The AI Archmage - Chapter 73

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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AI Grand Mage Episode 73

Nerin was far more enthusiastic about Sion’s “proposal” than he’d expected.
Oddly optimistic, but that was surely one of Nerin’s defining traits.
[I confess I did not anticipate such a reaction upon hearing odds barely exceeding fifty percent.]
‘Right, no kidding.’
Yet Sion hadn’t been entirely unprepared for this response.
The girl’s circumstances themselves were far from ordinary.
And precisely because of that, Nerin deviated sharply from what a typical mage ought to be.
In some ways, she resembled Altair.
“Let me ask you this first. You don’t want to lose your magic, right?”
“Right!”
“And you don’t want to die either?”
“Exactly!”
“So even if losing your magic guaranteed you’d survive, you’d rather take the risk anyway?”
Nerin went rigid for a moment at that, but soon nodded carefully.
“……Yes.”
A brief silence fell between them. Sion understood where Nerin’s heart lay.
For a mage, magic is essentially their entire life.
And that held true even for the eccentric Nerin.
‘Well, I saw it coming.’
Sion nodded and turned to Nerin. “Actually, there is a way to achieve that probability of mine at one hundred percent.”
“There… there is?”
“Yes. Though there’s one thing I need to confirm first.”
Sion studied her for a moment before asking.
“What’s your bloodline like?”
“……?”
Nerin tilted her head, confused.
“My… bloodline?”
“Yes, your bloodline.”
“I’m an orphan though?”
She looked at him as if he’d said something absurd.
Sion smiled faintly. “Being an orphan doesn’t mean you sprang from the earth.”
“Oh.”
Understanding dawned on Nerin’s face, and she nodded.
Akasha then observed, [Human, it seems you truly cannot be bothered to choose your words carefully.]
‘It’s not important.’
[Is that truly unimportant?]
While Akasha was calculating what was probably her fourteen-hundred-and-twenty-third assessment of whether her creator’s character was acceptable as-is, Sion was thinking.
‘Her bloodline is anything but ordinary.’
His suspicions had begun simply enough—during the process of removing the Magic Tool she’d been forced to implant, blood had spilled.
Using that blood, Sion had investigated the source of Nerin’s talent.
[It was, admittedly, an experiment conducted without consent—a rather rude act, I must confess.]
‘What could I do? That was the only way to properly assess Nerin’s condition.’
Though beyond that reasonable justification, he’d also simply been curious about how such a specimen had come to exist.
……But let’s call that irrelevant.
In any case, the analysis had revealed one certainty: Nerin’s bloodline was far from ordinary.
“Through your blood, I can make an educated guess about your origins. You’re almost certainly of noble descent.”
“How… how did you know that?”
“Noble bloodlines always show their mark. Their blood carries substantial latent Mana—think of it as magic itself, crystallized through lineage. That’s why the noble families command such respect in our magical society.”
The great families hadn’t established their systematic production of superior mages for nothing.
Though imperfect specimens did occasionally emerge, high nobility consistently produced mages of exceptional quality.
And in Nerin’s blood, Sion had found that trace.
“Your bloodline is quite refined. Pinpointing your exact family from blood alone would be difficult, but this much is certain—your parents came from superior bloodlines.”

“A… an excellent bloodline?”
Nerin looked at Sion with an expression of utter bewilderment.
There was no deception in that reaction.
Nerin truly knew nothing about her own bloodline.
“So I need to ask—you said you were assaulted by a ruffian wielding a Magic Killer Weapon, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you notice anything unusual during that attack?”
“Um… well…”
Nerin tilted her head, falling into thought for a moment.
Then, as if remembering something, she spoke.
“Oh! Now that you mention it, the mana those attackers used—how do I put this? The color was a bit odd.”
“Go on.”
“It had a purplish tint to it, I suppose? Though it wasn’t particularly intense. And there was also this faint floral scent.”
“……….”
Purplish mana. A floral scent.
Sion fell silent for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“The reason I’ve been asking you these questions is simple. I suspect the people who attacked you may be connected to your ‘bloodline.'”
“…!”
“You don’t know your own bloodline. Which means it’s highly likely you weren’t born through normal means as a noble-blooded heir.”
Had she been born normally, she would never have turned out so peculiar.
And she certainly wouldn’t be in a place like the Blue Tower.
Yet somehow, through circumstances of some kind, she had grown into an eccentric mage.
And judging from what she was saying now, she didn’t seem to know anything about her parents either.
“Are you saying… my parents want me dead?”
“If my suspicions are correct, I’d say the odds are fairly high.”
It was hardly unusual for noble families to act that way.
There were countless families obsessed with bloodline purity.
And among them were houses that refused to acknowledge even those with exceptional magical talent, simply because they were born out of wedlock or as illegitimate children.
The reason was simple.
They had dirtied the blood.
During his life as Altair, he had witnessed more than a few disposed of for such absurd reasons.
He’d even saved one once—though that was about the extent of it.
Nerin stared blankly into empty space as she listened to Sion’s words.
“Hmm……”
“If I can determine your bloodline precisely, it would be possible to turn that probability into certainty.”
And if the mastermind behind the assault was a noble family connected to Nerin, then perhaps…
‘I could make rather good use of that.’
Sion smiled quietly to himself at the thought.
Of course, nothing was certain yet.
It was entirely possible that Nerin’s attackers were simply bandits with no connection to any noble house, just ones who happened to wield Magic Killer Weapons.
But.
[You cannot wield a Magic Killer Weapon unless you are quite determined. They are absurdly expensive. Typically, such an item is not something a mere bandit would possess.]
‘That much is true.’
[It is for precisely these reasons that I suspect the bandits from last time had some significant backing.]
‘That’s also a fact.’
Sion agreed with Akasha’s assessment.
And if his current suspicions were correct, then perhaps…
“Nerin, you might just be able to form an ‘amicable relationship’ with your foundational family.”
“…Huh?”
Nerin’s expression showed she had no idea what he meant.
But seeing that Sion looked pleased, she laughed anyway.
“Hehehehehehe!”
“Hufufufu.”
And watching the two of them laugh like that, Akasha made a simple assessment.
[Insane humans……]

