Dammer was infuriated.
He was a member of the Extermination Office; he fought on the front lines against Monsters! People should respect him, yet that white-haired girl made a mockery of him in front of everyone!

(Most importantly, that little brat… She was staring at my face the whole time yesterday as well.)

There had been a carefree smile on her face that still had a somewhat childlike shape… but her amber eyes observed Dammer with an unblinking stare.
That brat must have already noticed.
He ought to arrange some sort of ‘accident’ to get her to disappear as soon as possible, but it would be too suspicious if he acted too soon.
That’s why he would have to make use of this man — Caspar Hütter.
Of course some nerd who came from the Mage Association would have no experience fighting real battles. He just had to rough him up a little bit and he’ll do whatever Dammer wants him to.

“Your student’s been a pain in my ass.”

“Oh, sheesh, well, I’m very sorry for all the trouble.”

“Some cute little ‘sorry’ isn’t gonna solve shit! Look, teach. If you can’t whip some manners into that brat, you need to kick her out of the Wedge Tower yourself!”

“Ah, well… I’ll have a discussion with my students not to be a bother to the nice folks at the Extermination Office. Of course.”
 Dammer stomped violently up to the podium where Hütter was standing.

“I’m telling you to throw that brat out!”

“……”

Hütter exhaled slowly and lightly waved a hand.
Suddenly, an orange light briefly shone in front of Dammer.

(……What was that?)

It was only just past noon. It wasn’t nearly late enough for the colors of sunset to shine through the windows.
And yet, he saw a burning orange.
Hütter waved his hand once again. An orange light enveloped the room, then disappeared as quickly as it appeared. As if a flame burned for only a fraction of a second.
As Dammer tried to track down the source of that flame, Hütter asked him a question.

“Mr. Dammer. Have you ever thought about the perfect crime?”

“…Huh?”

“The perfect crime. How to kill someone without leaving any evidence.”

Hütter brought up a strange topic with the kind of tone you’d use when talking about the weather. In his hand, he held a thin knife. Since when?

“There was a case a long time ago. An illusionist cast an illusion on a certain man. It was an illusion of the man’s chest being stabbed through by a sword. Of course, since it was an illusion, there wasn’t a drop of blood, but… the man died regardless.”

Hütter spun around the knife in his hand.

“The human mind puts too much faith in the things it sees.”

The knife pierced cleanly through the back of Hütter’s left wrist.
The knife passed straight through his arm, and the tip poked out through his sleeve on the other side — However, there was no blood. That knife was an illusion.
And yet, Hütter hadn’t said any incantations.

(Right, I heard a rumor… that the Dream Mage, Caspar Hütter, was a user of chantless illusion magic!)

Hütter pulled out the illusionary knife from his wrist and whispered with a polite laugh.

“If you were to kill someone with illusion magic, that would definitely be a perfect crime.”

It’s a bluff. As long as I know it’s an illusion, I’m not scared of getting stabbed by that knife.
But while Dammer tried to convince himself of that, Hütter set the knife down and raised his other hand.
That hand was covered in fire. His hand was burning. However, Hütter’s face showed no signs of distress.

“Would you like to try for yourself? … Do you think this fire is hot or not?”

(It’s a bluff. Of course it’s all just illusion magic…!)

Hütter reached his burning hand across the podium towards Dammer.
The red flames licked against Dammer’s chin.

“It’s hot!?”

Undoubtably feeling the heat, Dammer flinched away.
As if it was nothing, Hütter flicked his burning hand. Just like that, the fire disappeared without a trace.
It was illusion magic. It was supposed to be an illusion, and yet his mind definitely perceived it as ‘hot.’
Sweating, Dammer stood still in shock.
Then, a trail of red blood started to drip from Hütter’s mouth. Even while bleeding, Hütter smiled indomitably as he spoke.

“Chantless illusion magic takes my life as its price… So how about it? Why don’t we call this even and agree to go our separate ways?”

A chill ran down Dammer’s spine.
This man was serious. Even if it took using chantless illusion magic that shortened his lifespan, he intended to protect his students.

“…………Dammit!”

Cowing under the pressure, Dammer spat and stomped furiously out of the classroom.

Once Dammer had left and the furious stomping drifted out of earshot, Hütter collapsed on the podium.

(Ahh~~~, I feel like I just lost ten years of my life~ This is bad for my heart!)

Behind the podium, two small buckets were lined up. One was filled with ordinary water, while the other was filled with a liquid known as ‘burning water.’ This burning water would catch flame even at low temperatures.
He protected his hands by wetting them with water, then he added the burning water on top of that, and lit a flame under the podium. — That was the secret behind his sleight-of-hand.
An important detail of this particular magic trick was that if the hair on your fingers or the back of your hand had grown to any length, it might get caught up in the fire, so you had to be careful. That was why Hütter had shaved his hands smooth.

