A World Where Magic Devours People
Black Pine City Forest Magic Academy, administration building, second-floor banquet hall.
Kaiming led Xie Yu inside.
Just as the Shy Cloak had predicted, Kaiming took off his cloak, overcoat and hat and handed them to Xie Yu. He kept his cane in his hand and carried it into the hall.
Xie Yu glanced around and spotted several [Taciturn Coat Racks (Affection 0)] in the cloakroom by the banquet hall's side door. They were presumably meant for guests' coats.
[Arrogant Top Hat (Affection 5): Assistant, please hang me higher. Yes, right there, on the very top hook of the coat rack. I like being a little higher. (Affection rises to 10)]
[Attentive Cashmere Overcoat (Affection 0): Kaiming's money pouch is in my pocket. Don't lose it. Seventeen gold coins and five silver coins, I remember very clearly. Don't even think about stealing them!]
[The Shy Cloak (Affection 60) pleaded:]
[Oh, could you please not hang me on the rack? Just carry me on your arm, hold me, fold me. It's so cold and lonely on that rack, hanging there with nothing around me, as if something were missing from my heart. When you hold me, nothing's missing.]
Like people, ladies with different personalities varied enormously in how difficult they were to woo, Xie Yu thought for some reason.
He had kept himself in check the whole way and hadn't tried to win over any objects, but this cloak was far too forward.
Since Kaiming hadn't said whether to carry it or hang it up, Xie Yu took it upon himself to fold the cloak and drape it over his arm. He felt its Affection would naturally reach the maximum before long... When the exam paper's Affection had maxed out, he had been offered a choice of three rewards. Xie Yu had kept that in mind; perhaps fully winning over other things could trigger it too.
[Attentive Cashmere Overcoat (Affection 5): Why are you holding it and not me? Didn't I tell you to look after the money pouch? If you'd listened, you'd be holding me!]
Xie Yu had only just arranged the long cloak neatly when the overcoat's response threw him into a fluster.
He had no choice but to pick up the overcoat too. With the cloak over his left arm and the overcoat in his right, he said helplessly, "I thought you didn't like me."
Besides the distinguished guests circulating through the main part of the banquet hall, there were naturally butlers, attendants, secretaries, assistants and the like around the edges. Xie Yu alone looked ridiculous.
[Attentive Cashmere Overcoat (Affection rises to 15): Of course I don't like you! I'm only taking responsibility for Master Kaiming's money pouch! I never liked you in the first place.]
"Then I'll take the money pouch and leave you here."
[The Cashmere Overcoat grew anxious (Affection rises to 20): How can you do that? If you take the money pouch, what if you steal the gold coins? What if you lose it? What if you...]
"All right, I'll carry you." Xie Yu was out of options.
[Arrogant Top Hat (Affection 10) looks down at you from on high: What about me? I'm a little cold.]
Are you ever going to stop?
Xie Yu looked up and stared at the hat he had already hung up, showing it his full arms. "My hands are full. I can't exactly wear you on my head, can I?"
An assistant wearing a magician's hat would obviously be improper and impolite.
[Arrogant Top Hat (Affection 10): All right.]
Clothes always like human warmth... Xie Yu had a small revelation, having found something in common in the three garments' reactions.
With these two demanding masters in his arms, Xie Yu couldn't do anything else, so he simply chose a spot with fewer people and stood there.
[Shy Cloak (Affection 65):]
[This spot isn't good. You have to hold me, clutch me, and show me off to Kaiming.]
"Why?" Xie Yu really couldn't understand the request.
He really couldn't imagine what sort of state of mind he would have to be in to clutch the cloak and show it off to Kaiming.
[I've never tried it before. I want to try it. There are so many people here. I really want to be clutched tightly in the young assistant's hand in front of all these people, right here in public, in broad daylight, and tremble for Master Kaiming to see... (Affection rises to 70)]
At the heart of the banquet hall, Kaiming strolled leisurely around with a wineglass in hand, then sat down to the left of his first target of the day. "Secretary-General Fry, have you been well? It's been another year since we last met..."
Fry set down his glass and pointed a finger at Kaiming with a smile.
"You ask every year. Even before you open your mouth, I know what you're going to say, lad. We couldn't get it done these past few years, and there was nothing we could do about it, but there's been some progress this year. A bill will be issued in early summer requiring all municipal-level magic academies and above to appoint mental health inspectors. As for Black Pine City, that just means our Forest Academy and the other one, Mountain Rock Academy. But to prevent 'local power blocs from entrenching themselves,' you can forget about a position at Forest Academy."
"I understand, of course I do." Holding his cane, Kaiming tapped the gemstone at its top, preparing to open a hidden compartment and take out a valuable, discreet gift, but Fry reached over and stopped him.
"You're going there to get things done. There's no need to bring certain things up."
Get things done? That means there'll be something he wants me to do in this position later on. Kaiming nodded at once and stopped what he was doing.
"Actually, there shouldn't be much difficulty arranging this position for you. Your record is clean. It's that old, undying bastard at Forest Academy who's hard to deal with." As secretary-general of the Provincial Education Department Examination Institute, Fry spoke in a relaxed manner.
"If the old bastard doesn't leave, it'll be hard for anyone else to get in. There's no telling what trouble might arise. His mental magic is already at the four-star level, and the bureau can hardly transfer a Magister from elsewhere to bring him to heel."
Just then, Kaiming glanced aside and saw Xie Yu behind him to one side, holding up the cloak and waving to him from beside the wall. His movements looked ridiculous.
