“Opening the book room and temple classroom to the wealthy sounds like an excellent idea,” I said. “The children of merchants who do business with nobles will rejoice to have somewhere to practice carrying themselves. I am told there are few such instructors among the lower class.”
“Oh? Did you hear that from the Plantin Company?” Ferdinand asked, eyeing me carefully. Was he prying for fragments of my lost memories? Though my thoughts were blurred and unreliable, I dug through them as best I could.
“No, they were still the Gilberta Company at the time. My attendants were in the orphanage director’s chambers, and... Hmm? Aaah, I think I remember them training waiters for the Italian restaurant.”
Leon’s face arose in my mind. He was an apprentice back then. There must have been others there too, but I couldn’t remember them.
As I continued to rack my brain, I remembered that Leon had always grimaced at me. I wondered why that was.
“I see...” Ferdinand replied. “Is there a reason you want children who seek connections with nobles to be able to attend temple classes?”
“Oh, right. Once it becomes normal for merchants with noble connections to frequent the temple’s classes, craftspeople trying to secure patrons will attempt to follow suit. That much is clear from the Gutenbergs.”
Ferdinand nodded and wrote something on a nearby sheet of paper.
“Moving on,” he said, “though your planning was fascinating on a conceptual level, when put into practice, the library and printing industry would take far too much precedence. We must take a more realistic approach. First, we should rebuild the areas severely damaged during the Lanzenavians’ attack. The port, Noble’s Quarter, and temple, to name a few. Then, the guilds. You will want to hear their thoughts while finalizing the plans, I imagine.”
Then, Ferdinand gave a slight smirk. “This sounds like an excellent opportunity to train the scholars who are only used to giving orders, not receiving them.”
Well, it was true that we needed scholars who could work with commoners while also completing their duties. I saw no reason to complain.
“Performing a large-scale entwickeln to rebuild the entire city at once would put a tremendous strain on the commoners,” I said. “We should arrange meetings with them and then schedule the reconstruction piecemeal. Hartmut and Justus have the most experience with commoners, so we should assign one of them to train the scholars. As for the architecture, I would rather we base it on existing Ahrensbach buildings. The climate here is not the same as in Ehrenfest.”
Ahrensbach’s current architecture must have come about for a reason, I thought. Maybe the style used in Ehrenfest would make summers here unbearable.
“I was going to reuse the schematics the Plantin and Gilberta Companies provided for the entwickeln in Groschel...” Ferdinand said.
“Advise them against it, but leave the final decision in their hands.” It was important that the architecture match the climate, but the merchants would surely have their own preferences for the layout and the rooms and such. We would prioritize their needs above all else.
I continued, “The Gutenbergs cannot settle here until they have places to live and do business. We shall put them in the same part of the lower city as the Merchant’s Guild.”
“I suspect I already know the answer, considering how much attention you are paying to the details, but have you considered where their families are going to live?”
“Yes, of course.”
Ferdinand cast his eyes down, then suddenly rolled up the schematics for my new city.
“Hey!” I cried. “I wasn’t done looking at those! Spread them out again!”
“That is enough for now, lest you grow so excited that you end up bedridden again. It is almost first bell. Are you content enough to go back to sleep?”
I shook my head. “Sleeping will make my mana come back. I’d rather hold out for as long as I can.”
“And what of your hunger? It must be worse than before. You did not eat much for someone whose appetite has returned.”
I nodded glumly. “Do you have any ideas for what I can do?” Dinner hadn’t done much to satiate me, and now I was hungrier than ever.
“Some,” Ferdinand replied. He scanned the room before pausing and using a waschen on his hands. Then he poured just a drop of red potion onto his fingertip.
“Ferdinand...?” I asked, staring at him in surprise as he came closer. He pressed the drop of potion against my lips, then pulled away.
“Is it bitter?” he asked, wiping his finger with a handkerchief.
I licked my lips, expecting the same sharp taste as before. “No, not very.” It didn’t taste of much at all, though my tongue did sting a little.
“Good. Your hunger might be connected to the amount of mana you lost yesterday. Your body is attempting to warn you that your life is in danger, an indication that you have almost been drained.”
