episode_0008

“You seem healthy.”

“Leonard senior also found that part interesting.”

“So you met Leonard.”

She rested her chin on her right hand and looked at me. Before I could meet her eyes, I felt a light breeze pass through me. Surely she must have checked my body with mana, but I wondered what this feeling was.

“You didn’t take the medicine, so do you want to die?”

“Cold is natural for an ice mage. If I can’t heal this much cold, then I wouldn’t be able to handle cold either.”

“You’re a fool.”

Erika said that and lightly clapped her hands. As she did, a cough escaped from her lips. After coughing strongly, the cold feeling from my heart disappeared. When I raised my head slightly, the cold gathered at her fingertips had been absorbed into her body, and she looked at me as if she found me interesting.

“So you use ice magic.”

“I’m nothing compared to seniors.”

“Still, if you made my cold disappear to this extent, it seems you understand ice magic… Are you from the north?”

“I’m from Aralia in the east, a small village you probably don’t know about, senior.”

“Not from the north, yet familiar with cold…”

At that moment, she disappeared. Reflexively, I turned around to look behind me just like yesterday when she vanished. But she wasn’t in sight. Then I felt a finger touch my body.

“If it were a real fight, you’d be dead already, first-year.”

“…Teleportation.”

“You don’t have mana, nor are you particularly magical… Yet you weakened my magic to some extent… I’m curious, junior. You emitted cold.”

“I can gather and release cold to some extent.”

“That’s the basis of ice magic.”

And at that moment, she appeared in front of my eyes. I wondered if it was necessary to go this far, but I didn’t have enough courage to ask such a question.

“It’s a relief. If you had gotten hurt, I would have been scolded by Leonardo for sure. He would have said, ‘You made another first-year get hurt, this time I’ll teach you some manners.’ She imitated Leonardo’s voice as best as she could, and at that moment, laughter burst from my lips.

“You’re laughing?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, I can’t stop people from laughing.”

“Leonardo asked me to find Erica.”

“If you were going to do that, you should have told me this morning. It’s annoying.”

She said that and then looked at me. Meeting her gaze once again felt like my breath was being taken away. She stared at me without saying a word, wrote something on the paper she had, and handed it to me.

“Tell Leonardo when you see him.”

“Yes, senior.”

“That’s all then.”

She said that and started to walk away. Before her steps were even audible, I opened my mouth and called out to her.

“Senior Erica!”

“What?”

“Can you teach me ice magic?”

“Go ask the professor, not me.”

“I want to learn from you, senior.”

As I spat out those words, sweat ran down my spine. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, or maybe it definitely was, but once spoken, there was no taking it back. I just waited for her answer. What should I do? Should I apologize now and run away? What should I say? As my mind raced with these thoughts, she took something out of her pocket.

It was an object in a small glass bottle. I wanted to know what it was, but I just waited for her to speak. However, she didn’t say anything, and she opened the lid of the glass bottle, and at that moment, it felt like something was flowing into my mouth.

The moment I took a breath, my body’s instinct quickly moved my hand to cover my mouth. I shouldn’t breathe in. I knew it was dangerous to inhale. But the sensation from the air I had already taken in was cold.

A cold unlike anything from yesterday, a cold that quickly froze inside me, causing my vision to blur slowly.

“The basics of ice magic involve manipulating cold, young one.”

Her voice echoed. In that gentle voice that slowly tickled my ears, as I struggled to focus on her, she looked down at me and pointed at my body with her finger.

“Gather cold, emit cold, that’s how you handle ice magic. So naturally, those who wield ice magic can’t help but be friendly with cold… That’s it, in simple terms.”

“Try treating that cold once. Then I’ll teach you magic.”

And in that moment, she disappeared. It was natural that I couldn’t even sense her presence, but I didn’t care. All I had to do was stop the cold slowly moving through my heart. Should I shout and call for someone? If surviving like that is the way, it wouldn’t be the method my senior mentioned.

I bit my lip hard and moved the mana within me to my fingertips. But my mana was blocked by the cold she had infused.

The cold rushing into my heart was powerful. I knew that if it reached my heart, it would freeze and I would die. I recalled the method to remove yesterday’s cold. Emit cold from my fingertips, gather mana with my fingertips, crystallize the cold. I understood it in my mind, and I had done it before. But it wasn’t working this time.

Was it a difference in intensity? I clenched my fist at that thought. What should I do? The mana within me no longer moved.

Warm breath escaped from my lips due to the slowly freezing cold within my body. My body trembled. The shaking in front of my eyes intensified. My body wasn’t moving well. It was slowly freezing. At this rate, I would die soon.

I know. If it’s Erica-senpai… she was the one who would let me die. So I had to solve this myself. I bit my lip. There was no apparent solution. But at that moment, something came to mind.

Solidification.

If I can’t release the cold, could I draw natural mana into my body and extract the cold along with my mana?

At that moment, laughter flowed from my trembling body.

If I’m going to die anyway, there’s nothing to lose.

Reaching out with freezing hands, I gathered magical power in my mouth and spoke.

“Mana, swallow me!”

And at that moment, surrounding mana came into view. Like flickering flames, the mana was suddenly gathering at my fingertips and entering my body. As soon as the mana entered, a small groan escaped my lips.

Purifying the rampaging mana was impossible for me now. All I could do was accept the mana and use it to suppress the cold.

I felt the mana entering my body from my fingertips and touching the cold. A rough groan escaped my lips. It was a dizzying sensation.

“Haa… Haa…”

I just need to push the mana out in this state. Gather my own mana, pierce through the weakened cold. Inhaling deeply, I gathered magical power in my mouth and chanted the spell.

“Ice, rise up!”

I felt the natural mana and my own mana raging in response to my voice. I felt like I might collapse at any moment, but suppressing the cold was the priority. I felt the mana slowly pushing out the cold. The cold was slowly being pushed out by my mana, leaving my heart and moving down my arms to my fingertips.

The cold that had arrived at my fingertips was freezing my hands. And at that moment, I reached out with both hands and gathered the cold inside my body. The surrounding area was freezing due to the slow gathering of natural mana, cold, and my mana. And once again, I opened my mouth.

“Ice, rise up!”

And at my shout, a large ice crystal formed at my fingertips.

Above all, it’s that pure white, those ice crystals.

“I did it.”

She stood there, cautiously lifting her head at the voice. Blue eyes staring down at me.

“So… will you teach me magic?”

“Hmm…”

She touched her chin and then spoke while looking at me.

“I’ll consider it.”

And in that moment, everything before my eyes turned dark.

I slowly opened my eyes at the sound ringing in my ears. I could hear something boiling, and the ceiling filling my vision wasn’t that of a dormitory or lounge. Just as I wondered where I was, a voice echoed in my ears.

“You’d better stay lying down.”

I turned my eyes slightly to the left at the voice and saw a man sitting there. His familiar face made his name naturally slip from my lips.

“Sharen?”

“I found you collapsed in the library lounge. What on earth were you up to?”

“…It’s a long story.”

“The academy is a dangerous place. Rumor has it that there are monsters living in the academy’s hidden underground.”

“It wasn’t that kind of danger.”

“…You seem fine, judging by how well you speak.”

After saying that, Sharen got up from his chair and handed me something. When I slightly raised my head to look at what he held in his left hand, it was a small glass bottle.

“It was right in front of you.”

And as soon as I looked at the glass bottle, laughter spilled from my lips.