I smothered the second burst of flames beneath the curtain.
“Why does this work?”
After extinguishing the fire, I recalled what the professor who taught [Pure Magic Theory] had said.
The reason people could no longer invoke magic through the Rune Language was because its original meanings and pronunciations had been lost, while the vocal organs required to pronounce it had deteriorated.
Even if, by sheer coincidence, there happened to be a strange director here who knew both the original meanings and the pronunciations, the physical organs necessary to produce those sounds should still have deteriorated.
“Is Aiden somehow special?”
There was no record of Aiden ever using magic.
He had never displayed any talent for it either. Magic Swordsmen who practiced both swordsmanship and magic certainly existed, but Aiden was not one of them.
Which meant there should have been nothing special about Aiden in that regard……
‘To reach a certain level, you ultimately have no choice but to choose one or the other.’
It was not because of some inherent restriction, but because of the way mana was accumulated.
Mages accumulated mana in their heads to facilitate rapid calculations, while knights accumulated it around their hearts so they could circulate mana through their blood vessels and strengthen their bodies.
The amount of accumulated mana did not necessarily prove one’s level of attainment, but anyone who wanted to practice both disciplines would have to accumulate twice as much mana as everyone else.
Even Aiden had been unable to do that.
The higher one climbed, the more natural it became to concentrate on a single discipline.
“Then does this work because I am ‘me’?”
Because I had been the director.
Because I had memorized all of those settings.
It was entirely plausible, but……
“This stays sealed.”
If I simply left things alone, the protagonists would presumably deal with the destruction of the world on their own. I had no desire to meddle where I was not needed.
Even if I drew attention to myself, all I would gain was the interest of a collection of chitinous insects.
At most, I had acquired one additional means of self-defense.
I would be better off being satisfied with that.
I left the office to clear my head.
With the beginning of the semester approaching, newly arriving students were steadily making their way toward the dormitories in groups.
Even so, the academy grounds were so vast that they hardly felt crowded.
There was a reason shuttle buses operated within the university grounds.
I had no intention of going far, so I headed toward the canned coffee vending machine I had noticed while walking with Charlotte earlier.
Beside the vending machine, I saw a female student sleeping soundly.
I knew the spring sunlight was warm, but the weather was hardly mild enough to sleep outside like this.
The wind still carried the chill of winter.
But after finally seeing a girl who actually looked human in this world filled with insects, my entire body froze as though I had turned to stone.
Arms.
Legs.
A face.
Eyes, nose, mouth.
Everything was human.
My pupils trembled as an indescribable shock swept through me.
She is not a cockroach?
I rubbed my eyes and looked again.
Nothing changed.
She was not a chitinous cockroa—
No, she was not an insect.
That was genuinely a human being!
As though I had just witnessed a revolution, I hurried toward her to discover how this was possible.
“You are human.”
A human.
No……
“An elf. A Half-Elf.”
She belonged to a race classified as Demi-human, one that looked almost indistinguishable from humanity while still not actually being human.
Aiden’s Illusion of Hatred targeted humans.
If its scope extended any further, it affected only certain monsters.
Demi-humans fell outside the reach of this damnable Blessing.
Unable to contain my emotion, I covered my mouth with one hand.
“I am not insane.”
If the entire world told you that you were wrong while you alone insisted you were right, then at some point, you had to consider whether perhaps you were the problem.
Naturally, I believed myself to be sane, and I had never once doubted that my race was human.
But no matter how desperately I denied it, if every living person I saw appeared to be a chitinous insect, I could not help wondering, ‘What if I am not actually human either?’
Perhaps the species I remembered as humanity existed only in some fantasy I had invented.
Perhaps, in reality, even I was not a human being but a cockroa—
No, a chitinous insect.
I had never been able to completely dismiss that possibility……
But here, at last, was undeniable proof that humans truly existed.
Like an enlightened sage who had transcended worldly attachments, I felt as though I could have kissed the girl’s feet at that very moment.
The emotion swelling from the deepest reaches of my chest was overwhelming.
I allowed myself to savor the joy for a brief moment.
If I had been Gregor himself instead of Grete looking at Gregor, even someone as mentally resilient as Aiden might have lost the will to live.
I could handle being Grete.
I could not handle being Gregor.
I had no desire to die after being struck by an apple.
Even setting that aside, this was a matter concerning the dignity I had possessed when I was human.
People said that living in a ditch was still better than dying, but if you asked someone to spend the rest of their life in a swamp filled with cockroa—
No, chitinous insects, nine out of ten would probably choose an honorable death instead.
I was confident in that hypothesis.
After calming my warmed heart, I gazed at the girl with immeasurable affection.
It was not sexual desire.
She was proof of my very existence.
Yes.
