“What’s the problem? It’s not like you’ve got anything to hide, right?” asked Azu nonchalantly.
“Frau has nothing to hide. But they were too fast in sniffing out Frau as the source.”
“Well, it’s not like the school just sits there and twiddles its thumbs all day. They’ve got ways of gathering information.”
With many children of the nobility under their care, the school was hungry for all relevant information regarding local occurrences, seeking to keep themselves constantly informed. A simple “we didn’t know” would hardly do if anything befell their precious charges. Frau’s operation had apparently brushed against a strand of their high-strung intelligence network.
“Hey, uh, to be honest, I really couldn’t care less about any of that…” said Renya as he hesitantly butted in, feeling distinctly like he was being left out of the conversation. Suddenly, Frau and Azu seemed to be speaking an entirely different language. As terms such as “gathering information” and “intelligence network” got thrown back and forth, Renya felt his eyes beginning to spin.
“How many manastones will we need?”
“It takes about a gold’s worth of manastones to activate it, and each activation can handle two transfers.”
“So, let’s say Frau and I go together… Then Shion and Rona, and the luggage is maybe two more times? Five transfers in total means three activations. Do we have enough manastones for that, Frau?”
The weight limit of 150 kilograms per transfer was barely enough for one adult plus gear. There was no way they could fit in a second adult. Frau, however, was light enough to tag along with Renya, so the two of them could make the leap together. Regardless, they still needed three gold’s worth of manastones, which was about as much as Renya had amassed from the goblins back at the settlers’ village. It seemed a dizzying quantity to produce on short notice, but Frau put his worries to rest with an easy nod.
“It’s a piece of cake. Frau can have them ready right away.”
“Damn. Impressive.”
“All thanks to Master.”
All this time, Renya had been supplying Frau with a near-constant flow of mana. A particularly serious event might interrupt it, but those were few and far between. While Frau compressed the mana for storage, there was always a limit to how much she could hold. This issue was cleared when she gained the ability to crystallize mana, effectively ensuring her mana would never overflow. Nevertheless, Renya’s ever-growing mana pool necessarily resulted in more mana being fed to Frau with each passing day.
“I wonder how much mana I actually have right now.”
The first time he had it properly tested, he was told it was hopelessly small. The second time, Caryl called him a monster. He hadn’t measured it carefully yet, but judging from his ability to cast large-scale spells and keep multiple spells active for extended durations, he figured the pool was getting pretty big.
“Probably enough for that mana-measuring orb to let out a blinding flash before exploding and taking the whole city with it.”
“Ha ha. Of course,” said Renya, playing along with the joke. “No, but seriously…”
He trailed off when he saw Azu’s face.
“Wait… are you being serious?”
“As serious as I can be.” Azu nodded soberly.
Renya gave a hesitant smile.
“You know I’m only human, right?”
“I sure do. Which only makes it harder to explain the massive increase in your mana capacity in such a short time,” replied Azu. “Generally, they don’t grow much to begin with.”
Renya fell silent for a minute, pondering his response.
“What say we go with the fruits of hard work?”
“If hard work could go that far, then how much have I been slacking off?” said Azu mockingly before shifting his tone. “Anyway, none of that matters. You can’t explain talent. It is what it is.”
“Master is just that good,” said Frau with a pleased hmph. Both Renya and Azu wore smiles as they watched the fairy proudly puff out her chest as if she were the one being praised. The former was tinged with embarrassment, while the latter had the gentleness of an amused parent.
“That’s right, Frau. Your master is awesome.”
“Quit that, damn it! What’re you trying to do? Praise me to death?”
“Not at all. I’m just expressing my boundless reverence for Mr. Renya, teacher of the year.”
“Oh, I get it. This is about that, right? Lealis gave you a good talking-to and now you’re getting back at me,” said Renya with a glare.
Azu shrugged it off, putting up his hands up in a “I have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about” manner.
Beyond the transfer gate was supposedly a long tunnel, past which lay the elf kingdom. Frau held Renya’s hand as they walked toward it. When they reached the end, the first thing Frau said was,
“Master, what’s that?”
With a curious look, she turned toward Renya, who found himself at a loss for words. The first answer that came to mind was “somebody ripped off the work of an author from my previous world,” but that hardly seemed like a reasonable response. He mulled over it for a while.
“That… is telling us we’re here.”
He went with the safe answer in the end.
Two days after putting in the request with Azu, Renya and the girls had been told that the gate was ready for use. With their luggage already packed, the four of them simply stuffed everything into his inventory and headed off, arriving at the school practically empty-handed. Upon meeting up with Azu, he showed them to the room with the transfer gate.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until very recently that they realized it was possible to use one less transfer by storing the luggage in Renya’s inventory. They were fortunate for it to have occurred to them right in the nick of time; saving one activation of the gate was no small matter.
The room itself proved to be rather boring. On one wall, there was a door just about tall enough for an adult to pass through while standing up. There was little else. A hole was beside the door, and Azu haphazardly tossed a bunch of manastones into it. The door in the wall then opened, revealing the empty space beyond. It was pitch black inside.
“All right. In you go,” said Azu as he pointed a finger at the blackness in a profoundly indifferent manner. Renya stared at him.
“Okay, hold on a damn minute. Is it just me or is that a terrifying door to walk through?”
“What are you scared of? It’s just a hole in the wall.”
“Are you kidding me?! It’s blacker than death in there! Are you sure it’s okay to go in?!”
“If it wasn’t okay to go in there, it wouldn’t work very well as a gate, would it?” said Azu in a patronizing tone.
Regardless, Renya found himself extremely unwilling to step into a murky darkness where he couldn’t see anything. Something about it made him feel a very primal sense of dread. Were this the darkness of night, he could feel things out; there were ways to tell what was going around him, albeit to a limited degree. The darkness beyond the door, though, was different. He couldn’t feel anything past here.
“Master.” Frau pulled on his sleeve. “Frau will go first. Master can hold Frau’s hand and follow behind.”
“You hear that, Renya? Even the little one’s fine with it. Meanwhile, look at you…”
“Maybe the two of us should go first, then?”
Frau had offered to lead the way. Azu’s lips twisted upward into a mocking grin. Even Rona proposed going in first after seeing Renya’s hesitation. The pressure was reaching critical levels. Renya took a deep breath.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll go,” he said, taking a step forward.
“Master, Frau goes with Master too,” said the fairy, her voice still slightly concerned. A small hand wrapped itself around his, insisting on braving the darkness with him.
As it turned out, there was no long tunnel. As soon as Renya walked through the gate, the darkness faded away, revealing the wooden walls of a room. They had stepped through a door in the wall. There was a hole to the side for inserting manastones. The room was almost identical to the one they came from, right down to its boring design.
Before them stood the source of Frau’s curiosity.
An elf regarded them, her bright turquoise eyes ending in long slits at the sides. Her golden hair reached down to her waist. Two ears, long and thin, were at either side of her head — an overt reminder of her race. Her delicate features and slender face were undeniably attractive. She wore a leather chest guard atop an undershirt, both grassy green. Her boots were likewise, and only her skirt stood out in black. To a learned observer, it would have been an exemplary display of elven fashion, but the nuances were completely lost on Renya, who simply looked on with the wide-eyed wonder of a clueless tourist.