Chapter 72

Until a few days ago, Helio hadn’t replied to Sabina’s apology letter. As the cold war with Sabina dragged on, he started thinking he should write back—but the moment he looked at a blank sheet, it felt hopeless. An apology letter written after a long silence seemed like it would have to be flawless, perfect beyond criticism.

So, paradoxically, the boy spent his time making no contact with Sabina at all, and instead deliberately focusing only on his ‘practice’ with Ashton.

Ashton didn’t want the matter to add to Sabina’s stress.

Luckily, Ashton had learned through experience that Sabina had the habit of ignoring conflicts she couldn’t resolve, covering them up as if they didn’t exist. He used that habit of hers.

In mid-October, the Academy held midterms, and two weeks later, grades were assigned for all subjects. Needless to say, Helio received his grade report as well. First-tier was out of reach, but the boy raised his rank by around a hundred places from his entrance-exam standing and settled into the second tier.

“Your master helped you prepare for your exams, didn’t she?”

Ashton, wrapping a muffler after ‘practice’ with Helio ended, asked out of the blue. Helio pulled himself into a guarded posture and asked,

“……Why?”

“Send your master your report card.”

“……The school will send it. To my master.”

“Didn’t you understand what I said? Attach a thank-you card to the report card and send it. You, personally. Instead of wasting time agonizing over apology-letter wording.”

Helio’s cheeks heated with shame. But what Ashton suggested was certainly a good method—especially because it clearly showed achievement, eased tension, and didn’t impose a heavy burden.

So Helio sent Sabina his report card. He added a comment that the notes she had organized had been a huge help, and that he was grateful.

In truth, what Sabina needed wasn’t Helio’s apology as such—she only needed a small signal that Helio wasn’t still angry at her. Even if nothing had been truly resolved, it loosened the tightness a little.

Sabina could put off the day she would have to choose between Ashton and Helio. And so the conflict between Sabina and Helio, for now, ended anticlimactically.

Leaving behind a strange residue.

But there were things even Ashton couldn’t “fix.”

The matter Sabina was hiding from Ashton was not something he could help with unless he read Sabina’s mind.

Because burrowing into another person’s mind was exhausting, he didn’t use magic unless it was necessary.

And from here on, what Ashton couldn’t solve was going to muddle Sabina’s head.

Sabina received a letter with an envelope crushed into a mess. The sender was Miss Hannah of the Royal Research Institute.

When she opened it, there was only one short sentence inside.

『I solved it.』

She had succeeded in identifying what structure Ashton’s medicine had.

Sabina left the house immediately. Normally, proper manners required first expressing thanks and arranging, in writing, when they would meet—but if the other person was Hannah, it was fine to show up outright instead. In fact, Hannah found that kind of middle step annoyingly fussy.

And if Hannah had discovered something, she would be in a restless state where she couldn’t bear not to tell someone. She would be eagerly awaiting Sabina’s visit.

Sabina’s guess was right. The moment Hannah saw her, she grabbed her in a tight hug.

“Come on, hurry, this way.”

Hannah’s overly excited manner made Sabina feel slightly uneasy. That medicine must have had plenty of potential to spark Hannah’s interest. Complex, difficult, and…. likely dangerous.

Grabbing Sabina by the wrist and dragging her into the lab, Hannah locked the door to her private room. Sabina looked at Hannah’s desk. The ingredients Hannah had forcibly disassembled and separated were each contained in their own reagent bottles.

No words were needed between the two. Sabina looked down over the reagent bottles.

“The one with the red strip is the black medicine. That one is really interesting. Ah, it’s not that the clear medicine isn’t interesting. But the black one is overwhelmingly interesting.”

Hannah looked delighted.

Sabina stared for a long time at the ingredient names written on the labels Hannah had attached.

The things that could fully spark Hannah’s interest were complex, difficult, and dangerous.

“The main ingredient is poison.”

“Right. It’s Blueisia Tentacle poison. Isn’t it interesting? The other ingredients look like a desperate struggle to somehow neutralize the Blueisia Tentacle poison.”

