Chapter 7

“This is tight…”

Upon entering, it immediately became obvious how much of a struggling club the DCRC actually is.

“Could you not get a clubroom more fitting for the glory of demon kind?”

“I’m sorry, but with our members, this is the most I can get.”

The clubroom was a small, two-meter by seven-meter room at the edge of the club building. It looked more like a storage room than an actual club room. That already small space was made even tighter with the shelves on the side, housing the various research material Tila was working on.

“It normally isn’t so tight when I’m alone.”

“The other members?”

Tila scratched her cheeks. “We don’t have any, not active ones at least. That’s kind of why the club is shutting down, but thanks to you two, that’s no longer a concern. Ah, here it is.”

Tila pulled out an old-looking scroll. At a glance, it was obvious that this scroll had existed for more than a millennium.

“This… Apparently, this is an ancient human text, but they were written in a different language.”

“Hmm, how interesting.”

Meline handled the scroll with care. She slowly opened it up, spreading it wide. There was no table in the room, thus she was forced to hold it while she attempted to read the writings in it. As Tila said, it wasn’t ancient human text, at least not in the Heria language. She dabbled in ancient languages before, but she never read this one.

“The letters themselves are written with ancient Heria letters, yet the way they were arranged made no sense. How interesting.”

“I was about to write it off as some child’s machinations, but the longer I look at it, the less likely it seems.”

The writing was too tidy to be some random text. Back then, copying magic existed, but they were nowhere near as advanced as modern printing. Writing and copying large stretches of text would take some time. There’s no reason for someone to write or copy such a tidy, long string of words for no clear purpose.

“Plus, there’s something else going on with this text,” Tila murmured.

Meline nodded, having sensed it ever since entering the room, and it didn’t apply to just this text. Many of the scrolls in this room had one common thing between them.

They all had a strange kind of magic applied to them.

Magic didn’t linger for thousands of years; that’s common knowledge. Even devices imbued with magic power often lost their magic after ten or twenty years, requiring repair. Only one thing Meline knew wasn’t affected.

The hero’s sword. There were many rumors regarding the hero’s sword. One such rumor is that it would gain its power every time the world came under the threat of civilization-ending evil. Not the common war between nations, nor the disagreements between noble houses, but actual, full-on civilization-ending threats.

Meline had heard of the fated fight between the demon lord and the hero. For her goals, she needed to get that fight with the hero. It was like destiny. Hence why she kept insisting on fighting the hero. Of course, that had yet to come to fruition. The hero kept avoiding her for some reason.

Other than that, she never heard anything else that has magic lasting up to thousands of years.

Of course, there’s a chance that the magic in these scrolls was applied recently, but the magic here felt nothing like modern magic. Not like the ones humans used, not like the ones the demons used. Meline considered herself a master in magic, but how come she never sensed anything like this?

“These are no normal scrolls, I tell you. Their text isn’t just the thing they hide.”

Kade took a quick peek. He didn't recognize any of the words, except the ones in the end.

… I must be seeing things.

That was the conclusion he came to. Yes. His eyes weren't working properly. There was simply no way those words were there.

“So you’ve reached the same conclusion, huh?”

Meline turned toward the door. Linda had entered at some point during their conversation.

“I see… so this magic also interferes with the mana inside us.”

“Impressive. Can’t believe you’ve reached that conclusion that quickly.”

“It’s obvious. I didn’t detect you entering, which should be impossible.”

While Linda could sneak around and hide her sound from Kade and Tila, while also suppressing her mana enough that she remained undetected by the two, she couldn’t hide from Meline. Mana could be suppressed, but it couldn’t be hidden entirely. The more mana a magic user has, the more obvious they are to other high-level magic users. For someone like Meline, detecting Linda is like child’s play. Even in the past, she always knew when the heroes approached, thanks to Linda’s large amount of mana.

But this time, that wasn’t the case. She couldn’t detect Linda at all.

“And let me guess, that’s the same case for you, is it not?”

“You got me.”

Unlike Linda, Meline didn’t bother suppressing her mana. She wanted the heroes to always know where she was. Thus, Linda would normally be able to detect her presence. This time, though, she couldn’t feel anyone in the room.

“What are you doing here? Are you here to spy on us?”

Linda shook her head. “I was supposed to talk to Tila about the club, but that conversation is no longer needed.”

“Yes! All thanks to these two! Oh, by the way, Miss Linda is our club advisor. I assume you already knew each other?”

“Yeah. We’ve had quite a long history. Longer than I would like.”

“Right back at you.”

The two girls stared daggers at each other. It’s easy to forget that Meline is the oldest one in the room right now. When she got up to her antics like this, Kade couldn’t help but see her as someone his age. He found it adorable.

“Still, I’m surprised you’re willing to be this club’s advisor, Miss Linda,” Kade said.

“Oh, yes. To be fair, I’m not here just to advise.”

“When Miss Linda transferred here, she immediately came up to the club’s advisors and asked if he was willing to let her take over. He immediately said yes.”

Unlike Meline, Linda was a well-known member of the heroes' party. She's deeply respected by the professors at the university.

“I still remember how confused he was, seeing a member of the heroes asking to advise a demon-related club, but he didn't seem to care that much, so I took over.”

“Miss Linda is really impressive. She could sense the scrolls from faraway.”

“Hmph. I also detected it when I first arrived.”

When they first arrived, Meline had stopped and pointed toward the club building. Kade recalled her pointing straight to this room.

“You can as well? Impressive.”

“Yes, of course. Of course. I really am impressive, after all. But that is not common.”

When put into an object, the way magic worked and moved was fundamentally different from when in a living being’s body or out in the wild. It’s not something someone could normally detect from a distance. There are exceptions, and one of these exceptions is, of course, the hero’s sword.

“I wanted to bring the hero to come over and check it himself, but…” Linda trailed off, looking at Meline.

“Yes, bring him here! Bring him! We shall have our fight!”

“Are you a fan of the hero, Meline?”

“Fa- Fan!? No no no! You are misunderstanding. I’m here to fight him.”

Tila tilted her head, clearly confused.

“Anyway, it’ll be great if you can help with deciphering these texts.”

“Help? Hmph, it’ll be an easy task. Be grateful for my kindness.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Still… deciphering ancient texts… human education really is peculiar.”

“Human?”

“This has nothing to do with education,” Linda said. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Just call me if you ever find anything.”

And with that, Linda left the clubroom.

Meline’s attention floated back to the scrolls in front of her. “So even a mage from the heroes' party couldn’t decipher these texts. How intriguing. Regardless, it matters not. I shall figure it out one way or the other.”

“Thank you very much!”

“By the way, can I bring one of these home? I believe I can make better progress if I’m allowed to.”

“Oh, sure.”

Meline picked the smallest one and put it into her bag.