Chapter 32: The Test Results
“WAIT! Lady Iris! Listen to me! When Lord Cytisus showed me the vaccine you made with Lady Sauge’s mana, I was really impressed! Normally, it’s impossible to get magic to retain so much of a fairy’s wing color, and I kept wondering how you managed it, but now, I finally understand!” Pavot rambled.
She sounded so desperate, Iris stopped short. “Wing color?”
“Yes! The purple wing color!”
Confused, Iris looked at Cytisus.
“When you receive a fairy’s blessing, they will sometimes grant you their mana. Isn’t that how you originally created the vaccine?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, in those instances, the fairy’s mana mixes with that of the blessed person. It’s never purely the fairy’s mana alone.”
Pavot nodded along with his explanation, then launched into one of her own.
“Lady Sauge’s mana is purple with gold flecks, just like her wings. But if she were to mix her mana with Lord Cytisus, for example, a tiny amount of his own mana would mix with hers, resulting in magic that’s tinged blue. So, while they say that a fairy’s mana is the same color as their wings, only the person who received that mana would be able to confirm it because the result always looks slightly different.
“Furthermore, each person’s mana has its own quirks. Sometimes, when it’s converted into magic, it warps and changes color. These little idiosyncrasies are very difficult to remove. But the vaccine magic didn’t have any quirks or impurities at all, and because it was so simple and straightforward, it was that much easier to replicate! All this time, I wondered what the secret was…but now I know!”
Pavot looked at Iris, her eyes sparkling with childish glee from under her hood.
“It’s because you don’t have any mana whatsoever! Oh, Lady Iris, I’ve never met anyone like you in all my life!”
Iris stared at her, stunned. While her guard was down, Pavot rushed over to Iris and took her by the hand.
“I just can’t believe it! People like you really do exist! This is truly incredible. Not only that, but you’re able to talk to a Fairy Leader—why, it’s nothing short of a miracle! I was always taught that those without mana are incapable of seeing fairies at all!” she babbled excitedly.
“Uhhh…”
“Not only that, but any magic performed with you as a conduit is so much easier to analyze! With your help, we might finally start to systematize some of the fairy magic that’s eluded us all this time!”
Her enthusiasm was intense. Iris rubbed her temple. It sounded like Pavot wanted to use Iris as a…mana capacitor or something? Iris smiled stiffly. Apparently, she was like a strainer for fairy mana; whenever it passed through Iris, the end product was devoid of imperfections.
“Er, Lady Pavot? I don’t think Lady Sauge will agree so readily,” Iris protested hesitantly. “I have no mana of my own, and I can’t cast anything. I doubt she’ll lend me her mana without good reason.”
At this, Pavot fell to her knees.
“Ugh, you’re right… Just when I thought we might make some advancements in our magical research, too… Man, I wanted to try recreating some ancient spells!”
Ignoring her grumbling, Cytisus gently pushed Iris out of the room. Once he had shut the door behind them, he let out a heavy sigh.
“Lord Cytisus, er…did we break her?”
“Trust me, she’ll get over it,” he replied with a half-smirk.
This comment struck Iris as unusually callous, considering he was generally quite diplomatic. She looked at him dubiously; he let out an embarrassed laugh.
“I suppose I’ll tell you now: that is my fiancée.”
“Wha?!”
“When I recreated the vaccine, she was the first lunatic to ingest it,” he sighed.
A smile crept up on Iris’s face. “That’s very sweet. She must trust you a great deal.”
He blinked at her in surprise. Then, after a moment, he nodded. “Thank you. Many struggle to understand her and her distaste for fashionable society, but she means a great deal to me.”
It was so romantic, it made Iris’s cheeks flush.
But on the other hand, now she understood why game-Iris couldn’t step down from the Holy Maiden candidacy…and why she was forced to offer up her life force in the Tower of Prayer. If the Maiden’s Aide, Pavot, had died, then the Holy Maiden’s power would have been at an all-time low. And with no one around to repair the broken Aptitude Stone, Iris would never have had accurate aptitude results.
Then, after Camille died, zero-mana Iris was the only candidate left. The royal palace must have been in such an uproar… The Holy Maiden was required to offer her mana in the Tower of Prayer, but since Iris didn’t have any, she could only offer her life force. Yikes, that’s terrifying…
But at least now she’d managed to avoid all of that! Now I’ll never be crowned the Holy Maiden! Iris did a secret fist-pump.
✦ ✦ ✦
❀❀❀
A few days later, Iris was summoned to the headmaster’s office with her father, Lord Chevalier, to discuss her aptitude results. She eagerly hoped this would be the moment she was formally dropped from the Holy Maiden race.
Unfortunately, the headmaster betrayed her expectations entirely.
“Never before have we had a student with no mana…but of course, that’s nothing we need to announce to the public.”
Iris’s father nodded along happily.
“Wait, but…I can’t be the Holy Maiden without any mana, can I?” she asked.
“Not to worry. The aptitude test results only show your current status,” the headmaster explained. “If you work hard to improve, that aptitude might very well double.”
Spoken like a true teacher. Wait, but two times zero is still zero! And for the record, I have NO intention of improving! Aptitude is something you’re born with. Do you really think I can change these things just through hard work alone?! Instead of forcing myself to be something I’m not, I should just be proud of what talents I DO have!
“You have plenty of time, Iris. I know you can do it. You’d never lose to a mere commoner,” her father chimed in.
No matter how much they hated Iris, most of the upper crust wanted to see her win—purely to ensure that Camille wouldn’t. She could only imagine how hard this must have been for game-Iris, with everyone commanding her to take a position she knew she wasn’t qualified for. But she never knew she had zero mana, so she probably kept trying and trying and trying…and every time she failed, it destroyed her a little more… Her chest ached at the thought. That being said, it still didn’t justify her going around bullying and stabbing people, but at the same time…if only she could have escaped it all, maybe she could have had her own happy ending somewhere.
Well, I’m not going to jump through these rich people’s hoops! I’m outta here!
And so, Iris decided to go and break the news to Reseda.