Opposite them stood two gigantic towers, each twice as tall as the Sigma Tower.

They were built south of Rolderhelm, on either end of the islands of Easthelm and Southelm. The Wizarding Academy was a structure beyond his imagination.

But what really astonished Yu was not the towers; what astonished him was the bridge that connected the two towers, or better to say, the two islands.

“They should not have been able to build this bridge.”

“What nonsense you’re talking about?”

Yurine was angry after what happened last night. Even though Yu had thought about his decision until dawn, he knew what he had done was right. He had only seen Yurine's battle power a few times and never had any data on her full strength.

Maybe Yurine could defeat whatever was out there, it would have been a piece of cake for her, if Yu knew the opponent and Yurine's strength. Knowing nothing, Yu had refrained from jumping into the middle of danger and dying for nothing.

Others might argue that what Yu called nothing was human life, and Yu knew that, but he still felt that their life was not worth more than his or Yurine's.

He could only speculate about what had happened to the people in the forest that night, and it was certain that nothing good had happened to them either way. How was it possible for Yu to stand up to a monster if even the people of this world couldn't?

It was even possible that the people he had heard that night were much more powerful than Yurine. If that was the case, then by deciding to help them, he would be leading both himself and Yurine to death.

Maybe there were no people in the forest and the voices they heard were a trap set by an evil being. Whichever of the scenarios he imagined came true, Yu was glad he didn't go there.

In the morning he told the villagers about the noises they had heard during the night, and they immediately organized a search party and went into the forest. Yu and Yurine had breakfast and left without waiting for the villagers to return, but Yu was going to ask the villagers what they had found when they got back.

“The bridge, I can't believe such a bridge was built in this era.”

The academy consisted of two buildings, one at each end of the islands of Southelm and Easthelm. The distance between the two islands was almost as far as the Bosphorus. The bridge was as long as the bridge in Istanbul, even though it was supported by a small islet in the middle.

What made things even more interesting was that it was not a suspension bridge. Even in his time, it would have been impossible to build an arch bridge this long.

“I can't imagine how it was built.”

“It's been here for so many years, the gods helped build it.”

“That makes the perfect sense.”

Being in a fantasy world, he had to get used to the fact that most things were explained by magic or by the gods. These were often simple but satisfying explanations.

They walked a little from Urta towards the Wizarding Academy and turned onto a marble road that stretched for a kilometer.

At the end of the road was the Easthelm Tower of the Wizarding Academy. The tower grew larger as they approached, ivory colored, with smooth walls and every window covered in glass.

As Yu got closer, he began to wonder how accurate it was to call it a tower, it could have been compared to an oversized apartment building.

The windows were so big that when Yu got a little closer he could see what was happening on the first floors. A strange man was waving a stick and explaining something, a few students were walking up the stairs and a floor above them were walking down the stairs.

When Yu took his eyes off the stairs and looked down, he saw two swordswomen, or rather two knights, greeting them at the entrance to the academy.

“Neko, it's you, isn't it?” One of the knights was sitting upside down on the chair she had pulled under her. The one talking to Yurine was standing.

Their blue cloaks were fastened to their white armor with silver buckles. They wore helmets like those used in ancient Greece, and their helmets were topped with feathers the same blue as their cloaks. The swords hanging from their waists had gold hilts.

Yurine nodded, they recognized her. They turned their heads away from Yurine and looked at Yu, the man they did not recognize.

“Hello there,” Yu said with a slight smile and thought, “You can look as long as you like, I like to take a long look at myself too.” He liked to feel the gaze of two women on him.

“Who are you?” the standing knight asked.

“Yu Valarfin.”

“He is my friend.” Yurine immediately intervened. “Open the door and let us in.”

“Oh my God, are you starting to think of me as a friend? Our relationship is moving so fast, it will soon reach the point where it needs to be.”

“Shut up.”

He imagined himself with Yurine calling him father. That would certainly be a happy day.

“Where are Madam and Mr. Bishory?”

