CH extra 13

Extra 2. If Cory

The DuBois family had a hand in creating magical devices, magic research, and a lot of other things that had to do with magic. The company that produced the magazine ‘Today’s Magic’ was also within the DuBois family. Cory DuBois decided to combine his hobby and his future job as the DuBois marquis to take on the task of ‘Today’s Magic’ ever since he was young.

Cory didn’t run the magazine company or oversee it, he was helping a lot with its contents. He looked for any mistakes, for example. Or he brainstormed what other types of magic they would focus on in the next edition. Cory wanted to make sure that everyone knew about Shunivalen, so he purposefully decided to focus on the magazine to spread his agenda.

[‘Today’s Magic’ Presents The 1st Annual Magic Festival]

Cory read through the sample pamphlet from the magazine company and scratched his neck.

Recently, the ‘Today’s Magic’ company had been working on a new project. They were planning on opening a festival for marketing purposes. The marquis had given the stamp of approval and the date had been et.

Cory emotionlessly read through the document as he tapped on his desk. They were trying to invite new and old magicians to showcase new magic circles or devices to average people and give them an opportunity to try them out.

Moreover, they could create a booth for products that weren’t theirs for marketing purposes.

“Ooh……..”

Cory stared at the text in front of him and let out a noise of awe.

Cory, who had been buried under a mountain of magic circle doodles, stood up and headed towards his bed. His bed was covered with books about magical theory, in-depth magic texts, and more. There wasn’t even a bit of space to lay down upon. He moved the books aside with magic and took out his precious Shunivalen collection, which he had hidden right at the end of his bed in one corner.

Shuraina occasionally came over to his home with Karim. Because Shuraina always teased him for his collection, he hid every Shunivalen-related newspaper or document like this and fanboyed in secret.

Cory preciously hugged his thick notebook filled with Shunivalen articles and varied notes of magical items as he stared at the pamphlet again.

“Keuaaaaagh.”

The curtains covered the windows as Shuraina laid down on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. She had been like this, mouth wide open in a constant sigh, for a month. It had also been a month since she had locked herself in the room and hid under her blankets.

And it had also been a month since she had failed her exam for the First Order of the Royal Knights.

“If I had just skipped breakfast!”

Shuraina had ran out, mid-exam, and had been disqualified. Her destination at that time–the restroom. She had eaten something wrong that morning and her stomach had been hurting constantly. She had decided to give up the exam she had studied and practiced so hard for for the safety of her intestines.

She had wanted to retake the exam, but this exam only happened every two years.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! This has to be one of the dumbest reasons ever!”

She stayed on the bed, just like this. Her lips were quirked up in a smile, but her eyes were empty. Her mind was so wrecked that she couldn’t recover. And while her body and heart were crushed, there was a mountain of requests for Shunivalen and a lot of visitors came by the estate, but she sent them all back. Shuraina needed some time alone to recover. For her, who had always gotten good results for her efforts, this was quite a big blow.

She stopped wanting to try. She needed to start exercising again to start training for the exam two years for now, but she couldn’t muster up the will to do so. She had trained too hard before the exam and she was burned out.

She had only focused on her swordsmanship while she trained for the exam. For magic-wielding knights, swordsmanship was more of a factor so she had to give up on her magic somewhat. She had wanted to use her black magic to draw out and try some new magic circles, but she had suppressed those urges to practice wielding the sword. She had practiced so much that callouses had formed on her callouses.

But currently, she had messed up on her exams. She had a lot of time, she had enough time to spend time on magic, but she didn’t feel any sort of will to do that.

Shuraina’s face was comically pressed into her fluffy pillow. Her blank eyes stared at one thing in particular. She could see two contact orbs floating from the other side of her room. One of the contact orbs was for Shuraina’s personal use and the other was to collect requests as Shunivalen.

Both contact orbs shone brightly as they showed others reaching out. She had made it so that it would sound out whenever she got a call, but she had had so many people call her recently that she had muted it. It just flashed brightly as it showed her just how many calls she had missed.

She wasn’t in the right mind to respond, so Shuraina pulled her eyes away from the contact orbs and buried her face back into the pillow. She tried to close her eyes and pull down her anxiety when she couldn’t help but look back at the requests that had piled up for Shunivalen.

“……maybe I’ll feel up to it if I do something.”

Maybe if she earned some money and felt accomplished, she would feel better. Then she’d get her will back, and when she found her will again, she would want to start training for her exams again. She was going to rediscover her pace and join the order of knights. She had rested so much that Shuraina had lost the urge to work, but she pulled herself together.

Because she had just stayed in bed without washing, Shuraina’s hair resembled a lion’s mane. She scratched her scalp through her hair, which had become one huge clump, as she held Shunivalen’s contact orb. Then, she laid back down to read the contents of the orb.

There were a lot of menial requests. A magical ice device repair, a building security device installation, a request to save some data that had disappeared, etc, etc. Because the tasks were so easy, the pay was also low. It was between one silver to 10 gold. She had earned a lot more money while doing more illegal work, but she had given up on that particular line of work earlier.

She was just looking through the requests when her eyes shone at something that wasn’t a request but just an attempt at contacting.

“A magic festival….. It’s for Shunivalen?”

It was the most recent contact as well. It was an invitation from the company of ‘Today’s Magic,’ something she was subscribed to. It seemed like they had sent her an invitation for subscribing to their magazine.

