Damn Reincarnation

r>Trempel couldn’t possibly imagine how Akasha would be permitted to leave Akron, let alone Aroth.

“…What in the world just happened?” After Trempel had taken the elevator down, still heaving out sighs, Mer had quickly sat down next to Eugene and started questioning him.
“How could you have become Akasha’s new master? Akasha should have been sealed so that no one apart from Lady Sienna could even use it…!”

“That’s right, it was,” Eugene said with a nod as he once again turned to his magic book.

In the past, it had been full of sentences that were difficult for him to understand.
However, now it didn’t feel like that at all.
Just by reading it, his head was immediately able to understand what the author meant.

“Hey, Sir Eugene.
Can’t you please answer my question properly first?” Mer demanded as she leaned her face over the book to meet Eugene’s eyes.
“Did you manage to find Lady Sienna? You did, didn’t you? Apart from Lady Sienna, no other wizard would have been able to break Akasha’s seal.
Lady Sienna… she’s still alive, right?”

“There’s no need to be so hasty,” Eugene chided.

“You’re really asking me to not be hasty! How does that make any sense? Sir Eugene might be able to leave this place at any time, but I can’t do that!” Mer argued.

“Ah,” Eugene let out a short noise of surprise, closed the book, and stood up.

“See! You’re just going to run away now that it’s too bothersome and tiring to answer my questions!” Mer accused with a screech.
“U-uwah! I can’t even hold on to you! Once you’ve run away like this, who knows when you might return—”

“I just realized that I forgot something.”

“Forgot something! What would you forget?!”

Mer stuck close to Eugene as she followed behind him.
She wasn’t just quietly following him either, instead swinging both hands like windmills as she pounded on Eugene's back.
But her soft cottonball-like fists didn’t hurt him in the slightest.

“Sir Eugene, you’re always like that! Acting as you please, causing everyone else to feel frustrated! The contents of the fairy tale are completely correct.
You're a piece of trash, a son of a bitch!” Mer cursed.

“Sorry, but the one being described like that in the fairy tale isn’t Eugene Lionheart, it’s the Stupid Hamel,” Eugene corrected her.

“Are you really saying something like that at this point?” Mer asked in disbelief.
“I know that you are Hamel!”

“Well, that may be,” Eugene agreed.

“Are you making fun of me? You-you son of a bitch! I’m ordering you to tell me where Lady Sienna is, and whether she’s alright!”

“Geez, I told you not to be so hasty.”

“Why do you keep telling me to not be hasty! When I need to hurry up and get the answers from you before you leave!”

“Just hold on for a bit longer,” Eugene grumbled as he quickly turned around.
Eugene grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up into the air.

“Kyaaah!” Mer screeched as she kicked her heels in mid-air.

Eugene shook Mer up and down, then placed her on top of a nearby desk.

“You… yoooou… you bad guy…!”

Mer’s vocabulary was similar to Sienna’s, but also different.
Sienna was someone who had mastered all kinds of curses, from ‘son of a bitch’ to much worse ones, but Mer’s curses weren’t as harsh as Sienna’s.
After all, Mer wasn’t Sienna herself, but instead a familiar created based on Sienna’s childhood.

“Just wait here for a moment.
I have to concentrate, so don’t disturb me,” Eugene instructed with a grin as he patted Mer on the head.

Then he walked over to Witch Craft.
Mer watched Eugene, her expression filled with displeasure as she pouted her lips.
There were a lot of things that she still wanted to ask him, one of them addressing the fact that she didn’t know what Eugene was planning to do now.

Holding Akasha in his left hand, Eugene reached out to Witch Craft with his right hand.
As he did, Witch Craft began to activate.
He had done this dozens, even hundreds of times now.
Eugene closed his eyes and connected to Witch Craft.

The first thing he saw was the Eternal Hole, the ultimate goal of the Circle Magic Formula.
It still amazed him, even though he had already seen it hundreds of times.
Eugene stared at the Eternal Hole for a few moments.
It was an infinite cycle of Circles.
He had already managed to attain some understanding of it, and through this understanding, he had been able to create the Ring Flame Formula.

Akasha was assisting his ability to understand magic.
But even with that, his understanding of the Eternal Hole didn’t undergo any great changes.
He knew that it was an infinitely multiplying amount of Circles that were chained together, and the mana amplified through this process could be considered numerically infinite.

So there seemed to have been no point in trying to get a second look at it.

‘…This must mean that my understanding of it is correct,’ Eugene thought with some relief.

Since this was the case, even with Akasha’s assistance, his understanding of the Eternal Hole hadn’t undergone any changes.
Eugene grinned with satisfaction at this realization.

