SBTMK Chapter 21

"So this is the kind of dress you like. Good to know your taste."

"Why's this turning into that?"

"No? Then what taste is it?"

"What—what's with that all of a sudden. Of course whatever Simen wears looks——"

With a face like that, with a smile that charming, there was nothing to do but let everything spill out.

Was there some kind of confession serum leaking out of that face?

"Looks——?"

At the teasing note in his voice, Flora bowed her head, making it unmistakably clear she had no intention of finishing the sentence.

Simen laughed shortly at that and reached out a hand.

The fingers combing through her hair were remarkably gentle, and she found herself lifting her head again before she'd decided to.

It was ticklish, and it felt good. And then, unbidden, there was something genuinely unjust about it too.

"You keep doing that and I'm gonna get used to it."

"Hm? What do you mean?"

Simen tilted his head as if he genuinely had no idea.

"Treating me like a dog! Earlier someone else did that same thing—"

"Who touched your head?"

Before she'd even finished, Simen cut in, his voice dropped noticeably lower.

Flora shut her mouth and blinked.

……Wait, why is this going there?

"Ah, no. Not touched my head—earlier, someone gave me a look with an expression close to yours, and it felt familiar. I thought that was probably because of your influence on me......"

She had no idea why she was rattling off this whole explanation, but Simen's mood was clearly darkening, so smoothing over the misunderstanding took priority.

"Who would dare make an expression close to mine? No expression could ever come close to mine, no matter what face he pulls."

"Sorry?"

"No way there's a bastard in this castle better-looking than me."

The conversation had gone completely off the rails. Flora narrowed her brow and let out a short breath through her lips, a small, exhausted huff.

Simen lowered the hand that had been playing with her hair and tapped her forehead once.

Tok.

"Anyway. He's not like me."

"……"

"You only need to get used to me."

"That just now sounded like an Emperor down to the bone."

"Not wrong. I was destined to be Emperor from birth."

What would it feel like, to be born cradling an empire? Born already holding everything in his hands from infancy—maybe there just wasn't much to feel about it.

Flora looked at Simen blankly.

Somehow, she thought, being born already holding everything might not be entirely a good thing.

The more you had to protect, the more fiercely you had to fight for it.

"Let's go. We need to get ready for the next test."

Simen had already risen to his feet without her noticing and held out a hand toward her. Flora took it without hesitation.

Warmth traveled up through her fingertips. She hadn't been healed by Eden, and yet the fatigue of the whole day seemed to drain cleanly away.

The mage-gate where the second exam would be held was an enormous cavern.

Flora lined up in the row where the candidates who had passed stood. She glanced around but couldn't find Simen anywhere.

Just as a flicker of disappointment rose at the thought that he might have left, the knight standing at the front began to speak.

"This round will be conducted in teams of seven and eight. If we split the current line straight in half, that works out fine. You may arrange yourselves into teams however you like."

"……"

"You'll fight an illusory beast conjured by magic for ten minutes. Points to watch for—"

1. The demon-beast conjured by magic is calibrated by a mage-stone that evaluates the team's combined capabilities.
2. If struck by the beast, the pain will register exactly the same, but any wounds sustained will vanish once you return to reality. Even death within the illusion amounts to nothing more than being knocked unconscious in the real world. But since the pain's real, the fear of death will be too—there could be aftereffects. Don't push yourselves.
3. Anyone who wants to quit, go back to the entrance.

Flora nodded slowly, turning over the essentials from the lengthy list of precautions.

Creating an entire second world through magic.

It was a world she'd never experienced before. She thought she understood, at least somewhat, why Cenkan wasn't satisfied merely smuggling mage-stones, why it was so obsessed with mana itself.

"The path is dark, so follow closely."

Both the exam's supervisors and the candidates entered the cavern together.

The black-robed mages walked ahead, lighting fires as they went, but even with the darkness dispelled, the sense of grandeur pressing in from within didn't fade.

It felt like stepping into an actual Demon Hollow.

Demon Hollows only formed in countries adjacent to a rift in the dimensional barrier.

Flora had once thrown herself into one, taking a commission from the Kirin Kingdom.

Like Cenkan, it was a country with no innate mana of its own, a place where a Demon Hollow shouldn't have been able to form at all, but one had appeared like a freak mutation, and she remembered how ashen the faces of the kingdom's people had gone.

That den had been small—three 5th-rank demon-beasts, one 4th-rank, and a single 3rd-rank—but thirty people had gone in, Cenkan knights and Kirin Kingdom knights combined, and only three had come out alive.

Even the survivors, Flora included, had come out barely distinguishable from the dead.

Back then she hadn't known any better and had charged in with reckless confidence, but now was different.

