The 2nd branch Havashuka, where Muge Olga was the director, was located in the eastern part of the Sierow Kingdom.

There is the Kizel River that stretches eastward from the Solarus River, the longest and widest in the kingdom. These two streams flow widely towards the sea and form a lake in a sunken basin below.

The ancient people of Sierow, when they had someone they wanted to forget—for example, a dead family member or lover, a disappeared friend—would carve their names on small pieces of wood and throw them into this lake, which is why it was called the ‘Lake of the Lost’.

“I heard that the place where the magicians reside is near that lake.”

Eustar, who had told Laila about the ‘Lake of the Lost’, added an explanation.

“In the old days, magicians lived freely scattered throughout the kingdom, and only a few stayed in what we call the ‘City of Magicians’, the magician residential area. But at some point… all the people except for the magicians belonging to the royal palace flocked to the city.”

“Why did that happen?”

Eustar rubbed his chin lightly with his fingertips, holding back a bitter smile.

“Remember when I told you before that Olga was the last magician to officially work for the royal palace in the past?”

Laila nodded. It was a story she had briefly heard when they went to the Kiron branch to eliminate the monster that was luring and kidnapping children.

“Is it related to Olga?”

Eustar shook his head.

“No, it has nothing to do with Olga. The reason magicians gathered in their own city was because the kingdom’s laws were continuously revised to be unfavorable to magicians. They are proud and not used to compromising with others. Even those who had lived among non-magicians for a long time were like that. In the city of magicians, there are leaders in charge of each field, called ‘elders’ among them… They called in magicians from all over Sierow. And they hid their city from the eyes of non-magical humans.”

Laila, who had been deep in thought, said.

“Was it a kind of protest? Or…”

Eustar said.

“Well, at first, there might have been an intention to protest as Laila said. But even then, there were magicians who remained in the royal palace, and I heard there were also a very few who refused to return to the city. As a result, the magicians who entered the city became increasingly isolated in their own world.”

The conversation between the two naturally stopped when they reached the front of the room where Muge Olga was staying.

One of Muge’s adjutants said ‘The director must be resting now’, but even before opening the door, a buzzing vibration sound could be heard leaking out.

It sounded like someone rapidly beating a small drum with tightly stretched leather.

“What is this sound?”

When Laila asked, Eustar smiled ambiguously.

“Well, should I say it’s the sound of eating?”

“Eating?”

Eustar pushed open the door. Laila thought for a moment that it was an empty space, but that wasn’t the case.

It seemed eerily empty only because there was hardly anything that could be called furniture or objects necessary for living, but there were clearly traces of someone having stayed there.

Laila stopped, startled by the unfamiliar sight she had never seen before. A huge magic circle was drawn on the pale gray floor.

Muge was in the center of it, her small body floating slightly in the air. Even from a distance, one could feel the clear magical power surging around the entire magic circle.

“Muge.”

When Eustar called her name, Muge’s eyes, which had been lifeless and unfocused as if she had lost her life, blinked once. As the magical power that had been surging up and seeping into her gradually disappeared, Muge’s toes touched the ground.

“What? Did you two come all the way here on a date holding hands?”

Muge’s long hair was wet as if water had been sprinkled on it. Her attire was different from usual, and Laila found it hard to even call what she was wearing clothes. It was barely covering her naked body as if holes had been roughly punched in a sack.

Muge, who had come down, roughly pulled off the cloth hanging on the chair. Although the sudden visit of the two didn’t seem very welcome, her expression was unexpectedly mild.

“Why is she so dazed?”

When Muge gestured towards Laila with her chin, Eustar glanced at her and made an expression that was half smiling, half not.

“I think it’s because it’s a sight she’s never seen before in her life.”

Muge snorted and threw the cloth she had used to dry her hair carelessly, then turned around.

“She didn’t believe that I was an artificial human. Now she’ll believe it, right?”

Laila hesitantly objected.

“It’s not that I didn’t believe… But what just happened…”

“It’s replenishing magical power. Just as you humans need to sleep, eat, and bask in the sunlight to live, I, an artificially created human, need to replenish magical power like this occasionally.”

“Like… a magical tool?”

Muge, who was changing clothes, turned sharply to look at Laila. Laila’s shoulders shrank a little at the sharp gaze.

Muge grinned with a fierce expression and turned her head as she buttoned up her shirt.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m a magical tool that can speak, move, and think.”

Eustar intervened.

