Aozaki Aoko Case File [200]

Credits: Butterfingers Is good

After the banquet, Merem Solomon left the hotel that very night. According to him, he seemed to be heading back to Millennium Castle first to tidy up the place and joyfully welcome Arcueid's return to her semi-divine state.

Arcueid herself, however, had no intention of returning. Over the past few days, Aoko and the others had introduced her to far too many fun things, and she hadn't had enough yet. As a result, Aoko simply informed Alice and the others that the three of them would return to Misaki Town ahead of time. Aoko still had some vacation time left that she'd requested from her professor, so she didn't need to rush back to university.

...The meeting between Arcueid and Alice was nothing short of historic—or rather, the result of an exuberant, innocent golden retriever encountering a quiet, reserved introvert who keeps things to herself was nothing short of disastrous.

As a witch who was a direct descendant of the First Magician, Arcueid immediately took a liking to Alice upon meeting her. She pestered Alice with endless questions every day and even showed a particular interest in Alice's PLOY. In the end, Alice had no choice but to deploy her stand-in, the robin familiar Robin, to follow Arcueid around and answer her endless questions.

In a certain sense, the robin once again fulfilled its role as a sacrificial substitute, which was truly a cause for celebration.

Alice cast a resentful glance at Aoko, clearly displeased with how Aoko and Touko casually brought wild women into their home. However, she also quickly realized that this golden retriever-like visitor was an uninvited True Ancestor. Her enthusiasm, though overwhelming, left Alice with little room to retaliate. All in all, things didn't escalate to the point of physical conflict.

Watching the lively chaos of the household, Aoko couldn't help but reminisce about the days when Alice was a terrifying witch who would slaughter intruders in her domain at the slightest provocation. It seemed Aoko's subtle influence on her had been quite profound.

Arcueid's arrival injected an unprecedented burst of energy into the Kuonji residence. As payment for her lodging, the True Ancestor princess used her Marble Phantasm abilities to create a significant amount of magical materials that had become exceedingly rare since the Age of Gods.

Thanks to her Ultimate One authority, Arcueid, as the daughter of the Earth and Moon, could essentially create anything she wanted. As long as it was something naturally occurring on Earth, she could easily produce it (though this excluded humans and animals, as they had evolved beyond the Earth's system). She was practically a supercharged 3D printer.

Watching Arcueid skillfully maintain her relationships with the trio, Aoko suddenly has a strange feeling that she might not be the protagonist of this story. The current situation seemed more like the three of them were Arcueid's harem, causing Aoko to break out in a cold sweat.

Happy days always pass too quickly. Aoko had no choice but to return to her lab at the university to continue her projects once her vacation ended. The proud Fourth Magician now lived the life of a research workaholic.

Still, Aoko found joy in her work. It made her feel that she had talents beyond just the magic she inherited from her grandpa and the mysterious fragments of the Arcane fragment she had somehow acquired. (In truth, her talent for research might have been inherited from her previous life.)

If all went smoothly, Aoko would directly secure a Ph.D. position under her current number theory professor after completing her undergraduate studies. It would essentially be the equivalent of a fast-track doctoral program in her previous life, and with her current extraordinary intelligence, it would be a breeze.

...

...

...

Before she realized it, another year had passed, bringing the timeline to 1993.

Over the past year, aside from the children growing a bit, the residents of the Kuonji household—Aozaki sisters, Alice, and Arcueid—all belonged to the type that didn't age. If one had to nitpick, Alice would technically age, but as Yumina's witch, her aging was extremely slow.

As for Touko and Arcueid, who had no concept of aging, they were a given. Aoko, on the other hand, had effectively locked her own time. As long as the current universe didn't undergo heat death, she could indefinitely shift the burden of maintaining her ageless state onto the universe's entropy increase—a textbook case of debt transfer.

It was only a matter of time before strange rumors started circulating in Misaki Town, claiming that a mansion on the mountain was home to a group of witches who never aged.

Thanks to Holy Grail War Gold as their starting capital and Aoko's pseudo-clairvoyant guidance, the Aozaki family had made a fortune in recent years by riding the global trends. Whether it was the collapse of the Soviet Union or the burst of Japan's economic bubble, the Aozaki family had profited handsomely.

Even their father was walking on air, and their mother appeared to have regained some of her youth (though that might also have been due to Touko's alchemical potions). Thanks to the Aozaki Foundation, Misaki Town's economy had bucked the downward trend caused by Japan's economic collapse and even experienced a remarkable surge, attracting job seekers from other regions—including some destitute magus.

With the dividends from the Aozaki Foundation, Alice had completely shed her poor noblewoman status. She could now freely purchase magical training materials without concern (and if she couldn't buy them, Arcueid could simply create them). The days of cutting back on tea supplies due to overspending on gemstones were long gone!

Aoko herself had also made significant progress in her studies of magic and magecraft. Through her daily meditation and efforts to delve deep into the Arcane Fragment, she had managed to fish out some rather practical 7th-level spells over the past year.

These included the Banishment spell for repelling extraplanar entities (which could be enhanced with metamagic feats), Spell Turning to reflect projected spells or magecraft at their caster, and Plane Shift Bubble, which created a protective bubble simulating a livable environment. Aoko believed these would all prove highly useful in the future.

However, there were also some less practical 7th-level spells, such as the conjuration spell Wall of Eyes. This spell summoned a barrier made of eyes, which inflicted a Hold Monster effect on creatures that touched it and could consume them after about a minute (dealing disintegration damage).

On the surface, this spell seemed decent, but after using it once, Aoko found it utterly creepy and unsettling to look at for too long.

What intrigued Aoko the most, however, was the 7th-level conjuration spell Plane Shift. This spell allowed her to transport up to eight creatures to another plane of existence, which appealed greatly to her natural love for exploration and adventure.