How a Catastrophe-Level Magician Lives

Lady Orleans spoke.

“…I don’t know.”
“……”
“What do you mean by that? What on earth?”
The one who seemed most perplexed by these words was none other than Iolus himself.

“……Are you still hesitating to tell me the truth? Even though the situation has come to this-!”
“……!!”
For the first time, Iolus raised his voice.

To that extent, he was usually a person who hid his emotional changes well, not letting them show on the surface.

Hearing such an answer, he seemed to show another side of himself, as if he was extremely angry.

Lady Orleans, flustered, denied it.

“N-No! It’s not like that!”
“Then what exactly!! What do you mean you don’t know!”
“Sob, please listen to me, Iolus….”
“….”

Flinching, Lady Orleans now seemed to start sobbing, covering her face with both hands as if tears were beginning to blur her vision.

At this, Iolus, though feeling conflicted, continued to press his mother to the end.

“……Crying like that won’t change anything. I must know the truth. So please answer me properly.”
“I-Iolus! How could you do this to me….!”
The one who seemed to despair and be devastated by her son’s unbelievable behavior was his birth mother, Lady Orleans.

But finally, under Iolus’s cold, serious gaze, she eventually collapsed…! Kneeling down on the floor.

“……It was one day.”
At last, Lady Orleans, who had been sitting quietly, opened her mouth as if to begin her story.

“In my youth, there was a man I met at a ballroom.”
“……”
The audience listening to this story could only remain silent.

Lady Orleans continued after a brief pause.

“He and I ended up falling in love. It was something that my young, naive self of the past should never have done.”
The lady’s tone also seemed to genuinely regret some past youthful mistake.

“……That night, I accidentally conceived you there.”

She didn’t say it was a mistake.

Perhaps because she felt she shouldn’t say that giving birth to him was a mistake in front of her son Iolus.

Lady Orleans bit her lower lip hard and then spoke while staring at the floor. With a gaze and attitude as if recalling and reminiscing about that time.

“After that, it’s a somewhat futile story of how I found out I was pregnant with you, that man’s child, and not long after, I became the lady of House Phoenix through a political marriage.”
“……”

Often, when you learn the truth, it turns out to be nothing special.
And with those words, Lady Orleans finally quietly closed her eyes once.
Iolus quietly listened to the end of all those words and.

He bowed his head deeply while clenching his fist.

Then Iolus, as if realizing something, raised his head again and asked his mother.

“…Then. Are you saying that the identity and name of my real father are all unclear?”
“Yes……”
“Then, where on earth did that drug come from?”

What he’s asking about is the drug that was detected to have narcotic components, which was fed to the current head of House Phoenix.

Lady Orleans answered.

“…It was given to me by a mysterious magician who approached me one day.”
“A mysterious magician…?”
To his question, Lady Orleans continued.

“Yes. It was a bag containing over forty of them. He said that if I mixed each one slowly with some kind of neutralizer and consumed it over a certain period, I would soon be able to control the person who took it like a puppet as I wished.”
“……”
“He was a very frightening person. Wearing a black robe. He readily handed it over to me without revealing his face or identity at all, and suddenly disappeared from that place. Saying that it might be useful later, so use it as I wish.”

Lady Orleans seemed to be terribly afraid of that person’s appearance and the eerie atmosphere he exuded knowingly or unknowingly at the time.

“But I never thought I would really use it like this. At one point I even thought about throwing it away…. But in the end, the thought that you never know held me back.”
“……What was the real reason you ended up using it? If you knew it was such a dangerous item. If you were aware that it wasn’t obtained through normal means. You shouldn’t have used it in the end, right?”
To Iolus’s question, Orleans looked at Lady Rena, who was standing on one side, with a self-deprecating smile full of regret.

“……I heard it just recently, only 3 months ago.”

Lady Orleans was saying.

“That woman’s daughter might grow up to be an outstanding magician who could become an incredible talent in the future. Even though I didn’t want to hear it within the family, I couldn’t help but accidentally come across those circulating rumors through the young maids.”

The triggers that made her become alert.

“…That’s not all. That woman’s son, that guy, might have even more extraordinary potential. As a result of my secret investigation, I heard that he has such outstanding magical abilities that he might have no equal among the first-year students even in the Orwen Empire, a different empire.”
As she said this, at the end of her shifted gaze was Frey.

Then the head of the family eventually said to her.

“……So, you harbored this dissatisfaction towards me for not designating and selecting an heir until the end, and finally exploded like this?”
“You…! If you had just picked one of my sons as the family heir earlier…! No, if you had just mentioned it directly from your own mouth even once until now! I wouldn’t have lived this life trembling in anxiety day after day!”

As if harboring deep resentment, Orleans shouted at the head of the family who had spoken those words.

