The light bulb grinned. Well, it didn’t have a mouth, so it didn’t really grin, but it felt like it did.

“I see...” it said, satisfied. “If that’s the case, find the covenant and come back to me. Then, I will teach you everything I know.”

What? She has to do stuff for him before getting her powers? And what’s a covenant? My head was full of questions, but since my mouth was sealed, I had to keep them to myself.

“Excuse me, this covenant you speak of...” Maria started speaking.

However, the light bulb interrupted her, simply saying “I’ll be waiting,” and there was yet another flash of light.

When we opened our eyes, we were back in front of the stone.

What was that just now?

Maria and I looked at each other.

“Hey, Maria... that thing just now...” I started saying, but then Cyrus came running towards us, visibly shaken.

“Hey! Are you two okay?! Where did you disappear off to?!”

He said that he saw Maria and me disappear instantly, and then he’d started running around to look for us.

“And when I looked back at the stone, you were back there... what happened?” he asked, but I was still too confused to explain it properly, so Maria started talking instead.

“To be honest, I am still trying to understand it myself...” she started, and went on to tell him what we had seen — the flashes of light, the white space, and the floating orb.

I’m so glad she was with me. I’d never be able to explain something that weird so well.

“If I hadn’t seen you two disappear with my own two eyes, I’d have a hard time believing you,” Cyrus said. “But after seeing how you vanished and then reappeared in the blink of an eye, it makes sense that you were transported... somewhere else.”

He reflected silently for a while before speaking again.

“...This could be Lost Magic as well. It could be a spell placed here by the very person who built this garden way back when. That’d explain why the garden is being magically kept tidy to this day.”

“So was it true, what the light orb said? Could it really grant me greater power?” Maria asked.

“I have no proof, but I’d say it’s likely. As technology has advanced, magic users have become fewer, and their powers have become weaker. A lot of magic has been lost to time... If you could get some of that back, you’d definitely become more powerful, no doubt about it,” Cyrus said, and Maria’s face relaxed into a smile.

“I see. If so, I want to try my best to obtain that power. I will have to look for the covenant that the orb was talking about. I wonder where it is... If it is a book of some kind, perhaps it is in the library...”

“Hold your horses. Do you want to go to the library right now? It’s already closed at this hour. And how do you plan on looking for something that you know nothing about?” Cyrus stopped Maria, who looked ready to run to the library that very second.

“...That is true. I should ask that light orb once again,” she said, making for the stone.

“Wait, it’s too late today. If you want to do that, wait until tomorrow,” he said, and we decided to go rest for the day.

Maria and Cyrus saw me to the carriage. They both lived in the dormitory, so they would be going back there together.

“Maria Campbell looks tame, but she can be intense, huh?” Cyrus whispered to me. He was probably talking about how she wanted to go look for that covenant right away.

“Yes. She isn’t just some docile girl!” I said.

She was the protagonist of an otome game, after all. She was a strong girl who didn’t just wait to be saved, but who ran straight into danger when she had to protect her friends.

I’ll have you know that my friend is cute and strong, sir.

I left my two colleagues and rode back home, thinking of the weird events of that day. A white, empty space. A talking light bulb. Maria’s sudden eagerness. Just as Cyrus said, she could be intense at times.

That said, today she sounded even too eager, as if she were in a rush. Or was that just my imagination?

She already has the ring made by Larna to increase her powers, so why would she need to become stronger? She’s always working so hard... She should learn how to relax. What kind of otome game protagonist works harder than the love interests? I wish that Cyrus would learn from her and try a bit harder to overcome his fears without running away.

Ah! I just left those two alone, but did Cyrus properly see Maria back to her room? I was so confused with all that stuff going on that I forgot about that... I hope he did.

I was so worried about it that I didn’t even manage to fall asleep on the carriage like I always did.

★★★★★★★

After seeing Katarina off to her carriage, Mister Cyrus and I walked back to the dormitory together while talking about my plans.

For example we discussed how, if I really could achieve the powers that the light orb talked about, the Ministry itself could be interested in aiding my search. But unfortunately, I had no proof that what I’d heard was true.

Mister Cyrus told me that he would report to his superiors and look into it, and that I should not do anything rash in the meantime.

“There’s nothing to gain from scrambling ahead. There are too many unknown variables to this whole thing — diving in head first could be dangerous,” he told me with a serious expression that left me no option but to agree.

“Anyway,” he said right before we parted ways, “your Light Magic is already much stronger than anybody else’s. Why do you even want greater powers?”

I thought for a bit before replying. “...I do not want others to protect me anymore. I want to be the one to protect them,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

“...I-I see,” he said, before saying goodbye and making for his room.

I went back to mine, where I changed clothes and prepared for the next workday. I was too tired to go to the dining hall, so I made do with the sweets I had in my room before going to bed.

Today’s strange events had left me exhausted. I had been so happy to be able to spend time with Lady Katarina after so long, and then all of a sudden we were transported to that mysterious place, hearing those incredible things... It all seemed like a strange dream.

But it was not. Lady Katarina experienced the same things, and Mister Cyrus also saw the two of us disappear.

The covenant... I did not know what that was, but I wanted to find it and become more powerful.

Since the time we first met at the Academy, Lady Katarina had always been the one protecting me. Every time I was in danger of being hurt, either physically or mentally, she would come out of nowhere to rescue me. Even when I was kidnapped, she was the first one to show up.

And even during the examination, when we fought that dragon creature... That was so scary. Not the dragon, but thinking that Katarina could have died because of me. Had that happened, I doubted that I could have kept on living as before.

I did not want Katarina to stand in front of me to protect me, but I knew that she would never hesitate to do so, over and over. I knew that she was that kind of person, and that was one of the reasons why I held her so close to my heart.

I wanted the power to protect her. I needed much stronger magic, and I had reason to need it as soon as possible. Ever since the examination ended and we came back to the Ministry, I could ever so slightly feel an aura, a presence — an evil one. And I got the feeling that this presence was out to get Lady Katarina. It could all be my imagination, but I could not help but feel scared.

At the academy, Lady Katarina was once publicly shamed for things that she had never done. We later found out that it was all part of someone else’s plan, but the feeling that I had at the Ministry reminded me of the one from back then.

It felt as if the universe was conspiring to take a loved one away from me. I absolutely did not want to lose Lady Katarina. I was ready to fight anyone — even the universe itself — in order to avoid that, and that was why I needed power. Lots of it. And fast.

I hoped in my heart that I could quickly find the covenant.

★★★★★★★

The day after meeting the lightbulb, I visited Maria’s department during lunch break because I was curious about what she planned to do next. I had Sora come along with me, in case we’d be eating lunch with Maria and Dewey like on the previous day.

“Mister Cyrus reported to his superiors this morning, and now we are waiting for their reply before doing anything,” she explained to me.

“I see. So you’re not going to start moving just yet.”

“...Exactly,” she said with a disappointed look.

“Maria, I’ve told you this already, but don’t push yourself too hard, okay? Learn how to relax. Breathe in, breathe out. In, in, out. In, in, out.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sora asked, making Maria laugh.

After that, we called for Dewey and the four of us went to eat lunch together again.

I finished my lunch (today’s special: stew) while chatting with Maria and the others, and before I knew it lunch break was over. Once I was back in the office and was preparing for that afternoon’s work, Larna came back out of nowhere and told me and Sora to come to her desk because she had to speak with us.

At first I feared that we’d done something wrong and that she was going to scold us, but Larna looked pretty happy. As Sora and I walked towards her, I wondered what she wanted to speak to us about.

“I actually just received a mission from the higher-ups, and I want you two to help,” she said, grinning.

“What mission would that be?”

“It’s about looking for lost magic.”

Lost magic again. I’ve been hearing those words a lot since yesterday.

“And the mission will be undertaken jointly by our department and the Magical Powers Research Department.”

The Magical Powers Research Department? Wait... could it mean that we were looking for that lost magic?!

I stared at Larna, eager to hear the rest.

“Katarina looks like she already knows what’s going on. It’s just what you think it is — the lost magic you and Maria ran into yesterday,” she said, before quickly explaining the details to Sora, who knew nothing about that incident.

“You got in trouble again?” he murmured in my direction. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault this time. I mean, it never was my fault — trouble just seemed to follow me around! I couldn’t do anything about it! Anyway, Sora just sighed wearily at my explanation.

