Chapter 71

Back when he was a student, Walter D’Vialis had attempted clone magic on mice. The results were always failure. The cloned mice were not imbued with life.

Perhaps once his magical ability had matured further, life cloning might have been possible, but after Walter experienced the wondrous event of his wife becoming pregnant, he completely stopped attempting to clone life with magic. He declared he would leave that as the domain of the most mysterious magic the universe performed.

“That was Walter D’Vialis’s philosophy. And that bastard is stubborn iron to the bone—he doesn’t bend his philosophy. That temperament was inherited intact by Sabina D’Vialis….”

Rather than believing Walter D’Vialis had attempted life cloning, it was more plausible to suspect that Millum International Bank had left incorrect records. It had been sixteen years, after all. Getting accurate information from sixteen years ago was like plucking stars from the sky.

“Find that old man called Robert Milo. How old was he back then, sixteen years ago?”

“……His appearance and manner were so unusual that it’s hard…. Um, but….”

Another “but” he didn’t want to hear.

Reyes barely held back the urge to grab a vase and throw it at the detective. After that word always came a parade of idiocy, and Reyes couldn’t stand it.

He had been carving everything the detective said into his mind through his attribute magic, ‘Record,’ but it was an endless stream of information whose value was questionable.

The miserable detective, trembling in fear, clamped his mouth shut. But he couldn’t keep it shut for long. Reyes hated it when the detective stayed silent too long.

“I, I beg your pardon, but I believe it will be difficult to find that old man’s whereabouts. That old man…. seems to have taken his own life.”

“What did you say?”

Reyes asked sharply. Hesitating, the detective stammered on.

“At a hotel near the coast of Berna…. one day, he simply vanished, suddenly. He, uh, became a person who wasn’t there anymore. The hotel’s owner suspected he might have walked into the sea, but….”

“……”

Reyes rubbed his chin.

“High likelihood he’s a criminal.”

“I, I think so too.”

A departure carried out under an alias, money spent freely, an end presumed to be s*icide. Everything matched the behavior of someone who had committed crimes and then given up.

“Dig a little more. Oh, and change course regarding that man Ashton Bryant. New information has come in.”

“Y-yes, Your Highness.”

“He’s from Brinita, and he’s a mage. It’s presumed he’s an unregistered attribute mage. Stop spewing nonsense about the Shafong region. He must have started out in Brinita. Next time we meet, I’d like you to bring information that’s actually usable, for once. Understood? Find out properly where in Brinita that bastard is from. Now get out.”

Hearing the word “get out,” the detective felt happy inside. He was finally freed from this client who was so hard to appease.

***

One late morning, Sabina woke to find the maids bustling about. It was rare for them to be this busy at this hour.

A key rule was that the mansion’s cleaning and upkeep should be done in advance at the break of dawn, before the master opened her eyes. Sabina believed the maids didn’t need to wake up at the crack of dawn to work, but keeping that rule was also a point of pride for the D’Vialis maids. They always finished everything before eight.

Sabina noticed they were carrying heaps of black cloth. She gave a bitter smile.

November was right around the corner.

That meant her grandfather’s Memorial Day was fast approaching.

The maids were preparing to drape the furniture in the house in black for Walter’s Memorial Day. Decorating the furniture with black cloth on a family member’s Memorial Day was a custom in Brinita. Usually, they did it only on the day itself, and observed it for about the first to third Memorial Day anniversaries.

Of course, covering things with cloth made them hard to use. So Sabina had once told the maids that they didn’t need to honor her grandfather starting from the beginning of November. She didn’t like the idea of the maids being inconvenienced because of a memorial ritual.

But the maids strongly wanted to do it.

The D’Vialis maids, including Mitchell, loved Walter no less than Sabina did. Walter had been a gentle and attentive master. A large part of why the older maids served Sabina with such devotion was that she was Walter’s granddaughter.

‘Grandfather was a good person.’

Sabina loved Walter too. No—could she even call it love? Her memories of Walter, and the feelings toward him, belonged to Sabina, the original owner of this body. But what the current Sabina had inherited most strongly from the body’s original owner was precisely that affection toward her grandfather.