* * *

The next day.
Lumia diligently trained in the Secret Magic that Sion had taught Belusian, as she did every day, and found herself lost in thought.
‘Wow, this isn’t easy at all.’
And the realization that followed.
“No wonder it’s called a secret technique.”
Even she, called a genius, couldn’t reproduce her Master’s secret technique with any ease.
It wasn’t strange, really.
It was Belusian’s secret technique, after all.
And even her Master had judged that Lumia at the time wouldn’t fully understand the technique, so she’d never taught it to her.
The saving grace, though, was that Sion knew the technique and possessed enough explanatory skill to make Lumia understand it.
But still.
“Celestial Scale……”
The moment Lumia began the incantation.
Boom!
Mana that ran wild faster than she could control.
Lumia gritted her teeth and struggled with all her might to bring the mana under complete control.
After what felt like an eternity, she finally managed to rein in the flow of mana and breathed heavily.
“This really…… isn’t easy.”
The first-stage condition for using secret magic was to spread mana throughout your entire body and temporarily release control.
But the problem was that the secret magic itself demanded an enormous quantity of mana.
And no matter how talented Lumia was, if that ‘enormous mana’ slipped from her control for even a moment, there was nothing she could do about it.
‘Master, why are your secret techniques always set to such a high standard?’
Hayden from the Red Tower had learned it easily enough.
But this one’s standards were far too demanding.
Of course, when she finally could wield the secret magic completely, the reward would be substantial.
“Sigh, if only Sion would come by now and explain things……”
“Tower Master.”
“Kyaaaaa!”
At the voice that came from nowhere, Lumia leaped from her seat.
“Wh-what, what is it?! And more importantly, Sion, when exactly did you——!”
“That’s not important. What matters is that I’ve brought some rather good news.”
“G-good news?”
Even amid the confusion, Lumia found herself thinking.
‘Th-this is unsettling.’
From what she’d observed of Sion over time, one thing was certain.
She was incredibly fast.
And whenever Sion said she’d brought “good news,” it was easier to interpret it as a warning to prepare yourself, because she was about to stir up something big.
“Wh-what are you planning……”
“Didn’t you say you’d learn from watching me? You shouldn’t be surprised by something like this.”
“Th-that’s……”
She wasn’t wrong, though at the same time, Lumia thought to herself.
‘The pace is too fast……’
Even if she wanted to study, the progress was moving too quickly for her to keep up.
Sion wasted no time and got straight to business.
“I’d like to establish close ‘amicable relations’ with some respectable noble houses.”
“That……sounds like a good idea?”
The Blue Tower had recently resolved many crises, yet problems still remained.
One of them was the simple fact that there weren’t many noble families with whom they maintained proper relations.
At this point, aside from the Workshop Alliance, the Blue Tower was practically isolated.
“Oh, could it be that you’ve already started talks with the Rostery Family?! If it’s you, I’m sure——”
“No, don’t worry about them. As I mentioned, relations aren’t particularly good with that family.”
“Oh.”
So that wasn’t it.
Lumia felt a small pang of disappointment even as she pressed Sion for more information.
“Then could you tell me about this family? I’d like to know what kind of house it is first……”
“I don’t know.”
“……Pardon?”
How were you supposed to establish amicable relations with a family you didn’t even know?
The more she listened, the more confused everything became.
Sion continued.
“There’s a possibility that someone might assault the Main Tower in the near future, and there’s a good chance that this noble family is the one behind it.”
“……?”
“Isn’t it rather fortunate? Trust blooming amid crisis, no less. And if we play our cards right, we’ll have a perfectly legitimate justification to utterly bind those bastards.”
“Wait…… hold on a moment.”
Lumia struggled desperately to grasp what Sion was saying, but she couldn’t.
“I mean…… isn’t the Main Tower being attacked bad news?”
“The means are irrelevant.”
“Huh?”
Sion spoke to Lumia as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“We’ll thrash these attackers without taking a scratch, forge amicable relations with some noble house in the process. Surely the *outcome* is what matters, is it not?”
“……?”
As she listened, Lumia turned the words over in her mind.
‘This feels like scheming.’
The thought came to her so naturally, so overwhelming, that she couldn’t deny it.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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