After Alon’s birthday, which had been noisy in its own way, ended, and after three days had passed since that strange situation where an irritated Seollang lunged at Yutia and went “Guek—” before slamming into the floor the very next day—

“Can you process this document—”

“Okay, Brother.”

“And this one too—”

“Ah, I’ll do it, Teacher!”

“What are you talking about? I was waiting first!”

“Huh? But I’m the one who received the document?”

“You cut in line!”

For some reason, even though his birthday had already passed, the people still weren’t leaving, so Alon was living a noisy life.

“......”

He looked at the situation in front of him.

A sheet of paper stretched taut, pulled to either side like it was about to tear.

Holding one end each, Ryang-a and Seollang glared at each other.

A sigh slipped out of Alon on its own.

Seeing people other than Penia and Evan, who originally helped with document processing, moving around in his office felt pretty alien, and Alon also couldn’t understand why they were acting like this.

Even when he listened to Penia, she said this kind of behavior was extremely unusual for them.

Then Alon soon figured out the cause of their odd behavior.

It seemed to be because of the address “older sister.”

......More precisely, because they wanted Alon to call them “older sister.”

Of course, Alon had no intention of calling anyone “older sister.”

From the standpoint of thirteen years ago, after losing his memories, all the women did look like “older sisters,” but—

even so, that kind of title felt extremely awkward when he thought about his ‘old’ self.

When he first saw Yutia, the word “older sister” had popped out instinctively, but since he was at an age of his own, it felt embarrassing to consciously and boldly call someone “older sister.”

Crash—!

Around the time he was thinking that, Seollang and Ryang-a stormed out noisily.

“......For people who have a goal they want, they’re not really acting in a way that fits it.”

Penia, who had somehow joined in the document work again, muttered.

Alon agreed inwardly.

With calm Magrina and Historia, the word “older sister” had almost slipped out without him realizing it, but—

with Ryang-a and Seollang, it didn’t feel like that at all. That was the kind of thought it gave him; they were far from that address.

“......More importantly, are we finally almost done?”

“Mm— yeah. If we process just this, I think we’ll wrap up.”

“It’s a lot of paperwork, now that I see it. Was the original me constantly tormented by this murderous workload?”

At Alon’s reaction, sounding a little sick of it, Penia answered.

“No? It wasn’t this much before.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I was here too, and honestly, Alexion handled basically all the territory-related work.”

“Ah, that person.......”

In the game, Alexion had been a middle-aged man living a total trainwreck life in the slums of Raksas—so why was that person living such a diligent, salaried-worker kind of life here?

Alon had a memory of thinking that, so he nodded.

“Then why is it so much now?”

“Well— you already know because you’ve been processing it, but there’s a lot related to the Divine Land and diplomacy.”

“Mm, that’s true.”

Alon recalled what was in the documents he’d processed so far.

Just like she said.

“Right now, Sili has been continuously taking care of the Divine Land, but we’re reaching the point where we need to build a system so it runs properly even without Sili, so there’s more paperwork. And diplomacy is— because of Divine blood.”

“Divine blood.......”

“Yes. Honestly, there are way more reports than things you actually have to approve, right?”

“That’s true.”

Alon nodded.

Most of the diplomatic documents that had come up were reports.

And they didn’t look like they were in very good shape.

“It ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) seems like the Divine blood are starting to move in earnest. You can tell from the reports, but even if no one’s been attacked yet, the number of unusual individuals has been increasing little by little.”

“So you’re saying we need to start being careful.”

“That’s right. So naturally, the number of documents you need to check increases. Especially reports like these—you should absolutely check them, so they’re being sent up.”

Penia pointed at the stack of reports that was already about two finger-joints tall.

A low hum slipped out of Alon on its own.

‘......I need to hurry.’

His thoughts deepened as he judged the time.

####

Three days after that, the people who had gathered at Alon’s home left one by one, heading back to their places.

“See you next time, Teacher!”

“Yeah.”

After seeing off Seollang last, Alon processed documents for a bit, then moved to the Second Office with Penia faster than usual.

It was finally today.

The day Alon would check whether the inspiration he’d gotten from Yutia was useful.

“Whew—”

As Alon sighed after arriving at the Second Office, Penia, reading documents beside him, spoke.

“First, there’s no big problem with the spell formula.”

“So now it depends on whether I can implement the magic well.”

“......Most likely. Of course, our hypothesis could be wrong and it might not implement.”

Alon closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, then formed a sphere over his hand.

A simple mana orb—something any first-tier mage could implement—came into being, giving off a faint light.

‘The reason you recite phrases is to use the law, right? Then do you really need to do it with words?’

Along with that, Alon recalled Yutia’s advice.

The reason Alon hadn’t been able to find a method of supplementation until now was

because he had to force ‘hand seals’ and ‘phrases’ no matter what.

Those forced hand seals and phrases inevitably increased casting time.

But he couldn’t remove them either.

The moment he removed hand seals and phrases, he would become an ‘ordinary’ mage.

So when he was stuck, unable to do this or that, and couldn’t reach a conclusion, what Yutia had said gave him a huge spark.

