Chapter 30
Emily and Kira, sitting side by side at their dormitory desk, immersed themselves in deciphering the ancient language once again with sandwiches in their mouths. It was around dusk when they finally interpreted the sentence they were looking for.
“We’ve finally done it! Miss Emily, please look at this quickly!”
Kira exclaimed, holding up the paper. At her urging, Emily leaned over Kira’s desk, and Kira pulled the written paper in front of Emily, underlining a sentence with her pen. Emily read the translated text following Kira’s pen.
“…May you survive. Finally, I, Ekilante, leave my mana here. This will be activated only once for those who touch this monument, so if there are several of you, I hope you touch it simultaneously. May God’s mercy be with you.”
Emily turned to Kira with wide eyes after reading the text. Kira was also looking at Emily with eyes full of excitement.
“Goodness… Ekilante?! The Great Magician Ekilante?”
“Shh! Miss Emily. Your voice is too loud.”
As Emily let out a shrill scream at the unbelievable fact, Kira, startled, quickly cautioned Emily to lower her voice. Emily quickly calmed her excitement and whispered in a smaller voice.
“Kira, is this the Ekilante we know? Did we receive mana from the Great Magician?”
“Yes, it seems so. So I’ve come up with two hypotheses.”
“Two hypotheses?”
Kira nodded and continued speaking while taking a paper from the desk and making notes.
“The first is that there really was an ancient magic that expanded the mana circle. In that case, it would be impossible for us to investigate the magic now. There are hardly any books about ancient magic in the academy.”
“That’s true… But it seems fine as long as there are no side effects. We can be reassured if it’s magic left by the Great Magician Ekilante. It’s magic left by a legend from 300 years ago, right?”
“Exactly! And for the second hypothesis…”
As Kira paused with a slightly excited tone, Emily urged her on, curious.
“Tell me quickly! What’s the second one?”
“It’s really just my thought. Without any evidence…”
“It’s okay! It’s just between us, right? Go ahead and tell me, Kira.”
“Well… I thought that our mana circles might have been affected by the entry of highly pure mana from outside. As you know, Miss Emily, we are novice magicians, and our mana isn’t stable. I wondered if the high-purity mana of the legendary 6-circle magician, entering our bodies, didn’t just charge our mana but actually upgraded our mana circles themselves by one level.”
“If that’s true, this is really a groundbreaking idea…?”
“Yes, that’s right. I want to explore how low-level mana is affected when it fuses with high-level mana. So, Miss Emily, I was wondering if you’d like to investigate this part with me, and if we get good results, maybe we could use it for our graduation thesis?”
“What? Graduation thesis?”
Emily asked in surprise at Kira’s mention of a graduation thesis when they hadn’t even been in school for a few months. Kira nodded with a face slightly flushed with excitement.
“Yes! If this content is proven true, the academic world will be turned upside down! Of course, since we discovered this together, we’d publish the paper as co-authors! What do you think? Isn’t it exciting?”
Kira looked at Emily with her blue eyes sparkling like jewels, full of excitement. And at that moment, Emily hesitated. She remembered that she couldn’t afford the tuition for two years and was planning to finish with a certificate instead of graduating.
“Uh, well…”
Emily, who hadn’t told Kira about this fact yet, tried to say it casually, but strangely, her words got stuck in her throat.
And in that brief moment, several disorganized emotions flashed through Emily’s mind. It was a tangled mess of indescribable feelings.
“Oh, if you don’t like it because it’s certainly a far-fetched hypothesis, you can of course refuse. I absolutely didn’t mean to force you.”
As Emily hesitated to speak, Kira’s expression quickly clouded over. This brought Emily back to her senses, and she hurriedly waved her hands and shook her head.
“No, no, I was just amazed at your idea, Kira. Yes, let’s write the thesis together.”
“Really, Miss Emily? I’m so happy! Yes, let’s work hard!”
Kira was overjoyed at Emily’s answer. Watching her innocent excitement, Emily found herself smiling as she looked at her. Pushing away the momentary feeling of frustration that had passed through her, Emily decided to focus only on the pleasant feeling.
* * *
It was the start of proper summer.
The intense sunlight caused heat haze to shimmer over the stone paths in the main building’s garden. As students drooped from the heat and started nodding off during class, Liam Calroph, who was conducting the Illusion Magic class, decided to take drastic measures.
“Everyone, stop dozing and concentrate. This part here, I’m going to put it on the midterm exam.”
As he tapped the blackboard and uttered those magical words, most of the dozing students suddenly opened their eyes and looked at the blackboard. Emily was no exception. Startled by Calroph’s words that snapped her to attention, she straightened her posture. Then she diligently copied down the part he had underlined on the blackboard and put five stars next to it in her notebook.
