# Karma (7)
*
"Lord Yulian. Might I ask you something?"
Inside the car on the way home after visiting the Marquis.
Perisia, hands on the steering wheel, spoke up.
I nodded from the back seat so she could see me.
She caught my acknowledgment in the rear-view mirror and opened her mouth.
"Why are you extending such mercy to the Marquis? Even going so far as to forfeit the reward His Majesty had promised you."
"..."
In the past, the Imperial Court had promised to bestow corresponding rewards each time I resolved a significant incident involving black sorcerers.
Compensation for the danger of drawing their aggro.
Rewards along the lines of a tax reduction on what I paid as Director Schun, and a promotion in rank for the Nihilrit family, which had been a baronial house.
I had forfeited those rewards.
And in their place, I had petitioned the Imperial Court to preserve the Marquis's family.
The Imperial Court had accepted, and it was thanks to that I had been able to broker this plea bargain.
Perisia simply couldn't understand why I would go that far.
"The contribution you made in this incident was far from small, my lord. His Majesty had been considering granting access to the Imperial Archive."
The Imperial Archive.
A repository containing records of every form of Arcane Magic or technique that had ever existed in the Empire.
Families whose lines had been severed for treason. Martial arts whose lineage had died out for lack of a successor.
Even the Arcane Magic of currently living nobles was recorded in the Archive.
"Even if the Marquis's family were destroyed, their Arcane Magic would remain on record in the Archive. Though it would be that of the previous head of the family, its magical value would still be considerable."
Every noble, before succeeding as head of their house, has their secret techniques reviewed by the Board of Inspection on behalf of the Imperial Court.
The Imperial Court examines whether the techniques have developed, and if there is no advancement across three or more generations, they judge that the noble has failed to fulfill the duty of a noble and strip them of their title.
And during this review process, the techniques of each preceding generation are stored in the Archive to prevent their permanent loss.
Of course, to protect the rights of existing families, the Arcane Magic of living houses is forbidden from being accessed under any circumstances—
but the techniques of families that have already been destroyed may be accessed, depending on the conditions and meritorious deeds involved.
"Had you desired their Arcane Magic, there would have been no need to suffer a loss by brokering a plea bargain."
"What you're saying, Perisia, is that had I let the Marquis's family be destroyed and then accessed the records afterward, I could have monopolized their Arcane Magic?"
"...Yes. That is the more common approach, generally speaking."
As she said.
If I had wanted the Barlot family's precognition, it would have been better to simply let them be destroyed.
Had that been the case, I would have received the reward not as a 'right to learn' their Arcane Magic, but as a 'right to possess' it.
"Even if you were unable to master the techniques yourself, you could have entrusted them to future generations."
"Or I could have transferred those rights to another mage and taken them on as a vassal."
Perisia nodded.
"That is why I cannot understand it. Did you perhaps owe the Marquis a debt from the past?"
"No."
"Then why..."
And yet I had relinquished that opportunity.
It wasn't that I felt no desire for it.
There were moments I thought it a shame, and I couldn't entirely shake the feeling of having come out on the losing end.
Even so, the reason I had forgiven the Marquis came down to one thing.
"Simple compassion."
"Compassion...?"
Perisia's eyebrows shifted in the mirror.
Perhaps the answer hadn't sat well with her.
Before I knew it, I was offering examples as though making excuses.
"Say a vagrant you had invited in, Ms. Perisia, stole your silverware and fled the following morning. If you caught that vagrant, what would you do?"
"I would make them pay the price for betraying my trust, and make an example of them so that nothing like it ever happened again."
A good answer.
In terms of running an organization, that was the model response.
But what if a condition were added?
"That vagrant has a sick family. The silverware is nowhere near enough, but selling even that might buy their family a little more time. If you learned of those circumstances, would you still punish them?"
"Personal feelings must not enter into enforcement. It might be a mitigating circumstance, but forgiveness would still be difficult."
"Quite right."
Even with the added condition, the outcome of punishment should not change.
And yet,
"In the past, I gave someone in that situation a gold coin on top of everything else. You know this, Ms. Perisia."
"..."
"And in return, I gained a person."
A defining trait of a protagonist:
the tendency to give so generously it borders on being a pushover.
I wanted to follow that convention—so, swallowing the sting of it, I had added the gold coin.
To treat their sick family with.
And by repeating that pattern,
"That is how I came to meet Eri, and how I earned the trust of the Ironclad Special Task Force."
I had gained people.
"Perisia. I believe that no object or Arcane Magic holds greater value than a person."
Beyond just them, I had repeated this across trading company after trading company.
