Elizabeth tried her best to laugh cheerfully, though she couldn’t keep her face from twitching. “A-Aha ha ha! Oh dear, my disciple has such dangerous ideas. Wait...are you serious? Can you even do that? This place is still barely within the school grounds. Are you saying you can get past all of their security? If you could do that, you could kill anyone at school you wanted. Wouldn’t that make you more than just a genius? I had a feeling you were strong when the gods called on you, but aren’t you too strong?”
“The academy has changed from when you attended. The security system went down just the other day. We’d intentionally loosened it in preparation for the battle against the Witch of Yore, but it seems she’d already broken part of it a long time ago so she could lurk in the academy and conduct various schemes. It was fixed, but since the faculty was involved in the restoration, I think I could bypass it.”
Elizabeth clapped her hands together. “Ohhh, so that’s why the school went on break for a while after the battle. I did think it was an awfully long time. Oh, did you know? My Fiene got engaged to Baldur during that break!”
“I know. Lucky them, enjoying romance while the teachers were running around trying to fix that mess.” Leon sneered, cynical.
Elizabeth laughed and patted her disciple on the shoulder. “Sorry! But you know, if you make the traps any tougher than this, I definitely won’t be able to get past them. You’re so talented, Leon.” Her expression changed to a wistful frown.
Now it was Leon’s turn to smile. “Thank you. I have my master’s teachings to thank for that.”
“Oh, don’t lie. It has nothing to do with me. I barely taught you anything about magic. The only thing you can claim to have learned directly from me is the trick to making a fake smile. I mean, I’m the kind of person who turned to curses because I wasn’t good enough at normal magic. You probably already had talent from the start, so when you added curses on top of that, you...basically lost your humanity.” Elizabeth had a distant look in her eyes.
“If that’s what you think, don’t try to get past my traps just because you don’t want to lose to me. What would you have done if they had been different from last time? In fact, I only came here today because I was going to reinforce this place’s defenses. Master, if you’d come tomorrow, you would’ve died. From now on, make sure you contact me in advance. If your business is with me and not this room, we can meet somewhere else.”
“Whoa... All right, I’ll stop trying to break through your traps, and I won’t ever try to sneak in here again. But there isn’t exactly anywhere else we can meet in person... Oh, what about a parent-teacher interview? Are Fiene’s grades bad enough that her mom needs to be called in?”
“No. So long as she has the excellent student, Lieselotte Riefenstahl, helping her, her graduation is all but assured.” Leon gave a polite, teacherly smile.
Elizabeth grinned knowingly. “In other words, if Lieselotte abandons her or she slacks off, she might not graduate. I understand. I’ll tell her to work harder.”
The smiling master and disciple averted their gazes from each other at almost the same time and slumped their shoulders.
Elizabeth tilted her head. “But unless it’s in the context of parent and teacher, we’d attract a lot of attention if I met you in public or wrote you letters, wouldn’t we? Not only am I the former Fae Princess, I’m a widow. Who knows what rumors would start? Are you sure you’re all right with that? You don’t want to stand out, do you?”
“It’s fine. You can write letters or whatever you want. I’m about ready to give up on lying low.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened in shock. “Huh? Why? S-Sorry, is it because of what happened during the Festival of Gratitude, when you fought the Witch of Yore? Did Count Schach find out you were such a skilled mage that even the gods would enlist your help? I knew I should’ve gone instead of you...”
“That’s not it, master. Please calm down. Neither my father nor my stepmother have sent any assassins after me or anything, so they don’t know. Well, I was worried that might’ve been the case today. Someone broke into the place I wanted to keep hidden the most, disabling all of my traps as they went. I thought my father had sent a thief to find my weaknesses so he could take advantage of me, or my mother had sent an assassin to kill me.” Leon smiled, but the depths of his eyes were cold, and his words were tinged with obvious venom.
Elizabeth lowered her head, feeling awkward. “I... Sorry. I really do feel bad. I’ll never do it again. I promise. I wouldn’t be able to, anyway.”
Leon sighed. “It’s fine. Either way, I’ve gotten tired of worrying about that kind of thing all the time. I’m going to do something about that family.”
“Can you do anything about them?”
“I can. If I don’t, I won’t even be able to see the woman I fell in love with in public, let alone court her. It’s about time I got serious.”
“I’ll help too... All right, that’s kind of awkward to say. I feel like if you get serious, I’ll be the one with a problem in the end. Is it vain of me to think that?”
“Who knows? Well, I don’t want the woman I fell in love with to think I’m always relying on others, so I’m going to declare right now that I have no intention of accepting any help from you regarding this.”
“O-Oh... Wait, but I think I’m still ahead of you when it comes to connections...”
Leon beamed. “Master. This academy is attended by nobility from all over, and sometimes even royalty.”
“Yes, and...?”
“However, the students here are still immature and make mistakes. They’re all adolescents, so love-related quarrels happen rather often.”
“I imagine so, yes.”
“And I’m a professor here that uses black magic. In your words, I’m at the level where I’ve ‘lost’ my ‘humanity.’”
“Yes, that’s right. Wait, don’t tell me...”
“Black magic is convenient, isn’t it? You can use it to erase various traces, corrupt people’s minds, and search people’s memories and tamper with them.”
“So that’s what you were getting at...”
Leon simply smiled.
Elizabeth nodded. It all made sense to her now. “I see... The connections you can gain that way are hard to beat, even for the Fae Princess. They’re just so different in severity, although I don’t know whether they’re based on huge favors or fatal weaknesses. You’ve grown so much, Leon!” She laughed, admitting her loss.
Her disciple laughed too, sincerely happy.