Chapter 176. Could the Wyvern Be a Good Omen?
As soon as Aster returned to his room and shut the door, he let out a soft laugh—“Heh.”
To be honest, I had a hard time holding back the twitching at the corners of my mouth the whole time I listened to that story.
So, in other words—
“Spirits are trapped in there?”
And not just one or two, either.
According to Mycelln’s guess, there were at least hundreds… maybe even over a thousand.
But what did that have to do with anything?
Think about it.
When people go fishing, they call a spot where the fish bite well a “sweet spot,” and they’ll say it’s “half water, half fish.”
In a place like that, even a beginner can pull fish up without too much trouble—and the key point was this.
“So basically… there are a lot of fish.”
And on top of that, spirits are kind of pure?
No—spirits are very pure.
Just how pure are we talking…? Right. Would you believe it if I said they can be so moved by the smallest kindness that they follow you for the rest of their lives?
People often say you dish out bad karma by the doe and get it back by the mal, but spirits are the type to receive kindness by the doe and repay it by the mal.
In other words, ki— no. Anyway.
But spirits like that, in the hundreds or thousands?
“Heh, hehehe.”
Countless spirits reaching out to shake my hand.
A tower built by thousands upon thousands of spirits working together.
Isn’t it magnificent just to imagine?
Labor cost: zero. No food bill, either.
All you need is a chunk of land to raise the tower on.
“Strictly speaking, moonlight stones are more of a preferred snack, so that doesn’t count.”
…Of course, that’s the ideal scenario.
“Even if I only reel in one, I’m still making a profit.”
But that would only be a side benefit.
So then—what was the real reward?
- If you help me with this… I’ll hand over part of my spirit arts grimoire to you. It isn’t knowledge I inherited from my master, but something I organized from the enlightenment I gained in my later years, so it should still be of help.
A spirit arts grimoire personally written by the Spiritist of the Cutting Wind!
“Ah. You couldn’t get this even if you tried to pay for it.”
As expected of a man acknowledged by Grand Duke Muspellun?
“His scale of generosity is on a whole different level.”
And that wasn’t all.
If I got a little closer to him through this opportunity, wouldn’t he do even more for me later?
From the look of it, he seemed lonely all by himself—he might even donate his fortune to the tower. No, better yet, I could have him reside in the tower.
Invite those white-haired, bored seniors into the tower, and serve them as a proper junior. Then they’d lend a hand with something, wouldn’t they?
And even putting all that aside, meeting Senior Mycelln felt like a good sign in more ways than one.
“Could the wyvern be a good omen?”
If not, how else could fortune come rolling in like this—with the whole vine attached?
And it wasn’t like the task itself was difficult, either.
Back in the days of the Hamelin Great Forest, Senior Riheim’s condition had been so dire that I had no choice but to step in personally… but Senior Mycelln now wasn’t like that.
Sure, compared to his prime he might have slowed a little—
—but his overall strength was still considerable.
Which meant he could even be the handler of a performing bear…
Still, there was one thing that caught at me.
Aster lay down on the bed and continued his thoughts.
So, what Senior Mycelln had said was…
- I don’t know why, but the spirits designated you as their target for salvation. They say you’re the one who can save them.
…That’s what he said.
For some reason, it gave me a bad feeling.
But only for a moment.
Aster quickly shook off the lingering thoughts.
“The die has already been cast.”
All that remained was what number it would land on.
There was nothing more to gain by worrying. I’d already agreed to do it—so all that was left was to do it.
If I succeeded, I’d gain countless slaves, and I won’t even consider failure.
Because justice always wins.
Why?
“Because whoever wins is justice.”
That was all there was to it.
And so, after finishing breakfast that morning—
After we’d steeled our resolve, Senior Mycelln and I met in the drawing room and got straight to work.
We didn’t have much time.
“The Fairy Dance is accompanied by the spirits’ powerful mental impressions. When I was young, I could manage it well enough, but now it’s a bit difficult.”
