Chapter 38

Arafoo Kenja no Isekai Seikatsu Nikki Chapter 38

Istor Magic Academy; student dormitory.

Inside the beautifully ornamented gothic style building, where many youths from all across the country gathered with hopes of becoming a magician, the students were making a commotion.

The reason was the yearly tradition of the combat training drill, in which, those who show a certain level of talent are forced to participate.

For those who have set their aims towards alchemy and magic tools making, it’s a particularly bothersome event, likewise for those students of merchant and other households that are more wealthy rather than aristocratic, the majority of whom are not pursuing combat-related professions.

On the other hand, it’s also a great opportunity for those with low levels to increase their strength, given that, most of the students with poor academic performance will be participating. As they will get credits for entering it, they had no choice but to.

Practically all of the students were job-hunting, and most of those who have done moderately well in their studies will not find it hard to get one. But, when thinking about it more carefully, only a small number of the students will end up having great success, and almost everyone else will just end up searching for an ordinary job.

When it comes to finding employment, magicians are typically considered to be exclusively a combat profession, so there are only a few places where they can play an active role.

In the royal capital and other large cities, there are magicians who perform sanitary treatment of the sewages, but such job opportunities are few and far between. On the other hand, the employment rate for civil servants is high everywhere while the number of people that can be hired is limited, so the criterion for selecting people will inevitably be academic performance.

Furthermore, it’s also important to have good grades at the Academy to enter the Magician Division*, while ordinary people will need to have connections inside of it, in other words, the factions. But, since the Magician Division is a national organization, it can only acquire personnel within their budget.

(*T.N: Magician Division as opposed to the Chivalric Order. The author has not really explained in detail what exactly they are imo, besides saying that they’re national organizations, but they use the same kanji 団, so we can assume they’re both pretty much at the same level of authority.)

Those who aim for those scarce employment opportunities naturally wanted to earn credits in this event, but at the same time, they didn’t want to fight.

That is because the place they were heading to was called ‘Rahmuff* Forest,’ and although it wasn’t as big as Far-flung forest, it was still a place where monsters frequently appeared. Incidentally, it was also the place where the Chivalric Order often conducted its training drills.

(*T.N: ラーマフ)

For a certain middle-aged uncle, it might be a walk in the park, but for them who had low levels, it was a place with a considerably high degree of difficulty. Additionally, it was the perfect hunting ground for the happy-go-lucky magicians who were overconfident in their own magic, to learn the true horrors of a real fight.

For that reason, actual combat was part of the Academy’s curriculum, but it has not shown much in terms of results so far.

And, amongst these students, there was a girl who was full of motivation.

A blonde-haired young girl, wearing the Academy-designated robe and making a small fist with her hand. Her sapphire eyes exuded the impression as if she was going to have the time of her life very soon.

Celestina von Solisthea. The girl once considered to be an incompetent student was now being called a genius girl.

In addition to learning how to use magic proficiently in a short time when she couldn’t use it at all before, the power of her magic was much higher than the rest of the students at the Academy.

She is currently in the position of receiving special treatment, seeing that she had become stronger than the lecturers themselves.

In short, she doesn’t have to attend the lectures, however, it was practically a way of saying that the Academy had nothing else to teach to such an outstanding talent like her.

The people who studied under the previous lectures that were constructed off misconceptions and then became lecturers themselves don’t know how they could possibly offer her any guidance. They have nothing they could teach to her.

It wasn’t their fault, but since Celestina has become more than just an honor student, the lecturers were at a loss, not knowing how to treat her.

Whether she was an excellent student or an incompetent one, her treatment wasn’t much different from before.

However, to Celestina’s delight, she took the excursion as an opportunity to improve her family’s heirloom magic. Moreover, she also attends to magic potion brewing and magic tools manufacturing lectures; she’s looking at her future ahead, moving forward one step at a time.

And thus, today, the annual event she was waiting for was announced in the dormitory.

