NBFTR 06

Chapter 6

As the heavy silence stretched on, Laertes was the first to get up.

He examined the magic circle covering the floor, then looked around at the bedside table, chair, and bookshelves.

Somehow, the place looked almost like a studio apartment.

Airy cleared her throat for no particular reason.

After hesitating for a moment, she finally confessed,

“You said you knew, didn’t you? That I’m a mage.”

Laertes turned around.

A softly glowing sphere of light floated in the air beside him.

Airy couldn’t help feeling envious of his mana circle, which still had enough mana left to produce light even after casting a gigantic spell like that tidal wave.

“My original name was Aieri Belgiast. I was the only daughter of a ruined viscount family.”

“…I had no idea.”

“Yes. That’s how I was able to receive an education in magic. Though my mana circle was so small that everything ultimately came to nothing.”

“…….Your family?”

“Now, only my mother remains. She should be working as a maid somewhere in the south.”

“I see. So that’s why you were worried about the south.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I entered the Grand Duke’s residence under a false identity. But things like this do happen among the maids in the capital from time to time. They’re not common, but…”

“I have no intention of punishing you for that reason. Even if things had been different, I probably wouldn’t have. What surprised me was…”

Laertes frowned and brushed his long hair back.

“I didn’t realize you were a mage of this caliber.”

“Of this caliber? Honestly, I don’t think I can even be called a mage. Mages with mana circles as small as mine don’t usually even announce that they’ve awakened. They can’t use any magic.”

“Airy. Drawing a magic circle is an impressive feat.”

“That’s only because I read the books in here. Even then, I haven’t read them all, and honestly, I didn’t even study that hard.”

“And yet you drew one in that situation. Successfully.”

That was true.

It was undoubtedly a talent.

“Actually, Father knew that you had awakened your mana. So did the head maid.”

“What?”

“They said you used magic whenever you did the laundry, didn’t you?”

Airy’s face turned bright red, and she pressed her lips tightly together.

“Of course, as a newly hired maid, people were watching you. Father apparently had several people observe you for an entire year. But they found that you only used magic when doing laundry. During the rest of the time, you would lie down and rest, clearly suffering from mana depletion.”

This is so embarrassing…

No wonder they had stopped making her do laundry at some point.

“So they concluded that you were a ninth-grade mage without any ulterior motives. It’s not as though someone like that is particularly rare.”

“Yes, that’s true… Compared to mages of higher ranks, I suppose I’m not particularly rare…”

“I’m sorry if the way I phrased it offended you.”

“No, it didn’t offend me. It’s just that ‘a ninth-grade mage without any ulterior motives’ is such an accurate description that I’ve never heard anything quite like it before. I was impressed.”

“Ah. I wasn’t insulting you. Orine really liked you.”

“…I know.”

Airy had never thought the head maid disliked her. She hadn’t known that Orine actually liked her, though.

As she recalled all the ways she had been helped, knowingly or unknowingly, a bitter feeling quickly settled over her.

They would have continued living together, exchanging conversations like this.

But those people were no longer here.

The conclusion spoke too clearly for her to even put it into words.

Her thoughts became tangled.

One after another, the faces of the people she had awkwardly coexisted with at the Grand Duke’s residence came to mind.

Breaking the awkward silence, Laertes moved.

His destination was the bookshelf.

“You studied with these?”

“Yes. They’re all research books on magic. They’re organized according to difficulty, so they were good for studying.”

She decided she would give him Lottie’s notebook later, when the timing was right.

Preferably when they could sit down and rest properly.

Honestly, she wasn’t looking forward to having to explain why she had torn it to pieces with her fingernails.

Swallowing dryly, Airy opened the bookshelf.

“There is magic on the bookshelves.”

“Do they keep opening?”

“Yes. They keep going.”

“Again and again.”

With a grunt, Airy opened the second bookshelf, and Laertes lent his strength.

He looked astonished.

“How many are there? Did you open them all the way to the end?”

“No. I think I opened about ten rows. I didn’t go any farther. We don’t know what might be there, and it could be dangerous.”

Airy shrugged.

“I probably wouldn’t have been able to read them all anyway. I absolutely hate taking unnecessary risks. I’m more timid than I look.”

Laertes wore an expression that clearly disagreed.

Airy had no intention of preaching her safety-first philosophy to him, so she simply opened another layer of bookshelves.

Perhaps something about Airy’s attitude made him think of it, because the man was silent for a moment before speaking.

“Airy, you know, I wasn’t the one who put you in the basement.”

Airy turned toward him.

“I’m certain of that. When I went inside, the basement door was already closed.”

At the time, the boy had only wanted to hide inside the study of the annex—the room that the maids found intimidating—and cause Airy a little trouble.

He had been hiding behind the long curtains covering the study window.

He had covered his mouth, struggling to suppress the laughter that kept threatening to burst out.

He swore he knew nothing about what happened afterward.

The maid he adored and followed everywhere had walked down the basement stairs as though entranced.

There had been the sound of something rolling.

Then a scream.

And finally, the hollow sound of the door slamming shut.

“I immediately ran after you and tried to open the door. But it wouldn’t open, and I could feel an enormous reaction of mana from inside…”

“This isn’t something I’m saying because I’m trying to invent an excuse out of guilt over a mistake I made as a child.”

He continued speaking while scanning the bookshelves and opening them one after another.

He didn’t look into Airy’s eyes or plead his case through his expression.

But Airy understood.

And she believed him.

Laertes hadn’t told her everything there.

But that day, he had cried for hours while waiting desperately for the adults of the household to return.

And it was only late that night, when no one came, that he learned of the signs of the world’s destruction.

His grandfather had died.

And when Laertes had cried so much that no tears would come anymore, his father had finally returned.

After hearing what had happened, his father had gently stroked the boy’s head.

