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"Before you became a slave, there's no record of you at all, and the only record left is that you spent roughly five years as a slave. I couldn't verify any details, since your former owner never gave consent."
"...I don't understand why you're suddenly asking about my past."
"Ah, well, it's not that I'm trying to hold your having been a slave against you. I just wanted to confirm whether my guess was correct."
"Your guess?"
"From what Elin told me... you handle a sword at quite an impressive level."
From Professor Evin to this crazy old hag.
Just how much has Professor Elin actually been talking about me to everyone?
No, wait, I hadn't even realized she was that interested in me to begin with.
And how did any of them even find out I use a sword?
"Could it be... that during those five years as a slave, you worked as a gladiator?"
I did know a little about gladiators, since one of the members of the mercenary crew had been a former slave gladiator, but strictly speaking, that wasn't me.
Because of my looks, I'd been kept out of sight, cleaning out a stable, shoveling horse manure all day long.
"I asked an acquaintance connected to that world, and apparently there was a young rookie recently known as the Black Wildcat who suddenly vanished."
The Black Wildcat sounded like something I'd heard somewhere before.
That was a mercenary who'd fought at the very front lines of the crew, kicking up storms of blood wherever he went.
Thanks to a fighting style that overwhelmed enemies through sheer bulk, people had nicknamed him the Raging Boar.
Wait, was that thing he'd always said actually true?
I'd obviously assumed it was a lie.
"Small and unimpressive looking, but apparently that rookie always carried an overwhelmingly intense bloodlust with him. Almost exactly like you."
"..."
"They say that whenever he finally cut down an enemy for the last time, he'd always force them to their knees first and say something like this."
Without even meaning to, I found myself muttering the phrase he used to always shout.
"...It's time for judgment."
"It's time for judgment."
Hearing her say the exact same phrase at the same time as me, I couldn't help but smack my own forehead.
'Was this actually real...?'
Since I'd assumed the whole Black Wildcat, or Boar, thing was just a made up story from the start, I'd always treated whatever he claimed to have said as nothing more than a running joke.
Especially since apparently all he said to an enemy he'd just forced to their knees was "time for judgment."
I'd figured he'd just gone through a particularly rough case of puberty, but I never imagined it could actually be true.
"So it really was..."
"It wasn't."
I really hoped she'd stop mistaking someone who spouted that kind of absurd line for me.
"Fufu... you don't need to hide it, you know, you can just say it..."
"It really wasn't me."
Even with me radiating actual bloodlust as I spoke, Professor Marey never once let the smile fade from her lips.
This crazy old hag really wasn't picking up on social cues at all.
"Let's just keep it as a little secret between the two of us."
"Well then... since we've both had our questions answered, I'll be heading out now."
Having no desire to exchange another word with her, I simply stood up to leave.
As I hurried toward the door, Professor Marey called out from behind, stopping me in my tracks.
"Ah, Benjamin! You know you have class on Wednesday, right?"
Of course I knew.
That was exactly why I'd come here in the first place.
"You can look forward to it. Something quite entertaining is going to happen."
For a moment, I actually wondered if I should just skip class that day.
Anyway, the distortion in time the robed woman had mentioned.
Since the only reason I'd come here at all was out of concern that her staying at the academy might have been one of the variables caused by time's distortion, there was no need to continue exchanging pointless small talk.
"Then I'll be on my way, big sis."
"You don't know what might happen if you skip class Wednesday, do you?"
Had she picked up on the fact I was considering skipping class?
Her intuition really wasn't ordinary.
I supposed this was just what people meant by the power of experience.
"Lady Marey, are you in?"
Just then, the door opened, and a neatly dressed man walked in.
Short, dark brown hair, and eyebrows as thick and dark as soot.
Thanks to the monocle he wore over one eye, he looked a bit older than he actually was, but seeing that there weren't any wrinkles on his neck, he didn't seem quite as old as Professor Marey.
Wait, I feel like I've seen him somewhere before...
