Secrets of the Silent Witch - Volume 4.5 - Chapter Pr

Prologue - The Seven Sages and the Library's Secret

Located in the northwest of the Kingdom of Ridill, the Haymes-Nalia Library is a collection of tomes so historied only the Library of Ascard, the nation’s most famous, outclasses it. Many precious books from earlier ages are preserved at the Haymes, and not only its collection, but also the building itself, has great historical value.

Sadly, however, the number of visitors decreases each year thanks to the difficulty of travel to and from the library. With the establishment’s lineage of librarian overseers having died out as well, many assumed the Haymes would be closed down in the not-so-distant future.

And just now, at that very library, two girls were having a chat behind the counter.

“Look at this,” said the slightly younger girl. “I’ve been so bored that I drew a flower on the visitor register and added a cute ribbon. I think it’s my best work yet—”

“Would you please just sit there and try to look intelligent?” the elder one replied. “There are Sages visiting from the capital today.”

“Didn’t they replace two of them half a year ago? I think they brought in the Barrier Mage and… Wait, who was the other one?”

“Lord Louis Miller is the Barrier Mage, and the other was Lady Monica Everett, the Silent Witch. They’re the ones coming, along with one other—Lord Ray Albright, the Abyss Shaman.”

The Haymes’s collection boasted an assortment of many grimoires and shamanic tomes. Managing them was extremely difficult, and some even required sealing barriers. The purpose of the Sages’ visit was to repair these and reinforce their seals.

“The Barrier Mage is the former captain of the Magic Corps, right? He’s so strong—and yet so gentlemanly and charming. Hee-hee… I wonder if he has a special someone.”

“Under no circumstances are you to beg him for an autograph or ask for his contact information, understood? You’d be soiling the library’s reputation.”

“Yes, ma’aaam!” replied the younger girl with enthusiasm.

Just then, from outside the window they’d left open for ventilation, they heard the clattering noise of something rolling along the ground. It wasn’t like the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage—it sounded like something smaller, perhaps just a cart.

The girls exchanged glances, wondering if they’d mistaken the day of their next book shipment, just as the doors leading into the library opened.

The first to appear was a man wearing his chestnut hair in a braid; he had been the one to push open the doors. He had a beautiful, feminine face and wore a monocle over his right eye. Despite it being summer, he sported a robe embroidered with gold thread. In his hand he carried a golden staff, easily as tall as he was, and rested it against his right shoulder.

In Ridill, the length of a mage’s staff signified their rank. Only those at the very pinnacle of magecraft—the Seven Sages—were permitted to carry one as tall as a person.

“Good day. My name is Louis Miller, the Barrier Mage. We’ve come at the request of the library’s supervisor.”

He flashed a smile, friendly and attractive—but the two girls’ eyes were glued to something behind him.

In his left hand, the man was gripping a rope, which was attached to a handcart that had come to a stop outside the library. Evidently, Louis had come all the way here pulling the cart behind him.

The cart itself was quite humble, looking more like a small door with wheels attached. Two others rode on it, each wearing the same robe as Louis, and each lying still as a corpse under the harsh summer sun.

As the girls at the counter glanced back and forth between them, the Barrier Mage put on an even more dazzling smile. “I know we’ve only just arrived, but would you happen to have a cup of water?”

The elder girl’s gaze immediately snapped back to Louis. “It is quite hot today, sir,” she replied. “I’ll get you some cold water right—”

“No, regular water is fine. And actually, no cups will be necessary. Bring a bucket,” said Louis, looking back at the pair of limp bodies on the cart. “I feel like giving these two prunes a splash.”

Whether or not they heard his voice, the two prunes in question slowly rose from the cart’s surface.

“Are…are we there yet…?”

“Ooh… I don’t feel so good…”

The first to get up was a young man with purple hair. The second, who rolled off the cart a moment later, was a short girl with her light-brown locks tied in messy braids. Neither of them had any color in their face, and both had their hands over their mouths.

Louis stared at them coldly. “Don’t you have anything to say? I was kind enough to drag both of you all the way here, you know.”

At his icy remark, the purple-haired man and the girl with the braids looked around, and each made strange moaning noises.

“Ugh, the summer sun, it burns my eyes… The summer refuses to love me… I’m so delicate I’ll shrivel up… The shade… Where is the shade…?”

The purple-haired man writhed, covering his eyes. But eventually, scraping himself along the ground like a dried-out insect, he managed to hide behind the shelves next to the counter.

The girl with the braids, on the other hand, grasped her head through her hood and sobbed. “New places are scary, new places are scary, new places are scary… Ah… Waaahhh!”

Now weeping openly, she ran in clumsy, thudding steps to the window and rolled herself up in the curtains. It made her look like an out-of-season bagworm.

“Ah, shade… Please love me, shade…”

“Nooo… Waaah… I want to go home!”

