PIIING!
Light shimmered at Aizel's fingertips.
The instant the light, drawn into delicate lines, seemed to be swiftly tracing a Magic Circle.
FWOOSH!
From his fingertip, a flame bloomed u.......
PFFT!
......p, and then guttered out feebly.
"Ah, is he an idiot?"
Aizel's head whipped around and he glared at me with resentful eyes.
Oops. I'd meant to say that inwardly and let it out loud instead.
Since my mouth was already open, I went on.
"Come on, you succeeded once, so why can't you do it again? Even if the quality's poor, shouldn't it at least succeed?"
I was genuinely curious.
"It's the same with the sword. With a really difficult technique or Sword Path, the first success is the hard part; once you've managed it once, you can pull it off reasonably well. Separate from proficiency."
"Easy for you to say. This is my first time with magic."
"Right, the first success was hard, but you did succeed once. You picked up even difficult sword techniques without breaking a sweat, didn't you?"
It's clearly there in Kalian's memories inside me.
Back when he was Kalian, this one used to master extremely difficult sword techniques without effort.
"Is doing it with your body the same as doing it with your head?!"
Aizel flared up and shouted.
A voice with something like old resentment steeped in it.
"I said, is swordsmanship the same as magic?!"
I scratched the back of my head despite myself.
"I managed it, though?"
That was when it happened.
-Wow, Master, you really are wicked.
'What is?'
-Did you have to rub salt in the wound like that?
'Did I?'
-You did. A mage's thought structure and a martial artist's are worlds apart. How to put it? They're different species, you know? How would a deer ever understand a lion?
'I managed it, though?'
-That's because it's you, Master. My guess is it's thanks to the Sovereign Body Art? Honestly, that Sovereign Body Art is a total cheat, you know?
Velkarion made a fuss.
Anyway, Aizel needs more time.
I gave him a pitying look and turned around.
"Train."
And I left my magic study....... No, Aizel's magic study.
The interior of the huge mansion was as quiet as if nobody lived there.
It was because of the large-scale military operation called the 'Eastern Expedition'.
Running roughly two months between April and June, it's House Renhardt's largest undertaking of the first half of the year.
In this season all three of the Great Houses move like this.
House Facial has to comb the snowfields where blizzards rage all year round, and House Aquren desperately scours the sea under a blazing sun.
A large-scale operation commanded by the Patriarch himself, mobilizing all of the House's regular forces.
And it isn't only the army that gets mobilized.
Every administrator enters a standby state equivalent to a wartime footing.
The House's elders take up emergency management posts and maintain every administrative system in the domain.
Even the Patriarch's wife oversees the whole of the House's administration as acting Patriarch.
The staff left in the mansion is kept to a bare minimum.
Which is why the mansion was this quiet.
With every person in the House mobilized, there was exactly one reason Aizel was this free.
Age.
He was only fifteen, so no duty had been assigned to him.
His elder brother Stellan was out on the eastern reconnaissance as the Patriarch's aide.
And that undertaking would be over before long.
Before then, I had to get Aizel awakened.
My current standing is that of a member of House Facial's direct bloodline.
It could invite needless misunderstanding, and one misstep could create an awkward situation.
The Patriarch of House Renhardt.
That is, my actual father, Neik Renhardt, is no easy man to deal with.
I stopped and glanced back.
The firmly shut study door.
Please work hard, dimwit Aizel.
***
"The knights you brought have been quite busy, I hear."
Elric wore a relaxed expression and sank back into his chair.
Chloe's eyebrows twitched.
The urge rose to burn that chair back to ash on the spot and correct his arrogant posture.
And since she'd be burning things anyway, burning off that suddenly irritating curly hair along with it would be even better.
But the world doesn't let you do everything by temper alone.
"I can't just sit on my hands."
At Chloe's words Elric nodded with that same arrogant expression.
Chloe swallowed her rising anger once more and spoke.
"From the mood, it seems you've found the information I want?"
"Haha, it wasn't easy. Who would have thought traces would turn up there."
"And where is 'there'?"
Chloe shot to her feet.
But Elric's posture remained utterly relaxed.
He quietly raised a hand and continued.
"However urgent you feel, everything in this world has its procedures, does it not?"
"Prshhh....... Mrrfvsshh......."
Speaking through clenched teeth, she couldn't even pronounce it properly.
She barely restrained herself from setting that curly hair alight then and there.
"I am simply the sort who likes things clear....... I dislike sloppy, half-hearted fudging."
Chloe endured it once more and nodded.
At least he wasn't talking in circles.
"State what you want."
"Refreshingly direct. I like it. Hand it over."
At Elric's word, a man beside him who appeared to be a servant drew a sheet of paper from his coat and handed it over.
Hans took it, examined it, and spread it before Chloe.
The paper was covered with a great many line items of goods.
"Goods distributed by the Facial Merchant Company."
House Facial is the Empire's northern wall.
It monopolized trading rights with the natives of the northern snowfields, and it also handled the subjugation of the snowfields' frost-type monsters exclusively.
That meant a monopoly on the production and distribution of frost-type monster byproducts.
Every item on the list he had just handed over was one of those.
Chloe scanned the list once more and asked.
"So what do you propose to do with these goods? You can't be asking for all of it as payment for information."
The variety and quantity were considerable.
Elric waved a hand without the least sign of fluster.
