“Sorry, sis, but the tokamak is what we need. So I’ll just borrow it until you co ho!”
Having said that, Akasha jumped out the window. It had happened so suddenly that there wasn’t a chance to stop her.
Lotte sighed at the broken window. I could read the bafflent on her face. Running both hands down her face, Lotte asked .
“When did you get back to the mansion?”
“A little while ago.”
“I have so many things I need to ask you.”
I would’ve been the sa if I were her. Feeling guilty, I stood there quietly.
“But we need to catch her first, right? Since she took sothing important to you.”
I nodded with a sheepish smile. For now, the fire had to be put out first.
We ran to the window. When we looked down, Akasha was pulling the tokamak out of the bushes. She looked up at us and grinned.
“Ha, I hid it here beforehand in case of sothing like this.”
Ha, so it was a preditated cri. If this had been an accident, there could’ve been a chance for extenuation.
“You’re dead.”
Ti to set the hierarchy.
“Wait, don’t jump down all of a sudden!”
When I jumped out the window, Lotte followed suit in panic.
“This is the only way to catch her.”
“I know, but at least say sothing....”
There wasn’t ti to talk. Akasha lit a stick and pulled out a scroll. She was all ready to escape.
“Okay, let show you sothing fun; this is a Weight Reduction scroll.”
Weight Reduction–an Air Magic that manipulated the air around the target to allow even heavy objects to be carried easily.
“If I apply this here... oh? I can lift it with one hand!”
Akasha tucked the tokamak at her side like a pool tube and wagged back and forth.
To think she prepared this much–she was a thorough one.
This wasn’t going to be easy, it seed. I had to be prepared for a long chase. I pulled a stick of mana grass from my hip sack and lit the end, Lotte also getting ready to support .
“You’re going to fight , Aether? I don’t think you want to be doing this here.”
Groups of people gathered at the sound of glass breaking; they were mostly the mansion’s servants.
“I heard the window breaking... Oh my goodness! What is going on!”
“Wait, there are two of Miss Lotte’s friends...?”
“What is happening, everyone...!!”
The glass was shattered, there were two Aethers... it was certainly a ridiculous situation from a third party’s perspective.
This couldn’t be any more of a nuisance. I was going to have to bow in apology to the Count later.
There wasn’t enough ti to explain, so I made a decision.
“Lotte, I’ll go after her so could you explain to everyone here?”
“Uh, sure.”
Akasha nodded at that as if she expected it.
“Of course that’s what you’d do; your research is more important than your friends, after all.”
“Why don’t you just hand that over?”
“Why should I?”
Akasha took off like a water deer1 coming down the hill, dashing away at ground-folding speeds that couldn’t co from humans. It was ‘shukuchi’, the martial art mainly used by beastkin and Golden-Eyed.
This body was also familiar with martial arts, since both Akasha and I had the sa physical abilities, anyway. I should know how to do what she did.
“Better go this way.”
Ta-ta-tap!
Akasha changed her direction southward; it was the expected escape route.
There was a forest not well-traveled in the southern part of the County. Akasha was planning to follow this forest to the mountains first in the southwest, then the west, and go straight up to the Demonic Lands.
“So persistent!”
After running mindlessly, we’d co to the deeper part of the woods. Akasha stopped and turned around.
The mana began circulating evenly around my body, having inhaled mana grass while running. Once I checked that no one was around, I imdiately pulled out my staff. Akasha snorted at that and asked.
“You really intend to fight here? Sisters shouldn’t do that.”
“What fight? I’m punishing you for stealing.”
“Damn it, there’s no ti... Well, fine. It has been a while since we’ve last fought.”
Srrrr–Akasha also pulled her staff from subspace with a smile full of madness.
The staff of a mage was shaped based on their personality or past experiences, because it was sothing closer to an astral body than a physical object.
As a simple example, the staff I summoned was always the vernier caliper. I assud it was a reflection of that ti right before I transmigrated here–that is, when I slamd down iron calipers onto a computer as I had been reading that paper.
When I had first summoned it, I’d cursed the hell out of it for being so weird fucking thing. Now I was used to it.
And so I thought I’d be nonchalant no matter what kind of staff appeared.
“What the fuck is that?”
Akasha’s staff was a y-shaped lightning rod. Sothing like that was supposed to be a mage’s staff...?
“Is your surna ‘Franklin’ by any chance?”
“What the hell are you saying? There really is sothing wrong with your mory. Or did the Goddess ss with it?”
Akasha swung the lightning rod–I an, the staff–and slamd it on the ground.
“Oh, Aether, let’s go easy on the magic. If people find us like this here, then it’ll be quite troubleso, no?”
She was lying. The scrolls she took out from her pocket contained spells that wouldn’t make this a neat, quiet fight.
“Let’s see, you’ve forgotten the magics you usually use because of your mory, right? Then I’ll just use this one to fight you. Let’s have so fun, then.”
Akasha put down the tokamak and set each scroll alight. Things were about to happen at any mont.
