How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 107

“You, on the other hand, are exactly the same as before. You still have no idea how to speak to people, Eric.”

These were the first words Eric heard from Tina in more than twenty years. She looked caught between anger and amusement, but still managed to give him a helpless smile. They nodded to each other. Since the ship was about to depart, however, Tina did not linger. She soon turned away and boarded with her head high and shoulders straight.

Aisha now stood beside the motionless Eric, waving to her parents on deck. Tina looked happy, while Hock stood smiling beside her. The sea breeze tousled their hair. Hock’s black hair blew untidily across his face as he held the railing and turned toward his wife. The unscarred half of his face still bore the traces of hardship, and for a moment, a hint of the handsome young man he had once been appeared again…

Aisha stared at her father in surprise. Before she could fully react, the ship had already traveled farther away, and the figures aboard blurred into the distance. She could only see two tiny human shapes supporting each other as they turned toward the cabins. A long, glittering wake stretched behind the moving vessel.

“Let us go back,” Eric suddenly said.

Aisha turned to him and asked in concern, “Teacher, is this… all right?”

“What?”

“…Nothing.”

Seeing that Eric’s expression had returned to normal, Aisha relaxed. His meeting with Tina had been unexpectedly calm and ordinary, without the awkwardness she had imagined. The few words they exchanged had sounded faintly quarrelsome, but not distant. They had resembled ordinary old friends who had never fallen out. It was the best outcome Aisha could have hoped for, and she felt much more at ease.

She nodded and answered with a smile, “Mm! Let’s go back.”

Eric said nothing more. He gestured to Aisha and took the lead toward the port exit. But after he turned away, the face that had seemed completely restored to normal slowly revealed exhaustion.

The instant he saw Tina again, the blank and hollow twenty years behind him surged forward all at once. Time, which had stood still, finally began moving again. Once more he felt that he was alive, that he was breathing. Emotion swelled within his heart and brought pain so clear and definite that he could not mistake it.

The last time he saw her, she had been a girl about to marry. Now… her daughter had reached the age Tina had been then.

Once waiting became a habit, time ceased to matter. Only when one came back to oneself did one suddenly discover how many years had already passed. Still…

Tina was certainly no longer young, but Eric had possessed a second half to his sentence and had found no opportunity to say it.

She was still… as beautiful as ever.

Eric lowered his gaze to Aisha, who walked slowly beside him. Sensing his attention, the face that resembled Tina’s turned toward him in confusion and blinked.

“It is nothing,” Eric said indifferently, looking away. After a long while, he suddenly added, “Aisha, you resemble your mother very much.”

“Huh?” Aisha paused. Eric had said the same thing when they first met, and she had not expected him to mention it again now. Still, she smiled. “Many people in Vitas say that.”

Eric offered no opinion.

Aisha had misunderstood him. He had not been speaking of their appearance, but rather…

For some reason, in that moment, he had suddenly understood. Aisha and Tina certainly differed in temperament, but they shared many things within: talent in a particular field, for example, and… a certain blazing fire hidden in their hearts.

Composing himself, Eric said, “I will give you an answer about the magic array you brought me as soon as possible.”

…

Eric had said “as soon as possible,” but he had not recognized the array at a glance, and the array itself was genuinely complicated. Even as a mage on the ninth floor of the Tower of Magic’s upper section, he could not solve it immediately.

Aisha remained deeply uneasy while she waited because she could not be sure she had accurately drawn such an unfamiliar and intricate array. She had the sensitivities of a mage with unusual abilities, but many advanced mages had failed to reproduce that very spell. Her anxiety mounted with every day. When Eric finally told her the result two weeks later, her heart nearly leaped from her chest.

“…The spell has been tested. You appear to have drawn it correctly,” Eric announced succinctly. Then he paused.

“I apologize. I had never seen this magic array before and found almost no relevant information, so it required considerable time. This magic… should be unique to the darkfolk of Duke. It is probably used and transmitted only within a small circle even there, which is why no information has ever reached us.”

Aisha listened carefully and nodded. The level and direction of magical development differed between every country in the world. Subtle variations existed even within the Helman Federation. The mages of the Kingdom of Micks, for example, excelled at healing magic; those of Ger specialized in combat magic; and those of Bisnis were particularly skilled in magic for daily life. By the same principle, Beast and Duke probably possessed unique magic they had never made public.

