Chapter 23: Winter Preparations(6)

Closing the door, Avalli came out and looked around.

Hans was nowhere to be seen nearby, but… Avalli could quickly sense the location if she wanted to.

“Why are you hiding, Hans?”

“I feel this every time, but you have an unnecessarily sharp eye.”

Hans walked out from behind a large tree with a strangely dissatisfied expression.

In order to somehow defeat Avalli, Hans often tried to surprise her… but his attempts always ended in failure.

“I’ve never succeeded in pranking her.”

“Isn’t Hans just dull? I could see his arm just now.”

“Really?”

Avalli nodded and lied calmly.

Hans’s arm was nowhere to be seen, and Hans’s hiding was perfect.

However, Avalli naturally ‘knew’ where Hans was hiding.

As if she were breathing.

“So, what do you have to say?”

“… What.”

“The village chief has already said everything. What do you have to say to me?”

Hans frowned at Avalli’s words.

“… Sometimes, Uncle Arsene is so easy-going.”

Hans muttered quietly, then hesitated for a moment before opening his mouth as if he had made up his mind.

“You can come watch the training.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t mean it when I told you not to come.”

Hans said that while playing with his bangs that were sticking out.

Avali immediately understood the boy’s feelings contained in those few words.

“Huh?”

Immediately after understanding, she smiled playfully and clasped her hands behind her back.

When she slightly bent down and looked up at Hans, the boy seemed embarrassed and couldn’t meet her gaze.

“What do you mean, Hans?”

“… Exactly.”

“Why? You said you didn’t even want to look at me. Why did you suddenly change your mind?”

“That’s…”

There was no way he could answer.

Hans wasn’t sly enough to calmly say something awkward like, “Avali, I didn’t have any strength because you weren’t looking.”

That’s why Hans swallowed his answer and continued to avoid eye contact, while Avalli moved as if tracing the boy’s face.

“You’re cute, you brat.”

When Avalli was about Hans’ age, when she was a ‘boy,’ she wasn’t that innocent.

She was strangely sullen and always said things like, “Oh, I don’t want to grow old. I want to live my life as a teenager with no responsibilities.”

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

“Tsk…”

That might be why she felt like teasing Hans like this.

People tend to be attracted to those who are different from themselves.

Of course, none of these actions had even a grain of rational meaning.

To Avalli, Hans was just a cute brat who was hard to beat.

“Well, whatever. It’s obvious what Hans thinks anyway.”

“… You’re saying it’s obvious?”

Hans asked strangely tensely.

“Yeah. You need someone to cheer you on, right?”

But Avalli’s answer was completely different from what he had expected.

“Uh…?”

“No? Then maybe…?”

“No! That’s right!”

As Avalli trailed off, Hans hurriedly waved his hand and nodded.

“Yeah… Uh! Uh… I need someone to cheer me on so I can gain strength.”

It’s adult manners to leave a place to run away to.

But shouldn’t the boy’s innocence be protected?

“Right? Don’t worry, Hans. I’ll cheer you on.”

“… Okay, thank you.”

Hans let out a quiet sigh of relief inside and barely managed to calm himself down before opening his mouth again.

“…Then I’ll be going now.”

“Aren’t we done with our work for today? The village chief is over there at Bern’s house.”

“…I can train by myself. Anyway, be sure to come tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Hans. See you tomorrow.”

Avalli waved at Hans’s back as he hurriedly ran away with a bright red face.

As soon as he disappeared, the corners of her lips went up without her realizing it.

‘How unexpected.’

If he fell in love, he would definitely fall in love with her when she had silver hair.

In fact, just a month ago, wasn’t Hans intoxicated by the memories of that dreamy night and suffering from lovesickness?

But judging from his reaction now, he seemed to have found this plain appearance quite appealing.

‘…I don’t even look at a tree I can’t climb.’

Is that so?

Or maybe it’s similar to how, in school, a playful and friendly normal kid was more popular than a pretty kid.

‘I guess I’ll have to do it moderately from now on.’

Although his appearance was clearly young, Avali was mentally much older than Hans.

Playing with a boy’s innocence was far from something an adult would do.

If he really confessed his feelings…, it would be hard to see each other in this small town.

From now on, he might need to build a solid wall and reestablish his relationship as a ‘close friend.’

