Cæ took a deep breath.
He truly wished she hadn't said that.
On the other hand, he was grateful that she was being honest about it; he wasn't sure he would even believe her if she said that she was not guilty whatsoever.
His eyes wandered about with uncertainty as he rehashed the same considerations.
It wasn't easy choosing to continue to associate with a person who was potentially going down, but at the same time.
He heaved a sigh. "I can't let all the gains I have made with our arrangement collapse."
He turned towards her with a serious expression. "I suppose I'm still willing to continue our partnership for now."
She smiled with an appreciative expression. "Thank you. Regardless, even if I'm found guilty, it won't be of any consequence to you. I intend to drag this case out for quite some time so that by the time a verdict is actually reached several years later, the program will have already been instated for long enough that other magicademies will have eventually caught up and done the same, entrenching it in the system forever. Even if I'm found guilty in this legal proceeding, my work will be complete."
She gazed at him with a serious expression. "I will have taken our institute and our country one step closer towards equitism, and that is worth being found guilty of embezzlement."
Cæ's eyes fixed on her with a deep look. "… Are you willing to go that for your ideology, Ma'am?"
She smiled softly.
"Yes. I will make this ideology a reality in this country, even if I have to give my life for it."
Cæ gazed at her with a hint of respect. "I didn't think you truly cared about the ideology itself, just that you wanted to attract more talent to this magicademy so that your magicademy could perform better. But…"
He regarded her with a hint of admiration. "…I suppose that no one would be willing to go to prison for such a superficial deal."
"No, they wouldn't," she agreed with a soft breath. "I do believe that things would be much easier for me if I didn't attach myself to this movement and ideology, but…"
She gazed at him with a knowing glance. "Sometimes we are driven down paths by the weight of our lives, whether we want it or not."
It was something that Cæ resonated with from the bottom of his heart.
Who would want to willingly live a life driven down the path of wanting to destroy the world and build a better one?
It was a path of pure madness.
And yet, even the thought of stopping didn't cross his mind.
It wasn't even a question.
He recalled what he hid in the depths of his heart, never once showing it to anybody.
The sheer intensity of the fury and hatred he hid in his heart for the world.
The things that this world, that human civilization, had thrust in his path.
And everything that it had stolen from him, even after he overcame all its obstacles.
It made him want to burn this world down with an irresistible urge.
"Are you alright, Mr. Cæ?"
Cæ jolted back to reality as he found a concerned Headmistress gazing at him with furrowed eyebrows.
His expression was crumpled with anger.
His dichromatic eyes were flared with hatred.
The darkness he carried in his heart had surfaced for just a moment.
He shook his head. "Sorry, I just got absorbed into my own world."
The air tingled with a hint of tension.
A deafening silence bore heavily on the atmosphere, blending in with the dark of night through the window behind her.
She directed a knowing gaze at him.
"They say our demons chase us, but it feels as though you are the one chasing them down," she remarked with an empathetic tone. "You… understand what it is like to be driven down a path. One that you wish you never had to, but are simply unable to stop."
Her voice, containing the drawl of age, continued with a profound tone.
"I have always wondered what drives you," she gazed right into his dichromatic eyes with a knowing tone. "Only a masochist or a man driven by unyielding forces could possibly choose to juggle academics at our esteemed and testing magicademy while simultaneously running a brand-new business, with no time for friendships, indulgences, or romances."
Cæ remained silent.
He was unwilling to open up about his true goal.
Although it would not particularly matter at this point in his life if he divulged it, he still didn't want to share what had become the very core of who he was.
There were plenty of regular, everyday people who said crazy things, including articulating a desire to destroy the world order, but nobody cared, because they were powerless, and that was the same thing as him.
And yet, it could hurt him in the future.
She could see that he was unwilling to open up about what drove him, simply heaving a deep breath.
"I dedicated myself to this particular movement rather early in my life," she remarked as her eyes grew hazy. "As you know, I am of the Kurtole Family, a rather small family of the former aristocracy in Elendir before the Democratic Revolution in our country at the dawn of the Magindustrial Revolution."
Cæ turned his attention to her as she spontaneously decided to open up about her life.
"I had led a rather privileged life for most of my life," she remarked with a knowing tone, heaving a sigh. "I used to be quite proud of my bloodline and heritage. As a child, I would flaunt my wealth, among other things, and had the privilege of being able to go through special and highly expensive aptitude booster potions that allowed me to have the necessary aptitude to get accepted into a great magicademy."