"Gary? What's going on?"
"Gasp!?"
"...Benjamin?"
"Ah, my apologies..."
Gary?
The future Tower Master, Gary?
Finally recognizing his face, I could barely stop myself from clapping a hand over my own mouth.
Marey looked back and forth between us with a suspicious expression for a while before finally turning her attention toward Gary's words.
"My apologies, Lady Marey... the matter turned out to be more urgent than expected, so I came in without proper etiquette. I hadn't realized you had a guest."
"It's fine. This one was already on his way out, so no need to worry about it. Right, Benjamin?"
You don't have to hint at it like that, old hag, I'm already leaving.
I was curious why he'd come rushing to see Marey so urgently, but figured it had nothing to do with me, so I decided not to concern myself with it.
"You're... Benjamin?"
Just as I gave a slight nod and turned to leave, Gary suddenly grabbed hold of my arm.
Caught off guard, with no idea what was going on, I stared blankly up at him.
"I bring a message from the Tower Master. He asked if you could arrange to meet Benjamin for a moment."
"...Excuse me?"
What kind of situation was this now.
……
The next day, early in the morning.
That the Tower Master wanted to meet me was, in its own way, an honor.
It also helped that, given all the Magic Department professors at the academy had come from the Tower, my absence from class was readily excused as well.
"Bleugh!"
The problem was this damned long-distance teleportation.
Twisting and turning without regard for up, down, front, back, left, or right, whatever I'd eaten came surging right back up my throat.
"BLEUGHH!!!"
Even before the regression, I'd been oddly prone to nausea every single time I used teleportation, and apparently nothing had changed now either.
As I frantically threw up, Gary, standing beside me, patted my back with a rather displeased expression.
"I've heard there are certain people who get headaches from long-distance teleportation... but this is the first time I've ever seen someone complain of this much distress."
Watching me with a mix of fascination while jotting something down in a notebook annoyed me a fair amount.
Here I was, practically dying, and he was taking notes like he'd just discovered some rare species of animal.
"Ugh... I think I'm feeling a little better now... let's go see the Tower Master already..."
As I stumbled to my feet, he nodded and led me toward the Tower Master.
I'd been here once before, but the sheer scale of the Tower's main building was still enough to leave anyone speechless.
The only building that could possibly rival the Imperial Palace.
Considering the sheer number of mages permanently stationed here, I wondered if, in terms of raw combat strength, this place might actually outclass the Palace itself.
"This is it. Let's tidy up your outfit a bit before we go in."
Gary patted down my wrinkled clothes, thoroughly disheveled from all my rolling around while retching.
He was, for now, merely a candidate for Tower Master, but in just three years, this man would end up becoming Tower Master himself.
His being a commoner becoming Tower Master caused a fair amount of trouble at first, but Gary managed to bring every mage into line and get himself formally recognized as Tower Master in less than a single year, so there was no need to worry about that.
"Tower Master, it's Gary."
"Come in."
As the massive doors opened, I found myself looking into an office neatly decorated primarily with natural wood.
"You must be the one Elin mentioned, that Benjamin fellow."
"I greet the Tower Master."
The Tower Master, Gilliam Bloodbracelet.
As I'd mentioned when recalling my memories of Gary, this man was someone who would suddenly fall ill and pass away three years from now.
For someone about to die so soon, he looked shockingly healthy.
"...Tower Master?"
While I was bowing my head to greet the Tower Master, along with Gary's startled voice, I began to feel a force pressing down over my entire body.
Unlike Marey, whose pressure had felt like being roughly scorched from the inside, this force wrapped around me like something strangling my throat, restraining every part of my body.
"Ugh!"
As if reacting to his pressure, my own body began radiating pressure right back.
Instinctively, my hand shot toward my hip, but there was no sword there.
"Oho, so you're not a mage."
After a brief moment passed, the Tower Master spoke, sounding intrigued, and the pressure that had filled the room around us vanished instantly.
