"Good morning."
In the King's office deep within the royal palace, Airhart Hawk the Court Mage Division's Deputy Head Magician, presented the King with a black velvet tray.
There was a diamond 1cm big on the tray.
The other day, Sei had bestowed it with abnormal status nullification, magic resistance and attack resistance.
When the magic bestowed core was placed in front of him, the Prime Minister standing next to the King, who is usually emotionless, gulped.
It wasn't unreasonable for the Prime Minister, who excelled in Machiavellianism, to inadvertently reveal his true feelings.
The core that Sei had made, was only found by excavating deep within ancient ruins or by subjugating monsters.
Sometimes magic bestowed tools dropped when monsters were killed. The quality of the bestowal tool depended on the strength of the monster.
To get an item with the same bestowment as the one Sei made, the entire Knight Order would need to subjugation the monster or else it won't drop.
It is indeed a legendary item.
Items with similar effects become national treasures.
Those treasures weren't gathered within the past several decades, no, they was gathered over hundreds of years. It took months and years to find just one of those treasures so there were only a few of them.
The core that was placed in front of the King and the Prime Minister was one such treasure. It was the first time they had seen such a treasure in front of them outside of the treasury.
"Indeed. I can see why you wanted to clear the room."
The King sighed after a moment of silence.
The King had received a report that Airhart and Johan, the Director of the Medicinal Herb Research Institute, had confidential information that they wanted to share with him. Therefore only the King and the Prime Minister were present at the meeting place.
Sei had already bestowed magic in front of the Court Mage Division. Airhart had also issued a gag order on the Mages but he couldn't deny that there was a possibility that it would leak out from the Mages. It was, however, still better to clear people out of the room while reporting to the King.
The content reported by the two was about why they had wanted the room cleared; Sei had produced a legendary rank magic bestowed tool. It was unavoidable that the two, who held up this country, were dumbfounded.
A legendary rank item was exactly as stated. The core that Sei had produced was extremely useful to the military and it could be sold at astronomical prices. Sei, who can make such tools, was definitely a goose that laid golden eggs.
If this story were to get out, people would certainly target her.
This time, Sei was interested in magic. Airhart, who Johan had contacted, took the opportunity to examine her magic abilities so that he could report it to the King.
The only person who could appraise a person's status, the Court Mage Division's Head Magician was still in a coma after the【Saint Summoning Ceremony】; so they didn't know whether Sei or Aira, who were both summoned by the ceremony, was the 【Saint】.
However it has already been more than half a year since the ceremony and they didn't know when the Head Magician would awaken so the Cabinet Ministers talked about examining Sei and Aira's abilities.
Aira was attending the Royal Academy so they screened in class and her ability was being examined in various ways.
Sei, on the other hand, was placed at the Medicinal Herb Research Institute and was preforming the same work as the other researchers so the investigation into her abilities was proceeding slowly.
There was also that thing that happened immediately after she was summoned so she didn't appear at the royal palace often. Therefore her spontaneous request this time was a godsend.
The King accepted Airhart's report and a few days later, magic bestowal was conducted at the Court Mage Division. He'd decided to use this opportunity to investigate Sei's abilities.
Sei's astonishing abilities were revealed in this investigation.
The Court Mage Division already knew how they would investigate Sei's abilities and made preparations beforehand.
The effects of magic bestowal differed depending on a person's: magic skill attribute, level and how much magic power they expose to the item. Trying to bestow an item with high effects required a higher level of magic skill and more magic power needed to be used.
The relationship between the bestowed effects, the level of magic skill and the amount of magic power required have been researched extensively so they understood it to a certain degree.
They used that information to investigate Sei's magic skill. They would measure Sei's magic skill level by gradually increasing the difficulty of the magic bestowal.
If possible, they wanted her to exhaust her MP so that they could calculate the max value of it by the amount of MP potions she consumed.
Of course since Sei had been summoned here by the 【Saint Summoning Ceremony】, it was highly possible for her to possess holy attribute magic, so the Mage initially asked her to bestow support magic.