“It has finally come. I’ve been looking forward to this day♪”

“Young lady…… you have thoroughly turned into a bloodthirsty—”

“Misuka… Don’t say it as if I were a dangerous person. I just covet a little exercise.”

In order to successfully improve her family’s heirloom magic, she had started working on optimizing other spells.

The spells that Zeros optimized are in her head, which made the task easier than starting from scratch, however, some of the magic formulas still remained unidentified, so she was working devotedly on deciphering them.

But, working while sitting for long periods of time wasn’t healthy, and there were times where one would want to move around outside for a bit.

“No, it’s just that you swung a blunt weapon, smashing Golems continuously all the time during the summer vacation, so surely…”

“Surely what?”

“I thought you might have awakened to the hobby of beating people to death… that’s right, you only want to beat monsters to death, right?”

“I don’t have that kind of hobby! What do you see me as, Misuka!?”

“Bludgeoning Angel, Mace Girl, Annihilation Girl, Absolute Destruction Lady, Certain Death Young Lady, or maybe Bloodstained Duke’s Daughter?”

For some reason, Misuka talks about her impression in question form.

(*T.N: probably makes a bit more sense in Japanese given that there are more ways of politely asking a question, which is what she did.)

Moreover, all of them were embarrassing nicknames. However, she couldn’t really deny any of them.

“Uu… it’s true that I swung a mace every day, but all of those nicknames are shameful…”

“One day you’ll beat your husband to death in a marital quarrel. Young Lady… please learn how to hold back at that time.”

“I don’t have to learn that technique yet! No, before that, I’m not that extreme!”

“It was just an innocent joke, as you can see, Young Lady. Me having to clean up the bloodstained living room after the Young Lady rams her mace into her husband’s face in the mounting position sounds like an extremely bothersome thing to do. Cleaning up the aftermath, that is…”

“Is this a vision of my own future!? Why didn’t you stop the quarrel before it got to that point then!?”

Towards Celestina’s tsukkomi, Misuka heaves a small sigh without even the slightest change in her expression, as if to say ‘ Good grief, what are you even saying? What a troublesome child. ‘

“Young Lady, only the maids would be present at the situation, you know? They would never step into the crime scene.”

“W-What crime are you talking about!? You totally want me to look like a criminal, right!?”

Celestina’s voice did not reach her. She continues to talk indifferently with a dangerous gleam flashing on her glasses.

“And then, I’ll corner the culprit, by deduction, the Young Lady. ‘ You are the culprit, right, my Lady? ‘”

(*T.N: I feel like this is a Conan reference)

“Before you corner me with your deduction, Misuka, you are an eye-witness, you know? It would be too late to know who’s the real culprit, right? Wouldn’t you also be an accomplice for deleting the evidence at the scene?”

“No, that’s wrong. I will be a servant to the bitter end, and then I will give two hours of uninterrupted useless reasoning, you know? Otherwise, no one will enjoy the drama.”

“What are you talking about!? And, more importantly, you should stop the crime first!”

“No, thank you. Why should I have to do such an uninteresting thing? I want to track down the culprit. It’s a maid’s instinct or something like that, right?”

“What kind of instinct is that!? I haven’t been caught yet, and I’m supposed to be the culprit, right? Then, Misuka is the accomplice!”

For some reason, Misuka smiles in satisfaction and makes a gesture of wiping her non-existent sweat off her forehead.

“Young Lady, when there’s a scandal, maids have the habit of investigating, or at least, finding out the important details, you know?”

“First time I’ve heard of it! What kind of maid are you!?”

“It’s common sense in the maid industry. The Young Lady wouldn’t understand.”

There was no such thing as that kind of common sense. Misuka seems to have a rather compatible personality with her, to be able to tease Celestina.

She messed with her like this on rare moments to see Celestina’s completely serious tsukkomis. Well, though it misfired on more than one occasion in the past.

