Outside the window, lush farmland and dense forests rushed backward at dizzying speed. Beneath her sat the smoothly gliding "steel monster," and before her lay an exquisite, mouthwatering black pepper steak. Louise truly felt as though she were trapped in a dream. After the long and grueling journey to reach the Holm Kingdom, everything she had encountered since arriving was so novel, so breathtaking, so utterly inconceivable!
Apprentices could perform Arcane Magic right out in the open on the streets without fearing any interference from the Church. A railway station had been built in broad daylight right within the city, where ordinary people passing to and fro could see it freely. This enormous behemoth—emitting a piercing whistle and capable of carrying hundreds of passengers—could actually move this fast, this smoothly. Such a high-grade alchemical artifact, which in the past only mages of the seventh circle or above could enjoy, was now accessible even to first-circle mages and apprentices. The common knowledge and amusements of Alen were worlds apart from the ancient magic empires described in books—as far removed as heaven from the abyss.
If it weren't for the fact that the ordinary citizens she had seen at Port Padre dressed in styles that, while conservatively elegant and distinctly charming, were not fundamentally different from the common folk of the Vorlite Principality, Louise would have been convinced she had arrived in an entirely new world.
No—this *was* a new world. Her life had truly turned to a brand-new page!
Louise ran her fingers through her long, cascading black hair, her heart swelling with resolve and longing. She had been born into an ordinary noble family whose secret lineage of Arcane Magic had been passed down for several generations, taught to those descendants who could not awaken a knight's bloodline. This way, someone in the family could brew the bloodline-awakening potions according to secret formulas, ensuring the family's knights would never "run dry" and that their status would only continue to rise.
Unfortunately, no precaution, however careful, could withstand the whims of fate. Her family had been conscripted into the most recent war against the northern heretics, and most of the men had perished on the battlefield. The women married out or remarried, leaving behind only her grandfather and herself, just a few years old at the time. With them gone, the distant relatives began eyeing the title and the family's property with barely concealed greed.
Since she could not awaken a bloodline on her own, she had no choice but to take the path of Arcane Magic, apprenticing herself to a mage her grandfather had recruited under his protection.
The dazzling, boundless, and profoundly deep world of magic captivated her completely. Yet she could only live in constant fear, always having to conceal her tracks like a mouse. It was only when she accidentally discovered that the famous musician Sylvia was actually the apprentice known as "White Honey Sugar" that a plan took shape in her mind—using her rather considerable musical talent to disguise her identity as a magic apprentice.
Later, after inheriting the family estate and its secret materials, she traded those materials to her teacher for the Silver Moon Potion and advanced to the rank of formal mage. To mask the unusual spiritual fluctuations that marked a mage, she spent nearly the rest of her inheritance and the savings from her musical performances on Holy Water, awakening a bloodline that allowed her to command animals, and became a rising musician.
But even all of this was not enough to satisfy her. In particular, the fact that her teacher had been severely wounded and killed by the Night Watch while exploring ruins in the Black Forest often jolted her awake in the dead of night, terrified that one day the Night Watch might appear in her own room. And so she studied desperately, composed music desperately, hoping that a more prominent reputation would allow her to befriend more powerful nobles and secure their protection.
"My demands aren't unreasonable—I only want to live a quiet, stable life and study magic. But it seems that will never be enough," she would lament in the small hours when the midnight dreams came. And it was precisely then that "the Professor" had opened the door to an entirely new world, showing her a sliver of hope. Her only regret was that it meant bidding farewell to the music she loved, and farewell to the Altor Musicians' Association.
"Miss Louise?" The puzzled voice of the young mage across from her pulled Louise back from her memories.
Louise offered a gentle, lovely smile. "My apologies—I was simply stunned by the magic steam train and let my mind wander to some old memories. Mr. Pan, please do go on with the ranking of the stupidest ways to die in Alen. It's entertaining and quite instructive."
Her voice was sweet and captivating, her bearing fresh and graceful yet tinged with a subtle melancholy—a quality most female mages simply did not possess. There were certainly women whose appearance surpassed Louise's, whether intellectually refined, elegantly poised, or seductively alluring, but very few had the artistic temperament she carried, shaped by years of immersion in music.
Klein, whose black hair was neatly combed back, chimed in with a chuckle: "Mr. Pan, I truly never imagined that so many foolish things could happen in magic experiments, exploration, and daily life. Heh—I'll have to try hard to avoid ending up making a similar mistake and being laughed at by mages even after I'm dead."
Mr. Pan, who had the typical look of someone from Holm, glanced somewhat evasively at Louise and replied with a bright smile: "We're almost at Alen—there isn't much time to keep telling these stories. How about this: once you've all settled in, I'll treat you all to dinner and we can continue sharing all sorts of oddities and amusing tales from the Parliament."
He was addressing the clearly close-knit group of Louise, Klein, "Flame" Sapatero, and "Hanged Man" Ricardo, who had been looking utterly distracted ever since Heidler City had come into view. Among the apprentices of the Alen circle, some had never departed, and some had perished along the way. In the end, only two mages and two apprentices had made it to Stourck.
Originally, Stewart had only been sending mages and selected apprentices over, but the Hanged Man and Flame had relied on their relationship with the Sage to pass themselves off as his apprentices and be sent along as well.
"Mm, we're almost at Alen?" Louise gazed out the window at the sky, seemingly unable to spot any trace of the city.
Pan pointed ahead with a smile. "It's above the cloud layer—you can't see it from down here."
Louise nodded and withdrew her gaze. After a moment's hesitation, she smiled and asked: "Mr. Pan, may I ask you something?"
"Louise, no need to be so formal—just call me Pan. What is it?" Pan smoothly adjusted the way he addressed her.
Louise asked, for reasons she herself wasn't quite sure of, with a touch of nervousness: "Pan, do you know if there's a gentleman in the Parliament who goes by the codename 'Professor'?" A name that had made it onto the Purification Sequence must be fairly well known in Alen, surely?
The Sage, the Hanged Man, and the others instantly fixed their eyes on Pan. The only person in the Parliament they were most familiar with was this very "Professor."
"'Professor'—he once became famous for appearing on the Purification Sequence. He belongs to the 'Element Will' organization I mentioned earlier. But the vast majority of mages don't know his true identity, and I don't know which gentleman he really is either." Pan shook his head.
Klein and the others looked a bit disappointed. "Then have you ever made any guesses as to who it might be?"
Pan was just about to answer when the apprentices traveling alongside them suddenly cried out in astonishment. Klein and the others turned to look out the window as well. Before their eyes, the iron tracks curved upward into the sky, and the train sped along in midair. The fields, forests, and cities below shrank ever smaller, looking like dense clusters of ants.
"This… this is truly a miracle…" Klein had spent the better part of his life in Altor, steeped in the teachings of the Church, and the words tumbled out of him almost reflexively—"a miracle." And indeed, the half-mountain floating inverted in the air not far away, the forest of magic towers, the vivid gardens, the thick groves of trees, the sprawling city below—these things seemed to call for nothing less.
"Alen welcomes you all." Pan placed his left hand over his heart and bowed in greeting.
Louise murmured, her eyes hazy with wonder: "So this is Alen…"