As a result, the Merkur Trading Company had, almost before I realized it, come to hold what amounted to a near-monopoly on talented individuals.
"In a dark era, I believe mercy is the most powerful weapon there is. That is why I forgave the Marquis."
I had given up the Barlot family's Arcane Magic in exchange for gaining the people of the Barlot family.
From long experience, I had reached the conclusion that, viewed over the long term, gaining people was the better bargain.
There was also the matter of the hemophilia situation being such an unfair nerf that I genuinely felt sorry for him.
And thinking that it might have been the ending Eri could have faced—it didn't feel like someone else's problem anymore.
"And looking at the results, it wasn't even that steep a loss. I gained the opportunity to learn from the Barlot family's Arcane Magic firsthand."
There was one unexpected turn: even after relinquishing the Barlot family's Arcane Magic, it had found its way back to me—incompletely, but still.
I have no idea what conclusion the Imperial Court jumped to,
but they had added, as one of the conditions of the Marquis's plea bargain, that he would 'teach' his Arcane Magic to our family.
Thanks to that, I had gained Marquis Barlot as a person, and yet had also received the Arcane Magic—imperfect as it was.
'Could it be that His Majesty thinks I'm some kind of incarnation of an incorruptible official, like Prime Minister Hwang Hui?'
Was he thinking I was too clean-handed, and slipping me something to at least line my pockets with?
If that was it, I wanted to tell him he had the wrong idea.
Who else is out there protecting their livelihood as thoroughly as I do?
My thoughts had wandered off on a tangent for a moment,
but the point was that everything had worked out better than I had anticipated.
"Does that answer your question, Perisia?"
"As ever... you truly have no greed, my lord."
Hm. It seemed the explanation hadn't quite landed as intended.
Or perhaps she was laboring under the same misunderstanding as everyone else.
Perisia kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead as she spoke.
"If my question caused you any discomfort, I apologize. It was entirely a personal inquiry, with no connection to the Imperial Court's wishes."
In the mirror, I could see the corners of Perisia's lips curved ever so slightly upward, as though she were quietly pleased.
***
A week passed.
Released from the detention center, Marquis Barlot had been demoted to count.
"Father!"
"Darling!"
The Barlot family embraced one another in front of the detention center.
After the reunion, the former Marquis—now Count—made his way over to me.
"Thank you for bringing my wife and son, Lord Yulian."
To the public, the reason for his demotion had been made known simply as 'negligence of duty.'
The story being that Marquis Barlot's incompetence and inattentiveness had allowed black sorcerers to infiltrate the Academy.
Not a flattering account, but vastly preferable to the truth of having cooperated with black sorcerers.
"By the way, what is this, Lord Yulian?"
"A cake."
I held out a neat white rectangular block.
It was a fresh cream cake I had shaped to resemble a block of tofu as closely as possible.
"Think of it as a small ritual—wishing you a fresh start and nothing but good things ahead."
For the record, I had baked it myself.
Recently I had begun branching out from cooking into baking.
Turns out it's quite enjoyable.
"...I'll eat well."
And so, a few days after the Count's release.
Whenever I had free time, I began receiving instruction in the Barlot family's Arcane Magic.
"You likely already know that the Barlot family's Arcane Magic involves precognition. However, I expect the precise principles behind it are unknown to you."
I slipped back into student mode and nodded.
It had been a long while since I'd had a proper lesson like this, the last being the Great Sage's black magic lectures, and I found myself a little excited.
"There are countless approaches to precognition. 'Dream Walking'—observing parallel worlds through dreams. 'Eavesdropping on the Stars'—predicting by reading the stars. 'Leaking Heaven's Secrets'—gathering words the gods let slip."
Black magic has something similar.
Entrail Divination—a method of reading the future using the organs of living creatures.
It's most commonly useful for predicting the movements of demonic beasts.
By reading the entrails of a demonic beast of the same kind, one can divine something like the fate of another beast of its type.
Naturally, a person's entrails can also be used to divine another person's future.
The closer the family relation, the higher the accuracy.
And just as naturally, doing any such thing is taboo, and immediately earns you a pair of iron cuffs.
"Our family's precognition belongs to the 'Gears of All Creation' school."
Gears of All Creation?
What the heck is that.
It was a concept unfamiliar to me, having studied only the basics of magic theory before moving on to black magic.
Fortunately, Barlot turned out to be a good teacher.
The kind who goes back and covers everything a student might not know before moving forward.
"The Gears of All Creation is a method of predicting the future through calculation."
His explanation continued.
"Put that simply, it might not seem any different from ordinary prediction. So let me show you an example. Do you happen to remember what design was carved into the doorknob of this room?"
