[V9C15] A Mage’s Peak
Translated by Jodas 9: Battle for the Tower“The Werewolf’s collaborator… is Ms. Röhm.”
The Apprentices all gasped at Hütter’s words.
‘Of course they would.’ Hütter thought. From the Apprentices’ perspective, both Director Hegelich and Röhm would be the last ones they’d suspect of anything.
“The reasoning is simple. Ms. Röhm is the one responsible for the teaching materials and supplies the Apprentices use. If a Monster is pretending to be a human, then they would need someone to watch out for them so they don’t have a weird reaction with the teaching materials or magical devices.”
Monsters were said to cause modern magical devices to malfunction. If that was true, then whether during the mana evaluation with the mana measuring device or when using magical devices or other such items during classes, they would need to have someone backing them up to prevent the secret from getting out.
The only one capable of such a thing at the moment was Röhm.
“If you ask the other folks from the Guidance Office, they’ll tell you how strictly controlled the teaching materials are. After all, Röhm is a real hard-ass about this kind of stuff. If you even leave one sheet of paper out of place she’ll give you an earful.”
For whatever reason, Wren and Tia’s eyes started darting around. They must have had some thoughts about that.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’ Hütter elected to continue his explanation.
“There’s other reasons to suspect Ms. Röhm as well. It was Ms. Röhm who assisted Director Hegelich in that entrance exam when the Werewolf appeared. Which meant she could have covered things up if the Werewolf let anything slip during the entrance exam.”
To be honest, Hütter thought the chances weren’t zero that Director Hegelich or Sombart were the Werewolf’s collaborator instead.
It wouldn’t be hard to convince himself that Sombart had dug into Hütter’s identity in order to conceal the Werewolf’s identity.
Yet if he looked at it from all angles, the most probable answer as it stood from Hütter’s perspective would be Anneliese Röhm.
(Mr. Armster is probably… involved with that thing I bet.)
On that front, well… he didn’t have any proof. All of this was just a theory.
Yet he had no obligation to say everything he was thinking. He only needed to say the bare minimum, and so long as he could alleviate the suspicion against himself, then he would be happy.
Hütter looked around at the faces of Wren, Tia, Sevil, and Rukiye. Everyone — even Sevil — was visibly astonished.
Otto, who had been listening to the conversation beside him up to this point, hesitantly interjected.
“I really think it would be a bit much for Ms. Röhm to be the traitor… When she was in the Extermination Office she killed Monsters left and right, you know? Do you really think such a person would side with the Monsters?”
The Apprentices didn’t say anything, but ‘Yeah, that’s right!’ was written on their faces.
Hütter slowly exhaled out of his nose to give off the impression of ‘It pains me to talk about this stuff.’
“I’m sure you’re aware that Ms. Röhm suffers from mana organ damage, correct? But are you aware of just how… desperate she’s been to cure her condition?”
Otto gently shook his head.
Well, that would track. Otto hadn’t interacted with Röhm all that much in a personal capacity.
“I have the same condition, so she’s shared some of her research with me… and it was astounding. Both the quality and quantity of the materials she’s gathered as well as countless of Ms. Röhm’s handwritten notes. Everything from Classical Magecraft techniques to the most cutting-edge medical magic technology.”
“Please, by all means, take a look at this, Mr. Hütter!” — Röhm had said as she guided him to a room that was buried from wall to wall in papers.
Hütter wasn’t a mage himself, so he had no knowledge of medical magic at all. That said, ever since he told that lie about mana organ damage, he’d taken a look at some materials to get as good of a grasp on the subject as he could so he could answer questions convincingly.
Obviously, Hütter hadn’t the slightest clue about medical magic.
Nevertheless, he could tell to a dizzying degree just how intensely passionate she had to have been to gather those materials.
“After seeing just how much research she’d done,”
Hütter spoke morosely, with a pained expression.
“I thought: ‘Ah, no matter how much effort she put into it, Ms. Röhm still couldn’t find a way to heal herself?’”
Otto and the Apprentices were all enraptured by Hütter’s tale.
From their expressions, he could sense the deep sympathy they felt for Röhm’s plight.
