Chapter 166. New Year
8:00 p.m.
The small dining room at the Duke’s Manor.
The long table was covered with all kinds of dishes, but that was not the important part.
The important part was that none of the glasses held wine.
They held juice.
Freshly squeezed, brightly colored, all-natural fruit juice.
“Can’t we really have a little to drink?” Cicero stared at the glass of green honeydew juice in front of him with the expression of a man who had just swallowed a fly. “I specially brought two bottles of aged wine from my holand…”
“No.”
Logaris cut into his steak and refused without even looking up. “Everyone here is either underage or in a profession that requires them to remain clearheaded at all tis. Alcohol causes trouble.”
Especially a certain female knight who was an absolute disaster when drunk.
From the corner of his eye, Logaris glanced at Sylvia in the seat of honor.
He still rembered the farce at the last celebration banquet with perfect clarity. The embarrassnt he felt when he woke up the next day was enough to make him want to dig out an entire Magitech Academy and bury himself in it.
Sylvia had clearly rembered that “dark chapter of history” as well. Her face reddened slightly before she cleared her throat.
“Listen to Logaris. No alcohol tonight.”
Since the boss had spoken, everyone could only accept their fate.
Still, that tiny interruption did nothing to dampen the mood.
If anything, this was probably the liveliest al this group had ever eaten in their lives.
Iowen was clearly a starving ghost reborn. Not even an elf’s elegance could restrain his craving for at. Those hands that usually plucked a harp were now wielding knife and fork as he precisely snatched away the last fatty piece of at on the platter.
“The laws over in riga are really that entertaining?” Akash listened to Cicero recount bizarre cases about people writing wills for their cats just to fight over inheritances, and he laughed so hard he nearly sprayed orange juice out of his mouth.
“Of course. As long as the money is there, the law itself will dance for you.” Cicero cut his steak with perfect elegance while speaking utter nonsense with a straight face.
At first, Alectos was still a little restrained.
After all, everyone in the room was either a powerful noble who ruled over a region or a top genius in their own field.
As an “outsider” living under a false na, he felt so out of place among them that it seed as if there were nails sticking out of the chair beneath him.
But that awkwardness was quickly shattered by a crisp sound from beside him.
Clack.
Alice unceremoniously speared away the most perfectly cut piece of steak from Alectos’s plate, shoved it into her mouth, and chewed with gusto, her cheeks puffed out like a hamster stuffing its face.
“Hey, Alectos!” Alice mumbled around the food, then casually tapped the edge of his plate with her fork, making a series of bright clinks. “If you keep saying grace to that piece of at, then this young lady will reluctantly help you get rid of all of it. Stop looking like so country bumpkin who’s never seen the world. Pull yourself together. Aren’t you embarrassed?”
“…That was my portion.” Alectos sighed helplessly as he looked at the territory on his plate, now reduced by half in an instant, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “And besides, isn’t it because you already finished your own?”
“Nonsense! How could a noble mage possibly be greedy?” Alice said as she brazenly forked away another piece of broccoli. Her face was a little red, but her montum did not weaken in the slightest, and her crimson eyes were wide and fierce. “This is called… replenishing magic power! Do you understand, you uncouth brute?”
Watching Alectos finally relax because of the interruption, his forrly rigid shoulders loosening as he began helplessly wrestling with the girl beside him over the last potato, Logaris leaned back against his chair. The lenses of his glasses reflected the warm glow of the chandelier, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
What was this, exactly?
A group of rebels, exiles, and a few hired hands who had more or less been kidnapped, all getting together to celebrate the New Year?
It was a little absurd.
But not unpleasant.
…
Midnight.
The clocktower of Winter City struck twelve.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
A series of muffled launching sounds rang out, and then countless streams of light shot into the sky.
There was no pungent sll of sulfur, and no deafening roar of explosions either. After a few low booms, innurable streaks of light soared up from the open ground north of the city, tearing through the black night.
It was a feast built entirely out of light-and-shadow magic.
