Summer was approaching.
It was still technically late spring, but the sunlight was already harsh enough to make one squint without meaning to. The thick scent of grass made the presence of the oncoming summer feel undeniable.
At Tane, the activation of the magical fountains signaled the arrival of such summer. Sculptures scattered throughout the campus, fountains or statues adorned with streams of water, suddenly began to spray water with force.
These features, dormant throughout the winter, sprang back to life without warning.
And that was the day it happened.
Late spring. Just before summer began. The day the fountains were turned on.
Even though school rules didn’t yet permit it, Awen Damir had already switched into her summer uniform on her own, flapping her sleeves to cool her sweat.
The temperature wasn’t quite hot enough to sweat from just walking, so she had clearly run from somewhere.
“Professor Redcliff asked me to tell you something. Camilla. If anyone tries to make contact with you, don’t respond. He says they’re dangerous people.”
“…Is that so?”
“…Camilla. Be honest with me. Has someone already approached you?”
Awen looked at her friend with worried eyes. Ever since Adel’s death, Camilla had often stared blankly into space.
On top of that, she had developed a habit she never had before.
Constantly checking the dormitory mailbox. The frequency was so high it could practically be called compulsive.
“Camilla. We’re talking about someone skilled enough to overpower a professor. If someone like that is obsessively doing this, doesn’t that mean they have a motive… right?”
“Motive…”
A murmur left Camilla’s lips, but no clear answer followed. She only gazed somewhere in the distance, lost in thought.
“…Camilla. You can tell me, okay? What did they say? Why are they tormenting you like this?”
“Hmm.”
Camilla suddenly stared quietly at Awen, who was fanning her palms to cool off.
“…Wh-What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Awen. Are you hot by any chance?”
“…I mean, yeah?”
“Perfect timing, then.”
Awen was subdued in an instant. With both arms firmly held down, a question mark practically popped over her head.
“Huh?”
Only for a moment, though. When Camilla suddenly leaned her face in close, Awen started flailing.
“Wh-What are you doing?! Camilla?!”
Sniff sniff.
“Wh-What are you even doing?!”
Awen, having her scent sniffed without knowing why, let out a high-pitched squeal as Camilla, tilting her head in confusion, brought her nose close to different parts of Awen’s body.
“Wh-What… are you doing…”
“As I thought, a person’s scent doesn’t change…”
“W-Wait, do I smell…?”
“Yeah. It’s not like anyone doesn’t have a body scent.”
“……”
That shocking statement left Awen frozen in place.
She lifted her arm and started sniffing herself.
“I-I took a shower this morning though…!”
“Awen.”
Camilla continued on, unfazed.
“They say a person’s body scent doesn’t change easily. Unless they’ve just showered or used a ton of perfume.”
“……”
“But can that scent be the same… even if it’s someone else? I don’t know. I’ve heard people with blood ties can smell alike…”
“W-Wait, are you saying I smell like Aron? Like a lonely old man?!”
“Lonely old man? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You smell like fruit. Closer to yuzu.”
“……”
Awen, unsure whether to be happy or upset, missed the moment to react and let out a long sigh.
“…So what’s this sudden talk about scent, Camilla?”
“It’s nothing…”
“I trust you’re not planning to keep quiet after all that. Camilla.”
“…Hmm.”
And so, Camilla slowly began to share what she’d been brooding over.
Of course, she left out any direct mention of who she had mistaken the person for.
“So, you’re saying… a stranger smelled familiar to you?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Just to be clear, was it a good smell?”
“…That’s…”
“I know you’ll just dodge the question, so I’ll give you options. One, a bad smell. Two, a heart-racing smell. Three, a comforting smell.”
“I don’t see the point of breaking it down like that… but if I have to choose, I’d say number three… I think.”
At that confession, Awen rested her chin on her hand and gave a sly grin, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
Her thoughts, more interested in romance than schoolwork, began racing in an unwholesome direction.
“Really? So… are you meeting him again?”
“…He told me to come to the central fountain in the capital this weekend.”
“Oh my. How bold of him. Can I come too?”