By Madam, she must have meant Rie, and by Bishory she meant Sharley, Rie's apprentice. At that moment both Yu and Yurine realized something, they had never thought about what had happened to Sharley.

After they had left him under the Sigma Tower, they hadn't had a chance to go back for him. Sharley was under the building, not inside it. “Smoke comes down from the tower into the tunnel? I never thought of that.” The smoke from the tower could have gone down into the tunnel where they had left Sharley and suffocated him to death. And since there was no combustible material in the tunnel, he wouldn't have burned to death.

But if he woke up and went into the tower and the fire blocked his path, there was a possibility that he could have burned to death, and another possibility was that he woke up and came out of the tunnel by another route. If so, he would be alive. But if he was alive, why hadn't he returned to the Wizarding Academy? Was he looking for Rie and Yurine in capital?

“What happens if we meet him? Would he help us? Or will he see me as a criminal and attack me?” In some of the clichéd anime he watched, there were unnecessary side characters who were on the good side at first and then attacked the main character with a ridiculous plot. “If he's alive and he tries to take Yurine away from me...” He knew Yurine better than Yu, had spent more time with her and was her mother's apprentice.

And he could believe in Yurine's dream more than Yu could, and really work for her.

“Fuck...” Giving Yurine to someone else meant he would be alone. “Would I really be alone? Like I could make a life here... But...” He looked at Yurine. She had long white hair, two cat ears on the top of her head and big red eyes. He had spent less than a month with this arrogant little girl, but it was more than enough for him to love her.

“My mom...”

Yu didn't let Yurine continue.

“Rie and Sharley will join us in a few hours. They're in Urta right now. They had to deal with a monster situation.”

“Why did you come separately?”

“Aren't these personal matters that only concern us? If you are curious about me, we can talk privately.”

The knight looked Yu up and down. If it wasn't for Yurine at his side, they would probably have kicked him out of here because his eyes were restless.

“Neko and Yu Valarfin. Wait for me, I will ask the headmaster.”

The knight entered the academy and Yu, Yurine and the knight sitting in her chair were left alone outside. Yu looked up to see several people staring at him from the balconies of the tower.

“It's no surprise that most of them are girls, but why are those boys staring at me?”

“Why are-” Yurine spoke without lowering her voice.

“What happened?” Yu's gaze was enough to silence Yurine.

He wondered how Salery would act when he heard that Rie was alive and how he would react when he told him that Rie was actually dead. Even though he hadn't seen Salery's face yet, he was his first suspect and he wanted to take the chance to play a little game like this.

The knight in the chair had been staring at Yu for two minutes. Yu said, “I know I have a handsome face, you can look at me all you want. I also take a long look at myself on mirror.” After she kept looking at him he felt he need to continue. “Well... I know I said you can look as long as you want, but I feel like you're undressing me with your eyes...” He scratched his cheek with one finger, averting his eyes and pretending to be a shy girl. If Yu was a girl and the knight was a boy, his coquettish looks might seduce her.

The knight kept looking at Yu and after fifteen minutes Yu was bored to tears. Standing still for a few minutes made him more tired than walking for half an hour. He locked his eyes on the knight watching him and started a staring contest of his own.

Their contest lasted exactly twenty minutes. For twenty minutes Yu and the knight exchanged glances, neither looking away for a moment. The victor had not yet been decided when the knight who had left them half an hour earlier returned.

“The headmaster is waiting for you.”

“You traveled too fast, I wish you had walked a little slower, you are out of breath.”

“I will accompany you, Headmaster Salery's room is in the West Tower.” The knight started walking again, ignoring Yu's sarcastic words. Accompanied by him, they entered the building.

“Headmaster Salery. That means he has more opportunities at his disposal.”

The inside of the building was no different from a school. It was simple and there were boards and paintings on the walls, glass cabinets with glass doors containing the prizes.

“How many different competitions can you organize in a small country and win so many prizes?”

A few students were sprawled out on the couches, a few were looking at their books, a few were chatting and a few were looking at the fish in a big aquarium.

