Became the Patron of Villains Chapter 541: System (6)

Two weeks had already passed since Alon began properly receiving help from the sage Sia regarding magic.

“Good work today as well!”

“Yes, yes—”

The atmosphere of Keremenia was as chaotic as ever within the world that had become even redder than before.

And within it, Evan, who had once again spent the day teaching the soldiers basic swordsmanship and spear techniques at the sage’s request—

“Whew—”

—let out a small sigh around the time he returned to the royal castle and arrived at his quarters.

Part of it was relief that today’s work was finally over.

But the sigh also contained somewhat complicated emotions.

Still, only for a moment.

“Why are you sighing like the world is ending?”

At the voice from behind him, Evan turned his gaze and saw Penia.

“......And you, what happened to you?”

Instead of answering Penia’s question, Evan asked one himself.

It was not strange.

After all, the state Penia appeared in looked as though she had been caught in an explosion.

“This—”

At Evan’s words, Penia fell silent briefly before letting out a sigh.

“I just blew something up while practicing magic.”

“......Blew something up?”

“Yes. There was something I learned a bit from Lord Alon.”

“Learned?”

Evan tilted his head.

To him, Penia learning magic from Alon seemed slightly strange.

Her magical knowledge was, if anything, higher than Alon’s, never lower.

Of course, when it came to learning laws, the relationship reversed, but since he knew they could not currently learn laws, Evan tilted his head in confusion.

As though she noticed that, Penia spoke.

“It’s related to laws. Last time, Lord Alon produced the same effects even without using laws, right?”

“Ah, so that’s what you were learning?”

At Evan’s words, Penia sighed and nodded.

“Yes. Though it’s not going very well.”

“......Well, even from what I saw, it definitely does not look easy.”

“I wish I could somehow make it work......”

At the sight of Evan muttering while recalling what Alon had shown several weeks ago, Penia leaned against the wall and quietly bit her nails.

And while silently watching her—

“......?”

Evan suddenly spoke with a startled expression.

“......Hey, you.”

“Yes? What is it.”

“Your hands...... what happened to them?”

The reason Evan looked shocked—

was because from Penia’s thumb to her pinky, her fingernails had been horribly torn apart in places, dried blood crusted over them.

“Ah—”

At Evan’s question, Penia let out a groan while looking at her own hands, then immediately hid them behind her back.

“Do not worry about it. It is not like I have some illness.”

“......Isn’t it worse if you are not sick and they still look like that?”

“It is a habit.”

“......That is a habit?”

“Yes.”

Evan stared at Penia with an expression that seemed to say, Tearing your hands up like that is a habit......?

“......Isn’t that basically saying you eat your own hands whenever you are stressed?”

“What are you talking about.”

Though he spoke jokingly as though trying to lighten the mood, concern remained in his voice.

Penia let out a small sigh.

“It really is just a habit, so do not worry. I did not do this much when I was together with Lord Alon, but back when I was raising my rank, this happened often.”

Penia’s words.

At that, Evan silently looked at her before speaking.

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to rest a little?”

“Me? I’m fine though?”

“You absolutely do not look fine if I look at your hands.”

Penia let out another small sigh.

“How am I supposed to rest? Lord Alon is suffering that much already, so I should at least do something too. You know it as well, right? Right now, the two of us are basically nothing but baggage.”

Penia spoke decisively.

Evan momentarily closed his mouth.

“To be honest, if it were Lady Yutia or Lady Rine here instead of us, then probably some of the burden on Lord Alon would have been reduced. Compared to them, we are just—”

Penia trailed off.

But both she and Evan knew very well what word would have followed next, so silence fell.

Only briefly.

“......So I need to work at least enough to lighten Lord Alon’s burden a little. Even if I cannot completely remove it.”

With that, Penia ended the conversation and, as though trying to change the atmosphere—

“Ah, I feel too gross. I’m going to wash up a little.”

—walked off and disappeared.

And Evan, quietly watching Penia’s retreating figure—

“......Baggage. A nuisance.”

—murmured softly.

Of course, Penia had not gone that far.

But he knew very well what her words meant.

“Baggage......”

Evan muttered to himself.

“From what I see, she is not.”

“......”

Of course, neither Evan nor Penia would be able to help Alon in the battle that was coming.

But even so, Penia was not baggage.

She was Alon’s magic teacher, and at the same time, without the formulas she had memorized beforehand, they would never even have been able to return to their original world.

She was far more useful than she believed herself to be.

Even Alon was probably relying on her in his own way in this situation.

Rather, the person who could truly be called baggage was—

“......Whew.”

—me, Evan thought as he suddenly looked down at his own hands.

Even though more than ten years had already passed since he began traveling with Alon, his skill had still remained in place.

Of course, strictly speaking, it was not accurate to say it had remained completely in place.

