Night deepened; the stars glittered across the sky.
Leaning back on the sofa, the TV was on, its noisy cheer filling the room.
After ending the call with Aoko, Arato Sora found himself thinking about meeting her tomorrow.
About Aoko suddenly breaking up with him—Sora always acted unbothered in front of Touko, calm and breezy.
But he knew the truth.
He cared a lot.
Compared to that rushed conversation last time, maybe talking face-to-face would be better.
Half-awake in his thoughts, his mind began to sketch scenes of meeting Aoko the next day.
Sleepiness crept in without a sound.
Whether the scenes in his head were "thinking" or "dreaming" became impossible to tell.
Roughly speaking, Sora and Fujino Asagami had spent about seven or eight straight hours slaughtering giant bees.
If that workload had been real life, his body would've been dead on its feet.
And yet, after that, he'd still spent an entire day researching stones—
His mental state was already well into overdraft.
But when he finally collapsed into sleep on the sofa, his consciousness didn't sink into the deep rest he'd wanted.
Instead—
In a pure-white space with nothing at all, like a lucid dream…
Sora saw a familiar figure standing before him.
Amber-gold eyes.
That odd mixture of keen intellect and cold detachment—
Aozaki Touko.
The girl who was in London right now had apparently appeared in his dream through some special kind of magecraft.
And just as Sora opened his mouth, about to speak—
A chain of information poured into his mind.
Just like when Sora had recently sent Touko the images and sounds he'd seen and heard…
Touko replied the same way.
Everything—her fights with other magi, and every sensation and emotion from her negotiation with the Coal Witch—was transmitted flawlessly into Sora's heart.
And because it was first-person, Sora could clearly feel the "missing" part in Touko after the Coal Witch Liddell stole away a portion of her life.
It was about as severe as having her lifespan cut in half.
While feeling the changes in Touko's body, Sora also understood the message embedded in what she sent.
Their trade was now settled; they owed each other nothing.
If he dared to violate the rules she'd set, Touko would immediately treat him as an enemy—and seek to kill him without hesitation.
"In a way, Touko… you're actually pretty similar to Aoko, aren't you?"
After digesting the information, Sora spoke to her.
"Don't waste time. This kind of long-distance instruction across continents—even in a dream—burns through materials at a ridiculous rate. I'm only giving you seven nights. If you can't learn it, I won't teach you again. Now listen. If you have questions, ask immediately. Our time in the dream will be used mainly to teach you the magecraft of the Coal Witch—Liddell."
Touko—every inch the researcher—spoke without mercy.
Sora nodded. He didn't argue.
And with no pause, the atmosphere shifted straight into instruction.
This portion focused on the Coal Witch's unique technique: compressing and refining "life."
And "life" here didn't only mean plants and animals.
From the Coal Witch's title alone, it was obvious she also studied minerals.
In the occult definition, the planet itself was the greatest living thing.
Rocks, soil—everything on the planet was part of that colossal life.
That "life-aspect" was itself one of the Department of Botany's research subjects.
Under Touko's guidance, Sora finally unraveled the question that had been bothering him before he fell asleep—about the strange mineral structure in the dungeon world.
The planet beneath his feet, as a gigantic lifeform, possessed its own "blood vessels."
Magi usually called those blood vessels the planet's leylines.
Just as the mantle's movement over millions of years can force material upward through tectonics, finally cooling into rock—
From a mystery-centric perspective, the planet's leylines would also be squeezed upward through long epochs of motion and circulation, pushed out from deep within the world.
These leylines that emerged at the surface were called spiritual veins—the foundational basis upon which a magus family could establish itself.
Magi could integrate their foundations into local spiritual veins, creating a family's unique specialized magecraft.
And the special stones Sora had found were substances altered by interference during the "spouting" of a spiritual vein.
On the material level the change was minor—
But in the world of mystery, because they were linked to the leyline network, their compatibility with mana was extremely high.
They were ideal materials for crafting mystic codes.
"So stones like that should be worth a lot, right?" Sora asked.
"Ordinary stone has limited value. In mystery research, compatibility with mana is less important than the material's properties and its concept. If something has high mana compatibility and it's a special gemstone, that's extremely valuable. But plain 'stone'—nobody really wants it."
"Then compared to the 'Giant Queen Bee' I handed you… what about gems like that?"
Sora lowered his head, thinking back to what he'd seen in the dungeon world.
Back then he'd been fixated on clearing the objective, not observing the mineral layers.
But structurally speaking, if he followed the traces, he should be able to find quite a few special ores and gemstones there.
"Gemstones are more valuable. They're materials required for top-tier mystic codes, and also necessary to build large-scale magecraft projects."
"I see."
Sora nodded, his expression settling into thoughtful clarity.
"..."
In the dream, Touko silently stared at him.
At this moment, she genuinely didn't know what to say.
The way he looked—
It was like he was about to pull out some ridiculous high-grade gemstone at any second.
And if he really did…
Would she take it?
Or not?
Even Touko herself wasn't sure she could accumulate enough wealth within three years to purchase that kind of material.
If she had such resources to practice with, she could push her current research topic forward at tremendous speed.
Scientific research burned money.
Magecraft research was no different.
Even when she'd still been the Aozaki heir, because that old man in the family insisted on laying low, her resources hadn't been abundant.
She'd barely had the chance to build large-scale magecraft works.
But now—
A large-scale magecraft project wasn't even in the same category as a small one.
The precision of many experiments could be raised to an entirely higher tier.
For Touko—an obsessive perfectionist with a compulsive streak—the temptation was self-evident.
If conditions allowed, she would reduce flaws in her works to the smallest possible degree within her field of view.
In any case, as the dream deepened under the night sky—after Touko finished that night's instruction—the exchange gradually moved to a different topic.
At the end, Touko left Sora a plan for handling the Giant Queen Bee.
She had already sold it to a Clock Tower auction house.
They would take responsibility for transporting it to Japan; if anything went wrong, they would pay all compensation.
When the courier arrived and matched the passphrase, Sora could hand over the item.
And that passphrase would be based on—the Coal Witch Liddell's magecraft.
As long as Sora digested what was now in his head, he would be able to identify the right person easily.
"The things you give me—I'll always pay an appropriate reward."
Touko, chasing perfection, added that as the dream's time drew near its end.
And Sora's final line was—
"I'm meeting Aoko tomorrow. Anything I should watch out for? Touko, you probably don't want my identity as a magus exposed in front of Aoko, right?"
Touko: "..."
The orange-haired girl stared at him in silence.
She was honestly starting to wonder whether this man was deliberately throwing out the sort of information that would destabilize her state of mind.
-------
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