Mephistopheles' Daily Life (1)
Stop, stop! Mel, when are we going to break this habit of complimenting each other for no reason? We can't keep this up!
We haven't been hit with some kind of "endlessly praise each other" curse, have we?
Before my mouth could start responding to Mel's compliments of its own accord, those ever-present politicians interrupted our conversation at just the right moment. Mel's familiar jumped onto the windowsill with extreme reluctance and said the Federal Parliament's minister of military and political affairs needed him for something. But since we would see each other again soon anyway, he stopped insisting on watching me get dressed. After Mel left, I carefully straightened my clothes and woke my shadow to help adjust the straps on my back.
But after thinking for a while, I realized I didn't have any accessories to match these formal robes. What was I supposed to do? I could run around with my hair loose in my own plain robes, of course, but I was wearing Mel's-
"Xipei, this is for you!"
As I was thinking, I suddenly saw the metal raven return, flapping back in to toss a box onto the table. Then it explained, "I have to recall my familiar quickly. I saw the old director of your research institute, and he wants to talk to me." Having said that, it turned and hurried off again-
Oh, no wonder Mel was taking this seriously. I'd been too busy to visit the old director for a while, too. Maybe we'd get a chance to talk today... Oh, right, I still had a bottle of the conditioner I'd made last time. Now that I had a spatial ring, I could easily bring it over.
The box Mel had left was... Oh! Accessories to match my spatial ring!
Had Mel made all of these himself, too? His craftsmanship was incredible. No wonder he could make his familiars so lifelike. Back when I made familiars by folding paper, I was so bad at crafts that I only folded paper airplanes. Then Moli told me that a mage throwing paper airplanes everywhere looked a lot like performance art. I used her computer to look up what performance art was, and, well... to avoid becoming performance art, I practiced hard until I learned to fold paper birds.
Sigh... When the time comes, am I going to fill Mel's tower with such misshapen, hideous golems that no one can bear to look at them? What would I do then? Should I sit in on a sculpture lecture at the art academy?
I'm getting ahead of myself! I picked up the beautifully woven hair ribbon and suddenly felt so ashamed... I... I don't know how to do my hair... What am I going to do? I touched my hair. I... Why don't I wash it first? I was so busy chasing cyborgs yesterday that I didn't wash it. Yes, I'll wash it first and think about how to style it while I do. Next time, I should ask Moli to lend me her hair to practice on.
That's right, I still have Moli's computer. I can go online and find old photos reporters took of Mel and see what his hairstyle looks like.
Thank goodness Mel had taught me Shadow Dance, or I had no idea how I could have given myself such a complicated hairstyle-It looks a bit like an elf's hairstyle. This ribbon actually has to be braided into the hair? Does this forehead chain really have to be woven in too? How did Mel come up with such an amazing hairstyle?
By the time I finally got my hair almost as neat as Mel's-apart from the difference in length, of course—I hurried to the research institute and found only the guard holed up in the guard booth reading comics. There wasn't a single other person in the entire institute.
Ah—I came too late. I forgot to check the time. If I'd known, I would have gone straight to the summit venue. But I might have to use invisibility or something to sneak in. After all, I don't have a pass. If I don't go with the five-star old man's team, I'll be stopped outside.
It's fine. If I really can't sneak in, I'll wait outside for Mel. Before leaving, I had also brought another of my notebooks, one about mental magic. There were several pages I'd locked behind multiple layers of dark magic protection, and I planned to give them to Mel. They were about soul magic. The apartments assigned to us had a manager, and I was rather afraid they might come in without permission, so I had to lock the pages up with dark magic. Once I left them with Mel, I would have to replace the protections with gentler ones. It would be terrible if Moli and the others got into mischief and touched them.
Hm?
I suddenly frowned. There were huge crowds of reporters and onlookers outside the summit venue, and it was already impossible to squeeze through from this end of the street. The broad main street was packed with people... So the guards on duty seemed completely unaware-
Outside the bustling crowd, several cyborgs were climbing up the outer walls of a building!
Those guys again!
Chapter 30: Mephistopheles' Daily Life (1)
[Mephistopheles Madsen]
"Enough, Anna! Will you stop packing my clothes and accessories? I'm just going to a berserker summit. I'll be back in a few days... I'm talking to you. Are those long ears of yours just for wearing earrings? What are you doing with my robes? Those are my favorites. Would I need to wear them to a berserk transformation exchange conference?"
I watched my apprentice bustling back and forth, completely speechless—she wasn't listening to a word I said. I had given it serious thought, and I definitely hadn't been like this as a child. So who on earth had Anna learned it from?
"Teacher, you're going to an international magic summit, not a berserker summit. It doesn't have the slightest thing to do with exchanging ideas about berserk transformation, either," Anna replied. "You should use a mirror spell to look at yourself from every angle. With your physical strength, do you really think you could attend a berserker summit? A berserker whose biceps aren't as big as a human head-how could he have the nerve to call himself a berserker?"
Come to think of it, that mage parliamentarian who threw a chair at the last meeting might actually have biceps as big as his head. Huh? Wait... She's learned to mock me now?
"Anna, you're a dark elf. By your people's standards, a male with a build like your teacher's couldn't possibly be any taller or more impressive," I pointed out. "I'm a hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall. I'm at least twenty-five centimeters taller than your brothers!"
The ebony-skinned elf in front of me wiggled her long, slender pointed ears, bared her sharp canines, and replied with a smile, "But I wasn't raised by dark elves, so my tastes are standard human tastes now. You're not short, but you're a long way from impressive."
Impressive? What mage would want to gain muscle instead of knowledge? I was so angry I laughed.
"Then who was it who went to an internet café to play games all night last time but lied and told me she was going to the library?" I said. "Lying is a dark elf virtue, not a human one!"
"I'm clearly drawing on the best of both and combining the virtues of both races," Anna said.
Oh? Looks like I can't keep her in line anymore?
Very well. It seems I haven't properly taught Anna a lesson in so long that this girl has completely forgotten her teacher is also the "Evil Shadow Manipulator" and the "Death Overlord."
Hearing me question her, Anna tilted her head and looked utterly innocent. "Huh? Teacher, didn't you say last time that those two titles were way too exaggerated?"
Talking back again!!!
"Aaaaahhh-"
I plastered Anna to the ceiling, turning her into a dark elf relief for the time being. My pointy-eared apprentice was getting harder and harder to discipline. I really couldn't teach her a lesson without using force anymore; one of these days, she'd be climbing on her teacher's head.
"Teacher! Let me down! I'm going to report someone for abusing an elf!"
"As an elf, you only have elf rights, not human rights. Reporting me won't do you any good." I borrowed a popular catchphrase favored by young people these days to retort. She glared at me with her purple eyes—the color was from contact lenses—and she clearly seemed unconvinced, so I added, "And if you want to go back to the dungeon and report me to your family's matriarch... Well, sorry, but a female dark elf abused by a male would be despised to death by her sisters in the dungeon."
Trying to fight me? Anna, your teacher is still your teacher, after all.
Tsk, it can't be helped. I can't let you have all the advantages! Dark elf society was very different from human society. In the dark elves' dungeons, male elves had a far lower status than their female sisters, a tradition that had continued from ancient times to the present. Although nowadays the women among them didn't oppress the men, for the most part merely using this bad custom as an excuse to order pretty men into bed with them...