Chapter 756
For a while, nobody in the Watchers Club said a word.
Then Iactus, having recovered from the shock a little late, scrawled out shaky letters.
Iactus: …That really isn’t the principal, right??
*****
While the members of the Watchers Club whispered among themselves about the new member’s identity, Lee Han closed the book and left the tower.
He had already been careful not to run into first-years, but now he had grown far more cautious.
From now on, I should stay as close to the main building as possible.
When the older students had first said, “The higher your year gets, the more you end up doing everything inside the main building,” Lee Han had been puzzled.
Of course, Einroguard’s main building was a bizarre structure, broader even than the Einroguard estate itself, a place that seemed nearly infinite…
Even so, there were plenty of things you could only get out in the estate grounds beyond the main building.
No matter how short on time or miserable life became for an upperclassman, not going outside the main building at all?
But now he understood.
How could anyone go far when things like the Skull Principal’s insane duplicate show up on a regular basis?
When some bizarre archmage might kidnap you the moment you let your guard down, caution was only natural.
…Of course, the reason was rather different for ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) the other students…
“Is anyone here?”
Lee Han opened the door to the Hall of Sacred Engravings, Professor Verdus’s workshop and mage tower, and stepped inside.
When he went up to the second floor, he saw three upperclassmen from the enchantment magic school scattered about the large workshop area in utter disorder. They were bent so close over their worktables that their noses practically touched them, all of them absorbed in the finishing touches on artifacts.
“Senior, do you happen to know where Senior Yukbeltire is?”
“……”
“Senior?”
When the older students did not answer, Lee Han decided he would have to use the same method he had used on Professor Verdus.
“SENIOR!!!”
“Gah, you startled me! What is it?!”
The enchantment magic students, focused on their own spells, jumped in shock at the junior calling out to them.
“Good day!”
“Why are you shouting like that? Call quietly!”
“My apologies. I’ll keep that in mind next time. Do you happen to know where Senior Yukbeltire’s workshop is?”
“Yeah. Don’t know.”
“…?”
Lee Han was slightly taken aback.
There was no way a mage from the enchantment magic school at Yukbeltire’s level would not have a workshop in the Hall of Sacred Engravings.
“Doesn’t Senior Yukbeltire have a workshop here in the Hall of Sacred Engravings?”
“Probably.”
“But you don’t know where it is?”
“Nope.”
Still smiling, Lee Han asked, “Do you happen to know where Professor Verdus’s workshop is?”
“No clue. Why would I?”
“I see. Thank you.”
After hearing that, Lee Han decided he would have to walk around and find it himself.
Students in the enchantment magic school might not even know each other’s names.
“Senior Yukbeltire?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re not Senior Yukbeltire.”
“Yeah.”
“…Have a good day.”
“Yeah.”
After fighting his way past the obstruction posed by the uncooperative enchantment magic students, Lee Han finally managed to find Yukbeltire’s workshop.
The princess was using the entirety of the third basement level for research.
“Senior, are you in there?”
“Come in.”
Yukbeltire set a pair of blue-jade glasses on the table and beckoned him over.
Then, as if it had all gone exactly as expected, she said, “Good. So you finally took an interest in my research.”
“……”
Lee Han was dumbfounded by that boundless confidence.
“Senior. Until yesterday, I was kidnapped by a duplicate.”
“Hmm.”
Not understanding what he meant, Yukbeltire fell into thought.
Then, as if she had figured it out, she gave a light clap.
“While learning magic under the principal’s duplicate, you had an inspiration. And that inspiration is related to my research. Correct?”
“…Actually, I came to ask you not to bother Diret.”
Lee Han pulled out the basket of food he had brought as a bribe.
Since she was Adenart’s older sister and also related to Gainando, he had hoped a food bribe might work.
Yukbeltire answered at once, as if the very idea were ridiculous.
“You seem to be mistaken, but Diret is always the one bothering me. I have never once bothered Diret. I’ve always treated Diret with respect.”
“……”
Lee Han repeated to himself three times, She’s a senior, and this is her workshop. If I attack recklessly, I’ll be the one who suffers for it, and only then opened his mouth.
“To be honest, Senior, I don’t really want to debate the definition of bothering someone.”
“Listen first. You’ll understand once you do. When we first enrolled, Diret chose the dark magic school as a specialization. I advised Diret. I said there was no future in a school like that and Diret should come to the enchantment magic school instead. In response, Diret hurled a curse right at my face. Now then. Who do you think was bothering whom?”
“I think you were bothering Senior Diret.”
“Ha!”
Yukbeltire let out a cold sigh of regret.
To think that the junior whose ability she had finally acknowledged would say something so foolish.
“Senior. Didn’t you ask for Senior Diret’s help in exchange for helping rescue me? But honestly, how effective was your help?”
“A sharp point. Yes. My output was far too lacking.”
Yukbeltire admitted it readily.
She had found the weak point in the magic and had even prepared a method to destroy it, but she had lacked the means to carry it out.
“I’m lacking, but I’ll help you however I can, so please stop calling Senior Diret into this research.”
“Very well.”
Yukbeltire agreed surprisingly easily.
Startled, Lee Han asked, “Really?”
“Yes.”
“You really won’t need Senior Diret’s help anymore?”
“Diret wasn’t helping with the research anyway.”
“…?”
For a moment, Lee Han thought he had heard wrong.
Wasn’t helping?
“Wait. Didn’t Senior Diret say there would be help with the research in exchange for helping with the rescue?”
