After having safely escorted all the first years back to the campus, the Academy allowed them to take the next day off. Thus, when Cadmus awoke that morning, he woke up with a small feeling of relief since there wasn’t anything that he had to do for the rest of the day.

And then, the weight on his chest reminded him that he still had one specific conversation that he had to get through today. He kept his eyes closed, and kept his breathing even in order to pretend that he was still sleeping. He still hadn’t really decided what he was going to tell Alice after all.

However, Alice knew him too well for this to work.

“I know that you’re awake, Cadmus.”

Cadmus let loose a disappointed sigh. It had been worth a shot…

He opened his eyes and looked down at Alice on his chest. She was staring at him with a resolute look on her face. Her usually neat blonde hair was all tangled, and there was clear tiredness in her wide blue eyes. It seemed that she hadn’t been able to sleep too well last night.

“…Let me brush my teeth first.” He finally said.

“Cadmus!” Alice glared at him. It had been a while since she had truly looked at him so severely.

Cadmus sighed again, “Alright… fine.” He picked her up and deposited her on the bed before getting up, noticing with a wince that his body was incredibly sore as he did so, “What do you want to know specifically?”

He was just stalling now. He knew exactly what she wanted to know. However, Alice didn’t seem to notice,

“Please tell me… why did I recognize that [mind control] magic circle last night?” She trembled slightly, “Why… did I know that the formula that man used wasn’t the perfected formula? Ardea’s reaction clearly showed that it wasn’t common knowledge, and you’ve never shown me that magic circle before.”

Cadmus stretched lightly, producing a few satisfying ‘pops’ from his joints as his sore muscles ached in protest,

“To be honest, I don’t know the perfected formula of the [mind control] spell either.”

Which only made him wonder: If Everett Praesse had been telling the truth, and this spell was indeed Ember’s final legacy to the world, then why had she never showed it to him? Even if she chose to not show it to Everett Praesse due to whatever disagreement she had with him, why would she let her perfected formula just die with her?

“Then why do I know it!?” Alice yelled desperately.

Cadmus fidgeted a little, “To be honest… it’s not that dramatic of a secret, but… I’m not sure how it’ll affect you. Are you really sure you want to know?”

Alice gulped before nodding firmly.

Cadmus suppressed a curse. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t even need to tell her the secret. Considering the risk, she really didn’t even need to know. He could just say no right now and leave her to it.

But…

He looked directly into her eyes. She held his gaze, her wide blue eyes shining with a fierce determination that he didn’t often see in her.

Damn.

“Do you remember the explanation I gave you for how you were created?” Cadmus found himself asking.

Alice nodded, “You said that you created a human’s body for me to serve as my soul’s vessel, and that you used the imprints in the ambient mana to serve as my knowledge. You also said that bringing me to life required you to use a completely original magic circle and a lot of laurite. You never elaborated because you said that it was all ‘too complicated’.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Cadmus said, “Creating you was so ridiculously complicated that even if I explained everything down to the smallest details, most of it would just go over your head.” He grimaced, “But… to put it simply, the reason you knew that [mind-control] magic circle has to do with the creation of your human body.”

Alice listened patiently.

“The problem with creating your human body was that we, as humans, still don’t fully understand how the human body functions,” Cadmus explained, “There’s a lot of mysterious stuff going on inside of us, so even though I wanted to give you a perfectly human body, I still didn’t know what that entailed.”

Cadmus paused for a moment to take a deep breath. There would be no going back after this…

“You probably don’t know this since I never showed it to you, but I’ve kept Ember’s body preserved in the basement where we kept all the laurite,” he said, “And in order to create a perfectly accurate human body, I—to make it extremely simple—cloned her body and scaled it down to the size you’re at now. Of course, I changed what I could. That’s why your hair is straight and blonde instead of red and curly, that’s why your eyes are blue and wide instead of green and narrow—those kinds of things.”