"Your aura is no ordinary thing either. A presence this cruelly honed could only have come from someone who's naturally absorbed the taking of at least several hundred lives."
He was wrong.
It was true that I'd taken several hundred lives myself, but the reason behind this particular presence came from a different source, an ability I'd gained before the regression, from being exposed to the energy that had burst out when I destroyed the Marionette's Ghost.
Since I said nothing, the Tower Master continued speaking in a solemn, reproachful tone.
"What exactly are you?"
Looking at him, radiating no visible pressure at all, most people would assume he was simply asking a question, but for someone like me, capable of reading the flow of mana, it wasn't quite that simple.
[Wrath of the Heavens]
[Thunderbird's Talon]
[Lightning that Blazes in a Single Strike]
[Divine Punishment]
Countless flows of mana kept rising up around him, one after another.
Every single one clearly belonged to top-tier Lightning spells I'd only ever heard the names of.
What on earth could possibly make him this wary of me.
"Why are you doing this to me, exactly?"
Feeling as if my throat was on fire, I asked, and the Tower Master answered with a cold smile.
"I'm curious why you'd even ask me that. A rat brazen enough to set foot in an academy under the Tower's own management, without an ounce of fear."
At his words, Gary, as if suddenly realizing something, muttered while abruptly putting distance between us.
"A rat, meaning... Silver Ring!"
The Tower Master knew more than I'd expected.
Silver Ring lurked behind enough major incidents that even Gary reacted with alarm at the name.
Through Aden's memories, I'd been able to learn their goal, and I even knew that the reason behind their indiscriminate massacres was, of all things, an effort to revive the ancient being.
But how did these two even know about Silver Ring?
"Fufu... seems like you're familiar with Silver Ring too."
The Tower Master spoke, watching my reaction to Gary's words.
But more important than what he'd just said was the fact that, among the many spells floating around him, Divine Punishment had disappeared.
Which meant...
Boom!
"You're dodging this?"
Barely managing to twist my body back to avoid the lightning bolt that had suddenly crashed down from the ceiling, I immediately bolted toward the door.
"Gary!"
Just before I reached the door in my attempt to escape, at the Tower Master's shout, Gary began sealing off the entire area.
[Highest-Tier Sealing Barrier]
A massive barrier stretched across the entire area, including the door, naturally blocking my body.
Turning back in bewilderment, I found the Tower Master, his rage evident, face flushed red, shouting furiously.
"Did you seriously think you could run away right in front of me!"
Along with his shout, several of the spell formulas floating around him vanished once again.
The moment I registered this, lightning bolts began firing at me from every direction.
But this was all a situation I'd deliberately engineered myself.
I'd never actually thought I could escape from someone like him to begin with.
I simply needed mana I could actually use, mana I could physically touch and access directly.
[Fire Fist]
Editing the Highest-Tier Sealing Barrier Gary had cast, I created Marey's signature spell, Fire Fist, and used it to knock away the approaching bolts of lightning.
With every strike, a massive shockwave rattled my head so hard I nearly lost consciousness, but gritting my teeth, I endured it, and the moment I'd blocked all the activated spells, I shouted out.
"Damn it! I'm not with Silver Ring!"
Following my outburst, there was a brief moment of silence.
As the silence stretched on, awkwardly, I hesitated for a moment before adding one more word.
"...Sir."
"You... aren't with Silver Ring?"
"I'm not, I said! Silver Ring can go screw itself! Silver Ring is a bunch of morons! Want me to keep going?"
Apparently believing themselves to be working toward some grand, noble cause, they were the kind of people who, even when captured as prisoners, would shout things like "For Silver Ring!" as they took their own lives.
I figured that if the Tower Master had ever dealt with them personally, he'd know full well that people that obsessed with Silver Ring would never insult the organization directly, of all things.
"Do you think insulting Silver Ring somehow clears you of suspicion!"
Ah, apparently he didn't know.
This was something I hadn't anticipated.