As the man begged the shadows for affection and the girl cocooned herself in the curtains, Louis heaved a heavy sigh.

“Go back to being human, please,” he called to them. “Unless you want me to shove your heads in this bucket of water.”

The Barrier Mage’s behavior was gentlemanly, but his words gave a very different impression. The two girls behind the counter looked on, dumbfounded.

The Sage continued like nothing had happened, picking up the library’s visitor record. “Oh, that’s very cute,” he said when he saw the ribbon-adorned front cover.

It happened about a year before Monica Everett, the Silent Witch, was dragged from her cabin and tasked with the second prince’s protection. After becoming the youngest candidate ever chosen for the Seven Sages at fifteen, she’d holed up in the mountains, engrossing herself in personal research and jobs involving numbers. It had been a quiet life.

Then, one clear, bright summer morning, Louis, another Sage, came to visit. She’d been sleeping peacefully underneath the table, cradling the essay she’d finished overnight to her breast.

Both the bed and the floor of the cabin were covered in an ocean of books and other documents. The only clear spot had been under the table, so she’d curled up there and gone to sleep.

She was still in the same spot when she heard an exasperated voice calling to her from the entrance. “My fellow Sage,” it said. “You’re not sleeping there again, are you…?”

“…Mister Louis? If you need a document, please…mm, just take it…”

“Documents are not what I’m here to pick up.” Louis deftly moved across the paper-covered floor and physically dragged Monica out from under the table. “I’m here for you. We have work.”

That was where Monica’s memory came to an end. She’d fallen asleep again.

The next time she awoke, she was in a carriage headed to the Haymes-Nalia Library.

“Good morning, my fellow Sage.”

“……”

“You’ll have to forgive the carriage. Were my spirit here, we could have simply flown. Unfortunately, she’s currently on loan to my elder fellow pupil.”

Monica thought he should be apologizing for taking her away against her will, rather than their means of transportation. He’d practically kidnapped her.

At a loss for words, she saw that there was someone else riding in the carriage with them—a young man with purple hair wearing a robe identical to Louis’s. It was Ray Albright, the Abyss Shaman and another of the Seven Sages.

While it had been almost six months since Monica’s induction, she hadn’t spoken much to the other Sages besides Louis. Ray, in particular, barely ever came to meetings, and even when he did he’d just stay in the corner muttering to himself. This only made him harder to talk to. Even now, sitting diagonally across from her, he had already sunk deep into his seat, murmuring to himself.

Monica tactfully averted her eyes. “Wh-where are we?” she asked Louis, who sat opposite her. “Why am I in a—…? Where is this carriage going…?”

“Our destination is the Haymes-Nalia Library. Or more specifically, the closest town to it. It’s called Roah.”

Her last question was the only one that got a clear response. Monica had heard of the library before, given how ancient and well-known it was. She’d never visited it personally, though. Why was Louis taking her there?

As if to answer her unspoken question, Louis continued. “The library has requested that we repair its shamanic tomes and restore the seals on its grimoires. And wait until you hear how many—over four hundred!”

They’d never get so many done in one day. It’d take at least two, even if they worked quickly. And depending on what kind of seals they were dealing with, it could easily require still more.

“And my throat would dry out like an old husk if I had to do so much sealing work myself, don’t you agree?”

Sealing magecraft necessitated incantations, just like every other kind of magecraft. Certain ones might require twenty or thirty minutes of focused chanting. Monica grimaced. She knew what Louis was getting at now.

With the look of a clergyman reciting a prayer, the man put a hand to his chest. “But it seems the powers that be have not forsaken me…for I have a very dependable colleague. One who, incredibly, just so happens to be the only person in the world who can use magecraft without chanting.”

The witch famous for her unchanted magecraft stayed silent, true to her title. Louis’s tyranny had her at a loss for words.

Completely ignoring her reaction, Louis picked up a bundle of cloth from the seat next to him and held it out to her. “It was hanging on the back of your chair, so I brought it.”

It was her official Sage robe. She looked from it to Louis and back.

He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Anyway, thanks in advance for doing what sealing work can be managed without incantations! I’ll handle the more complex barriers.”

This man was a total despot. Still, Monica couldn’t exactly refuse. She’d been dragged from her home with no time to grab anything, and her pockets were empty.

The Haymes-Nalia Library was in a forest about thirty minutes walking distance from the town of Roah. The trip had once been a little faster, but a landslide the year prior had blocked the road. If you wanted to visit it now, you had to travel a path too narrow for carriages.

By the time they arrived at Roah, however, Monica and Ray were on the verge of collapse from motion sickness and the summer heat. They were obviously not well enough to walk all the way to the library.

Louis Miller, however, was not the type of person to offer his companions time to rest until they felt better. Instead, the man who had managed to read a book throughout their carriage ride and still not get sick went into town, rented a handcart, and rolled Monica and Ray onto it. From there, he attached a rope to the vehicle and started off in the direction of the library, his steps heavy as he pulled the cart behind him.