But Camilla tilted her head and answered,
“Didn’t you just say not to respond?”
“…Huh?”
“I mean, the professor told me not to engage if anyone made contact…”
The sudden twist in context left Awen speechless for a moment.
If what Camilla just said was true, then….could it be?
“That familiar scent… don’t tell me the person it came from was—”
“Yeah. The mysterious figure who tampered with the records. That’s the person I was talking about…”
“Whaaat?!”
Awen was at a loss for words, feeling like the world was spinning.
“Th-That’s so weird!! Don’t you think your crush point is kind of off?!”
“…Crush? I don’t think it goes that far…”
“W-Well, did you see his face?”
“…I didn’t.”
“A-Aaagh!! That’s even weirder! Camilla! I get developing feelings for someone who beat you in a match, but didn’t this whole thing seriously stress you out before!? He’s basically the culprit! And now you’re interested in him just because of his scent?!”
Her friend, who had lived without any men in her life, was awakening to some bizarre tastes! At this rate, things could spiral out of control.
Something like this could become a stain on Camilla’s otherwise promising future…!
Driven by that fear, Awen shouted,
“Then I’m going too! I’ll be the one to judge if this guy is really worthy of being your future lover since you’re picking him based on scent alone!”
“No, I just found it odd, that’s all… And really, who even does that based on scent…”
“Leave it to your mom!”
“My mother is Lady Bliss, actually…”
***
[Welcome, visitor. Please state your destination.]
“Magic Tower, Basement Level 53.”
[This Magic Tower consists of Floors 1 through 30 above ground.]
[Please state your destination.]
“No, I said Basement Level 53… Ah.”
I pulled out the crumpled scrap of paper I had shoved into my pocket.
On it was a magic circle I occasionally used in the game.
I stared at its faintly glowing surface for a moment, then raised a finger and tore the paper.
Rip—
[Welcome, Heinel2.]
“Hmm. Just as I thought. So that’s what was triggering the response.”
Only now did the identity verification system inside the elevator react properly.
“Now that I think about it… this could be a problem.”
I looked up at a small light pointed in my direction.
A surveillance-type magical tool. Like a magical CCTV, commonly installed in elevators.
“…I should probably delete that.”
I raised a finger and brought it close to the light.
◆ [Total Magical Structure Analysis] activated.
◆ Analyzing nearby magical tool… Analysis complete.
◆ Accessing stored records.
A holographic interface appeared, resembling a video editing timeline.
First, I erased the most recent five minutes of footage, then disabled the device for an extra minute just in case.
Normally, no one would bother checking the footage in detail…but if someone did, it could become a big issue.
After all, I had just tricked the Magic Tower’s identity verification system using nothing more than a scrap of paper.
Normally, this kind of thing would be impossible, but there is a reason it worked.
A magic circle inscribed on the piece of paper. The symbol at its center.
Even now, it was faintly glowing. Its true nature was a rune-letter magic circle.
Runes.
In the original game, they were treated as hidden collectible elements.
Typically, the magic that mages use is like the mage themselves becoming a kind of signal, manipulating the world…a TV, so to speak.
So traditional magic involves weaving these signals together into a structured system.
That structured expression is what we call a magic formula.
But rune letters are a different matter altogether.
Letters that can manipulate the world on their own.
It’s like pressing a button on the TV itself.
Because of that, what you can do with them is limited, and you have to know exactly what each rune means. But… for someone like me, who cleared the game multiple times, that limitation isn’t much of an obstacle.
In fact, maintaining a uniform wave of 100,000 units of mana to form a rune, which would normally be a trivial requirement, was now my biggest hurdle.
Just like how a certain amount of pressure is needed to press a TV button, the same applies to rune letters.
Even in demonic form, my mana tops out at around 70,000… If it weren’t for the mana I absorbed from the Magic Tower, I couldn’t have used rune letters at all.
Still, I managed to overcome those limitations…and this was the result.
I had completely fooled the Magic Tower’s identity verification system with nothing but a piece of paper.
Back when I played the game, I didn’t think much of it… but now that I consider it, rune letters are kind of similar to “quirks”.