“By the way, Young Lady, what would you like to do about your equipment?”

“Eh? Isn’t this good enough to go to that forest?”

“That’s the ‘ White Snake Dragon Equipment, ‘ you know? Not only it makes you stand out, but it also makes you seem really out of place compared to the people around you, Young Lady.”

“That’s true… Everyone will be using the equipment given by the Academy, right? This equipment will stand out because it’s pure white, isn’t it?”

“In the worst case, you could be accused of ‘ using the Duke’s connections. ‘ It would be better not to use that equipment then, don’t you think, Young Lady?”

Her equipment made using White Snake Dragon’s materials boasts far better performance than the one supplied to the Chivalric Order. However, the circumstances behind it were the crystallization of her beloved grandfather’s rampage as well as the suffering of those he inconvenienced.

In order to make that equipment, her grandfather went berserk, plundered several items from the treasury, and sold them, which not only caused a great deal of trouble to many people but also drove someone to attempt suicide.

Well, in the end, it was true that his wife had only fallen in love with his younger self, and so he attempted to commit suicide to keep her there in pain, so she wouldn’t forget about him, though that is a fact that was not released to the public.

In light of those incidents, it would look especially bad if she were to use the equipment for this combat training drill.

“What should I wear then? The only thing left is the training equipment, but it might be a bit too lacking in terms of defense…”

“It’s cheap equipment, after all. But, thanks to the previous training, the Young Lady is as sturdy as a Dwarf now. Like that, you wouldn’t die easily, would you?”

“Misuka… Aren’t you thinking that I’m such an absurd existence for no real reason? Even I wouldn’t be as sturdy as a Dwarf, you know?”

“It’s your imagination. The Young Lady has such a bad persecution complex, doesn’t she? I’m just saying that the higher the level, the stronger one is, that’s all.”

“……”

There truly wasn’t anything ill-intentioned in what Misuka said, but the recipient of those words, Celestina, still puffs up her cheeks and sulks.

Those child-like gestures are exactly the reason why she teases her, though Celestin doesn’t seem to notice.

“…Aside from that, should you borrow a set of equipment from the Academy, then?”

“No, that would be pointless. It’s not custom-made, so there will be various inconveniences in terms of size, and most importantly, since it’s for magicians, its defensive capabilities can’t be trusted.”

“…In that case, there’s no choice but to purchase a set of equipment specified by the Academy.”

“The design is too old, I honesty would like to pass on that. It wouldn’t look good on a young lady.”

All of the equipment designated by the Academy is made of leather with metal reinforcements on vital points.

Incidentally, the one that the Academy lends is made of good materials, but its design is dated and plainly unattractive. The cheap equipment that mercenaries used looked better.

The Academy had quite a lot of expenses, most of which were from the capture and transportation of Goblins in the name of their combat training drill, as well as medicinal herbs and magic stones used in alchemy, and so on.

Expenses piled up constantly for the cheap equipment that broke, so the out-of-date equipment was saved for the sake of avoiding shifting those expenses to the rental one. There was no problem given that the old equipment was strong to a certain degree, but perhaps because the younger generation tends to be more concerned with appearance, no one borrowed it and they were sitting there covered in dust.

Nevertheless, it shouldn’t matter as long as it can protect their lives, but the students, who had no combat experience didn’t realize it, and similarly, the Academy’s lecturers too failed to notice that fact.

“I know, what about reinforcing the equipment used for training? Luckily, I have materials, and there are also shops inside the Academy that sell defensive gear.”

“Young Lady……  You have become as burly as a mercenary… when you start saying ‘ Aye, found monsters ‘ere.  Ora, I’m gettin’ all excited! ‘ Your husband and I will start crying, okay?”

“I won’t say that!”

“Is that so? I’d really like to see that, though?”

“Which one is it then!!”