Ah—just for the record, no one could hear those accompanying mental impressions except Senior Mycelln.
I even asked around to see if other spiritists had ever heard them, but it seemed he was the only one who ever had.
“If it’s like that, I can see why he’d think of it as a calling.”
Anyway, before we left, we put our heads together to identify the location where Amera’s spirits were trapped as precisely as possible.
To be honest, I didn’t do much.
Senior Mycelln had already predicted the location to some extent.
No—should I even call it a “prediction”? It was closer to a hypothesis.
“As you know, countless renowned houses and famed mages have searched the Amera region thoroughly. Not only magical tracking, but every means and method imaginable—they’ve pursued it relentlessly.”
Senior Mycelln, of course, was no exception.
At one point, he had even released a wind spirit—Fury, or whatever-his-name-was—across the entirety of Amera to sweep the area.
“But the location was never identified. The Amera region was clean. So here is what I think.”
Surely the place where the spirits were trapped had facilities in place to prevent magical and spiritual tracking.
And that led to a problem.
Aster flicked his gaze toward the entrance of the drawing room, then spoke.
“Then does that mean we have to find it by running around on foot in the end?”
“No, not quite. Thanks to the mages searching every nook and cranny for so many years, there’s nothing left to check on the surface.”
“Then…”
Senior Mycelln pointed at the floor.
“What I’m thinking of is underground.”
“Underground…?”
“Not just any underground. Think about how the Fairy Dance blooms. The answer is the lakes.”
“The lakes?”
Senior Mycelln nodded.
Then, as if he’d been waiting for this, he pulled out a map of the Amera region from his clothes and showed it to me—covered in dense notes.
What year the Fairy Dance occurred, and which lakes it had bloomed from.
How long each period lasted, and which lakes had never bloomed at all.
“It was quite difficult. I can guarantee no renowned house investigated it as thoroughly as I did. I borrowed connections on the imperial side.”
In any case, with the map spread out, Senior Mycelln continued.
“What we must pay attention to are the lakes where the Fairy Dance has never occurred—not even once. Here. Look.”
The places he indicated were lakes marked in red—big and small lakes scattered here and there.
“These lakes have something in common.”
“A commonality…?”
“Waterways. That is, the water flow is blocked. More precisely, you could say they don’t connect to the ‘other lakes.’”
As he said that, Senior Mycelln tapped each of the red-marked lakes one by one.
In summary, it was this.
“My guess is that the place where the spirits are trapped is somewhere along the ‘underground waterways’ shared by the lakes.”
Hold on.
I cut him off and asked.
“Aren’t you saying the parts you marked in red are isolated lakes?”
“That’s right.”
Then something didn’t add up.
“But this lake here has a record of the Fairy Dance blooming.”
It wasn’t only one.
Among the lakes he marked in red, a few had records showing the Fairy Dance had bloomed there in the past.
In other words, his own 자료—his own data—was contradicting his claim.
So why?
Senior Mycelln didn’t answer right away.
He simply leaned back against the chair with an unhurried, gentle smile, wetting his lips with tea.
He looked oddly proud—and it wasn’t long before he finally spoke.
“I’ve been waiting for that question.”
“…?”
“Mages always have this problem. They try to grasp every phenomenon with nothing but numbers and records.”
Suddenly?
“Do you know this? Nature is always moving. It lives and breathes. A great mountain can be worn down and become flat land, and sometimes a desert, after long ages, can become a forest.”
And it wasn’t only nature that lived and breathed.
“Like the heads of those pen-pushers.”
Of course, theirs only grew more barren with no fertility, little by little.
Anyway, what Senior Mycelln was trying to say was this.
“Eiki told me.”
“Eiki?”
“Ah, a water spirit. In any case, according to Eiki, those lakes used to have connected waterways long ago. The other lakes were the same. Would you look over here?”
The lake he pointed at was one that had no record of the Fairy Dance. Yet he’d marked it in green.
“This lake has no records, but it’s green. Do you know why?”
I didn’t.
Senior Mycelln opened his mouth immediately after.
