Chapter 31
“Alright. You may go upstairs now. I have something to discuss with your mother.”
“Huh? Is it something I’m not allowed to hear?”
I hadn’t seen Master in so long—I wanted to sit and chat with her about all sorts of things….
Perhaps noticing how crestfallen I looked, Mother gently coaxed me.
“Would you like to stay? We’re going to talk about sponsorship for the Magic Tower. I assumed you’d find it boring….”
“Ugh, then I’ll go upstairs.”
Long, complicated, tedious conversations about funding were exactly the sort of thing I hated. If I stayed, I’d probably just nod off in my seat anyway, so I stood up.
“Then can I take Snowy with me?”
“You may. But don’t give him any more snacks. He’s gotten quite plump.”
“Where? Isn’t it just his feathers getting fluffier?”
“That’s a new expression. In any case, don’t feed him.”
“Yes, ma’am….”
Hmm. But if Snowy looked at me all cute and begged for treats, I didn’t think I’d be able to resist.
Sure enough, the moment we entered my room, Snowy rubbed his head against my cheek and began pleading for snacks.
I firmly refused. I really did. I refused and refused and refused…
“…This is a secret from Master, alright?”
“Fwoo!”
Luckily, there were some cookies left over from yesterday’s baking. I crumbled them into small pieces and set them on a plate. Snowy chirped happily and gobbled them up.
“Is it good?”
“Fwoo!”
Snowy’s face looked positively delighted, clearly pleased with the cookies.
I was gently stroking his head with my finger when Eunice, wearing a curious expression, asked,
“But, my lady, isn’t a spirit familiar a magical life-form made from a portion of a mage’s soul? How can it eat cookies?”
“Well, it’s a magical life-form, after all. It basically shares the characteristics of living beings.”
Before a spirit familiar is fully completed—while it’s still ‘in the making’—it can only move if the caster directly controls it.
But once it becomes a complete life-form, it develops its own sense of self and can move independently.
And because it’s created from a fragment of the mage’s soul, the mage can connect their consciousness to it at any time and use it to communicate with others.
“That’s why mages don’t get close to unfamiliar animals. It could be another mage’s spirit familiar approaching to gather information.”
According to Master, there are even eccentrics who use spirit familiars shaped like common, adorable animals—cats or dogs—to wander through noble estates, secretly collecting and selling information.
“But that’s a rare case. It’s an incredibly difficult spell to begin with. Even within the Magic Tower, only four or five mages have successfully cast it. Sending one somewhere dangerous to infiltrate? The risk is far too great.”
“What kind of risk?”
“If a spirit familiar dies, it’s practically the same as having that fragment of your soul destroyed. The caster suffers tremendous damage.”
That’s why the spell must only be cast after reaching adulthood.
It was already nearly impossible for a child to complete such advanced magic—but more importantly, if a growing child’s soul were damaged, there was a high chance they would die.
Even adults, in severe cases, could fall unconscious for one or two years.
“Fwoo!”
“Hm? No, absolutely not. That’s really it. I said just one more.”
“Fwoo, fwoooo.”
“Ugh, look at him acting cute….”
I really tried. I truly did my best to resist to the very end. Surely Master would understand?
“Fwooo.”
“Alright, alright. It’s not like gaining a little weight will make you sick.”
“Fwooooo!”
“Oh my, you’re adorable. Our Snowy is the cutest in the whole world.”
Ah, what a shame.
If only I could use magic too, I would’ve made a spirit familiar.
“Mother, Master! I’ll see you at dinner later!”
After Cecilia waved both hands energetically and left the room,
Duchess Sophia Rohaim and Melania, the Master of the Frost Magic Tower, let out long sighs almost in unison.
“That child… She’s already sixteen this year, yet she’s still so innocent.”
“Hehe. Isn’t she simply lovely? Sixteen is still an age to be wrapped in her mother’s skirts.”
“Shouldn’t she have matured by now? She’s old enough to carry her own weight.”
“My child has no need to grow up so soon.”
The beloved youngest daughter of the Rohaim ducal house.
Cecilia had no reason to mature, no need to—and she had been raised deliberately indulged so that she wouldn’t have to.
Perhaps that very sentiment was why Veloz and Albert still had no fiancées.
Let her remain forever a child in our arms. Let her stay inside the comfortable, peaceful greenhouse we built for her.
…Even though they both knew better than anyone that such a wish could never come true.
“More importantly, Lady Melania. Since you deliberately sent Cecil away, you must have something to discuss with me in private?”
“Yes.”
Melania lightly snapped her fingers. A thin soundproof barrier formed around the two of them.
Within the barrier, where no one could overhear, Melania spoke in a grave voice.
“You remember what I once told you about Cecil’s mana vessel, don’t you?”
“Yes. You said it would be impossible for her to regain it.”
Melania nodded.
“When I said that, I believed that when Cecil’s spirit familiar was destroyed, her mana vessel itself had been destroyed as well.”
Casting the spirit familiar spell at the age of seven was not something to praise—it was something deserving of a severe scolding.
But before anyone could even realize what she had done, Cecilia’s spirit familiar had been annihilated, and Cecilia—her soul fragment destroyed—had nearly died.
In exchange, she lost all her memories and her mana vessel. It was far too heavy a price for a child once called a prodigy, a genius beyond compare.
There was no way to restore a destroyed mana vessel. Thus, Melania had thought it almost fortunate that Cecilia had lost her memories of the past.
“But I was wrong. It seems Cecil’s mana vessel was not destroyed.”
Sophia asked with a hopeful expression,
“Does that mean… there is a way for her mana vessel to be restored?”
“No. Not restored. It wasn’t destroyed to begin with—it was lost.”
“Lost?”
“I don’t know how it happened. But the residual mana left in Cecil’s body was undoubtedly the same mana she possessed as a child.”
A mage’s mana springs forth from the mana vessel generated within their body.
If the mana vessel is destroyed, mana can never again well up from within.
Yet the mana remaining in Cecilia’s body was unmistakably hers—and it bore traces of having flowed in from outside.
Which meant—
“What I told Cecil was a lie. She did not receive someone else’s mana. She said she had visited the Imperial Palace, so perhaps her mana vessel is wandering somewhere within the palace. From there, her own mana must have flowed back into her.”
“A wandering mana vessel… Is such a thing even possible?”
“It’s not impossible.”
The precise location where a mana vessel forms is not in the physical body, but in the soul.
If, when Cecilia created her spirit familiar, she tore away the entire portion of her soul that contained the mana vessel and placed it into the spell…
“When her spirit familiar was destroyed… her mana vessel may have instinctively protected that fragment of her soul.”
That would explain why young Cecilia had survived. Her soul fragment had not vanished—it remained somewhere.
‘But how…? How could a fragment of a soul, separated from the body, endure outside for nine years?’
Had it settled somewhere?
But where?