"If you know you've done wrong, you have to change your ways — understand?"
Dark solemnly removed the wooden placard from Meowth's neck and set it to one side.
The very next instant, Catnip snatched the placard up in its mouth and carried it back into the little sleeping basket.
Meowth glanced over, then suddenly shot out a paw and fished around inside the basket — retrieving the placard carved with the words "Naughty Troublemaker" — and promptly hid it behind its back.
Dark had witnessed the whole thing and stood there, thoroughly stunned.
...
Only after Meowth had tucked the placard away in its little cabinet like a treasured keepsake did Dark return it to the Magic Guide Card.
He then lay on his bed, holding the deep-violet bead between two fingers, and studied it carefully against the ceiling.
After a moment's thought, he squeezed it sharply — and for just an instant, the divine light swirling within flickered slightly brighter.
"Hm?"
That faint brightening gave him the first real inkling of the bead's purpose.
Yet he couldn't recall ever encountering anything like it.
The [Seven-Star Coin] from before had at least left some trail to follow; this bead offered him nothing to go on.
Under normal circumstances, unless he was lucky enough to stumble across matching records in the library, asking a professor was the more reliable path to an answer.
Still, relying too heavily on professors wasn't ideal, so Dark decided he'd try the library first thing tomorrow.
...
The first day of March began with Arithmetic class.
Dark received a private notification from Professor Lily at half past six in the morning — and he had very strong opinions about this kind of abuse of the Sorting Card system for personal convenience.
He showed up at Professor Lily's office at around ten to seven regardless.
"Good morning, Professor Lily."
When he pushed open the door, he found textbooks stacked and spread all across the floor.
Professor Lily stood there with her hands on her hips, looking tremendously pleased with herself. "Well? My binding work is pretty good, isn't it? I even took your advice and changed the name to Mathematics I. The study of numbers — mathematics. Catchy, right?"
Dark picked up a copy of Mathematics I at random and flipped through it, finding the contents even better than he'd expected.
Not only was the layout clean and problem-free, but nearly every chapter was accompanied by rather adorable illustrations.
One look at that and it was clear — this wasn't Professor Lily's handiwork.
"Professor," Dark asked casually, "did you get someone to help you?"
Professor Lily's expression stiffened at once, her gaze sliding away.
"It turned out well," Dark added. "Must have been a meticulous professor."
Professor Lily gave an awkward little laugh at that. "It was Professor Bacon — the one who teaches Arithmetic to the second-years. She heard about what we were teaching from her students and came to us looking for a collaboration, hoping we'd allow her to use our materials in her second-year classes."
"Professor Bacon?"
Dark racked his brain but couldn't place any professor who gave off a "bacon" sort of impression.
That said, making the material widely available had always been part of his original intent when he began writing it, so he had no objection to Professor Bacon's involvement.
What he did find exasperating was Professor Lily's transparently obvious tactic of offloading work onto someone else.
Then again, you couldn't force enthusiasm.
A professor who'd jumped in of her own accord, like Professor Bacon, would naturally pour more care into producing the materials.
All things considered, this was a net gain. Pure profit.
Noticing his slightly puzzled look, Professor Lily said, "Professor Bacon is surprisingly a good person. Would you like me to introduce you? I could arrange a little mathematics tea party, for instance."
Dark smiled. "That won't be necessary. Just pass along my thanks when you see her."
"Hm?" Professor Lily looked perplexed. "She's the one benefiting from the arrangement, though — why would we be the ones saying thank you?"
Dark simply smiled and said nothing.
...
As class time drew near, Dark summoned Meowth and had it help carry the textbooks for both houses to the classroom.
Professor Lily summoned a voluptuous, fine-featured Enchantress to help as well.
The two of them, plus their two companions, made their way to the classroom with arms full of textbooks.
By the time they arrived, the room was already packed.
Professor Lily exercised her authority as a professor and called on a few male students to help distribute Mathematics I.
The students reveled in the joy of finally having a proper textbook — a few were so moved they actually burst into tears.
Professor Lily then launched into her lesson on basic geometry.
This class was focused on the Pythagorean theorem — the 3-4-5 right triangle relationship.
People encountering the Pythagorean theorem for the first time generally found it astonishing.