Because her words widened the field of view that had narrowed under the belief that he had to “supplement.”

“Whew...”

Basically, the reason Alon used ‘hand seals’ and ‘phrases’ was because of magic’s firepower.

But if you dig a little deeper—

ultimately, the reason Alon performed hand seals and phrases was to touch the law carved by Divine blood.

It wasn’t that firepower rose because of using ‘hand seals’ and ‘phrases’; by doing those two things, he ‘touched’ the ‘law’, and by using that law, he gave magic its abnormality.

So there was only one point.

Hand seals and phrases were merely a means to touch the law.

And what Alon was about to do now—

‘Let’s do it.’

was to try changing that ‘means.’

Staring fixedly at the hand where the mana orb had formed, Alon closed his eyes and began gathering mana again.

What he was going to attempt was a slightly different kind from his magic so far.

The magic he was making this time was simply to produce a ‘sound.’

A ‘sound’ very similar to Alon’s own voice.

In other words, what he was trying to do was not to directly speak, but to experiment with whether he could replace that means with magic.

After exhaling calmly, Alon delicately tuned the magic.

To produce a sound as close as possible to his own voice, he had to adjust various parts in real time.

That’s why Alon, focusing so hard he even closed his eyes, finally implemented perfectly tuned magic, and—

──Refraction

With a light tearing-through-the-air sound, the vibration—implemented by magic—rang out, slightly alien.

Alon opened his eyes and—

“Looks like it worked?”

together with Penia’s voice, saw it.

The small sphere that had been resting over his hand had become a dizzying line, tracing a small linear shape.

####

“The hypothesis is confirmed, but what are you planning to do?”

Right after confirming that Alon’s hypothesis could be implemented, Penia asked.

“What part are you talking about?”

“The research direction. Now that we know magic manifests even if you imitate the syllable units with magic instead of your mouth, are you going to research it in the direction of cramming the syllable units in?”

Alon answered her.

“Of course I need to research that too, but I think it’ll probably be just one step in the process.”

“......One step?”

Penia tilted her head.

“If you succeed in stuffing the syllable units into a single spell, doesn’t that mean you’ve succeeded in supplementing it too?”

“You could look at it that way.”

She wasn’t wrong.

The goal was to minimize the time it took to use hand seals and phrases, and the hypothesis he’d found this time seemed capable of solving the supplementation point he’d been agonizing over all at once.

“But what’s important right now isn’t that.”

“......It isn’t?”

“What matters here is that even if you change the ‘means,’ you can still use magic.”

Of course, this experiment Alon conducted was also to confirm that he could use magic as a ‘means.’

But that was only a byproduct.

What Alon truly wanted to confirm was the ‘means’ itself.

Whether magic could manifest through a ‘means’ other than the mouth.

That was the core he wanted to verify this time—

and he succeeded.

It suggested one meaning.

That the ‘means’ to touch the law wasn’t important.

And that meant—

“If touching the law itself is what matters, regardless of the means, then that means I can change the ‘means’ however I want, doesn’t it?”

“What—?”

The means, being able to change it however he wanted.

At those words, Penia made a blank expression for a moment, then—

“......No way!”

as if she’d realized something, her eyes went wide.

Alon showed a deep smile instead of a blank face.

A confident smile.

And at that time, in the Kingdom of Fildagreen—

“Oh my— Magrina still hasn’t come back yet, but you’re very fast.”

“I had a bit of business.”

Rine and Yutia were facing each other, smiling.

And on one side, inside an unseen shadow—

“......”

Hidan was secretly trembling as Hidan watched that scene.

But as if Hidan’s anxiety didn’t matter at all, the two looked at each other.

“So what business brought you here? You could’ve left it to me.”

“Mm— it’s something I can handle well enough.”

“Working, and coming to tease me too....... Is it something like that?”

At Rine’s smile, Yutia also answered with a smile.

“What are you talking about, Rine. Why would I tease you?”

“It doesn’t seem like you’re asking because you truly don’t know.”

“Ah— are you talking about not being able to come to Teacher’s birthday? There’s no reason for me to tease you.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course it is— it wouldn’t change anything even if you came on the birthday.”

“......That sounds like teasing.”

“Oh my, does it?”

Yutia’s remarks.

They sounded kind and like they carried no special meaning, but there was an air like an enormous meaning was hidden inside them, and Hidan hunched over without realizing it.

Because from Hidan’s perspective, the moment one or two more lines of conversation were exchanged, the odds of needing to run would rise.

However—

“Mm— then it can’t be helped. If you’re going to tease me like that.”

Contrary to Hidan’s expectation, Rine didn’t really get angry.

Instead, with a calm expression, Rine looked at Yutia and simply took something out.

And then......

[Yutia...... older sister?]

The moment Marquis Palatio’s voice flowed out of the storage magic orb, the smile vanished from Yutia’s lips, which had been wearing a relaxed laugh.

And—

“I was going to just give it to you, but—” 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Kkwajik—!

the magic orb in Rine’s hand began to crack, spiderweb fissures spreading across it.

“—I guess I should pull a little prank too?”

A bright line followed.