This was……
‘A pure, nonsexual form of love.’
Another word for it would be worship.
This girl was certainly worthy of worship……
Perhaps she was cold, because the tips of her long ears had turned red.
Whenever the wind blew, she would let out a faint, sleepy moan, and the sound tugged at my newly warmed heart.
I took off my coat and draped it over her, then placed the canned coffee I had just bought beside her.
I did not consider it a waste.
If anything, it was a cheap price to pay for the reassurance she had given me.
While doing so, I got an opportunity to examine the girl’s face more closely when she turned her head.
Looking carefully at her features, I felt as though I had seen her somewhere before and began searching through my memories.
“Ah. It is Ellin.”
Iones Ellin.
Among this year’s incoming students, a cohort already hailed as the Golden Generation, she had proudly taken first place as its greatest prodigy.
She was also one of the protagonists of the original story who would prevent the coming destruction.
I nodded to myself and turned away again.
I had no particular reason to wake her, nor did I intend to approach her merely because I recognized her.
Aiden was a professor in the Department of Knighthood, while Ellin belonged to the Department of Magic.
On top of that, Ellin would join the Snowfield Magic Tower, an organization affiliated with Le Sete Academy, as a Mage immediately after graduating.
By the time Aiden died, she would be happily conducting magical research on the Floating Island.
In other words, there was absolutely no reason for the two of them to become involved with each other.
I saw no need to wake her and disrupt the flow of the original story.
Without my coat, the cold prickled unpleasantly against my skin.
That made me quicken my pace slightly as I returned to the office.
***
Shortly after Aiden left.
The silver-haired girl slowly opened her eyes and looked at the coat covering her body.
“Huh?”
Ellin stared at the unfamiliar garment with a puzzled expression.
The coat was made from fabric far too fine for an ordinary commoner, its surface covered in intricate embroidery.
It was also somewhat oversized, making it unlikely that it belonged to another student.
Yet for some reason, Ellin felt as though she could guess where the coat had come from.
She pulled it into her arms.
She thought back to what had happened before she sat down on this bench.
She had been returning from the Third Entrance Examination.
Whether an applicant passed or failed was generally determined during the First Written Examination and the Second Practical Examination.
If someone reached the Third Interview, it was usually safe to assume that they had already been accepted.
The interview scores existed largely as a formality. There were broad predetermined scoring ranges, and unless an applicant was truly incapable of speaking properly, they generally received the highest score.
That was why Ellin had not thought much of it.
For some reason, however, one question the examiner had asked during the interview had lodged itself deep inside her chest.
Thinking about it again made her thoughts grow tangled.
“Phew……”
If she had known this would happen, she would have brought at least a light jacket.
It was not cold enough to make her shiver, but the chilly wind still stung.
Because of that, she had deliberately kept herself beneath the sunlight while walking.
Despite the temperature, the weather itself was bright and clear.
“Haah.”
The breath that escaped through her parted lips somehow felt hollow.
She wondered why she felt this way, only to realize that, for some reason…
her chest simply felt empty today.
She shook her head sharply.
She wanted to deny it, but she did not even know what she was trying to deny.
“I hate this.”
It was a quiet moment that went beyond tranquility and approached complete silence, in a secluded corner of the academy grounds where it seemed as though everyone had collectively held their breath.
There was little remarkable about the place except that it received plenty of sunlight, but Ellin noticed a bench in the smoking area.
It had been installed for professors and a small number of students, but apparently no one had used it in quite some time.
The enormous ashtray provided for cigarette butts contained nothing but fine sand, without a single discarded cigarette in sight.
At least that meant there was no tobacco smoke either.
With no other suitable bench nearby, Ellin sat down there.
Perhaps because it had retained the cold of the early morning, the seat chilled her so sharply that it felt as though she had pressed herself against the inside of a freezer.
“Ah!”
A short cry escaped her without warning.
But the discomfort lasted only briefly, and it did not take her long to grow accustomed to it.
Afterward, she simply sat on the bench, which gradually warmed beneath her body heat, and gazed up at the clear sky.
Peaceful.
Immersed in that thought, she remained there without noticing the passage of time.
“How was your interview?”
“Do not even ask. It was a real stress interview. They kept pressing me with these intense questions. I was sweating bullets trying to answer them……”
“I did not get a stress interview. Do they only do that if your practical score is a little low?”
“Hey!”
Two female students walked past, bickering as though one had just landed a perfect blow on the other.
Elsewhere, Ellin could see people moving around in groups.
She, by contrast, was alone.
Perhaps she always would be.
The interview room had been slightly dark, illuminated only by the light entering through the windows rather than any lamps.
A stern-looking female professor had studied Ellin’s application while repeatedly pressing the end of her pen with one finger.