“That was the agreement. But, just as you pointed out, the help wasn’t especially effective. Diret pressed that point and persuaded me. I accepted it. Wait. I suppose this also counts as further evidence that Diret is the one bothering me.”
Yukbeltire considered it in a cold voice.
No matter how she thought about it, Diret really was the one bullying her.
What self-serving nonsense.
“So even if I hadn’t helped, Senior Diret still would not have taken part in this research?”
“Who knows. Diret may have reflected and come to help after all.”
“…Senior. Please keep it a secret from Senior Diret that I’m helping with the research.”
“?”
Yukbeltire tilted her head slightly, unable to understand why the junior would say such a thing.
*****
The research was exactly what Lee Han had seen during the last winter break.
An artificial dimension artifact.
It was an enormous project: creating a new, artificially isolated dimension according to the mage’s will.
“I learned a few things from the last failure.”
“Don’t trust other mages?”
“That is a useful lesson too. Please pass it along to Diret.”
Trusting other mages had indeed been one of the causes of failure, but Yukbeltire felt that the artifact’s fundamental structure itself also needed improvement.
The current artificial dimension artifact had a structure in which dozens, even hundreds, of magic circles were linked together, continuously accelerating mana.
The mana accelerated by the first magic circle was accelerated again by the second, then again by the third…
Even if the dimension being created was very small, making an artificial one required that much power, so there had been little choice.
But such an overly delicate and complex structure invited irreversible consequences the instant even one magic circle contained a mistake.
When Yukbeltire supervised the entire process personally from beginning to end, there was no problem, but the moment outside mages took part, it became a ticking bomb that could go off at any time.
Just last time, a tiny error had warped it into an elliptical form and connected it to an indeterminate dimension.
“I’m considering two things. One is simplifying part of the structure. The other is a safety device that detects dimensions in advance.”
Reduce and combine some of the magic circles to lower the chance of mistakes, while also adding an artifact that can sense and detect any connection to an indeterminate dimension ahead of time, just in case.
It was such a sensible improvement plan that even Lee Han, who had little real interest in the research, found it convincing.
“I see. So one of my roles is to supply mana when you combine two circles into one?”
“One of them, yes.”
Yukbeltire was pleased by the junior’s answer.
Unlike other juniors, who needed things explained five times, ten times, he understood immediately. She found that deeply satisfying.
The process of improving the linked magic circles by merging some of them into a single circle inevitably involved mana loss, so some method of compensating for that was needed.
Ordinarily it would have been rather complex, but if there happened to be a mage capable of simply pouring in mana, the problem was solved at once.
“Then sit and wait.”
“Yes.”
Lee Han sat down and waited while reading <Escape from Einroguard>.
Yukbeltire sorted and flipped through a stack of papers hundreds of pages high, drawing new magic circles one after another.
Hmm.
After about an hour, Lee Han wondered whether he was allowed to ask if it was going to take much longer.
But Yukbeltire looked so intensely focused that he pulled out the toy instead and played with the basilisk.
The baby basilisk made happy hissing noises and was clearly delighted.
Those idiots in the Watchers Club. They can’t even tell real information from fake.
Lee Han resolved to question Beaver-Penguin-Fox the next time they met.
There had been a reason such ominous animals were in that alias. What kind of person brought in rumors that had not even been properly confirmed?
About another hour passed.
Yukbeltire finally raised her head with the most exhausted face in the world. Her voice was half gone.
“It’s done. Come over here and pour in mana.”
“Yes.”
Following Yukbeltire’s instructions, Lee Han stepped close to the artifact and poured mana into it. With a flash of light, one part of the artifact was newly modified.
A tremendous amount of mana flowed out of him, but it did not affect Lee Han much.
“Is that it?”
“Now we do the next one.”
Yukbeltire sat back down at the desk piled with hundreds of pages and began drawing another new magic circle.
Lee Han looked once at the artificial dimension artifact, then calculated how fast Yukbeltire had been working just now.
So if all of this has to be improved… ?
He was in the middle of calculating how many years it might take, and whether he could graduate and escape before that, when he heard a thud from the front. Startled, Lee Han looked up.
Yukbeltire had collapsed.
“Are you all right?!”
“I’ve consumed too little nourishment…”
Lee Han was speechless at the grandiose way she managed to say she had not eaten.
Adenart and Gainando both at least managed to eat their meals properly, so what in the world was a fifth-year doing acting like this?
“I happened to bring some snacks, so please have a little. Here. I have sandwiches.”
“Do they have cheese in them?”
Hearing that gluttonous precision in identifying ingredients, Lee Han smiled to himself. As expected of royalty.
“Yes.”
“I’m not fond of cheese.”
“…I-I see. Then please have this sandwich with ham and egg.”
“I’m not fond of ham either…”
Yukbeltire picked every single ingredient out of the sandwich, then chewed on the piece of bread with satisfaction.
“Your cooking is fairly good. It’s nearly on par with an Imperial Palace chef.”
“……”
After making a meal out of one piece of bread and one sip of cocoa, Yukbeltire immediately signaled that she was full.
While Lee Han was still staring in disbelief, the workshop door opened and Diret came in.
“Hey. I’ll help. Even if you were incompetent, you did make an effor—”
“……”
The moment his eyes met Diret’s, Lee Han froze where he was.
Then he spoke in a rush.
“…I just happened to stop by and look around!”
“You came to help with the research, though?”
Lee Han shoved the obstructive senior out of the way. Yukbeltire tumbled off the sofa and hit the floor with a crash.