It made sense that nobody else had connected my hunger to my dearth of mana; any other noble would have drunk a rejuvenation potion long before their reserves dropped this low. My circumstances were special in that I needed to expend my mana practically nonstop. I wasn’t even giving my body time to recover as I rushed to eject all the mana that came back overnight.
“I, too, felt something akin to starvation when I was trapped inside Ahrensbach’s replenishment hall,” Ferdinand explained. “I suspect it was the result of my mana decreasing slowly rather than all at once. We should drain the rest of yours in one go, if we can. Unless you wish to endure an immense amount of pain.”
“It’s going to get even worse...? Oh gods,” I muttered, instinctively stepping away from Ferdinand. I couldn’t take any more of this.
“Not if you follow my advice. The more divine power we remove, the less it will hurt when your mana is redyed.”
“I see...” He seemed strangely motivated, but I wasn’t going to question it—not when there was a risk of my situation getting even worse.
“You asked me to draw healing circles for you, did you not? Could you not use that duplication spell of yours to create several at once? As I recall, the spell does not require the names of the gods.”
I cocked my head in thought. “It doesn’t, no, and the risk seems reasonably small. If nothing else, I won’t need to worry about another wayward whirlpool. That said, the spell only works on surfaces with mana. We don’t have a sheet of fey paper large enough for me to use several magic circles at once.”
“Would the ground not suffice? Barren though it might be, it does contain some mana.”
He was right—the earth did contain mana. The magic circles in the Royal Academy’s gathering spots were carved straight into the ground, so it wasn’t the craziest idea.
“It sounds feasible...” I mused. “Still, I don’t know how much I can expand the circles. We never had time to experiment with changing their size.”
“Aah, yes...” Ferdinand muttered, his brow furrowed. He must have remembered that it was his decision for us to postpone our research. “I thought we could restore Alexandria with a circle as large as the one above the Royal Academy... but perhaps that is too much even for your abnormal ‘copy and place’ spell.”
Excuse me?
“You should consider your own abnormality before slandering my work,” I shot back. “Besides, have you forgotten that the magic circle above the Academy was made by Erwaermen and the gods back in ancient times, when the gods were much closer to Yurgenschmidt than they are now?”
Long ago, a Zent had secured the gods’ aid through Erwaermen, then combined several magic circles based on Erwaermen’s feystone to establish what we now knew as the Royal Academy’s grounds. Creating our own massive circle for Alexandria sounded outright impossible.
“Something on that scale could never be performed in the modern era, when... when...” Words failed me as inspiration struck. “Or maybe it could...”
“Stop! I cannot permit you to seek help from Erwaermen or the gods. Let us think of another method. Would it not be more reliable for you to expand the feystone for this highbeast to its maximum size, inscribe it with healing magic circles, and then extend its range as much as you can using Clarissa’s magic?”
Despite having come up with the idea in the first place, Ferdinand withdrew at the slightest indication that I might get the gods involved. I fell into thought, then formed my Grutrissheit and started searching through it.
“Well, it seems we won’t need to ask Erwaermen or the gods for help...” I said. “Not when you have fragments of the former.”
“Aah, those...” Ferdinand raised an eyebrow at me.
“And we have more than enough divine mana right here.” I spread my arms wide. “Considering how much anguish it’s caused me, I think I deserve to use some as I please. Not to mention, you’re interested in reviving magecraft lost since ancient times, are you not?”
Ferdinand grimaced in response to my argument but took out some plain sheets of paper nonetheless. His interest was clear even as he muttered, “We do not have time to research this in full...”
“It shouldn’t be too hard if, rather than combining circles with various elements and purposes as they did at the Academy, we simply expand a restoration circle. Here. Look.”
I presented a section of my Book that described the ancient method of performing large-scale magic. Ferdinand peered down at it, then began dissecting the complex magic circles. He couldn’t use his own Book when our retainers were around.
“I see,” he said. “If this decides the range, we could cover all of Alexandria by placing the center of our circle at the foundation and using the border gates as endpoints. Can my fragments of Erwaermen take the place of his feystone?”
“They won’t be as durable—that is, they won’t last very long—but that shouldn’t be an issue if we use my divine power to turn them into feystones.”