Chapter 57 — In which Ver isn’t paranoid

 

“I knew that Lesser Lord is young but…”

 

Durio mumbled, while her gaze fixed on Vern's face.

Rambeta raised her hand like some kind of student.

 

“Yes? Please speak.”

“If I may, how old are you Lesser Lord?”

 

Vern blinked as his brain came to a sharp halt.

How old was he again?

Considering his entire life as Vermillian and combining it with his life as Vern…

… He would be quite old…

 

“Eighteen.”

 

He finally answered when the silence prolonged and even Sangria, who was absorbed in the research he was reading, looked up and gave him a weird look.

 

“Eighteen? So you will be turning nineteen in like… two weeks?”

“No, Lesser Lord will be turning eighteen in two weeks. He didn’t have his big coming-to-age ceremony, or we would hear something about it.”

 

Durio corrected Cuprit, who upon hearing it looked at Vern with even more shock.

It seemed that his young age was a problem…

Vern wasn’t sure why it was, but what concerned him more at the moment was…

 

“You don’t know my age, but know when is my birthday?”

“Of course. Lord Archmage established Lesser Lord’s and Lesser Lady’s birthdays as state holidays and everyone get a free work-day.”

“…”

 

This is the first time Vern heard that.

He knew that there were holidays in his name as Vermillian, mainly celebrating some of his achievements, and there was also mourning day on the anniversary of his death, but…

Vern’s birthday were as important as achievements made by Vermillian 300 years ago?

Besides, there was something strange here…

 

“Is Crimo’s birthday also celebrated?”

“Uh… not really.”

“There is no state holiday, but boss, I mean, Grandmaster Scarlen, made it a free-day for all his subordinates and workers.”

“Yeah! It’s actually cool, because Lord Archmage’s birthday is on the day of the longest night of the year, and there are many fun events.”

 

The answer was as Vern expected.

He put ‘birthday celebration problem’ on his to-solve list and then turned towards the papers.

 

“If you don’t have any more questions, I’ll get to back to my work.”

 

The siblings made a bit ambiguous expressions.

It seemed that they had more questions to ask, but also didn’t want to interrupt the work of their de facto younger boss.

Finally, they shook their heads, deciding that it would be crossing the line on their part.

They were about to leave, but…

 

“Please, don’t forget your tea.”

 

Vern pointed at the three tea cups Sangria prepared for them.

The man himself seemed too absorbed in reading to remember about giving them to siblings.

 

“Uh… That’s quite expensive tea, right?”

“We don’t really drink tea…”

 

Durio and Rambeta suddenly turned flustered.

Cuprit looked at them weirdly.

 

“What is wrong with drinking tea offered by Lesser Lord?”

 

Durio and Rambeta blushed slightly at his words and waved their hands.

 

“That’s something which pretty noble drink all the time! Ah! Cuprit you will never understand that…”

 

From the look on his face it seemed that he indeed didn’t understand, but he softly asked:

 

“Well, we can at least try it, right?”

 

In the end, they all took their tea cups and withdrew into one of the side-rooms, which were probably allocated to them.

Vern took a random paper and sitting at the edge of the desk, where Sangria sat down, he started to take notes.

After some time passed…

As both of them were quite talented mages and therefore dealing with large stack of research papers wasn’t much of a problem for them, their data gathering ended.

And the results…

 

“I can understand Young Master’s concern.”

 

Was quite concerning indeed.

There was not even a need to make a graph or make any calculations.

The problem was plainly visible from just of their notes.

 

80% of all the research gained by Vern was about or related to research of mind and magic effects on it.

 

Such thing couldn’t be considered a trend in the mage community. It was an abnormality.

It was as if all guilds and mages suddenly and independently received a divine revelation that they should research the mind fields.

There was no connection or correlation between research papers.

Their topics ranged from ‘Effect of strong emotions on mana flow’ to ‘Creating of the artificial mind’ (that one has very little to no success).

 

‘Besides, there are also…’

 

Vern looked at the research papers of two top guilds, which he was holding.

‘Researching methods of mind transplantation’.

‘Possibility of establishing mental connections with other beings’.

 

He frowned.

 

‘I thought we destroyed all of it…’

 

And yet parts of those papers were oddly similar to something Vern saw before.

A long time ago. More than 300 years ago.

Was it a coincidence? People coming up with the same concept again?

It wouldn’t be strange. Multiple cultures would discover wheel sooner or later, completely independently.

And yet, he couldn’t erase that feeling of discomfort.

 

“Let’s go see Crimo. He should be up, right?”

“Yes, Lord and Young Master are very similar in that regard….”

 

Vern ignored Sangria’s grumbling about lack of sleep hygiene among both of his lords and left the room, heading to Crimo’s office.

 

*-*-*

 

He followed Sangria after he realized that he don’t actually know where Crimo’s office was.

That was a bit embarrassing, really.

Vern promised himself to learn the mansion’s floor plan later.

 

Sangria knocked on a plain door, which Vern would never assume would lead to the office of the most important person in the state.

Perhaps because it was Crimo’s private office…?

 

“Come in.”

 

Sangria entered straight away and Vern followed after him.

 

“Master Sangria what’s is the matt—“

 

Crimo paused when he saw Vern.

Then he jumped.

 

“Vern! Is everything alright? Are you feeling unwell?”

 

Why is everyone asking him that?

He was cursed for most of his life, but…

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Vern made sure that he closed the door properly, before showing the notes he made about his investigation with Sangria.

 

“I brought you some…”

 

He looked around the room, which every window was close-shut covered with dark curtains and didn’t seem to see the light of the day for a very long time.

The room was full of piles of papers.

 

“… Some more papers.”

“Oh, that’s great. Our Dear Lord loves papers.”

 

There was a black shape sitting among the piles of paper, examining the coffee cup with great concentration.

 

“My Lord. Grandmaster Scarlen.”

 

Sangria bowed in greeting.

Vern did the same, and Scarlen also got up from his seat and bowed in greeting.

The only one who didn’t bow was Crimo, who just stood awkwardly behind the desk.

Being an Archmage was sometimes very embarrassing.

 

“Cough, so what brought you here?”

“… This.”

 

Vern put his notes and some of the fair-gained-research-papers on Crimo’s desk.

Crimo immediately put away whatever he was dealing with and started reading what Vern brought.

Scarlen got behind him and also started reading over his shoulder.

A few minutes later, Crimo put down the notes with a grim look on his face.

 

“It appears that you made some connection.”

 

Vern expected that Crimo might have some clues about why everyone in Rubrun seems to be secretly obsessed with mind research and mind magic.

But he could never imagine what the clue was.

 

“I do… It somewhat resembles my and Scarlen investigation into Purplus’ abilities to control minds.”

 

*~*~*

Author's note:

For a single moment there, just a moment, there existed a possibility of AI in this world. Now it's gone forever.

I'm sorry.

Thanks for reading <3 May you have your mind under control! Your own control!