Larna, who wasn’t really interested in our little quarrel, went back to talking enthusiastically about the mission. “We’ve been able to recreate some kinds of lost magic as far as keeping places tidy and such goes, but I’ve never heard of one that can transport people to another dimension. This is so interesting!”

I’d heard from my older colleagues that Larna was so into magic that she always went crazy about rare or interesting types of it. I’d also heard that when that happened, she forgot about everything else — including work.

Seeing how excited she was, I started worrying for the department’s wellbeing.

“Let me explain about this mission,” said Cyrus.

After hearing Larna’s explanation, we moved to a conference room. Maria, Dewey, and Cyrus had come from the Magical Powers Research Department to join Larna, Sora, and me. Apart from the two directors, the rest of us were all newcomers. I wondered why that was — maybe it was some kind of test.

However, Cyrus told us that there weren’t enough people available to dispatch on a mission that was based on such dubious information. Looking very sad, he added that he would still be attending to his normal director responsibilities, and that he couldn’t help us that much throughout.

“Don’t worry, Cyrus, I’ll take responsibility here,” said Larna, who was oozing enthusiasm.

“What about your responsibilities as department director?” Cyrus asked, perplexed.

“I have very talented employees to whom I can entrust everything. I’ll focus on looking for the lost magic,” she explained casually.

“There you go again... Raphael Wolt is going to get fed up with you,” he said, his face having gone from perplexed to stern.

“There’s no reason to worry about that.”

“And on what basis can you say that?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Speaking with you stresses me out...” Cyrus said with a sigh.

Anyone could tell that these two were incompatible. Larna was too unconcerned about everything, and Cyrus too concerned. My department colleagues had already assured me that “You can mostly ignore whatever Larna says when she’s not talking about work.”

“I asked for your help because you’re the most knowledgeable about lost magic around here, but let’s just operate independently as two departments. We’ll both gather information and then compare and contrast here,” said Cyrus, who obviously didn’t want to work with Larna, and we started working as he said.

I had been looking forward to working together with Maria, so I was a bit sad about that. But we would still be able to meet when exchanging information, so I decided to do my best regardless.

“But where are we even going to look for information?” I asked once we were out of the meeting room, unsure of what we were supposed to do next.

“First of all, we’ll go see someone who’s an expert on lost magic,” Larna said joyfully.

“You know such a person?”

“Yes. He chases down lost and rare types of magic. He’s sort of a weird guy.”

If someone as weird as Larna was saying that, I could only wonder what kind of guy that could be.

“He doesn’t live in the Ministry, so we’ll have to ride on a carriage,” she said before starting to march away, with Sora and I doing our best to keep up with her.

The carriage brought us to a residential district not far away from the castle. The people living there weren’t nobles, but they were definitely well-off.

Larna knocked on the door of a house that’s size made it stand out even among the many large ones of that neighborhood. Someone, probably a servant, came out to greet us. They recognized Larna, bowed to her, and led us inside.

“Is the professor doing well?” Larna asked.

“Yes, he is as full of energy as usual,” the servant replied.

So we were here to see a professor. Larna had said that this man was an expert in lost magic, so maybe he was a teacher at a magic school.

Deep inside the house, we reached a closed door. The servant stopped in front of it and started speaking to someone on the other side.

“Master, you have visitors. May I open the door?”

Instead of a parlor, the servant led us directly to the professor’s room.

“Oh, hold on a second,” a man inside the room replied.

We heard rumbling and rattling. After a short while, the same man said, “There, come in.”

What was all that noise just now? I thought to myself, but I discovered the answer the second the servant opened the door and we walked inside.

I stared in awe with my mouth hanging open. The whole room was full of stacks upon stacks of books and documents, so many that anyone who was inside it during an earthquake would be buried under an avalanche of paper. That noise was probably the professor shoving some of those books aside.

And there he was, near the door: an old man with white hair and a white, bushy moustache, looking somewhat like Santa Claus.

“Oh, Miss, it’s been a while. How have you been?” he said upon seeing Larna, beaming at her with a smile so large that he looked like he was squinting.

“Well. And I am glad to see you doing fine as well, Professor,” Larna replied with a smile. “I have come here with some of my subordinates because there is something that I would like to ask you. May we have some of your time?”

