At night the Twilight Manor was like a quiet castle in the air, quietly making itself felt under the moonlight.
After leaving Finn's office, Leo and Ais walked together along the sky corridor leading to the other towers, their footsteps rising and falling in rhythm.
Neither of them spoke. One looked ahead, the other kept her head down.
Before long a corner appeared in front of them, and both stopped at the same time.
"I'll head off, then." Leo stood facing the direction of the men's dormitory and spoke to Ais, who was still looking down. "Get some proper rest tonight."
Ais nodded once, lightly, which counted as a reply.
Leo was about to leave when Ais finally couldn't hold it in.
"Do you... do you think..."
Do you think someone like me is strange?
Ais wanted to ask that, but she couldn't get the words out, and it left her looking timid in a way she rarely did.
That look was nothing like the cold, powerful Sword Princess. It was more like an ordinary little girl you might see anywhere.
Perhaps this was Ais's truest side.
Leo looked at her like that, saw that she couldn't bring herself to say the rest, and smiled.
He reached out, patted her head lightly, and spoke.
"Don't think about it too much." There was laughter in his eyes as he said it. "You're you, Ais Wallenstein. You're not some strange person."
"So you're the daughter of a great hero and a Great Spirit from a thousand years ago. So what?"
"That's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, everyone who learns your real identity ought to be treating you like something precious. That's what would make sense, understand?"
Whether it was the great hero Albert or the Great Spirit Aria, both were famous figures in history.
As their daughter, Ais's standing should have been an exalted one, probably no less than a real princess, and in some ways even more special.
The way Leo saw it, feeling inferior because of that identity, worrying about being seen as some kind of aberration, was itself a very strange thing.
So Ais's worry and unease were entirely unnecessary.
"...Really? It isn't strange?"
Ais lifted her eyes, looked at the laughter in his, and asked in a low voice.
"It isn't."
Leo's voice was quiet, but the weight and finality it carried were something anyone could hear.
That eased the worry and unease in Ais's heart a little.
"...Thank you."
The girl answered softly as well, and that rare timidity finally vanished.
"Go get some rest." Only then did Leo say it. "There's probably still a lot for us to do after this."
Ais knew what he meant. She drew a deep breath and nodded firmly.
The two parted ways, each heading toward their own dormitory.
Leo thought to himself as he walked.
The seed's been planted. Now I just wait for it to keep sprouting.
With that thought, Leo returned to his room.
...
The next day...
Leo had just gotten up and stepped out of his room when he ran into Raul, who had come looking for him.
"There's a Guild employee here for you and Miss Ais. Says he has something to hand over to you two."
Raul stated his errand, which left Leo blank for a moment.
"The Guild?"
Then, as though something had occurred to him, Leo thanked Raul, and he and Ais arrived at the reception room one after the other to meet the Guild employee.
The man handed them a key, saying he'd been instructed from above to bring it over, along with a message for the two of them.
"This is the reward as agreed."
Hearing that, not only Leo but Ais too realized exactly who had sent it.
It was the man in black who had made the request of them the day before, sending them to Floor 24 of the Dungeon to deal with the Irregular that had occurred there. In other words, Fels the Sage.
He had clearly already learned everything that had happened in the Pantry on Floor 24 from Hermes Familia, and had made good on his earlier promise by preparing their reward.
Leo had been looking forward to this for a while, so he immediately pulled Ais along and headed for the Gnome rental vault.
The key was a key to a Gnome rental vault.
In Orario's East District, Gnomes had set up a facility called the Safe-Deposit. Its main function was renting out vaults to the public and safeguarding people's money, which is to say it was the bank here.
The common currency of this world was, after all, gold coins, and ten thousand valis alone could fill an entire purse. Once a person's assets passed a million, they either found a vault to store it in or spent every day hauling around a big sack stuffed with gold coins.
So the Gnome rental vaults were popular, and plenty of people had done business there and rented one.
The key Fels had given Leo and Ais opened a small vault.
Yet when Leo and Ais opened it, this small vault was packed with glittering precious gems, gold and silver jewelry, rare artistically worked items, and even several Grimoires. It was a treasure vault, plain and simple.
The dazzling array left Ais, the strongest female swordsman in the city, staring blankly, and even Leo's eyes lit up. He felt a little thrill he couldn't suppress.
This Sage is someone I can work with...
That was the only thought in Leo's head just then.
His request had been a raw deal and dangerous, and without Leo and Ais the other party that had taken it on, Hermes Familia, might have been wiped out entirely in the incident. But perhaps for exactly that reason, Fels's payment was extraordinarily generous, enough for a large Familia to digest for a good while.
For Hermes Familia, who handled business across all sorts of industries year-round, this must have been an unprecedented contract.
Dangerous it certainly was, but seeing a reward this generous, they would surely feel it had been worth it.
So, after tallying up how much money the contents of the vault could be exchanged for, Leo and Ais decided where the money would go.
Ais decided to hand the entire sum over to the Familia for the upcoming expedition. After the last incident, the Familia's funds had run into some trouble and were nearly bottomed out. People like Tiona, whose main weapons had been destroyed, were still in debt, and since Ais herself wasn't short on money, letting the Familia put the funds to work was obviously best.
Leo likewise intended to give most of the money to the Familia. The Familia had looked after him all this time, and even most of the equipment he carried came from the Familia, or rather from the personal sponsorship of the Familia's goddess Loki. Now that he had money, of course he had to step in when the Familia was in difficulty.