"Haha, we have not the slightest wish to make an enemy of House Facial."
Chloe's eyebrows twitched again.
His dignified gestures, somehow overdone, were grating on her more and more.
'That damned curly hair.'
He couldn't know her inner thoughts, so she spoke in businesslike terms.
"Then?"
"I would like to purchase at cost."
That much wasn't difficult.
But somehow the urge rose not to grant it all so plainly.
'Finding his whereabouts wouldn't be impossible.......'
Quite a lot of time had passed, and she was in a hurry.
The Ballonz domain wanted payment for shortening that time.
"Fine. I'll do as you wish. But I'll add one condition."
"Please speak."
Elric extended a hand with refinement, and once again Chloe's eyebrows twitched.
"Come to the Facial domain yourselves to collect the goods. And it goes without saying......."
Chloe stopped and raised an index finger before her lips.
Meaning: keep silent about having bought the goods at cost.
But.
"Haha, doesn't that make two conditions?"
A vein bulged on Chloe's forehead.
In fact, magic power momentarily gathered in her left hand under the table.
GRRRIT!
Normally she would already have made the bastard bald.
That she hadn't was solely for the sake of finding her brother a day sooner.
"Hahaha, as it happens I have a request of my own, so let us cancel one request against the other."
He seemed to think it a joke.
But a joke requires both the teller and the listener to enjoy it.
In the end Chloe abandoned her noble bearing.
"Why don't you stop spouting pointless drivel and get to the point?"
Only then did Elric flinch and wipe the smile from his face.
"I ask that you keep silent about having obtained the information from us."
A condition requiring no deliberation, and not a difficult one.
"Agreed. Now may I finally learn where my brother is?"
At the edge in Chloe's voice Elric grew tenser and spoke.
"Renhardt territory."
"What?"
"According to our intelligence, Young Master Kalian was carried unconscious on someone's back into the Renhardt mansion."
BANG!
Chloe shot to her feet and slammed the table as if to break it.
"You sat on information that urgent this long?"
"T-that is....... As there was no notable movement inside the mansion, we judged there was no dang....... Kk, khk!"
Elric couldn't finish.
Because Chloe had closed the distance in an instant and yanked him up by the collar.
THUD, CLANG!
A dull thud and a sharp ring of steel sounded at the same moment.
Hans had already flung himself forward, subdued Elric's escort knight, and pressed a dagger to his throat.
"Let g......."
Elric reflexively moved to shake off Chloe's hand.
But his body reacted the opposite way.
FLOP!
All strength drained out of him, leaving him unable to move a finger.
'M-my body, no strength.......'
He'd been caught by [Mire of Will], the spell Chloe had cast as she lunged.
A Fifth Circle status-affliction spell, single-target only and effective only against those of a lower Circle than the caster.
Chloe was a mage who displayed tremendous combat power in real fights, not merely theory and a magical mind.
This was one such moment.
In the brief span of lunging to grab his collar, she had already cast a Fifth Circle spell on him.
"Listen well."
Chloe said in a low voice.
"The likes of you have no right to judge what is urgent and what isn't. You just deliver the information. Fast, and accurately."
"Khhk, l-let go of this......."
Elric forced the words out through a choked throat.
How had she cast such a spell in that brief instant?
A mage as brilliant as the rumors said.
"M-my apologies!"
Elric hurriedly avoided Chloe's gaze.
Chloe's voice growled like a beast's.
"I keep my promises. I am a Facial. But you had better remember clearly that you crossed a line today."
"My apologies. My apologies!"
FLOP, THUD!
Chloe flung her hand away and Elric was hurled to the floor.
Without so much as glancing his way, Chloe strode out of the room.
"Hans, we cross into Renhardt territory at once!"
"Yes, Lady Chloe!"
Hans knocked Elric's escort knight unconscious and followed Chloe like a shadow.
***
That night, the smell of liquor hung thick in Elric's quarters at the Ballonz mansion.
He poured whiskey into a large glass and gulped it down.
Half a bottle of hard liquor went down Elric's throat in an instant.
SLAM!
"Kgggh!"
The scorching pain in his throat and stomach and the thick rush of alcohol became firewood for Elric's emotions.
"That crazy bitch, how dare she!"
The humiliating moment from that afternoon would not leave his head.
The escort knight who had been pathetically subdued and knocked out had already been crippled and cast aside.
"Insolent bitch. So what if you are a Facial? To dare inflict such humiliation on me, Elric Ballonz......."
The more he thought about it, the more the fire in his gut rose past bearing.
"Someday, without fail......."
He swore revenge.
And poured another glass of whiskey down his throat.
"Kggh!"
The liquor made his whole body feel hot.
The heat seemed to rise upward in particular; his head was burning.
"Damn it, bring ice water at once......."
Elric whipped his head around and abruptly cut himself off.
Because of his own reflection in the mirror on the wall.
Why was light coming from his head?
Why did his head look crimson?
Only then did he realize.
Absurdly, his head had caught fire and his hair was blazing.
"Gyaaah, fire—!"
Strangely, it was a fire that burned the hair bright red without leaving a single burn on the skin.
It was [Hidden Ember], the spell Chloe had placed on him when she grabbed his collar.
From that day Elric had to live bald for quite some time.
Magic cannot make hair grow, but removing hair is a very easy matter.