Chapter 3

Airy had never had much interest in peeking into someone else’s self-consciousness, either in her previous life or this one.

She was the sort of person who had dealt with the stress of adolescence by doing Sudoku.

The back half of the notebook continued in much the same vein.

The entries from the first and second days were long and carefully written, but from the third day onward, they became much more concise.

Father said that I am not to take a single step out of this basement until I can draw the basic formulae proficiently.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—I am intimately aware of the uniqueness of my bloodline.

I can already draw the basic formulae with ease.

However, I sincerely hope he never finds out.

Please, leave me as the disgrace of this family who cannot even draw a basic formula.

That wish did not last long.

He soon began calling the boredom of having to continue writing a diary despite nothing happening “the void of existence.”

After that came complaints about the sandwiches, whose fillings never changed, and the fact that he was given water instead of tea.

The next entry skipped several days.

September 12.

There are many fascinating and demonic stories hidden within this basement.

I was able to discover them thanks to my cursed talent.

These days, I have been fascinated by Palamo’s new method of activating magic circles.

The thrill is so intense that I almost feel guilty, as though I were committing a crime.

Airy found a thin book beside the spot where the notebook had been shelved.

Its title was:

On Efficient Magic Circle Activation — Palamo Kevlas

“This guy has quite the organizing obsession, doesn’t he? Is it a family trait?”

Apparently, the self-proclaimed cursed genius had eventually succumbed to his own talent.

All the books arranged after Palamo Kevlas’s work had been organized according to the order in which the notebook’s author, “Lottie,” had read them.

Lottie had written brief reviews of each book and summarized the parts he found particularly impressive.

Whenever he encountered something difficult, he sometimes lamented the limitations of his own understanding and then added his own interpretation.

Airy was still only a beginner in magic, but she knew enough to glimpse the extent of his genius.

She made her way through roughly half of the thick notebook.

Of course, whenever she reached the passages filled with reverent theoretical explanations, she conveniently let her eyes glaze over and skipped them.

At some point, Lottie had completely abandoned his initial skepticism.

As the entries progressed, he became increasingly unable to hide his admiration for the previous generations of mages.

He wrote about how frightening magic was as a field of study—vast and deep, with no apparent limits to what it could encompass.

It wasn’t until Airy’s eyes grew tired and her stomach began to growl that she finally pulled her gaze away from the notebook.

It was nothing special.

That was the disappointing part.

And yet, the intellectual pleasure she had experienced for the first time in years had been surprisingly stimulating.

Just who exactly was this “Lottie”?

He was obviously a member of this family.

But when had Lottie escaped?

And how long had it taken him to become such an outstanding talent?

Airy tried to guess which members of the family he might have been by comparing the dates recorded in the notebook with the ages of the family elders.

Then she casually flipped through the pages and opened to the final entry.

…For that reason, I believe this book would be best read together with the short paper by Oje that I read previously.

I have run out of space, so I plan to go outside and bring back another notebook.

I will have to sneak it in without anyone noticing. I am worried about whether I can time it for the middle of the night.

October 11, 897. Lottie.

It was essentially a promise to look forward to the next volume.

Airy closed the notebook, returned it to its place, then went back to the armchair and fell into thought.

Lottie or whatever.

At least she knew one thing now.

This notebook was not a secret technique.

Then, think about the meaning behind all the hardships that had befallen Airy in the story.

Haha.

This is fucking terrible…

A disturbing thought occurred to her.

What if I’m simply an existence destined to disappear?

It was an ominous suspicion.

She had always kept the thought suppressed, but this time, she couldn’t.

Airy drew up her knees, rested her forehead against them, and dabbed at her eyelids with a worn scrap of cloth.

Even her tears felt wasted.

On a stupid story like this.

Fatigue washed over her.

She had slept quite a lot during the day, yet she was still sleepy, which probably meant it was somewhere around dawn.

Whether she was the protagonist, a supporting character, or whatever else, she had no idea when someone would come looking for her.

So Airy decided not to waste the unexpected rest she had been given.

The ordinary maid from Salisbury decided to simply go to sleep.

The underground room remained unchanged.

The magic circle hummed continuously, stirring up the wind.

After taking care of her basic bodily needs and hygiene as best she could, Airy briefly felt grateful that the room at least had some ventilation.

She spent quite some time searching through the bookshelves for another notebook.

There was nothing.

There were only two bookshelves, and every single volume on them was a book about magic.

That bastard Lottie.

Did he get caught when he went outside?

Perhaps he hadn’t managed to sneak out in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep.

Airy was certain at least a day had passed, but she had no idea what time it was in the morning.

So she established a system for herself.

Since her meals were rather inadequate, she would eat three sandwiches a day and sleep.

She would count that as one day.

By that calculation, she was now on her second day.

Airy opened the side of the notebook with the most blank space, carefully wrote down the date she estimated in the corner, and circled it.

Then she spent the rest of her time immersed in the remainder of the notebook.

Unlike the previous day, whenever she became curious about something, she searched for the corresponding book and compared the contents.

Sometimes, if she felt like it, she would continue reading the reference book itself.

Airy might only have enough mana to do laundry and wash soap off her hands, but fortunately, she possessed a considerable amount of knowledge and judgment from her previous life.

Thanks to that, she could understand most of Lottie’s annotations.