The male students didn't pay much attention to Yu, but he could see the girls looking at him. When he realized this, he started to give a nice smile to his audience.

The knight said that the headmaster’s office was in the west tower. So that meant they would have to go up a few flights of stairs, enter the bridge and then go to Southelm.

As they made their way to the stairs, the door of a classroom that had just finished a lesson opened and students started to come out with a slight noise.

“Isn't that Neko?” The boy Yu didn't know seemed to be the sassy type, the kind of guy who would do anything to get favor with girls. “Hey, did you forget about us?”

The boy waved at Yurine, trying to get her to notice him. Yurine didn't even turn her head, she approached Yu and kept walking.

“I don't like meeting acquaintances on the road either,” Yu said. He grabbed the approaching Yurine by the shoulder and pulled her a little closer to him. “In fact, if I notice someone in the distance, I even change my path to avoid saying hello.”

It was fine for him to see acquaintances if they just raised their hands towards each other and said hello and hello and then went their separate ways, but when the other person had something to say, Yu was going crazy.

He was the kind of person who was determined to reach his goal. He wouldn't deviate from his path unless he had to, he wouldn't slow down, and he would grumble his way through people walking slowly on the sidewalk. Someone would stop him, making him feel obliged to say hello, and he would have to talk to them.

He didn't like the people he was supposedly friends with very much either, so he didn’t like had to have a conversation with someone he didn't care about something he didn't care. But he cared too much about the impression he made in people's eyes, so he couldn't cut them off, he had to keep the conversation going to avoid embarrassment.

He would forget what they were talking about as soon as the conversation was over and move on, having lost a few minutes.

“Those snippy whoresons, I tell them I don't want to talk to them, I don't like them and to leave me alone, but the stupid whoresons keep picking on me, saying ‘how cute’.” Yurine was really angry, her problem was a problem that many children have.

“Wow, motherfuckers, I don't like them at all. I would beat them up for you if they weren't mages who could turn me into pulp in an instant.” He hated humans too, he would beat them if he could. “But I don't want to hear you swear like that.”

Putting Yurine's choice of words aside, he couldn't deny that she was right. As Yurine had said, some snotty sons of bitches insisted on doing the same thing even when the other person said they didn't want to.

“So far I've been taking it easy for my mom's sake, but if they mess with me again, I'll kick their ass and fuck their all future even their little child-”

“I see, you've got a bad mouth on you today.”

When they went up five floors inside the building, they saw that the floor was entirely dedicated to bridge traffic. There were a lot of doors and all the doors led to the bridge.

The bridge was as wide as a highway and about two kilometers long, so transportation was by horse-drawn carriages.

“Yurine, when we get there, let me do the talking.” He was afraid that if he let Yurine do the talking he would scare Salery.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Looking at the floor plans on the walls, she saw that the East Tower in Easthelm was mostly classrooms. The West Tower, apart from the classrooms, was mainly reserved for administration, the library, laboratories and dormitories.

“The headmaster’s office is on the top floor, keep following me.”

Hearing the word headmaster again, Yu thought back to his high school years. In high school, nobody liked the principal of his school and they made fun of him behind his back. In those days, he heard a joke from his friend.

“Headmaster is a principal right?” He asked but nobody answered. “One day all the organs in the human body gathered to choose a principal. The brain spoke first, saying ‘without me you are all useless, I should be the principal.’ The heart rejected, saying ‘without me you would all die and that is why I deserved to be the principal.’ All the organs spoke their opinions in turn, but not the give a chance to speak to ass. The ass got angry that no one asked for his opinion, so he closed all the doors and didn't shit for three days. After three days, the organs realized that there was no way out, it was a shithole inside, so they reluctantly made the asshole the principal. Since that day, all assholes are principals and all principals are assholes.”

“Pffh...” Yurine was about to laugh at the joke for a moment, but she restrained herself because she didn't want to laugh at something Yu told her.

The knight kept silent and kept walking.

Yu knew a good principal, but exceptions were the rule. Salery was a possible asshole.