Alice looked taken aback by the revelation. Her mouth parted open in surprise and her eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“Of course, it wasn’t a perfect clone! That’s why you only have a few of Ember’s memories! Because Ember’s cloned brain that I used to create you was heavily altered!” Cadmus said quickly, “And when I say ‘clone’, I mean more that I cloned the information of her body and utilized a lot of steps to create yours! You—”

“D-does that mean… I’m Ember…? Or at least… a clone of Ember…?” Alice whispered, trembling as wildly as a leaf in a hurricane, “Wh-what does that make me? What is Alice!?”

Her eyes had glazed over, muddled in the fog of fear and doubt.

Cadmus gently shook her, “You’re not! Trust me—you’re not Ember! Gah—this is exactly what I was afraid of!”

Alice didn’t seem to be listening.

“Alice!” Cadmus yelled, “You know that my greatest wish is to bring Ember back to life! If cloning her was the path to do that, then don’t you think I would have done it already!? Alice, you have some of Ember’s memories, but that’s it! The rest of you is all you!”

That seemed to knock a little bit of sense into Alice. She looked up at him doubtfully,

“Why… didn’t you tell me then?”

Cadmus scratched the back of his head, “You’re the first ever homunculus in the world, you know? There are no textbooks that explain how to safely interact with you. I was afraid that if I told you this information, you would begin to doubt your own existence, and that would somehow cause the life inside you to just shut down or something.”

“So… I’m not Ember—or just some clone of her?” Alice asked hopefully.

Cadmus nodded, “Of course. If I could bring Ember back like this, then I would have just done that instead of creating you.”

Alice looked as though she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Then, she shook her head before asking,

“I don’t understand, why can’t you clone Ember to revive her then? I mean, I got some of her memories, even though you changed many things around…”

Cadmus hung his head, “By the time I enchanted Ember’s body with the preservation spell, her body had already deteriorated a little. The way I cloned the information from her body to create a new body for you and used magic to generate life inside of you won’t work for her, because I’ll have to repair a lot of parts, which will make it so that the new existence won’t be a hundred percent her.

He remembered, “I considered a different type of cloning called genetic cloning for a while, but I decided not to develop a spell for that because the new clone would only be an accurate copy of Ember’s body. She wouldn’t have any of Ember’s memories or experiences. And I’d have to raise her since she would be a baby, and—well, just too many problems.”

“Is that so…?”

Cadmus nodded, “Yes. In any case, just know that I’m telling the truth when I say you’re not Ember. Your existence is your own. I would have no reason to create you if it wasn’t.”

Alice seemed to find some comfort in his words, and Cadmus guessed that she was stable now. Thankfully, the life inside of her hadn’t been shut down as he had feared.

“Now that we’re past this, can you—?”

A firm set of knocks on the door interrupted Cadmus.

He opened the door, his sore muscles protesting all the way.

“Professor Mackenzie?”

“Yo, brat. Am I interrupting anything?” Professor Mackenzie said as she let herself in. She took a seat on his desk chair.

Cadmus privately wondered why no one ever waited for him to invite them in?

He closed the door and sat on his bed, “Yes, but I suppose it can wait till later.”

Professor Mackenzie nodded, “Thanks. Anyway, I just got done talking to Ms. Regis, and came here to get your account of what happened in the forest before you forget too many details. We’re going to be asking everyone eventually, but we’re especially interested in you, Ms. Regis, Ms. Auxil, and… the other Ms. Regis since you guys actually met the enemy leader.”

Alice looked confused, “When you say you talked to Ms. Regis…?”

“Ms. Ardea Regis,” Professor Mackenzie clarified, “I talked to Ms. Ardea Regis. So, brat, think you’re up to explaining your experience in the forest?”

Cadmus shrugged, “I don’t mind.”

He proceeded to explain everything that he remembered, from first hearing Candice’s scream to Everett Praesse escaping after using his troops as a shield. Professor Mackenzie listened attentively without interrupting, even though she looked like she had wanted to a few times. Once Cadmus was done explaining, Professor Mackenzie put a hand on her chin, seeming to be in deep thought.