But he hadn’t connected to Witch Craft just to confirm this.
Eugene had a different goal in mind.
He took a few deep breaths and then opened his eyes.
As he returned to reality, the Eternal Hole was no longer visible.
Instead, a sphere could be seen that was covered in layers or rings.
This was the physical appearance of Witch Craft.
Without erasing his smile, Eugene approached Witch Craft.

Back at the World Tree, in the elven domain, Sienna had taught him the method used to unlock Akasha’s seal.

She had also taught him something else.

While readying his focus, Eugene held Akasha forward.
Akasha’s Dragonheart began to glow softly and Witch Craft began to respond to this light.

“…Huh…?” Mer made a puzzled noise, an analytic expression crossing her face as she sat on the desk, only for her eyes to widen in surprise.

The Rings surrounding Witch Craft, which had never stopped moving, were coming to a halt one by one.
With each ring that stopped moving, the light that surrounded Witch Craft’s sphere dimmed.

Creak, creeeeak….

Once all the rings had completely stopped, the sphere split into two, revealing a huge mana crystal.
This was where the core formulas of Witch Craft, which no one had ever been able to discover or analyze, were stored.
Eugene waved Akasha at the crystal.

“—Kyaaaah!” Mer, who had been staring blankly, suddenly screamed.

She panicked and jumped off the desk.
Then she immediately rushed over to Eugene.

Or at least that’s what she intended to do, but she wasn’t able to go through with it.
The moment that Mer leapt off the desk, she lost all strength in her legs.
Mer limply plopped down on the spot.
She tried to scream once more, but this time, she couldn’t even let out a cry.

Mer could sense that her body’s structure was changing.
She had been dissected by wizards several times before, but that hadn’t been painful for her.
No matter how this body of hers was dissected, the core of Mer was inside of Witch Craft.
As long as that remained intact, Mer’s body would never be permanently broken.

It had been hundreds of years since Witch Craft was stored in Akron.
Several wizards had attempted to crack into Witch Craft, but none had been able to open up the exterior of Witch Craft and reach the techniques inside.

However, Eugene had just managed to open up the exterior of Witch Craft without any apparent difficulty.
Mer stared at Eugene’s back with terrified eyes.
She wanted to say something to him, but she couldn’t move her body according to her will.
This caused Mer to feel even greater fear.

She was dying.
No, she was malfunctioning.
Was she really going to be erased like this? Why? Was this something that Lady Sienna had requested? But why in the world would she do so? There shouldn’t be any reason for doing that…..
A number of thoughts that Mer didn’t even want to contemplate began appearing inside of Mer’s head.

“…Uwaaaah!” Mer started sobbing as thick streams of tears ran from her eyes.
“Uwaaah! Aaah! Waaaah!”

Eugene remained silently focused on his task.

“Sob… hic…! Sooob! Uwaaa… hic….
Waaaaah!” As Mer continued to cry, she belatedly realized something.

The sound of her crying was audible.
Even though, just a moment ago, she hadn’t been able to make any noise when she had tried to scream!

Mer jerked her head up in surprise.

“Why are you crying? Eugene asked as he looked over at Mer with a confused expression.

Her lips trembling, Mer sniffed, some snot drawn back up her nose.

“Knock knock~”

After watching Mer for a few moments, waiting for her to say something, Eugene tried to cheer her up with a joke.

“Knock knock~”

Despite his repeated attempts, Mer remained silent.

“Knock—”

“Sh-shut up,” Mer said with a slight sniffle as she got to her feet.
“What in the world… just what in the world did you just do? How did you… to Witch Craft… you, just what did you do?”

“I moved the formula controlling your structure from Witch Craft over to me,” Eugene revealed.

“…Huh?” Mer grunted in shock.

Eugene continued, “I thought it would be better to move it to Akasha, but Sienna said that it would be better to move it to me instead.
She said that adding your control formula to Akasha would be incredibly difficult, while with all the mana that I have, I should have more than enough to sustain you.”

Mer couldn’t find anything to say to this.
Eugene just grinned and tucked Akasha into his cloak.

“Sienna asked me to tell you that she’s sorry,” Eugene began conveying the message.

“…Hic…,” Mer broke her silence with a sob.

Eugene kept talking, “She also asked me to take good care of you.
Since you’ve been stuck in this place for hundreds of years, she wanted me to take you out of here, so you can see some better sights, and even have some good food to eat….”

Mer kept crying.

Sob….

“First of all let’s get you a change of clothes…,” Eugene hesitated.
“No… hm… we don’t need to do that immediately, right? So let’s go to the Red Tower first.
I still have to explain the situation to my master—”

“Uwaaah!” Mer burst into tears once more as she threw herself into Eugene’s arms.