Today is the day.

After coming back to the castle last night, the steward approached Arthur to tell him of a formal request of his presence at Clock Tower, the mages guild. It’s what Sir Samuel was talking about. He’s being invited by one of the mages there to both learn magic and have his soul examined.

He gets up early in the morning as always and heads to his brigade’s training room for usual practice. There, he meets Sir Edward and Sir Luis again, along with a still distant Lianne.

“Are the captain and the others not coming?” He asks them.

“Oh, they don’t live here in the castle.” Sir Edward says. “Most married knights don’t. They do their morning training at home.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Arthur nods.

“They do come here when we have specific training programs planned, however.” Sir Luis says.

As for practice itself, it goes as expected. It’s all light, routine exercises. And while he’s doing his own thing, he can’t help but glance every so often in Lianne’s direction to see her training. Right now, she’s in front of the wooden training dummy, taking a stance with a rapier in front of her. She thrusts with precision into what would be the non-vital areas in a real person. Areas meant to incapacitate, not kill. Yet, while her movements are good, they’re… unremarkable.

He remembers catching a glance of Marina’s flowing and intense swordplay, and his body clearly remembers the ferocity of his mother’s strikes. Watching Lianne, it’s easy to tell she’s not particularly talented with a sword.

Yet she’s at it for a long while. Practicing the same thrust time after time. Arthur sees the frustration in her face after every unremarkable thrust. Like she knows what she’s doing wrong, but can’t fix it.

Arthur turns to Sir Luis, who catches his gaze and solemnly shakes his head, silently telling him not to interfere. He’s curious as to how she managed to get into the knights with that level of skill, but he quickly chastises himself for it. The fact that she’s here means she won a tournament. There has to be more to her than meets the eye.

They finish their morning practice, and before Arthur can even approach Lianne to talk to her, she excuses herself with a polite bow and leaves.

“Why do I feel like she has something against me?” He asks Sir Edward.

“It’s… a little difficult.” He says, massaging the back of his neck and making a complicated expression. “I can assure you it’s nothing against YOU as a person, at least. Our little Lianne is, well… she has her own issues to deal with, like everyone else.”

“Please don’t hold it against her.” Sir Luis says, smiling wryly at Arthur. “I’m sure she’ll warm up to you eventually. Just give her time.”

“Alright…” He’s not convinced, but there’s not much he can do. He doesn’t want to make things worse by talking to her when she doesn’t want to talk to him.

He cleans up, gets changed into a comfortable outfit, as in, some baggy pants and a linen shirt, and heads to Clock Tower.

Clock Tower is a building made of finely cut stone bricks. There are two guards at the entrance door, one of them in robes and the other in iron armor. They ask what Arthur’s business in the tower is, and when he shows them the invitation, they let him in.

An old woman in a maid outfit leads him to an extremely small and empty room. Barely four people could fit in it standing.

“Please step inside.” The old maid says politely.

“What is this?” Arthur can’t help but ask.

“As you can see, this is a very tall building. Ms. Carmen’s laboratory is on the 10thfloor, and as a safety measure, Clock Tower doesn’t have a set of stairs to reach past the 4th floor. This is the method with which we can get there.”

‘…An empty room?’

Still, Arthur steps in and the old maid follows. She closes the door and holds her hands parallel to the ground. “The floor will move below us, so try to keep firm footing. You can sit down, if you prefer.”

‘The floor will… move?’

Then, Arthur feels a very faint flow of prana from the maid. But more noticeable than that, the air around him… changes. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s almost like a shift in the wind current without actually being any wind. The soft sound of stone grinding against stone resonates, and the floor suddenly starts… going up, the sound coming from the floor, a stone slab, grinding against the walls. It’s taking him and the maid up with it.

“T-The hell!?”

“This is an elevator.” The old maid chuckles. “We use magic to lift the stone below us and take us to the upper floors.

“M-Magic is capable of things like this?” Arthur’s jaw hangs half-opened. Right now, a floating stone slab is taking him up the tallest building in the city. He knew magic could do things normal people can’t, but to him, that always meant healing wounds, throwing fireballs and freezing water. He swallows. He hadn’t thought of the more pragmatic uses of magic.

The slab stops in front of another door. The maid opens it and asks Arthur to step out of the elevator. They step into a dark hallway. There aren’t any windows and the place is dimly lit by several of the blue glass lamps that he’s seen at the castle.

‘If they were going for the spooky, mysterious vive, then they nailed it.’

The maid leads him through the hallways until they stop at yet another door.

“This is Ms. Carmen’s room and laboratory. Before I knock on the door, let me warn you against touching any items without her permission. Some of them might be experiments, some of them might be… a little volatile.” She coughs to clear her throat.

“I-I see. Then I won’t touch anything.”

“Good.” After an approving nod, the old maid knocks on the door. “Ms. Carmen. Mr. Arthur is here to see you.”

“Took him long enough!” They hear from behind the door, which opens only moments after. “Thanks, Miriam!”

The woman that comes out… leaves a lasting impression in Arthur’s mind. She’s wearing a full body, white and stained overall that’s a bit of a tight fit for her large bosom. Her auburn hair looks dirty, unkempt and is tied into a messy topknot. She’s smaller than Arthur, perhaps around the same height as Lady Mary-Beth. She must be around 1.65m or so. She also smells terribly, not unlike the mixture of herbs and chemicals you’d find at an apothecary’s store, but stronger.