“More importantly, Olga. There’s an issue we need to discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“Magicians. More precisely, an issue related to magicians who died long ago.”

Muge, who was putting one arm into her jacket, looked back at the two with an expression incomparably more bewildered and annoyed than before.

She looked like a child who had just been told that the picnic they had been waiting for all month had been canceled… but Laila kept her mouth shut tight and didn’t show it.

The three people sitting around the round table each had a steaming cup of tea in front of them, but no one was touching their cups.

Eustar placed a small bottle containing the ghost that had lost its power due to Laila’s ‘overwriting’ on the table. Muge looked down at the energy mass that was writhing like a dying snake with a displeased eye.

“Is there any self-consciousness left?”

Eustar shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I haven’t tried to communicate with it yet.”

A disgruntled groan escaped from Muge’s mouth. She stared at the ghost twitching in the bottle for a while, then turned her gaze to Laila.

“I can’t tell who it is just from the description of impressions you gave. I don’t know all the magicians, after all. Are there no other characteristics?”

Laila carefully recalled what she had seen in the ghost’s memories, but there wasn’t much that was plausible.

A space surrounded by stone walls, a basement… And besides the fact that they traveled around Sierow to plant ‘seeds’. The one called ‘Master’ never took off his hood, so Laila could only see the tip of his nose, lips, and chin.

After pondering, Laila said.

“That memory was very old. At least a few decades… Maybe even a hundred years ago. And that ‘Master’ said…”

— Just you wait, those who banished me. Those who looked down on me and persecuted me! Everyone will fear me. Everyone will kneel and bow to my magic!

Muge’s eyebrows twitched.

“Banishment, hm. I’m not sure if he was really banished or if he was just suffering from paranoid delusions, but that might be a clue. There were quite a few who were banished, though…”

Laila’s eyes blinked a couple of times. Her expression seemed to ask, ‘What on earth do these magicians do?’

Muge, who was poking at the bottle while resting her chin on her hand, said.

“So what did those things do?”

Eustar and Laila’s gazes met briefly. Laila glanced at the ghost twitching in the bottle and cleared her throat with a fake cough.

“According to this one’s memory, that ‘Master’ created a sync.”

Muge’s eyes widened.

“What?”

“Ghosts came out of the sync. It’s something I’ve never seen before… The magician this one called ‘Master’ was seen creating a sync. It was very small though. And that sync…”

Laila explained about the small, dark red stone she had seen. While listening to the story that it looked like a ‘seed’, Muge was looking down with a very serious expression.

Eustar said.

“The sync that appeared near the Romul branch showed a flow we’ve never seen before. It seemed that monsters were gathering to absorb the energy of the sync. Some of them actually grew.”

Muge slowly rolled her tongue inside her lips, her eyes wide.

“…We had a similar incident on our side not long ago.”

Laila and Eustar stared at Muge in surprise.

“Large and small monsters gathered around the sync. We beat them all, but the sync didn’t disappear and remained as it was. We haven’t been able to clearly analyze the relationship between syncs and monsters, or syncs and ghosts so far. We’ve left the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, ambiguous.”

“But, if the sync remained even after all the monsters were eliminated…”

Muge frowned.

“The order is that the sync occurs first, and then monsters or ghosts are drawn to its energy, that’s the right way to think about it. However, the conditions of where and why syncs occur were completely blank, but now hearing what you say…”

Laila felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Even though she had already suspected it. Maybe it was because of Muge’s glass-like eyes.

After a moment’s pause, Muge said in a voice mixed with a sigh.

“There are ‘seeds’ that create syncs.”

Silence fell. The three of them were just staring blankly at the ghost in the bottle, which now seemed to have given up on wriggling, having become a small energy mass.

Eustar said.

“How did you handle that sync on your side?”

“We barely closed it by reversing the energy flow.”

“Havashuka and Romul, that’s already two places. We need to check if similar incidents have occurred in other branches.”

Muge’s small fingertip tapped the table.

“The fact that these damn things popped out of the sync you closed means that the last sync in the memory Kristrad saw was right there. I’m not sure if we should say we’re lucky or that things have become annoyingly complicated.”

Muge, who let out an irritated sigh, stood up from her seat.

“Wait a moment.”

She crossed the empty room and entered a small space inside an arched entrance. There was a brief clattering sound. When she returned, Muge was holding a shiny green key.

“What’s that?”

When Eustar asked, Muge frowned and chuckled.

“Well, what should we call this? A viewing ticket to take a peek at my hometown?”