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Bang!
Lost in old memories for only a moment, the ghost coiled around the sword let out a sound like escaping air and scattered into dust before it could even finish taking shape.
Once the ghost vanished, the bloodlust that had been spreading through the surroundings disappeared entirely too, and only then did the people nearby let out sighs of relief and start breathing again.
"Benjamin... Wh-what was that just now?"
The moment Aria came back to her senses, she asked with a horrified expression.
At that, I smiled cheerfully and put on an expression as if it were nothing much.
"This...? I guess you could say it means I might be able to use a decent weapon from now on too?"
A sword made from a Mana Stone wasn't quite on the level of a ghost-tier weapon like Marionette, but it could hold its own to some degree against spells or mana infused swords.
The problem was that Mana Stones tended to be fairly expensive.
Back in my mercenary days, even when I worked up the courage to buy an expensive sword, the blade would get damaged every time I blocked a mana-infused sword, so I'd end up having to replace it, and eventually I just went back to using mass produced swords.
Murmur, murmur.
Anyway, the stinging stares around me suggested that the ghost's bloodlust must have been quite intense.
Everyone kept glancing back and forth between me and Aria, each of them whispering something.
Unable to withstand the attention, I spoke to Aria first.
"Let's go eat somewhere else. People are staring way too much."
"Yeah, sure!"
Since I had no interest in eating while under everyone's gaze, we started moving to a different spot.
Once we'd relocated to a more secluded corner, Aria, as if she'd been waiting for the chance, asked me with her eyes shining.
"Benjamin, you're really amazing! Teach me how to do that too!"
"Hmm... that's kind of hard to explain."
"Then even just roughly... hm?"
Since Aria kept pestering me, I scratched my head and pulled up my status window in front of me.
There wasn't really anything specific to explain, but I vaguely dodged around the topic, offering some approximation of the description written under my Talent and what I'd come to realize.
"It's a Mana Stone made by nature, sure, but there's still a flow inside it too. If you can read that flow... you can't change the broad framework of it, but you should be able to intervene enough to change its shape, right?"
"Hmm... ah!"
At my vague explanation, she let out a small gasp, as if something had clicked for her.
"By flow, you mean the formula, right? Then this sounds less like formula theory... and more like something about the completion and transformation of formulas? That's a class you don't even take until fourth year... how did you even come up with this kind of thinking?"
"Ah, well, that's..."
Something about the way Aria was looking at me shifted subtly.
I wondered for a moment if she'd noticed something, but decided to just give a vague answer for now.
"Guess you could call it natural talent."
"..."
At my shameless attitude, Aria's expression froze cold in an instant.
It was a fairly unimpressed look.
Seeing her expression suddenly brought to mind a conversation with my old mentor.
'Cockeye.'
'You son of a bitch... I told you to call me master.'
'What exactly do I have to do to be able to use mana?'
'That's a matter of birth.'
'...'
'And you were doomed from birth.'
I remembered getting beaten black and blue that day for talking back to my mentor.
It was strange how every single memory of him ended in violence, no matter how I tried to recall it.
Anyway, even though I'd said it half as a joke, having her look at me with such genuine respect, calling me amazing, honestly felt like a bit much to handle.
Maybe it was because it was praise without any sarcasm attached.
It felt, somehow, like being treated as a proper person for the first time.
It was a little sad that this kind of treatment felt so new to me, but I did my best not to show it and spoke to Aria, keeping my expression neutral.
"But one of the Mana Stones is completely gone now... is that going to be okay?"
At my question, Aria touched a finger to her lips and thought it over for a moment, tilting her head.
I wondered why she touched her finger to her lips like that, but I didn't bother asking.
"Well... we packed more than enough for the number of people, so one should probably be fine, right?"
At her words, I felt some relief over a part I'd been secretly worried about.
That was because I had no more money left to borrow, and no one left I could borrow it from.
