Chapter 94

The Sunday morning began with a kiss from Lily.

I spent the holiday morning happily with Lily in my room.

After dealing with lunch by some old one goo,

“Then I’ll be going.”

I tightly embraced Lily.

And Lily whispered to me as she faced me in that embrace.

“Are you really going to be okay on your own?”

“Of course.”

“If there’s an emergency, press the badge hard. A signal will come to me.”

“There won’t be.”

“I’m just worried.”

“For just a half a day? Come on.”

“Just? It’s ‘whole’ half a day.”

As it seemed, Lily herself was worried when it came to actually parting.

After all, this was the longest period we’d be apart since we met.

“Don’t worry. It’s a holiday, nothing much would happen, right?”

“…Yeah. It’s a holiday.”

Lily hesitated for a moment, then pulled my head close.

“Before you go, one last time…”

“I understand.”

Smack…

We parted slightly after sharing a parting kiss.

“Then, have a safe trip.”

“Yeah, I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

Lily, who kept staring at me until the last moment, disappeared in the blink of an eye.

I looked around.

The room where Lily was no longer present.

Even though I had spent two years here and was about to enter my third, I felt unnaturally awkward.

It felt as though something important was missing.

For half a day, I wouldn’t see Lily…

Just thinking about it made me feel so disheartened that I ended up lying flat down on the bed.

When I pressed Lily’s neatly folded blanket to my nose, I could smell her fragrance.

“…Now what?”

I couldn’t think of how to spend this long half a day.

Because most of my time was spent with Lily, it was hard to figure out what I should do without her around.

“Was there something I did before meeting Lily?”

The answer quickly came to me.

“…I was studying.”

I seem to have lived quite earnestly back then.

Just eating and studying… what a life.

“…Wait, studying?”

I immediately jumped off the bed and took out the Necronomicon from my pocket.

“I couldn’t study black magic yesterday because of the duel. I should work on this.”

I also had something I wanted to try, so I got up from the bed and stood in the center of the room.

Closing my eyes and concentrating, I could feel a faint warmth.

I had become able to sense the essence of life while having “dinner” with Lily.

“Then, I’ll do it like this…”

Following what was written in the Necronomicon, I began to concentrate on the image in my mind — imagining there was a scale inside my body and placing life force on one side of it.

‘Concentration… concentration…’

According to what was written in the Necronomicon, the study of black magic begins by completing one’s own scale.

It says that the scale can exchange costs with black mana, but it’s a process that takes a long time. I was told to be patient, but my goal was to place a curse on Lucas within a month, so I had to shorten the time as much as possible.

Was it thanks to my concentration honed by studying, or maybe the imagination I developed by reading countless books?

I was able to create the scale after a short while.

It was a simple, dark-colored scale quickly formed, but I could definitely visualize it.

‘Now, to place the life force on one side…’

I imagined lifting the warmth I felt in my chest to one side, but…

For a long time, the life force didn’t budge at all.

“Hm… is this wrong?”

Attempting black magic alone was probably too much.

Studying ordinary magic alone is considered crazy, let alone unfamiliar black magic.

“Hmm…”

Perhaps it was too ambitious.

“Should I ask Lily? But then I’d have to write a letter…”

I didn’t want to make Lily or myself feel bad with such a letter.

I didn’t want Lily to see it.

“Hmm…”

Recalling an incident a few days ago, just two days before my proposal, when light flowed from my chest.

Lily had said it was life force.

“Was it not heat but light? But I only feel warmth… Ah, could it be?”

Lily had closed off the hole from which the light had flowed that day.

Could this be why the life force isn’t moving?

“…Let’s try something else.”

I decided to think differently.

Instead of uplifting the life force onto the scale, I imagined bringing the scale to the life force.

Squeak—

“…Huh?”

It tilted.

Clearly, the scale was tilting.

And it tilted significantly.

“Did it… Did it work?”

After waiting for a little while,

Squeak—

The scale righted itself.

The scale that had been slowly tilting finally found its balance.

Then, I felt a chill in my chest.

A feeling I had felt many times everyday.

The feeling I got during meals with Lily.

The feeling of the life force leaving my body.

However, I didn’t feel the subsequent emptiness.

Because there was a force replacing the lost life force.

A foreign energy I had never felt since my birth.

“Could it be…!”

I nervously sensed that energy.

The energy massing inside my chest, described in countless books… there’s no mistake, it was mana.

“…Really? Is it real?”

The words spilled out of my mouth.

Clutching my trembling hand, I immediately jumped into bed.

After burying my face into the blanket I’d smelled just moments ago, I yelled with all my might.

“Yaaaahoooo!!!”

