🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 59
“Why can you draw blueprints so well, but not…?”
Lionel trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
Jailyn felt wronged.
‘How can he even put those two things on the same level?’
To her, they were completely different matters.
Seeing Jailyn’s brows droop, Lionel covered his mouth with his hand, and soon a quiet laugh slipped out.
That was when Jailyn realized Lionel was teasing her.
Today, Lionel seemed unusually lighthearted. Unlike the carefully painted smiles he wore at times, like a man trapped inside a portrait, his laughter now felt more genuine.
“D-drawing and blueprints are completely different things!”
As Jailyn protested, Adrian suddenly shouted from across the room.
“What the hell are you two giggling about? If you’re done, get over here already! I’m roasting alive here!”
Lionel cleared his throat softly and looked at Jailyn.
“Shall we go, then?”
“Y-yes.”
Jailyn gathered up the scattered blueprints and papers from the desk, then walked with Lionel over to where Stephan and Adrian were waiting.
While Jailyn was sketching, Stephan had already prepared the foundation work, carving the base onto the magic stone.
Taking the blueprint from Jailyn, Stephan clipped it onto a holder in front of the stone fixed in place.
He pulled down his goggles, raised his gloved hands, and said with a solemn tone:
“Alright then, shall we begin?”
“Woooow… S-Stephan, you look so cool.”
Seeing him in full professional gear, Jailyn clapped her hands.
Stephan’s shoulders rose proudly, and he rubbed under his nose.
“I know, I know. I am kind of professional, aren’t I?”
“Quit showing off and just start already,” Adrian snapped.
But Stephan didn’t care.
“Show off? Please! This is confidence born of skill!”
Dragging over a table magnifier, Stephan waved for Jailyn to step back.
“Puppy, if you’re going to watch, you need to stand farther away.”
“Wh-why?”
“When carving a magic stone, there’s light and heat. It can be dangerous.”
“O-okay.”
Once Jailyn stepped back enough, Stephan picked up a pen-like special engraver and began the work.
From where she stood, Jailyn couldn’t see exactly what he was engraving on the stone—it was too tiny.
From time to time, Stephan dipped the overheated tool into cold water, sending up hissing steam. Sparks sometimes shot out, too.
Jailyn could only marvel at how he managed to carve such intricate blueprints onto something smaller than a fingernail.
Focused and serious, Stephan looked like a completely different person from his usual clumsy self.
Unlike blueprints, magical tools could be used by ordinary people without mana. But making them required expensive equipment and delicate skill, so they weren’t widely available.
Because of that, magical tools were luxuries, owned only by nobles and a few wealthy middle-class families.
As Jailyn craned her neck watching, Lionel lightly tapped her shoulder.
“Jailyn, we need to go clean the hologram control room now. Time’s up.”
“Ah… okay…”
Jailyn still didn’t want to take her eyes off Stephan, wishing she could watch to the end.
But there was no delaying—she knew well that they had to finish cleaning before morning lectures started.
Not wanting to interrupt Stephan’s concentration, she silently mouthed to Adrian that they were leaving.
Adrian waved them off lazily as if to say, “Go already.”
Jailyn and Lionel quietly left the workshop.
“T-thank you for waiting with me.”
Jailyn bowed her head toward Lionel.
“I enjoyed it too. Thanks to you, I got to see magical tool crafting. I’d only heard about it before, but never seen it.”
“M-me too, it’s actually my first time seeing it made.”
Lionel touched his lips, recalling the doll Jailyn had once made him as a child.
“Haven’t you made something like this before? That doll you gave me back then was, in a way, a kind of magical tool too.”
“Mm… Well, it’s not really the same. That was more like drawing a blueprint on wood instead of paper. It only worked when activated by mana directly. True magical tools, the kind carved into stones, can be used even by people without mana… It’s completely different.”
“Ah, I see.”
“S-Stephan really is amazing.”
“You could make them too, you know?”
“I-I don’t think so. I’m not as skilled with my hands as Stephan.”
“Maybe. But how can you know unless you try?”
“Th-that’s true, but… I can’t even carve properly, so shaping metal and stone for magical tools? And besides, getting the equipment needed for crafting isn’t easy either.”
Lionel thought of the little wooden carving Jailyn had once gifted him and nodded in agreement.
“Mm… fair point.”
While chatting, they soon reached the hologram control room.
The walk from the student council hall was quite far, but it felt surprisingly short with Lionel by her side.
Arriving, they immediately began cleaning.
They had already wasted too much time watching Stephan, so there was no leisure left.
Lionel took up the mop while Jailyn wiped the windows and dust along the sills.
It reminded Jailyn of the first day they cleaned the room together. Back then, things hadn’t gone smoothly at all.
That day too, Lionel had insisted on mopping.
From fetching supplies to filling water buckets, Lionel moved confidently as if everything was under control.
Jailyn had thought cleaning would be no problem for him.
But while she was distracted wiping windows, disaster struck.
Lionel had pushed the mop around without wringing it properly, soaking the floor until the whole room was flooded.
Climbing on a chair to clean the windows, Jailyn nearly slipped when she stepped down, and only then noticed the disaster.
“S-senior…”
“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
“I-I’m fine. But that’s not the problem…”
“Hm? What is it? Something wrong?”
“T-the floor’s turned into a lake…”
“Well yeah. We’re cleaning, aren’t we?”
Lionel’s casual reply made Jailyn doubt herself for a moment. Was she the one who was wrong?
Seeing her distressed expression, Lionel finally realized something was off.
“Hmm… am I doing something wrong?”
“Y-yes…”
Jailyn nodded honestly, leaving Lionel flustered.
“Isn’t this how it’s done? I’m sure the servants always cleaned like this.”
Of course—Lionel had never once tidied even his own bed sheets.
But unlike before, Jailyn was delighted. At last, she could be the one helping him.
With a determined little fist, she declared firmly:
“Th-this isn’t how it’s done! We have to redo the whole floor!”
“…Oh dear.”
It took them a long time to fix the soaked floor.
They emptied the supply closet of every dry cloth they could find, wiping up the water.
“Sorry. I should’ve asked you from the start. I just went ahead thinking I knew. I’d seen the servants do it so many times, I thought I could manage too.”
After that, Lionel followed Jailyn’s instructions carefully and did quite well. Over time, he even got faster and more confident, wiping not only the floor but also the desks and chairs in the room.
As Jailyn cleaned the windows, Lionel pretended to clean the control panel, secretly turning on the device.
Long before he’d started cleaning with Jailyn, Lionel had been sneaking into this room to look through its records, trying to track down the crown princess’s agents.
For him, these cleaning duties were a blessing in disguise.
The hologram control room’s device was the only place in the academy where a student could access logs of important facility usage.
Even Lionel couldn’t risk coming here too often on his own—too dangerous.
Without these regular cleaning sessions, gathering information would have been nearly impossible.
When Jailyn climbed down from the chair, having finished the windows, Lionel quickly scanned the records and memorized them before shutting off the device and pretending to tidy up.