—Rael, don’t worry. There is preservation magic in the basement, and Airy Aster is an awakened beginner mage, so her survival won’t be a problem at all. In fact, during a time like this, she’ll probably be safer there.

Hearing those words had eased the boy’s guilt somewhat.

—I can’t guarantee it, but perhaps someone beyond our imagination created this situation to ensure the safety of that maid. Don’t try to force yourself to resist it, and don’t torment yourself too much. Just protect that place.

Laertes remembered his father’s face from that final moment.

He had been smiling peacefully, like a man who had no idea that any hardship awaited him.

—I guarantee it. High-ranking mages sometimes notice the movements of gods.

He had never imagined that twelve years would pass.

But those words had been the only comfort Laertes had possessed throughout all those years.

In the silence shared by the two of them—

Thunk.

The fourteenth bookshelf opened.

Airy instinctively took a step backward.

“…What’s this?”

It was a door.

A bronze door.

Laertes looked equally shocked.

“I’ve heard about the basement from time to time, but…”

Airy carefully traced the spell structures with her fingers.

“There’s concealment and a locking spell. The inside seems to be considered the caster’s side, so I think it only functions from the opposite direction.”

There were additional spells that reinforced it, but they didn’t apply in this case.

“An emergency exit? In case the basement door becomes blocked?”

“Maybe. It can be deactivated. And the magic stones are embedded in an extremely efficient manner.”

The design placed greater emphasis on durability than functionality.

Airy judged that whoever designed it had probably created the door with a crisis situation in mind.

Whether the space beyond the door was actually an escape route or led somewhere else could only be determined by going outside.

Before Laertes could even prepare himself, Airy placed her palm against the magic stone and absorbed the mana.

A massive amount of active mana flowed into Airy, but it couldn’t accumulate inside her and instead dispersed.

Once an exit appeared, the remaining mana following the magic circle leaked out after it.

After the magic was dispelled, the door opened remarkably smoothly despite its weight.

“Light.”

At Laertes’s command, the source of illumination shifted.

Light shot into the pitch-black space, revealing a circular chamber.

An unlit chandelier hung from the ceiling.

“It just looks like an empty space. There’s nothing here.”

“Let’s take a look.”

The stagnant air from both sides mixed together, creating a strange current of wind.

Airy stood beside Laertes and slowly examined her surroundings.

She wondered if she might be able to sense even the faintest flow of mana.

Eventually, she discovered a magic circle engraved upside down into the stone at roughly the nine o’clock position from the basement.

Airy clenched her fist.

“This is another simple locking spell. It looks like there’s a mechanism for opening it from the outside.”

Of the two sides, the more perfectly concealed one was the basement.

Once the door behind the bookshelves was opened and then closed from the other side, there wasn’t even a trace of it remaining.

It was concealment magic.

Unlike the door before them, there wasn’t even a hint of an engraved magic circle to reveal its presence.

Airy carefully examined the dome-shaped chamber all the way up to the ceiling.

She couldn’t find anything unusual.

Satisfied that there was nothing else suspicious, she turned to Laertes, who was absorbed in examining the engraved pattern.

“Could you break through it?”

“Huh?”

“This magic circle has to be deactivated from the other side. From here, there’s no way to open it except by destroying it.”

“How do we destroy it?”

“Think of it as a monster and hit it.”

Airy remembered the magic she had witnessed when she first emerged from the basement.

Laertes’s method of attacking was brutally simple and overwhelmingly powerful.

Just as compressed air could become a weapon when used as a blow, he simply unleashed a huge mass of mana and struck with it.

Naturally, it was extremely inefficient.

Unless, of course, you possessed a mana capacity like a whale’s.

Laertes extended a hand and motioned for Airy to step back.

“If fragments fly out, you could get hurt.”

Even now, he hadn’t considered the possibility of failure.

He was simply confident that this wall couldn’t possibly be stronger than the monsters.

“Explode.”

Apparently, Explode was the only offensive spell he could cast with any proficiency.

At least, that was what Airy thought.

The spell was terribly unsuited for breaking through a wall.

The stone wall shattered into gravel, fragments about the size of pebbles flying in every direction.

In that instant, Airy made a split-second decision.

She opened her precious mana circle, which had barely a fingernail’s worth of mana remaining, and shouted—

“Protect!!!”

A thin defensive magic circle unfolded, barely large enough to protect the heads of two people.

Airy collapsed as blood poured from her nose from mana depletion.

As she fell, she thought for a moment—

This was still a better decision than getting knocked unconscious by flying stones.

Airy Aster was having a wonderful dream.

She was in the beautifully maintained garden of the Grand Duke’s residence, basking in the warm sunlight of late spring.

A picnic mat had been spread across the grass, its surface decorated with a colorful basket of fruit as though it were an artistic arrangement.

Sitting across from her was a handsome, healthy young master who looked to be around eighteen or nineteen.

They alternated between eating beef sandwiches and drinking tea.

At some point, Airy had taken out an apple and was peeling it.

Then a pig appeared.

Airy was unconsciously delighted.

A pig appeared in my dream! That’s a good omen!

She offered the pig a slice of the apple she had been peeling.

The pig happily accepted it, licking the saliva onto Airy’s fingers as it ate.

A pig appeared in my dream, and I gave it food! What an auspicious dream!

Airy happily savored everything.

The air.

The smell.

The sunlight.

Even the damp sensation on her fingertip.

The pig seemed happy too.

“Oink. Oink-oink.”

Somehow, this feels incredibly realistic.

Slowly awakening from her dream, Airy smacked her lips.

A warm, comfortable feeling lingered pleasantly over her.

She opened her eyes.

And Airy found herself staring directly into the eyes of a baby pig that was licking her finger with its small, damp, rough tongue.