“Alright, you’re here! Come on in!” She says with an excited smile and goes to grab Arthur’s hand to pull him into the room. But she’s stopped by the old maid, Miriam, who catches her hand first.

“Ms. Carmen, if you’re going to have a guest, the least you could do is take a proper shower, don’t you think? That smell will only scare them away.” She says with an incredibly kind smile and tone.

“…Is it that bad?” Ms. Carmen grimaces and tries to smell her own wrist. “I guess I’m too used to it. Fine! I’ll take a shower!” She gives in. “Still, you, come in and wait for me. I’ll only take a second!” She tells Arthur, pointing at him with a finger.

“Then, if you’ll excuse me.” The maid bows politely. “I wish you success in your endeavors.”

“T-Thank you very much.” Arthur returns the bow.

The maid leaves and Ms. Carmen keeps hurrying Arthur up to enter.

The room is more spacious than he imagined, and it’s surprisingly… tidy. The east wall is an enormous bookshelf filled to the brim with tomes. The west wall is also a shelf, but this one has different kinds of… ingredients? There’re jars with differently colored liquids, powders and a few more disgusting things such as bugs, chicken legs, lizards and what are probably animal innards as well. Yet everything is neatly organized by categories and properly labeled.

On the ceiling, Arthur notices a single lamp made out of a big chunk of the crystals he’s seen around the city, giving off a stronger light than the others. Useful, considering this room has no windows. At the center of the room there are two big tables and a desk further behind them. The first table has several glass containers, filled with the same liquids he can see in the shelves and giving the same smell as Ms. Carmen. The second table has a few shiny rocks and what looks like a pendant on top of a sheet of paper, in the middle of a drawn circle with an elaborate design. The desk behind it has stacks of books and a quill and inkwell next to an opened book with still blank pages. And behind the desk is a wall with an extra door, which Ms. Carmen directly goes to.

“Wait here. I won’t be long. You can browse through the books, but leave them where they were. Don’t touch anything else.” With that, she disappears into the room at the back.

Arthur has to resist the desire to sigh tiredly, lest he takes in the smell of the chemicals more than he needs to. Everything here is strange, yet there’s also a certain familiarity. Even though he has no idea what any of this is for, this room is exactly what the books he used to read as a kid described the witches’ homes as. What’s more, the contrast between Ms. Carmen’s personal appearance and the cleanliness of the room is certainly interesting.

He walks to the bookshelf and starts examining the titles of the books. Most of them seem to deal with some sort of magical theory or complex concepts.

“The Connection between Prana and Mana. The Evolution of Monsters and its Connection to the Soul. How Mana Affects the World Around Us.” And those are the titles he can at least make sense of.

He grabs the first book he saw, opens it to the first chapter page and gives it a quick look.

‘Anyone who doesn’t know what prana is has no understanding of life. Even if they can’t feel it or make use of it, prana is part of what keeps us alive, much like the blood flowing through our veins. It’s what gives the soul its strength, and anyone who willingly stays ignorant of the importance of prana is bound to live forever in darkness.’

…

A little extreme, maybe, but Arthur can see the point. Even kids learn at a very early age that seeing blood come out of you is a bad sign. Prana is harder to understand, but anyone who has even minimal involvement with the world beyond the towns has to know what prana is, or they’ll never understand a lot of it. It must be wild for someone who doesn’t know what prana can do to see a person jump two meters into the air.

“Okay, I’m done!”

Hearing Ms. Carmen’s voice, Arthur turns around.

“Gah!” He flinches and nearly drops the book in his hand.

“What?” Ms. Carmen asks with an innocent and puzzled expression on her face.

“W-What do you mean ‘what’!?”

She’s almost naked! Not actually naked, but wearing only a white camisole with thin straps and matching lace panties isn’t that much better!

Arthur swallows hard. Her chest looked large while constrained by her overalls, but now it’s even more noticeable with a clear view of her cleavage. Somehow, contrasted with her small frame, they look even larger! Her wavy hair is also down, and it’s long enough that it reaches down to her waist. She has a perfect hourglass figure and smooth skin that’s just… just…!

Arthur shakes his head. He’s not sure if having already done it with Ms. Ariana is making him resist the sight better or making him weaker to it. It’s certainly making memories come back and giving him ideas he shouldn’t be having.

He groans audibly and gives her an annoyed look.

“Why are you wearing that, Ms. Carmen?” He says.

“Okay, first off, don’t call me ‘miss’. I’m only 22.” She says with her own annoyed scowl and hands on her hips. “I only let Miriam call me that because she’s my elder, and Samuel too but that’s because the guy has a stick up his ass.”

‘…She’s 22? I thought she was around my age.’

“And second, I feel comfortable in this.” She says.

“…” Arthur holds back any other comments. If she’s going to be walking around like that, even after he pointed it out, then he’s just going to enjoy the view. She can’t complain, right? “Fine then.

“Sir Samuel told me the gist of it.” He says, changing the topic. “You invited me here to study my soul and teach me magic, right?”

“Exactly.” She nods. “To be honest, I don’t want to teach you magic. But I do want to study your soul, so I’ll compromise.” She humphs and crosses her arms below her chest. He can’t stop his eyes from seeing it bounce because of it.

“I see.” He sighs. “Even so, thank you for your time.” He bows politely.

“Well, aren’t you a well-behaved kid.” She smirks. “Let’s not waste any more time! Sit down and I’ll start the examination.”