“I see,” said the old man. “It’s a bit messy, but be my guests.”

He pointed to a table in the center of the room with some chairs around it. The servant who had welcomed us had quickly cleaned it up so that it was the only surface not completely covered in books. I was touched by the speed-cleaning when I noticed that the servant had also prepared tea and snacks for us. Impressive.

We sat down facing the professor, and Larna introduced us.

“These are my subordinates, Katarina Claes and Sora Smith.”

“I am Katarina Claes. It is my pleasure.”

“I am Sora Smith. It is my pleasure.”

The man in front of us then spoke. “I am Morris Hyde. The pleasure is mine. People call me ‘professor’ and ‘doctor’ and whatnot, but I’m nothing more than an old man. Call me Morris, or Hyde, or whatever you like,” he said, laughing.

He looked like a pleasant, kind old man. But since it wouldn’t be polite to call him by his name or give him a new nickname, Sora and I decided to follow Larna’s example and just call him “professor.”

Sora and I told him about our backgrounds while drinking tea. I said that I was the daughter of a duke, and Sora talked about his story of scraping by as an orphan. This story was enough to surprise most people, but the professor didn’t bat an eye and just kept nodding and listening intently.

We also heard a few things about him, giving me the impression that he was a close acquaintance of Larna’s and that he was not an ordinary person.

The “professor” nickname, he told us, stuck with him because he used to work as a private teacher for noble children even though he had never actually taught in a school. The “doctor” one was given to him by some of his friends to taunt him for being so passionate about researching lost magic, but he wasn’t a researcher by trade and only looked into things that caught his interest as a hobby.

After chatting for a while, he took a sip of his tea and asked Larna what it was that she wanted to talk about.

“You see, we have just found an unheard-of type of lost magic on the Ministry’s grounds...” she said. Then as if she’d been waiting all along for the opportunity to do so, she explained about how Maria and I were transported into another dimension and how a floating light orb had told Maria to find a covenant.

She explained everything in such detail that Sora started worrying. “Excuse me, Miss Larna, but is it appropriate to disclose all of this to people outside the Ministry?” he whispered to her.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got permission. And the professor’s from the Ministry too, anyway. His name is still on the records, but he’s already retired, as you can see,” she said nonchalantly.

“My name is still on those records? I’ve retired! Tell them to erase that, will you?” the professor said.

“That is out of my jurisdiction,” she said, deflecting the request. “More importantly, do you know anything about this lost magic? That is your specialty, is it not?”

“More importantly...? Miss, you should learn to be a bit more... Ah, never mind, it’s too late for that. A different dimension, a light orb, and a covenant, you say?”

The professor started thinking while staring at the ceiling. After a while he stood up, walked to a bookshelf (the whole room was basically a giant bookshelf, to be honest) and started looking for something. Not wanting to disturb him as he seemed so concentrated in his search, we waited while silently drinking our tea.

“Oh, here it is! Found it!” he said after a while, bringing a book back with him to the table. “A friend gave this to me many years ago, and I made a translation into our modern language. The content was so unrealistic that I just left it to collect dust on a shelf, but here, take a look,” he said, opening up the book and moving it towards us.

More than the usual magic manuals that we saw at the Ministry, this looked like a fairy tale book, aimed at what in my previous world would be called “grade-schoolers,” with pictures and all.

“Excuse me... Isn’t this a made-up story, like a fairy tale?” I asked.

“Exactly,” said the professor. “It’s from a very old book of stories for children.”

Just as I thought. How could that help us?

“But forget that and take a look. Here,” he said, pointing to a specific part of the text.

And the Prince was led into the garden which had been created with magic. There he met the shining goddess, who told him, “If you want greater powers, find the covenant and come back here.”

“I will do so,” replied the Prince.

The content of the story was exactly the same as what had happened to me and Maria on the previous day.

“...But why? Isn’t this supposed to be fiction?”

The professor laughed at my surprised reaction. “Sometimes, old books talk about magic that was the norm back then and only just so happens to be lost now. Of course, some of them are pure fiction.”

“Professor, when was this written, and by whom?” asked Larna, leaning forward with eagerness.