“It’s rare to meet someone so averse to killing in this age, but I suppose Ms. Regis has an unusually kind heart…” She muttered. Then, she sighed, “And to think Everett was the enemy leader…”

“Did you know him?” Cadmus asked.

Professor Mackenzie nodded, “I knew him well. He was one of the brightest students to attend this Academy, and he and your sister were great friends—always working on something, those two.”

So… Everett hadn’t lied about the friendship between him and his sister…

Professor Mackenzie sighed and palmed her forehead, “To think he would do something like this… I wonder what’s gotten into him? And that [mind control] spell that Ember created… just what were those brats up to…?”

“I was just about to take a look at the perfected version of the [mind control], would you like to see it as well?” Cadmus asked.

Professor Mackenzie looked confused, “You were ‘about to take a look’? What do you mean? Didn’t Ember show you before she died?”

Cadmus shook his head, “No. It’s something I find curious as well. However, due to the process of her creation, Alice is the only one who knows the formula, and I was going to ask her to draw it out before you arrived.”

Professor Mackenzie looked taken aback, “Wait… you’re fine with showing it to me as well?”

Cadmus nodded. And he wasn’t lying either. He trusted Professor Mackenzie for some reason—perhaps because she had repeatedly proven herself to be trustworthy, or perhaps because her personality reminded him a bit of his sister. In any case, he had no problems in showing her Ember’s final legacy.

Professor Mackenzie looked touched, and her wide brown eyes were shining a little,

“I’ll… take you up on your offer then. Thanks, brat.”

Alice took this as her cue to draw out the perfected [mind control] magic circle. Cadmus and Professor Mackenzie watched carefully as Alice went from one symbol to the next. Once the circle was done, she stepped back.

Alice had been forced to draw the circle larger than her entire body simply due to the sheer number of symbols that she had to cram inside. Even so, she wasn’t able to draw the magic circle too large, so Cadmus and Professor had been forced to lean in closer in order to make out the individual symbols and examine how they all interacted with each other.

“Now that you know this magic circle, what are you going to do with it?” Alice asked as Cadmus and Professor Mackenzie continued inspecting it.

“…Nothing,” Cadmus finally said once he gained a semblance of understanding on what the magic circle actually did.

Alice looked gobsmacked, “…Nothing? I was ready to try and stop you from using it to get the resources you want, but I never expected you to say that you won’t even use it!”

“It’s a terrifying spell, that’s for sure…” Professor Mackenzie said, “It’s designed to control a person’s mind without them even realizing that such a spell is being used on them. This circle can bend a person’s will so thoroughly, that the user can make their target do anything. And it links the minds of the user and the target, so the user doesn’t even have to adjust the circle to adjust the orders they want to give the target. The user simply has to send a mental command through the link, and the target will obey. To think Ember created something like this…”

Alice looked a little frightened, “S-so why did you decide not to use this circle then, Cadmus?”

“It takes too much mana,” Cadmus answered simply.

Alice gave him a confused look.

“This magic circle is certainly amazing, but it takes far too much mana for me to be able to use,” Cadmus explained, “Even with my mana reserves at full capacity, I won’t be able to fire a single shot from that circle. I’d need massive amounts of laurite to compensate, and if I had that much laurite, I would rather just focus on developing my own research.”

He ran a hand through the circle, erasing it from existence,

“This spell is useless to me.” He turned to Professor Mackenzie, “Although, Professor…”

Professor Mackenzie nodded understandingly, “Yeah, I get it. I’ll keep the knowledge of the circle to myself. Who knows what people will do to get their hands on that…”

Cadmus nodded gratefully, “Thank you.”

Professor Mackenzie scratched her cheek a little sheepishly, “Well, you didn’t have to show me that circle in the first place, so this is just my way of thanking you I guess.” She got to her feet, “Anyway, I still have two more people to talk to. The headmaster wants to talk to all of you first years in the main hall tomorrow, so make sure to be there by twelve. See ya.”

She waved them goodbye and left.