After hauling them to their destination like luggage, Louis dragged Ray away from his spot in the shade and Monica from her curtains and brought them both to the storage room for books on magecraft located at the back of the library.

The room was pretty cramped. To the right of the entrance were five evenly spaced bookshelves. On the left was a worktable, atop which they found the tools they would need and a list of books to repair.

Louis let go of Ray, and he immediately slumped over the table and began a barrage of discontented grumbling. “You’re supposed to let motion-sick colleagues rest in town… But you dragged us here like cargo… You have a gaping hole where your heart is supposed to be…”

“If I’d waited until you two were better, the sun would have gone down. Why do you think I wanted the Silent Witch’s help in the first place? So we can wrap this all up before the day is out,” explained Louis. He was separating the books based on difficulty of repair, his face a picture of seriousness. “After all, I have a date with my fiancée tomorrow.”

Monica and Ray froze and stared at their colleague. The two younger mages looked at him as if they weren’t even sure he was human. But Louis continued, unfazed.

“And is there anything more important than a date with one’s fiancée?” he asked, as though the answer were obvious.

Ray began to bite his thumbnail and moan. “Blast. Blast. I’m so jealous… When I have a fiancée of my own, I’ll throw your own words back in your face, I swear it…”

“Ah-ha-ha. Please do!”

“I bet you think I’ll never be able to marry! Damn it, damn it all! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought that about myself?! I’ll curse you! I’ll curse you, damn it! I’ll curse you so that the seat of your pants rips during your date and embarrasses you!”

“Oh, my fiancée is quite generous, I assure you,” responded Louis smoothly. “If my pants were to split, she would mend them right up.”

Ray’s eyes boggled, and he fell out of his chair. The miserable shaman grasped at his heart and began to convulse. “Countering a curse with words of love… My heart is now dead from the misery… Cause of death: wretchedness…”

Without sparing so much as a glance at his colleague spasming on the floor, Louis pushed one of the piles of books toward Monica. “My fellow Sage, please give these grimoires grade-three seals with added fire-resistance formulae, if you would.”

“Um. Right…” Monica glanced at Ray as she took the stack of books from Louis.

In the Kingdom of Ridill, magecraft books and grimoires were clearly demarcated. In general, the textbook-like tomes that explained how to use magecraft or detailed its theory were referred to as magecraft books—and they were specifically categorized as books.

Grimoires, on the other hand, merely used the book as a medium. Inside, magecraft formulae were inscribed in special paint so that simply reading a formula aloud would activate the spell. These weren’t treated as books, but rather as a type of magical item.

Before the modern advancement of magical items, grimoires were valued as handy tools that allowed anyone to easily use a spell. But the tiny stains and tears the grimoires picked up over time would often lead to their mana leaking out and to the inscribed techniques going berserk. And since their medium was paper, they deteriorated quickly.

About 80 percent of modern magical items, developed after the advent of grimoires, used formulae engraved into a mineral and then imbued with mana. These magical items could be activated simply by adding mana; they didn’t require any incantation. A user did not need any knowledge of magecraft—and could trigger the spells with only a tiny bit of mana.

With grimoires, though, you needed to read the contents aloud, and they were more difficult to keep in shape. Those factors had led to their gradual decline.

That put libraries, which often carried many grimoires, in a troubling situation. As they were difficult to handle, both keeping them and having them destroyed required a significant amount of money and effort. In recent years, it had become regular practice to install sealing barriers on unused grimoires, as this was the safest and least-expensive option.

Let’s have a look at the state of this book’s sealing formula…, thought Monica, checking one of the grimoires Louis had given her.

If the seal was too far gone, she’d have to remove the formulae entirely and redo them. Otherwise, she could simply restore and strengthen what was there. Finally, she’d record the grimoire’s level of deterioration and what she’d done to repair it on a piece of paper, then repeat the process for the next one.

This one only has light wear, she observed. The seal is fraying, so I’ll restore that. And now I’ll strengthen it… Okay, all done.

As she repaired each grimoire without chanting, she used her free hand to write down the process. Because she didn’t need to chant, inspecting each grimoire and recording her work were what took most of her time, rather than the actual placement of the sealing formulae.

“Um, Mister Louis… I’m done, um, sealing this pile,” she said, stacking her fiftieth grimoire atop the table.

Louis’s feather pen stopped moving. “You truly are an incredibly capable mage in situations like this,” he said, profoundly impressed. “To think you’ve already finished sealing all those books in such a short time…”

Sealing techniques were a subset of barrier magecraft, which was itself relatively difficult. There were some barriers Monica couldn’t handle without chanting, but for simple seals, she didn’t need to. That meant her unchanted magecraft was very much in demand for tasks involving a lot of such seals.

