In hindsight, I had always disliked the Wetrekha Empire. It was a nation of devout believers, where the Cardinal and the Emperor were one and the same. I was somewhat of a believer myself, so it wasn’t a matter of anti-theism. Rather, I despised how this belief was interfering with the empire's methods for advancing magic.

Unlike most nations on the continent, which built on the knowledge acquired across generations of the phenomena at play in magic, Wetrekhans essentially delegated everything to Alcya, the Goddess of magic.

Mages there simply waited to be given a ready-to-use spell instead of working hard to obtain a more versatile and interesting one.

We might as well consider there were no methods whatsoever.

I disliked how this empire wagered the future of its subjects on the premise that Alcya would graciously grant them potent magic.

In that respect, I was glad to have been born in the Ouronia Kingdom where the goal was to understand the world’s intricacies in order to attain new heights in magic. It didn’t mean that it was perfect though, far from it.

Tailoring topics and subjects to individuals certainly made sense considering the tendency of elements to reflect someone’s knowledge or passions, but I would dare say that the educational system was not implemented well, to say the least.

After all, the kingdom didn’t fund children’s tutoring nearly enough, so almost no commoner could hope to be taught unless they applied for obscure programs that I didn’t know about.

As for nobles, funding procedures were even more complex since they were considered rich to begin with. There likely were programs for baron families, but I was pretty sure there was no support whatsoever for count families or anything higher. I was in a bit of a liminal class then, because my father had the wealth of a baron despite no longer being one.

Access to knowledge could be seen as disastrous by some, but the book culture in this kingdom was in fact more developed than in many others. Anyone really willing to learn could always walk to a nearby library and read. Whether most commoners actually did that or not, though, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps some were too busy making a living to survive.

In contrast, it seemed pretty much everyone in Wetrekha had given up on working out their brains and claimed this was what the gods expected from them.

Well, gaining knowledge was associated with disobeying God in the Bible, so maybe they were onto something after all.

Despite my jesting, the Wetrekha Empire did seem to prosper in the field of magic—enough for me to know that the imperial family had been selecting numerous commoners to join the ranks of an elite group of immensely talented people.

To me, that wasn't proof their vision was right in any way. Just like how a broken clock was right twice a day, it was statistically conceivable that hundreds or even thousands of mages would develop interesting magic types with great potential regardless of their education. This was why we called it a tendency and not a hard rule.

The worst part, however, was probably that this biased ideology was contagious. This had led many other nations to adopt a similar stance. And yet, none of the followers managed to reproduce similar results. Instead of correcting their approach after realizing Wetrekha’s methods were just hot air, of course, they thought they were not doing it exactly right and concluded that persistence was the answer.

This reminded me too much of how, in a sect, some followers who were unable to perform the promised miracles still managed to convince themselves of their guru’s genuineness and authenticity by blaming their own inexperience. It was unnerving.

As flawed as it was, this ideology was the most compatible with elves, who traditionally relied on their natural talent and their so-called strong connection to the gods. As such, it was natural that the vast majority of elven populations lived in these kingdoms and empires.

But it was natural only to me. To many people, the immigration of the masters of magic in these places could not be anything but the validation of their beliefs.

These people mixed up cause and effect on their own, without Wetrekha claiming anything per se. I believed it was exactly the reason this propaganda worked so well. The empire didn’t display any concrete military achievements and only popularized its group of prodigies through smart storytelling.

It felt organic because they weren’t shoving it in everyone’s face. Heck, they were even playing the mystery card by making the geniuses hide their identities, turning all the gossip to their advantage. These famous mages were treated like a mix between superheroes and pop stars.

At least, that was the impression I got from Clair’s descriptions as, fortunately for my sanity, their influence here had been diluted enough that I only was vaguely aware of their existence.

Now, even in Wetrekha, conspiracy theories about the so-called 'oracles' had apparently been circulating for a while. They ranged from leveraging divine artifacts to perform what looked like miracles to the onlookers, to the oracles just being elves. After all, no one knew what they looked like behind their masks.

It was in this context that the elf guy that had attacked us came into play. Before Clair ended him, he had revealed that he was one of these oracles working undercover in the Ouronia Kingdom.

If that was true, then at least one of the conspiracy theories was correct. If Wetrekha was bragging – albeit implicitly – about their approach to magic while secretly using elves instead of humans, that would for sure be revolting.