Since Misuka made jokes with a completely straight face, to Celestina, it only sounded like she actually meant them. However, there was a good reason for her to act like that. The previous Celestina always had a pensive expression and spent her days rummaging through books with great vigor and accumulating knowledge. But, after she became capable of using magic, that dark shadow over her face started to crumble. Therefore, she so was glad that Celestina could once again smile from the bottom of her heart like a little child, that she subconsciously started to tease her.

Misuka smiles charmingly as Celestina gets worked up. Though, the fact that her jokes were slightly ill-natured was something better left unsaid…

◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇

With heavy steps, Kreuz was pushing a dolly cart carrying a huge number of books to return to the Great Library.

This has been his routine for about a week now, and his legs and back were screaming in pain. Said affliction, commonly known as muscle pain, has become the usual state for him, trembling with such pain that he wasn’t able to hold his pen.

The cause of this predicament was that he had been so passionate about his research that he did not return any of the books he had collected as reference materials.

As a consequence of his scholarly, or hikikomori, personality, he lacks stamina as he doesn’t do much physical exercise. Though it was his own fault, to say the least, he had to endure the back pain in order to get back into his research as soon as possible.

“That looks pretty tough, right, Kreuz-kun?”

“If you think so, then help me out, Yi Ling…”

“Nope, I can’t. If you don’t make your body learn these things to be careful the next time, it’ll become a habit.”

“I feel like it’s a bit too late for that… Ugh!”

Enduring the pain in his legs, he used all of his mental strength to advance forward even one step at a time.

Despite that his passion for his research was immense, the current situation was nothing but the results of his own actions. Though, it might be better to say that it was only him wallowing in self-pity.

“If you think it’s too late, then why didn’t you do anything to fix the issue before it got to this point?”

”Even though it’s a reasonable argument…it hurts my ears. I’m the type of person who is absorbed in only doing one thing, I—”

“But∼  It’s no good now that you have to return the things you borrowed, huuhh∼??”

Desperately moving his feet, he looked like a sinner carrying a cross to the execution ground.

In this case, it was due to his own laziness, and being one of the seven deadly sins, he was in the midst of repenting for it.

Enduring the pain, Kreuz finally managed to push the dolly cart arriving at the Great Library. But, there was a problem.

In this Academy, the students had to check in the books they have borrowed at the reception desk, and then put them back into their respective shelves by themselves. In other words, he had to receive the books he had finished checking in, and move up and down the stairs to place them in their correct places; rinse and repeat.

It would be simpler if all of the shelves were on the first floor, but unfortunately, he had to go back and forth between the three floors of the library, as well as the basement – in the archives – where the valuable books were stored.

This was where the true hell would begin for Kreuz, who had no stamina.

“This is the final stage, so do your best.”

“I know that, but… I don’t have any strength left to—”

“I’ll help you too, so∼ do your best until the end, ‘kay?”

“I’m grateful for that, but my legs feel heavy as if I were wearing lead clothes…”

In short, Kreuz was useless in everything related to his personal life. On the other hand, Yi Ling looked just like a mother, taking care of him. She had the ideal personality for taking care of useless men, though, from the outside they looked like a couple with really good chemistry.

There were also the figures of pitiful men, who stared at the idiot couple* from behind with eyes full of envy and crying tears of blood. They were the ones who had feelings for Yi Ling, and they continued to curse Kreuz while burning in the flame of jealousy.

(*T.N: baka couple; aka バカップル)

She was the Academy’s idol and one of its five most beautiful girls, though Kreuz wasn’t aware of that.

“…Should we kill him?”

“No, I wouldn’t be able to stand to make her cry.”

“But! He’s monopolizing our goddess, I can’t accept this!”

“As expected, it’s dangerous here.”

“I could kill tens of thousands of people with this bloodthirst!”

“Same…”

At his place, there were people who were going mad in jealousy. Kreuz, who was indifferent to his surroundings, however, just pushes the dolly cart into the library.

◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇

“Ahh! I don’t get it, how can we even optimize this? Isn’t it impossible!?”

“Perhaps we’re missing something, don’t you think? The magic formula that gathers nature’s mana should be fine, but the problem now should be adjusting it, right? There’s also the balance between the retained mana, nature’s mana, and the rest of the magic formula, and… The ratio of required mana and the threshold value of its activation rate… “

(*T.N: it took me a while to get this and I still don’t think it makes any sense, but either way, it’s just fancy fantasy mumbo jumbo. Also, I’ve previously translated nature’s mana as external mana because I thought that fitted better, but now I’m having second thoughts about that, so I’ll go with nature’s mana from now on.)

“The adjustable range of the power of a single shot and the effective range when it’s cast…… the amount of mana to allocate towards that… Once we decide on it, we won’t be able to cut it off.”

“In order to make that magic more compact, we switch to a layered magic circle, fine-tuning the configuration of the spell’s circuit to make the spell line… The degree of difficulty is way too high.”

Celestina and Zweit were in the Great Library, working together in the optimization of their family’s heirloom magic, however, that quickly came to a deadlock.

The magic formulas in this world commonly take the appearance of magic circles, and the power and range of a spell can vary according to the size and density of its constructed magic formula. In the case of a simple spell to light a fire, like the magic 〖 Torch 〗, a single sheet of paper the size of a small notebook is enough to contain its magic formula, but when it comes to heirloom magics, their formulas would be the size of world maps big enough to cover the entire surface of a long table.

There, a magic circle with an intricate pattern would be drawn, and then a phenomenon conversion magic formula would be used to fill in the gaps to complete the scroll, but a multi-layered magic circle has a slightly different appearance.

(*T.N: again, no clue what any of this means.)

A multi-layered magic circle consists of several other magic circles of the same size and with different command structures, individually stacked one on top of each other.

In between them, another magic circle, that reads the programming of each of the rest, is placed, ultimately binding them all in a single magic spell.

Two different predicates are superimposed onto one another, which are read by connecting together each of the spell lines, and by integrating them into a single process, the magician was able to cast the magic, activating the functions predetermined beforehand.

The former kind of magic circle had the issue of limiting the number of spells one could learn due to the sheer amount of space they took when they were etched into one’s brain, but the multi-layered magic circle was a revolutionary solution to that problem.

To use an analogy for the maximum amount of space allowed: the old type of magic circles would be like a cassette tape, whereas the new type would be like a CD-R. On the other hand, the binary compression magic formula that the middle-aged Zeros used might as well be called a BRD*.

(*T.N: I dunno if it’s a typo from the author, but legit the only reference I could find on the internet after several pages of phishing sites on google is this obscure reference , that links to UARTs which is a telecommunications technology that old 90’s modems and 00’s cellphones used basically, which still kinda makes sense in the context of the sentence, but who tf would catch that obscure ass reference.)

But in actuality, this wasn’t an uncomplicated method either. With multi-layered magic circles, the magic formulas with multiple different command structures that were separated and overlapped on top of each other had to be processed at the same time, and for that reason, the data processing in each section had to be precisely coordinated.

The casting time was instantaneous, however, in order to get to that point, it was absolutely indispensable for the gears, in other words, the magic formulas, to move in perfect synchrony. But, if one of the commanding magic formulas was defective, the spell circuit won’t be able to read it, and in the end, the spell as a whole won’t be activated.

If the coordination of the various sections doesn’t go smoothly, the formulas will clash and cancel each other out. The resultant effect will be the inevitable collapse of the magic formulas.

This phenomenon is bound to manifest itself when the magic formulas inside the magic circle negate each other reciprocally, which not only will bring about the consumption of mana, but it could also prove to be fatal to the magician.

In regards to a family’s heirloom magic, the rate at which this phenomenon occurs is much higher than it would normally be. It was akin to trying to assemble a digital clock from its components but using a grandfather clock as a reference.

