{Hurry! Go and make a contract with it quickly! Lilith, you have plenty of mana, so you can easily contract with a mid-level spirit!!}

“…”

{My following you to the academy was fate; it was meant for me to meet that child! So hurry up and go charm her, Lilith!}

 

As soon as we encountered a sylphid in Professor Erin’s secret garden, Sally began shouting excitedly.

Seeing her attitude change so suddenly, I felt an incredible sense of exasperation towards her.

 

{If you contract with her, you’ll be able to see her whenever you’re with Lilith! Hurry up and make the contract! Hurry…}

“Are you crazy?”

{…Huh?}

“Why are you suddenly injecting your selfish desires into my spirit contracting? There’s a limit to how absurd you can be.”

{W-what’s wrong with that?! It’s only natural that wind and fire have good compatibility! That child will definitely boost my power, too! It’s not a bad deal for you either, Lilith!}

 

Even after I bluntly called her absurd to her face, Sally acted as if she didn’t understand what she’d done wrong. 

Until now, I thought she was just a bit noisy but still somewhat useful. Thanks to that statement just now, my good impression of her completely reversed.

 

“You pedophile.”

{W-what are you saying?! S-spirits live much longer than humans! I’ve lived dozens of times longer than you, Lilith, and that child over there is at least 200 years old…}

“So you’re a pedophile by spirit age standards. Did you think I wouldn’t know that spirits under 400 years old are practically children among your kind?”

{H-how did you know that, Lilith… No! That’s not it! Don’t say such rude things! You’re not even a spirit!} [Read only on Galaxy Translations! / Axiomatic]

“Then why don’t you go ask the professor right now? She’s half-fairy and has been tending this garden, so she probably knows much better than I do.”

{Aaaah, no! Okay, I admit it! I was wrong!!}

 

It seems she has some sense of shame, at least, enough shame not to want the professor to know she’s a lolicon.

Why make such an easily exposed lie in the first place?

Her face burned with embarrassment as she realized how unsightly she must have looked just moments ago. I meant that in two ways since she’s a fire spirit.

 

{I-I’ll admit that child is young! B-but calling me a pedophile is wrong! I do feel love for that child, but it’s definitely not sexual!}

“Well, that’s natural since your species doesn’t reproduce.”

{And it’s not like I particularly like young spirits! It just happens that the one who caught my eye is young!}

“Don’t spirits have law enforcement? Who deals with mentally unstable ones like you, huh?”

{Even so, your words are too harsh!}

 

If only she could see herself reflected in water, she’d know who the harsh one is.

Well, from a spirit studies perspective, it’s not out of the ordinary for fire spirits to be attracted to wind spirits.

It’s a natural phenomenon that fire spirits are drawn to wind spirits, wind spirits feel affection for water spirits, and water spirits want to associate with earth spirits. 

My disgust with Sally was a completely different issue from this natural phenomenon.

I was exasperated by her shameless attitude of being attracted to a mid-level spirit that was practically a child from a high-level spirit’s perspective and her obsessive fixation on a spirit she’d just met less than fifteen minutes ago.

Of course, I had no reason to go along with Sally’s nonsense.

 

“If you like that child so much, go try to charm her yourself. Don’t order me to do it.”

{D-don’t say such ridiculous things! It’s obvious she’ll run away if I approach her! What fearless sylphid would just stand there watching a salamander approach?!}

“So you do understand. You understand the reason why you should give up.”

{P-please, don’t be like that! You can definitely charm her, Lilith! If you set your mind to it, you could attract any mid-level spirit with how delicious your mana is!}

 

…Well, considering Lilith’s Charm stat, it wasn’t impossible.

With my Charm approaching triple digits soon and the proportionally increasing Spirit Affinity, it would certainly be possible to contract with one innocent sylphid. [Read only on Galaxy Translations! / Axiomatic]

However, I didn’t feel like simply going along with this salamander’s words when her intentions didn’t seem very pure to begin with.

 

“Your intentions are too impure for me to go along with this. Wouldn’t that innocent child be much happier living without knowing a being like you exists? Why don’t you just give up for both of your sakes?”

{W-why?! I’m really not trying to do anything weird! I’d be happy just watching from the side! If you’re worried about not having enough mana for the contract, I can eat less!}

“My mana overflows normally anyway, so whether you eat less or more doesn’t really matter.”

{T-then, let’s make a contract now! If you just contract with that child, I’ll make a contract with you, too! Okay?!}

“No, you’re a high-level spirit, so it’s impossible for you to contract with me in the first place.”

 

Contracting with a spirit is similar to a monthly rent contract. The principle of spirit contracts works similarly to creating a nest made of mana around oneself.

Creating a nest for these spirits to live in requires quite a high initial cost, and the reason why a high mana capacity is needed to contract with spirits also stems from this.