“Miss, I understand your passion for magic, but please calm down. I’ll explain everything from the start,” he said with a smile. “The only information I have on this story is that it’s very old. I don’t know who wrote it, or when. The book that my translation comes from was given to me by a friend in the first place. This friend knew his way around magic, and was convinced that the story was based on magic that once really existed. However, no matter how much I searched for evidence, I found none. I just translated it so that children could read it, seeing as it’s a children’s book anyway, but I’d completely forgotten about it until today.”

“So you know nothing about the book... What about your friend?” Larna asked promptly, but the professor shook his head.

“If he were to hear of what happened, my friend would surely be ecstatic knowing that the magic is actually real. However he’s not with us anymore, and I know nothing about how he got that book.”

“Which means that we have no information at all...” Larna said, visibly disappointed.

“I told you to calm down. You really haven’t changed at all, Miss!” the professor said, frustrated but amused. “I may not know about the book’s origin, but the way to obtain the covenant is written right here.”

“Really?! Where?!” Larna asked enthusiastically, and the professor reached for the book and started flipping its pages. After he found what he was looking for, he showed it to us.

The goddess told the prince how to find the covenant so that he may obtain the power that he wanted.

“The covenant will draw to itself those who truly wish to find it. And, as soon as you find it, you will know.”

The prince thanked the goddess and left the garden.

“So... we just have to start looking for it and then we’ll just find it?” I asked, with my head resting on one hand.

“That seems to be the case,” the professor said while stroking his moustache.

“That doesn’t tell us a lot about how to obtain it, though...” I said, unsure how to feel about that non-answer.

“Furthermore,” the professor continued, “we can’t tell whether all that the book tells is true. The author may have embellished the facts.”

I thought we’d finally found a hint, but we’re back at square one...

“Do you know of anything else that could help us?” Larna asked, trying to find even the smallest piece of information to work with.

“I’m sorry, but this is all I know,” he said, but he let us borrow the book.

We thanked him and made to leave the Hyde manor. Right before we did so, the professor told us something.

“I don’t know if knowing this would be useful to you, but in the story, the prince found the covenant in the form of a book in the largest library in the kingdom.”

After that, Larna said that she would go questioning people who potentially held useful knowledge, and Sora and I were appointed to search the kingdom’s largest library: the one in the Magical Ministry.

“The professor’s room was so full of books and documents and all kinds of papers,” I said while we were still in the carriage. That had impressed me the most out of anything.

“He’s always loved collecting old and rare documents and manuscripts for his research. He has a research room, but it’s completely full of papers,” Larna explained. He had enough texts lying around to fill his research room and overflow into his study and guest rooms.

“His wife lives with him, but she doesn’t want him to dump any more paper inside the rooms.”

Living in a house so full of books and documents must be hard. But there was something else I was wondering about...

“Miss Larna, you’re on really friendly terms with the professor, aren’t you?”

She knew about his family, and she spoke very politely when addressing him. What’s more, the professor looked at her with the same kindness as a grandfather looking at his granddaughter.

Larna giggled, squinting slightly in a way that reminded me of the professor. “Yeah, we’ve known each other since I was a child. I used to go to his research room all the time.”

This explained the way he looked at her. He really did have the eyes of a grandfather thinking “You’ve grown so much!”

“So if you didn’t become acquaintances at the Ministry, how did you two first meet?”

Since she said that he’d known her since she was a child, that must have been before she started working at the Ministry. There were sometimes people around the Ministry who didn’t work there, but it certainly wasn’t a place for children to play around in.

“I used to know one of his friends. One day I was bored, and he told me he’d bring me to an interesting place, which happened to be the professor’s research room. I was so excited seeing all those books about magic around me,” she explained with a hint of nostalgia in her voice.

“Were you already interested in magic back then?” I asked, recalling what my colleagues had told me about her.

“Researching magic is something of a life mission for me,” she said with an innocent smile.

The carriage finally reached the Ministry, and Sora and I went to the library while Larna was asking more people for information.

Sure, going to the library is the easy part, but now what? This place is huge and full of books... How are we going to find a single one which we don’t even know anything about?

“Since we have no clue, what do you think about beginning from the start and looking through each book in order?” I said, but Sora looked at me in dismay.

“That’s never going to work,” he said. “We should at least narrow our options.”