“Who would put their room three hundred meters up...”

Yu was out of breath when they reached the headmaster’s office. He had a fit body, but he couldn't afford to climb all those stairs and had to stop several times.

In fact, the time they stopped to rest after climbing half of the stairs could rival the time it took them to walk.

“Oh, aren't you ever tired?”

Yurine said, slapping her hands on her legs, “Unlike you, I'm a real number ten, I don't get tired easily. You weak, stupid human, look at you.”

While Yu was still taking deep breaths, the knight who had accompanied them knocked on the headmaster's door. “The sword fairy and Mr. Valarfin are here to see you.”

“Come in.” The voice from inside the room was slumped and shaky.

When the door opened, standing before them was the man who had managed to gather all the evidence in the case against him. He was a tall, thin, human male in his forties. His unkempt black hair, which fell to his eyebrows, looked as if it had never seen a comb, and the bottoms of his dark blue eyes were swollen and bruised from lack of sleep.

As they entered, Salery raised his hand and held it out to Yu.

“Yu Valarfin and my daughter Yurine Valarfin, pleased to meet you. Though you already know her.”

There was not even a hint of surprise in Salery's already dead eyes. “I beg your pardon. Your daughter? Yurine?”

“There's nothing difficult to understand, I gave her a new name.”

Yurine used her silence to confirm Yu.

Salery looked more stressed than surprised. He must have gotten the news from the knight that Rie was alive, but he couldn't possibly have been this exhausted in the time it took for Yu and Yurine to get here.

He must have been suffering from some other problem before Yu came here. In that case, it might not have been possible to figure it out from his reactions to hearing that Rie was alive and dead.

“Maybe he's stressed because he thinks Rie is alive.”

“How did you manage to give her a name? Didn't Rie say anything?” Salery spoke wearily, as if he had given up on everything.

“Unfortunately, Rie is not here to say anything. He was assassinated in the Sigma Tower, we lost him.”

“Killed... killed... I see.” Salery's eyes flickered. “I'm sorry for your loss, Neko. I know it's hard.”

Yu was trying to figure something out. It was difficult to speculate as Salery was mentally and physically broken, but Yu interpreted his relaxed cheeks as him trying to smile inwardly. He was almost certain that Salery was involved.

“You said Madam was in Urta!” The knight raised his voice and put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Neko, aren't you going to say something about this?”

“Shut up, I say, stay out of our business.”

The knight grew angrier. Yu knew what she was thinking. He had read it before in novels and manga, seen it in anime. The Knight thought Yu was controlling Yurine.

“Eleny, you can come out.”

“But!”

The knight protested at first, but at Salery's glare, he gave Yu one last look. “Don't think this ends here.” Then he left the room.

As Yu tried to make deductions, Salery motioned for him to sit down. The view from his room overlooked the tower to the east.

“I am Salery Von Bishory, headmaster of the Wizarding Academy. Pleased to meet you.”

Yu only nodded since he had already introduced himself when they entered.

“Neko, I'm really sorry. Do you need any-“

“Are you sorry? Didn't you know what would happen when you sent us to our death? Why are you sorry?”

Salery couldn't react, Yurine's words had frozen him cold.

“What are you doing?”

Ignoring Yu's voice, Yurine slammed her hands on the table and jumped up from her chair, which she hadn't sat in thirty seconds.

“Why did you send my mother to that tower? Why did you do it? TELL ME!”

“Neko, I understand you were in a difficult situation-”

“ANSWER!”

Yu could see the papers on the table moving as Yurine raged. The winds whirled around her.

“Yurine, enough.”

This was where Yu would eventually come to, but the path Yurine had chosen would not be fruitful. They were only provoking Salery with this method, Yu had to ask the next question.

“We know that it was you who told Rie about the Sigma Tower and gave her the map to get there. I don't think you'd deny it either. What we want to know is why you did it.”

“Who are you in the first place?” Salery pushed himself back, using the support of the table to get up from his chair. “You have no right to accuse me.”