A lot of mana (the initial deposit) must be consumed at once to create the mana nest, and once it’s made, only maintenance costs (the monthly rent) of mana need to be consumed afterwards, so it’s essentially like a monthly rent contract.

Naturally, the higher the level of the spirit, the more mana is consumed to create this nest, so the beings that can contract with them are limited. [Read only on Galaxy Translations! / Axiomatic]

You’d need titles like Sage, Archmage, or Master of a Magic Tower.

Even for me, who insanely increased my maximum mana from a very low level, it would only be possible after reaching Levels 30-40. Trying to contract with one before that would just waste my mana and leave me exhausted.

Well, contracting with a high-level spirit was an attractive proposal, but at the same time, it was a meaningless proposal for me right now.

 

“If I had enough mana to contract with you, I might consider it, but don’t you think it’s a meaningless proposal for me right now?”

{A-a temporary contract is possible! It doesn’t use as much mana as a formal contract, and it’s much easier to change to a formal contract later!}

“Hmm…”

{Please! It’s my lifelong wish! If you just contract with her, Lilith, I’ll listen to you well from now on! I won’t wake you up at night when you’re sleeping!}

 

…Not waking me up at night when I’m sleeping is quite an attractive offer.

Honestly, the temporary contract proposal itself was a really good condition.

Although she’s a noisy lolicon, she’s still a high-level spirit. If I contract with her, there would be ways to use her in some sense.

It would be beneficial since one way for Lilith, whose accuracy is still lacking, to land confirmed hits is by using spirits.

If I feed mana to a spirit and have it attack directly, I could overcome one of my chronic problems.

 

“Alright, then. I’ll give it a try.”

{Really?!}

“But don’t complain if it doesn’t work out. Just because my mana is delicious doesn’t mean I can charm every spirit.”

{Y-yes! I understand!}

“I’ll be back in a moment, so Sally, please keep some distance from me for a while.”

 

After distancing Sally from myself so as not to frighten the sylphid, I slowly walked towards the mid-level spirit floating in the wind, without any particular expectations.

I approached it with a light heart, thinking it would be good if the contract worked out luckily, and if not, it couldn’t be helped.

Agnes Elizabeth Blaze.

The only daughter of the Blaze Viscount family and the top student of Luminor Academy’s Magic Department.

Also Lilith’s partner in the spirit studies lecture, she was momentarily composing her sorrowful emotions in a corner of the garden.

 

“…Sniff.”

 

In truth, she knew it herself.

She knew that her mana capacity was high, but her affinity with spirits wasn’t very good.

She knew that even if theoretically she could contract with mid-level spirits, in reality, even low-level spirits were reluctant to contract with her.

She also knew that she was being impatient about contracting with spirits – these were all facts she knew well.

 

<Do you think spirits will eagerly contract with you without a thought just because they have eyes, Miss Blaze?>

<…from the spirits’ perspective, Miss Blaze, your mana probably smells like some terribly stinky food. … At the very least, you need to change that unsellable-product-like attitude to make spirits feel curious…>

 

“You didn’t have to go that far…”

 

Terribly stinky food? An unsellable product?

For her, who had grown up receiving all sorts of expectations as a promising talent of the Elizabeth family, it was a scathing evaluation she had never heard before.

To think someone who looks pretty and gentle on the outside would unhesitatingly say such things to her.

Moreover, the fact that she couldn’t refute what Lilith had said kept pricking at her heart, making it impossible not to feel even more dejected.

 

“I know that too, you know.”

 

After secretly wiping her tears away in a corner, Agnes was finally able to calm her complicated emotions to some extent.

She realized how childishly she had been competing with Lilith.

In any case, she probably didn’t say those things just to torment her. After all, if Agnes couldn’t contract with a spirit, Lilith herself would be disadvantaged as well.

She must have been sincere in worrying about her and giving advice. …It’s just that the advice she gave was so intense that she momentarily lost her composure.

Anyway, she was a woman with such a high understanding of spirits that she could bring around a high-level spirit without even contracting it.

If she just obediently followed her words, she should be able to contract with at least a low-level spirit.

For Agnes, who needed to somehow contract with her first spirit in order not to fall behind in the fight for a successor among the numerous branch families of the Elizabeths, she could put aside petty and childish emotions for that purpose.

 

“That woman hasn’t made a formal contract with the salamander yet, either.”

 

She probably couldn’t easily contract with other low-level spirits, which made her contract with a high-level spirit instead.

If she could contract with even a low-level spirit before her in the meantime, she could say she had won for now.

Such thoughts became the driving force that made Agnes, who had become depressed, rise from her seat once again.

It was shortly after this that she would encounter Lilith, who had finished contracting with a mid-level spirit while she was briefly away.

T/N

Hello! Axiomatic here.

Poor girl. It’s a canon event that all gifted kids have to go through at least once in their lives. I know the pain all too well.

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow!