“I hate you, uncle! I’m not playing with you anymore!”

[The evil god, ‘Kali’, cries out in heart-wrenching pain.]

Charlotte is sulking. This time, she’s either pretending to sulk to grab attention or is genuinely upset. Whether she’s truly angry or just pretending, she’s taken her "Super Strong Sword" to the training ground and has practically been living there.

“Should I go apologize?”

“Why? She’ll come when she gets hungry. You don’t need to worry. Charlotte forgets her debts and grudges quickly….”

“…”

Scratching her notes, Yulia speaks as if it’s no big deal. Perhaps because she’s known Charlotte for so long, she has an accurate grasp of Charlotte’s psychology.

“What do you think you would have done in her place?”

“Me? I would never be so foolish as to jump around happily, thinking I succeeded after failing at magic. That’s just asking for it…”

Right? After all, Charlotte was the one who left room for that, wasn’t she? I’m not at fault here. It was just Charlotte who created a situation perfect for teasing.

Kali, as an observer, could have scolded me for not teasing her. If it were me in that position, I wouldn't have been able to resist teasing either. I can guarantee that whether it’s a saint or anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to hold back.

“Oh, and Aslan.”

“What is it?”

“I think I can sleep alone now.”

“Really? That’s good to hear.”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“…”

“…?”

[The evil god, ‘Kali’, claps in joy, saying our necromancer has grown up!]

Involuntarily responding casually, I was momentarily struck silent. Then I gasped in shock. …What did she just say? That she thinks she can sleep without me now?

'What does that mean? Has her insomnia been completely cured?'

I had to suppress my agitation with all my might.

Yulia had originally been unable to sleep because the voices of the spirits would come flooding in unrefined and chaotic. But that had already been resolved when Yulia awakened as a necromancer. The fact that she still had trouble sleeping for a while longer was just a residual effect of inertia. Getting completely better was just a matter of time.

I knew that there would come a day when Yulia would no longer need my hand. I had steeled myself for that day. After all, isn’t it strange that a child of her age can’t sleep alone? It’s a sign of growth, so it should be something to be happy about.

Yet for some reason, one side of my heart began to ache. Ah. Tears welled up in my eyes. If I had known this would happen, I should have touched Yulia’s chubby cheeks a little more while she was asleep…

'Children grow up. That is an irreversible truth of the flow of time that I can do nothing about…'

Both Charlotte and Yulia are growing up slowly. Someday, they will become adults. And I have neither the power nor the will to stop that.

Why is the innocence and naïveté of children beautiful? It’s because I know the answer.

What does not change is never truly beautiful. The truly beautiful things are ephemeral, like flowers that wilt shortly after blooming. A child's childhood is also just a fleeting, brief moment. It is infinitely fleeting, and thus it is beautiful.

'I must accept it…'

Swallowing my tears, I barely managed to calm my mind and body. The fact that Yulia is growing up quickly is actually a good sign, isn’t it? It means the day she will become my wife is drawing near as well.

Just as I tried to reassure myself, I heard:

“What, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you sad? …?”

“…?”

Glimpsing back, I saw Yulia looking at me with a slightly embarrassed expression. The moment our eyes met, she flinched in surprise and quickly turned her head away.

“It sounds like you want me to be sad.”

“I-I’m not saying that! More than that, come over here and look at this! I found something interesting! …!”

“Are you trying to change the subject because you’re embarrassed?”

“No, I’m not! Just hurry up and come see! …!”

Reluctantly, I approached at Yulia’s urgent call. She pointed to a neatly written note. It seemed she was just saying something to brush off her embarrassment, but it looked like she actually had something to show me.

“What’s this?”

“I went through all the books and records Aslan gave me. I analyzed the experimental data related to neodymium written there and organized it here…!”

“All of that? I can understand the books, but the data must be thousands of pages!”

“Of course, I didn’t do it in just a day or two.”

“Wow. That’s impressive. How did you manage to do it all alone?”

“Ugh, my hair is a mess…”

Ruffling my hair made Yulia retreat as if running away. When I chased after her and rubbed her head more, she shot me a glare, her face full of resentment.

'What incredible perseverance.'

Research on black magic often starts as a hobby rather than formal study. Those documents, while labeled as research data, are essentially just disorganized journals. To go through all that and organize it would take too much time, so I had put it off. I never expected Yulia would take care of it all.