After making Ellin wait for a long time, the professor had asked only a single question.
“Student Ellin, are you trying to become the top-ranked student?”
“Not the top-ranked student. The best.”
Ranking first was merely a step along the way.
There was no satisfaction to be found in it.
It was simply a position that naturally belonged to her, and there were far too many things she still needed to accomplish for her to be satisfied merely with taking first place.
“…I see.”
The professor pressed the end of her pen against her temple as though this were giving her a headache, then let out a long groan.
“So you intend to see everyone else as nothing more than competition?”
“Yes.”
She did not need anything else, after all.
The professor, however, apparently found something unsatisfactory about that answer and continued making troubled noises.
Eventually, the woman seemed to reach a conclusion.
“All right. Perhaps I should put it this way.”
The professor began speaking again.
“If you want to rank first, then barring some unforeseen circumstance, I imagine you will. I have seen countless incoming students and Irregulars over the years, but… to be perfectly frank, I have never seen a student quite like you, Ellin.”
That was only natural.
Ellin herself was practically the ultimate ideal toward which every witch and elf aspired.
An almost inexhaustible reserve of mana and extraordinary Spirit Affinity.
She was an unrivaled Mage and Spirit Summoner who possessed both.
Compared to Ellin, everyone else had simply been born with far too little.
“But.”
But.
Ellin’s eyes narrowed unconsciously at the objection.
The female professor set down her pen and looked at her as though genuinely asking whether she was certain about this.
“Won’t you be lonely?”
“What do you mean?”
The professor unclasped her hands and spoke in a deliberately casual manner.
“I mean exactly what I said. A life where everyone in the world is your competitor. Where you constantly burn with rivalry, comparing yourself to everyone else—you and other people, you and someone specific, you and the great figures of the past.”
She studied Ellin as though testing her.
“Have you ever really thought about it?”
Then she continued.
“It will be lonely. Exhausting too, I imagine.”
“…I will not be lonely.”
As though she had expected precisely that answer, the professor leisurely set down her ballpoint pen.
“You took a while to answer. I suppose you have never given it much serious thought.”
The smile she offered felt strangely uncomfortable.
“You have never looked at anything except the goal directly in front of you, have you?”
“……”
“Then I think I can say this with certainty as well. You said you will not be lonely? Hmm… No. You absolutely will be.”
The categorical statement left Ellin speechless.
She wanted to snap back and ask what gave this woman the right to speak as though she understood her so well.
But the woman was a professor, and this was still an examination.
Even if the interview had become little more than a formality.
Suppressing what she truly wanted to say, Ellin stared at the professor sullenly.
“A once-in-a-generation, peerless genius. A brilliant star, radiant enough to illuminate the night sky like the sun. They are extremely rare, but they are not entirely nonexistent. Every few years, I encounter another genius like that.”
The professor shook her head, indicating that this was not the important part.
“They are people who make you wonder, ‘Is that really the same kind of person as me?’ And yet my conclusion has always been the same… In the end, they are still people. They get tired if they do not sleep, hungry if they do not eat, lonely if they are alone, and… well, things like that.”
Pity entered the professor’s eyes.
The instant Ellin realized that expression was directed at her, irritation flared inside her.
But it quickly faded.
The countless stories and experiences reflected in the professor’s eyes seemed to tell her that she had misunderstood.
“The academy certainly places great emphasis on improving its students’ abilities, but that is not all it exists for. I hope you will gain something here as well, Student Ellin.”
With that, the professor put Ellin’s application aside.
She spoke as though the conclusion had already been decided and there was no point pretending otherwise.
“Welcome to the academy, Student Ellin. I hope this place becomes your new home.”
She gave Ellin a warm smile, signaling that the interview was over.
Ellin remained silent for a while beneath the gentleness of that expression before rising awkwardly, bowing her head, and leaving the interview room.
When she opened her eyes again, the sun had already climbed to its highest point and was pouring down its light.
She had only intended to close her eyes for a moment, but apparently, she had dozed off without realizing it.
Ellin looked at the coat again.
Now that she thought about it, a thick coat belonging to someone she did not know had been draped over her.
Beside the bench sat a canned coffee that was still warm, as though it had only just come out of the vending machine.
Come to think of it, this coat looked somewhat similar to the one that female professor had been wearing.
Had the professor noticed her while leaving and covered her with it?
“……”
Ellin rubbed her cold hands against the canned coffee.
Warm.
She released a quiet breath and took the can into her hands, idly turning it between her fingers.
“A home……”
So this was supposed to become her home…
She sank into thought for a while, deciding that she would return the coat later.
At least, she probably would have.
Until she discovered the magical trace of a rune long since lost to history lingering on the coat.