Meanwhile, Louis was handling the advanced-sealing formulae, which were more powerful and complex. These were generally placed on highly dangerous grimoires, and naturally, activating them took a lot of effort.

As the Barrier Mage, when it came to barrier techniques—defensive barriers, sealing barriers, you name it—Louis was second to none in Ridill. The sealing formulae he placed on the grimoires were as precise as an architectural marvel, calculated down to the smallest detail.

Barrier techniques required both a deep understanding of magecraft formulae and control over one’s mana so precise one could use it to pass thread through the eye of a needle. Louis maintained a high skill level in both areas and could thus create an ideal barrier using a minimum of mana. His proficiency was something even Monica couldn’t emulate.

As she was absentmindedly watching him work, Louis looked over at the bookshelves. “All right, let’s get the books we’re done sealing back to their shelves.”

“Okay…,” she said.

Louis easily lifted his pile of books. Though he was on the slender side, his time with the Magic Corps had left him with arm strength and endurance on a wholly different level from Monica’s.

Her frail arms started to hurt after picking up just five of the thick tomes. Oof, they’re so heavy… She could have lifted them with wind magecraft, but considering the sealing work she still had left to do, she wanted to conserve her mana. Her twig-like arms trembling under the strain, she returned the books one by one to the shelves.

As she was diligently traveling back and forth between the shelves and the table to fetch more books, she heard a voice from behind.

“…Hey.”

The gloomy, weak intonation, ready to fade away at any moment, belonged to Ray. For a second, she thought he was speaking to Louis, but his pink eyes were clearly on her.

Monica immediately clutched the books she was holding to her chest and stiffened up. Though the man was also a Sage, she’d never had a real conversation with him.

“Um, yeph?! Um, wh-wh-what do you, um—?”

As she shook with fright, Ray said in a dark voice, “I wanted to ask you something, Silent Witch… People don’t generally have a great impression of shamanic tomes, do they?”

Shamanic tomes showed their reader how to use shamanic, or cursed, techniques; the books themselves weren’t cursed. Like magecraft books, they were classified as books rather than magical items. They were the reason Ray had joined Louis and Monica for this particular job.

The shamanic arts were entirely different from magecraft—even their system of formulae was completely unrelated. As a result, it took someone with special knowledge to repair shamanic tomes. Ray, the only shaman among the Seven Sages, had been brought here for that purpose.

“People find them spooky, right?” he went on. “So spooky they think they’ll be cursed just by owning one.”

“Um, I’m, um, s-sorry, I don’t really… Um, I don’t knowmph!”

“If the cover was more like this…do you think it would make girls happier?” he asked, holding up a book.

It was one of the shamanic tomes he’d been repairing. A little earlier, she’d caught a glimpse of its cover. It had been dark red, like dried blood, but now it looked completely different.

Its new cover was light pink and featured a picture of a charming girl holding a bouquet of flowers. The pièce de résistance, however, was the title: The original An Introduction to the Shamanic Arts had been changed to My First Charm.

What’s more, both the paper and the paint used in the new cover were intended for repairing grimoires, meaning they were very expensive, made with plants and minerals imbued with mana. And the cover made use of a lot of it. The cute ribbon, the flowers—Monica was at a loss for words.

She stood there, face frozen, as Louis stopped putting away his books for a moment and said in a tone that implied he really couldn’t care less, “Are you planning on putting together an exhibition on wasted effort?”

“It’s not wasted! It’s…it’s cute! Right?! I used the library’s visitor record as a reference… I figured it might make the book more approachable for girls…”

Apparently, the charming new cover was part of a concerted effort by Ray to improve the shamanic arts’ image. But he’d gone well beyond the scope of simple repair—the result was practically a different book altogether.

Nervously, Monica said, “Um, won’t the person who wrote that be, um, mad…?”

“I’m the author,” replied Ray.

“But it, er, might trouble the library workers…” With a different title, it would no longer match their records.

Ray thought about this for a moment, then pounded a fist into his palm. “Then I’ll keep the title An Introduction to the Shamanic Arts, but add My First Charm as a subtitle… And if I make the real title smaller, maybe people won’t even notice… Heh-heh. This should finally put an end to the prejudice against shamanic techniques as ‘gross’ and ‘eerie’…”

Monica took a good look at Ray’s new cover. It seemed he had a knack for the artistic; the picture he’d drawn was detailed, precise, and adorable.

…But no matter how adorable the cover was, the book itself was still a primer on the cursed arts.

Louis sighed, exasperated. “Shamanic tomes are about how to make other people unhappy, aren’t they? What purpose will it serve to make the front cover cuter?”

“D-don’t make fun of them…,” mumbled Ray. “I’ll have you know one of the curses actually raises a person’s self-esteem!”

“Oh, really?” said Louis. “A curse to promote self-esteem? And what does it do, exactly?”