‘Oh, right. I’m sorry, hyung, Hans. Hans had achieved 0 confessions 1 time without even knowing it.’

***

Winter is cold.

The magic tower where wizards live is, of course, no exception.

500 years ago, when the war ended, the magic tower was a kind of show-off to the wizards that they were still going strong.

That’s why they built tall and fancy towers competitively… but in reality, they were shabby.

This tendency was especially severe in the upper floors where high-level wizards resided.

It was cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and difficult to properly heat, so it was not at all ‘livable.’

In fact, it was an extremely poor area, close to sloppy construction.

However, for wizards who had surpassed a certain level, such inconveniences were nothing more than trivial problems.

Cold, heat, and such were things that only young wizards who had not yet escaped the secular world would complain about.

For high-ranking wizards, the only thing worth concentrating on was the pursuit of truth.

“It’s beautiful,” Jafar said, looking at the magical device in the middle of his laboratory.

A calculation device that reads the flow of magical power held by stars and predicts the future.

‘Astrobe.’

It seemed to have been used quite commonly before the great war 700 years ago… but now it is hard to find.

The blueprint itself was not that hard to obtain, so even now many wizards and magicians are trying to restore it… but only a very small number of cases have succeeded in operating it.

Even among them, the longest time it has been in operation is a mere 10 minutes.

At the very least, it would take 24 hours to operate in order to read the future, so it would be close to a technology that has actually been used.

“You said it moved for more than an hour, Jafar?”

“That’s right, Fel. It’s been 72 minutes now.”

“… Do you really think it’s possible?”

Professor Clear Fel of the Magic Tower asked, swallowing hard.

If Astrobe could really be activated, the entire continent’s map would change overnight.

Magic that manipulates time has enough ripple effects to shake the world.

“No, it’s probably impossible.”

However, Jafar calmly assured that his attempt would fail.

“It’s just a miracle that happened because I got my hands on a part that transcends common sense, so this is probably the limit.”

“You mean the magic stone?”

Jafar nodded to Fel’s question.

The highest-grade magic stone that had caused a commotion in the easternmost city, East Police, for several weeks.

The man who ultimately purchased that magic stone was none other than Jafar.

Of course, only a few people in the Magic Tower know that the buyer of the magic stone is Zepar.

To be exact, only the person who bought it and his close friend, Fel, know.

The merchant named Elif, who acted as the broker for the auction, had already used contract magic to silence him.

“As expected, it doesn’t move any further than this.”

Although he succeeded in reducing the structure of the celestial body and bringing it, the movement of the Astrobe suddenly stopped there.

“… This is truly a headache. The blueprint is absolutely perfect, but no matter how I make it, it won’t move.”

Professor Fel had also made the Astrobe when he was young.

It was so well-made that even other experts were surprised, but it eventually stopped after three minutes.

He spent several more years pouring in his time after that, but the results were all failures.

Fel gave up on restoring the Astrobe and specialized in a new field.

“I agree with you, Fel.

However, this attempt has given me a slightly different idea.”

“Tell me.”

“If there were no problems with the design and the manufacturing was perfect, then it’s only natural for a machine to move.But if no one has succeeded in hundreds of years, then perhaps the problem lies elsewhere.”

“… Power, you mean?”

Jafar smiled reptilianly at Fel’s words.

“… If I can get more magic stones of this purity, it’s not impossible.”

“That’s why you called me.”

Fel shrugged.

Fel was a professor of magic stones who studied magic stones themselves.

Since Fel posted a notice that he was going to explore a newly appeared dungeon, Jafar must have heard the news.

“Please take good care of it, Fel. We’re not related.”

“If you don’t hit me too hard, I’ll hand it over to you first.

Well, I’ll never be able to get a magic stone of that purity.”

Fel said as he looked at the pitch-black magic stone embedded in the center of Astrove.

“It’s beautiful.”

Any wizard would have felt the same way upon seeing that magic stone.

How on earth did such a miraculous object come into the world?

And in this remote outskirts of East Police, not even the center of the continent.

“… What do you plan on calculating when Astrove is completed?”

“Well.”

“There used to be a future that I definitely wanted to know about.”

Jafar continued, stroking his well-groomed beard.

“Now, I guess I should say that completion itself is the goal.”

There was a strange madness in Jafar’s eyes as he spoke calmly.