Taking a breath after raising my head,

“Huff…!”

After a deep breath,

“Yaaaahoooo!!!”

I tumbled around on the bed,

I ran around the room,

I even opened the window and shouted.

I couldn’t contain the overwhelming feeling in my heart.

‘I… I have… mana!’

For over twenty years, I’ve been persecuted and looked down upon for lacking mana.

Now, I can confidently say it.

I have mana.

I can use magic just like you.

Trying to calm my racing heart, I focused my mind.

Although this mana was foreign, it also felt familiar.

For two years, I studied maniacally and always got perfect scores.

Theoretically, no one among the academy students understands mana as well as I do.

As I attempted to move the mana according to what I’ve learned so far, the massed mana began to stir.

‘As expected, the method of manipulating it is similar to ordinary mana.’

I thought there might be a difference since it’s black mana, but it seems that’s not the case.

While feeling the stirring mana, I decided to conduct an experiment.

‘What’s a suitable spell… one that won’t cause harm around but has clear effects…’

After pondering for a moment, I decided on the spell to experiment with.

I wasn’t aiming for difficult spells from the start.

It would be starting with simple basic spells.

“Kip!”

With the yell, a flash came out of my hand.

“Done! It worked!”

It was a basic magic of the light attribute used instead of fire without any physical force as an attack.

An extremely simple magic, literally basic magic.

Still, I was overjoyed just by that.

I was in a position where I had to envy such simple basic magic until now.

But it’s different now.

“Kip!”

Flash!

“Kip!”

Flash!

Now, I can create light from my hand, too.

Overcome by the overwhelming excitement, tears almost welled up—

“Ah…”

I felt a stream of water flowing along my cheeks.

When I touched it, sure enough, they were tears.

Gazing blankly at them, I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

The tears wouldn’t stop no matter how much I wiped.

Are they tears of emotion or joy?

Doesn’t matter.

I thought anything was fine right now.

—

After calming my emotions and washing my face, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw myself in the restroom mirror.

My cheeks were red, but my mouth kept smiling widely, a rather awkward sight, even to myself.

“What am I crying for? It’s such a joyous occasion.”

Saying that to myself, I closed my eyes and felt the mana again.

“Clearly, the quantity has decreased.”

This wasn’t measurement, but an intuition.

As soon as I sensed the mana, I immediately felt that its quantity had decreased.

“It’s not that much reduced…?”

There was still plenty left in my heart.

If I hadn’t noticed, I would have overlooked the reduction completely.

“Maybe the efficiency of life force is really good?”

The fact that one can obtain a lot of mana with a small amount of life force.

However, excessively using life force could affect one’s lifespan, so overuse is strictly prohibited.

If there were a magic to quantify life force, it would be very convenient.

For now, it felt like less than half the amount lost during meals with Lily.

With that amount, being able to gain this much mana…

“…No time for marveling. Let’s experiment more.”

With that, I repeated experiments with mana for the half day until Lily returned.

I almost set the bedspread on fire during an experiment with basic fire magic in between.

By evening, I had cleared all traces of the magic experiments and sat neatly on the bed.

How much time passed in that state?

“I’m back~!”

Suddenly, Lily appeared out of nowhere and rushed towards me.

With her enthusiastic embrace, we naturally fell onto the bed.

Lily hugged me tightly, rubbing her cheeks against mine.

“Nice to see you, Arthur~!”

“Me too, Lily.”

In fact, I had temporarily forgotten about Lily during my crazed celebration of using magic for the first time,

But as Lily held me tightly, my heart pounded more than when I first used magic.

Certainly, half a day was too long for us.

Being separated for a long time made us feel like we wanted each other even more, like some kind of withdrawal syndrome.

It seems the same for Lily, too, because she quickly kissed me.

“Chu… Arthur… huff… I love you…”

Lily’s voice, melting like chocolate, made my head spin.

I don’t think I’ll ever get addicted to any medicines again with someone this powerful right before my eyes.

“I love you too…”

After a considerable amount of time spent in each other’s arms, we finally managed to calm down enough to remember we needed to eat dinner.

As I adjusted my breathing, I noticed Lily’s lingering gaze on my lips.

“I’ll give you plenty later after dinner.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Honestly, this time, I was the one who desired it.

I wanted compensation for being apart.

“I’ll make conch soup for dinner tonight!”

Lily dashed to the kitchen.

The urgency in her movements clearly showed she wanted to hurry through dinner.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I walked up behind her, where I now instinctively hugged her from behind, and asked,

“So… did you meet Cha Toguah?”

Lily nodded.

“Yeah, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, you see…”

Lily began the story of the past half day.

The story started with no less than traveling to the City of Earth.

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