Ray smirked at the question—a suitably wicked shaman’s smile. And then, his chest puffed out in pride, he replied, “Listen and be amazed, for this curse to raise one’s self-esteem…is a curse that punches holes in someone else’s socks!”

Louis sat down without saying a word and quietly resumed his sealing work.

At the other man’s reaction, which all but said “This isn’t even worth listening to,” Ray pounded on the table and wailed, “At least hear me out!”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Louis off-handedly.

Ray looked unhappy, but then he turned around to Monica and began proudly rattling off his spiel to her instead. “When you poke holes in the socks of someone you hate, it makes you think They’re wearing socks with holes in them, but I’m wearing socks with no holes, which raises your self-esteem… It adheres to the teaching of House Albright that curses exist to make others suffer by raising a person’s self-esteem through someone else’s pain…”

“Um…” Monica couldn’t think of how to respond to that.

Louis, sounding utterly fed up with the whole thing, said, “My fellow Sage, you can be honest with him. Tell him the whole thing is depressing.”

“Don’t say that!” cried Ray. “There’s even a curse that inserts you into your victim’s dreams so you can bully them while they sleep! …Heh-heh. And in a dream, you can say all kinds of things you wouldn’t normally be able to…”

“Why not just say those things to their face?” asked Louis.

“I can’t! That’s what the curse is for!” Ray pounded the table a couple more times, seeming very bitter.

Put off, Louis held down a rocking jar of ink. “Please don’t shake the table. You’ll spill the ink.”

“Girls love charms! So why can’t they come to love the shamanic arts, too?!” Ray shouted.

Monica wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t care about charms for luck and the like. In fact, she was much more fascinated with the shamanic techniques, since they could be explained with formulae. She fidgeted uncomfortably with her hands.

“Charms, eh?” said Louis, his feather pen moving again. “I remember they were quite popular when I was in school. Really takes me back.”

Like Monica, the Barrier Mage was a graduate of Minerva’s Mage Training Institution. She was surprised to learn that the students there, all apprentice mages, were obsessed with charms of dubious efficacy.

“So charms, um…were popular…at Minerva’s, too?”

Monica was usually holed up in a lab all day, and she’d never participated in any of the school’s fads. Since she’d graduated a year early, as well, she had no idea what Louis was talking about.

As Monica crooked her head in confusion, Louis stopped writing and looked at her. “Not just Minerva’s,” he said. “They’re popular with kids everywhere. One might make a charm for good luck by dripping morning dew on a floral accessory or use blue ink to write a love letter to ensure reciprocation… I’m sure even students these days know about those.”

Morning dew on a floral accessory? Monica thought. Blue ink for a love letter? Naturally, she’d never even heard of charms like those. Her brow furrowed as she folded her arms.

“Pure water is more efficient than morning dew for imbuing mana,” she said, offering her viewpoint on the matter as a mage. “And unless you’re writing a mental-interference formula with specialized grimoire ink, using blue ink shouldn’t have any effect on someone’s feelings. I don’t understand the logic.”

Louis shrugged a little and grinned. “But it’s harder to get morning dew, and blue ink is more expensive,” he pointed out. “They’re both special—you wouldn’t normally use them. And using something special raises your self-esteem. In other words, it’s all about feelings. That’s the whole point.”

“Oh…”

Using a special item to raise one’s self-esteem? It made no sense to Monica. Why cling to such uncertainties when you could settle your mind with equations instead?

Charms… I doubt I’ll have anything to do with them as long as I live, she thought, slowly getting back to the task at hand.

“Oh, and by the way, my good shaman,” said Louis without stopping.

Ray was plastered to the table now. His eyes swiveled over to look at Louis. “My heart is in pieces already… Please, no more of your abuse…”

“You need permission to view shamanic tomes in the first place, don’t you? Regular books are one thing, but you’re trying to make a restricted book containing specialized knowledge appeal to young girls when barely anyone will read it to begin with. I really can’t think of anything more meaningless than that.”

His logic was sound. And yet it was worse than abuse—it was outright cruelty that could have gouged out a person’s heart. Ray coughed loudly, as if spitting up blood, then slumped down onto the table and stopped moving.

“Uh, ummm, Mister Louis…,” Monica stammered.

“My fellow Sage, could you return these books to their shelves as well?” said Louis, stacking a few more sealed books on the pile. He didn’t even glance at the shaman.

Monica shut her mouth, picked up the books, and headed toward the shelves.

“Last one… Phew.”

After returning the final book in her arms, Monica looked from one end of the bookshelf to the other and wiped the sweat from her brow. While she had a bad habit of putting books away according to her own personal rules, this time she made sure they were all in order by author name. I really wish I could reorganize them, she thought, privately a little irritated as she gazed down at the shelf.

But as she did, she noticed something out of place.