As the result of consistently traveling with Alon over the years while secretly training little by little, his realm had risen far higher than before.

To the level of a Sword Master who had not yet obtained a derivative.

That alone was remarkable considering Evan’s age.

But despite how remarkable it was, Evan never deliberately talked about his realm or boasted about it.

No, it would be more accurate to say he could not boast about it.

Because compared to others, including Alon, his realm simply was not that impressive.

“What am I even supposed to do......?”

Evan wiped his face with one hand.

In truth, he already knew it was impossible.

The time he had spent together with Alon had already given him a cold verdict.

With his talent, he could never catch up to Alon, nor grow strong enough to truly help him.

He already knew that.

He had already felt it countless times.

But this was the first time he had felt it this desperately—

“......This is driving me insane.”

—and Evan lowered his head while leaning against the wall.

####

At the same time Evan was sighing like that—

inside the small laboratory on one side of the royal castle where Alon and Sia were—

“Congratulations.”

Sia spoke while smiling faintly, brushing back her hair with her right hand as she looked at Alon, whose faint violet glow was gradually fading away.

And Alon looked at Sia with a subtle expression.

“What is wrong?”

Sia tilted her head.

Over the past two weeks, Alon had been able to improve his magic tremendously.

Of course, because he lacked laws, it was still impossible to create a perfect system, but over the past two weeks, Alon had nevertheless reached a level where he could produce sufficient combat strength even excluding those laws.

So Sia’s confusion at seeing his expression was not strange.

She had personally witnessed his system gradually taking shape and growing stronger while giving him advice in real time beside him.

Yet despite that, the reason Alon still looked at Sia with such a subtle expression was only one thing.

‘......As expected, this is strange.’

Because one question had arisen in his mind.

Without question, the reason Alon had been able to improve so quickly over the past two weeks was thanks to Sia.

If not for the knowledge she conveyed to him through her future sight, he would still have been stuck in place.

In the first place, there was an unimaginably vast difference between learning something that already existed and personally creating a new system of one’s own while walking a path no one had ever walked before.

And if that path involved not separately using Divine power and magic, but harmonizing them together, then the difficulty became impossible to describe.

Yet Alon had systematized that absurd difficulty in barely two weeks, even if not perfectly.

And still, the reason Alon could not stop questioning Sia was because of the information she provided.

‘The density of the information is too high.’

Sia was a mage.

It was not strange for her to speak about magic.

Mages might have existed even before the world of True Mages.

But even so, the density of the information she conveyed to Alon through her future sight was far too deep for her to be an ordinary mage.

Almost as though she herself had already walked the path Alon was trying to walk.

“Mr. Alon?”

Alon looked at Sia as she called him.

It was not that he was ignoring her.

Nor did Alon consider himself particularly intelligent.

But the information she gave him was simply too excessive, too precise—

“......”

—and too timely.

Almost as though she knew exactly where Alon would struggle.

That should have been impossible. At least, that was how it felt to him.

The only possible explanations for information being conveyed at this level were two.

The first was what Alon had considered earlier: that Sia herself had walked the exact same path.

But that possibility was not very likely.

......Especially in this era, it was impossible, and Sia did not appear to have walked the same path as Alon.

Which left only the second possibility.

That she knew and understood Divine power and the laws of the True Mages to some degree.

But there was no way Sia should know about Divine power or the laws of the True Mages.

As far as he knew, for a human to possess Divine power like him, it would have to be far in the future compared to now.

Likewise, in this era, the laws of the True Mages did not exist in the first place.

Which left only one conclusion.

“May I ask you something?”

Alon asked the question.

“Mm, what is it?”

Even at the sudden question, Sia did not panic, merely maintaining her calm smile.

Alon quietly looked at her.

“One question came to mind, Sia. Or rather—”

He spoke calmly.

“—Yutia.”

At Alon’s words,

Sia tilted her head briefly, then soon smiled as though something had come back to her.

“By Yutia, you mean the person you mentioned before, correct? The one who apparently looks very similar to me. Mm—if you are calling me that, then I suppose I really do resemble her quite a lot?”

Sia let out a soft laugh while meeting Alon’s gaze.

But Alon did not take his eyes off her.

“Yes. You resemble her greatly.”

“Then I suppose I really must. But I am not this person named Yutia?”

“Are you truly not?”

“Of course not?”

Sia’s answer did not waver in the slightest.

But Alon quietly looked at her before speaking.

“Then why are your habits and behavior exactly the same?”

And then—

“......The Yutia I know always brushes back her hair with her right hand whenever she is in a good mood.”

“.......”

“When discussing something difficult, she slightly narrows her left eye, and whenever she smiles, she always pretends to cover her mouth while touching the corner of her lips.”

“.......”

“But you do the same.”

He quietly asked,

“Was my deduction wrong, Yutia?”

And—

Sia’s lips closed shut.