Chapter 186

Mikhail let out a dry laugh and set the staff down. If there was a reason his weapon had cracked, he could guess at it.

The time before, when Ethan's sword had nearly shattered. Same reason.

A phenomenon where the wear on the weapon couldn't keep up with the growth of its owner.

To solve the problem, same as when he'd grown Ethan's sword, the hard surface wrapping the weapon's exterior had to be worn down and stripped away.

Still… what's easier this time than it was back then.

Unlike the sword blade — which had needed to strike targets directly to wear its outer edge — the staff could have its outer casing worn down just by having its owner channel mana through it.

So roughly speaking, all I have to do is pour as much of my mana as I can into some sturdy magical beast.

Mikhail let out a low sound as he stroked the tip of his chin, then set aside the likely targets that had come to mind.

To take part in the coming semester without any hitch, he needed to weigh a few more conditions.

Arms folded, Mikhail tapped his finger up and down, then turned his head toward the calendar.

Six days of break left. But the leeway I've actually got is only three. Which means I can't stay long anywhere else, and going far obviously isn't an option either.

Round-trip time. The kind of magical beast to be brought down. The difficulty of the fight….

Mikhail sized up the necessary conditions, and soon a single job came to mind that fit every one of the options.

It's there. The magical beast that'll turn up in the hills east of here.

Only… even so, there was one problem.

For the fight in that region to wrap up without trouble, he needed one partner who could move with him.

"Hmm."

Mikhail started narrowing down suitable candidates.

Realistically, there weren't many people skilled enough to keep step with him on this kind of outing.

And of those few, most weren't available on short notice.

Ethan was still missing without a trace and no sign of returning; Edwin had stepped away to visit his family estate.

Julien wasn't in any state to be showing off his abilities anywhere. Which left, one way or another….

"……"

Mikhail let the hand that had been resting on his chin slide down.

Then, with the look of someone deep in thought, he paused a moment before drawing in a breath.

Right. I already made up my mind not to keep drifting further away.

Mikhail moved toward the dormitory door.

Since he'd decided to make the offer anyway, better to go now and put it on the table.

Ahead of him, where until a moment ago his view had only been vague, a familiar head of golden hair came into focus.

---

The kingdom's south.

Inside the manor of Leventia, the great noble house that presided over the mild climate and the wide plains.

Flap.

Cassien Leventia looked over the documents that had come in from the southern territory's frontier and spoke to his aide.

"Failden Village and the Himble Plains. And the mouth of the Sonnet River, too. So three sites total where anomalies have been reported?"

"Yes. That's correct."

Cassien's aide, Lennox Irving, bowed politely toward the young man he served, then added a little more.

"Anomalies of considerable scale broke out in all three at the same time. Medium-to-large magical beasts smashed straight through fences and palisades, pushed into civilian settlements, and killed off the livestock — the damage is heavy, from what we're hearing."

Cassien only tapped lightly on the paper and said nothing.

Lennox glanced at him, drew a breath, and went on with the report on the frontier situation.

"On top of that, the sudden anomalies have left a growing number of people missing, injured, or having lost their sense of self—"

"Hmm."

The moment Cassien tipped his head to one side and let out a small sound, Lennox shut his mouth at once. Apparently, the young lord had no interest in the current line of talk.

"……"

Cassien then set his laced hands on the desk.

He rested the tip of his chin lightly on the back of them, turned his eyes on Lennox, and asked,

"Beyond that, is there anything else I should know?"

Lennox bowed his head toward Cassien. It meant he was deeply sorry for failing to bring information befitting his master. Then he spoke on what a direct heir of the South's great mage house — the guardian of the region — would want to hear.

"What had driven the chaos in Failden Village and the Himble Plains were three or four kinds of magical beast. Earthworms and colony spiders. Most of them savage specimens that came down from the nearby mountain range."

Lennox drew in a breath, paused briefly, and continued.

"The mouth of the Sonnet River, though — the shape of the anomaly there looks a little different. The size and number of the magical beasts that appeared were smaller than at the other two sites, but the great majority of the ego-loss cases have shown up at the mouth of the Sonnet River."

"Tell me more."

"There's no follow-up report in yet, but the speculation that an environmental shift has occurred—"

"That's enough."

Cassien cut off the line mid-sentence in a flat tone, and Lennox stopped speaking at once.

A heavy silence bore down on the air of the study.

Cassien tapped a finger on the desk. Then, blinking slowly as if weighing something, he said,

"See that information tied to the Sonnet River anomaly doesn't leak. Keep it tightly held."

Lennox glanced at Cassien's face, then bowed his head with no objection.

"Yes. As you say."

Cassien left Lennox's answer behind him and turned his eyes back to the documents on the desk.

Purple eyes moved across the writing without wavering once.

Cassien kept the same look as before Lennox had begun the report, focused on going through the paperwork.

Flap.

The documents heaped high on the desk turned page by page, approved or set aside, again and again.

The silver frames on Cassien's high-bridged nose caught the light streaming down and gave off a clear gleam.

Working through and managing the family's important affairs without the smallest slip, Cassien looked every inch what one would expect of Leventia's heir.

Lennox watched him for a moment, then quietly bowed his head and stepped aside, standing straight where he was.

Flap. Flap.

Silence settled over the study again.

And so, right around the time Cassien had nearly finished checking through the papers in front of him—

—Thunk.