Truthfully, it was.
The students were utterly engrossed, feeling as though they were learning magic.
What they hadn't realized was that magic was extraordinarily deep and difficult to master.
In that respect, mathematics was exactly the same.
...
During the break after mathematics class, Dark could clearly sense that the atmosphere had shifted.
It seemed that the turning of the calendar to March had suddenly reminded the young Magic Guides that White Valentine's Day was just around the corner, and both boys and girls — whether they had something hanging in the balance or not — couldn't help but feel a little nervous.
As for exactly what it was they were nervous about?
Who could really say.
Perhaps it was the anticipation of a response.
Perhaps it was not wanting a close friend to find their other half and drift away from the group.
Perhaps it was not wanting the person they secretly liked to receive — or give — a reply.
In any case, the reasons were far more numerous than most people would expect.
Caught up in it all himself, Dark couldn't help but feel the weight of it too.
The Valentine's Day and White Valentine's Day pair-festival setup had many good points — except for how thoroughly unkind it was to whoever had received chocolates on Valentine's Day.
If two people were in that ambiguous territory of more-than-friends but not-quite-lovers, the complications only multiplied.
Depending on how you handled it, the friendship you'd had before could easily shatter.
That was precisely the kind of dilemma Dark found himself tangled up in.
But thinking it over more carefully, the atmosphere when Pandora, Rose, and Professor Lily had given chocolates on Valentine's Day had actually been rather casual — nothing like the charged intensity of being head over heels.
The Valentine's Day they'd spent together out in the snow had carried a different feeling entirely — quiet, natural, unhurried.
As if they'd skipped straight past the heady rush of new romance and fast-forwarded to simply living together.
Perhaps that wasn't quite accurate.
But it had felt that way at the time.
So Dark decided he'd keep things equally easygoing.
"I'll think of it as just a way to deepen the bond."
He hadn't originally planned to respond at all.
But one good turn deserves another.
So in the end, he decided to make some kind of gesture.
...
After the second morning class — Magic Guide Theory — Dark headed straight to the library.
He set about trying to track down information on the bead on his own.
His search terms were "orb," "absorb impact," and "violet."
But trying to locate the right materials from that vast library with so little to go on was an almost impossibly tall order.
In the end he slapped his forehead and decided to simply ask Pandora, who was nearby.
However, the one on duty at noon turned out to be Ms. Bella.
Ms. Bella was a somewhat heavyset middle-aged woman with a warm, approachable face that naturally made people feel at ease around her.
Dark didn't have much history with Ms. Bella, so once he confirmed that Pandora wasn't on duty that noon, he prepared to leave.
But Ms. Bella beckoned him over, then pulled a stool out from under the counter and gestured for him to sit.
Dark was a little surprised, but sat down obediently.
Ms. Bella said warmly, "Demon, you're twelve this year, aren't you?"
Dark nodded. "Yes, ma'am. My birthday is in June."
Ms. Bella then said, quite out of nowhere, "That's three years younger, then."
Dark: ??
She pressed on: "You don't have a betrothal, do you?"
Dark's mouth fell open, and he stayed silent for a long moment.
Not because he was unwilling to answer — only because he genuinely wasn't sure himself.
In theory, he did have a fiancée — she was, after all, the most popular female character in the original game.
But in his own memories, there was no betrothal.
So whenever he turned the question over in his mind, he couldn't help but wonder: could it be an engagement that hadn't been arranged yet — one that would only come about later?
When he'd first enrolled, he had placed some of his hopes for happiness on that unknown, unnamed fiancée.
But now, he found he didn't particularly care anymore about that possibly-nonexistent fiancée.
If things could develop naturally with one of the girls at the academy who liked him, he thought that would make him quite content.
Dark Demon — his [Greed] value had been climbing steadily, yet he wasn't, at his core, a greedy person.
And so, in that moment, he gave an honest answer.
Dark shook his head and said, "Ms. Bella, you probably know that nobles sometimes form engagements for all manner of reasons. I don't know myself — but I can't say for certain that I have no betrothal."
"Is that so?"
Ms. Bella let out a somewhat disappointed sigh.
