Chapter 189.2

Envoy from the Magic Kingdom (2.2)
No matter how you looked at it, it was just an ordinary medal with no magic imbued. The surface of the coin bore the engraving of a wolf’s head. Incidentally, the model was Coote with a serious expression. The fact that this would become Arland's currency a hundred years later is another story.

To tell the truth, the clone doesn’t disappear just from being beheaded. It can’t be helped—it isn’t a living creature but a magical existence itself.

Since everyone around her was visibly taken aback, the Alicetia clone decided to end things quickly.

“This time it’s my turn.”

With a skill called Quick Draw, she pulled out several smoke grenades and casually tossed them out one after another. Norman naturally tried to blow them away with wind magic, but a barrier had been set up around the area, leaving the smoke with nowhere to escape. Norman immediately switched to detection magic—but that was a mistake. He used a spell to search for living organisms. Naturally, that wouldn’t detect the Alicetia clone. He should have gone with mana detection right away. However, mana detection has many ways to be misled. That’s why Norman opted for life detection. That choice came back to bite him.

Before long, a loud rattling noise began to echo. When the barrier was lifted, wind roared through and scattered the smoke.

“... What... What is that!?”

“A prototype I made. Well, technically another me made it.”

The booming voice of the Alicetia clone rang out from speakers, reverberating around them.

The clone was riding an Apache. At the front seat was a marionette-like puppet. The craft was operated using puppet magic, which allowed for finer control than golems, and the clone sat in the gunner’s seat.

“You got to fly earlier, so now it’s my turn to fly—Fire!”

The 20mm Gatling gun mounted below the craft, with multiple round barrels, began to spin. Norman instinctively realized that this was a roar of death. He poured all his mana into activating his barrier magic tool. He also erected the hardest barrier he could conjure himself—but even then, the sound of the barrier creaking echoed.

“Damn it!”

One by one, the magic tools generating the barriers shattered. They couldn’t withstand the load. Magic tools that generate barriers have the trait of breaking under excessive strain. Some can be configured to shut down automatically to avoid overheating once the load reaches a certain level, but Norman didn’t choose that. No—he couldn’t choose that. If he did such a thing here, death awaited.

And when the final magic tool shattered, the entire burden was shifted onto Norman.

“This... This isn’t how it was supposed to go...”

To Norman, this had been a simple matter. Travel to the barbaric nation ruled by savages, retrieve the princess, and that would be it. If he made her his disciple, his own influence would grow, and perhaps he’d have a clear path to becoming a Great Mage.

The Magic Kingdom treats Great Mages as sacred beings (Eibon’s existence is officially denied), and the standards to become one are unimaginably high. So high, in fact, that the Magic Kingdom has yet to produce a single Great Mage.

A Great Mage is the ultimate pinnacle of a magic user. To be recognized as one, at least three countries must agree. For the Magic Kingdom, which supplies magic tools to the entire continent, getting such agreement should be simple—yet there are no Great Mages. That is proof of how sacredly the title is regarded in the Magic Kingdom.

Alicetia was merely a magician from a magically backward nation. Norman himself was a pure-blooded mage from the Magic Kingdom, the heart and origin of magic. If he gave the order, the princess should have knelt before him in tears, begging to follow. But reality was different. She’d dismissed him simply because they didn’t have the sweets she wanted. He couldn’t defeat her in ability, either.

Even in the Magic Kingdom, he was the only one who had a dragon with an elemental attribute under his command. No—he believed he was the only one on the entire continent. With the wind dragon Leaf and his own wind magic, there should have been no way he could lose. By teaming up with Leaf, his power rivaled that of the number one mage. And yet, Leaf was being eaten in the corner of his vision. He himself was being trampled by some mysterious magical weapon, as if his magic had no worth at all.

It was humiliating. The princess before him held not even a fragment of interest in him. She only saw him as an obstacle to be removed. Like swatting a fly buzzing before her eyes.

Finally, Norman’s mana ran dry, and he collapsed.

“My overwhelming victory! As I thought, We’ll become a Great Mage and escape from Mother and Madame’s threats!”

Through his fading consciousness, Norman clearly heard it.

“Someone... actually wanted to become a Great Mage... for *that* reason...?”

As he lost consciousness, Norman was dumbfounded that someone would pursue the pinnacle longed for by so many magicians for such a bizarre reason.