There was a reason Hannah kept repeating “isn’t it interesting” in her excitement. Blueisia Tentacle, which carried a paralytic poison, wasn’t used as medicinal material. It was too dangerous, and there were many other natural ingredients with similar functions that were far safer.

Getting Blueisia Tentacle was also a problem. That material existed only in Letona, and gathering it was illegal. Even to obtain it illegally, the material’s nature itself became an obstacle. Anyone trying to harvest it had to risk their life.

“It’s a blend that hasn’t existed before. Look—Cynthia Lily root was used, right? That’s poison too. But when you mix it with the tentacle poison, it loses its potency and prevents blood poisoning.”

Sabina patiently listened to Hannah’s excited stream of explanations. After a long silence, she asked,

“What’s it for?”

“Like you said, it seems like a painkiller.”

“For nothing but pain relief.”

“Yeah. For nothing but pain relief, they gave up every other commercially available medicine and used this.”

Her thoughts grew heavier. Sabina’s expression went blank. But what mattered to Hannah wasn’t Sabina’s mood.

And of course, Sabina herself didn’t much care about her own mood, either.

“What about the other one?”

“That side’s ingredients aren’t particularly outstanding. But the combination is strange. In the last stage of manufacturing, they deliberately induced magical transformation, you know? So I don’t even know what effect it produces.”

It was rare for Hannah to say, “I don’t know.”

“Will you give me the recipe. I need to find out which apothecaries handle those ingredients.”

“Impossible.”

Hannah said it flatly.

“The clear side’s ingredients are everywhere. It’s just that the measuring, blending, and transformation process are finicky. Even a slight error in the process won’t produce that colorless transparent solution.”

“And the black side uses materials that are too rare and illegal, so it’ll be hard to find a supplier.”

“You said you found it in Letona, right?”

“That’s right.”

Hannah looked like something had clicked for her.

“In my view, it looks like medicine a mage living in Letona personally mixes and takes. If it were a Brinita mage, continually smuggling Blueisia Tentacle would be insanity itself.”

Unless someone had built a smuggling route as cunning as Don Slafdi and Marquis Meolin—who had once held carnival before Ashton came—importing Blueisia Tentacle would be impossible. But a mage living in Letona….

“Do you think there’s any reason a mage would live in Letona?”

“Well, no. Why would a mage go there? It’s like a penguin living in the tropics.”

Hannah admitted easily.

“Anyway, it’s definitely made by a mage. And continuously, too. The black medicine starts to spoil after a week, and the clear one after three weeks. What you brought was already spoiled, so it was trickier.”

Sabina didn’t apologize. That obstacle would only have excited Hannah more.

Hannah loaded Sabina up with her research notes, the raw materials, and even the newly mixed medicine she had prepared. Even though she was affiliated with the Royal Research Institute, she didn’t seem to have any intention of reporting this illegal-smelling medicine to the state. If she did, she’d lose the chance to do something this interesting again.

“It’s far too toxic for a human to take. It’s the same as pouring oil over yourself and setting your body on fire just to thaw frozen feet. Someone who takes medicine like this won’t live long.”

“That’s true.”

Sabina thought Ashton had to drink this “even so.” Was the pain that severe? Severe enough to require Blueisia Tentacle? A person suffering that kind of agony couldn’t maintain a normal daily life.

Or was it an illness that wouldn’t respond unless it was Blueisia Tentacle?

Hannah suddenly said.

“That medicine, an unattribute mage can also make it. That’s why I made it alone.”

Her magic attribute was Disassembly. If other attribute magic had been needed during the manufacturing process, there would have been no way to reproduce the medicine exactly.

“So finding the maker will be harder. It might even be an unregistered attribute mage. If it’s an unregistered attribute mage, that’s a big problem.”

“Whether they’re registered doesn’t matter.”

In Brinita, where unregistered mages were severely punished, it was an extremely subversive thing to say.

“What?”

Hannah reacted strongly to what Sabina had blurted out without thinking, and Sabina was, instead, more startled.