Early the next morning, Aoko took another day off from school.
Her teacher, Kazuki Yamashiro, could do nothing about her. Not only was she exceptionally beautiful, but her grades were flawless, and her deviation score had consistently ranked first in the entire year. So long as she met the minimum attendance requirement, no one in the school had any reason to stop the Aozaki family's second daughter from skipping class.
Though she occasionally rode her beloved Interceptor (Honda VF750F) around, that was still unlicensed driving. Small vehicles like motorcycles were one thing, but if it involved hauling cargo, she could not expect the police to turn a blind eye. So Aoko had no choice but to call her bargain-bin dad and have him drive the truck himself. Since it involved the old man's inheritance, she could not ask an outsider for help.
"Heave-ho!" Aoko circulated her mana, lifted a box that looked impossibly heavy, and tossed it into the truck bed before dusting off her hands.
"Are you all right? Want me to help carry it?" Aoko's father asked worriedly. His simple values made him feel that his daughter's slender waist might snap beneath the weight of that box.
"No problem. This should be the last one." Aoko surveyed the scene. "I'll go lock the door. We probably won't be coming back anytime soon."
Her father nodded, climbed into the driver's seat, and Aoko briskly entered through the door on the other side. She settled into the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt.
Her bargain-bin dad was a skilled driver, and the truck rolled down the highway without a hint of jolting.
Neither father nor daughter said much. Aoko propped her chin on one hand and looked out the window. Misaki Town's scenery looked quite nice today. No wonder the local government wanted to develop tourism.
"Your grandfather... is gone?" Aoko's bargain-bin father asked, his tone somewhat hesitant.
"Probably not?" Aoko blinked. "I just couldn't find him after I finished some things last night. You know how mysterious the old man always is."
"Ah, I get it." Aoko's father let out a breath of relief, his tone carrying the air of I knew it had to be something like that.
"First, take me to the house Touko and I share," Aoko instructed. "Then just drop me off at Alice's place."
"No problem." Her father nodded. "Touko's coming back soon. She called home yesterday."
"...Is that so?" Aoko fell silent for a moment. It seemed that her stubborn older sister still intended to bring her dog along and fight her.
"Say, did you two have some kind of conflict?" her father asked. "Over something like the inheritance rights to your grandfather's property?"
"Don't you have inheritance rights too, Dad?" Aoko asked slyly.
"Give me a break." Her father gave a bitter smile as he drove. "I'm not cut out for that. Your grandfather gave up on me a long time ago."
"Though that's not exactly a good thing," Aoko said casually, "that old bastard really was quite an asshole."
"Aoko, promise me," her father suddenly said seriously. "Get along with your sister, all right? Consider it a request from your father."
"...I don't have a problem with that," Aoko replied with a headache. "But you know Touko is incredibly stubborn. When she comes back in a while, I might still have to fight her."
After storing most of the boxes in her own house, Aoko used magecraft and Magic Network spells to seal the storage area tight, then drove with her bargain-bin dad to the Kuonji residence.
It was nearly three in the afternoon by the time Aoko's truck drove up the mountain and arrived at the Kuonji residence.
As promised, Alice Kuonji was waiting for Aoko at home. Aoko's father also knew that Alice's identity was unusual, so he did not linger at the Kuonji house for long. After giving Aoko a few reminders, he drove away.
Alice sat nearby and watched Aoko circulate her mana, use Reinforcement magecraft to enhance her physical abilities, then haul one heavy box after another into the living room with a series of grunts.
"What is this...?" Aoko began sorting through the various items in the boxes. In her hand was a glass bottle containing a strange object soaked in some pale yellow liquid. "Some kind of curse medium?"
"...It should be some kind of spirit root," Alice said after identifying it. "A core material used to make earthen or stone golems."
After looking at it for a while, Aoko set the bottle aside and continued rummaging through the box.
"This stone looks a little familiar..." Aoko pulled out another stone flickering with arcs of different-colored electricity. It was encased in resin.
"A cursed beast gallstone," Alice said. "An accumulation of curses within the body of a large magical beast. It is a valuable material for certain curse magecraft."
"Then it's pretty useful." Aoko examined it from side to side, then placed it with the pile of "useful" items.
"A self-restraint scroll." Aoko recognized a similarly sized parchment scroll she had dug out, then set it aside. "No use for it yet."
"Huh?" Aoko pulled a brass-cased object resembling a mechanical pocket watch from the box. Upon closer inspection, however, it only had four directions marked by letters and a single hand. "What is this? A compass?"
"A mana meter," Alice said after examining it closely. "A Mystic Code used to detect high-volume sources of mana. It is quite expensive."
Curiously, Aoko pressed the button at the top of the pocket watch and found that its hand did not move, remaining pointed at her.
Then she swayed from side to side, only to find that the mana meter's hand continued pointing at her.
"...Your mana reserves are probably too large," Alice said. "This kind of Mystic Code generally points toward the person nearby with the greatest amount of mana."
"...Then isn't it completely useless to me?" Aoko said with a frown. "You can have it, Alice."
Aoko casually handed the exquisitely crafted mana meter, along with its wooden box, to Alice.
Alice accepted the box without saying much. She knew Aoko was not the sort of person to fuss over such minor details.
Aoko sped up her inventory of her grandfather's "relics." All manner of strange devices and magecraft materials were sorted into categories across the living room carpet, while Alice offered a comment or two from time to time.
However, her grandfather's collection was far too abundant, and there were some items even Alice did not recognize.
It took Aoko nearly two hours to open and inspect every box before her.
She wiped away nonexistent sweat from her forehead, then took the final metal box from a large crate. It bore a lock with a complicated mechanical structure, inscribed with a language she did not recognize, and appeared to have been sealed shut with some kind of magecraft.
Alice shook her head after looking at it, indicating that she could not open it. Aoko frowned in thought, took out her spellbook from an imaginary-number rift, and flipped to the page where she kept a first-circle spell scroll.
"Instant Locksmith." Aoko spoke softly. In an instant, the scroll ignited on its own and vanished without a trace as ash. Then the box emitted a series of fine mechanical sounds, followed by a final click as the lock released.
Aoko happily opened the lid and found that the box contained only an exquisitely crafted crystal bottle with a narrow neck, filled with an unknown liquid that gave off a faint blue glow.
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