Purple Tears

Noah's trial of patience… didn't last long.

"Hey."

*Light kick*

"H-Hey!"

At first, Noah planned to wait for two hours but quickly changed his mind. One hour. If she slept more than that, he would kick her until she woke up.

And so, he waited.

He waited.

He waited and…

"Hm?"

A thought crossed his mind.

"(Wait, why is she sleeping?! Isn't this the middle of the day?!)" he asked himself.

She woke him at 11 a.m., which was already a rather late hour for a servant to wake their master.

Hm? What was he doing sleeping until 11 a.m. in the first place? Why wouldn't he? He was a noble now; nobody would judge him for that, yes?

"..."

Anyway, that wasn't the point!

Even if she cooked everything in that cart—something he doubted—she would normally have found plenty of time to sleep properly before coming! That could only mean she was actually messing with him!

"Hey! Hey!"

And so, Noah's patience only held him back for about 21 minutes + 3 minutes he spent hesitating to approach her and 5 minutes he spent thinking thoroughly about whether he should really kick her or not for a total of 29 minutes.

"Mmh… Mm?"

Finally, the maid reacted. She turned in his direction, her gaze unfocused. Noah did his best to look her deep in the eyes, his eyebrows furrowed to make his intentions as clear as possible.

"... Mmmh."

It seems they weren't clear enough, though, as the maid soon put her head on the table again. This was too much for Noah. This maid had definitely brought what would happen next upon herself.

*Heavy kick*

"Ah! Uh? Mmh?"

This time, the maid jolted back to consciousness, her gaze a bit more focused. She turned to Noah again, squinting her only visible eye.

"Oh… You are…" She pulled her notepad and opened it to some page, "Ah, Vasilisa. Yeah… Did I fall asleep?"

"Y-Yes?"

"Oh…"

The maid rose from the chair, reading her notepad.

"Ah… I am supposed to teach you… So what would you like to learn?"

"Er…"

That was quite the irresponsible question for a teacher, but it seems the maid was merely talking into the air.

"Oh, Muddy Tongues, huh? You don't know about them…" she said, closing her notepad. "I see you need the long version?"

The long version? Well, he didn't know the first thing about that thing, so he might as well listen. And so, he nodded, prompting a sigh from the maid.

"... I can't be helped. Listen well then…"

She looked at the ground for a moment with an empty gaze before seeming to realize something. She turned to the cart of food and grabbed a few cakes.

"Oh… Good thing you left me so many cakes. I heard that you didn't have much appetite and offered your food to the servants, but to think that would actually be true…"

"Hm? W-Wait, wha—"

"There don't seem to be a few colors... Well, that will do."

She seemed to not be able to hear him anymore, occupied as she was in the delicate art of cake sorting. Yet, she casually said something that caught his attention in the sense of the term.

"So…"

The maid placed six cakes on the study table.

"When the Smiling One granted us the Light, it was separated into six shards or paths as we call them. That is something you know."

Well, he didn't. He was already lost from the beginning, in fact, but he tried his best not to show it.

"Each path has a natural ability given to it as well as a type of beings who… mostly possess it."

She pointed at a pink strawberry cake.

"The Purple path is the path of the witches. You follow?"

Noah nodded. If his memory served right, he saw a path tag when he saw his… status screen (?) a while back. However, he was sure it wasn't Purple but Blue.

"Hm? Is… er… Is t-that…"

"Don't say 'me,'" cut the maid.

"H-Huh… yes? Er… Is it… be-because… I am not… er… uh… f-fro-from… the… Purple… path?"

Again, the maid waited for him to finish before answering in her usually tired voice, "You mean your curse? Yes and no."

She adjusted her glasses.

"Simply put, you have an ability that isn't from your path or even just a friendly path. And sadly, abilities granted by paths are statuses that cannot be dispelled. When they are beneficial, we call them blessings. You can imagine how they are called otherwise."

"... C-Curse…"

"Exactly… Well, to be more specific about yours, it gives you the blessing of a witch—The Purple."

She adjusted her glasses.

"You see, actually, witchcraft isn't something people besides witches can truly use. Other people just use a cheap version called magic. That cheap version is created when a witch creates a path to a library of spells. We call that…"

She pointed at the closed door.

"We call that a door."

"Oh…"

Starting from there, he could easily understand the rest. So those keywords were actually just like keys to open those doors and use the magic they hold!

Well, it was good to learn that, but it didn't really explain his problem, did it?

"From the look on your face, it seems you still haven't connected the dots together…"

Again, Noah glared at the maid, but she simply shook her head.