……
"Aria, there are supposed to be exactly 30 Mana Stones... So why are there only 29?"
"..."
"Do you know that embezzling public property can result in expulsion?"
But my relief was completely shattered the moment class started.
Professor Evin Elixir, in charge of Monday's Mana Theory class.
His family was famous for magic too, but what had really made them well known was their reputation as merchants.
That was because the current head of the Elixir family was the master of the Elixir Trading Company, which had never once relinquished its position as the top trading company in the Southern continent.
And Evin, the head's own younger brother, was a person who had contributed enormously to making the Elixir Trading Company the greatest trading company on the entire continent.
Despite being such a famous trading house, there had been no family infighting whatsoever over who would take over as head.
If anything, rumor had it that Evin, sick and tired of the constant attention and interference from people around him, had started working as a professor at the academy simply because he couldn't stand it anymore.
But those who knew his true nature understood that he hadn't come to the academy merely to escape the whispering.
"Aria, why don't you say something."
Looking down at a flustered Aria while speaking, he had the air of a stubborn, nitpicking merchant layered over him.
I wondered if that was just the impression I got knowing his family background, or if he was genuinely that kind of stubborn, difficult person by nature.
Regardless, if I left things as they were, that kind-hearted girl would surely end up claiming she'd lost it by accident herself, so I had to step in.
"Benjamin made one disappear with magic!"
Damn it, I didn't even need to step in.
I'd momentarily forgotten that Aria was sharp enough to rank in the school's top 100.
At Aria's words, everyone's eyes locked onto me.
Including that arrogant professor's gaze.
"Benjamin...? Benjamin, you say..."
"Yes. That's me."
"Benjamin, come up here."
At his words, I scratched my head roughly and walked up front, and he held out a Mana Stone toward me as he spoke.
"What does it mean, that you made a Mana Stone disappear with magic?"
The gazes of the professor and the students all gathered on me.
Since the sandwich shop was mostly frequented by commoners, the students here, all nobles, seemed to have no idea what had happened earlier.
"How did you even use the Mana Stone that it ended up disappearing?"
"...Is it that strange for it to disappear?"
"Of course it's strange. And not just for one reason, but two."
He held up two fingers, then folded one down as he began to speak.
His index finger folded down, leaving his middle finger pointed straight at me.
I doubted it was intentional that the finger left standing happened to be the middle one, but having it wave back and forth right in front of my face didn't exactly put me in a great mood.
Oblivious to my hardening expression, Professor Evin continued.
"First, Mana Stones hold such a large quantity of mana that they're sometimes called spare mana hearts. Even if the practice Mana Stones used here are only low grade, a Mana Stone is still a Mana Stone, and it raises the question of what spell could possibly use up all that mana entirely, how using it caused no problems at all, and, being a commoner, where you could have possibly learned a spell capable of that."
I wasn't sure if he realized that, despite saying "first," he'd actually pointed out three separate oddities.
"Second, a Mana Stone doesn't just disappear once all its mana has been used up. In fact, a Mana Stone with all its mana extracted still retains a heightened responsiveness to mana precisely because it once held mana, which is why it gets finely ground down for use when crafting magical tools."
I hadn't known that, since I'd only ever handled Mana Stones for transport jobs and never actually used one myself.
Given how expensive they were, they were something even mercenaries who could use magic could never dream of affording.
"The most reasonable suspicion here is... that Benjamin used a spell to create a diversion and then smuggled the Mana Stone away somewhere."
"I didn't smuggle anything away."
"Then let's see you make a Mana Stone disappear right in front of my eyes."
Well, there was nothing stopping me from doing that, so I simply took the Mana Stone he held out.
But given my twisted personality, I had no intention of just going along with it quietly.
"If you let me use all the Mana Stones you brought for practice, I'll show you exactly how I did it."
I'd actually worked together with Evin Elixir once before, prior to the regression.
Among all the eccentric, truth seeking mages, he was easily one of the more peculiar ones.
