Overpowered Archmage Doesn’t Hide His Talent

Chapter 138:

Translator: MarcTempest

Proofreader: naturallyInconsistent

Chapter 138

The next morning.

The magic department was boiling with excitement for the Advent Festival.

Meanwhile, I was busy with my work in the dormitory.

Of course, Maiev was with me. She was wrestling with some documents on a small desk next to me.

I took a sip of tea first.

However, I didn’t feel the usual poison at all.

“Yes.”

Maiev nodded.

She stacked the papers vertically and then tapped them on the desk with a thud. 

She aligned the edges of the sheets and continued to speak.

“I realized that the things I tried before actually made you safer, Master.”

“Interesting.”

But there was something else that bothered me.

Now that I looked, she was standing in front of the desk.

“Why are you working standing up?”

“Because there’s no chair.”

“That’s interesting too.”

I slowly opened Maiev’s report.

─[ Void Report ]─

1. 1. Hierarchy and officers2. Their purpose3. Flan….

────────

The first thing I checked was item 2. The vampires’ goal was the power source containing the ancient runes.

However, the fact that they didn’t know much about the ancient runes themselves was particularly noticeable.

“Maiev. Isn’t the common language of the vampires runes?”

“Yes. That’s right, Master.”

“It’s strange that they don’t know the ancient runes well.”

“The history of the vampires is long, and most of it is in the dark ages. That’s when the ancient runes were mostly lost.”

Maiev calmly continued.

“That’s why she is also interested in you, Master. Think about it. How amazing is it that a human is deciphering ancient runes?”

She nodded her head a few times as if she was amazed herself.

I understood what she meant by ‘she’. It was the princess who ruled over the vampires.

“I didn’t know the princess was interested in me.”

“You should be lucky. She didn’t make killing you her goal. If she did, this place would have been destroyed by now.”

“Then she has another goal.”

“Of course, she probably wants to keep you by her side and use you.”

That was enough for now.

I put down the report and checked the golden paper that was coated over. It was a message from the second princess.

“Come to think of it, I made a promise.”

It was time to keep the ‘conversation between the two of us’ that I promised in exchange for the Advent Festival attraction.

However, I was worried about the fact that the place was the palace again.

Originally, Aurora was supposed to visit the academy, but she asked me to come to the royal palace, saying she had something important.

“Well.”

I had to think about this part.

Knock knock─

Then someone knocked on the door carefully. I opened the door silently with telekinesis.

“Ah!”

As our eyes met, a surprised voice and a unique white fluffy appearance were familiar to me.

Yushia opened her lips.

“You’re awake early in the morning, Flan.”

“What brings you here?”

Yushia smiled brightly and approached me.

“I heard rumors that you suppressed the bad vampires. I wanted to see your face again…. Huh?”

Yushia’s eyes widened as she saw Maiev.

Fortunately, Maiev was disguised as the head of the Marceline Trading Company, Marceline.

I could have kept her in the frame, but I didn’t. I entrusted her with the analysis of the girl vampire’s blood, and every minute and second was precious.

“Who is this person?”

“This is not a person, but the head of the Marceline Trading Company, Marceline.”

Maiev answered Yushia’s question herself. Maybe she was annoyed by the words ‘bad vampires’, her tone was not very polite.

“Why are you in Flan’s dormitory?”

Yushia also hardened her expression slightly.

“I’m so busy with the work.”

“Why are you standing while working? Suspicious.”​“There’s no chair… No, never mind.”

I used my power to turn a wooden closet into a chair. I placed it in front of Yushia.“…!”

Maiev’s eyes widened.

She kept looking back and forth between her empty desk and me. Yushia stared at Maiev with a puzzled look and sat down.

I was the one who broke the silence.

“Yushia. Do you have something to say to me?”

“Yes. Of course. But…”​Yushia’s gaze shifted to Maiev.​“Don’t mind her and talk. It’s okay.”

“…Is that so? Then, Sir Flan, are you going to meet the second princess soon?”

Yushia asked me cautiously.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“I see. If you do go to meet her, please be careful. As I told you before, she’s a very dangerous woman.”

“I know. First, I have to visit the mansion.”

It was time to reveal that I am a Judith.

I also had to check the collected investment funds, so I planned to go to the mansion as soon as I finished my work here.

Yushia smiled faintly.

“You’re the only one who can ignore the demands of the second princess… Maybe you’re the only person who can do that, Sir Flan.”

“It would be troublesome if I wasn’t the only one.”

“Yes. Of course.”

And then silence again. For a while, only the sound of rustling paper was heard in the dormitory.

“Hmm.”

I looked at the clock.

It was only 6 a.m.

I finished my work 40 minutes faster than expected.

“Yushia.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you still here?”

“I like watching you, Sir Flan.”

​I checked if there was any more work to do here.

There wasn’t, and Yushia was still staring at me intently.

I sighed helplessly.

“Did you bring the glow-in-the-dark puzzle?”

“Huh?”

Yushia nodded her head belatedly. She hastily took out the glow-in-the-dark puzzle from her backpack.

“Oh, yes. I brought it! Of course!”

“Let’s do that. For 40 minutes.”