The long history of war had allowed little exchange between the countries of the continent. Even Beast and the Helman Federation, whose relations had been relatively good in recent years, had coexisted peacefully for only a little more than twenty years. Their intimacy had not reached the point of sharing research. Information on newly developed magic was especially important and tightly classified. It would never be allowed to leak.

Under such circumstances, investigating foreign magic was naturally extremely difficult. The darkfolk magic of Duke was the most difficult of all. Legend claimed that before the gods abandoned them, the darkfolk had been the race most favored by the divine. A remarkably high proportion of their population possessed magical talent, and their average ability exceeded that of both humans and beastfolk. Duke still could not compare with Wold, where both technology and magic flourished at extraordinary heights, but it was undeniably the most magically advanced country on the continent. Its population was small, its people were ostracized by other races, and very little information escaped its borders. Even at the Heart of the World, records concerning darkfolk were far scarcer than those concerning beastfolk or humans.

According to Elizabeth, the advanced mages who examined her before had said the same thing: this was unusual darkfolk magic, difficult to identify and harder still to break.

Aisha was already delighted that Eric had agreed to undertake such troublesome work. She pressed her lips together anxiously and asked in haste, “Teacher, then… what kind of magic is it? It has remained inside Elizabeth’s wrist for several years. Could it harm her body? And… can we draw a counter-array to break it?”

Aisha asked too many questions at once, forcing Eric to sort through them. After considering, he chose to answer only the last.

“No.”

He paused.

“Aisha, you told me before that this was sealing magic.”

Aisha stared, then nodded. “After the spell was used, Elizabeth could hardly exert any strength through her wrist… Is it not a seal?”

“No. Look at these.”

Eric organized the papers in his hands, passed them to Aisha, and began explaining.

Aisha accepted the sheets. They showed the magic array she had copied for Eric, now transferred with special materials onto professional magical paper. Formulas and annotations filled every surrounding space, analyzing it in detail. The material was so advanced that one glance made Aisha dizzy. Still, she wanted to understand the spell’s structure, so she forced herself to concentrate and studied the dense contents. She could not make sense of them in so short a time.

Then she heard Eric say, “In fact, this is transfer magic… Come. A practical demonstration will make it clearer.”

Aisha looked up at him in surprise. Eric walked to the magic workbench and calmly took out his wand and several teaching implements. Realizing the importance of the lesson, Aisha rose as well and watched his demonstration with complete concentration.

After studying the spell for two weeks, Eric could already draw the array with astonishing proficiency. First, he drew an array identical to Aisha’s copy on the left side of the magic workbench. Then he drew an unfamiliar array on the right—though some of its patterns resembled those of the first. Finally, he picked up a plastic ball, placed it upon the array on the left, and activated the magic.

The palm-sized array spun rapidly and emitted a faint magical glow. The plastic ball vanished instantly. The next second, it appeared on the array to the right.

The experiment ended. Both arrays stopped, and the plastic ball lay motionless on the table.

Aisha was astonished.

This was… spatial magic.

Within the field of magic, space and time were the most difficult boundaries to cross and usually reflected a mage’s level directly. The linked alarm spell Aisha had established with Thorne, for example, could not operate across an area larger than a small country. For this reason, temporal magic and spatial magic—whose very purpose was to transcend time or space—were universally recognized as the most difficult branches to study and develop. In truth, temporal magic existed only as a conceptual form of “future magic”; no mage had ever accomplished it. Even the highest achievement in spatial magic amounted to nothing more than manipulating a few objects through empty space.

Yet the transfer magic Eric had just demonstrated, a form of advanced spatial magic, relied on no medium whatsoever. The ball vanished into thin air and reappeared elsewhere. Had darkfolk magic truly developed this far?

Wait…

Aisha suddenly froze.

If the spell’s function was to move something from one location to another, then… Elizabeth’s strength had not been sealed, but transferred? Did that mean Brandon had stolen her strength? But in that case… why did his wrist contain an identical array? The two arrays used for transfer magic differed in form. What Aisha had felt in Prince Brandon’s wrist was plainly the same output array Elizabeth carried…

Before Aisha could follow the thought further, Eric looked at her once more, his gaze profound. He hesitated for several seconds before saying, “There is one more thing I must tell you, Aisha.”

“What?” Aisha looked over distractedly.

Eric met her eyes and said calmly, “You may begin considering the topic of your graduation thesis.”