“That prayer actually working is what’s weirding me out. I thought for sure it was gonna fail,” I said, and Karstedt—who would now be considered Rozemyne’s biological father—looked up at the ceiling with a frown.
“That was unprecedented, but I don’t think Rozemyne fully understands what she did, nor how significant it is.”
“Indeed. Not at all,” Ferdinand agreed.
“You got hit with the blessing yourself, didn’t you, Ferdinand? Did you teach her to use magic?” While the lights of blessing had avoided Karstedt and I, they did reach Ferdinand. They had probably gotten close enough to justify that, but missing a blessing that significant kind of ticked me off.
I glared at Ferdinand, since I was her adoptive father and therefore deserved it more than him, but he just glared back at me.
“Enough already. How many times have I said this now? Myne could use magic from the start.”
The trombe extermination mission had been Myne’s first ever ritual, and to help her, Ferdinand had given her a magic tool in the form of a ring that amplified and strengthened her mana—that much I understood. But apparently, Myne had suddenly blessed the entire Knight’s Order with a prayer to Angriff the God of War. She herself had said that seeing the trombe scared her, and that she just wanted to pray for their good luck in battle. The reports were clear, but they just didn’t make sense.
“She said she just made up a line that sounded like something a noble would say and was surprised when it turned into a blessing, but I was more surprised than anyone when it happened,” Ferdinand continued. “I have not taught her how to use magic whatsoever.”
“She seemed pretty experienced to me. To think that was a blessing she gave by accident,” Karstedt said while rubbing his chin, having received that blessing himself.
To be frank, it was completely insane that she had managed to compress her overflowing mana all on her own, without teaching or assistance. And it was insane that she had prayed for their good fortune and given a divine blessing without meaning to.
“It’s hard to believe she didn’t mean for it to be a blessing, but even putting that aside, how is she so good at using her mana at that young of an age?”
“I believe it is because she has the mind of an adult, and a high capacity for learning. The mind of a child cannot control mana properly, but despite her youthful body, Myne has memories of reaching adulthood in another world. That must have been enough for her to control it,” Ferdinand proposed. “She grew used to the flow of mana while making her offerings to the divine instruments as an apprentice blue shrine maiden, and although it was by chance, she gave a blessing by stating the name of a god. That was enough for her to know that she could control her mana freely if she had a feystone. And furthermore, she saw knights giving their weapons a Darkness blessing before proceeding to pray with a divine instrument to grant a sizable blessing of her own. It was then that she learned how to give blessings by praying to the gods.”
“Still. Learning to pray is one thing, but how do you explain her just blasting out the whole prayer like that?” The prayers necessary for earning the blessings of the gods were unbearably long—you had to memorize their names and which god gave which blessing. Apprentice knights were taught to pray to the God of Darkness early so that they could bless their weapons for trombe missions, but most struggled to do even that.
“If you were to ask Myne, she would say that she had only needed to memorize the lines for a single prayer. From there, she just needed to mix in the names of gods and lines of scripture, both of which she had learned from reading the bible.”
Thinking back to the Spring Prayer ambush, Myne had absolutely said “I just have to pray to the gods to make magic happen, right?!” without even realizing how blunt that was. She wasn’t wrong, but nobody educated in the Royal Academy would waste mana like that.
“...Starting today, Rozemyne will be a noble girl who uses magic tools in her day-to-day life. I get the feeling that it’d be smart to teach her a little about magic before she enters the Royal Academy,” I said. Magic tools were an essential part of noble life. Most kids would be fine just carrying around a tool that could absorb their excess mana, but since nobody could predict what messes Rozemyne might end up in, we intended to give her feystones that could expel mana, too.
“Sylvester’s right. It’s more dangerous to keep using self-taught magic. Who knows what she might see and draw wrong inspiration from,” Karstedt added, nodding in agreement.
Ferdinand furrowed his brow and began tapping his temple. That was his thinking pose—something I was all too familiar with, and a sign that he was in the middle of constructing a brutal education plan that he would enforce on Rozemyne without a shred of mercy.
...Heh. Sucks for her.
“Ah, right. Ferdinand, give Rozemyne a physical examination. You mentioned that there was something suspicious about her poor health, right? If she has a problem with her mana flow, I trust you can make a potion for it.”
Given that she was now my adopted daughter, there would be a huge fuss if a doctor found something wrong with her. If she was sick with something particularly rare, I’d have to fend off weirdos wanting to use her for research. Giving her a checkup now and keeping it private before moving her to the Noble’s Quarter would be best.
“I do feel that