“If some incredibly powerful Monster were to approach a human facing such an incurable illness and said ‘I can cure your disease.‘… Even if it was a lie, don’t you think you would find it tempting?”
Otto swallowed his words. It seemed like he’d been convinced.
And thus, the curtain closed on the Smoke Fox Theatre… Yet at that moment, Tia chirped “Piyo?”
“Huh? But if she wants to cure this mana or-gan damage, then wouldn’t you want to do the same thing, Mr. Hütter?”
(Oh crap, now that you say that, you’re right—!)
The Apprentices once again gave Hütter looks of suspicion.
Hütter failed to maintain his confident expression. At this point the best he could do was a forced smile.
“Tia, you’ve gotten a lot smarter, huh?”
“Piyopp! I’ve been complemented!”
In contrast to Tia’s cheer of delight, Sevil’s purple eyes gleamed harshly as the corners of her lips raised into a smirk.
“As I thought, Mr. Hütter is incredibly suspicious. Need I carry out an interrogation?”
What a lovely and terrifying smile. Even this old man was on the verge of tears.
“Ah, well, when it comes to our mana organ damage, Ms. Röhm’s passion is on a totally different level from me… wait, no, I really do want to cure it too, right? Really, I do. But mages also have the issue of age too, you know?…”
The third-rate con man put his sharp tongue to work, spinning one excuse after another.
Coming up with believable reasoning as he spoke was his specialty.
“A mage’s peak is said to be in their late twenties, right? Basically as soon as you come of age you’re already slowly withering away. You can only fight on the front lines until you hit thirty for the most part. When you consider Ms. Röhm’s age, she’s right on the edge, isn’t she? That’s why I thought Ms. Röhm may or may not be in somewhat of a panicked state…”
The Hundred-Eyes Witch Anneliese Röhm activated her detection magic.
Her epithet comes from the precision and accuracy of her detection and reconnaissance magics from which no enemies could escape. And, once she’d read the results of those detections, she had the talent to strike down that enemy with certainty.
Röhm divided her arrow of lightning into twenty fragments, knocking down the magecraft cast by the Wedge Tower’s mages with extreme precision.
Ten towards the arrows of lightning fired by Haydn, the other ten towards the attack magics fired by the mages fighting on the ground.
Screams echoed from all around. The balance of the battle between humans and Monsters was broken.
“LIEEESSE!!!”
Haydn howled. Had he finally started taking her seriously?
A mage’s peak was somewhere around twenty years of age. One could only fight on the front lines until around the age of thirty.
Both Haydn and Röhm were in their late twenties — they didn’t have much time left.
(Oh, thank goodness. I made it in time.)
When her mana organs became damaged leaving her unable to use magecraft, she cried so much she was worried she might run out of water in her body. As she cried, she searched for a means to cure herself.
Yet the months and years flew by without a cure.
“Heal!”
She devoured every paper she could find on the latest medical magecraft. She tried any and all methods.
She even tried using Classical Magecraft. She sought the secrets of the Old Era.
“Heal!”
Yet the holes in her chambers would not fill in. Her mana continued to drain out, and that mana ate away at Röhm from the inside.
Slamming her hand — still unable to emit any mana — against her desk, Röhm had wailed.
“Why won’t you heal already!”
She would do whatever it took to be able to use magecraft once again. To be rivals with Fritz Haydn once again. Even if that meant selling her soul to the devil.
Speak of the devil, and he shall come.
That man who had approached her, calling himself the ‘Chancellor,’ had the form of a blond young man. He was a hollow man, on whom the plastered-on smile fit perfectly.
“With these Crystal Rivets, your mana organs can be stabilized. They were originally intended to restrain the power of Monsters, but they have different effects when used by humans.”
“So, what say you?” — The devil had offered his hands, and Röhm had hesitated for only a second before taking that hand.
The moment she reached out her hand, she would become an enemy of humanity. She didn’t mind.
Even if meant expending her hollow, meaningless life; even if it meant selling her soul to the devil, she would have it back.
Anneliese Röhm would once again have her ultimate rival: Fritz Haydn.