“The conversion to a phenomenon, the power adjustment, the control mechanism, and mana consumption. We have to balance all of that, plus the timing at which the magic formulas are read…… Isn’t this like one of those impossible questions on tests?”

“Sensei did a pretty good job at adjusting all of that, right? This magic formula is just terribly malicious.”

“Yeah, I can only say that this is quite mean-spirited…”

To make matters worse, this heirloom spell had an exquisitely proportioned, complex, and mysterious magic formula.

Maybe because the defective magic formula that seemed to only be harassing them seemed to be working in a splendid manner the way it was, they had no choice but to disassemble it and start rewriting it from scratch. Due to that, the two were holding their heads.

“Perhaps having to optimize the heirloom magic might’ve been too early for us.”

“Shishou, why did he give us an assignment like this? No matter how I look at it, it’s still impossible for us.”

“There has to be a deeper reason… I’m sure of it.”

“Don’t know about that… though I have no clue what the hell he was planning.”

“Oh my, were you having a serious conversation right now? You seem to be stuck, what might be the matter?”

After being suddenly called out to, the two turn back to see the unexpected appearance of their brother, Kreuz. Only mentioning his looks, he had his usual snobbish expression, but for some reason, his legs seemed to be shaking pitifully.

“Hey, aren’t your legs shaking too much?”

“You look like a newborn foal. What happened to you, Kreuz-niisama!?”

“I’ve been going back and forth from my lab to here for the past few days, and my body is at its limits now… please leave me alone.”

“At least tidy up the room. This is what you get for being always so careless, you know?”

“I don’t even know what to say… You don’t do much physical exercise, don’t you?”

Zweit might be a bit rough around the edges when it comes to his personal life, but at least he keeps himself and his room neat and tidy. On the other hand, Celestina doesn’t even have stuffed animals in her room as she didn’t want any unnecessary things in it.

Kreuz, however, was extremely disorganized with everything concerning his personal belongings.

It seems like the personalities of these three siblings were completely different from each other.

“Leaving that aside, you seemed to have something on your minds, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah well, it’s just that it looks like optimizing our family’s heirloom magic is impossible for us right now.”

“I think it is an unreasonable assignment. In the first place, it’s impossible to even decipher an ordinary magic formula, right? Just to decipher a single magic, you’d have to pile up countless research results over a long period of time. There’s no way you guys could easily remake something like that.”

“I know, right? If that’s really the case, then I don’t understand Sensei’s intentions. I have no idea why did he give us this assignment…”

The two couldn’t understand what the middle-aged uncle was thinking.

But, naturally, he wasn’t thinking too deeply when he gave them the assignment, though it was given with the premise of failing it in mind. Nevertheless, they seemed to be under the impression that because he had the Great Sage job, he must have had some sort of hidden intentions behind it.

“First of all, to rebuild this heirloom magic, wouldn’t it be pointless if you don’t learn the techniques and re-examine the foundations of magic formulas? It’s not a task that magicians that have only analyzed a few magic formulas could do.”

“”!?””

The words ‘ then if we’re able to decipher other formulas… ‘ crossed their minds. In other words, conducting other sorts of magic research could be the stepping stone they needed to finally optimize the heirloom magic.

Certainly, it would be impossible for an amateur magician to improve such an insanely complicated magic. Adding in the experience from other sorts of magic research will allow them to build a more complex magic formula.

The two had been blinded by the words ‘ best magic medium created by a Great Sage, ‘ and failed to notice the important things.

“Shishou… you kinda have an awful personality…”

“He knew from the beginning that it was impossible, right? And for that reason, he thought we had to study other types of magic first.”

Both the middle-aged Zeros and Kreuz were hikikomoris. They are the same in the sense that they both think that money and fame are pointless things, and the only difference between the two would be that one secluded himself to continue his research, while the other wanted to be self-sufficient by doing a few part-time jobs and earning small change.