Having no idea how many terrifying things might be lurking inside, and having to hunt a demon-beast with a mere seven or eight people—

Even if she didn't die, the pain she was about to feel would probably stay with her for the rest of her life.

So this is what it takes to become a Haenkan knight.

Flora shivered slightly, pressed down by the sheer weight the towering cavern gave off.

Deep within the cave was an ancient magic circle. The black-robed mages began handing out a single mage-stone to each member of the first team.

Flora took a round, violet-colored mage-stone into her hands as well.

"Step up onto the magic circle one at a time, please."

Following the mage's direction, the first team climbed slowly onto the circle, one by one.

Each time someone stepped up, the violet mage-stone in their hands flashed with light—— evaluating their capabilities, most likely.

Soon it was Flora's turn.

The atmosphere was so quiet and grave that she felt tense even though she wasn't about to face a demon-beast just yet.

She stepped onto the magic circle, and the mages began chanting an incantation she couldn't understand. Soon the mage-stone in her hand began to glow.

The faint light gradually grew stronger. No one so far had made the stone glow this brightly. Just as she sensed something was wrong——

Crack——

The mage-stone in her hand shattered, and the light vanished entirely.

"……Good God."

She heard only the wondering murmur of the black-robed mage standing beside her, and the cavern fell utterly silent, as if not a single other soul remained inside it.

Flora looked down at her own hand and swallowed against a dry throat. The mage-stone that had glowed violet had turned white and scattered into fragments like broken glass.

Mage-stones were crystals formed from a demon-beast's condensed mana, obtainable only by defeating one.

They allowed even people without innate mana to use teleportation, and they could be used to craft magical devices, so despite being consumables, they were treated as extraordinarily expensive.

Among them, crystals that glowed violet were top-tier mage-stones.

And she'd just broken one.

"I'm sorry."

She'd clearly caused an incident.

She lifted her eyes slightly and looked ahead—everyone was staring at her with the expression of people who'd just seen a ghost.

She felt disoriented. She'd only been standing there holding it—it had simply shattered on its own—and honestly, it felt unfair.

Flora looked toward the mage standing beside her with the eyes of someone seeking rescue.

The mage, catching her eye, seemed to come back to himself and coughed briefly before telling her she could step down now.

Watching him receive the broken mage-stone with a face gone completely pale only made her sigh harder.

Once Flora stepped down, the mages began conferring. They soon called over the commanders of both knight corps as well.

"How did you do that?"

While she waited for their conference to end, one of the other successful candidates on her team spoke up beside her.

"Do what?"

"That light just now."

"Doesn't it just glow on its own when you step onto the circle?"

The candidate let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

"Do you have mana?"

"Got told I have some. Useless, though."

Because she had mana, Ayden didn't knock her around like he did the other knights.

If anything, it meant she was called into his experiments more often, though it also meant she'd escaped being killed on a whim or subjected to meaningless abuse.

But for some reason, she'd never been able to use any actual magic.

Laviu had secretly invited mages to teach her, but they all said the same thing.

The volume of mana she held was enormous, and yet no one could explain why she couldn't use it.

If it simply hadn't awakened yet, then she'd have to wait. But that waiting had never come to an end.

On a mission once, she'd met some old quack of a mage in some foreign country and learned magic behind Cenkan's back.

Even he only managed to get one flame lit at her fingertip, and quit there. Taught her that scrap of nothing and called her some kind of prodigy.

He'd asked if she wouldn't like to meet some famous mage he knew, but that had felt like it would be another waste of time, and she'd never gone back after that.

So what connection could there possibly be between that useless mana and a shattered mage-stone?

"Still, that's something, having mana at all."

"Sorry?"

"You just purified a mage-stone. That's why the commanders were fighting over who'd get to recruit you. I'm jealous. Got everything but a rank."

"You saying that about me right now?"

"Yeah."

Flora let out a short, incredulous laugh. Hearing it from someone else's mouth, she sounded like some remarkable person, but the reality was rather different.

"I think There's some misunderstanding—no one tried to recruit me. And I have no idea what you mean about purifying a mage-stone either—"

"There's a rumor going around among the candidates. That both corps chose you."

"I did speak with the commanders, but neither of them offered me a spot. Please correct that the next time you hear it."

The candidate didn't look convinced, but nodded dutifully all the same.

"My name's Paul Kartin. If we both get in, let's be friendly."

"Flora. Good luck to you."

She and Paul exchanged brief introductions, and the conversation ended there.

Around the same time, the corps commanders and mages finished their conference.

The gist of what they'd decided was this.

If one person's capability score was overwhelmingly higher than the rest, then the average rank of the demon-beast a team faced would also rise—so for the safety of the candidates, teams would be formed of seven, and the one candidate left over would take the exam individually.

And that "one left over" turned out to be Flora.