What in the world? This shelf feels somehow different from the last one…

She backed up a few steps to get a view of the entire bookshelf, then immediately located the anomaly. Of the five bookcases on the right side of the room, the first four had ten shelves each, while the one at the back had only nine.

They’re all the same size. Why does this one alone have fewer shelves?

If you removed one shelf from a bookcase of equal size, each of the remaining shelves would naturally have a little more space. But the bookcase in the back didn’t seem to contain particularly large books.

If it had been crammed full of them, then Monica might have chalked her discovery up to that and left it alone. But since they were in the middle of working on the grimoires, the shelves were mostly empty.

And that was why Monica noticed something else: In the backing of the lowest shelf was an unnatural seam with a small gap. The gap was just about big enough to hook a finger in.

This bookcase is positioned exactly in the right corner of the room. And that means…

Monica put her finger in the gap and pulled. The shelf’s backing slid away. She’d been right, and as she moved the board to the side, an empty space revealed itself beyond. It was pitch-black, however, so she couldn’t see what was there.

“What are you up to, my fellow Sage?” asked Louis, looking down at her dubiously—she had her cheek to the floor and her arm through the bottom of the bookshelf.

“Mister Louis, look. There’s a strange empty space—”

Mid-sentence, something coiled around her right wrist. Before she knew what was happening, it pulled the rest of her in, and she began to fall.

What?! What’s this?! What’s going on?!

Monica’s incredible skill at numbers and her superb unchanted magecraft were useless; she was so confused she couldn’t construct her formulae correctly.

What is this?! What is this?! What is thiiis?!

All she felt was the sensation of her right wrist being tugged on—and then weightlessness. She was falling. She couldn’t even scream as she plummeted.

She heard Louis chant something from above—a flight spell.

“My fellow Sage!” he exclaimed.

A moment later, someone violently grabbed the back of her robe. Of course, she knew who it was—Louis had used flight magecraft to jump behind the bookshelf and save her.

All around her was darkness. She didn’t know what was going on, but she could tell that Louis was hanging in the air, holding on to her robe.

“M-Mi-Mi-Mister Louis—”

“A little light, please.”

“Yeffer!”

Monica lit a small flame at the end of her finger without chanting. When she did, the thing coiled around her right wrist retreated from the fire and slithered away.

“Was that…a plant vine?” she wondered aloud, making her magical flame bigger to see farther.

The space they currently occupied appeared to be about three stories tall. She and Louis were stopped in the air about halfway down. Her flame was still small, so she couldn’t see the whole area, but she could tell it was unnaturally large. Much larger, at least, than the room they’d just been working in.

What’s more, plant vines and tree roots covered the entire floor, writhing and squirming. Some of them were thinner, like the one that had coiled around her wrist, but others were thicker than a human arm. The way they slowly squirmed this way and that made them look like snakes blanketing the floor.

Monica swayed in the air, hanging by her robe, until Louis got her under his arm. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Plants enlarged by mana… I have a very bad feeling about this. My fellow Sage, could you light this place up a little more?”

Monica nodded and made the flame bigger, widening their field of vision. The space must have originally been a small hidden room—small enough that you wouldn’t get hurt falling through the bookshelf. There were traces of man-made structures here and there.

The vegetation, however, had dug out more and more space, resulting in its current size.

“I’ll use a detection spell,” said Louis. “Maintain the light. If they attack, handle it.”

After those brief instructions, he began to chant. In general, a mage could only maintain two spells at once. Since Louis was keeping them in the air with flight magecraft, using a detection spell on top of that meant he wouldn’t be able to cast anything else. Because of that, light and defense fell to Monica.

The plants, possibly having registered the two mages as hostile, shot a portion of their vines up toward them. From her unstable position under Louis’s arm, Monica used unchanted magecraft to create blades of wind, easily cutting each of them down.

…The vines are sturdier than I predicted. They must be imbued with mana.

After she’d dealt with a few dozen of them, Louis spoke. “I found it. It’s over there—a powerful source of mana located near that tree root.”

Whatever it was, it had to be the cause of all this. The problem was that they couldn’t attack it recklessly. If Monica’s hunch about the source was right, destroying it would make everything worse.

Louis understood that, too; his face was grim as he glared at the clusters of vines. “Now, how should we deal with this…? Let’s go back up for now and regroup.”

But just then, they heard a yell from above them—from Ray. Monica looked up and realized belatedly that a few of the vines had gotten all the way up to the hole in the library she’d fallen from.

Eventually, bound by vines, Ray was dragged down into the hole. But he didn’t fall; he stayed where he was, bounced and rocked in place by the tips of the vines.

“What…what is this…? Have I been loved by plants this whole time…?! Am…am I being loved? Are these plants showing me their love?!”

Monica was speechless. Ray’s eyes sparkled in anticipation, but all she could see was a victim about to be made into a meal.

Exasperated, Louis sighed. “He can be quite optimistic at times, can’t he? Perhaps he doesn’t need to poke holes in people’s socks to feel good about himself.”

