Seeking Magic — with the correct formula and a sufficiently large outpouring of Mana — could trace the location of a being's origin through any mana it had touched, or through fragments of its physical essence.
It was a remarkably concise folk-magic. Yet because each use consumed an extravagant amount of Mana for what amounted to a simple act of finding a person or an object, those who had learned or come to possess it were few indeed.
The moment Yuna received Seeking Magic from Serie, she used it.
Yuna's staff had been crafted by Nanoda's own hands, and within it still lingered faint traces of Nanoda's Mana. In ordinary times, Yuna had never dared to draw upon those traces — she treated them as something precious, untouchable. But now, searching for Nanoda, she could not afford to hold back.
In the stillness of the empty schoolhouse, a brilliant burst of crimson light erupted outward, and the Mana drifting through the air was stirred into a moment of chaotic turbulence.
Yuna gripped the scarlet staff tightly in both hands. As the Mana drained from her at a frightening pace — compounded by the tension of casting this magic for the very first time — the colour began to bleed from her normally rosy cheeks, leaving her pale.
[Please — you have to find her…]
Lips pressed tightly shut, eyes locked on the flow of the Mana until faint red threads appeared at the corners of her eyes — Yuna had never prayed with such desperate sincerity.
Ten years. It had already been ten years since there had been any word of that Demon.
As if she had simply vanished from the face of the earth — that tall silhouette, the one who had once struck down the Red Mirror Dragon, was nowhere to be seen.
Yuna had walked through bitterness and grief alike to reach this moment. She had sought out Seeking Magic for one reason alone: to find her.
It was also the driving force that had carried Yuna all the way to becoming a First-Class Mage.
In the beginning, after Nanoda vanished, Yuna had thought: if only she had not been so weak. If only she had possessed strength enough.
Could she have stood at Nanoda's side and fought alongside her — and would Nanoda then not have disappeared alone, without reason or warning?
First-Class Mage. A level that countless Mages in the years ahead would spend their entire lives striving for and never reach.
Even Serie had praised Yuna's advancement as the fastest in recorded history among her cohort.
And yet, in the end —
Yuna found that she did not truly care about the power of a First-Class Mage. She had not done it for an empty title, either. What she wanted was nothing more than what it had always been — to have Nanoda ruffle her hair, the way she always used to.
A red Mana arrow flickered to life at the tip of the staff. The magic had responded to a trace of Mana — and Yuna, who had been wound so tightly, allowed the faintest glimmer of relief to cross her face.
All she had to do was wait for the arrow to point the way, and she would have her first clue to where Nanoda was.
The hands gripping the staff began to tremble ever so slightly, and her gaze filled with something she had long been without — hope.
"That is…"
The Mana arrow began to spin.
The Mana arrow kept spinning.
The Mana arrow did not stop.
"?!"
Mana continued to pour out of her without end, and the red Mana arrow showed no sign of settling on a direction — it simply spun and spun, tracing endless circles.
Was the Mana insufficient?
Yuna did not hesitate for even an instant. She increased her output. For someone who had already reached First-Class Mage, this much Mana was nothing she could not spare.
As the supply of Mana surged, the efficiency of Seeking Magic rose once more. The red arrow's rotation accelerated — and then it shifted, changing direction entirely, expanding into an irregular sphere spinning in all three hundred and sixty degrees at once. Mana overflowed from it in every direction, and as it turned, it began to whip up a rising gale.
"Ngh — stop it! Point to where she is!"
Yuna did not stop. Her eyes had begun to turn red.
"This time — this time I will find Lady Nanoda! Even just a direction — give me that much — stop spinning and give it to me!"
The furnishings of the schoolhouse were flung about by the Mana-driven wind; the sounds of objects colliding and shattering rang out one after another.
Yuna's once-abundant Mana had already been squandered by more than half, yet the red Mana arrow still showed no sign of stopping.
Time bled away, second by second.
The neatly braided green plaits she had carefully arranged came loose; her hair streamed wild in the wind. Yuna herself had begun to sway on her feet, a spreading weakness taking hold — the Mana within her now nearly spent.
"Why… why is it like this..."
Consciousness was on the verge of leaving her. Yuna braced herself against the staff with all the strength she had left, fighting to stay upright. A single tear slid down her cheek — then was scattered and swept away by the Mana-driven gale, and with it, the last of her will.
A voice came from behind her. Yuna, her Mana utterly spent, slumped against the staff and lost consciousness.
"That is enough. Something is not quite right here — and yet, at the very least, this magic did respond to the being you are looking for."
A far greater Mana descended and simply suppressed the magic before it could spiral out of control.
Every desk and chair and object that had been tumbling through the air froze in place, suspended mid-flight.
An absolute, overwhelming pressure began to saturate the air of the schoolhouse.
Serie appeared within the room, as if from nowhere.
In the same instant, she extended a single slender finger and pointed it at the violently spinning Mana arrow.
At that touch, the red Mana arrow detonated — and her Defensive Magic closed around it, containing a force that could have levelled the surrounding area.
"Truly… Humans… not one of you lets me rest."
The Continental Magic Association, as the institution Serie herself had founded and placed under her protection, fell entirely within the range of Serie's Mana Perception.
Every fluctuation, every change — Serie sensed it the moment it occurred.
This had been an anomaly like no other, and what Yuna was searching for was a being like no other.
Out of curiosity, Serie had once used Seeking Magic to search for traces of the Goddess — who had withdrawn from the world before the Mythical Era — and the result had been nothing: not the faintest response.
Had the Goddess truly vanished? That had been Serie's question at the time. Or had her presence been deliberately concealed?
Even now, she had no way of knowing. After all, one who knew Seeking Magic intimately could also find ways to evade it.
The path of magic stretched outward without end; Serie stood at its furthest frontier, not at its terminus. There were always things in this world that exceeded her expectations — these human Mages among them.
And this time, Seeking Magic had reacted with something altogether excessive.
"I find myself growing more and more curious… But before that —"
She looked down at Yuna, slumped unconscious against her staff, and the expression on Serie's face was one of undisguised exasperation.
Drawn along by the current of her Mana, the furniture and objects that had frozen mid-air or been scattered across the floor gradually drifted back into their proper places.
What surprised Serie was this: even in her faint, Yuna's grip on the staff in her hands had not loosened — not even slightly. And so Serie simply used her magic to carry both of them, staff and all, and deposited Yuna onto the bed.
"Why am I the one cleaning up after someone else's apprentice…"
She grumbled once, then vanished from the spot.
A brief moment passed — and then Serie appeared again. She stood looking at Yuna sleeping on the bed, and let out a quiet sigh.
Gently, she pulled the blanket over her.
…
Yuna dreamed.
A landscape of scorched earth.
The Red Mirror Dragon rampaging. Gaderia swallowed in a sea of flame.
Everyone was fleeing. Baron Aaron — who had always protected her — was stabbed in the back, betrayed and murdered by his own brother.
In the last moment of his life, he spoke the very same words her father had spoken when he held back the Red Mirror Dragon:
[Child — run. You must live.]
Her younger self ran and ran and ran.
Ran and ran.
Losing count of how many times she fell. Losing count of how many times she hauled herself back to her feet.
Mud and tears, all mixed together.
At the very last, when her strength was almost gone, she encountered a woman of generous bearing — beautiful of face, with a voice that moved the heart.
She threw herself into the woman's arms.
And when she raised her head to look —
a searing pain erupted in her chest, and from every limb and every bone there spilled a warm red tide.
"Hah—!"
Heart pounding wildly, she jolted awake from the dream.
____
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