“But how? Even if we, say, ignored all romance novels and just looked at the books on magic, most books here are about magic anyway...” I said, pouting, and Sora sighed while putting a hand to his forehead.

“That’s not what I meant... We’re looking for an ancient magic book, right? So it can’t be among recent books. We should ask where they keep the oldest books and start searching from there,” he said.

“You’re right! Sora, you’re so smart!”

“I’m not. You should just use your head a bit more...”

Following Sora’s suggestion, we asked the librarian sitting at the counter where the oldest books were being kept.

“Oh? You two are also looking for ancient books? What a coincidence. Usually nobody ever cares much for those,” she told us, implying that someone else had already visited that area today. “I think the other people are still there, so try to cooperate and not take up all the space, okay?”

We went in the direction that she guided us to and found Maria and Dewey concentrating on reading some books. They were probably — well, definitely — looking for the covenant.

As soon as Sora and I stepped near them, they noticed us and looked up from their books. “Lady Katarina! Sora!” Maria said in surprise. Dewey, too, was staring at us with fluttering eyes.

“Oh, hi Maria, hi Dewey. We’ve come here to look for the covenant too.” I looked around, but didn’t see Cyrus anywhere. “Isn’t Mister Cyrus with you?”

“He has gone to question some people who may have useful information, and he also has his normal duties to attend to,” Maria explained.

As newcomers, the four of us could focus entirely on our search, but the directors had to balance this mission with their usual day to day work.

That must be tough. Wait, that’s true for Cyrus, but Larna said something about entrusting her work to subordinates... So it’s the people left at the department who have it tough.

My imagination went to Raphael and his desk, barely visible under a mountain of documents, and I decided that I had to find the covenant as soon as possible.

“Why are you two in the library? Pray tell, have you found any useful information?” While I was busy thinking, Sora asked Maria and Dewey with the most polite speech he could muster.

“Mister Cyrus told us to ask several researchers about it,” Dewey said, “but none of them have ever heard of any magic like this, leaving us with no clue. We are looking through these old texts to see if there is any mention of a kind of magic like the one in the garden.”

“So you aren’t looking for the covenant itself?”

“Well, of course we would be more than happy to find it, but I doubt things will play out that well,” Dewey replied calmly. He was so mature for a thirteen-year-old... At that age, I was romping around the mountains in my previous world and in the garden in this one.

I was looking at Dewey, appreciating how much of a grown-up he was, when our eyes met.

“Lady Katarina, did you happen to find anything?”

“Why, yes, we found a children’s book,” I said, and both Dewey and Maria stared at me questioningly. I may have left out too much of the story there.

Sora, after aiming a look of disapproval in my direction, started explaining the whole story behind our coming to the library: our meeting with Professor Hyde, what he had told us, the book we read, and its contents.

“That professor must be an incredibly smart person to be able to remember that book just by hearing your story!” Maria said in admiration.

“Do you have the book with you right now?” Dewey asked.

“Miss Larna took it to do some more research, so you will be able to see it if she comes here,” Sora replied.

“That means that if we keep searching, we may just happen to find it. And if the covenant is really supposed to be in the largest library in the kingdom... I am glad to know that searching this place was not a terrible idea after all,” Maria said.

She looked so relieved that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the professor had said that we had no way of knowing which parts of the book were true, if any.

With that, Sora and I joined Maria and Dewey’s search.

“How have you been looking through the books? In the order that they’re placed on the shelves?” I asked.

“No,” said Dewey, surprised. “We have been looking at them in chronological order, from oldest to most recent. Since nobody had heard of that magic, it is likely that it is very ancient.”

“Dewey, you’re so smart!”

Dewey blushed as he laughed off my comment, but Sora gave me one of his wry looks and whispered, so quietly that only I could hear it, “I told you to use your head a bit more...”

Using my head has never been my forte. I think I can manage to look through some books though.

“Okay then, we’ll start searching with you.”

Sora and I went to the shelf that Maria showed us, the one that had the oldest books on it, and took some that hadn’t been checked yet.

I froze.

“Hm, these old books have no pictures or charts; they’re so boring. Uh? What’s wrong?” Sora said, noticing how I wasn’t moving at all.

“I can’t read this,” I told him sadly.

Surprised, he looked at my book. “And... why is that?” he asked. That meant that he was able to read it.