“Ummm…,” stammered Monica. “Um, we…we should help…”

As she was about to whip up a few more wind blades, Louis stopped her and called out to the young man. “My good shaman, unfortunately, you are not loved. Those plants wish to make you their meal for the day. How tragic.”

“I’m… I’m not loved… I—I—I… You—you played with my heart!” Ray glared at the traitorous vines with hate in his eyes, emitting a low moan. “I thought I was loved… I thought you loved me… I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! How dare you toy with me, you plants… I’ll curse you, I’ll curse you! I’ll curse you to the ends of the earth!”

Ray quickly muttered an incantation. A pattern on his left cheek glowed with purple light, then slid away from his body and into the air. It attached itself to the vines binding him, then stretched and crawled over them like blood vessels, eating away at them.

“If you won’t love me, then I’ll make sure you rot and never bear fruit again!”

The vines around him began to turn brown and wither, losing their hold over the shaman. Eventually, his dangling body fell into the sea of vines below with a smack. The cursed seal spread out from his location, eating away at the rest of the plants, causing them to shrivel up one after another. It was like a scene from a nightmare.

“Our good shaman shines his brightest when thrown right into enemy territory, don’t you agree?” murmured Louis thoughtfully.

What did this man take his colleagues for anyway? As Monica let out a soft squeal, the mage pressed his monocle to his eye.

“I suppose we should pick him up,” he said. “My fellow Sage, would you be so kind as to take care of the rest of the vines?”

“O-okay…”

Thirty percent of the plant life covering the floor had already rotted thanks to Ray’s power, and the portion that hadn’t now moved sluggishly. Louis, with Monica still under his arm, used his flight spell to begin a rapid descent toward a cluster of tree roots. Though the vines reached out for them in a last, vain act of defiance, they were quickly cut to pieces by Monica’s wind blades.

“The two roots in front,” indicated Louis.

Monica took aim. She was maintaining the flame lighting up their surroundings, so she could only use one more spell on top of that. She couldn’t afford to waste a shot.

No problems with coordinate axis. Calculating strength from estimated mana levels…

After approximating the strength of the roots from the amount of mana contained in the vines, she adjusted the power of her wind blades to match. It would be simple to use a more powerful spell, but then it might destroy what was underneath the roots.

…There we go.

Her wind blades tore the roots Louis had pointed out to shreds, leaving everything else intact.

The edges of Louis’s mouth curled up into a violent grin. “Very skilled,” he noted as he plunged his free hand into the remains and grabbed something from inside.

When his hand reemerged, he held a grimoire with a magic circle printed on its black leather cover. It was damaged, as you would expect of something so old, and the circle was faded.

Quickly, Louis chanted a sealing barrier. Mana leaped from his fingertips, then formed a golden chain that wrapped itself around the black tome. Each of its links was a powerful barrier made of its own magical formula.

Eventually, the chains seeped into the grimoire and disappeared. The formulae, however, remained on the book, slightly raised from the rest of its cover.

“And it’s sealed,” he said. The vines and tree roots all fell back to the ground with a series of smacks, their energy gone. Now deprived of their mana, the rest of them fell victim to Ray’s curse, withering in an anticlimactic display.

After leaving the hidden space now littered with the plants’ remains and returning to the previous room, all three of them sat back down. Monica and Ray were exhausted—neither of them had much stamina to begin with. Louis, on the other hand, examined the black grimoire as though nothing had happened.

Ray, his jaw against the table’s surface, moved his pink eyes to glare at the tome. “So that book was behind it all. But what is it?”

“The lettering is faded in spots, but I can make out the author’s name,” said Louis. “Rebecca Roseburg.”

At the name, Ray and Monica opened their eyes wide.

“That’s the first Witch of Thorns!” exclaimed Ray.

“W-wait! Really?!” Monica stammered. “I had no idea it was something so amazing!”

The very first Witch of Thorns, Rebecca Roseburg, was such a legend that everyone in the kingdom knew her name. She had a talent for controlling plants, and her roses came to be known as the Man-eating Rose Fortress. This “Fortress” was said to have massacred a military force of over a thousand in a vicious bloodbath.

The Roseburgs were still an elite mage family in Ridill, and one of the Seven Sages always came from their number. The current Witch of Thorns was the fifth to hold the title.

“Um, Mister Louis…,” said Monica in a hushed tone. “Wouldn’t a grimoire made by the first Witch of Thorns be really, really valuable?”

“The family who used to run this library must have acquired it back when grimoires were much more popular…,” he mused. “And through illegal channels, no doubt.”

This gave Monica a good picture of the circumstances. The one who had illegally obtained this grimoire must have hidden it in the library and placed a sealing barrier on it.