But she didn't let him leave; instead she continued: "Then what are your thoughts on the current marriage system?"
"The marriage system?" Dark was puzzled.
Ms. Bella elaborated: "Polygamy, specifically."
Dark understood at once.
In this world, early wars had claimed so many men on the battlefield that the ratio of men to women had become severely imbalanced — which was how polygamy had come about.
Later, women took to the battlefield as well, and owing to the previous cultural preference for having sons over daughters, the ratio had gradually returned to something closer to normal.
Polygamy had begun to be phased out around that time.
But not entirely.
For both commoners and certain nobles who wished to take additional wives, the barrier had risen considerably — they were required to go to a church, perform a confession, and pay a substantial penance fee before they could earn the right to take one more.
However, great nobles of earl rank and above faced no such restrictions.
To be precise, it was earls who held domain land, and great nobles of earl rank and higher, who legitimately enjoyed the privilege of polygamy.
That said, this so-called "polygamy" was in practice a system of one principal wife and multiple concubines.
Only the sole principal wife could be addressed as "Lady" at formal occasions and hold legitimate claim to title inheritance.
There was also the concept of a "secondary wife" — a middle ground between the principal wife and a concubine, ranked above the concubine but below the principal wife.
But the "secondary wife" status had no legal recognition.
Of course, even this privilege for great nobles was being resisted in the current era.
As women's status continued to rise, more and more of these social phenomena would only increase.
Ms. Bella, quite obviously, had raised this question against the backdrop of these larger social changes.
Dark, however, held a fairly indifferent attitude about it.
He had something of a "go with the flow" mentality.
Part of it was also simply that he didn't have the spare mental bandwidth to think about issues so removed from his own life.
So he answered: "Time will give us the answer."
Ms. Bella was disappointed once again.
She had clearly been hoping Dark was a staunch advocate of monogamy — in other words, she had hoped he was the devoted, one-woman type.
By this point, Dark had already guessed what Ms. Bella was thinking. He could easily have played along and given her a satisfying answer — but he didn't.
There was no point.
Dark Demon had absolutely no need to paint himself in colors that weren't his own.
...
The conversation between Dark and Ms. Bella ended there.
He gave it a little thought afterward, but only a little.
In the History of Magic class that followed, Professor Ryan Hacks finally resumed his account of the historical campaigns he loved to tell, and Dark listened with real attention — which promptly swept the exchange with Ms. Bella right out of his mind.
After class, he packed up his things and headed directly to Professor Kazel's office, rapping on the door.
Knock knock knock.
"Come in."
Dark stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
Professor Kazel was bent over the door card, working on improvements — clearly in the thick of it.
Not wanting to disrupt him, Dark got straight to the point: he took out the violet bead and held it up. "Professor, do you know what this is?"
Professor Kazel took the bead and studied it closely. The longer he looked, the more astonished his expression became. "Where on earth did you find a Shelgon Orb?"
"A Shelgon Orb?" Dark echoed.
Professor Kazel nodded. "The Shelgon Orb — a product of a high-rank magical creature called a Shelgon. It sits at the top of the creature's shell and can absorb physical impacts, converting them into magical energy for the Shelgon. It's an outstanding material for crafting shields."
...
"A shield-crafting material — more or less what I'd guessed."
Dark turned it over in his mind briefly and a plan began to take shape.
He bid Professor Kazel farewell and made his way swiftly back to the dormitory.
There, he made a decision.
He summoned Meowth, explained the properties of the Shelgon Orb, and instructed it to craft a wooden shield — using the Shelgon Orb as its centerpiece.
Meowth received its bead back and looked between the orb and Dark over and over again, as if it couldn't quite believe what was happening.
It still had a vivid memory of how Dark's attitude toward the bead had shifted after taking it last night.
Part of it had secretly attributed some of its forgiveness to that "tribute."
But now that the bead was back in its paws, that notion crumbled.
Meowth fell into a quiet, contemplative silence.
...
Dark watched Meowth's reaction carefully and knew he'd made the right call.
A faint smile touched his lips. Then he turned to begin preparations for the Magic Guide Spirit's "Basic Transmutation Method."
Tonight, he was going to use every last bit of Vampire Vlad's [Soul Powder].
____
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