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Chapter 56
🕑 Added 2025-08-19 06:20:25 +0000 UTCAfter all the man had done for me with nothing in exchange, the Professor was my ride-or-die. Unlike Inorai, or almost every other magi I'd met thus far, Waver El-Melloi II possessed no ulterior motives at all when he first came to me.
That demanded respect.
So, when he respectfully asked me to help him out, hesitation was the farthest thing from my mind. I immediately travelled to the location he gave me, not through any public transit or car, but instead, through the high-speed movement afforded to me by utilising Blue in a way to 'delete' the distance between myself and a point within eyeshot.
The truth was, England was a pitifully small island. It barely took me a couple of minutes to go from the cobbled streets of London to a rather sizable privately owned plot of land in the boonies (the Lake District near Windermere). The plot was barely developed, and nature had clearly been left to its own devices judging by the dense thickets sprawled all over.
Two leaning towers with extreme points jutted from somewhere, built in the ornate and gaudy fashion that was typical of the noble magi. Each tower had four levels, and from where I was, they kind of looked like a massive sundial.
"Makes me want to mess with whoever owns this..." I stood in the air about a mile above, lips pursed, aviators pocketed and eyes locked onto a massive lake. "But the Professor will probably chew me out."
The land was soaked in all sorts of magicks, and the pilfered remains of a Bounded Field someone had only recently destroyed. Dark clouds rolled in the skies above, and thunder roared amongst flashes of lightning. A terribly fantastical spectacle. A clearly engineered spectacle.
"This shit's a spell."
Or, was ritual the right word? The two kind of blended in for me.
The weather itself was a product of a spell, a still active spell. A still active spell that-
Suddenly, the thunder roared again. A massive amount of lightning struck the earth, ripping the ground open. Instead of stopping, it kept striking that very same place, again and again, even though the target was an empty piece of land.
At least, that was what the owner of the land wanted people to think. The very soil was connecting the foundations of the spells defending those towers. The attacker knew this, and targeted it specifically, so as to disrupt their operation and consequently, render them null.
What had the Professor gotten himself stuck in now?
Clearly, the level of magecraft being thrown around was well beyond his level. And yes, this WAS still magecraft. A phenomenon that closely resembled cloud seeding in a way, just a lot more controlled. No matter how many times I observed this sort of thing in action, I always got terribly excited.
I put a hand to my chin and narrowed my eyes, scanning the perimeter.
"A ton of people fighting an old dude over yonder. Some weirdo gloating on that hill. And ah, there he is."
A moment later, I was standing next to Gray. The girl let out a startled yelp and jumped away like a cat. Then, she let out a small sigh before ducking her head.
"Henry... You startled me..."
I patted her shoulder with a grin, "That was the plan."
"Mmm."
She pulled down her hood as I turned to face the small gathering of people. Thankfully, there were no new faces. Just the professor, his mean little sister Reines, and good ol' Gray. If the Professor was even slightly surprised, I wasn't able to figure it out.
He just eyed me as if it were the most expected thing in the world.
"Thank you, Henry." I nodded, and he continued. "I don't know how else to put it. A bunch of troublesome things have happened one after the other and Reines is caught up in them-"
Reines put a foot on the ground and crossed her arms, "It isn't my fault that Lord Valualeta is such an unreasonable person."
So... that troublesome woman was here too?
"Like I said last time, the kind of person to blame the world for their incompetence." I cackled, jabbing a thumb her way. "Didn't know you'd prove me right yourself."
Reines opened her mouth to retort, but Waver put a hand in front of her first, "We don't have the time for this! Henry. This is Lord Byron Iselma's domain. The Twin Towers of Iselma."
I cast a glance at the towers rising in the distance.
"And they're under attack by an unknown force. Since Reines is under scrutiny for murdering one of their princesses, we can't afford to move lightly."
Murdering a-... what now?
He caught onto my confusion instantly, "I'll explain it all in detail later. For now, helping Lord Byron is to our advantage. Unfortunately, I'm not up to the challenge so I'll have to beg for your help. I know, as a teacher, it's shamefu-"
I had to stop him at that point. Even if he refrained from explaining, I'd have done what he wanted without a second thought. Besides, this wasn't even a favour. I LOVED getting caught up in these types of situations.
"Mate, don't throw around such heavy words. If kicking in a couple teeth is all you want, I'm happily your guy." I took a deep breath of the ionized air all around us. "I gotta take care of those guys fighting that old dude, right?"
"You know where he is?"