Now that the family of librarian overseers had died out, there was no way to know which of them had been its owner. What was certain, however, was that nobody with knowledge of the hidden room and its grimoire was left alive. As the days and months went by, both the book and the sealing barrier continued to deteriorate.

“I assume this grimoire contained spells for controlling plants,” said Louis. “The formulae must have leaked out, affecting the plants near the hidden room.” He paused for a moment and shrugged. “The road here was closed due to a landslide, right? I have a feeling we have the plants to thank for that, too. I believe I saw roots poking out here and there.”

The hidden room had been significantly enlarged, and the floor dug out pretty deep. It was easy to see how the soil and plant life around the facility could have been affected.

Ray scrunched up his nose and groaned. “Ugh. What an annoying grimoire.”

“More annoying is the one who didn’t properly care for it,” said Louis. “Were they still alive, I’d invoice them for the trouble and cost of resealing it…”

He sighed. There was nobody to complain to. Even if he wanted to demand an extra fee for the unexpected trouble, the grimoire’s owner was long dead—and so was the rest of their family.

The first Witch of Thorns’s grimoire was not listed in the Haymes-Nalia Library’s index. The current owners would probably insist they had no knowledge of it.

Louis ran a finger over the sealing barrier that had appeared on the grimoire. He’d used a short chant, creating a simple seal that wouldn’t last long. If the grimoire really was penned by the first Witch of Thorns, he’d need to redo it with a seal of the highest grade.

“I’ll have to use one of my best seals on it, then put another seal on the hidden room to keep it intact, and write a whole report on the incident…” As he counted off all the new tasks on his plate, Louis looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost evening, and they still had over half of the grimoires left to seal. “An all-nighter, then. I’ll go ask those in charge for permission to stay. You two wait here.”

“Wait, why me?” asked Ray.

“Like I told you earlier,” said Louis. “I have a date tomorrow.”

His monocled eye twinkled dangerously, exuding a powerful sense of pressure. Monica and Ray shut their mouths and got back to work.

Owing to its location amid a forest, mornings at the Haymes-Nalia Library were punctuated by scattered birdcalls. On that particular summer day, in the early hours when it was still comfortably cool, Monica—listening to the avian chorus—let go of her pen.

“That was…the last one… I’m done…”

“And I’ve finished with all the repairs…”

As she and Ray reported in, Louis finished sealing his final tome as well, then let go of his staff before sitting back in his chair and gazing at the ceiling, bags under his eyes.

“All finished… I should make it in time for my date.”

“Um, Mister Louis, when does your date, er, start?” asked Monica.

Louis picked himself back up and answered, “Right at noon. We’re meeting at the fountain in Riltaria Park in the capital.”

“Hweh?! W-wait, but…that’s way too far…”

Even if he took a fast horse, it would be night by the time he reached the royal capital. And a carriage would take even longer.

Louis, however, grinned and chuckled. “I had a feeling this might happen, so I summoned my contracted spirit.”

The Barrier Mage was one of only a few who had formed contracts with a high wind spirit. Flight magecraft drained your mana quickly, so humans couldn’t use it for very long. A high wind spirit, on the other hand, would have an easy time delivering him to his destination.

Louis took an emerald ring out of his pocket. It was a stone of contract, binding him to the spirit. Holding it aloft, he performed a quick-chant.

“Rynzbelfeid, spirit of wind, in accordance with the contract, be swift to my side!”

In response to his call, a gust of wind, laced with mana, blew in through the window. It brought with it tiny particles of yellow-green light. And inside that wind was…not Louis’s contracted spirit, but a piece of paper.

It fluttered down toward them. The note—the penmanship of which left something to be desired—said this:

“I have learned the concept of ‘breaks’ from human culture, and I am now, as they say, ‘taking’ one.

I will not be back for approximately one week. Please excuse my absence.

Rynzbelfeid”

Veins rose up on Louis’s temples. “That…that useless, good-for-nothing maid!”

He crumpled up the piece of paper and hurled it into the waste bin before gripping his staff and quickly chanting a spell.

When Monica and Ray heard the words, they widened their eyes.

“Mister Louis!” cried Monica. “Th-that’s not… You’re not, um…using flight magecraft, are you?!”

“That’s insane! Even for you!” agreed Ray. “Your mana won’t last long enough to get you to the capital!”

Louis opened his robe in the front to make it easier to move around, then set one foot on the window frame. “Insane? Far from it. For the woman I love, this is nothing.”

With his long, braided hair fluttering in the wind, he jumped out the window.

Ray watched him grow smaller in the early morning sky. “Damn him,” he said. “He just wanted a chance to use that line, didn’t he?”

And so, in a feat approaching the national record for long-distance flight, Louis Miller made it very close to the appointed spot. But right at the last moment, his mana ran out, and he plunged into the fountain where he was supposed to meet his fiancée.

It is said that the woman, being very generous, at once scolded him for his reckless behavior and then devotedly nursed him back to health.