“This is ancient script!” I replied. The book wasn’t written in our modern, everyday language, but in an old one that I couldn’t understand. “Do you mean you can read it, Sora? How?”

“It’s just that I once fell in love with a girl who said she liked ancient— Er... I just learned it because I needed it for work. Didn’t you learn how to read it at the academy?” he replied with a further question.

Sure, there were lessons on ancient script at the academy, just like the ones on classical Japanese that we had in school back in my old world. But to be honest, I never liked either of those subjects. I only studied as hard as I could before tests, having my smart friends teach me the most important parts and just memorizing those. As soon as I passed one of those tests with the bare minimum of required points, the information I’d crammed inside my brain would just evaporate, leaving nothing behind.

This had already been one of my special skills in my previous life — I called it “forgetting useless stuff.”

Because of this, I couldn’t read a single letter. Just to make it clear: not even word, but letter. Not a single one.

Since there wasn’t much point in lying, I admitted to everyone that I couldn’t read any of it. Maria and Dewey were also surprised, and the latter, just like Sora had done, asked me how that could be possible, since I was supposed to have studied that at the academy.

I started feeling really bummed out, and I stared at the floor in a mixture of embarrassment and self-pity.

“But were you not able to read that old story at professor Hyde’s place?” Dewey asked.

“No, that was a modern translation that the professor had made so that children could read it,” Sora explained for me.

Now that I thought about it, that was obvious. There was no way that such an old story would be written in modern language, and I only had the professor to thank for being able to understand it. Back at his house, the thought just hadn’t occurred to me.

“But this is quite the problem. If she cannot read ancient script, she will not be able to check most of the books in this area,” said Dewey, looking troubled.

“Yup,” said Sora, who, maybe because of how disappointed in me he was, had forgotten about using polite speech.

What am I going to do? I’m completely useless!

“If that is the case, you could check stories instead of these ancient books,” Maria said.

“Stories? What do you mean?” I asked as I looked up, noticing her smile.

“The hint that you found was inside a story, so you could try checking other stories written in modern script. They could hold something valuable.”

Maria, my angel, why are you always so kind?

“I guess that could be true...” Sora said.

“Yes, there is certainly a possibility...” Dewey said.

And thus, I started looking through stories. Thanks to Maria, I avoided being completely useless. She was such a good girl that I considered fighting off all the love interests to marry her myself.

I thanked my beautiful angel for her kindness and made for the area where the story books were being kept.

“Hm, it’s all boring stories,” I murmured to myself while flipping the pages.

The story books were kept near the library’s entrance, in a place easily visible from the librarian’s counter. Most of the texts here were technical books on magic, but there were also normal story books, if only a few (of course there were no romance novels, though).

However, these stories weren’t particularly exciting — they were the kind of classical story that you’d find in a school textbook. The writing was also full of metaphors, making it difficult to understand.

Oh well, still better than those ancient books though. At least I can read these. Thank you, Maria...

A lot of these stories had a prince as protagonist, and he would usually end up married to a kind and beautiful princess or other noble girl. The explanation of how the protagonist used magic to defeat the villain was always so lengthy and detailed that it made you forget about the story itself. Do we really need this many details?

After all, I was looking for hints about lost magic, so I couldn’t skip those parts... but most of the magic featured in the books was of the kind I’d already heard about anyway.

While I was focusing on one of the books, someone entered the library and started talking to me.

“Miss Katarina? What are you doing here by yourself?”

I looked up and saw that it was Cyrus. “Oh, Mister Cyrus, are you done with work?”

“Not yet, but I wanted to check on Maria and Dewey.”

What a proper, thoughtful boss.

“I see. They’re reading through ancient texts right now.”

“I know that, but... Sorry to ask again, but what are you doing here by yourself?”

“Me? I’m reading through these story books.”

“Stories? And why would that be?” he said, looking perplexed. I explained about the story that the professor had shown us, and Cyrus responded, “He showed you a book like that? As expected of Morris Hyde; he’s so knowledgeable.”

“You know him?”

“He’s famous as a great scholar, you know. Well, he’s also infamous for his difficult personality, which makes it difficult for people to talk to him despite his undeniable intelligence,” he said.