"Now, now, I am not mad. I will get used to it eventually."

"(... I should have kicked you harder.)"

"Well, that aside, if this was so easy to understand, people wouldn't blindly fear Muddy Tongues."

She cut a part of the pink cake with a fork and presented it to Noah.

"Now, what do you think happens when you give someone who isn't of the Purple path the ability to… see the Purple."

She then forcefully pierced a green cake with the same fork and turned to Noah.

"What do you see?"

"Huh…"

What was she expecting him to reply? All that remained of the squished cake was a total…

"... M-Mess?"

"Correct. One of the things that can happen is that someone who can't really understand the Purple sees it. This somewhat damages them, yes, but the worst part is that they never stop seeing it. Simply put, they can use true witchcraft like witches but without the control witches have."

"S-So…"

"Yes. You can use the Purple, the power to use just about any door in existence, not just those linked by magic. This makes it so you are not limited by spell slots in the same way as the average mage but…"

She squished the cake again as if to drive her point home.

"Your body has been irreversibly damaged. Muddy Tongue is just a manifestation of the problem at the core. An incompatibility of path. So yes, you can use any door like a witch but you can't control which, just like a non-witch."

"O-Oh. I… I think… w-well…"

So he was able to use any spell but couldn't control which? So as soon as he uttered a keyword, even by accident, it would create a spell instantly? Well, he could understand how dangerous that thing was now.

"Now, before you ask more questions, allow me to finish."

She pointed at his nose.

"How many doors do you think there are?"

"Huh… W-We—"

"Wrong. That is currently unknown."

Well, he wasn't really trying, anyway?

"I won't get into the details, but the Purple does not create doors. It just connects to them. It means that…" She clapped her hands. "Congratulations. You won't destroy another cup by randomly opening your mouth… That being said, many doors and keywords haven't been discovered or tamed yet meaning that, by saying anything—and I do mean anything—you could be doing anything from boiling the blood of someone to sending their head flying. It's really random."

"...!"

"Moreover, the broken speech you gained as a damage for seeing the light of a path that wasn't yours makes you even more dangerous… You follow?"

"..."

Blood drained from Noah's face. Now he could easily figure out what could happen when a person like him opened their mouth. A child calling his father and making his head explode or a baby whose cry drained the blood from his mother's body.

Those examples were a bit extreme, but who said such things never happened? If he knew someone like that, he would be afraid of them too…

"..."

"Sigh…"

The maid crouched in front of him, tapping on his nose to focus his attention on her.

"Now you know, so stop acting like an idiot," she said, looking into his eyes. "You can talk, but just don't say 'me,' okay?"

"...?"

He looked at her in confusion. Just not "me"? Wasn't all of his words potentially dangerous?

"You see, stupid… Ahem, ignorant? Uneducated? Not very curious? Yes... not very curious people... are afraid of people like you because they don't understand how all of this works. Actually, neutralizing you is simple."

"... Huh?"

The maid continued, a faint smile on her face, "Alomeda. I just needed to boost your magic so that you could use a spell outside of your current mastery. Ah yeah… I haven't explained this, but the reason why this world is still standing even though people like you exist is because every mage needs a certain amount of spell slots to cast a spell. If you don't have enough of them, you can't call it. If all your emplacements are full, you can't add another. You follow?"

His eyes opened wide. For the first time, he instantly understood what his teacher meant by her cryptic lifeless ramble.

"Me... I looked it up all night, and it seems to be the keyword for a family of spells that harms things the user hasn't touched in a certain period. Can you imagine? A family made only of rank 4 spells and above? They don't give more information on it even in the magic books of the academy... Sigh ... If I wasn't lucky yesterday, you could have blowed me in pieces… Well, that would been my fault but still... Well, well, at least now you have a spell that uses way too many slots for you. Everything should be… fine?"

The maid stopped, her eyes showing concern for the first time.

How could she not be worried when the child she was supposed to take care of started tearing up as soon as she mentioned having essentially sealed her magic and forbidden her from ever using a word as important for personal identity as "me"?

"W-Wait. I mean, I am sorry, okay? I didn't mean to… ugh…"

The girl had started to silently cry, leaving the maid at a loss as to what to do.

"(Uwah… I messed up again… What if she hates me now? What will I say to him? Urgh… I should have explained everything to her and asked to use a… Argh!!!)"

As she thought that, the maid tried her best to calm down both herself and the crying child.

Finally, the evening came, and Noah's first lesson ended in a puddle of tears.