I Blue : Reincarnated as a Cursed Crit-Based Swordwoman-Chapter 5: Mage Mage Ritual

*Rustling of papers*

"Good day. My name is..."

The pink-haired maid squinted her only visible eye as she read the notepad in her hand.

"Mo... mota... sigh... It will be easier if you call me Momo. I will be your instructor and caretaker starting today."

The "instructor" lowered the notepad, now looking at the cup of tea she had poured for her student a bit earlier. It was still resting on the little table in the room, untouched—just like the cakes she had arranged around it. In fact, her student was sitting on her bed, far from the table, having even refused the handkerchief she gave him to wipe his nose.

"... Could it be that you don't like Cinella tea?" she asked, tilting her head.

What IS Cinella to begin with? Noah wanted to ask, but he refrained, more disturbed by the fact that the woman sighed in the middle of reading her own name. That, and he didn't understand why she needed to read her name off a notepad in the first place.

Was she using an alias? If so, she wasn't doing a great job at earning his trust.

"... Hm, you don't seem very motivated. Good..." said the maid, covering her mouth. "Ever been to one of those adventuring schools?"

"Hm?"

Adventuring school? First time he'd heard of something like that. Well, in a world obeying video game laws, maybe it wasn't so surprising for adventurers to have schools dedicated to them.

"Seems not," she continued.

She looked around the room for a few seconds before fetching a piece of paper and a pen.

"Here," she said. "Write your name and what you want to say here."

"..."

Noah glared at her again. She looked completely oblivious, nonchalantly giving him something to write on like that. He couldn't tell why, but the gesture infuriated him to no end. He wanted to push the paper away in rage but quickly calmed himself. Yes, he had no need to get physically violent.

"I... I can... er... I... I can talk just... fine."

The sentence came out less jagged this time—a true accomplishment for him. But, to his surprise, the pink-haired woman barely reacted.

"Sigh"

No, in fact, she reacted in the worst possible way.

"Talking, huh? You do realize you are cursed, right?" she said, her tone as cold and detached as ever.

Noah furrowed his eyebrows. "Cu-cursed this! C-c... Argh! Cursed that! Leave... er... leave me—"

"Alomeda."

The woman put a finger on Noah's mouth just as he said "me." At that moment, Noah saw many mysterious letters crossing in front of his eyes and then...

*Bang!!*

"Aaaaaah!!!"

The teacup on the nearby little table exploded, shards flying in every direction.

"... Huh?"

For a moment, he thought he saw a few shards flying in his direction, but... they never reached him. The pink-haired maid had used her arm to shield him with surprising efficiency.

Yet, the shards had penetrated deep into her forearm, and blood quickly ran down her fingers.

"Oh... I went harder than I thought," she said, unfazed as she pulled the shards out of her arm. "Sigh... Anyway, here's my first lesson."

She took her student's hand and put one bloodied shard into it. Then she clenched her fists and rolled them as if they were some sort of dynamo.

"Mage Mage Sonoko Hibara Yeah!!!"

What followed was what could only be described as the most ridiculous dance Noah had ever seen. No, the fact that the one executing it seemed so devoid of energy yet moved gracefully nonetheless made it even more ridiculous. What was that?

"Mage Mage Sonoko Hibara Yeah!!!"

The maid twirled and finished her dance with a dazzling peace sign. Some people might have gone blind from the sheer amount of light that woman exuded with that move. After all, she was exuding actual stars of light.

"Sigh... Done..." She then looked at him. "You seem lost. Have you never seen a darkening ritual?"

A what now?

What was that woman talking about? Was there some obscure reason why performing a strange dance with a bleeding hand was considered perfectly normal? If so, he'd really like to know!

"So we have to start from there..."

The maid let out another sigh and pushed her glasses up.

"The Mage Mage ritual makes it so its user cannot use keywords anymore..."

Noah furrowed his eyebrows, even more confused. The maid's eye narrowed in fatigue too.

"Magic. There are words that enable some families of spells. You know that... don't you?"

"Oh!"

Oh, so that's what she meant by keywords? Of course, he was familiar with the concept of spell names like Fire/Fira/Firaga from Penultimate Fantasy. She could have simply said that, and he would have understood right away!

"So you know..." she said, dropping her shoulders before continuing. "The Mage Mage ritual is essentially a... really elaborate keyword that disables other keywords until a certain other keyword is uttered. Huh, anyway, the Alomeda keyword can enhance a lot of different things... like magic, for instance... so I used it on you to show you the true problem with your condition. Then I used the Mage Mage ritual to explain how Alomeda works without activating it. Clear?"

"..."

"..."

"... Huh..."

"... Strange. Your father told me you were smart. Seems not."

"..."

For some reason, Noah felt personally attacked there. Well, he was personally attacked, but this was the first time he felt attacked as Noah, not as Vasilisa.

"Well, you do look very sheltered, spending your days in your room and all..." said the maid, looking around absentmindedly.

Again, her comment was something Noah took personally, but her following sentence distracted him from some of the frustration.

"So you probably don't know that Muddy Tongues are failed witches..."

"H-Huh?"

"So you didn't know... Sigh..."

Failed... witches? Noah's brain was struggling to understand the meaning of the words he just heard. Witches? Did witches even exis—well, yes, he'd heard that woman calling him that, but he thought it was just for the negative connotation and whatnot. He never thought witches were an actual thing!

The maid looked at him with her tired eye. It was obvious she didn't like the look of surprise on her student's face.

The words of that man still echoed in her head.

"You will have an easy job!" he said.

"My daughter is really smart!" he said.

Now that she was in front of said daughter, she regretted not following her intuition and refusing said "easy" job. Teaching really wasn't her forte, especially teaching basics.

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"..."

But she made a promise, didn't she? She had to take care of that girl, even if it was annoying.

"Sigh... At least you seem interested in the subject... should make it easier..."

And so, closing her eyes, she made up her mind.

"Do you remember when I talked about adventurer's schools? Well, on the first day, the teacher and the students usually..."

This time, she would put in a bit more effort.

"... just introduce themselves," she said, turning back. "Let's respect etiquette, yeah? So I will see you tomorrow. Good day to you..."

... Just a little bit.