The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 300: Daisy Chain

Chapter 300: Daisy Chain

Even after signing a contract, which turned out to be one massive non-disclosure agreement tailored to his specific situation, Kir was not given much more than what he needed to know. That was fine. Whoever Quill, Lumin, and Imogen really represented, they had conceded to the carveouts he wanted as far as being able to inform people he trusted about things he learned from them.

The primary purpose was for him to not be able to reveal their identities or the identities of anyone in their organization, which they refused to name even after his signing. Something Quilliam did allowed him to merge the signed parchment into his body, which aside from being a little freaky confirmed to Kir that they took their secrecy seriously to a fatal degree.

"We will be in touch," Quill said as soon as breakfast and the signing were concluded. "Your ring will arrive within the week."

"I’m scheduled to return to Norneau in a few days," Kir replied.

Quilliam left without addressing his concern.

"I’m extending your field trip," Lumin said. "And taking it over. I want to see what this Moshui of yours can do since she already seems to have the solution to Miss Daisy’s problem."

She was clearly referring to Moshui’s "gate opener" magic script.

"She’s not mine," Kir protested.

"She’s on your team, I meant," Lumin said with a suspicious glance. "If she does well, I might even hire her."

Imogen swallowed a bite of pastry. "Mmf. Is she a graduated mage?"

"As far as I know, no. She’s entirely home-taught," Kir said.

"Like a certain metatron," Lumin shook her head. "Why your mothers let you come up with such deadly spells is still beyond me..."

She must have been recalling his entrance exam, when he’d demonstrated five original spells... including his presently most destructive spell, Nova Blast.

"Should have called it Ultima," Kiryu sent Kir a mental eye-roll at the memory of that spell.

"This isn’t a game."

"Uh-huh. Which is why you gave it an anime name instead."

"Shut up. Besides, I’ve got ideas for more powerful ’ultimate’ spells."

"Yeah yeah. A black hole to kill everyone and maybe fuck the local space-time continuum, and a magnetically confined anti-matter beam. You need the Quantum Zero Point Inversion formula to generate the former, and you’ll annihilate yourself if you ever try testing the latter. Stick to the atomic shit."

"Don’t you mean I’ll annihilate us?"

"Kid, I died via black-hole and it didn’t stick. I may not know how but I’ve got a sample-size of one in favor of my continuing to exist until I wind up in the head of some other idiot."

"I thought you’d be done calling me an idiot by now," Kir shot back. "Sorry I’m only half the genius fucking physicist you are."

"I did fuck quite a few geniuses... most of them suck in bed. And remember, I know what equations you’re missing. You’re maybe a third the physicist I am, if I’m including eldritch, universe-creating math."

"Go fuck yourself," Kir let out an audible chuff after the thought. "You’re being particularly pissy today."

"I’m not the one who just signed an NDA with the fuck knows who. Fucking Jesus you remind me of me in college."

"I am in college... technically."

"Is he alright?" Imogen leaned over to Lumin to ask.

"He does that sometimes," the human woman replied. "Boy lives inside his own head when he’s not paying attention."

"I’m paying attention," Kir protested.

"Good. Then you can observe this evening when I set Moshui on fixing Daisy’s problem."

"How am I supposed to observe when I don’t have a disguise?"

*

Hours later, Kir tugged a bit at the fake beard that had been glued to his face.

"Don’t bet everything on a magical solution when a mechanical one will work just fine..." Kiryu taunted.

"Oh shut up."

Kir was pretending to be a demonkin man of a significant age, which meant heavy robes that allowed him to obscure his height by slouching, and wearing tinted glasses to obscure his eyes.

It felt weird sitting next to Kordia and his students with the latter none the wiser... while Kordia kept giggling to herself as she snuck glances at him.

Kir scowled, which only made her giggle more. Across the room, "Professor Nasumi" was covering his snout as Stella stifled her own giggles.

"What are you laughing at?" Lapins asked as she returned from the restroom.

"Nothing, nothing," Kordia grinned as the princess sat next to her at a distance just on the edge of appropriate, receiving a look from Mercy as the maid adjusted her glasses with a disapproving look.

As mute as she was typically, Kir had long had the sense of the maid that she was more observant than she appeared. Combined with her freakish strength, it made her someone he wanted to avoid the bad side of even more than the one she served. Thankfully her attention was entirely on the situation between Kordia and Lapins, which according to Kordia was "affectionate but nothing too serious."

Not that Kir would have cared if it was serious...

Nope.

He stifled the mote of jealousy as Chancellor Lumin entered the room with Daisy and Moshui in tow, and Imogen and her retinue took the lowest seats available to better observe what was about to happen.

"Esteemed colleagues... students... friends," the Chancellor began, "It is rare for me to introduce an original working of magic in person, much less one that has come from a partnership between a new professor and his protege." Stella rose at impending mention and gave everyone a small bow.

Meanwhile, Kir was left wondering... Protege? Really?! Lumin was totally setting him up!

