10 Wilfred Eustice

~ wilfred ~

I took a quick gander at the scroll she had attempted to pull out. [Soul Protection], an indispensable A-rank protection spell by our standards. I quietly rolled the sheet back up and tucked it back into the bag she carried.

Even when she was young, she was competent. I remember [that] day they had fought, she was the youngest mage they took along, while I only showed up as an accident.

I saw it, that day. The absolute devastation when her parents and many other high-ranked mages were devoured in one gulp. How she fired high-level spells without even needing scrolls, only a simple wand as her focus.

One after the other, I saw her pull off a feat that most S-rank mages could only ever hope to accomplish, until [that] thing was defeated.

Afterwards... that's a story for another time.

I could sense the [Memory Erase] spell I had cast kicking in so that she would awaken soon, so I hurriedly rushed back to my chair.

"Ehm..." she woke and stretched her arms out.

"Welcome back, Candace," I said hurriedly. "I was leading you to my office, but the moment you sat down in the chair, it seems you blacked out a bit."

I had plenty of time to formulate my response, so hopefully I won't mess up as bad as I had just a moment ago.

"Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Eustice, I must have been so tired..."

Her memory would be fuzzy due to the aftereffects of the spell, so I had to quickly patch it.

"It's no problem," I said. "I wanted to talk to you about the thing that attacked today."

"Ah," she nodded, mind shifting straight to the topic at hand. "What information do we have?"

"We've received reports of similar situations near the other magic schools in Tervas," I said.

"So quickly?" she murmured.

"Yes, the information network around here is very quick, each school has a high-speed magic communications channel," I said.

She nodded, accepting without question.

"How did the other schools fare in this?" she asked worriedly.

"No one died, thankfully," I said. "However, many are highly crippled as a result of the miasma."

"Like Ms. Cohen?" she asked.

I nodded. "Esther is among the worst of our school, but the damage pales in comparison to some of the other schools."

"How many schools and people were affected?" she asked.

"Around ten schools, so probably 200 individuals in total," I replied.

"Aiya, I don't think I can purify them all quickly enough..." I heard her mutter.

I pretended to ignore it. "The clerics have found all their healing magics to be ineffective," I said, waiting for a real reaction.

As expected, she pursed her lips. So cute.

"What do you think could be done?" she asked.

"That's what I was going to ask you," I said. "Garcia said she thought she saw you there, and most of us back here saw a blinding white light from the forest..."

I can't mess this up again. I already slipped up once, telling her what happened, so I had to pretend to be oblivious this time.

"W-Well," she stammered, clearly uncertain.

Of course I knew it was the [Purification Song], I wasn't an idiot. She should have scaled it up to cast at rank A, but she probably didn't have the necessary preparations or energy in place after sneaking out.

"What is it, Miss Mendoza?" I asked.

"I-I'm not sure," she said. "My memory is still a bit hazy after I entered the miasma."

The miasma would cause a slow degradation of your mental and physical state, so there was no real way to poke a hole in her uncertainty argument.

"Hmm... even though the water element is specialized in purification as well..." I sighed.

"W-well, I could try a little bit?" she stammered. "I don't know what I could do, though..."

"Ah, if there were only a spell scroll for purification from the Gods..." I hinted.

Something seemed to have lit up in her eyes.

"Ah, I might know something," she said. "Let me go home for tonight, alright?"

With that, she rushed straight of my office.

Always one to take action. That was the Candice Mendoza I had secretly admired from afar.

It might look odd to any onlooker, but back home, I was a year younger.

That's what I told myself, anyways.

~ candace ~

After rushing out of Wilfred's office, I took a deep breath.

That was too close! It would have been even harder to explain if I were from a different world, as I still had no idea how I got here myself. Even more difficult to explain would have been the potential ramifications of releasing information about magic only I knew how to perform.

I hurriedly ran over to the room where Fredric Mendoza, my "brother," was. I realized that I had forgotten to purify the miasma running through him as I rushed to the source of the problem earlier, but he didn't even recall that I had been there.

"Candace?" he asked, looking up weakly.

"Need help getting home?" I asked.

He nodded, struggling to get up.

"I was waiting to see if you were going to be around, but they said you were asleep," he said, shaking his head. "I didn't know you went in, are you alright?"