In that case, if she had nothing else to do, studying theory was certainly better for her quality of life than simply sitting around.

Airy had definitely resigned herself to her circumstances.

She had abandoned most of her expectations of outside help.

But somewhere deep inside, a tiny part of her still remained a reader.

That’s simply how romance-fantasy novels work.

Coincidences like this don’t happen to just anyone, at just any time.

And so, somehow, Airy ended up trapped in an underground basement, passionately reading the basic magic lectures of a teacher named Lottie.

She finished the entire notebook—including even the reference books cited by the reference books—on the afternoon of her ninth day.

Of course, “afternoon” didn’t actually refer to a particular time.

It simply meant that she had reached the point of eating her second sandwich of the day.

Ah… This is nice.

And I hate it.

There were still plenty of books left.

And she genuinely enjoyed reading them.

Yet Airy both loved and hated everything about this situation.

To be perfectly honest, she missed the little bastard young master so much that it was almost creepy.

She missed the two maids who shared her room.

She wanted to end her day laughing together with them over meaningless nonsense.

Have they forgotten that I exist?

Could entering this basement somehow erase my existence?

Why hasn’t the young master told anyone that I’m trapped down here?

Could something have happened that is preventing the adults from returning?

Her anxious thoughts began multiplying, each one giving birth to another.

Airy chopped them down one after another, as though cutting them apart with an axe.

She lingered in the armchair for a while before standing in front of the bookshelf again.

There was nowhere else to go.

And there was nothing else to do.

Day 13.

Airy had roughly gone through every book on the shelves.

Her brain was protesting from overwork.

Her body felt horribly stiff.

When it came to sleeping, the armchair was somehow even worse than the hard bed in the maids’ quarters.

At this point, she felt as though she could happily lie down on straw in a barn.

She wanted to take a bath, even if the water was completely cold.

She wanted to relieve herself in an actual bathroom, even if the place was shabby and smelled terrible.

The sandwiches were truly fucking awful.

Airy found herself impressed by Lottie, who had eaten them for over a month and merely described them as “feeling like an insult to human dignity.”

By now, every time Airy ate one, she no longer bothered suppressing her colorful stream of profanity.

She became aware that nearly everything she had been saying aloud lately consisted of swear words.

So she decided she should try saying a few nice things for a change.

Airy had finally learned how to talk to herself freely.

Day 16.

When she had merely skimmed through the books before, she had thought she would need to reread them someday.

Now that she was actually rereading them, however, she felt like she was going to die.

Missing the excitement she had felt when she first discovered them, Airy leaned against the bookshelf.

Then she felt it move slightly to the side.

There were no visible rails or mechanisms.

It simply looked like an ordinary bookshelf.

Airy began doubting her own senses and pushed the bookshelf back and forth, then from side to side.

“Wow. It actually moves.”

What kind of magic did they put on a bookshelf?

Beyond the massive shelves that slid left and right was another bookshelf.

Curious, Airy pushed that one too.

It moved.

She pushed six layers of bookshelves aside.

A tiny corridor appeared.

Of course, the walls of the corridor were made of yet another set of bookshelves.

Airy lay down between them and laughed hollowly.

Once she lay down in the narrow space separated from the magic circle, she felt inexplicably comfortable.

On the second layer of bookshelves, she discovered another notebook belonging to Lottie.

Airy opened it with genuine delight.

Lottie greeted her just as warmly.

To my surprise, when I secretly left the basement after forcing myself to stay awake, it was broad daylight.

I ended up running into Father, who was working in the laboratory above the basement.

Apparently, he hadn’t even gone to his study.

Perhaps my old emotions had melted away with the passage of time, because I no longer hated Father.

It is not as though I understand his feelings to that extent, but perhaps I feel differently because I also gained something from my imprisonment.

After resting properly for the first time in a long while, I obtained Father’s permission and came back down here of my own accord.

When I asked him to change the sandwich menu, Father readily agreed.

Now I no longer have to eat those wretched sandwiches containing fried beef.

Before I came down, Father told me something amusing.

He said that he had also been trapped in this basement when he was young.

Father endured forty days, while Grandfather escaped after only seventeen.

Their siblings were even worse.

From what I heard, remarkably few people in this family willingly chose the path of magic.

My great-great-grandfather personally built this basement.

I have nothing but respect for his understanding of and wisdom regarding our family.

“This guy actually became a decent person.”

Airy couldn’t hide her satisfaction.

And once she learned the truth about the basement, she felt somewhat relieved.

It wasn’t a prison for intruders after all.

It was a place designed to awaken the heir who was struggling through the turbulent path of adolescence.

Suddenly, the oddly considerate setup made sense.

“So how the hell do I get out?”

She skimmed through the entries that followed, but there was no detailed explanation of how to leave.

Apparently, the possibility of someone who wasn’t even part of the family bloodline accidentally tumbling down the stairs and getting trapped here had never occurred to them.

“Come to think of it, I kind of want to try one of those fried beef sandwiches.”

So Lottie was the one who had changed the menu to this shitty combination.

Airy had never even tasted fried beef before, but suddenly it felt like soul food.

She made a solemn promise to herself.

Once I get out, I’ll borrow money if I have to and buy one.

With that thought, Airy turned the page of the notebook.