Yushia clasped her hands and nodded vigorously.

“Yes─!”A sunflower bloomed on her snow-white face.

She looked sincerely happy.◈…Meanwhile, Scarlet returned to the mansion early.

Judith’s mansion had a warehouse in the basement, and Scarlet’s footsteps were also heading there.

She followed the narrow stairs down and slowly pushed open the solid iron door. 

A moment later, the dark warehouse and a familiar back came into view.

​It was the maid Catarina.

​”…Huh? Miss.”

​Catarina bowed her head hastily and showed her manners as a maid. Scarlet just lowered her head quietly.Did she deserve to receive the greetings of the maids? 

He couldn’t even tell that anymore.

​”Catarina.”

“Yes. Miss.”

“Before you came to the mansion, what did you do?”

“Do you mean before I worked at Judith’s mansion? Um… What did I do…”

​Catarina tilted her head and tried her best to think. But in the end, she sighed.

​”Miss, I’m sorry. I can’t remember what I did before at all.”​“As expected.”

​Scarlet nodded her head quietly. It was natural that Catarina couldn’t remember her past.

The memory cutter, Libra.​She erased the memories of all the servants after the incident in the past.Scarlet’s eyes suddenly moved to the maid’s hand. Catarina was holding a bunch of papers in her arms.

“Are you burning them?”

“Yes, miss.”

Catarina nodded.

“I’m sorry. You ordered me to clean up a long time ago, but I only managed to get around to it now.”

“Wait a minute.”

Scarlet grabbed one of the papers that was in the arms of the maid. And she narrowed her brow.

She remembered.

She had called the maid and ordered her to burn it right away, with a fiery anger.

“…A notebook.”

It was the notebook that Flan had practiced magic theory. A notebook that was neither intact nor torn into pieces.

She could no longer easily guess his magical skills.

Since yesterday, rumors had started to circulate that he had single-handedly subdued the vampire in the ballroom, so he would be more famous tomorrow than today.

His actions were shocking and he never stopped. He probably would continue to do so.

“…”

Scarlet’s expression hardened.

Only now did she examine the pages of the notebook carefully, and there were traces of him feeling his limits and stopping in the past.

It wasn’t one page.

It wasn’t two pages either.

She slowly lifted her head.

The whole pile of pages stacked up like a mountain in the warehouse… It was the trace of Flan’s twisting and struggling.

The strength of her hand loosened. The paper she was holding fell fluttering, and she seemed to have a complicated and stiff face.

The maid quietly watched Scarlet’s mood.

“I’m sorry, miss! I’ll deal with it quickly!”

“Leave it.”

“Yes, yes?”

“Don’t burn it, just leave it. Just clean it up.”

With that, she left the warehouse.

“…”

Scarlet was dazed. The more she knew, the more she felt the world was getting farther away from her.

Her feet moved on their own.

At some point, she came to her senses, and it was a graveyard.

Scarlet walked the path of the graveyard as if possessed.

At the end of the walk, feeling a soulful resentment, she finally reached the owner of the tombstone.

[The Knight of Blazing] [Evelyn Judith]

“Mother.”

The grave of the woman who could no longer be called mother was still clean. It must have been Judith’s sincerity.

“…Mother.”

Evelyn was her mother, but not her mother.

Could she call her mother? What kind of relationship was it? If she asked now, she would not get any answer from the dead.

“I don’t know anything.”

She muttered in front of the tombstone, kneeling down.

What she should have in mind in front of the tombstone, how she should regard the Judith family, how she should live… She really didn’t know anything.

If she tried to think a little deeper, her mind seemed to fly away to a faraway place.

“Mother.”

Scarlet parted her lips with a trembling voice.

She still called Evelyn, the Knight of Blazing, by the name of mother.

“How much faith did you have in the succession of the unique ability, mother, I don’t know anything, but…”

She closed her eyes for a moment.

She still wanted to deny reality sometimes, but she was already an adult and realistic.

“I’m just a remnant of the flame. I’m not great enough to succeed, and Flan’s circuit is all burned out, so I can’t even give it back.”

She quietly put a flower on the tombstone.

“But I also know that I can’t change the past.”

She shouldn’t forget the past, but even if she clung to it, nothing would change.

She knew that too well.

“So, I have no choice but to go on…”

As the sun rises in the morning, the ground gets wet when it rains, and the snow melts in the sunlight.

“From now on.”

She had no choice but to live by doing what was natural. And what was natural was…

“For your blood… I swear to burn for him alone.”

She could only think of the way of atonement.

Flan.

He sincerely cared for Scarlet and eventually saved her.

So it was also her fate to repay him.

“It’s not a vow to Judith, but a promise I make to myself.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

No matter how Flan sees me now, I will willingly become the fuel for his true blaze.

Flan will become a more intense flame, and as he goes on, he will be the proof of something that illuminates the world.

A life that I almost lost once.

It’s not that hard to throw it away again.

That was my resolve.

“…Then, I’ll be going.”

That’s how she left Judith’s mansion.

At the front gate of the mansion, she ran into a familiar man.

“Flan….”

Scarlet forced her eyes down.

It was not long after the tears on her cheeks had dried.