“In the past the waterways were closed, but now they’re open. I can guarantee it—before long, the Fairy Dance will bloom here as well. …Of course, that’s only if we fail to save the spirits this time.”
He spoke proudly, only to droop at the very end.
It made it painfully clear how sincere he was about this… and how much he loved spirits.
“That precious spirit… I’ll take good care of it.”
Just let me catch one. Just one.
Anyway, the location he expected was underground waterways.
“Then… how are we going to move…?”
“With me here, what is there to worry about? The only question is how long it will take.”
“Hm.”
“What is it?”
When I let out a low hum, Senior Mycelln asked.
Maybe my troubled expression showed more than I thought, but it couldn’t be helped.
“I’m kind of… being held in Brando right now.”
“…You seem to be enjoying luxuries.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
In other words, I couldn’t be away for long.
If this were the academy, I could make up some excuse, but if I disappeared from here, there’d definitely be an uproar.
But Senior Mycelln spoke as if to tell me not to worry.
“I’ll move on my own and investigate that part. Once I pinpoint the exact location, you can come with me then.”
“S-so… that’s how it is?”
“You look like you’re in a good mood?”
“It’s—oh yeah.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I mean, oh, I see.”
In truth, “oh yeah” was exactly right.
He was saying he’d handle the most annoying part all by himself.
If you don’t cheer at that, there are only two possibilities.
Either you’re a hopeless sucker who loves to sacrifice, or you’re such an extreme perfectionist that you can’t trust anyone else.
In any case, since I was neither, it was more than enough reason to go “oh yeah.”
But as I spoke, one problem suddenly came to mind.
“By the way… are you going to be okay?”
“With what?”
“You said you were going to teach Demian spirit arts. Will you have time?”
“That’s…”
Senior Mycelln suddenly fell silent.
I understood how he felt.
Teaching Demian spirit arts was close to impossible.
But was his conscience pricked?
Senior Mycelln made an excuse.
“…His aptitude isn’t bad.”
Sure. Of course.
The problem was that it ended exactly there.
What does it matter if he has aptitude? The spirits won’t even contract—they’ll all run away.
Senior Mycelln wore a face shadowed by worry for a moment, then brushed back the hair that had fallen and sighed.
“Isn’t it possible the child won’t even want to learn? From what I think, he doesn’t seem particularly interested.”
Yesterday, Senior Mycelln had told Demian, “Think about it until the first lesson and let me know.”
I knew his intention well.
For a mage who’d reached a certain level, spirit arts wasn’t exactly an attractive field of study.
Rather than spreading your focus thin on something that was neither here nor there, you’d choose to concentrate on magic.
“So he probably tossed out the offer without any real plan…”
Honestly, I had nothing to say about that part.
Because—
- But is spirit arts even fun? It doesn’t seem like it’d be fun. It just sounds annoying.
Last night, Demian asked me that while we were night-fishing.
So I answered.
- It’ll be fun.
- Why?
- Think about it. You get a friend that only you can see. Not an imaginary friend. Wouldn’t that be fun all by itself?
- Hm. Is that so?
- If you learn it, it’ll come in handy for anything. If anything, why don’t you ask him to take you as a disciple while you’re at it? If you learn properly, it’ll be fun.
I admit it.
I said it because I wanted him to get screwed.
The way he’d come all the way here to capture me(?) was just too nasty.
“Ahem… but isn’t it almost lesson time?”
“Mm. Yes.”
Before we knew it, it was time for Senior Mycelln and Demian’s first lesson.
I quietly slipped away.
“Good luck.”
“…Thank you.”
You never know.
Demian might contract with a spirit in a brilliant way and save Senior Mycelln’s dignity.
“If you’re really worried, why don’t you just teach him your direct lineage’s secret art? That way even if Demian can’t contract, you’ll still save face.”
“…To a child who isn’t even my disciple?”
Tsk.
I was trying to get him to cough up some of his fundamentals, but his defenses were solid.
Apparently, he’s no pushover.
