CH 46

Chapter 46

Translator: Yonnee

—

As strange and as clear as her desire was for this, it’s a wonder why she couldn’t do it earlier.

‘Perhaps this is what it means to have a wider perspective.’

While enduring those unchanging things in Ronen, where she had to live as a grand duchess, it was something she never thought she could have done.

Outside the five senses, it felt like she gained another sense as she felt magic.

Ophelia now understood Alei and Sante’s conversation earlier.

It wasn’t clear to her, but it felt like there was something lurking at the west cliffside.

Just as the eye of a typhoon was the most tranquil, there was still a suppressed disturbance at the center of that stillness.

Rather than sensing it, it was more like an instinct.

“Is that what you were talking about?”

“Right.”

Sante replied as he descended. As though he was looking at something odd or something interesting, he squinted at Ophelia.

“That ring, it’s the one you put on me before, right? The one that blocks mana.”

“Yes. Ariel’s magic is flowing within me, and that needs to be blocked.”

“I know that, but it’s interesting. It’s not common to feel magic in such a place after just removing that block on magic.”

“The Imperial Family of Milescet has high mana affinity, so it’s possible.”

Alei said as he obstructed Sante from approaching Ophelia.

Sante shifted his gaze to Alei, his eyes turning loosely harsh as if he was seeing something unsavory, but he soon smiled.

“…Yeah, when it comes to humans, you know a lot, right? But apart from that, has anyone noticed yet?”

“Noticed what?”

At Alei’s question, Sante pointed towards the west.

“There’s a shield over there. Maybe the one who did it is the same guy who made that mana wave earlier.”

“I didn’t know because I didn’t try using detection magic, but I guess sirens can feel it?”

“We aren’t as good as mermaids when it comes to detecting, but we can still feel mana. It feels like it’s suppressed.”

Something suppressed—it’s exactly what Ophelia felt.

‘Perhaps?’

Ophelia walked towards that place as though she was possessed, led by a perception outside her five senses.

As she headed there, what she felt was a feeling of many waves trapped in a barrel. There was a strange dissonance between the tranquility around her when there was something that seemed to be suppressed yet was fluctuating so strongly.

Tak. Ophelia stopped walking. As she reached out, it felt like there was something blocked in that space though it was transparent.

Found it.

Confident about this, Ophelia turned around to call out to Alei, however at that moment—

“You shouldn’t touch a protective shield like this, Ophelia.”

At Alei’s hushed whisper into her ear, Ophelia said, ‘Ah’, but the moment she did,

Bang!

As the deafening boom resounded, something scattered. An explosion of some sort happened inside the shield. In the aftermath, Ophelia was hurled away.

No actually, it would be right to say that she was almost flung.

“The purpose of a protective shield like that is to prevent crime, that’s why the moment you touch it, it tends to cause mana explosions.”

Just as those that were scattered, Ophelia was up in the air.

To be more exact, she was in Alei’s arms as he was hovering in the air.

Unlike how surprised Ophelia was, Alei was calm. No, it looked like he was a little angry.

With a sharp expression that couldn’t be seen on him before, Alei’s forehead was slightly crumpled as he reached out.

“I should have warned you because I noticed there was a shield. It’s my fault.”

There was no time for Ophelia to answer him, and Alei reached a hand towards her.

Ususu.

The leaves nearby trembled and made a sound reminiscent of the cold wail of a wheat field.

The moment a large gust swept through the area and passed by, Ophelia opened her eyes unconsciously.

And she saw something that she couldn’t see a moment ago.

A young siren crushed on the floor, and a woman, whose expression was sour, standing in front of that siren.

Ophelia knew who she was.

‘You’re finally here.’

It was Ronen Castle’s mage, Yennit.

* * *

Yennit, Ronen Castle’s resident eccentric who had short, red curly hair, was perplexed by the letter she received this morning.

She had been experiencing weird things lately.

First, there were too many people looking for her.

The letters came in quick succession over the period of a few days, and this was very unusual.

‘There was a time when I didn’t hear from anyone for two months.’

Yennit was from the magic tower. In other words, this also meant that no one in the Maynard continent knew her.

Sometimes, people find the tower’s location and eventually enter the tower, but Yennit herself was born and raised in the tower.

Strictly speaking, after she lived in a small, insular country called the magic tower, it could be said that she had left her birthplace and set off to a different land with no connections to her name.

Of course, there were people who built relationships later even though they were in a similar situation. However, Yennit really was a typical person from the magic tower.

She was someone who did not care for human interaction and simply loved and indulged in her magical research.

It was an equivalent exchange between magical skills and social skills, and a case like her was commonly referred to by the public as a ‘nerd’.

That was Yennit.

‘This truth was something I didn’t know either until I left the tower.’

The reason for that was simple—there were even more eccentrics in the magic tower, and Yennit actually belonged to the fairly ‘normal’ side.

Of course, this was Yennit’s own opinion.

She sat in front of her desk and casually lit the cigarette between her lips with a candle. Smoke rose, and beyond the slanted glasses, over the air where indifferent eyes became cloudy, she recalled something.

While packing for her exit out of the tower, it was the conversation she had with the only person she could call a friend.

“Yennit, what are you planning to do when you say you’re leaving the tower? You know, it’s only because you just came back from a trade… You can just take a break and think about it again. This is your birthplace.”

“Oh, well when I came back here, the smell of the sea and mana stone powders were nice and suffocating and all, but I’m leaving now because I’ve smelled it all.”

“But why? Is there a place you want to live in?”

“No, nothing like that. But once I went out, I realized how stuffy the tower is. I think I’ll settle where I went for the trade. The air is nice and cold over there.”

“Is that really the only reason?”

Yennit’s friend looked awfully soft and was characteristically clumsy, yet because of a certain eccentricity, there was a sharp edge about that person.

As Yennit glanced towards her friend who was looking at her with a gloomy expression, she opened her lips to speak.

“I think you’ll misunderstand if I stay silent, so I’ll just say it first. I’ve been feeling suffocated in the tower since some time ago, and I didn’t volunteer to go out as a trader for no reason.”

“I know that, but.”

“The world is vast, and the land we have no knowledge about is also wide. Even if you look out the window, there’s such a place where what you can see is not water but land. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I… I don’t know. Those people know nothing about magic. Rather than being persecuted, you wouldn’t know anyone once you go outside. We won’t be able to meet and study like we do now.”

“I heard Alejandro was exiled while I was away.”

The chattering friend’s lips closed. In an instant, Yennit’s eyes were also seen to be crestfallen.

“…That’s right. It’s the magic tower’s decision.”

“What kind of house throws out its own owner? Without Alejandro, I’m not interested in this place either.”

Alejandro Diarmuid.

Unlike Yennit, her friend and many people in the tower, he was a genius unlike any other and was famously known to have come from outside.

No matter what the elders thought of him, all the young people of the tower respected him.

Alejandro wasn’t just a good leader.

The people of the tower interacted under the balance of colleague and competitor, and at the same time teacher and student.

The magical formulas that only Alejandro could make with his own two hands had already exceeded boundaries.

Those formulas that he improved were already countless.

He had a unique eye for formulas, and his own magical power was enormous enough to be comparable to that of a siren.

More than that, Alejandro was someone who didn’t feel that it was a waste to share his research with others, so those who were jealous of him at first eventually bowed their heads to how exceptional he was.

After all, jealousy could only be directed to only those who were superior but could still be comparable to oneself.