I could tell just from how vividly I still remembered what he did the one time we were assigned a mission to rescue a saintess from the Order.
'The holy relic was destroyed and the holy power fused directly with mana...? There's no way I can just let that go!'
It had been an extremely dangerous mission, so despite everyone urging him to hurry back, he'd insisted on staying behind alone.
I never found out what he'd discovered about that fused mana, but the only news I ever got was that he'd ultimately died there.
Evin was the type of person who simply couldn't hold back once his curiosity was sparked, even if death was staring him right in the face.
Going by my memory of him, I figured he'd be intrigued and easily take the bait on my provocation.
Proving my prediction correct, Evin grinned and held out all 29 remaining Mana Stones to me.
"You're absolutely certain that even if all of these disappear, there won't be any demand for compensation or any impact on my grade, right?"
"That's correct."
Placing my hand over the gathered pile of 29 Mana Stones, I pictured the ghost, and soon the Mana Stones began fusing together into one, starting to shift shape.
Watching a blood-red blade gradually emerge, Evin looked back and forth between the Mana Stones and my face with a fairly startled expression.
"Gasp!"
"Wh-what is that!"
Compared to what I'd shown outside the sandwich shop, that had apparently been nothing more than a preview, and the bloodlust that spread out this time was horrific.
The bloodlust was so thick that it almost created the illusion the whole classroom had turned red.
The students, faces frozen in shock, trembled uncontrollably.
"The Mana Stones themselves...!"
Along with Evin's gasp, the blade, this time, actually succeeded in fully forming.
But that horrifically beautiful, blood-red blade scattered into dust again shortly after.
"That's how it happened."
Leaving the vanished Mana Stones behind me, I gave him a single shrug of my shoulders.
I had now proven exactly why the Mana Stones had disappeared, and he had no choice but to accept it.
After all, I'd shown him directly.
Still, no matter how low grade the Mana Stones were, it was surprising that even with 29 of them, the blade still couldn't fully complete its form.
I figured it must be because the ghost's rank was simply too far above what those Mana Stones could support.
I decided that going forward, whenever I used Mana Stones, I'd keep the design as simple as possible and focus purely on performance instead.
Being able to block a mana-infused sword was more than enough on its own.
"Benjamin, just as Elin told me, you truly are special... maybe you really could achieve Perfection..."
"..."
"But why is it that what you made from the Mana Stone was a sword instead of a staff or a wand?"
"...Excuse me?"
"A sword is a weapon carried by uncultured swordsmen. To a mage of real caliber, all a sword should ever be is a single dagger, kept ready for the moment mana runs out entirely and you need to end your own life."
Hearing that, I found myself thinking of the one and only mage the mercenary crew had ever had.
'Ah, so this is what it means to end up moving alongside a bunch of graceless mercenaries swinging swords around.'
A character with a high level of magical skill and background from a fallen noble house had joined the mercenary company once, and she was, to put it mildly, an exhausting personality, and the captain had ended up having no choice but to place her into our crew specifically.
The official reason given was that they were assigning excellent personnel to us, since we were the highest performing crew in the company at the time, but in practice, it might as well have just been a request to knock some sense into her.
Through frequent, rigorous discipline, her opinion of us "swordsmen" changed little by little over time.
'Maybe mages are... just trash?'
Once she'd been thoroughly humbled and started following along without complaint, we figured she was probably fine now and sent her off to a different crew, but by the time she came back, she'd picked up all sorts of bizarre nicknames, things like "the tyrant" or "the noble queen," and eventually ended up returning to our crew for good, becoming a permanent member.
The guy who'd primarily wielded dual swords and always had that strange grin on his face had been her personal handler, and I still remembered him grinding his sheath into her repeatedly after "correcting" her attitude once she came back with a swelled up ego.
'You're the tyra-a-ant?! The noble quee-e-en?! Did the tyrant and the queen just die or something?!'