However, Clair had told me another bombshell about this elf-looking guy. As it happened, he wasn’t even an elf, but rather a human-elf hybrid. If that was true, then both the conspiracy theory and the official version were incorrect.

That was ironically fitting but, this time around, the truth did lay somewhere in between.

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Either way, this painted a rather grim picture of Wetrekha, as hybrids were rare. It would have been feasible for the emperor to recruit only elves in this group, but even he wouldn’t have managed to find several dozen naturally occurring hybrids.

It wouldn’t be wise to generalize and conclude that all oracles were hybrids, of course, but it told me they were at the very least open to expanding their elite group that way.

This was consistent with the fact that Lune, a hybrid herself, was running away from these people.

Although Clair refused to go into the details of her family’s history, I reckoned that Wetrekha had not just coincidentally found out about Lune. I suspected that the situation was more complex, possibly involving a secret program and a runaway from their parents as well.

Somehow, I had yet to meet one person outside of the nobility to not have some sort of conflict with their parents.

Is that a societal custom here of what?

Anyway, at this point, I could only make conjectures about these girls. I still didn’t know what they had to go through and in what exact circumstances they were led to blindly search for salvation in another kingdom.

And yet, far from complaining, Lune selflessly tried to help both her sister and me in as many ways as she could. Instead of wallowing in her misery, she mourned every dead person we encountered on the road, and sometimes even some animals lying dead on the side. There was no doubt that she was empathizing with others partly as a way to temporarily escape from her own reality.

Right at this moment, she was praying next to an middle-aged merchant while Clair was scavenging through his carriage.

As for me, I was doing better than I initially did. There was some kind of coping mechanism at play for sure, but seeing people dead had started to feel ordinary, almost normal. To be fair, this specific carriage was even closer to ground zero than the capital, so seeing a survivor here would have been the shocking part.

If anything, instead of sadness, I felt hopeful that the next city in our path would be outside the lethal range.

“Maybe Lune could use her magic to track down survivors,” I thought aloud.

“Not happening,” Clair interjected without being prompted to, not providing any clarification as usual.

“Why not? From what she said, she did it back in the capital.”

“We were found yesterday because she used her magic.”

“... Did that hybrid guy told you this as well?”

“He did.”

She didn’t torture him to get that confession, did she…?

I couldn’t read much into her, and that scared me quite a bit. It was a good thing that Lune had someone ready to do anything for the sole purpose of protecting her, but the problem was that I wasn’t included in Clair’s list of people to protect.

She wasn’t fundamentally a bad person, but I felt like she would not hesitate to kill me without thinking twice if she ever thought it was best for her little sister. Since I creeped her out already, I wasn’t off to a great start. The safest move would have been to just abandon them now that I could more or less walk by myself but, after the recent attack from before, I was a bit reluctant to leave them at the mercy of these oracles. For now, perhaps it would be wise to think of some countermeasure against Clair’s magic in case she planned to murder me once she and Lune secured a place to live incognito.

Before implementing new spells, though, it felt to me like I should take some time alone with my existing ones to understand them.

I turned to Clair, the one who was holding my leash, and politely asked her to give me back my magic for a bit. It felt slightly humiliating to ask for permission to do something considered a fundamental right everywhere, but I genuinely thought it was best. It was putting Clair’s mind at rest and was forcing me to conscientize my use of magic, thus reducing the probability of accidentally dooming my surroundings once again.

“What for?” she asked.

“I just want to try things out.”

“Is now really the time to play?”

“I’m not playing…”

Well, the annoying part was that I had to justify myself every time I wanted the seal to be put away.

“Fine, but stay where I can see you.”

“Yes~…”

It sounded a lot like she was seeing me as a child who would quickly get lost, but it was actually betraying her distrust toward me. Or at least, I hoped. I did have a terrible sense of direction, but she shouldn’t have had the occasion to witness this yet.

Soon enough, after she recited a cheesy-sounding incantation that was singing her spirit's praises, I sensed this now familiar sensation, a short-lived feeling of stomach drop that meant the flow of mana in my body was being put back in motion again. Frankly, just that small adrenaline rush that accompanied this unsealing process might provide enough reason to let myself be sealed in the first place.

Which made me ponder a bit about the reason why I was letting myself become captive to that girl. To be honest, I preferred to think of myself as consciously restraining my power to avoid hurting others rather than slowly being conditioned to favor adrenaline-inducing activities like a rat.

Whichever it was, I chose to brush this aside. For now, I had to make use of every second while I could use my magic to its full potential.

Alright, let’s do that.