"Aren't I walking fine now?" I quipped, stepping over to him.

I took his arm and slung it over my shoulder.

This body still wasn't as strong as my old one. What a shame, I could have carried him completely if it were the case.

As I helped him move outside, I saw Lacie Arvras similarly struggling with Garcia. She was even weaker than I was in this state, and despite Garcia being much lighter than Fredric, she was on the verge of collapse.

I looked by, but couldn't do much to help as Fredric was already leaning the majority of his weight against me as we slowly moved towards the carriages outside that were to take us home.

I dropped him inside and headed back to where Lacie and Garcia were struggling.

"I don't need your help," Lacie scoffed.

I rolled my eyes at her before slinging Garcia's frail body over my back. She was rather light and was additionally a wind mage specialist,

I don't know why that girl is always out for me. I hadn't offended her, other than the first day of school when I might have shown off a little bit in Magic Circle Computations.

Physics? Chemistry? I never even spoken. Practicals? All I did was dodge moves from the instructor.

The test scores for the entrance examinations weren't released to the public, so how would she know she didn't outperform me in the other areas of study?

As usual, I never quite understood the feeling of jealousy, even as one who consistently strives to be at the top.

Your performance is yours, not the fault of anyone else.

I placed Garcia down in the carriage behind us before climbing in where Fredric was. Lacie just had her mouth wide open at the sight.

"Mendoza Manor," I instructed the driver in the front before flinging the curtain shut.

Even though Garcia was much lighter than Fredric, that didn't change the fact that this body was terribly out of shape. After preparing the scrolls, I should devote some time to training my physical strength.

It was late at night when we reached home, far past dinnertime though neither of us had eaten since lunch.

The two of us were fawned over by Annabel, the head housekeeper, and plenty of other maids that our Manor employed.

"Some food please," I said, back muscles sore from carrying Garcia and supporting Fredric's weight.

Fredric nodded weakly in agreement.

Fredric was carried to his room while I headed straight for my room.

On the way, I was stopped by my "mother," Aprilynne.

"I heard about what happened," she said. "Rest well for a few days, the school said both of you were pardoned for a week."

I nodded curtly, as there were more pressing matters to attend to. Cases of miasma poisoning would lead to weakening of physical strength, along with high amounts of mental torture, all the way until insanity set in.

I treated Fredric as no different from the rest of the students who had been poisoned by miasma, and would let the school distribute the scrolls I created.

Normally, high-ranked spells would be the hardest to inscribe on a spell scroll, but as a seasoned mage, the time and effort that would be expended differed minimally between A-rank and D-ranked spells.

Because of that, I chose the highest ranked purification spell I knew, [Whispers of Light].

Spells and arias were categorized differently. A C-ranked aria could not be compared to a C-ranked spell. Arias were on a completely different scale. Even though [Whispers of Light] had a much smaller scale compared to the [Purification Song], the power they had were completely different. The [Purification Song] channeled as a B-rank spell could purify over a large area, but since most of the energy was focused at the darkness forme, little of it went into purifying the miasma poisoning.

[Whispers of Light] was completely different. It had far more purification power than even a [Purification Song] scaled to be cast at the S-rank, but could only affect a single target.

Since there were an estimated 200 casualties, I needed to inscribe 250 spell scrolls to be on the safe side.

Hopefully, the poisoning wouldn't spread too far before I finished.

A maid knocked on the door as I was in the midst of inscribing.

Being able to split your focus is a core skill in every Mage's arsenal, so I continued inscribing as I yelled for her to bring it in.

She walked in, and I instructed her to place it on the small table beside me as I continued on my current scroll.

We didn't exchange further pleasantries and she left without kicking up a fuss.

"How... does she inscribe while talking?" I heard her mutter.

[Fredric must not be able to split his focus very well...] I thought.

When the clock struck midnight, I only had 20 spell scrolls done.

I could push through the night, but sleep would be important in restoring my mental state. Despite the fact that I had slept plenty, that hardly made me energetic at all as I had collapsed from exhaustion earlier.

Collapsing from exhaustion twice in the same day due to fervent magic study is something of the past. I needed to pace myself better now.

I snuffed out the candle with a thought before changing into a nightgown and crawling into my bed, falling to sleep the moment my head hit the pillow.