Kunon skated down the road of ice, guiding the cart containing the rest of the team. All the teachers and Lulomet had to do was sit inside and enjoy the ride. They never would have imagined a dungeon could be explored in such comfort.
“We’re stopping on the fourteenth floor, right?” Clavis asked.
“Yes,” Lulomet replied. That was where he’d lost sight of the shining plant.
He and the other members of Rationality had followed the divine flower on foot while taking time to wither and collect the plants it spawned. As a result, it had taken them quite a while to move through the dungeon.
This time, however, they were advancing with incredible speed. If they found the divine flower quickly, they could easily return before the day was over.
“Professor Clavis,” said Keevan, steeling himself. “What exactly are divine flowers?” He’d been waiting for a chance to ask this question and was quite nervous.
Not even the other teachers knew much about Clavis. He didn’t often go out in public and few people knew where he was most of the time. He was an enigma. However, the teachers knew one thing about him: He was Gray Rouva’s disciple.
Keevan and Soff had only learned that Saint Reyes would be unable to join them right at the last minute. No one knew anything about divine flowers. They didn’t even have a clue what they were. The faculty had been counting on the Saint, with her extensive knowledge of plants, to figure something out. Plus, they’d hoped she would be able to trap the flower with her Sanctum spell if necessary.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to come, so they’d needed a light user to replace her. They knew there was a chance they would need the light element in some form, even if Sanctum wasn’t an option. Keevan’s friend Sureyya Gaulin had been busy and wouldn’t be able to help. So they’d gone to the school’s leaders for assistance, and Clavis was added to the team. Gray Rouva’s pupil himself had joined them.
“Divine flowers are… How should I explain? You can think of them as magically charged flowers. They can be just as difficult to handle as sacred herbs, but they don’t normally move. They’re powerful, but at the end of the day, they’re just flowers.”
You wouldn’t know by Clavis’s casual tone that he was talking about a mythical plant.
“This incident might be the result of a light spirit choosing to inhabit the divine flower instead of a tree. The spirit is what’s making the flower move. They are highly compatible with divine flowers.”
It seemed he even had a vague idea of what had caused this incident.
“If that’s the case, I’m guessing the spirit used up the divine flower’s energy with all its activity down here. That is why the plant is on the verge of death… It’s wilting because its power was drained. That’s what I think, anyway.”
Regardless of whether or not his guess was correct, Clavis’s knowledge of divine flowers would certainly come in handy. The other team members were sure he’d help them solve this problem in no time.
“You were just talking about something really interesting behind my back, weren’t you?” asked Kunon, suddenly turning around to skate backward.
He was the only person who didn’t hear a word of the group’s conversation.
The group continued their trek without issue—though perhaps “trek” was the wrong word for a journey spent mostly skating or riding in a cart—until, at last, they reached the fourteenth floor. It was still morning when they arrived.
“I’ll take the lead from here,” said Clavis, moving ahead of the group.
The divine flower was somewhere beyond this point. There was a chance it had gone back upstairs, of course, but Kunon had paid careful attention on the way down and hadn’t sensed it. Because he hadn’t searched every inch of the higher floors, he couldn’t make a definitive declaration, but his A-ori certainly hadn’t made contact with the target.
They were simply playing the odds. There was a higher probability of the flower being on or below the fourteenth floor, so they were starting their search there. That was all there was to it.
“Let’s see… Is this how you did it?” Clavis said, lifting his left hand and producing countless balls of light that fell to the ground. They bounced along the floor and walls, traveling down the corridor. The balls looked different, but they behaved almost exactly like Kunon’s A-ori.
“Wow…!”
Kunon rarely saw light magic in action, so he was very intrigued. But they had more important business to attend to.
“Let’s go.” Clavis started walking, and the other four followed him.
“…Hmm.”
Kunon was sure of it—something had appeared behind Clavis’s back when he performed that spell.
It had looked like a headless goddess statue emitting a faint light. Though it was normally invisible to Kunon, that must have been the thing possessing Clavis.
Kunon was fascinated.
His mind spun as he walked. He had been leading the team up to that point, but now he was at the very back of the group. So many things had caught his interest.
For example, Clavis’s balls of light. They moved just like Kunon’s A-ori as they bounced deeper into the dungeon. What was their purpose?
Kunon didn’t understand at first, but after some thought, it finally dawned on him: The balls of light were infusing the surfaces they touched with a little bit of light. It was like they were stamping the corridor with glowing ink, providing the team with a light source. Kunon had initially missed this because light and darkness held no meaning for him.
Clavis must have devised the spell after witnessing Kunon’s A-ori earlier. Even Satori, whom Kunon deeply respected, took days to research, develop, and master a new spell. And she was thought to be quite fast. And yet Clavis had taken one glance at Kunon’s A-ori and reproduced the technique without even needing to practice. That alone gave Kunon an idea of how well-versed Clavis was in magic.
In fact, perhaps it was more useful to consider the matter backward: How well-versed in magic did one have to be to pull something like that off?
It seemed unfathomable. Kunon was curious about that, but…he was even more interested in the thing behind Clavis’s back.
He normally couldn’t see it. In fact, he couldn’t see it now. But it had definitely appeared when Clavis used that spell.
At the time, Kunon had instinctively thought, “Oh, he’s about to use magic!” and activated his Glass Eye. And when he’d used it to observe Clavis, he’d seen the headless goddess statue.