"Duh, I scouted the whole place out."
"That's... unexpected." Reines mumbled quietly.
Before I could respond in kind, Gray shook her head, "Not very, Miss Reines. Violence and mockery is where he excels."
"I'm glad you know me so well, Gray~."
Before I left, the Professor put a hand on my shoulder.
"There is a Grand-ranked magus present here. I can't say what she'll do, but if you encounter her, don't provoke her. Just run."
Well... that just made things a whole lot better.
-
"He's not going to run, is he?"
Waver rubbed his temple with a sigh as he watched Henry depart.
That was just the sort of person his student was. No, instead, now that he'd told him, there was a decent chance he would willingly seek out that dreadful monster masquerading as a party guest to this event.
Really, all this was horrible for his stomach.
Gray shook her head from side to side.
"It's not very likely..."
For a simple social gathering hosted by the Iselma Family, this had turned out to be quite the ordeal not very different from the incident at the Adra Castle. In hindsight, he really should have guessed that the unveiling of the Iselma family's Twin Princesses wouldn't go so smoothly and warned Reines accordingly.
Now, one of the two princesses lay dead, brutally pieced up in her own room, and Reines was the one blamed for the murder. It was easy to tell that this was a frame job, but that kind of thing mattered very little in their world. The Iselma Family was a part of Valuay aligned with the Democrats. The El-Melloi were Norwich, aligned with the Aristocracy.
Regardless of the truth, now that the murder had occurred, it was ideal to throw them under the bus to gain the upper hand in the political war unfolding in the Clock Tower.
And it would most certainly work if left unchecked. The Twin Princesses were the main Iselma's subject of obsessive research, and were only produced once with every generation. The objective was to create an ascendant beauty and then, by some principle, use it to ascend to that realm themselves.
"A party, then a murder and now we're the culprits..." Reines let out a sigh, "I should have just stayed home. On top of that, Iselma is being attacked too."
"You really should have." Waver agreed. "But now that it's come to this, we have no choice except to face it head-on."
This whole thing reeked of foul play, especially the ensuing attack. Lord Valualeta herself was in attendance, and yet, when one of her people was under attack, she chose to sit aside and let it happen with not a hint of reluctance.
The old Lord was aligned with the attackers.
"Maybe she's the one crippling them." He muttered, eyes narrowed as lightning flashed across the skies.
It wasn't so out of the ordinary for the great families to cripple their subordinates if they became exceptional to the point of threatening an established hierarchy. It was to keep their underlings on a leash, so to say.
"That... might actually be the case." Reines stared at him with wide eyes. "If we go by what I saw, then the Iselma came a little too close to the realm they're after this time. No, maybe they reached it. It's annoying but even I couldn't do anything after bearing witness to the Princess of Gold. By looking at beautiful things, people become more beautiful as well. If that's how they're approaching it, then they're too close for comfort."
"It was something like... I was about to forget I existed." Gray murmured, nodding.
An ascendant beauty beyond the realm of what the human mind could comprehend, that was their desire. Then, by adhering to the principle of acquiring beauty by interacting with it as Reines said, the rest were meant to reach that same realm as well, then keep going until they reached what all magi desired.
The Root.
"Forgetting that for a moment, dearest brother..." Reines gave him a withering glare that brought his stomach pains right back. "Why did you call him of all people here? You know he's aligned with them right?"
Waver shook his head. "That is what everyone assumes. I re-iterate that it's quite possibly not the case at all. Regardless, with him here, even if that Grand decides to become our enemy, it'll be too troublesome for her to continue to be so."
"That's... have you gone mad from the stress, dearest brother?"
"That woman reached Grand by 20, but her lineage was definitely impressive and had a part to play. My student which you are putting down reached Cause from nothing over the course of a few months. If nothing else, I'm confident he'll put a halt to everything long enough for me to clear your name."
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Hope you enjoyed.
Please comment your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions for the story. I thrive on them.
Edit: Waver's perspective elucidates on the background of the situation a bit, but more details will come as Henry himself navigates it.
Comments
Entitled
Touko my beloved
Bleap
The thighs reign supreme! Also, hell yeah. Trolling and showing off is where all of it's at.
Kevin Valentin
I can't wait for Henry to start trolling. I can see someone shooting a spell at him and him going "womp womp" while seemingly touching the spell condescendingly. Also in regards to the last chapter perfect amount of fluff I'd miss Luvia's thighs too.
Bleap
thanks for reading, brother
Alan
Thanks for the chapter!
