How a Catastrophe-Level Magician Lives

Frey, who had just met Aina, was now sitting side by side with her on a bench.

“It’s been a while. Almost a week, I guess.”
“Yeah.”

Aina’s attitude was no different from usual.

Just like her normal self. The appearance Frey knew.

“Have your wounds healed?”

Frey nodded in response to Aina’s question.

“Yes. I’ve fully recovered now.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“……”

Aina was particularly taciturn.

Although he hadn’t known her for long, he knew well how little Aina usually spoke.

After all, he had been following her around for several days.

And that stubborn determination to definitely achieve something once she set her mind to it.

“Come to think of it, thanks to the magic book series you gave me, I was able to get quite a lot of help in the previous fight with Rekas. Thank you.”
“……”

Frey finished his words with a forced cough at the end, perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed.

At those words, Aina, sitting on the bench, started lightly tapping the ground with her heels, alternately swinging her slender, shapely legs and brown shoes.

Aina’s gaze was also focused on the tips of her own feet performing this action.

Frey, sitting quietly beside her, inadvertently glanced at this.

Strangely, he found that insignificant tapping sound pleasant to hear.

‘…What is this, her own way of expressing that she’s in a good mood?’

Just as he was thinking this based on his own deduction, Aina suddenly stopped the motion of tapping her shoe heels.

Then she turned her head towards Frey and stared at his profile for a moment.

Frey caught this again with a sidelong glance.

While pretending not to have seen it, Aina spoke in her characteristic voice without inflection:

“…What was the magic you used during the duel?”
“The magic I used during the duel?”

It wasn’t just one or two.
Although he didn’t know exactly why she was asking such a thing, he thought about it for a moment.

“Are you talking about the magic I used at the end?”
At this, Aina shook her head.

She said:

“No, not that one.”
“Then?”

When he asked with a questioning look, she gave a clear answer first:

“That polygonal magic.”
“Ah. You mean the defensive magic.”
Nod.

Why? Why is she asking about that?
With such thoughts, Frey soon noticed the true meaning of her intent.

Turning his gaze to look at Aina, who was looking at him from the side, he spoke after a slight pause:

“…You, don’t tell me you’re asking me to teach you that magic too? Right now?”

Nod.

“……”
What a shameless kid.

No, perhaps she’s just purely a magic enthusiast like Frey himself, he thought on one hand.

Frey leaned back on the bench, folding his arms.

Then, with a gesture as if pondering for a moment, he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, saying:

“The Center Protect magic is difficult for me to teach to just anyone.”

It’s somewhat of a secret magic.
After all, it was something he had developed independently and created as a single magic.

It’s a defensive magic that creates and connects multiple small shield magics forming multiple angles.

The magic’s grade was also classified in the low-level magic book hierarchy.

That meant anyone who was a magician could learn and master it.

At Frey’s words that sounded like bargaining, Aina tilted her head once and asked innocently:

“Is it difficult to learn?”
“…That’s not it, I mean it’s a magic that’s difficult to teach to just anyone.”
“Just anyone?”
“Yes.”

As he looked at Aina with his arms folded and head turned to the side, giving her a look that meant ‘don’t make me repeat the same thing multiple times’,

She spoke to him with her pure expression and clear eyes:

“I’m not just anyone, am I?”
“……”

Then what exactly are you?

Aina leaned back against the backrest and spoke while looking straight ahead.

One hand was on her knee, the other pointing to the front of her chest.

Aina spoke. With her eyes closed. Showing her long inner eyelashes and somehow proudly, with a bit of satisfaction:

“I’m a friend who helped Frey. So I’m not just anyone that Frey is talking about.”
“…Well, really.”

It was an exasperated sound.

But thinking about it carefully, although it might be a bit unpleasant, her words weren’t entirely wrong.

Her position as a classmate plus someone who had given big and small help in the magic duel with Rekas.

Even if not for that, she had provided the complete series of top-grade mana training books, which were more difficult to obtain than anything else for Frey himself, who would walk the path of a magician in the future.

In any case, he had sincerely thought at the time that he had given an appropriate reward for that.

But after actually learning and mastering it, he thought it was more valuable in some ways than that Magical Eye.

So, looking at it objectively, it seemed that her words just now weren’t entirely wrong.

“…I suppose that’s true. In a way, we could be called friends who help each other. We could also be seen as comrades walking the same path of magic.”
“Right?”

It felt as if Aina’s shoulders rose once, as if finally acknowledging and accepting it. Her nose also seemed to lift a little.

“…Anyway, even if that’s the case, that’s that and this is this. If you really want to learn that magic from me. You know the condition, right?”
“…Yeah.”

Rustle rustle.

Once again, from her brown rectangular book bag placed on the empty seat next to her on the bench, Aina took out something she had prepared.

Swish.

What she took out was, as expected, what appeared to be another advanced magic book, which was Frey’s desired trading condition.

“…Kuk.”

At Aina’s thoroughly prepared appearance, as if she had prepared in advance, Frey inadvertently let out a laugh, feeling her consistent nature.

After parting with Aina on the bench, Frey returned to his dormitory.

Holding the total of three magic books he had received from her.

As a condition for the trade, he had explained in detail to Aina the creation structure, phrases, magical power arrangement, and other detailed methods of the polygonal shield magic, Center Protect.

And as a fair trade item for that condition, he was able to receive three other higher-level magic books.

The names of those magic books were:

[On More Efficient Methods of Magical Power Release].

Like before, it was a series of 3 volumes, from Volume 1 to 3.

He had been thinking about various problems that occur when instantly releasing magical power, which he had become newly aware of again after the final battle with Rekas. Just when he was inwardly contemplating proper methods to complement these problems, he happened to receive them from Aina by chance.

The timing was good too.
Aina was really helping him more than he had thought.

Of course, it was a trade where he taught her several special magics he possessed as a fair condition in return, but personally, he thought he was getting even greater benefits and advantages than her.

‘She’s like a treasure chest providing me with the magic books I need most right now.’

As a result, setting aside her shameless personality, he naturally couldn’t help but look at Aina with a somewhat favorable gaze.

‘I plan to go back to classes from tomorrow, so I should thoroughly read all these magic books by today.’

Thinking this, he sat down at the chair in front of the desk by the window, which was a basic option in the room. Frey began to carefully read and study, starting from the first page of Volume 1.

And at that time.

“……”

Aina had also returned alone to her room and was quietly sitting in the chair at the desk in front of the window, drinking a cup of tea.

She was deeply pondering something while looking up at the blue sky above the clouds outside the window, which had not yet darkened.

It might have seemed like she was thinking about the magic Frey had taught her, but that wasn’t it.

The scenes being recalled and remembered in her head now were….

The man with a usually somewhat stiff image, a male classmate, who had shown her a smiling face for the first time today when she took out the magic book.

It was Frey, with his navy blue hair and red eyes, and handsome appearance.

For a moment, when he smiled, that gap from his usual self, something like a slight reversal charm, kept making his smiling face appear in her mind strangely.

Clatter-

“Ah.”
Aina, who had been absentmindedly holding the teacup, accidentally spilled a little of the tea she was about to drink on her clothes, being clumsy.