* * *
Regardless of how she felt, his position outranked hers.
Once she left and the door closed, silence filled the room.
Elliot sipped his tea, as if trying to calm himself.
Then, he raised his head and looked at me.
“The ball is just around the corner. Are you really going to let things stay like this? At this rate, I won’t even be able to attend.”
“……”
The ball.
The word lingered in my mind — and something clicked.
There was a rumor like that, wasn’t there?
Something about getting dragged out of the hall entrance if the report was late?
No wonder he was so desperate to report—there was another reason behind it.
“If you couldn’t meet me, couldn’t you have just gone to Klen instead?”
“He’s being summoned all over the place these days. There’s hardly a moment to catch him.”
“Not even for a short meeting?”
“Phew. Don’t even mention it. The mood over there is… not something we can talk about.”
It wasn’t just the act of performing that made Klen look exhausted.
Everyone wanted to extract as much information from him as possible.
But Klen knew that going too far would only bring more trouble—so he always stopped just short.
Especially when it came to the Elders.
Just knowing of their existence was enough to make things complicated.
With everyone harboring different motives, maybe that’s why the atmosphere kept getting worse.
“You didn’t come by yesterday, did you?”
“I’m not always that free, you know.”
Though he said it bluntly, his expression was still sullen.
Wasn’t he always free?
Maybe my thoughts showed on my face, because Elliot suddenly continued, as if picking up on them.
“And in the afternoon, I was told you were at the East Tower, so I couldn’t come.”
“Is that so?”
The two of them—so vastly different in temperament—seemed to avoid each other.
Even the healer told me not to get too close to this guy.
He took another sip of tea and grabbed a cookie from the table.
A variety of flavors made it fun to pick and choose based on your taste.
He popped a few into his mouth and, finding them to his liking, kept eating.
His sour mood finally seemed to ease a little.
Elliot placed a thick stack of documents on the table.
“I brought the report.”
My hand, reaching for the teacup, froze. It was thicker than I expected.
“You’re not going to just explain it to me?”
“It’s all written in there.”
“…”
There’s no way he forgot.
He just didn’t want to bother saying it out loud.
If it were Klen, he would’ve hated writing it down and just said it.
Elliot, on the other hand, preferred writing to talking.
He waited quietly, sipping tea and munching on cookies while I read.
‘No… actually, maybe it’s more like…’
He said he wasn’t free, but is he just using me as an excuse to slack off here?
“Thanks for the report. You can go now.”
“…”
Elliot didn’t reply.
He just stared at me quietly—and stuffed another cookie in his mouth.
“Go prepare for the ball or something.”
“So… this is it, right? We’re done? You won’t block me at the entrance or anything?”
The moment I mentioned the ball, his eyes lit up.
That mixture of laziness and irritation vanished without a trace.
He stuffed a few more cookies in his mouth, stood up quickly, and dashed out.
Of course, not without saying goodbye.
So this is what he meant by “just for a moment,” huh.
If I had been in worse shape, he probably would’ve just left the report and gone off to the ballroom, claiming his work was done.
Only after the room grew quiet did I sip my tea and flip open the report.
‘Let’s see here…’
For someone so lazy, the title of Mage Corps Commander wasn’t just for show—the content was surprisingly solid.
Apparently, the rumor that Levatein was imbued with magic stemmed from its nature of absorbing mana.
But even so, he added a cautionary note that experiments were needed to confirm it.
Next was a report about finding a spell array in the forest that had been carved in a strange way.
Incomplete arrays tend to dissolve on their own after a few years, so people usually just leave them alone. He also noted that the variations were too numerous to list.
‘Nothing about the stain.’
There was no mention of the strange stain that Klen had seen.
Strange, fragmented spells…
But the response seemed oddly dismissive, as if it were perfectly normal for mages to be practicing randomly wherever they wanted.
But I didn’t know much about magic—and maybe that’s why I found it suspicious.
All we’d found so far were scraps of broken spells.
Isn’t it natural to be wary?
Would people normally go out of their way to cover up failed spells?
Could it be that because the Mage Corps Commander didn’t raise suspicion, everyone else just brushed it off too?
“…”
Maybe I should punish Elliot if he can’t stop the teleportation spell from being completed.
‘Should I go back to the forest entrance?’
But I can’t see the spell arrays myself.
I should bring someone who can handle mana.
Not Elliot—I just told him to prepare for the ball.
If I call him back now, he’ll really lose it this time.
Then… someone else?
A name does come to mind.
Someone with mana rivaling even the Corps Commander, who could probably spot a hidden spell array easily.
But then I remember his face—haggard, overwhelmed by his workload—and I hesitate.
“Hmmm…”
I took another sip of tea, and popped one of the few remaining cookies into my mouth.
The crisp, sweet flavor spread across my tongue.
Somehow, it lifted my mood just enough.
“Maybe… this is actually a good chance for him to get some air?”
If he could escape that awful smell that lingers in the tower, and see some fresh air and greenery, it might help him relax.
With that thought, I stood up decisively.
I walked straight to the door, hand outstretched for the handle—
“Where are you going?”
Before I even touched it, the door slid open, and there stood Linda, wearing a small smile.
“…!”
I barely swallowed the scream that tried to escape.
My heart dropped with a thud and pounded violently, like I’d just finished some brutal training session.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, but… meeting her like this?
Terrifying.
“I thought you might be running low on cookies, so I brought more. But—are you going somewhere?”
“Ah? N-no, I was just…”
Even I could tell how suspicious my trembling voice sounded.
My eyes darted unnaturally to the side.
It hadn’t been that long since I promised to inform someone of where I was going.
And now… here was the test of that promise.
Do I lie—or do I keep my word?
Well, technically, I didn’t promise I’d always say where I was going.
So if I twist it just right, this isn’t a breach of trust.
“…”
“I was just going to swing by the forest for a bit.”
But I didn’t want to worm my way out of this with a half-baked excuse from the start.
“No.”
As expected, she refused flatly, like it wasn’t even worth thinking about.
From the way she positioned herself fully in front of the door, it was clear—she wasn’t going to budge.
“Not even for a short while?”
“No matter how effective the medicine was, you still need proper rest for the time being.”
The medicine, huh. So she thinks I’m acting like this because of the tonic I got from the healer?
* * *