This was surprising to hear. “What?! He wasn’t like that at all! He let us in to talk to him in his room without a hitch!”

“That’s probably because Larna Smith was with you. I’ve heard she used to live amongst royalty, so she must have lots of connections.”

“She did say that she’d known the professor since she was a child... Wait, did you say that she used to live with royalty?!”

Despite being her subordinate, I didn’t know much about Larna apart from her knack for disguise and her passion for magic.

“Yes, I heard so directly from her, but I don’t know anything about her family. Some say that she’s a noble, but nobody except for a few of the higher-ups knows for sure about her background.”

It turned out that my superior’s background was classified.

“There are a lot of people like that in the Ministry, though. Just look at me. I come from a small farming village, but people treat me like a high-ranking noble,” Cyrus said, laughing at himself.

Then he got back to the subject at hand. “I understand why you’d want to look through these books, but why are you doing it alone? There aren’t that many here, so wouldn’t it be faster if you all cooperated and got it over with quickly?”

Ugh, this is so embarrassing... I wish I didn’t have to explain it.

“Well, actually...”

I told him about how I couldn’t read ancient script.

“You graduated from the Academy of Magic, correct?”

“...Yes.”

“And they teach ancient script there, correct?”

“...Yes.”

Confused, he looked at me silently. I felt so bad that I once again stared at the floor as I murmured, “I could read it back then, but after the tests I just kind of... forgot all of it...”

After a few moments of unbearable silence, Cyrus spoke again. “...I see,” he said. “Keep checking these books.”

He then went off to the area where Maria and the others were looking at the ancient texts, so I followed his order and kept doing my best to flip through the pages.

As the end of the workday grew closer, Larna came back and told us that she’d already interviewed several people. We then went back to the same conference room where we had been debriefed in the morning.

Cyrus, being the one in charge, spoke first. “I have asked historians and ancient magic researchers in and around the Ministry, but all of them said that they had never heard of any such magic. I sent Maria and Dewey to research ancient magic texts — did you two find anything?”

Maria and Dewey looked at each other, and the latter spoke. “We have checked dozens of books on ancient magic, but none of them mentioned the spell we were looking for. However, there still are several books that we have not yet checked.”

“I see. Good work. Keep on searching those books, then,” Cyrus said to Maria and Dewey, before turning to the people from the Magical Tool Laboratory. “Please tell us what you’ve found.”

We’d already told them about the professor’s book, but Larna explained everything in detail once more. She might have been a problem child of sorts within the Ministry, but she really was smart. Her explanation was comprehensive and easy to understand, so much so that Cyrus, who had only heard the story from me, was surprised by several points throughout.

After leaving us, Larna had gone to find more information about the book, but, unfortunately, she had found none.

“I’m planning to go farther from the Ministry tomorrow to ask more people about the book, but I don’t expect to find anything. The story said that the covenant will draw to itself those who look for it, and the library in the Ministry is the largest one in the kingdom. Realistically, that’s our best bet at finding it,” she said, and so it was decided that we’d be searching in the library on the following day as well.

The workday was now over, but Maria said that she would go back to the library to do some more research.

“There’s no rush,” Cyrus said, stopping her. “You’re still a newcomer, and you aren’t used to working here yet. It’s way too soon to overwork yourself.”

Despite what he said, Cyrus went back to his office to finish his own work. He probably wouldn’t have time to tend to the field and relax for a while. Maybe because she was influenced by his diligence, Larna said that she’d be going to her office too, leaving us four newbies in the meeting room.

We prepared to go back home, and despite the fact that everyone but me actually lived in the dormitory, they all casually followed me all the way to the gate.

While we walked there, the conversation was naturally drawn towards the topic of searching through the books.

“You guys are all so incredible, being able to read through all of those heavy, difficult books,” I said in awe.

“I haven’t read even half of what those two have. They’re the awesome ones,” Sora said. He wasn’t trying to speak politely anymore, probably because he’d gotten used to Maria and Dewey.

“Not at all,” said Maria, smiling at her younger colleague. “Dewey has done much more than I have. He is so smart.”

Dewey’s face instantly turned red. Seeing his love grow in real time like that was really endearing.

We eventually reached the gate, and I hopped into the carriage. Tomorrow would be another long day of searching through books.