Shuraina tilted her head as she read the contents of the invitation.

“Are they introducing devices and circles while selling rights to use it and stuff?”

It seemed like they were inviting big corporations and organizations to make it easy for poor magicians to get investors. Looking at the date, the festival was starting the day after tomorrow, too.

Shuraina decided to go to the festival. She turned off the contact orb and walked towards the shower room.

She didn’t want to work, didn’t want to use magic, and she especially didn’t want to move around and wield the sword. She wanted to laze around forever, but she felt like she needed to do something. Shuraina felt like the middle ground between her two wants was the festival. It was perfect. It was a festival, so there would be sights to see and good food to eat, right? Slurp. She was already drooling.

“I’m just going to watch. Just watch.”

But even as she said that, Shuraina was thinking about opening her own booth. What magic circle did she want to exhibit, if someone wanted to invest in her, what plans did she want to show them? She was planning for situations A through Z but was verbally telling herself that she would just watch.

Whew. Sure. Let’s just put everything down and enjoy ourselves. It had been a while since she had let everything go, but Shuraina decided that since she had already gone so easy on herself, she’d just go a bit easier on herself from here on out.

She hadn’t even had time to get some fresh air while she studied for the knight exam–she had gone from her room to the training hall, and back and forth. Some fresh air wouldn’t be bad.

When she remembered the day of the exam, Shuraina just banged her head on the tiled walls of the shower room.

Just reading the pamphlet was enough to see that the festival was going to be huge. It was barely the first festival they had opened, but it seemed like they had poured their heart and soul into it. But because it was being held by such a large corporation and it was the first magic festival of its kind, a lot of people paid attention to it. It seemed like they were making it large to appease the large crowd of interested individuals.

There were a lot of things that caught people’s interest. The food being just the start, there was a lot of magicians participating in it which gave the visitors a lot to see and learn about. The entire festival was bright, colorful, and attractive.

She could see a variety of different magicians. There was a pyrotechnic magicians who made flame flowers out of fireworks as well as a magician who was busy at work explaining how they could create a new type of energy using a new light magic circle.

Normal magic users had their own specialties. Fire, light, etc., they usually picked one of their most skilled types of magic and researched it forever.

There weren’t many magicians who were able to switch around magic circles to use as they wished like Shuraina, so most others just dug deep into a specific type of magic they liked the most.

“Ooh. I saw that person in the magazine before.”

Seeing that this festival was being held by a magazine company, many of the magicians who were exclusively contracted with ‘Today’s Magic’ had been invited and were participating in the festival. When she turned her head slightly and looked across, she saw a magician who appeared in the magazine countless times who was explaining the background of magic. When she turned the other way, she saw a magic user who was famous for their use of ice magic.

She was dazzled by the amount of famous people in one setting. Shuraina wanted to look at everything a bit closer, so she walked in to where the festival was taking place.

“Excuse me….. Are you a magic user?”

“Ah, yes.”

As soon as she stepped in to the festival location, one of the attendants walked over to her. Shuraina was taken aback for a moment before nodding.

“Oh! Have you been invited?”

“No. Just a magic user who came to visit.”

“Is that so. What is your name? Or your stage name….?”

Shuraina fidgeted with her sleeve, wondering why this had to be cumbersome.

“Shunival…….”

Shunivalen. She was just about to give away her stage name before clamping her mouth shut.

They had asked if she had been invited, but she had been annoyed and had said that she hadn’t. Shunivalen had been invited here, too. Seeing how they were asking about invites to each and every person, it seemed like they were giving added bonuses to those who had been asked to come. Shuraina just wanted to visit for a short while, so she wanted to refuse that.

“So, your stage name is?”

“Yes, uh…. No. What should my name be.”

“……?”

“Mm….. Michol?”

Shuraina just opened and closed her mouth under the scrutinizing gaze of the attendant before borrowing the chef’s name at her residence. She had just blurted out any name that she could think of.

“Aah. You’re Michol.”

“…..yes. My occupation change has been very recent, so I’m not too famous.”

“Seeing how you’re not on the list, it seems so.”

The attendant seemed to deflate once they learned that Shuraina wasn’t who they wanted. They gave them a label with [Indivual_Magic User Michol] and left.

‘They said that if there was someone with their hood on, they had a high chance of being Shunivalen.’]

The weird girl from earlier who called themselves Michol had her hood down so they had asked to confirm. The weather was hot, so there was hardly anyone who covered their face with a hood like this. That was why the attendant had asked question and question to make sure.

Just as they thought, the girl hadn’t been them. There was no way that secretive magic user would show up so easily.

It was well-known that the future DuBois marquis who was participating in the festival was a hardcore Shunivalen fan. The company had tried to ask Shunivalen to participate to buy the affection and interest of the DuBois heir, but they were now sitting at the edge of their seats, nervous that Shunivalen wouldn’t come.

Personally, they were just curious as to how they looked. They also respected how much impact Shunivalen had on the study of magic as well.

“Is Shunivalen not coming, just as expected? I have half a mind to kowtow to them if I see them.”

But their long-awaited Shunivalen hadn’t come–instead, a no-name magician named Michol came instead. They regretted that they had anticipated their arrival so much that they balefully stared at Michol.

Michol was a magic user, but they didn’t even go to the magic booths. Instead, they wandered around the food stalls. Seeing how they kept eating without stopping, it seemed like Michol’s magic skills had to do with having a strong stomach.