Chapter 4 - Let’s Learn Magic (1)

Learning magic was a little different from what I had imagined.

I thought I’d have to do things like breathing exercises or sit cross-legged and feel mana, but apparently, I needed knowledge first.

I opened the Grimoire again and sat at my desk with a notebook beside me, studying The Mysteries of the Worm as if it were a textbook for my major, carefully taking notes and memorizing things step by step.

“Ah~ So these are the planetary days. Mercury’s day is Wednesday, and Jupiter’s day is Thursday. It’s much more intuitive than I expected.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Sun.

According to Medieval Traditional Magic, these seven planets possess great magical power, so when casting certain powerful spells, you must borrow the attributes and power corresponding to the relevant planet.

And it’s not enough to simply match the day. You also have to match the time of day.

The first hour after sunrise is when that planet’s power is at its strongest, and then the power of the other planets cycles in by the hour. Since there are seven planets, if you miss the first hour after sunrise, that day’s planetary hour comes around again seven hours later.

Since sunrise occurs at different times depending on the season, like summer and winter, you have to calculate it carefully and be cautious.

…There’s a lot to keep track of.

Can’t I just use my mana circuit instead of planetary magic?

Well, apparently it’s only necessary for certain spells. In that case, let’s see what kind of impressive magic I can use.

[Magic to Find Stolen Objects] [Magic to Prevent Accidental Death During Exercise] [Magic to Make Socks That Don’t Tire You Out While Traveling] [Magic to Win Other People’s Favor] [Magic to Make a Scam Successful]

And so on.

My eyes blinked on their own.

No, I mean, they were impressive in their own way, but… they were a little underwhelming.

Isn’t there anything more proper? Something flashy?

Just then, perhaps because he noticed that I was concentrating, Grizzly gently placed a hand on the refrigerator door.

“Grrr~.”

Grizzly. That was the name I had given my Invisible Vampire.

Because it tore people apart, I named it after a bear. Grizzly.

I had no idea what had gotten into him, but he liked opening and closing the refrigerator door.

Creeeak—

“Grizzly.”

“Giiiii….”

At his master’s call, Grizzly quietly closed the door again.

I reached out and stroked his head.

A cool, smooth yet firm texture. I had never touched a reptile before, but I imagined it might feel similar.

“Good boy. Good boy.”

“Grrrr~.”

Invisible Vampire. A terrifying and horrifying creature, but I intended to do my best to maintain a good relationship with him.

I didn’t know whether it would work, but… at least when he got hungry, maybe he would remember me as the person who fed him rather than as meat.

I stroked and scratched Grizzly’s head a few more times before checking the news on my phone.

[University Professor Dies in Horrific Incident, Connection to Previous University District Case]

As one might expect, the incident in which a professor was killed in a lecture hall became a hot topic because of its connection to the case in which a man had died in the university district.

There was a murdered person, but there was no sign of a murderer.

As I browsed the internet, I found posts speculating that the phenomenon was related to spontaneous human combustion, calling it some kind of natural massacre, or claiming that the victim’s body had exploded from the inside because of an unknown virus. Others even claimed that a group of students had killed the professor and coordinated their stories afterward.

Whatever the case, none of it was good for me.

After all, I had been at both the first crime scene and the second.

This was dangerous. There was no evidence directly linking me to being the culprit, but there was no evidence proving otherwise, either.

They could investigate me simply to gather information, just on the off chance that something turned up.

The first incident could be dismissed as me simply getting caught up in something unlucky, but after the second, things didn’t look good.

Fortunately, the lecture hall where the professor had died didn’t have CCTV, so there was no footage of the incident.

But if they obtained the attendance list from that day’s class, they would quickly discover that I had been there too.

“………”

…Am I thinking about this too negatively?

It was entirely possible they wouldn’t notice that I had been at the first crime scene at all. And even if they did, couldn’t they just let it slide?

“Haa…”

I sighed and stopped indulging in such complacent thoughts.

Enough. Being positive was good, but being blindly optimistic wasn’t.

The world wasn’t some warm, gentle thing that moved according to my wishes.

Hadn’t I realized that the day my biological mother abandoned me at an orphanage when I was five?

…But remembering that day for no reason just pissed me off.

I couldn’t even remember her face anymore.

Damn bitch. If she was going to abandon me anyway, she should’ve done it when I was a newborn. By the time she dumped me, I had already missed the adoption window and couldn’t get adopted anywhere.

A hollow laugh formed at the corner of my mouth.

But then again, I wasn’t exactly cute or lovable. Considering my personality, even if I had been adopted, I probably would’ve been returned in no time.