If we made a racket here, it would cause trouble for the residents. Akasha would imdiately take off and the bla would naturally fall on . Her intention was to have shunned by the people and force to return ‘ho’.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I needed a way to end this with a single move so that this little sister wouldn’t try anything funny. I had to find a magic for the so-called ‘lunatic tactic’.
And it wasn’t hard to co up with one.
I reached deep into my hipsack and took out a large scroll.
“Uh, hold on.”
She was clearly taken aback. Akasha backed off, mouth twitching.
“A-Aether, you’re not trying to kill , are you? That’s way over the line no matter how you see it, right?”
“So you know what this is.”
A supre magic that could defeat even a Cataclysm:
[Ultimate Fire Magic ─ Flare]
I prepared to pour mana into the scroll’s bloom unit.
Smiling, I threw the question at Akasha.
“Will you give the tokamak or not?”
It was my ultimatum.
**Using Flare would destroy the whole forest, so I never thought to use it in the first place.
But I needed to pour my heart into fooling Akasha. I actually let mana flow into the bloom unit and got ready to fire. Thanks to that, I was able to deceive her.
“O-okay! Let’s use words, alright? Words!”
I got her to realize on her own that it was better for her to sit at a negotiation table rather than fight. Waving her arm, Akasha put her staff away.
“There. No more scroll, staff unsummoned. So you put that away, too!”
“I will. But before that....”
The important thing in negotiations was to take the lead. I had to make the difference in our positions clear.
“Get on your knees first.”
“Fine! Like this, right?”
Then began the eting with the sister I had never t.
“Is it good or bad to steal soone’s else’s property?”
“It’s bad.”
It was a cheerful answer. When I glared, Akasha forced her face into sothing woeful.
Akasha swiped the backs of her hands over her eyes in pretense. If she had actually been crying, I might have felt a modicum of sympathy, but she ruined it for herself. The boring, uninspiring, poor excuse for acting only irritated .
“But the tokamak really couldn’t be helped, because the progress of our work slowed after you left.”
“Work? What work?”
“It’s sothing; you’ll know when your mories co back.”
It didn’t matter if she didn’t tell , because I had my own source of information.
“Anyway, it’s an earnest desire of our kind. My ability isn’t enough to achieve it; it needs to be you and together.”
“So what?”
“Think about it. The fact that you made this despite losing your mories ans that you deeply care for us.”
“What are you trying to say?”
I didn’t like when people talked in circles. At my direct question, Akasha put her hands together in a plea.
“I don’t expect you to co ho right away, so just let get away with borrowing it.”
A girl identical to was kneeling and begging with pitiful eyes. The sight of it made feel bizarre.
“Hm.”
I pondered for a mont.
What should I do about this?
[You seem to have sothing in mind.]
Yup.
I had a basic idea of who Akasha was, so I was able to co up with a decent idea.
Verl’s info, not mine but ‘Aether’s’ position, and this little sister of hers. By combining the three of these well, I could considerably accelerate the developnt of nuclear weapons.
[How?]
It was rather simple if you think about it. Lips curled upwards, I looked down at Akasha.
“Not for free.”
“Then?”
“Equivalent exchange.”
Akasha’s head tilted slightly at my response.
“Hmph, aren’t you being stingy towards your sister?”
“I said I don’t know you.”
“A-alright, I got it, so get that scroll away from !”
[Wow, Master. That was a bit harsh.]
Well, this was sufficiently generous.
I was nearly robbed of the tokamak but was willing to put it up for trade. From the surface, I was getting the worse end of the deal.
Yeah, on the surface.
“Fine, what should I give, then?”
“Think about what I would want the most.”
I prodded her a little. If they thought the sa way, then she should know what that was without saying anything.
“Oh, that? The thing you wanted before, right?”
Saying that, Akasha pulled out a A2-sized magic paper from her inner pocket.
It was a complicated scroll. There was a tangle of elaborate curves all over, and it was quite thick with over five layers of coating. It was even a multidinsional scroll like Flare.
Although they were both multidinsional scrolls, it seed to be different from Flare. As I observed the patterns of the magic circle, there was no geotry defined within the Euclidean inner product space.
“I’ll lend it to you until you co ho. So let’s consider this even, how about it?”
Akasha rolled up the scroll and held it out to .
“Hmm.”
What was it? The original Aether would’ve known, but I didn’t.
As I pondered, I rembered that I had the book. Right, wouldn’t this guy know with its index of all the magics in this world?
[Switching to Admin Mode.]I looked at the translucent hardcover floating around. After remotely selecting the scroll for analysis, I left the rest up to the book’s system.
[Analyzing]I stared boredly at those words, then narrowed my eyes.
Because the results were out.
[▷ Analysis results]
[□ Legendary Innate Magic ─ Bloom unit of ‘White Night’ (Incomplete)]
I seed to have caught a big one.
Footnotes
1. A small deer native to Korea and China
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