"For those of you who are unaware, Professor Kiryu Nasumi came to Norneau from Retha, the land of his birth. He brought with him fresh ideas and a willingness to work hard. And he found in Norneau a gem that went unnoticed by the Academy for many years." She gestured magnanimously at Moshui. "Today, through his apprentice, Professor Nasumi’s invention - a form of magic he has dubbed Programmable Magic - will be demonstrated. As some of you may know, Daisy de la Recca was born to a unique circumstance with her magic, one that inverts the normal conduct of spells. Like most anti-magic users, her capacity for spellcasting has been whittled away over time."

Lumin nodded to Daisy, and the girl raised her hand, a melancholy look on her face as she tried to cast one of her signature spells, only for it to come out as a gasp of mana in unformed wisps. Seeing this, the look on her face went from melancholy to pathetic but hopeful.

"Thank you, Miss Daisy. Please lay down on the table and prepare."

Daisy nodded and proceeded to the padded table, which had Moshui’s equipment already placed on it.

She began to remove her top and Bailey was halfway through an appreciative sound when Stella smacked him upside the head with her palm. The twins, meanwhile, were bored and sitting on Encke’s lap so they could see better. Keiya was interested but divided her attention by giving scratches to Nimfi.

The sense Kir got from his students was so lax he wondered just what the hell Stella had been really up to. He was still wondering when Lumin turned the floor over to Moshui, which was a mistake.

"I’m now going to, uh..." Moshui looked at Kir instead of Stella, and a mote of panic rose inside of him. "I’m going to do the thing..."

Kir was ninety percent certain Lumin would have wanted Moshui explaining what she was actually doing, but the "protege" was so nervous she went completely silent as she strapped on her tattoo applicator and loaded it with mana-rich inks - courtesy of Kir having donated a few feathers to the cause.

Only once she got started did she find her voice again.

"So, uh, Miss Wrecker," Moshui began as Bailey chortled a bit, "What I’m going to do now is inscribe the bounding circle... I’m using angel-feather catalyzed ink and a soft soul stone blend with no other additives."

Daisy muttered something into the pillow at the head of the bed, which Kir could make out as "I hate red..."

His incubus senses told him that she might have been thinking about him when she said that.

Once she got started, Moshui became a fountain of information as she gave over the side of herself that hated crowds to the side of herself that loved magic. She explained the basics of the formulas, but not to the point anyone could really understand without proper teaching. She skimmed a bit when it came to logic gating and the bridge symbols Kir - really Kiryu - had come up with to overcome the sign-signifier-signified gap when it came to the cynosural aspect of magic’s phenomenal relationship to linguistics...

And then she did something that made Kir almost forget himself as he stood in surprise and anger.

"I am now going to demonstrate the effect of linking programmable magic by chaining together programmable magic circles before activating them together..."

"Miss Moshui, is this ethical?" Kir raised his voice, drawing a glare from Lumin.

"W-well... um... she did agree... um..."

"I think what my esteemed colleague here is asking is whether or not Professor Nasumi’s technique is safe enough to use with standard spell circle procedures." Lumin narrowed her eyes at Kir. "As we all know, a repeated spell has exactly double its power. Doubling this programmable magic circle-"

"Script," Moshui interjected.

"Doubling this script will restore Miss Daisy’s access to mana and grow it rapidly to its original levels... and beyond... Just as Miss Moshui has benefited from her own self-testing... Isn’t that right Professor Nasumi?"

"Hm? Yeah, go ahead."

Kir leveled a withering glare at Stella, but sat. What choice did he have? If he gave himself away, there would be more than a little hell to pay.

"I-I’m a hundred percent confident this will work," Moshui said at him, clearly feeling the pressure.

"Are you sure?!" Daisy tilted her head sideways to ask before holding her face into her pillow as the new tattoo was rapidly etched into her back, a mirror of the first so that they could share the same activation as Kir watched with bated breath and one bouncing leg. As with the first, she spent her time biting her pillow and trying not to move.

The moment Moshui finished and activated the chained scripts, Kir flinched, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t about to see his student explode...

A gasp escaped Daisy’s throat as she blinked in surprise, forgetting herself for a moment as she pushed herself to a seat, only for Kordia to jump up and cover Daisy with the robe she’d discarded.

"Are you alright, Miss Daisy?" Lumin asked.

"I can feel it... I can feel my mana again!" Daisy declared.

She leveled a hand and cut loose with a spell that, while anemic compared to what she’d wielded only a year ago, was still quite improved from what she’d demonstrated earlier.

Seeing this, Kir held his head in his hands, mostly from relief as Lumin crossed the room and shook "Professor Nasumi’s" hand.

Instead of staying, Kir got up and made to leave, only to wind up intercepted by Lumin.

"It’s strange, friend, I feel like I have a much better sense for who you are now."

"You knew it would work. You just did this to mess with me, didn’t you?" Kir spat back in a low voice.

"Miss Moshui was very confident in her explanations... You should have noticed she’s already done that to herself."

Kir glanced over at Moshui, and for the first time noticed the hourglass tattoo on her arm.

As Kir gawped, Lumin gave him a patronizing pat on the elbow. "You’re more of a teacher than you know if you’re that concerned for her well-being. And she needs someone like you who will protect her from herself... Which is why I’m going to hire her as your teaching assistant. Have fun reigning in your protege... I assume you’ll be foisting even more credit for your inventions onto her."

"Hag," Kir said to Lumin’s face before turning on his toes and leaving.

Her cackle followed him all the way out the door.