Kaiming's gaze lingered, and Mr. Fry followed it.
"Your apprentice?" Fry remembered that Kaiming had brought a young man in with him. This seemed to be the one.
"Not quite, just an assistant. He's only a kid; pay him no mind." Kaiming waved a hand with a smile, unwilling to waste precious time on an unimportant subject.
"Secretary-General, how has Minister Yize of the Education Bureau's Inspection Department been lately?"
Yize was someone Kaiming could no longer meet directly; he could only be introduced.
"You fellow, you're getting more and more formal. We're all old classmates from the same hometown." Fry chuckled twice, picked up the wine at his side and took a couple of sips.
"You're a step too late. Yize went to Pinecone Town in person."
[Shy Cloak (Affection soars to 95):]
[How exciting, how exciting, hee-hee. Ah, what a shame. Master Kaiming doesn't care about me. If only his face had twisted in anger!]
Xie Yu practically wanted to run away.
How could a dignified magician's face twist in anger just because his assistant was holding his cloak?
Shy Cloak, what on earth are you thinking?
"We'll play again on the street later." Xie Yu felt the cloak's Affection was just one step short of the finish line, so he added this against his better judgment.
[Shy Cloak (Affection 100):]
[It's a deal!]
This cloak was easy to win over. I hardly did anything. It was almost as if the cloak were winning me over instead... Xie Yu thought.
Then the words that had once appeared on the exam paper surfaced before Xie Yu's eyes a second time.
[Congratulations, you have won over the Shy Cloak!]
[You may choose one of three rewards:]
[1. Lifelong Entrustment] [Affection will never decrease again.]
[2. Full Disclosure] [Some unknown magical knowledge and Kaiming's secrets.]
[3. Friend of Cloaks] [The initial Affection of all clothing items encountered from now on +0.5. Can be accumulated.]
Xie Yu frowned slightly. This time, the rewards were unexpectedly much less substantial than the first time.
Leaving options 1 and 3 aside, the middle option, 2, was also clearly much less substantial than option 2 on the exam paper.
Is it because this cloak isn't anything important?
His thoughts turned to option 2.
"By the way, tell me about Kaiming. How much do you know about him?" Xie Yu asked, patting the cloak gently.
[Shy Cloak (Affection 100):]
[Let me think. The most important thing! Ever since Master Kaiming learned that advancing further in mental and soul magic inevitably requires eating other people's souls, he stopped practicing magic. He comes from a commoner background and doesn't want to hurt anyone.]
Xie Yu froze. Looking at the secret the cloak had revealed, his thoughts flew far away in an instant.
He remembered many things.
Black Pine City, including its towns, had a population of 1.2 million. Forests and mountains lay to the north, while the population was mainly distributed across the southern plains, concentrated in the city proper and four major towns.
Among them were roughly four thousand registered magicians. If all magic apprentices were included, the number came to over a hundred thousand. Almost all of them were concentrated in the city's central area, with only a scattered few in the towns.
Magicians had never been distributed evenly across the land. Powerful people always had the right to choose where they lived.
According to statistics for the entire kingdom, apprentices made up about a tenth of the population, and roughly one in twelve apprentices became a magician. But in actual geographical terms, the proportion of magicians living long-term in barren, sparsely populated regions was close to zero.
He wasn't even an apprentice yet.
The magical education he had received so far was called "pre-apprentice magical education." Only after truly entering a magic academy and gaining a magician's recognition, or taking the kingdom's examinations in a branch of magic upon reaching adulthood, could one become a proud magic apprentice recognized by the kingdom and its magicians.
He had memorized quite a lot of exam material and knowledge, but the world of magic remained unfamiliar to him.
He recalled this broad, fundamental knowledge in an attempt to determine whether what the cloak had said was true.
A mental and soul magician's advancement came at the cost of other people's souls...
If he had merely been unlucky enough to run into a criminal, the worst he had to do was avoid that old man from now on. As long as he was careful, it wouldn't be much of a problem.
But what if this was normal among the magicians of this world? What if the whole world was full of people like that?
Many things said earlier had corroborated it all.
According to the cloak, eleven students had died in the old man's class, yet he had been retired for his protection. Before learning that, Xie Yu had wondered whether it was too much of a waste to hide such a powerful elderly mental magic specialist on the edge of the academy as a forest ranger. Even after retiring, he could have been rehired.
Physicians in the mental and soul field other than Kaiming always ended up killing some people through treatment. As a result, "Kaiming the fraud," as the three-story wooden house called him, had instead become a renowned physician.
In the world of magicians, was Kaiming's teacher the one on the "righteous path"?
But there were hundreds of thousands of magicians in the kingdom. If evil was widespread, was there really no one to do anything about it?
The kingdom had laws, oversight, diviners, and so many powerful people of high repute. Among the order and rules they had established, was there really no one righteous enough to do something... Did they all simply let magicians do as they pleased, like the person who had set the questions in the "Kingdom Unified Magic Apprentice Entrance Examination paper"?
Only when he thought of that exam paper did Xie Yu realize that perhaps the answer was already before him. Ordinary examinees might not have understood the workings behind the paper, but he, with memories of two lives, who had studied hard with family support for his magic studies and had happened to be right on the sixty-point threshold, had seen them fairly clearly.
Perhaps the rules of this world were decided by magicians to begin with.
Holding Kaiming's cloak and overcoat, Xie Yu stood in a corner, lost in thought, attracting no one's attention.