"A wolf? Or a coyote?"
"Hm. Not remembering would normally be the expected response, and yet... your perception is sharper than I anticipated."
"Frequent deduction contests with my fiancée have naturally sharpened my eye."
"I see..."
Count Barlot cleared his throat and changed his example with a slightly sheepish air.
"Then—just a moment ago, do you remember how many birds passed by the window behind me?"
"...That one I couldn't say."
I had been focused on the lesson and hadn't looked that way.
Only then did the Count give a satisfied nod.
"Ordinarily, I too would have no way of knowing. I never looked, after all. But it is a necessary condition for the Gears of All Creation-style Precognition."
The explanation that followed was very long.
Something about the unconscious, something about everything leaving a trace...
To summarize an hour's worth of content, it ran roughly as follows.
One. Precognition begins by quantifying all the conditions one passes without a second thought—an ant crawling along the floor, the flow of the wind, the incline of the path I just walked.
Two. To do this, one requires a form of Preparatory Magic that converts everything one passes into memory. That is the 1st Form of the Barlot family's Arcane Magic.
Three. At the 2nd Form, all those memories are converted into meaningful numerical values. At the 3rd Form, those values are systematized into formulas...
Four. In any case, it is from the 4th Form onward that one can foresee roughly five seconds into the future.
"And at the 5th Form, it extends to a day. At the 6th, roughly a week."
This magic possesses no direct means of attack.
Which is why the Barlot family supplements their offensive capability with Fighting Aura.
"As a side note, your father-in-law's family—Marquis Hausen—also belongs to the same Gears of All Creation lineage as us. I don't know the details, but the roots appear similar."
As an aside, as he said, Shallot's family also makes its living through precognition.
Hearing only this much, one might think Barlot and Shallot's family overlap in character—but in practice, the two fill different roles.
Barlot specializes in predicting individuals down to the movement of a finger, excelling in one-on-one combat.
Hausen specializes in treating individual people as rough, approximate units of movement and predicting at the scale of crowds and armies.
The former is a knight type; the latter, a commander type.
"Take that as mere speculation."
"Understood."
"In any case, I'm not entirely sure whether you'll be able to perform precognition right away."
Of course not.
What, after all, is the reason nobles are nobles?
The talent that flows in their blood—talent that defies rational explanation.
The Hausen family, like Shallot, reportedly possess a talent where timelines are automatically inscribed onto every clue they perceive.
The Nihilrit family, like Freya, have some kind of talent for hearing things others cannot.
The Barlot family would have something of that nature as well.
"For now, let us confirm whether that talent is present."
We moved straight to the test.
Just as when I had once tried to learn Arcane Magic from Mother.
Count Barlot made some manner of gesture in my direction.
"Do you feel anything?"
"...I'm not quite sure."
"Ahem."
As expected.
Just as I had once failed to hear something,
this time too, I failed to feel anything.
"I sent a current of air across your fingertips just now—it seems you couldn't feel it."
It appeared that mastering the Barlot family's Arcane Magic would require a sensitivity fine enough to detect individual specks of dust.
"A shame. But it's all right. Instead, you can teach my younger sister when she matriculates next year."
Not a shame—that would be a lie.
Even so, I wasn't disappointed.
It had always seemed likely that this family's Arcane Magic simply wasn't meant to be my fortuitous encounter.
I had just settled that thought in my mind and was preparing to let it go cleanly when:
"Even so, you should be able to learn the 1st-Form support magic."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The magic that brings unconscious memories into conscious awareness."
The Count produced a book.
"Our 1st-Form magic is, in the end, support magic. Using that support, synthesizing what one has gathered through refined senses—that is the domain of the 2nd Form. In other words, even without the innate sensitivity, the support magic itself can be learned well enough."
Thud.
A thick tome was set down before me with a heavy sound.
"This support magic will help you recall memories you had forgotten, or bring into focus things you had read only in passing."
The moment I heard that, my heart began to race.
I forced down the surge of excitement and asked the Count a question.
"That means—I would be able to recall things I had passed over even once?"
"I'm glad you catch on quickly. That's precisely why I brought out this book."
He tapped the thick volume as he spoke.
"Call out any number."
"244."
"There should be an illustration of an eagle and a rabbit."
I opened the book.
It was exactly as he had said.
As I sat there frozen, staring at the page, the Count smiled with quiet satisfaction and spoke.
"Well then. Would something like this serve as sufficient recompense for you?"
"...Yes."
More than sufficient.
"It is more valuable than any gift I could have received."
Because with this alone, the scale of what I would be able to accomplish would change entirely.