A single envelope that had been sitting at the very bottom of the stack came into view.

Cassien paused the pen he'd been moving and looked at the envelope that had just appeared.

[Sender: Julien Leventia]

Cassien watched the words on the page, his eyelids lowering and lifting slowly, then muttered in a voice without rise or fall.

"Ah. A letter from my dear younger brother."

"You mean Lord Julien?"

"Yes."

Cassien answered Lennox, then drew out the letter and looked at what was written.

Calm purple eyes moved across the letter Julien had sent, twice over.

"……"

The movement of his pupils soon stopped. Cassien, showing nothing but a blank face, set the letter down and reached for the papers.

Flap.

Business was soon wrapped up. Lennox, who had been standing at the side of the desk watching Cassien, opened his mouth in a careful tone.

"Have you finished reading the letter?"

"I have."

Cassien gave the short reply and stacked the finished documents neatly, pushing them aside.

Then he turned his head toward Lennox and added a line.

"He wrote that he can't keep it up any longer."

"Ah…."

"I'm not surprised. I never expected anything from Julien to begin with."

Cassien moved his hand and propped up his chin.

As the answer he'd just given Lennox drifted into the air and faded, Cassien pictured the North's heir.

The boy said to look exactly like Joseph Senit, the North's great noble, apart from the color of the eyes.

The point where their paths crossed had come a little earlier than expected… but no matter. He was an opponent Cassien was bound to clash with sooner or later.

"Hmm. So he fed it to Mikhail three times…."

Cassien turned the contents of the letter over in his head, eyelids sliding down and up, then tilted his head and said,

"Wasn't much I could work with, was it?"

Lennox watched Cassien and asked cautiously, puzzled.

"Three times should be enough for the drug's effects to set in, shouldn't it? So when you say it wasn't something to work with, what do you mean…."

"The drug was a fake."

Cassien cut Lennox off in a single stroke. Then, with a faint smile at his mouth, he went on.

"One doesn't lay a careless hand on the North's heir. Should something go wrong, imagine trying to clean it up afterward."

"……"

"The aim from the start was only to see how far the relationship between the two of them had gone. I got what I wanted out of it."

Lennox opened and closed his mouth slightly, then bowed his head deeply. His face showed surprise, but not that every doubt had been put to rest. Cassien glanced at him and added a little more with a small smile.

"He's a younger brother who clings to affection thin as tissue. Just calling his name properly is enough to leave him beside himself with gratitude."

"……"

"And a fellow like that — could he really, wide-eyed and clear-headed, feed even a single tablet of lethal poison to a friend he holds dear?"

—No. Impossible.

Cassien swallowed the answer down inside and lifted the corners of his mouth.

Every ability and constraint, every desire and every disappointment his half-brother carried — there was nothing about them he didn't know. Which was why he could be certain.

That Julien, no matter how he thrashed, could never break free of the loneliness fixed to him by his very birth.

Which meant the authority to plunge Julien into hell and the standing to tie him to hope — all of it rested with himself alone….

"Was that answer enough?"

Cassien lowered his propped arm and asked. At the reply, Lennox — who'd been listening — bowed his head to Cassien once more.

"Yes. My lord."

Cassien gave a small nod. Then, setting Lennox's response behind him, he fixed his eyes once more on the envelope on the desk.

[Sender: Julien Leventia.]

Julien Leventia.

The most dazzling rough stone Leventia had.

But any rough stone — even the most precious diamond — was no different from an ordinary shard of glass without refining and shaping.

Without a hand to trim and polish it, it stayed lost among unremarkable rocks, losing its shine without ever showing a hint of its true worth. That was simply how it went.

So for a while, he'd be shelved out of sight. But even that wouldn't be the final disposition. In the end, so that no trouble could come of it later—

Cassien pressed down the corner of his mouth as it started to tilt crooked on its own.

Then he set on his face a smile that covered every trace of what was underneath, moved his fingers over the envelope, and tapped lightly at Julien's name as he spoke.

"Well, thanks to this, my worries are settled. I won't need to trouble my dear brother with any difficult requests again."

---

Meanwhile, at the same hour.

The boulevard you met when you stepped out of Salvator Academy's front gate, the faint sound of the sea coming with it.

A broad path, shops packed along both sides, ran on all the way to the plaza.

[Tavern: Fioned's Early Autumn]

The tavern near the plaza was relatively quiet, past lunch hour.

The staff moved about the hall at an easy pace, and most of the tables in the place were empty as well.

Except — the table set right in the middle of the hall was different.

Spread across the wide tabletop were dishes holding meat with steam still curling off it, stew, and drinks.

And at the edge of the table sat two people who had, only a moment ago, traded one particular proposal—

"What?"

Lloyd had been tearing into the meat in front of him; now he looked up wearing the face of someone smacked upside the head.

The boy his eyes stared blankly at across the table had dark blue-black hair, cut short.

Mikhail Senit. He'd tossed out a proposal no one had ever heard of and now sat there wearing a perfectly composed face.

"……"

Mikhail took Lloyd's stare without a word, then slid his eyes down. Once he'd confirmed the plate of meat was half empty, he raised his hand toward the kitchen and called out.

"—Mr. Denver. One more butter roast over here."

"No! No! Not that! That's not it!"

Lloyd shouted, flustered. Then he thrust his upper body forward and caught Mikhail by the wrist.