Certainly, from the point of view of others, it would be hard to empathize with them, but there were many people out there with such a biased way of thinking.

One person feels that their research is worth doing and will throw away everything to immerse themselves in it.

The other despaired and lost their sense of worth, and now wants a peaceful life.

Although it was extreme, both had the same nature.

“Just what kind of person is your guys’ mentor?”

“He’s excellent but pretty twisted, you know? As a person, he probably has some screws loose in his head.”

“He’s a strict person, you see. Especially when it comes to myself… he’s a bit biased.”

Long story short, he’s a failure as a person.

On the other hand, Kreuz was confused, unable to distinguish the true character of the mentor of the two.

“Ahh∼! Kreuz-kun, you’re slacking off again∼!”

As the three looked back, they saw a girl carrying a couple of books, while puffing her cheeks and pointing her finger at Kreuz.

It was Yi Ling, who was helping him out to return the books.

“Ah, right… I completely forgot about that.”

“That’s so∼ meea∼an!! I’m here helping you out to carry books and you’re just having a chat with… huh? Ah! It’s Kreuz-kun’s siblings I’ve been hearing so many rumors about∼”

“”…Rumors?””

“I’ve heard all sort of things… like∼∼, that you two have an unusual relationship for a brother and sister∼”

“”The hell!?””

“… How come I don’t remember hearing such a rumor, though?”

Yi Ling’s shocking remarks upset the two. It was the first time they have heard those rumors.

“Ah, right. She must be the source of that rumor, huh? After we saw you two here by chance, she must’ve started spilling the tea to everyone around.”

“Why the fuck did you do that!?”

“Kreuz-niisama… you should choose your next girlfriend more carefully, okay? Ideally someone with a less loose mouth… fufufu…”

“It’s a misunderstanding. She probably has nothing to do with it… wait, Celestina, where did you get that mace from!?”

As expected, they seemed to have gotten angry at the fact of false rumors being spread.

Nevertheless, Celestina has certainly also inherited the old man’s blood. It seems that when she gets emotional, the House of Solisthea’s blood starts to come up. No, it might be better to say that she has reached a spiritual awakening.

They say that blood is undeniable, but the resemblance, in this case, is quite scary.

“Huh∼? What a weird magic formula you guys have here∼”

“Yi Ling! This is—”

“Nah, you probably wouldn’t understand it even if you see it. Especially if it’s someone who doesn’t know the deciphering method for magic formulas.”

“Nevertheless, this magic is our family’s—”

“Should be fine. This is just one of the countless parts of the magic formula. Besides, she probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend the meaning of any of this, right?”

If the heirloom magic were to be disassembled and reconstructed, the number of magic formulas would be enormous.

The magic formula scroll that Zeros handed to Creston was also big a bundle of papers, so thick that there was no way of guessing how many sheets there were in it. If someone could understand it after only seeing one part of it, rather than a genius, they would be like a god.

“Now that you mention it, the number of magic formulas is too small. This doesn’t look much different from an elementary spell’s magic formula, right?”

“We’re trying to improve the formulas’ operating efficiency by inserting a specific magic formula in between each layer so that it reads all of the magic formulas, but the obstacle there is that we have no clue how to make those two things work in perfect synchrony.”

“This is a fantastic idea. Stacking them on top of each other, and giving form to the magic circle… If this is completed, it will expand the number of spells a magician can learn.”

“A large-scale magic that can be compacted, is it∼? I’ve never seen a magic formula like that.”

The segmented formulas are superimposed on each other, forming a three-dimensional magic circle. Furthermore, by doing that, there would be even more space inside the magician’s brain to memorize more of this same type of magic circles. It was a ground-breaking idea, but at the same time, they were difficult to make.

To illustrate it, it would be as if the traditional type of magic circle were a disorganized and messy room, while the multi-layered type was a neat tidy room.