Sabina helped the maids. Even the maids who normally disliked seeing Sabina do housework joined their master in this act of observing Walter’s Memorial Day. On Sabina’s always-composed face, a strange sadness pooled.

‘Somehow, I feel sorry toward Grandfather.’

In previous years, Sabina would start counting from September how many days were left until Walter’s Memorial Day. Sometimes, the act of commemorating sorrow could be a comfort. By reminding herself how much she loved her grandfather, Sabina would carve into herself that Walter was still beside her, held there by that love.

But this year, her head was filled with other thoughts. Even though she knew it was more rational to focus on the problems right in front of her—Walter was already gone—her mouth tasted bitter. She wanted to spend November solely for Walter. Because she knew how much he had loved Sabina.

Walter was a good man, but Sabina also resented him.

Back when Sabina was in her graduation year at the Academy, Walter collapsed from acute heart disease. Even after summoning healing mages again and again, he was told that extending his life much longer would be impossible. He had, at most, one month left.

Upon hearing he had only one month to live, Walter made an outrageous choice. Afraid he would be a burden to his granddaughter, who was writing her graduation thesis, he did not tell her he was living on borrowed time. And to leave her immense wealth, he kept dissolving his magic into solvent.

In the end, Walter died without even filling half of that “one month” he was said to have left.

Sabina, who had been absorbed in research without even knowing what state her grandfather was in, only barely received word once Walter became truly critical. By the time she arrived home to keep vigil at her grandfather’s deathbed, Walter had already lost consciousness.

Sabina even lost the chance to say a final farewell.

The profound sense of loss Sabina felt the moment Walter’s breath stopped could not be compared to anything. Sabina never wanted to feel that sensation again. It felt like sinking endlessly into a black hole with no bottom.

Thanks to the choice her grandfather made at death’s edge, Sabina became the century’s heiress who seized the greatest wealth in Brinita, but that fact did not make her very happy. When she discovered the thousands of containers of clone-magic solvent stored in the basement, it felt as though her chest was being torn apart.

Wearing mourning clothes, Sabina clung to Mitchell and cried, saying she didn’t care if they were miserably poor—she wanted to live with Walter. She wished that no one she loved would ever die before her.

But people envied her wealth when she said those things.

As if snapping Sabina out of her reverie, Mitchell said,

“I wish the weather would stay this nice. So there’ll be plenty of sunshine.”

Sabina nodded. And fortunately, around this time of year, the skies were clear on average.

Mitchell studied Sabina’s complexion. The head maid was the second person who disliked draping the house in black cloth even before November arrived, but her reason was a little different from Sabina’s. She was worried about the young lady.

The only person Sabina—lacking in social skills, introverted, and a little ill-mannered—had ever loved deeply was Walter D’Vialis. When Walter died, Sabina couldn’t escape that sorrow for a long time. While Sabina shut herself away and lived alone in loneliness, Mitchell was always worried about her.

That she might never escape Walter’s shadow.

Still, this year, Sabina had brought in a new family, and she even had a lover who softened her a little, so Mitchell had thought things might be improving—but then the situation started twisting strangely again. Because she had clashed with Helio, Sabina’s mood stayed low and heavy.

Mitchell thought it was fortunate Sabina had Ashton. Not knowing that Ashton was also one of the root causes that muddled Sabina’s mind.

It didn’t seem as though Sabina burned with passion for Ashton. To Mitchell, Sabina treated him as a refuge. Ashton also appeared aware of that fact, and as though he was satisfied with it.

Even so, in Mitchell’s eyes, Sabina seemed likely to settle with Ashton. Marriage wasn’t built on passion alone; considering Sabina’s current state, that might have been the best choice.

Besides, to Mitchell, Ashton’s greatest strength was that he was quick to read the room. He knew well how to “cook” Sabina’s problems.

Mitchell’s assessment was correct. That was evident just from how Ashton had handled the conflict between Helio and Sabina. He stitched things up between them in a fairly convincing way.