be said to get along well, but even they all behaved meekly in front of Mary.
Eris wasn't much different in that regard, so she obediently raised the white flag and changed her words.
“Mary.”
“That's right, that's all I need. The others all act like 'I'm not a child anymore,' and do you know how disappointing that is for me?”
“They're probably just shy in front of other people. I'd imagine they'd react differently somewhere they don't have to worry about being watched.”
At Eris's words, Professor Mary's eyes went wide.
At that reaction, as if she'd heard something astonishing, Eris felt puzzled.
I didn't think I'd said anything strange, so why was she reacting like that?
“Eris, you've changed a little lately, haven't you?”
“Changed?”
“If it had been before, you'd probably have just said, 'Yeah, that's really too much,' and let it go. You wouldn't have cared at all about what others were thinking or how they might react.”
“…….”
That was a rather blunt remark to make right to her face, and Eris was momentarily at a loss for words.
It wasn't that she thought Professor Mary's words were absurd. On the contrary, to Eris, the professor's words hit quite close to the mark.
If it had been the old Eris, she would never have tried to understand others from their point of view.
No, she probably wouldn't have paid them much attention to begin with.
She'd be busy enough just studying magic and improving her own skills, so where would she have any spare energy to worry about something like that?
But the current Eris, without even needing to consciously think about it, would naturally infer their feelings and speak in their defense.
How was that even possible?
“…Because she'd seen it over and over until she was sick of it.”
A novel doesn't necessarily tell its story only from the protagonist's point of view.
It often also presents, from an objective perspective, how others received the protagonist's words, and it frequently depicts the emotions felt by the person involved from that person's own point of view.
So when Eris heard Professor Mary's story, she thought, without any real hesitation,
that if she were in the same position, she would probably have acted for the same reason.
This was a field somewhat separate from the learning Eris had been doing all this time.
It wasn't the result of diligently learning something and forcing it into her brain, but simply the result of unconsciously accepting that something someone did while thinking 'A' could be received as 'B' by someone else.
Apparently interpreting Eris's somewhat dazed expression that way, Professor Mary suddenly let out a hearty laugh.
“I did feel like you looked a little more lively lately, but did you happen to meet someone nice?”
“No. A nice encounter? Nothing like that.”
Eris put on a serious face.
Meeting that awful librarian and calling it a 'nice encounter'? There was no way that could be true.
“'Unpleasant,' 'creepy,' or 'annoying' might fit, but 'nice' is absolutely not an adjective that suits that person.”
“Heh heh, yes, yes. I know.”
To Eris, Professor Mary's remark looked like nothing more than empty politeness.
Because it felt exactly like the reactions of the surrounding characters in the romance novels she'd read, watching a heroine as she strongly denied her feelings—
“—No, wait! You can't use that example here!!”
Eris covered her face with both hands and scrubbed at it.
For some reason, the urge to yell and to flail her fists and feet at empty air kept surging up without pause.
The more she objectively recognized how her current self would look to Professor Mary, the stronger the impulse became, and curling up to suppress it only made her acutely aware of what she herself was doing—a vicious cycle of enormous proportions.
Eris was feeling the saying that knowledge is poison more keenly than at any other point in her life.
Having watched her with delight at first, Professor Mary apparently realized that if she left it any longer, the face of the disciple who studied under the same master might turn red and even explode, and hurriedly changed the subject.
“Ahem. More importantly, Eris, keep next week's day off free.”
“Time…?”
“We'll be gathering at the master's manor. Since a new disciple is being taken in, wouldn't it be proper for everyone who can make it to gather?”
As one of Rabelocia's living national treasures, Delphinaris periodically took in promising youths from across the country as disciples and contributed to the nation.
Students who became Delphinaris's disciples usually spent a year or two under the Great Mage's instruction, then spread out to pursue their own paths, gathering again like this whenever a major event came up.
Because Eris had been taken in by Delphinaris as a child and had received instruction for more than five years, this was also a particularly familiar event for her, so she had no real objections to attending.
And after tearing through one theoretical text after another lately, she had also wanted to show her master how much her abilities had grown.
However, it wasn't as though she had no questions.
“But isn't now too soon to be taking in disciples?”
A 6th-tier mage could suppress the body's aging and keep it close to its peak condition, but even then there was a limit to how much one's pure lifespan could be extended.
Unless one used a special method, such as becoming a lich through dark sorcery or receiving the highest-ranking blessing directly from a god, even a 6th-tier mage had a maximum lifespan of about 150 years.
Of course, that was only the 'longest record' preserved in the archives, so it was more accurate to say an actual lifespan would be even shorter than that.
Delphinaris, who looked middle-aged like Professor Mary on the outside, was in fact already over ninety.
To say that death was near would be an exaggeration, but it was already a point where it wouldn't be strange to start preparing for the end of life, so the Great Mage of Rabelocia had been reducing the number of new disciples more and more as time went on.
He almost never personally took in promising children as he once had, and only once every two years, at the royal family's request, accepted the bare minimum of disciples.
But hearing that a new disciple had been accepted even though it wasn't yet time to recruit one, Eris couldn't help but feel curious.
“I looked into it too because I was curious, but it doesn't seem to be a disciple who lives and eats under the master's roof like we do. They're already a student attending the institute. Maybe the master just accepted them without much burden because it only means giving occasional advice?”
“Do you know what kind of person the new disciple is?”
“I think it was Count Grimun's adopted son? Since that lord always treats the master so considerately that he sends gifts of local specialties every year, maybe the master is paying extra attention too.”
There was nothing particularly contradictory in Professor Mary's words.
The burden is different between taking someone in full-time and raising them under the same roof versus only giving advice once in a while.
It wasn't strange either that she would pay extra attention because the student was the adopted child of a friendly noble.
But why was that?
Eris couldn't shake the strange unease.
As Eris pondered where that unease came from, she soon recalled the story the young ladies at the same institute had been chattering about.
「Come to think of it, did you hear? Apparently a weirdo showed up at Rowton Institute.」
「A weirdo?」
「He's Count Grimun's adopted child, and they say his theoretical classes are abysmal, but nobody can keep up with him in practical classes. So there's a rumor he'll be one of their representatives at this exchange meeting.」
“…….”
An oddball with exceptional talent.
And perhaps someone Eris herself might end up facing in the near future.
Such a person had been taken in as a disciple by her revered master, even breaking the original plan to do so.
That was overthinking it.
It was nothing more than a few coincidences overlapping.
Eris's reason told her as much, but in her heart, an instinctive sense of displeasure and wariness surged up.
That was a wound, a trauma etched into her heart when she had heard her master's complaints as a child.
‘Do I look like I'm going to lose?’
Eris's eyes flashed coldly.
Her once-wide field of vision narrowed once again.