A gigantic golden lily suddenly blood over Winter City. Every petal was made up of countless tiny points of light, and as they drifted down, it looked as though a shower of golden stars were falling from the heavens.
Then ca a roaring red dragon wheeling through the sky, blue tidal waves surging and churning, and a silver griffin spreading its wings and flying high.
Brilliant and dazzling, they bathed the entire snow-covered city in dreamlike color.
“Wow—”
A chorus of astonished cries rose from the dining room as everyone rushed toward the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows.
Behind all the commotion, Logaris took his half-full glass of orange juice and silently pushed open the glass door leading to the balcony.
The cold wind, laced with grains of snow, rushed toward him and instantly swept away the warmth and cloying sweetness of the room behind him.
He leaned against the railing and looked down at the city below, boiling over with light and color.
Before long, the rhythmic click of high heels ca from behind him.
Sylvia pulled her heavy silver fox cloak tighter around herself and walked to his side. Resting both hands on the freezing stone railing, she let the night wind scatter the carefully arranged strands of her hair.
“So this is your new kind of firework?” She tilted her head back to watch a purple rose blooming in the sky, the shifting lights flowing through her silver-gray eyes. “No gunpowder, no noise, safe and environntally friendly?”
“The main point is that it’s cheap.”
Logaris took a sip of the chilled orange juice. “Traditional alchemical fireworks consu a large amount of rare tal powder. This, on the other hand, only needs a few discarded low-purity magic crystals and a set of light-refraction spell formulas to keep going all night. The cost is less than a tenth of traditional fireworks.”
“You really are the death of romance.” Sylvia turned her head and shot him a look, though it lacked any real force.
“Reason is the greatest romance of all.”
The two stood side by side, and neither of them spoke again.
Down on the streets below, commoners ran out of their hos and cheered beneath the rain of light. In the industrial district in the distance, the workshop lamps were still burning even on this night. That was the beating heart of the Northern Territory.
“Happy New Year, Logaris.”
Sylvia’s voice was very soft, almost carried away by the wind. She did not look at him. Her gaze remained fixed on the golden tulip in the sky as it slowly faded away.
“Happy New Year, Sylvia.”
Out of habit, Logaris lifted a hand to adjust his glasses, only to stop when his fingers touched the cold fra.
“This year really was brutal enough,” Sylvia said, exhaling a breath that turned into white mist in the cold air. “Sotis I seriously think I should just tie you up and hand you over to the Holy Church in exchange for those millions of Golden Lion Coins in bounty.”
“In that case, you would probably have to stand in line.” A curve tugged at Logaris’s lips. “The people who want my head form a queue long enough to reach the docks of White Harbor.”
“That’s true.”
Sylvia turned around and leaned back against the railing, studying the man before her seriously for the first ti.
A black coat, gold trim, the glasses of a refined scoundrel, and that infuriating expression that always made it seem as though even if the sky were to collapse, he could solve it with a formula.
“Logaris.”
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
Those two words carried no embellishnt and no political calculation. They were clean and direct, like a sword leaving its sheath.
Logaris froze for a mont.
He turned his head and t those silver-gray eyes. They reflected the fireworks filling the sky, and within them was also the faintly startled outline of his own reflection.
That was the kind of weight that ant one could entrust one’s back to the other.
“Don’t thank too early.” Logaris shifted his gaze away a little uncomfortably and looked back up at the night sky, trying to use his usual logic to conceal the montary tremor in his heart.
“Once tonight is over, the real trouble will only just begin. The ceasefire agreent with the demi-humans is only a temporary asure. The agents of Valeria and Tyrenia are still operating in the shadows. Your second brother is definitely still brooding over so sche back in the royal capital, and then there’s—”
“Be quiet.”
Sylvia cut him off.
She lifted a hand and caught a falling snowflake. The warmth of her palm made the crystal lt instantly.
“At least tonight, let have a pleasant dream.”
Above them, another vast roar exploded across the sky, drowning out all the noise and all the scheming.
A new year had arrived.
Even if the road ahead was still thick with thorns, even if the darkness had never truly receded.
At least tonight, there was only light here.
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