I’m not the type to dwell on things that have already happened.

Anyway, there were a lot of problems I had to deal with, but…

Actually, everything was practically one giant mess. Still, if I were to organize things, there were three major things I needed to do from now on.

First—I need to study magic through the Grimoire. This is essential.

Beyond simply understanding the Grimoire and properly controlling Grizzly, the knowledge and spells within the Grimoire could prove useful to me.

Second—hide my connection to the murder cases involving the man and the professor.

Government agencies might look incompetent, but sometimes they were strangely competent in certain areas.

It might just be my imagination, but…

With actual Grimoires and monsters existing right in front of them, there was no way there wasn’t some secret government organization dedicated to managing them and maintaining social order.

That organization would investigate the incidents and come looking for me.

I had to hide the fact that I possessed the Grimoire The Mysteries of the Worm and that I was the master of an Invisible Vampire.

Maybe they would try to recruit me, but no matter how I thought about it, killing one powerless orphan kid and cleanly recovering and securing the Grimoire seemed like a much more certain and safer method than going through all that trouble.

And then the third. This was the most important one.

“Gyaa?”

Grizzly tilted his head as he stared at me, then held out the bowl he used as his food dish.

“Gyaa!”

It looked as though he was saying, ‘Feed me!’ …No, not looked like it. He was definitely telling me to feed him.

“……….”

Third—make enough money to pay for Grizzly’s food.

It was nice to discover that I could feed him meat and milk from the Butcher Shop, but maybe because of his size, he ate a surprisingly large amount.

…Should I take a leave of absence from college and get more part-time jobs?

Fortunately, perhaps he digested everything, or perhaps his body was simply different because he was a monster, but he didn’t produce any waste.

At least I didn’t have to buy a litter box and waste bags.

***

[Special Response Division Conference Room]

There was no need to write down or say what exactly they were responding to.

The Special Response Division was an organization that dealt with things incomprehensible to human reason and maintained social order.

The beginning of this incident.

A video played through the conference room’s presentation system, showing a man being brutally murdered in the university district.

The sight of the man being killed—his arms torn off and his internal organs scattered everywhere—was clearly visible, but the murderer could not be seen.

“…What kind of lunatic did this?”

Until now, whenever a bizarre incident occurred, it usually happened in abandoned buildings or places outside the public eye. But this incident had taken place brazenly in the middle of the street.

And although it was unclear whether the two incidents were truly connected, the very next day, a professor had also been killed inside a university lecture hall.

Was the culprit devoid of reason? Or was this a declaration of war?

The senior officials who supported the Special Response Division were thrown into an uproar by this blatant murder.

They had been accustomed to issuing orders from the safety of their offices. Now, the fear that they could be killed at any moment by some invisible ‘something’ had been carved into their minds.

“But why was that man killed so brutally? Who was he?”

“Someone capable of doing something like this… Maybe he just killed him because he was bored?”

“It might not have been done by a human in the first place.”

Amid the murmurs of the other government officials attending the meeting, a neatly composed woman standing at the podium continued the briefing.

Shin Sion of the Special Response Division.

“We believe that a Grimoire may be connected to this incident.”

Sion changed the presentation slide.

The screen displayed a book with an elegant, old-fashioned white cover.

“This is the Grimoire The Book of Raziel the Angel, which had been kept in the Vatican. And it is currently missing. It sensed a compatible owner and went off to find them on its own.”

“…What does that mean?”

“A Grimoire is not an object that can simply be kept safely in storage. It merely stops acting for a while when it has yet to find a suitable owner.”

Sion explained in a calm voice.

“Grimoires possessing great power either manipulate circumstances so that a person they deem compatible and appealing can draw them out, or they leave it to chance and search for a new owner that way.”

“For example, they might end up mixed in with an old book among inherited belongings. Or they might wait for their owner in an antique bookstore.”

The government official rubbed his chin.

“…Then are you saying this incident is connected to The Book of Raziel the Angel?”

“No. That is not what I mean. The magic contained within The Book of Raziel the Angel consists of prophecies, methods of reading people’s innermost thoughts and secrets, and the sorcery of angels.”

Sion changed the presentation screen back to the image of the man being murdered in the middle of the street.

“We believe this incident may be connected to a Grimoire because it differs from the behavior of mages or supernatural phenomena. Even when those entities cause incidents, they do not carry them out so blatantly in a street covered with CCTV cameras. They are much more discreet.”

Her calm, methodical voice filled the conference room as she gradually approached the heart of the case.

“That is why the Special Response Division currently believes that this incident may have been a rampage by a user who happened to acquire some Grimoire or dangerous artifact.”