When that realization came, Leanne did everything in her power to find out whether or not she was problematic or not. She had searched every inch of her mind-space and even allowed another psychiatrist to go through her mind.

Finding nothing, she read about every mention of an infectious curse or mental illness that lays dormant in the brain.

Finding nothing again, she was now frantically searching for signs on her own body. Any kind of change would indicate that she was indeed infected, but once again, she found nothing.

She was completely clean.

The fact did nothing to help her calm down at all. Every day, she continued to search for any signs of infection on her. She was lately considering drawing blood from herself and seeing if her blood showed any signs of abnormality. But the more she thought about it, the more she felt one thing.

‘Is this how I go mad?’

At this point, she couldn’t even know if it was due to the supposed mental infection or if she was being overly paranoid.

Perhaps she really was being paranoid. It was because Evin still talked to himself sometimes. The boy tried to hide it, but it wasn’t that hard to notice something odd if you kept one’s eyes on him. For example, how often his mouth would move, as if he was whispering something to himself.

There was no way of knowing what he said exactly, but it was clear that he was conversing with someone.

‘Since it’s able to talk and also cast spells… it’s definitely not a simple mental illness. Most items from the Forgotten Era don’t have a clear enough conscience to hold conversations. They’re either crazy ravings or whispers of something unintelligible.

That meant that whatever was inside Evin’s head was extremely rare.

‘There’s be many in the world to want it for themselves… but as long as they want to die, they wouldn’t dare to try and put it in their own head. Likely, they’ll try to get Evin on their sides.’

‘Sigh… it feels like all I do is think about this lately…’

Shaking her head, Leanne finished applying her checkup and rushed over to Evin’s room.

Outside her destination, she heard someone’s footsteps coming in from inside the room, as well as some other voices. The door opened, and Leanne saw a rugged-looking man with burgundy-colored hair peeking his head from behind the doorway.

“Aran?” she murmured, recognizing her old classmate.

“Oh, Lea. Long time no see, eh? What are you doing here?” the man seemed pleasantly surprised to see her as well. He then opened the door fully and invited her inside.

But this act revealed Aran’s full figure, and Leanne couldn’t help but notice the metal prosthetic dangling on Aran’s left side, looking weirdly familiar.

The design of the arm seemed to emphasize sleekness and ease-of-use, judging by how its dimensions were almost identical to Aran’s surviving right hand. It also seemed to be quite light, considering how easily Aran seemed to be moving it around… 

She vaguely remembered that the steam hissing from the joints of the arm acted as a conductor for Aran’s nerves to control the prosthetic, as if it was his own. The masterfully crafted makeshift metal bones and joints were made to resemble a human’s arm down to the tiniest of details, and miraculously, they would all be hollow inside to let the steam pass through them. 

She didn’t remember how such a thing was possible, but since the real thing was right in front of her, functioning as it was advertised, she could only accept it as a proper marvel of Magical Engineering.

‘Ah, that’s one of the designs by the Master Prosthetist, Armut Mungiar,’ Leanne finally remembered. ‘So that’s why it felt so familiar.’

She felt that it was weird for her to recognize the thing, since Aran definitely didn’t possess a prosthetic the last time she met him. And as for how the man could’ve lost his arms, there was only one answer to this question.

‘So… they managed to snatch something away from you after all…’ Leanne thought with a sigh, ‘And just before you finished paying your debts, too.’

“Damn… you want my arm, too? I thought mages would be different, but I guess it can’t be helped,” Aran joked, and extended his arms to invite Leanne for a hug.

Leanne shoved the useless thoughts out of her head and gave Aran a heartfelt hug.

“How much are you selling it for?”

“At least a million,” Aran chuckled before eyeing Leanne. “You turned into a real stunner. Terrence is a lucky man… How is he, by the way?”

Reminded of her husband, Leanne resisted the urge to sigh and replied perfunctorily.

“He’s doing fine… Still following the Duchess around.”

“Mm. Anyhow, how did you find yourself here?” Aran asked.

“I’m here for Evin,” Leanne said and peeked behind Aran’s figure to find the boy sitting on his bed, curiously listening to the two’s conversation.

Next to his bed was a red-haired boy, looking over with a poised smile. 

“Hello, Lady Lea!” the boy greeted.

“Hey there, Arza. So, you’re finally old enough to enter the Academy, huh?” Leanne said, remembering the last time she met the boy.

“Yup!”

“Good morning, Lady Leanne,” Evin added himself in the conversation.

“Good morning to you too,” Leanne smiled. “Well, I was thinking I can show you around the Academy, before we went to the Ceremony afterwards. Do you mind if Arza and Aran joined us?”

“No,” Evin replied. 

The group went on a tour of some sorts, with Leanne in the lead. She helped Evin and Arza become familiar with the Academy’s premises before leading the two to the giant open arena where the new students needed to gather. After that, she walked towards the spectators’ areas with Aran in tow. 

“So? How did you end up losing your hand?” Leanne casually asked Aran.

Now that they were alone, they could talk more freely.

“This?” Aran said, pointing at his arm. “Exploding Myrmis. Dozens and dozens of exploding Myrmis. The Southern bastards always seem to find some kind of new fucked up way to try and win their battles. The previous fight included a bunch of human hostages and this time they invented suicidal explosion deliverers. A bunch of ant-men wearing a coat decorated with Talismans of Explosion… I was wondering why the little red bastards were wearing clothes that time around. Thought if the South was finally introducing Myrmi rights.”

Aran told the story in a pretty casual way, but Leanne could hear how sick and tired of the war he had become.

“Is it that bad in the Southern Front?”

“Sigh… Who knows? We all say we’re winning, and honestly, we’ve never lost a battle since the start… but unfortunately, we can’t really do anything with these victories, you know? With everything I’ve seen, I’m afraid that we’ll most likely end up losing at this rate.”

Aran’s story supported what Leanne heard before. The country, of course, only ever talked about the good side. The Kingdom’s infallible defense against the Southern menace; the countless victories they’ve snatched from the enemy; the brave souls that protected their beloved homeland. Of course, the people believed the country’s words. But anyone that actually went to the war tended to have a differing opinion, just like Aran here.

“While South can throw at us an endless army of Myrmis, we don’t have anything of the sort. Our soldiers still die and our mages are still wounded…”

“Mm.” Leanne nodded while glancing at Aran’s hand. “How did you survive in the first place? I really find it hard to imagine surviving such an abhorrent tactic.”

“Ah… that. When I noticed what was happening, I decided to kill the enemy griffins who were controlling the Myrmis. That stopped the main bulk of the Myrmi army to break free from the griffins’ control and stop their suicidal march. You know how cowardly the Ant-people are by nature…” Aran paused. “Sadly, some of them still managed to overcome their fear and still exploded near me. My barriers ran out and my arm was blown to smithereens.”

“With that secret spell of yours?” Leanne asked.

Aran was quite famous in the kingdom as a mage. He wasn’t some young prodigy who possessed an Absolute at the age of 30, or someone gifted with an easily nurtured Mana-core. But he did possess one spell that every mage in the kingdom feared and wanted. A spell that caused instant death, one that no one in the kingdom had yet to understand.

“Yep, that damn spell that the country’s trying so damn hard to wring out of me, those bastards,” Aran cursed, a bit too emotionally compared to his usual standards.

“I’m really sorry for your hands, Aran, I really am,” Leanne sighed as she held his metal prosthetic.

“It’s not that, Lea. I really couldn’t give a damn about my hand.”

“Then?”

“I found two Talismans of Listening inside Arza’s room yesterday. Pretty well-made ones as well.”

“What? Seriously?” Leanne exclaimed in shock. 

“If I wasn’t so paranoid, I probably wouldn’t have even cared to check,” Aran sighed.

Obviously, a normal person wouldn’t think to check the room for such things, because… why would anyone even think of that? Leanne was the same.

“I later asked around, and learned that there was three,” Aran continued. “Some old servant said that it was found from inside the room.”

“Did the servant find it himself?”

“No. He said the kid inside gave him the Talisman.”

“Arza?”

“No. Evin.”

A chill went down Leanne’s spine.

“When you showed revealed the Talismans… was Evin there?”

“Yeah?”

“How did he take it?”

“Hmm?” Aran paused and seemed to contemplate a bit, “Now that I think about it, he reacted quite weirdly. He definitely didn’t panic like I expected him to… I can’t be completely sure but he looked kind of relieved?”

“Why would he be relieved?”

“I don’t know,” Aran shrugged. “And besides, I could still be wrong.”

Leanne stopped walking for a bit to think about the matter more deeply. Aran was familiar with this habit of Leanne’s so he stopped as well to let her think.

‘He definitely knew about the Talismans… As for why they were there… Evin might not know, but the entity inside him would definitely know. It’s because he’s able to perform Imagination Casting. It’s something reserved only for the nobility so if word came out that there was a commoner who could Imagination Cast… then there would be enough people willing to throw some spies towards Evin’s side.’

…However, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the details of Evin’s abilities had leaked out.

‘And as far as the entity was aware of, the only one who knows about its abilities is Edmund, Kon, Jun… and me. As for which of them would reveal such information...’

The first three were automatically disqualified. None of them were proper mages. They wouldn’t even know why this was such a big deal. No, none of them would be able to even contact a mage to relay the information.

This left only one person to reveal its secrets and blow the whole incident way out of proportions… with some unknown people leaving Talismans of Listening near its location, and trying to find its secrets.

“Shit…” Leanne murmured as a cold shiver ran up her back.

“What happened?” Aran asked, noticing that Leanne finished thinking.

“I think I fucked up.”

“How? You wanna talk about it?”

“I… probably shouldn’t,” Leanne shook her head, “Sorry, could you leave on without me? I need to hurry somewhere.”

“Alright. If you need any help, you can search for me through Arza,” Aran said and the two separated.

Leanne walked towards where the Academy executives were gathering with wide strides, thinking of her situation.

Obviously, Leanne was not the culprit here. She would never even think to reveal the entity’s existence. Even if a Full-core High-mage personally guaranteed her safety for it, she wasn’t going to dare offend the entity inside Evin’s head.

And worse off, it might even be inside of her own head.

But the only other person that knew about Evin’s situation was Chairman Kent. And even then, the man should only be thinking of Evin as some kid who was just awfully talented at Imagination Casting. It was a rare thing, but it wasn’t something that never happened before. There really was no need for Kent to bring in Talismans and whatnot.

‘Seriously, what the hell is he thinking?’ Leanne thought as she arrived at her destination, which was a special area in the spectator’s terrace.