However, considering that he still had to pay for his custom weapon later, Leo didn't hand over everything the way Ais had, and kept a little for himself.
Not much: roughly two or three hundred million valis in value. Added to his original savings, it should be enough to pay for the custom weapon that was coming.
On top of that, Leo also kept the several Grimoires from the vault.
Whether his third magic would appear depended on those Grimoires.
...
The Twilight Manor, the library...
In that silent study, Leo sat in the seat he always sat in.
In front of him, on the surface of the desk, a Grimoire had been slowly opened.
This Grimoire was clearly the Sage's own work, its contents entirely different from the Grimoire that had come out of the Magic Kingdom of Altena, which Leo had used last time.
In the Grimoire Leo had used before, the opening chapter explained what magic was, along with some basic knowledge related to magic.
This time, the Grimoire made by the Sage himself opened by discussing the classification and concept of the magic adventurers unearthed through the Falna, and what it depended upon.
"The magic adventurers unearth through the Falna differs from magic in the traditional sense. Because it is influenced by unstable factors such as the person's interests, essence, will, wishes, and past experiences, its effects vary wildly. Compared with magic in the traditional sense, it is undoubtedly more particular, more bizarre, even heretical."
This was the summary the Sage himself had drawn, or rather a kind of subconscious guidance for whoever read the Grimoire.
Leo was no longer a novice at magic. Under the teaching of Riveria, the strongest Mage in the city, he might not count as any sort of master of magic, but he already had a sufficient understanding and grasp of it.
So Leo could tell from between the Sage's lines that the man intended, through this method of subconscious guidance, to let the reader of the Grimoire understand his own essence more deeply, and so unearth the magic best suited to him.
If the Grimoire Leo had used last time was a standardized assembly-line product with only the most basic function, then this Grimoire was a fine piece the author had carefully crafted, and the maker's care was obvious.
This should raise the user's chances of learning new magic, shouldn't it?
Leo clicked his tongue in admiration, thinking that a master of magic who had survived eight hundred years in the world lived up to his name. The Grimoire he'd made with his own hands was of far higher quality than an ordinary one.
But as a Grimoire, its function was still to help others learn new magic.
So within the lines of this Grimoire that Fels had made by hand, there were still those unusual, tiny characters.
The tiny characters, like a string of complex and strange marks, drew Leo into a wondrous spiritual world just as before, leaving his mind somewhat hazy.
In that state, the contents of the book before Leo's eyes shifted as they had last time, gradually forming a mirrored face woven and outlined in all-black strokes, exactly the same as Leo's own.
That three-dimensional face, empty above the forehead, opened its eyes and met Leo's gaze.
"If you seek, ask. If you seek, resolve. If you desire, watch closely. The ugly mirror that permits no falsehood stands ready here."
The words seemed to echo inside his heart, exactly the same as last time.
What followed was the same as well.
"To 'me', what is magic?"
"To 'me', what is magic, then?"
"To 'me', what kind of thing is magic?"
"To 'me', what do I seek from magic?"
Four questions in a row, all interrogating Leo's heart, dissecting his essence, digging out the possibilities hidden within him, seeking to unearth as much as possible of his interests, essence, will, wishes, and past experiences, and turn them into a brand-new power, into magic, into a new strength for Leo.
And whether it was because Fels's opening guidance had taken effect, or because this time the situation differed from before, the answers Leo gave this time were different too.
He thought of Riveria, and he thought of Lefiya.
Both of them were Mages who had learned all three magics, but their magic was extremely special, which meant the number of spells they could use went far beyond three.
All three of Riveria's magics possessed a single trait: Chant Link.
This was a magic trait only she, a royal princess, could possess. Its effect was to divide a spell into three stages, changing the spell's effect and even its attribute depending on the amount of chant spoken.
For example, Riveria's first magic was an ultra-long chant wide-area annihilation spell, but she could split that spell's chant into three segments.
Chanting only one segment, Riveria invoked a short chant ice-attribute magic: Wynn Fimbulvetr.
Chanting only two segments, Riveria invoked a long chant flame-attribute magic: Rea Laevateinn.
And if she chanted all three segments, Riveria invoked her strongest magic, an ultra-long chant spell: Vas Windheim.
This was why Riveria was called Nine Hell.
Her three magics possessed attack, defense, and recovery effects respectively, but with the Chant Link trait she could flexibly use each spell's different effects, wielding one magic as three, so that in the end the magic she could use amounted to nine kinds in total.
And Lefiya was even more absurd. Her third magic, Elf Ring, was a summoning magic, and what it summoned was magic learned by her own race. Any spell learned by a member of the Elf race, she could use through it.
In other words, Riveria's nine magics, Lefiya could use through Elf Ring, and other people's magic as well, so long as the user was an Elf and Lefiya herself knew the conditions for invoking it and its chant.
Limited by race, unlimited in number, which was why she had received the alias Thousand Elf. It meant that so long as the conditions were met, she could use even a thousand kinds of magic.
Add to that her extraordinary magical firepower, and that was why Lefiya, at only Lv.3, had been designated Riveria's successor.
So then...
What about me?
Thinking of those two, Leo couldn't help but wonder.
Can I master more than three magics?
Based on that thought, Leo gave answers entirely different from last time.
What is magic?
"Omnipotent and diverse. That is magic."
What is magic, then?
"Magic is a miracle without limits."
What kind of thing is magic?
"Something that holds infinite possibility, like the stars."
What do you seek from magic?
"For it to help me overcome any hardship and any despair."
And with that, a new possibility quietly sprouted.
A new power was born.
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