“So, what’s the interesting discovery you made?”

“Look closely. There’s a wonderful secret hidden here! When I gathered all the cases together, I noticed a commonality! …!”

“A commonality?”

“I counted everything, and out of 282 cases, 208 were experiments conducted in monasteries! That’s a whopping 70 percent! I hypothesized that the substance neodymium reacts with something in the monastery to cause black magic. What do you think? Sounds plausible, right? …?”

“…”

[The evil god, ‘Kali’, facepalms, expressing disappointment.]

Yulia looked up at me with eager eyes, but her hypothesis was completely off base.

The reason about 70 percent of neodymium experiments were conducted in monasteries is not anything other than this: The places where intellectuals gather in the Empire are mainly universities and monasteries. Universities rarely invest in black magic research, so many do not even get started. However, monasteries are located in secluded areas, and since sons of local nobility enter as monks, they have abundant funding, which leads to relatively frequent black magic research.

“I wonder. If there is a direct causal relationship between the monastery and black magic, shouldn’t we compare it with research conducted elsewhere? If the success rate in monasteries is significantly higher than in other places, then what you said would indeed be correct.”

“Um… That…”

Flustered, Yulia flipped through her notebook and began calculating. After a while, once she finished the calculations, she looked up at me with a glum face.

“The success rates are roughly similar… It seems my hypothesis was wrong…”

“It’s okay. Even if the hypothesis is wrong, you still have the organized data. This will speed up the research significantly.”

“Really? Hehe, heehee.”

Unable to hide her delight, Yulia let out soft giggles. I took the organized data from Yulia and examined it closely. However, something felt off.

“Shall we organize it in chronological order?”

“In chronological order? Okay, got it…”

I arranged all the data in chronological order. I recorded the success or failure of each study, as well as the weight of the neodymium chunks used in the experiments. When I checked the completed table, a noticeable sign emerged that anyone could recognize.

“Ah, this…!”

“Just as I thought.”

“The weight of the neodymium chunks is decreasing as the days go by! Didn’t you say that neodymium is a substance that doesn’t corrode or break easily!?”

“Look a little closer. The weight of the neodymium chunks only decreases after cases where black magic succeeded. It didn’t decrease immediately after a failure.”

“Oh, it’s true! Does that mean the neodymium is consumed when using black magic…!”

That would be the typical conclusion. However, with my greater knowledge about black magic than most, I couldn’t help but reach a different conclusion. The condition for determining the success of black magic is whether the researcher has been possessed by an evil god or not. So, rather than saying that neodymium is being consumed as fuel for black magic, it would be more convincing to see it as an offering consumed to summon the evil god.

'So, did Irene obtain neodymium to summon the evil god Laura…?'

I realized this fact only now, but the people of the Vermont family, who summoned the evil gods to form contracts, must have known it long ago. Irene has the key to summon the evil god. I now have a reason to seize the neodymium chunks from Irene immediately.

'After Laura, there’s the possibility of summoning even more evil gods.'

I need to plan to raid Irene’s residence as soon as possible. Should I mobilize the undead army? Ah, speaking of which, when exactly is the undead army arriving? They’re not exactly the kind of force that can be transported by cart, so I ordered them to march to the Vermont territory under their own power…

While I was chewing on my lips, deep in thought, the door swung open with a loud bang. Charlotte appeared, looking quite imposing.

“Charlotte…?”

“Wah! I’m sorry, uncle! I said something terrible! I don’t really hate you at all! I was lying about not playing with you! I said that in a fit of anger! Please don’t hate me…!”

[The evil god, ‘Kali’, mourns that nobody hates our dark knight.]

Overcome by a torrent of emotions, she ran to me and hugged me tightly. It was… exactly 6 o’clock. Just before dinner time. As Yulia said, she arrived just around the time we would be eating.

I knelt down to match Charlotte’s height and wiped her tears.

“I didn’t hold that against you. I’m sorry too. I should have stopped teasing you at a reasonable point, but I went too far.”

“Whew! I’m so glad! I’m relieved I’m not hated by you…!”

With a beaming smile, Charlotte pulled me into a tight embrace. I sighed deeply as I patted her trembling back.

She cried and laughed with just a few words… Maybe being a year younger than Yulia, she still has many childish traits.

Charlotte’s tears were a bit salty.

[The evil god, ‘Kali’, deeply sighs at your foolishness.]

What does that even mean?