“DON'T DODGE THE QUESTIONS” The wind around Yurine's body was getting stronger and stronger.

“I am officially Yurine's father, so I have the right to pursue her case. Now please answer me, why did you send Rie there and did you know what would happen?”

Salery preferred to dodge the questions rather than answer them, not realizing that by doing so he was only increasing the suspicion on him. “I don't know how you managed it, but you are here to accuse me, and I won't allow it.”

“Mr. Bishory, please help us. What happened to Rie was clearly premeditated and it was you who led her to the Sigma Tower. It's only natural that you should be seen as a suspect and questioned, and if you are uncomfortable with that, you can help us by answering the questi-”

“WHERE IS MY SON?!”

Yu had to interrupt his speech when a tall, dark-haired woman suddenly burst into the room. A man and the dark-haired girl he had met yesterday were trying to stop him.

“Stella, now is not the time.”

“Sharley! Where is Sharley?!”

Salery's words could not stop her screams. Stella ran straight to Yurine and grabbed her by the shoulders and screamed in her face.

“ANİMAL! WHERE IS MY SON?!”

Yurine pushed Stella hard and shrugged her shoulders. “He's the one who killed him you unrespectful bitch, ask this bastard,” she said, pointing at Salery.

“What?” Yu and Salery reacted at the same time.

Even though Salery had gotten Sharley killed, Yurine's words were more than tolerable. Stella's trembling knees could no longer support her and she fell to the ground wailing.

“Yurine!”

“Am I lying? C’mon, call me a liar.”

Yu couldn't call her a liar, so he turned his attention to the woman on the floor.

“Are you ok- No, can you get up?”

At first he thought about asking if she was okay, but it was obvious that she was not. He knelt beside her and held out his hand to support her, but she hit him hard with the back of hers.

“Sharley, where is he?” Stella continued to call his name in a trembling voice as tears streamed from her eyes as she opened her lips to call his name.

“Mr. Valarfin?” Lylphia wanted to ask what was going on when she saw someone familiar, but Yu didn't even notice her.

“Because he went after that whore...” Stella said. Yurine heard her voice, even though she was whispering. Stella's words were the last straw for Yurine.

“Be careful what you say. I don't care how are you feel right now, if you don't take your words back I will send you to your son.”

Yu wanted to defend Yurine, but her words were completely cruel.

“NEKO!” Salery shouted.

“Who do you think you're shouting at?” Yurine tried her best to make people angry, but Yu would continue to defend her. He walked over to Salery.

“I'm asking you guys to calm down a bit...” Lylphia spoke but again no one paid attention to her.

“Are you threating me in my school!”

“What the fuck are you slurring about? Isn't she right? Didn't you send them there?”

“Stop right there.” A knight put his sword to the back of Yu's neck as he continued to walk towards Salery.

This knight had heard the voices and burst into the room. The knight's sword extended to Yu did not stay in the air for long, and Yurine threw the knight out of the door with a gust of wind.

Salery raised his hand when he saw Yurine using magic, yellow halos of light started to appear around his hand, but Yu intervened to prevent them from forming.

“Back the fuck up, back the fuck up!” Yu pushed the table in front of him with his hand and it hit Salery. Yu pushed so hard that Salery lost his balance and fell to the ground.

“Calm down...” Lylphia was trying to calm things down, but when she realized that no one was listening to her, her voice trailed off.

“You!”

As Salery tried to get up, Yurine raised a hand towards him. “Fuck you whoreson.”

Yurine's second spell spread from her shoulder, traveled to her fingertips, and slammed into Salery's body, who hadn't quite managed to get up, pinning him against the wall behind him. Salery spat blood from his mouth.

“ENOUGH!”

Before things could get any worse, a man Yu didn't recognize walked in with a dozen knights and separated the sides.

***

“Give it up, girl. You managed to fuck everything up, well done.” He was protesting by applauding Yurine.

The man who entered the headmaster’s office and separated them was Maron Martin, the second headmaster. He told them to wait in his office and left Lylphia to keep an eye on Yu and Yurine.

“Shut up, stupid human.”

“Shut up? All you had to do was be quiet and let me talk.”

“Shut up.”

She pulled her legs up to her stomach and rested her cheek on her knee, watching Yurine's face. He couldn't be angry with her because she was sweet. He was trying to empathize with her, trying hard not to blame her.

Yurine was depressed too. He could see it in the way her eyes seemed to pierce the ground. “I'm sorry,” he said. He didn't want Yurine to feel bad.

“The academy hasn't had an incident like this since its inception,” the girl said.

“Your name is Lylphia, isn't it?”

“Yes, Lil-fi-a,” she puffed out her cheeks and spelled her name. “Did you forget it already?”

“No.” He remembered her name but couldn't make it out because he hadn't been paying attention to her during the discussion.

“I didn't know Yurine was a powerful mage, so she's what they call Neko at the academy.”

“If things had gone the way I planned, you wouldn't have needed to know.”

“One of them cursed my mother, and the other is my mother's killer. What did you expect me to do?”

She was right. When Yu put himself in her situation, he felt he couldn't keep his cool either.

“Are you going to explain to me what's going on?” After five minutes of waiting, Maron Martin opened the door sharply and joined them. He was the one who stopped the fight.

“I'll tell you,” Yurine and Lylphia said. When their voices overlapped, they both fell silent and Yu began to tell the story as Maron took his seat.

“I was walking on the road at night...”

---

“I gave her a new name, Yurine, and adopted her so she wouldn't go to an orphanage. And then we came here to question Salery. Also I won't hide the fact that we were intrigued by the Wizarding Academy library.”

He had told him almost everything except about the scams, their aim to turn back time to bring Rie back, and the Blessings. These were the main topics that would take a long time to cover anyway, and once he took them out, there wasn't much left.

“I see,” Maron began after listening intently. “And now I understand why Yurine was angry with Salery, I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Hmph.” Yurine ignored it. Maron didn't know it, but Yurine only saw herself as a child separated from her mother for a short time.

“But you were too hard on Stella, you should apologize to her. After all, she is a woman who has lost a son, and she is also in pain.”

“Talking about Stella and forcing Yurine to apologize can only make things worse. We'd better just deal with our own business and leave Rolderhelm.”

Maron was younger than Salery, but at least ten years older than Yu. He clasped his hands on the table.

“You want to interrogate Salery, I get that. What made you want to enter the library?”

“We want to find out if there's a way to bring Rie back from the dead.”

His conscience was clear because he wasn't technically lying. Their goal was to keep Rie alive. At least that was Yurine's goal for the moment.

“The idea of bringing loved ones back from the dead is a common motivation, but I have yet to meet anyone who has succeeded. For centuries people have toiled their elbows in this library, dreaming of being reunited with their loved ones, but every single one of them eventually gave up and went back to their own lives.”

Maron's words gave Yu, whose faith was already weak, another reason not to believe, but he couldn't say he agreed with him in front of Yurine.

“That's the deal between Yurine and me, I'll find a way to bring her back.”

“If that's the deal between a human and a fairy, it's not for me to pry, but I assume the library you want to investigate is not the big one, but the small one. That's where the knowledge hidden from humanity is kept, and even I'm not allowed to go in there.”

“How do we get permission to go in there?”

“That's a bit difficult now,” Maron said. He opened the desk drawer and took out an organizer. On the last page was a folded map. “But I can help you if you help me.”

He handed the map to Yu. It was a map of the Principality of Rolderhelm.

“Why do you want to help us?” asked Yurine.

“It's better if we talk about this alone with Mr. Valarfin.”

“This guy will tell me everything he learns anyway. The stupid girl who's been hanging around with us will just have to leave.”

“That's a little rude.” Lylphia folded her arms under her large breasts. She had no qualms about exposing them to the public eye.

“I'm sorry, Yurine, it's a grown-up thing.”

“Let's get out of here then,” Lylphia said, trying to grab Yurine and drag her away. Yurine refused to let her drag her, pushed her away and went out on her own. Lylphia followed close behind.

“What do you want to talk about?” Yu asked.

“I feel really sorry for Stella,” Maron began. “From what you said, her son's death was really caused by her own brother. And I feel sorry for Yurine too, and it's not an easy situation for her to get through. It's understandable that she would use you to bring her mother back.”

Maron brushed back a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of his green eyes and stood up and went to the window. He ran his fingers through his blond hair, looking at his faint reflection.

“The truth is, being a witch is not a crime, but some people still don't like them. And since you are easily blamed, you will not find justice in the hands of the local forces of justice.”

If Yu was blamed for the fire in the tower, he had no evidence to clear the charges against him. There wasn't much evidence to blame Yu, of course, but Yu was someone with no influence, someone no one really knew. Someone who had to blame someone for the fire and say, “He was in the tower, he must have done it,” if he had some influence, he could have had Yu executed.

Where was Maron going with this? Was he threatening to put the blame on Yu?

“But it is also difficult to find justice on your own. You cannot question Salery, you cannot punish him. You have no authority. That's where my proposal comes in.”

He turned around and pointed with his finger at the map on the table.

“Redchapel. The last place where Salery's son Sony was seen. Before he went there, a very important item went missing from the Wizarding Academy, a Blessing.”

“A Blessing...”

He felt a heaviness in his chest as he repeated the word. He hadn't told Maron that Rie's Blessing had passed to him, because if the former owner had to die to get the Blessing, someone who wanted the Blessing and knew Yu had it might kill him.

“The Blessing that was lost, or rather stolen, was an artificial Blessing. One of a kind, the result of decades of work. You know something, Mr. Valarfin? By creating the Neko, Rie had achieved one of the most important events in human history, bringing humanity one step closer to the gods. The creation of this artificial Blessing would bring humanity a few steps closer to the gods...” Maron sighed deeply. “But unfortunately, the day Sony disappeared, so did the Blessing. The thing is, Salery was the only one allowed to freely enter the place where the Blessing was kept. Sony couldn't have gotten that permission despite his father.”

“So you're basically saying that Sony stole the Blessing with the help of his father.”

“Maybe he stole it with his father's help, maybe he stole the key secretly from his father and then stole the Blessing. Either way, Salery can be blamed. Anyway, this happened five months ago and for five months Salery has been looking for his son.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I want to be first headmaster, and I can tell you why I want to be headmaster, because the only place in this school where there is any chance of finding useful information is the little library, and I need to be headmaster to get in there. I've asked Salery for permission many times, but he won't give it to me. Because he is truly an envy asshole like all other House of Bishory.”

“And if I help you and find Sony, you will help us question Salery and get access to both libraries.”

“Yes,” Maron said, nodding. “If you capture Sony and bring him here alive, I will allow you to stay at the academy as long as you like and use all the facilities of the academy to the fullest. If possible, I would also appreciate it if you could bring back the lost Blessing. Then I will get Sony to confess that he got into that room because of his father, and I will use that to get Salery removed as headmaster, and I will be headmaster for three years until the next headmaster is chosen, and that gives me enough time to do what I want.”

“How do we know he's still in Redchapel or not killed by the Redchapel Killer?”

“The furthest he could have gone with the Blessing is Redchapel, and it would be terrible if he was killed by the Redchapel Killer. So it's best to hope that he wasn't killed, and anyway I don't think Sony is weak enough to be killed by him.”

“What is this Blessing? Why that it can only go little far?”

“It's complicated, I'm afraid I can't tell you right now.”

“Not telling me would make things difficult.”

“I'm sorry.”

Maron sat back in his chair. “What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking how can I be sure you'll keep your word?”

Maron Martin was not someone he could fool with the magic deal game.

“I swear on everything I love, I will do my part when you do yours.” Maron held out his hand to Yu. “I wish you success, Mr. Valarfin.”

Yu took Maron's hand in the air and shook it. “I hope you keep your promise.”