Five days later.
Knock knock. The sound rang through my room in the mansion, at dusk.
“Merlin? Come in.”
“Excuse me. The investigation into Sheryl’s brother, the student Brad, and everything around him is finished.”
“Is your body all right now?”
“It was recovery magic of the Thunder God Emperor’s own make, so… yes.”
“Good. That thing is customized to my body specifically, so it tends to come out weak on anyone else…”
I looked through the documents she handed me and sighed.
“So it’s the dark arts after all.”
“Yes. We squeezed the back guild crowd and followed the money moving around narcotics and virulent substances, and it checked out immediately.”
The ingredients told me they were using much the same method as that religious outfit I broke up in my past life. The effects run:
· explosive improvement in magic skill
· as a side effect, increased violence
· as a grave side effect, a shortened lifespan
The shortened lifespan is the really ugly part. Put plainly, this is a thing that burns your life out over a few years to manufacture a superhuman for one fleeting instant. It has something of an evil-god contract ritual about it, too, so the premise is that the subject consents to the enhancement. Which is the part I can’t get to sit right. Wanting power the easy way is a human constant, but would a young student really accept having a few years left to live?
“Well, set that aside. But Merlin? Granted it gives an explosive improvement in magic skill, do you think a thing like that lets you handle a Level 10?”
“Impossible.”
Flat and immediate, and I nodded, because I agreed with her.
“Level 9 and above have been lost to this era in the first place. It isn’t a question of enhancement one way or the other.”
“Right. Otherwise there’d be no way your own ceiling would be Level 8.”
Hmm. I read further into the documents, and my eyes went wide at what was there.
“Brad’s magic aptitude is… none?”
“Yes. The student records show that Sheryl’s brother has no magic aptitude. And Sheryl’s brother is the biological son of Sheryl’s adoptive father.”
“Would you give me the details?”
“Well. Sheryl Oldis. She was disowned, but she is the adopted daughter of a ducal house in a certain country, and House Oldis is a great noble line of mages. So when the duke realized that Brad, his eldest son, had no magic aptitude, he fell into despair. He fathered several more children after that, and not one of them had anything worth calling an aptitude either. Brad was the only case extreme enough to be a complete absence, mind.”
“I see. And that’s why they adopted Sheryl?”
“Yes. People at court began whispering that the fault might lie in the duke’s own seed, and in time the duke came to dread fathering children at all. Which brings us to the adoption.”
“I see…”
“With the spirit side kept buried, Sheryl—whose magic aptitude could only be called a miracle—and her twin elder sister were bought for a great deal of money. It saves the house’s face, and if either of them is eventually married to one of the duke’s children, they become family in name as well as fact.”
“Hm? Hold—hold on. Wait a moment, Merlin. Her twin elder sister?”
“There is a record of her sitting the entrance examination at the same time as Sheryl. Her results were higher still than Sheryl’s. There is no word for that score but ‘prodigy.’ But… she never enrolled.”
“Meaning what?”
“…She died before enrollment. Cause of death, magic power depletion. The direct cause… being magic power siphoning.”
“Siphoning? You’re telling me she was murdered?”
“Yes. Siphoning is the method used when, say, an adventurer party is out on an expedition and one mage transfers magic power to a healer who has run dry. Somebody stole into the twin sister’s bedroom and did it there. Nothing was taken, apparently… so there is a great deal about it that doesn’t sit right.”
“So that girl still hasn’t opened up to me completely, has she. I haven’t heard a word of any of this.”
I shrugged.
“Yes, well. The Ice God Emperor was a secretive man too, in his way.”
“Two of a kind… blood tells.”
“In any case, it’s Brad,” Merlin went on. “A man with no magic aptitude whatsoever, reaching Level 10… however I look at it, it seems wrong.”
“No,” I said. “It’s the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“It’s because he has no magic aptitude that Sheryl’s brother, Brad, could reach Level 10. Probably… I think I’m starting to see it. A little… but I am.”
I turned the keywords Sasha gave me over in my head.
· an ancient artifact
· the Root of Roots, said to be the cure for magic aptitude
· reincarnation, and the goddess
· magic aptitude
And then the Fire God Emperor.
He was researching ancient civilization and magic aptitude as well, and that’s probably not a coincidence. Beyond that: the transformation of the soul that lowered the ceiling on magic across this entire world—the Magia Burst—was caused by the Fire God Emperor, and so was Isaac’s death.
Then set the goddess of reincarnation, who governs souls, beside the transformation of the soul that the Magia Burst produced. There’s no possible way those are unrelated. Which is exactly why I’ve been watching and moving carefully on Sheryl’s magic power depletion rather than simply solving it. Ever since Sasha turned up, I haven’t been able to shake the sense that the Fire God Emperor’s shadow keeps flickering across this festival.
“Say, Merlin? One in a hundred thousand. Any idea what that’s the probability of?”
“No… I’m sorry, I haven’t the faintest.”
“Of a human being born with no magic aptitude. And I can’t bring myself to think that’s a coincidence.”
I came up with no magic aptitude a second time too. And Sasha told me, right in the middle of that conversation, that it was inevitable. The connection’s plain enough.
“That may well be so.”
“Well. The details of all that will have to wait until the Thunder God Emperor Festival is over and I can pin my master down.”
Merlin gave a small nod.
“By the way, have you noticed, Ephthal-sama?”
“Which one do you mean?”
Merlin laughed a little, as though exasperated.
“You really do see everything, don’t you, Ephthal-sama.”
“Well, the first is Sheryl.”
“That she’s in secret contact with the brother she claims to have lost touch with,” Merlin finished.
“Yeah. There’s no chance of me missing a familiar being used as a carrier pigeon.”
“Then… how far are you on the disturbance inside the magic academy?”
“There’s a large-scale magic circle planted inside the academy as well, on a timed trigger. And it’s a forbidden circle of the Undead line.”
“Soul Eater. A formula that devours the magic power of everyone in range until they dry out. You say you’ve noticed it… so is it all right to leave it alone?”
“No, leave it for now. All of it… I know it’s there and I’m leaving it alone deliberately.”
“…And your reasoning?”
“There’s far too much I don’t know, and I want to see how the other side moves. I can crush the circle whenever I like, and the trigger time is right after the festival’s final match, so there’s room.”
I got to my feet.
“And where might you be going?”
“Sheryl. I’ve gathered every document that can be gathered on her, and if it still doesn’t tell me, it’s faster to ask the girl herself, right?”