The head of the family just kept his mouth firmly shut with a complicated look in his eyes.

But soon he opened his mouth again and after hesitation, he eventually said.

“……That was. Something I really couldn’t help from my position.”
“What exactly! What position was it that you couldn’t help!”
To Lady Orleans’ shouting, the head of the family closed his eyes tightly with a solemn expression and continued.

“…Iolus. The situation where I kept doubting whether he was my own son or not, with the suspicion becoming clearer as the child grew up. The second son, Alcas, has a personality and tendencies that are too violent and rough, like a volcano. He’s too lacking in many ways to sit in the position of the head of the family who handles important family matters. I heard that he can’t control himself and just makes decisions and acts according to momentary emotions, and there are even endless rumors and incidents from here and there.”
“……”
“F-Father! T-That’s…!”
Alcas tried to interject in the middle of the head of the family’s words, trying to make various excuses, but the head of the family’s words weren’t finished yet.

“Also, the third son, Albert…. He’s the child with the most potential, but…… However, he himself has no intention of taking on such a high responsibility as the family heir. Do you know what Albert’s dream is, madam?”
“……That’s….”
Lady Orleans, who heard the head of the family’s unexpected question, seemed unable to answer that question right away.

Seeing this reaction, the head of the family eventually said with a deep sigh mixed in.

“Huu…… Of course not. I didn’t even think you would know that. Madam, you always just wanted me to directly mention and designate the family heir from among your sons as soon as possible.”
“……”
Lady Orleans couldn’t refute those words.

It seemed that those words were somewhat true.

The head of the family continued.

“Albert’s dream is….”
It was then.

The person who was mentioned as the subject, the third son of House Phoenix, Albert von Betelgeuse, stepped forward and deliberately interrupted the head of the family’s words, which was rude and not proper etiquette.

“Wait a moment, Father. If we’re going to reveal it anyway, I’d like to say it with my own mouth. I’ll use this opportunity to speak for myself.”
“……Alright. I understand.”
The head of the family nodded and allowed it.

Albert turned around and, after taking a deep breath with his eyes closed once towards the audience whose attention was focused on him, eventually spoke as if he had made some kind of decision.

“……I. If I may be so bold.”
The final gaze was directed at Lady Orleans, who was sitting on the floor with her legs weakened.

“I want to become a magic engineer, not a magician.”
“……!!”

It was an unexpected, hidden dream of his own.

Many things were being revealed one after another in this place.

A few days after the incident that day.

Lady Orleans was eventually transferred to the imperial capital and taken to a prison there, as her vicious act of nearly assassinating the head of a family was exposed.

It was a measure taken through official procedures via the empire, as the head of the family couldn’t bring himself to imprison her directly in House Phoenix’s prison.

This showed well how the head of the family’s feelings and his view and treatment of his first wife, Lady Orleans, were until the very end.

‘…Still. Is this because she was his wife?’

It was a series of too shocking events.
House Phoenix gained an untimely quiet stillness.

As if the family had suddenly closed its doors.

“Sigh….”
“Why are you sighing so heavily all by yourself?”
“Brother Albert.”

The person he turned to see was none other than Albert, the blonde young nobleman who was the third son of House Phoenix, who had said he wanted to become a magic engineer himself.

The current location was a garden of the family mansion where sunlight shone after a long time since the storm had passed.

Frey was in the middle of calmly organizing his thoughts and feelings there.

“What brings you here?”
“Of course, I came to see you.”
“….”

At Albert’s words, Frey suddenly closed his mouth and fell silent.

‘You’re still a brother whose inner thoughts I can’t understand at all.’

That’s right.
Frey had been trying to consider Albert as a real family member and address him as such for some time now.

Albert, the blonde, green-eyed young nobleman, quietly approached Frey with a smile and gently placed one hand on his shoulder.

“Little brother.”
Glance.

“Yes, brother.”

Frey’s gaze briefly glanced at his shoulder held by Albert’s hand, but he didn’t particularly refuse or stop it.

Rather, he showed an attitude of listening briefly to Albert in front of him, who was showing a rather serious atmosphere unlike usual.

Finally, Albert said to him.

“When I eventually achieve my dream and leave the family completely, you’ll be the only man left in the family to inherit it, except for Brother Alcas.”
“……”
What on earth was he trying to say to him?

Albert then looked at Frey with gentle, curved eyes and spoke his final words.

“So I’m counting on you. Our family. And our ‘father’.”
“……..”

A long silence followed for a while.

Albert left after delivering only those words. Perhaps he was about to return to his academy to match the end of the academy vacation period.

Left alone in that place, Frey….

“……”

Unconsciously, he looked up at the warm sunlight rising in the sky.

With one hand partially covering the light in front of his eyes, as it was too dazzling after the rainy clouds had cleared.

It was an untimely confused state of mind for Frey.