Her gaze returned to Cæ. "Life had been a perfectly smooth ride for me until…"
Her eyes grew hazy with recollection. "…It came out that I wasn't my father's biological child."
Cæ simply listened to her story with patience.
"…not just that," she continued. "But when investigations into my biological father yielded an employee of our estate, a man who happened to be from the slums, my life had changed forever."
She gazed at him with a hint of compassion. "Although not to the extent of what you have gone through in this magicademy, I faced a great degree of ostracization from my friends and even family, who regarded my very being as soiled with filthy seed. The worst part was that I was not allowed to go to the magicademy that I wanted to go to because of my blood."
She took a deep breath. "By the time I mentally recovered from the trauma that I had suffered, I had resolved to dedicate myself to equitism."
She gazed at Cæ with a genuine smile. "And since then, I have cultivated immense magical power, seizing the position of leadership in my clan and have become an esteemed master mage who eventually found herself in the position of Headmistress. And I bided for the right time to make a move. And that time…"
She directed a pointed gaze at him. "…was you."
Cæ heaved a sigh. "I'd rather not be burdened by your life goals, ma'am. I can barely handle my own."
A soft chuckle escaped her.
"Rest assured, the burden is mine," her tone grew more serious. "As I mentioned to you before, by the time this gets settled in court, our partnership agreement will have long come to an end and you will no longer have anything to do with me or with my legal matters."
"…Unless the Nelnmont Family appeals to the judge to file an injunction upon all activities pertaining to the alleged embezzlement," Cæ pointed out with a more intense tone. "In that case, the program will be put on pause until the court can adjudicate whether or not the allegations of embezzlement are true."
Her expression grew more severe at his words. "I cannot deny that possibility. However, it is very unlikely that a judge will place this much credence in claims of embezzlement against an esteemed Headmistress and master mage like myself with no track record of such crimes."
"Even so, ma'am…" Cæ clenched his fist. "…that's not a gamble I can afford to take. I have invested too much into our little partnership to bet it all away on this gamble. I need certainty that my interests and stakes in this partnership will not be affected."
She shook her head with a hint of regret.
"I understand and even agree with your point," she continued with a softer tone. "However, there isn't really anything that I can promise regarding the results of the lawsuit. If things unfold, then anything can happen."
This was simply the truth.
Despite her political pull and her status, she could not directly influence the outcome of the lawsuit. Her status as a master mage would only alleviate and even get rid of any criminal prosecution that could happen, for the most part, replacing it with magic labor for a specified amount of time.
Quite similar to the scholarship contract that he had signed when admitted to the Elendir Institute of Magic, there wasn't anything that could happen, short of terrorism or treason, that would get her imprisoned.
It was simply due to how valuable master mages.
They were treasures of great tactical and sometimes even strategic value to a nation.
However, that didn't protect her from the outcome.
In fact, because the government had something to be gained by a potentially guilty verdict, it would not be moved by any influence to lessen the verdict, legal or illegal. It was one of the checks and balances instated into the Elendir Constitution to prevent the complete destruction of the judiciary at the hands of the magic class.
Her words bore heavily on him as he pondered them with a serious expression. He hoped to intervene in some way or the other to protect his interests; he didn't want to lose the protection of the Elendir Institute of Magic when his company went deeper into the slums.
And yet, what could he even do?
He was ultimately powerless in the face of such matters.
He hadn't forgotten, in his frequent engagement with the Headmistress, that he was just an apprentice mage to graduate from the Elendir Institute of Magic.
He was not deluded into thinking that he was anything more than a more significant chess piece on the chessboard.
Although the Headmistress's life experiences had shaped her into a person who could never look down and condescend upon her students, he was still painfully aware that he was essentially a political prop for her.
Although that sounded a lot worse than it actually was, since Cæ had entered into the agreement with full cognition of his place. Still, now that the political conflict had expanded into legal battles, he was truly out of his league in this particular place. There wasn't anything that he could do to stop the Nelnmont Family from going through with the lawsuit.
"Then…" he heaved a sigh. "I suppose I will just have to prepare for the possibility of the Elendir Institute of Magic being forced to suffer an injunction that stops all activities in the slums."
It was difficult, but this was the only option that he had at his disposal now that the political conflict between Headmistress and her opponents had gone legal. It was a frustrating reminder of the fact that he was still far, far too politically weak.