“Making illusion magic real is theoretically impossible. It’s creating something from nothing. But there are two exceptions to this. The first is when setting the duration for maintaining the magic. If you set a period for maintaining the illusion, it will remain as if it’s real during that time. However, this is limited to visual aspects. The second is when causing a reaction that changes a medium into a new substance without altering its total mass. However, there are no magicians in modern times who can perform this magic. The reason is…”
The students who had woken up from Calroph’s words started to focus on the class. They seemed much more passionate than usual, and for good reason – the midterm exam period was already approaching.
Right after the midterms, a month and a half of summer vacation was waiting. While looking forward to going home for the vacation, Emily was feeling considerable pressure from the burden of doing well on the midterms. For Emily, who planned to attend the academy for only one year, the midterm and final exam scores from this semester were all she would have to show when applying for jobs later.
“…My head feels like it’s going to explode.”
As Emily held her head with both hands after class, Kira, who was tidying up her desk, turned to her with concern.
“Don’t stress yourself out too much. You’ll collapse from exhaustion before the exam at this rate.”
“Smart Kira wouldn’t understand. The pain of someone who has to repeat knowledge that doesn’t sink in ten or twenty times to stuff it into their head.”
As Emily collapsed on her desk and spoke in a dying voice, Kira looked troubled, not knowing how to respond.
-Thud
And at that moment, with perfect timing, a magic letter dropped onto Emily’s head.
“Huh? What’s this?”
Feeling the paper covering her head, Emily straightened up from her position of resting her forehead on the desk, and the letter fell beside her.
“Oh my, it looks like a magic letter for Miss Emily.”
“A magic letter? Who sent it?”
As Emily examined the envelope front and back before opening it and unfolding the letter inside, she saw cute, round handwriting.
[Miss Emily, are you feeling alright? If you’re up for it, let’s have tea time together this afternoon! Sophia Fons.]
“…Miss Sophia?”
After reading the letter, Emily turned to look at Sophia, who was sitting in the seat behind her. Sophia, who was just getting up to move to the next class, met Emily’s eyes. She waved her hand slightly towards Emily.
“Miss Sophia! Aren’t you coming?”
At that moment, Lily Ramone, who was about to leave the classroom, turned to Sophia and called her in a sharp voice. At the sound, Astina, who was already in the corridor, also turned around.
“Ah, yes! I’m coming, Miss Lily. Just a moment!”
Sophia hurriedly gathered her notebook and writing tools from her desk, practically sweeping them into her hands, and rushed to the back door of the classroom. Lily, who had been watching Sophia approach, saw her leave the classroom and then glanced sideways towards where Emily was sitting.
“…Hmph!”
Lily, who had actually glared at Kira, followed behind Astina, who was waiting in the corridor, flipping her long silver hair.
Astina, still with her glamorous red hair, was wearing a hair ornament made of dazzling jewels, which made her stand out even from a distance. Astina, who had been looking at Kira for a moment with an indecipherable expression through the corridor window, moved her steps at Lily’s urging who had followed behind.
“Shall we move to our seats too?”
Emily, who had been watching Astina pass through the corridor, turned her head at Kira’s words. She was tidying up her seat and getting up to walk towards the classroom door with an indifferent expression.
Looking at Kira, Emily suddenly remembered a question she had missed the timing to ask before.
“Oh, by the way, Kira, did you know that your photo was published in the society newspaper?”
At Emily’s sudden question, Kira stopped in her tracks. Emily, who had gotten up from her seat with books in hand following Kira, looked puzzled at Kira’s stopped figure.
“…Kira?”
“Yes, I knew, Miss Emily. It was the first time I’d seen a society newspaper, and it was quite interesting.”
When Emily called out to Kira again, puzzled by her momentary lack of response while turned away, Kira turned around with a smile. Her expression was the same as usual, but somehow it felt sharp.
“I see… I felt the same. But they shouldn’t be using photos of academy students without permission. Did you perhaps receive any prior notice from Second Prince Lucas?”
“He didn’t say anything directly, but he did mention that there’s always a risk of being photographed when close to the Prince. He probably anticipated something like this.”
Emily wanted to ask if Kira knew how much impact being rumored as the Second Prince’s partner in high society would have, but she closed her mouth again. Somehow, she felt that Kira didn’t want to be questioned about it.
“We’ll be late. Let’s hurry, Miss Emily.”
“Yes, let’s.”
And while Emily hesitated for a moment whether to ask the question or not, Kira urged her to hurry. As a result, Emily swallowed her question and was led by Kira’s hand to quickly move to the classroom for their next class.