Like how just the rune for “darkness” can generate a side effect that conceals your identity…
“……”
I looked down at the torn piece of paper, then checked the surveillance magical tool that had lit up again.
[Registered User Name: Heinel2]
[Please state the floor you wish to visit.]
“Lowest basement level.”
[Confirmed.]
[Descending to Basement Level 53.]
***
Past midnight, now dawn.
A time when most people would normally be asleep.
And yet, Basement Level 53 of the Magic Tower was brightly lit.
“You’re late.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Even at this hour, there was a kind of intense passion in the air. But what was it directed toward?
Standing there with her arms crossed and a sharp look on her face was the red-haired mage, Heinel Shifter.
“I ran into a bit of trouble.”
“That’s your whole excuse?”
“I did mention it in advance, but…”
“You never said you’d be gone this long.”
“……”
I had nothing to say to that.
I’d managed to juggle both lives while working undercover as Tane’s butler… but over the past few days, I’d completely skipped the Tower several times while laying the groundwork with Camilla.
“Look, without you, the research doesn’t progress properly. You know that, right?”
“That’s not true. With your talent, Heinel, you would’ve—”
“You’re the one who proposed this contract in the first place, remember? You said if we finished the research quickly, even someone like you who can’t use magic would be able to.”
I can use magic without any of this, actually.
…is what I could’ve said, but she looked too angry to hear it.
Still, she wasn’t wrong. Right now, I was using up precious NP just to learn basic spells one by one.
But if she personally rewrote the spell formulas for me, it could drastically reduce NP consumption.
“I don’t mind you going out. Even being gone a day or two is fine; I’ll let that slide. But three days in a row? While I’m here working, and you’re supposed to be my lab assistant?”
“……”
“And on top of that, you didn’t even show me or explain how you did it!! I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure it out!”
She must be talking about that….me, an unregistered user, lighting up the Tower’s space illumination at will.
“……”
I silently let her rant go in one ear and out the other.
Any moment now, I figured she’d fall back into her usual recluse-like speech patterns.
“…That’s so cruel. If you’re going to treat this so lightly, why don’t you just quit─?!”
She snapped and immediately looked startled at herself, clearly thinking she’d gone too far.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
I just shrugged.
I snapped my fingers to dim the overly bright lights and started cleaning up the mess of a room.
“Wh-What the…?”
“Looks like you haven’t even been eating properly while I was gone.”
“……”
“I’ll whip something up quickly. Just have a seat.”
“……”
I caught her sitting down out of the corner of my eye, her expression still flustered.
I opened the magical fridge off to the side.
“How were the past three days?”
“…Felt like my head was going to explode.”
“That must’ve been rough.”
“No matter how I look at it, it’s just too much. The directional flow of the wave being completely reversed is already complicated, but then there’s the concept of structural symmetry… ah.”
“Symmetry concept?”
“…Ugh. It’s, uh, I mean…”
Heinel Shifter is 21 years old. If I were still in Adel’s position, she might have felt like a distant older figure.
But from my perspective, 21 is still an immature age.
On top of that, she’s someone who’s focused more on magic than on human relationships.
She’s just a smart kid in a grown-up body. Her way of expressing emotions hasn’t changed much since she was younger.
Maybe the guilt hit her after she let all her anger out. Heinel dipped some bread into the soup and glanced at me.
“…Hey.”
“Yes?”
“You’re not mad? I mean… yeah.”
“Not really. I’m used to it.”
Compared to the bosses I had back when I was working at a company, Heinel was nothing. In fact, she was actually kind of cute. And objectively attractive, too.
“…Used to it…? But you’re a noble from… oh.”
“Yes.”
“…Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. …You must be the one in the biggest hurry, being unable to use magic and all.”
I wasn’t sure what misunderstanding led her to this, but she’d clearly switched into self-reflection mode.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Anyway, would you like some coffee? I brought cake.”
Seeing her lower her head and quietly nod, I smiled to myself.
Guess I can stay out a few more days and she won’t complain.
They say the first time is always the hardest. After that, it gets easier.
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