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Chapter 8
The other idiots seemed not to have noticed, but the illusion magic that had toyed with all of them had not been Evangeline’s doing.
In the middle of the test, there had been a black butterfly that kept annoyingly fluttering around right in front of his eyes.
It had been so irritating that Evangeline had tried to burn the butterfly away.
But at that very moment, as though it had been waiting for him to do exactly that, the butterfly slammed its body into the hourglass right before Evangeline’s eyes and disappeared like smoke.
For the briefest instant, it left behind a strange ripple, like heat haze rising from the ground.
It had happened in the blink of an eye, and the trace the butterfly left behind was extremely faint. As a result, no one except Evangeline noticed anything unusual.
In the first place, as humiliating as it was to admit, he simply did not yet possess the ability to cast an illusion spell sophisticated enough to deceive everyone in the room.
…Is this really something a four-winged mage can do? Of course, there’s no reason for him to deliberately understate his abilities, but…
Then, suddenly, a strong sense of doubt arose within Evangeline.
Besides, why deliberately let me know that it was an illusion spell? That Belkiers has always been impossible to read. There’s something unsettling about him.
Well, regardless, simply getting to see the utterly idiotic expression of that arrogant fool had already made today worthwhile.
And now that things have turned out this way, I’m the Selector this year, so I can win the bet too.
There had been only two successful candidates in today’s test.
Yet Belkiers had never shown the slightest interest in something as trivial as being a Selector.
Whatever Belkiers’s intentions might have been, Evangeline was in a rather good mood.
“Anyway, I don’t know what you were thinking when you helped me. But, Belkiers, since you did this entirely of your own accord, don’t think that this means I owe you a—”
“Not particularly. I only chose you because I thought you’d be more useful than Leo.”
An unexpected answer came back.
His cool, dry voice, resembling something between late autumn and early winter, settled over the colorless hallway.
Evangeline frowned in confusion.
“Hm? What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t have any friends.”
“What?”
“You have no master with whom you’ve formed a bond, nor even a single acquaintance with whom you maintain a superficial social relationship. Wherever you are, whenever you are, you’re always alone. The only person with whom you have even the slightest connection is probably the Tower Master. But that person has no interest in you whatsoever.”
“W-what did you say?”
Evangeline questioned him in disbelief, wondering if he had heard correctly. But Belkiers continued saying whatever was on his mind in the same monotonous manner.
“You’re equally unfriendly to everyone, regardless of age or gender, and you regard everyone except the Tower Master as an inferior human being. Naturally, no one likes you. So if you disappeared today, there probably wouldn’t be a single person who would come looking for you.”
“Are you picking a fight with me right now?”
“No. You were curious about my reason, so I’m telling you.”
Evangeline still couldn’t understand what on earth the boy in front of him was trying to accomplish by saying such things.
Having his personality flaws pointed out out of nowhere left a bitter taste in his mouth, and his face naturally twisted into a frown.
At that moment, perhaps because clouds had passed in front of the sun outside the window, a faint shadow fell across the hallway where the two stood.
Belkiers’s golden eyes, like glass marbles, did not possess the lively warmth of sunlight.
Instead, they held the cold, metallic color of still, polished steel.
Staring into them for this long gave Evangeline an eerie, chilling sensation.
“Erin, you’ve had an intense inferiority complex and deep feelings of inadequacy toward me for a long time, yet you’ve always tried desperately to hide them.”
For an instant, a powerful sense of wrongness crawled down the back of Evangeline’s neck, strong enough to suppress even his irritation.
“So I judged that no matter what I did to you, it wouldn’t create any meaningful variable in your future actions.”
But by the time his instincts warned him of danger and he unconsciously took a step backward, it was already too late.
“That’s why I chose you.”
“Wh-what does that…?”
“Still, I’ll let you win the bet we made earlier, so don’t feel too cheated.”
Before he could even prepare himself, his vision went black.
An instinctive terror engulfed his entire body, as though he had suddenly been thrown into a frozen deep sea—or an utterly black abyss with no bottom.
A merciless gravity squeezed him from every direction, as though it intended to crush every organ inside his body.
Under the horrifying threat of annihilation itself, as though his entire body would be crushed and reduced to dust floating in the void, Evangeline could do nothing but gasp desperately for breath.
Choking from the lack of oxygen, he scratched wildly at his throat with his fingernails before, as a last resort, drawing his magical power to its absolute limit and releasing it in an explosion.
At the same time, the invisible force that had been tightening around him as densely as a net pierced through his flesh.
Thud! Rattle, rattle…!
The next moment, there came a sound like soft fruit being sliced apart by something sharp.
The magical energy that had spread thickly in every direction like a night sky finally receded.
The reddish, fishy smell of blood lingering in the now-silent hallway was soon swept away by the empty wind.
—Belki… you… crazy… I… will never… forgive…
A faint whisper of a desperate curse, carrying the last remnants of magical power, clung wetly to his back.
But Belkiers, as though he had heard nothing, calmly turned around and walked down the hallway.
The unidentified, fragmented remains left behind where he had been standing soon began to wriggle.
Then they crawled quietly into the shadows and disappeared.
Footsteps echoed through the hallway.
Belkiers Bellegoth stepped onto the endless staircase, his feet sinking into the red carpet covering the floor.
A short while later, he arrived at the end of a long corridor on the 80th floor.
“……”
Portraits depicting the official successors of the Northern Magic Tower throughout its history were densely hung along the walls.
He had heard that on the 100th floor—the summit he had yet to reach—the portraits of all the former Tower Masters were displayed.
Among the portraits arranged chronologically before him, Belkiers stared at the one he knew best.
It depicted a young boy with black hair and golden eyes, wearing a bored expression.
This was the portrait that had been hung approximately six years ago, when Belkiers, at the age of only eight, had been officially recognized as the successor of the Magic Tower.
Ever since that day, the painting had remained unchanged whenever he passed through the corridor on the 80th floor, simply existing like meaningless background scenery.
But that familiar view had suddenly changed without warning this morning.
A strange portrait of an unfamiliar girl had appeared beside his own, despite the fact that Belkiers was still very much alive.
The meaning of this was clear.
The ‘most suitable one’ chosen by the Tower.
The current Tower Master had been away for quite some time on personal business, meaning Belkiers was the only person who had discovered this at present.
As the boy’s head moved smoothly, his dark hair swayed along with it.
His unwavering gaze seemed to pierce through the thick walls, staring intently at something beyond them.
Today was the day when new young lambs had entered the Outer Tower of the Northern Magic Tower.
That was the only thing he could think of that might have caused this sudden and unexpected anomaly.
Turning his head once again, Belkiers stared obsessively at the unfamiliar face in the portrait, as though engraving it onto his retinas.
At last, the corners of his mouth slowly lifted into a smile.
“Interesting.”
Whoosh.
In the darkness where there wasn’t even a trace of wind, the deep-blue robe embroidered with four pairs of wings slowly fluttered.
Like a bolt of lightning piercing through dark storm clouds and striking the earth, black magical energy surrounded the boy, radiating a dazzling aura.
The tips of his ink-black hair gradually began turning white.
His golden eyes, which had possessed an inorganic radiance, also transformed into a molten red like heated metal.
In an instant, Belkiers transformed into someone who looked remarkably similar to Evangeline and stepped without hesitation through a door that had appeared in midair.
Then, shall I go find her before anyone else does?
To find and eliminate the girl in the portrait before the master of the Magic Tower returned.
That was the purpose of Belkiers Bellegoth.