At that moment, an alarm blared within the helicopter. The craft suddenly lost stability, the rear tail rotor exploded off, and the Apache went into a crash. But the Alicetia clone emerged calmly. The fuel wasn’t fossil-based, so there was little risk of an explosion.

“... If it had been the real me, I might’ve died. But if this thing was destroyed, that means...”

As a knight proclaimed Alicetia’s victory and Norman’s disciples cried out in shock—they arrived.

Accompanied by whistling sounds, more Alicetia clones in knightly outfits marched in. At the front was one that looked like a judge, with a fake mustache.

The mustached Alicetia clone stepped in front of the victorious clone and unrolled a rolled parchment to declare:

“For the crime of severely damaging an experimental prototype during testing, you are under arrest.”

“It took twenty-four hours to make that thing and you just took it—death penalty!”

“You destroyed it—death penalty!”

The knight-clad clones seized the victorious one by both arms and began dragging her away for having taken the prototype without permission.

“Oh dear, I’m not letting you get away.”

“Everyone, fall back!”

Just as they were about to detain the duplicate that had stolen the prototype from the scene, which remained carefree despite the commotion, Sylvia, who had been out on a walk, was drawn to the explosion and showed up. The duplicates scattered like baby spiders.

“Were you making weird things again?”

Gilbert looked exasperated, and the finance minister turned pale at the thought of increased military spending if those helicopters were ever mass-produced. It's fine for now. If they started mass-producing helicopters, it would be catastrophic for Alicetia's capacity. Tomorrow can’t be guaranteed.

Later, the Alicetia duplicate escaped through the castle’s secret passages, and so the original, who was innocently munching on cake in high spirits, ended up getting scolded—a completely unfair consequence, but a minor one, so let’s leave it out.

Norman woke up inside the carriage that had been expelled from the royal castle. His disciples had already been informed that from now on, no emissaries would be accepted and that people from the Magic Kingdom were banned from entering the country.

Even his disciples, for all their loyalty, were dispirited seeing Norman defeated without putting up a fight, and so no unnecessary conflict arose.

Norman, however, had regained some composure. The fact that he had lost to a young girl made him calm down. And that calm allowed him to broaden his perspective.

He looked calmly out the carriage window. He saw people who couldn't even use magic, working cheerfully and fulfilling their roles using many magical devices.

“What a shameful feeling. It seems our country was making false claims.”

Norman had come to understand that Alicetia had not stolen technology from the Magic Kingdom. Those magical devices—more like magical weapons—did not exist in the Magic Kingdom. And they could not be produced there either. They were a crystallization of advanced technology to such an extent. If he knew they’d been destroyed, he’d probably faint.

And he also came to realize just how arrogant they had become.

“Master…”

“The Magic Kingdom began as a country to protect magicians. To save our brethren who were being used as tools of war and to create a nation for us magicians—that was supposed to be the beginning. Where did we go wrong?”

Outside the carriage was the world the magicians had once dreamed of. A magician in a robe was laughing arm-in-arm with a dwarf. Such a sight couldn’t be seen in the Magic Kingdom.

In the Magic Kingdom, the gazes directed at magicians were filled with fear and awe. Non-magicians avoided eye contact to protect themselves.

Norman calmed his still-confused disciples and set off for home. He would’ve liked to stay and see more of this country, but since he and his group had called Alicetia a thief, there wasn’t a single inn willing to take them in. They were turned away everywhere. The only thing people directed at them was hatred.

Upon returning home, Norman advocated that the Magic Kingdom needed to change... and was purged for dangerous thinking.

The Magic Kingdom did not change. And they imposed an export ban on magic tools to Arland. The condition for lifting the ban: handing over Alicetia.

This was a standard tactic of the Magic Kingdom. Any nation that defied the Magic Kingdom—the largest producer of magic tools—would be subjected to an embargo. But when this was conveyed at the border (they couldn’t actually enter due to the entry ban), the Arland side just laughed through their noses. They had already stopped importing long ago, previously resorting to smuggling via third countries.

Furious, the Magic King then imposed an embargo on Arland’s allied nations as well—but was met with the same derision. In terms of quality, price, and performance, Arland-made magic tools were superior in every way. Their productivity was also unmatched. No one had any need for overpriced magic tools anymore.

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