(Even then, it’s not like it’s not hot at all.)

Just to be sure, he cooled his hand with water, and turned towards the window to give a light wave with his other hand.
This was his signal to Heidi, the Black Lion Emperor’s subordinate who had been waiting outside, meaning ‘I’m all done here, Heidi. Thanks for the help!’
Hütter had clocked on to Dammer’s personality in his preliminary investigations, so he’d been able to foresee that the man would come to intimidate him at some point.
Therefore, as a man who pulls out all the stops to solve whatever problem is right in front of him, he asked Heidi to prepare some props, and set up this magic trick.
First, he looked into Dammer’s schedule to anticipate the time Dammer would be most likely to come bother him.
Since the classroom had doors in the front and the back, he locked the front door and left the back door slightly ajar. That way, Dammer would certainly enter through that door. This allowed him to keep the props he’d prepared hidden behind the podium.
Once Dammer entered the room, he signaled to Heidi, who was waiting outside, and she used a prop made with orange-stained glass to cast an orange light inside the room.
This was a performance to get Dammer to think that ‘something’ was afoot. It made it easier for him to believe the trick with fire that would come later.
Stabbing the knife through his wrist was a simple sleight of hand. This knife was thin and reasonably curved. All he had to do was to strap a hollow cylinder to the side of his wrist and pass the knife through that cylinder to make it look like he’d been stabbed.
The story he’d told about the man who died from an illusion was an ad-libbed elaboration of some rumor he’d heard somewhere. He had no idea if it was true or not.
Then, finally, he wrapped it up with the burning hand trick… and that was the extent of his plan.
The blood coming from his mouth was, of course, fake blood.

(Sheesh, it’s been a long time since I’ve done something so elaborate… I think the last time was when I was still working as a performer?)

He’d been able to go to a relatively good school, but he spent his youth wondering if it was really best for him to keep on the path his parents had set out for him.
Wishing to become something else, he ran away from home and tried to make it as an actor, but his plays sold poorly and the troupe ended up disbanding.
To put food on the table, he’d sought work as a traveling performer, but that alone wasn’t enough, so he’d tried his hand at fraud. Then, the end result of a man who fell from grace step-by-step was the third-rate con man Smoke Fox.

(It was fun being a traveling performer, and I had started to think that I might actually be good at it, but…)

He recalled his visit to a certain village long ago.
At that time, he had dyed his hair bright red in order to stand out, and wore much flashier clothes.
The people of this village approached that flashy but unpopular performer with this request:

— There’s a girl who doesn’t have much time left to live. I want you to send that girl off with happy memories.

The villagers offered him plenty of money upfront. They said they wanted him to stay for a while with that money.
He accepted the offer with a light heart at first. For a joyless village in the boonies to accept his performances to that extent, he remembered feeling quite pleased with himself.
But the girl in question with not long left to live, said this to him one day:

“Hey, performer. I have a request.”

“Of course, anything you want. What is it?”

“I’m probably going to say a lot of sad things from now on, so…”

This girl was good at hiding her emotions. She knew she didn’t have long, yet she would always act so cheerful in front of her family.
However, she must have felt so, so scared and helpless.
She didn’t want to burden her family with all of that, so she instead leaned on this passing stranger.

“I don’t care if it’s a lie; just tell me I’m going to get better… I want you to tell me I’m going to live.”

‘I don’t care if it’s a lie.’ Her words trembled with sadness.
What a cruel world they lived in, that such a young girl would be forced to say such a thing.
He said ‘Okay.’
The girl broke into tears and latched on to him, sobbing.

“I don’t want to die….!”

“Of course.”

“I don’t wanna die!!…. No!…. I’m scared!…. No!….. Nonono! Nooooo!! I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die! I, still, don’t want to die….!! Ooh, Auuuugh!! AH!!!!”

“You’re not gonna die. Don’t you know, youth is the strongest superpower!”

He patted the girl on the back as she clung to his clothes.
Her back was all skin and bones, and he felt viscerally that her death would come soon.

“I won’t die?”

“Yeah, you’re not gonna die.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s not a lie. You’ll get better in no time.”

He wasn’t a rotten enough guy to casually think ‘I can get paid just to say hollow lies like this, sweet!’
Yet he was not so optimistic and naïve to think ‘This is a gentle lie, for her sake.’
He merely plastered on a half-assed forced smile, and continued to tell those hollow lies.

Then, after less than a week, the girl died.
With the memories of this day still fresh in his heart, he continued on his journey.

(Lies like that………………… They hurt.)

Perhaps he should have chosen then to pursue the path of a priest. Instead, he listlessly continued his journey.
His performances went nowhere, and he committed more and more scams.
From there, he fell until he hit rock bottom, and could only think of his life as a tragedy.

No matter how many more hollow lies he told, he would never be able to overwrite the lie he told to that girl.

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