Chapter 11

Chapter 11

“Gah, what the...... What is that monster of a bastard?!”

“Damn it, why are you standing there in a daze? Attack first and do something about him!”

“‘Do something about him’ is easy to say, but magic and aura don’t work on him at all, so what are we supposed to do?!”

“Uaaaaaaagh!”

Amid the chaotic mix of screams and shouts from the mercenaries guarding the mansion, I slowly looked around. The lavish scenery of a stair hall that opened through the first to third floors in a duplex structure filled my vision. Decorated extravagantly with all sorts of craftsmanship, the sight made it clear at a glance that this mansion belonged to a great magnate who had accumulated tremendous wealth.

Normally, one might be unable to help marveling at it and feel awe toward the family that owned such an incredible place, but the emotion I felt was completely removed from that.

So you lived dreaming atop glory built by mere theft, Hustein. While I sank alone, thinking of death.

Feeling my face twist to its limit, I began moving forward one step at a time while wrapped in a destruction formula. I felt a faint flinch from the stairs above, and then, with a crash of footsteps, mercenaries hurriedly poured down in front of me.

“Y-You bastard!”

“D-Die!”

“Uaaaaah!”

With noisy threats, the swordsmen who had all but leaped down from the third floor to the first floor swung their weapons at me menacingly. SWISH. Blades tinged faintly with green light cut through the air as they flew toward me. Before they could even touch my body, I brought over the attack formulas being cast toward me from above the staircase and deployed them. Razor-sharp lightning roared as it flowed along the blades and into the swordsmen’s bodies. Charred lumps of coal, blackened before they could even scream, drifted weakly through the air.

Before those things could be caught by gravity and fall to the floor, the flames that unfolded next swallowed the lumps of coal. The oxidized lumps scattered into ash powder, then were swept up by the gust of wind that followed and vanished without a trace.

“W-Was that magic always that powerful......?!”

“I’m sure it was supposed to be single-target attack magic, so how did it cover such a wide range......?”

“Damn it, at this rate, we’ll be wiped o— Urk?!”

The few who had survived by hiding behind pillars above the staircase had only just begun to stir in astonishment when the stair hall began collapsing as though a sugar sculpture were being crushed. It was the result of the magic I had snatched from the mercenaries and deployed beating the entire surrounding area at random.

“Urk?! Guh?!”

“Th-This is...... Gah, damn it......!”

“N-No good! Retreat for n— Gah?!”

Above the heads of the mercenaries fleeing in a panic, the luxuriously decorated walls and ceiling vomited out all kinds of fixtures with a roar. A fortunate few barely avoided them and fled beyond the corridor, but most were swept away without even managing a proper scream and dragged down to the mansion’s basement.

The only thing not swept away was me.

It was not that none of this chaos came crashing down over me and my surroundings. It was only that everything pouring down over me disassembled before it could touch me and returned from form to concept.

In the first place, I was not paying attention to this petty commotion at all. My nerves were focused solely on the stolen goods that should be somewhere in this pointlessly large, gaudy thieves’ den: the source formula of the magic scroll.

That was partly because of my personal past...... but also because the content of my ongoing research assignment had been newly updated.

***

[Research Assignment] No. 703083-453

＃001. Field Investigation of the Location Where the Pillar of Fire Manifested

→ Complete!! But do not stop here. Complete it to the end!!

＃002. Identification and Analysis of All Formulas Involved in the Pillar of Fire Manifestation

→ Formula design state and defect check complete.

→ Recover and restore the source formula to correct defects!!

→ Proceed with correction work after source formula restoration!!

☆★P.S. 1★☆ Do not keep putting it off because you lack motivation. Untie the knot you tied!!

☆★P.S. 2★☆ Completion urged within this year at the latest!!!!!!!!!!!

☆★P.S. 3★☆ Absolutely forbidden to put it off until year-end just because I said within this year!!!!!!

***

No, Master...... Why are you so desperate to roll me around like this......?

Your unworthy disciple has so little energy right now that he feels as if he could collapse and die at any moment. I completed two research assignments just today. Could you not let me rest a little?

......Of course, even if I pleaded like that, it was obvious how Master would answer. My master would probably say this.

-A research assignment is like washing dishes. If you keep putting it off and try to do it all at once, it takes a long time and makes you suffer, but if you handle it then and there, you can finish it relatively quickly and easily. Therefore, should you not complete them immediately instead of putting them off? Yes, you, of all people.

“Haaah.......”

Feeling as if I had been pushed from behind, I let out deep sighs and barely moved my body, sagging like waterlogged cotton, to deploy tracking magic. A purple-glowing marker flew several meters, and there, I detected numerous human presences and the target. After roughly checking, they seemed to be the owner of this place and his family.

From the look of it, they had taken refuge in a secret space to avoid the intruder - meaning me - but since I had blocked every path leading outside from the very beginning, including secret passages, they had no choice but to hide there, right? It did not seem like a very wise choice while the building was collapsing...... but what did I care?

I slowly dragged my heavy steps in their direction. Every object around me split left and right like an ebbing tide, creating a path before me. Even during that, mercenaries caught in the chaos while trying to flee fell from above or poured out attacks for the sake of protecting themselves, but those attempts, too, merely returned from form to concept.

