Published: August 10, 2026
There was a magic circle where the rainbow curtain ended.
"Hii!?!" I gasped and hurriedly stepped onto a spot where there was no magic circle.
"...Th-that was close."
I had told Foster Father, "Why not set a trap inside too?" Yet, because Hartmut had investigated the library and found nothing, and because we had information that no noble had entered the temple library, I had apparently let my guard down completely.
"Could this be Lady Georgine's trap?"
I thought the one who actually set it was either Dietlinde, who knew where the foundation was, or her sister, but wasn't it probably Georgine who suggested it? Remaining cautious, I threw one of the mana stones imbued with my mana. The moment it hit with a clack, the magic circle lit up and a pillar of blue flame shot violently upward.
"Eek!"
I held my breath at the force of it and the heat that seemed to burn my skin, flattening myself against the wall. If even a single strand of hair touched that flame, it felt like I'd be burned along with it. The blue fire, as if it would swallow everything, also felt like Georgine's obsession, and it made it hard to breathe. I clutched my chest tightly and simply watched as the mana stone imbued with my mana was swallowed by the blue flames.
When the blue flames shrank and disappeared, the magic circle vanished with them, and the floor and room returned to their familiar pure white. Even so, I was still afraid there might be something left, so I urged my trembling legs onward and carefully walked along the edge to the foundation.
Inside the room, which was surrounded on all sides by white walls with no windows, seven mana stones the size of softballs and shining in the great god's noble color were floating in the air. They moved like a celestial sphere, much like the ones in the mana replenishment chamber, and tiny glittering particles, like sparkling dust, were falling from the noble-colored mana stones little by little.
These seven mana stones were connected to the mana replenishment chamber, and the sparkling dust that seemed to shimmer in various colors was mana supplied in that chamber. In other words, the light dust falling right now was Ferdinand's mana still being drained away.
Following the stream of mana-made light dust downward, I could see that it was falling onto a section of the white floor that looked as if a part had been cut away, revealing a portion of a large sphere. Even the visible part was larger than what I could span with both arms. This was the foundation of the territory. Since it glowed a pale green, I could tell that the current aub of Arensbach, who had dyed this foundation, was strongly aligned with the water attribute.
"So this is how big it is in person."
I peered into the foundation. Inside the large spherical foundation, a pale green glowing liquid shimmered, but it seemed less than half full. For all that Ferdinand had been pouring mana into it for over half a day, there was still surprisingly little mana in the foundation.
...Could it be that he managed to keep the leakage of mana right down to the limit?
Unlike in a large-scale ritual, he was trapped alone, so he wouldn't have been influenced by other people's mana flow and had his own mana leak out. I had been worried because Dietlinde activated the magic circle and I thought she had decided the rate of leakage, but Ferdinand must have resisted as much as he could in that situation.
...If they had meant to kill him by draining his mana dry, they would have let it flow much faster.
But no matter how much less mana was leaking out than expected, the fact remained that Ferdinand was still being forced to supply mana at this very moment. Watching the light dust fall quietly, I placed an empty mana stone on the foundation. I was absorbing the mana in order to make it easier to dye the foundation. If I reduced the mana inside too much, it would greatly affect the white building and the barrier, so I had to be careful, but the less mana there was, the easier it would be to dye.