“The spells the old man is selling had been optimized already, and they only use ordinary magic formulas, but even so, they’re pretty compact, you know? I’ve already learned a fair amount of attack spells.”

“…I’ll send a letter to Father later. I would like to see those spells in detail.”

“It’s probably impossible right now, isn’t it? The number of magicians under Father is limited, the production can’t even keep up with the demand.”

“I bet you’re regretting not coming back home now, huh?”

It was at this point that Kreuz seriously regretted his decision. As a researcher, it was regrettable that he couldn’t put his hand on valuable research material.

“Anyways, Kreuz-kun. Let’s go tidy this up properly, alright?”

“Tch. Hey, Yi Ling? You don’t have to pull my arm, I’m not going to run away, you know!?”

“That’s no good. The moment I take my eyes off you, you’ll be absorbed into your research again, so let’s make sure you finish with this first, alright?”

“”……””

Kreuz was dragged away by Yi Ling.

After a while, the sight of him carrying a large number of books up and down the stairs with shaky legs, could be seen. And, Yi Ling was going behind him, wagging her tail furiously.

“Kreuz-niisama… he’s changed, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah… so, it was a woman, huh? Do women really change useless men!?”

With the exception of his mouth, he had a gentle and reliable nature, but for some reason, Zweit was unpopular with women. He is yet to be aware that the reason behind it is that the first impression he gave to people was that he looked scary.

God only knows if Spring will come for him.

◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇　　◇

“Dio! What are you doing at this hour?”

On the way back to the dormitory, Zweit happens to see his friend who was running about, and so he called out to him. Although he didn’t know how long he was running for, the sweat on his forehead was a sign of how hard he was training.

“Zweit, were you going back just now? Isn’t it super late?”

“I was at the library for a bit to do some research, and you?”

“Obviously working out. To be the man she deserves.”

He had fallen in love with Celestina at first sight and was desperately trying to train himself and build up his strength.

His classmate was like that, though he still didn’t know how to feel about it.

“I couldn’t find you anywhere, so I went to the library for a bit. Celestina was there, too, you know?”

“Why the hell didn’t you look for me for longer!!? If I had known, I would’ve stopped training for today…”

“Hey… are you really gonna confess to her? Are you prepared to die?”

“The bigger the obstacle, the more love burns! I’ve never thought it would be easy. A few obstacles are to be expected.”

“It’s more than just a few, though…”

Dio wasn’t aware of it… The fact that some old man was planning to burn him into ashes somewhere else, and that he has even started to prepare for the right time to come.

“I don’t wanna see a friend being reduced to ashes, you know?”

“Hahaha! No way, even the magician of the purgatory would go that far!”

“He might kill you… No, he’s gonna kill you for real.”

“…You’re kidding, right?”

“…I’m completely serious.”

With that single phrase, an early Autumn breeze flows quietly between the two. Even though it’s still supposed to be warm in Autumn, for some reason, the air felt really cold.

“T-T-The bigger the obstacle, the more I worship* her!”

“Your voice is kinda shaky, you know? Also, wasn’t there something weird with what you said just now?”

(*T.N: I didn’t know how to translate this without sounding too cringe, but he used the verb 萌える[moeru] which is when you have a crush[like an extreme one] on an anime waifu or an idol. You’ve also probably heard in anime or other weebs calling things ‘moe’, well it comes from that. So the joke is that he sounds like a creepy otaku when he says that.)

“I-It’s just your imagination… Let’s go back to the dormitory. It’s getting kinda chilly for some reason.”

“Your legs are also shaking, though…”

Zweit felt sorry for his friend. If Celestina were a merchant’s daughter, he would have cheered on him, but the opponent on this occasion was a bad match.

The old man, who dotes on his granddaughter, has tinges of madness somewhere in his mind, and he will come to kill Dio without hesitation.

A great fire was approaching, and Zweit could only pray for his friend’s soul to find eternal rest.