And at the end of that, when I finally arrived at my destination, a scene unfolded before me of people dressed in finery, huddled close together in fear. They were like rats gathered together to avoid the cold.

After silently looking over them for a moment, I soon found one bastard clutching a box to his chest. He was probably the family head.

“Hand that over.”

“Wh-What...... Do you even know what this is, demanding I hand it over out of nowhere?”

“What else would it be? It’s the source formula of the magic scroll. There’s a seal stamped beside it too.”

When I pointed at the Royal Academy graduation seal from more than nine hundred years ago that remained in one corner of the box, the family head flinched, his face flushing red and blue as he clutched the box tightly.

“Th-This is a family treasure left behind by our great ancestor! For you to dare covet such a thing, you heaven-cursed......!”

“Why would I receive divine punishment? Your ancestor bastard didn’t, even after he committed theft. And you bastards are perfectly fine too, after living well all this time off the stolen goods he robbed.”

“Wh-What......”

The family head was struck speechless, his mouth opening and closing as he did not know what to do. He seemed to want to say something, but it was not worth listening to, and explaining more was bothersome, so I simply deployed a formula. Space flickered once within the purple-woven formula, and the worn-out box appeared in the air, landing in my hand.

Seeing that, the family head was startled, felt around his chest, then shouted at me in rage.

“Gah?! Y-You...... You thief......!”

“I told you, the thieves are your ancestors.”

“Shut your mouth, you wretch!”

With a thunderous roar of anger, the family head deployed attack magic. A few of his family members flinched and rose from their seats to stop him, only to scream and be flung here and there. The family head’s magic, intercepted by me, had swallowed the family head and his family members as it was.

“Aaaaaaagh?!”

“G-Gngh.......”

“S-Save me.......”

Amid the rows of wet, sticky groans, I opened the box with trembling hands and checked its contents. A hollow laugh burst out of me on its own. The handwriting that filled the worn-out stack of documents densely, no matter how one looked at it, was not Elclid’s but mine from around the age of eight.

“What is this? He just submitted mine exactly as it was?”

Of course, there was a superfluous note Elclid had roughly scribbled and attached to the very last page. But calling hundreds of pages of documents Elclid’s work because of that single page would be utterly absurd. In other words, Elclid had not even gone to the effort of copying it over.

I had only heard the content that was presented, so I had not known this until now...... How could this be this absurd? It was supposed to be a graduation thesis. Well, I suppose a bastard like this was exactly why he could not graduate even when he was nearly forty.

While it was pathetic, I also felt complicated and hollow. At this level, the professors back then must have realized at a glance that this thesis had not been written by Elclid. And yet they had let it pass...... which meant they had found me so irritating that they wanted to get rid of me however they could.

Truly...... there was nothing there. Not anyone on my side, not even the barest conscience.

When I lowered my gaze with a hollow heart, I saw my face reflected in the dark red puddle pooling on the floor. It wore an expression that was neither clearly crying nor laughing.

For an instant, I felt the impulse to tear this stack of documents to shreds and destroy it. But I could not put it into action. Because I knew that destroying this would not make the past disappear, and because Master’s Notebook flashed and flapped at the back of my waist, reminding me of the existence of the research assignment.

***

☆★P.S. 1★☆ Do not keep putting it off because you lack motivation. Untie the knot you tied!!

☆★P.S. 2★☆ Completion urged within this year at the latest!!!!!!!!!!!

☆★P.S. 3★☆ Absolutely forbidden to put it off until year-end just because I said within this year!!!!!!

☆★P.S. 4★☆ Complete without fail!!! Giving up midway forbidden!!!

***

A-All right....... I won’t tear it. I really won’t tear it, okay? Honestly, Master, why would I go to the trouble of tearing this up for no reason? Even if I tore it up, you would tell me to restore it to its original state anyway. You would say I must complete the research assignment no matter what.......

Grumbling inwardly with a sigh, I put the documents back into the box and held it against my chest. When I turned to leave like that, the family head’s urgent voice came from behind me.

“N-No! Please, please return it! That is...... that is our family’s treasure!”

“What are you talking about? This is mine. I’m not the one who needs to return it. You bastards are.”

“Wh-What are you saying......”

“You still don’t understand what I’m saying? You must be even stupider than average.”

Perhaps flustered by the sarcasm, the family head stammered and hesitated. Then, when he noticed me deploying a spatial movement formula, he urgently shouted again.

“E-Even if that was originally yours! We merely made use of what we had! If you are going to ask someone to pay for the crime, ask our ancestors! Why are you harming us, who committed no crime?!”

What the hell was he even saying? I laughed at the family head as I finished deploying spatial movement magic.

“If you’ve profited for nearly a thousand years off something stolen, that makes you bastards accomplices too.”

Even if one were to say they were not accomplices...... could this not simply be seen as finally paying the price for having lived while enjoying the benefits all this time?

But I had no idea why I had to calculate that for them. They could think about it themselves.

After cutting him off briefly, I left that place.