Something unexpected happened midway and Airhart took over but the plan still proceeded as planned.
The difficulty of magic bestowed were increased as such: reduction, resistance and then nullification.
Level 10 magic skills were generally regarded as the highest level but throughout history, there had only been one or two people who have reached that level. Even the Mages that worked at the Court Mage Division were mostly at level 3.
Reduction could be bestowed with the lowest level holy magic skill; resistance required level 3 holy magic skill, and nullification required at least level 5 holy magic skill.
The effect that Sei wanted to bestow first was magic nullification which was the most difficult so instead, the supporting Mage recommended she try reduction, which was the easiest to bestow.
The first one failed and broke because Sei changed the bestowal effect beforehand. That had been completely unexpected but she succeeded in bestowing magic resistance the second time.
Since effects like resistance and defense fell under the resistance group they decided that Sei's magic skill at that time was level 3 or higher.
Half a year half passed since they've been summoned and even Aira the other candidate was at level 4. Her holy magic skill had already surpassed the Court Mage Division. When she first began attending the Royal Academy, however, her holy magic skill was only at level 1.
It was easy to imagine how surprised the Mages were since Sei, who had never attended a magic lecture, was suddenly at level 3.
In order to investigate further, Airhart instructed Sei to bestow various effects.
The surrounding Mages wondered how long it would take for Sei to blow a fuse at Airhart's extremely businesslike instructs and grew fearful. Fortunately for them, she followed his instructs and bestowed magic quietly without losing it.
Bestowing reduction group magic required at least level 1, but a higher level may be required depending on the effect of the reduction.
For example, poison reduction can be bestowed at level 1 but paralysis reduction cannot be bestowed unless the caster had a holy magic skill level of 2 or higher.
Airhart tried to examine Sei's magic skill level in detail using that premise.
In order to bestow various effects, he gradually increased the difficulty level but in the end Sei succeeded in bestowing nullification which required level 5 or over.
Therefore as a magic researcher, Airhart got a little greedy.
The next instruction that he gave her was to bestow more than one effect onto a single gem. No one has ever succeeded in doing that before.
Still he felt that it was impossible and he asked her half-heartedly. Even if the effects were from the easiest reduction group, Sei easily succeeded.
Since it came to that, everyone wanted to see how far she could go.
The Mages who were secretly watching her at that time all concentrated on what she was doing.
When she took a break, Sei asked how long she would continue this for so Airhart gave her the last order.
He had told her to do the impossible.
Abnormal status nullification, magic nullification and attack nullification.
It was the highest difficulty nullification and he didn't just instruct her to bestow two nullification, he had asked her to bestow three of them. No one has ever been able to do something like this before. Even if it could exist in this world, he had instructed her to bestow something dodgy.
As he'd expected, it was impossible even for Sei. She, however, suggested that she could bestow the core with abnormal status nullification, magic resistance and attack resistance; which was something legendary.
She had succeeded, just as she declared.
Thus Sei's holy magic skill level was probably at the highest level; level 10.
Her holy magic wasn't actually at that level but it would be a while longer before Airhart and the people at the royal palace find out.
"Her holy magic skill level is most likely at level 10. Her level, itself, is over level 40."
The King and Prime Minister's eyes widened when they heard him report that in a quiet voice.
Apart from combat skills and production skills, Status also showed one's basic level.
Basic level effected things like HP, MP, attack and magic.
The average levels of an ordinary person was between level 5 ~ 10, for those who graduated from the Royal Academy 15 ~ 20, and for knights and mages that worked at the royal palace 30 ~ 35.
The Knight Order Captains and the Head Magician were the only ones who had passed level 40.
This time they estimated that Sei's max MP was around 5000 from the amount of MP potions she drank during the magic bestowal.
The only person with the highest max MP at the royal palace is the Court Mage Division's Head Magician, whose level is 45.
Because of that, Airhart speculated that Sei's level is 40 or over.
"It's really high…"
It's not surprising that the Prime Minister grumbled.
The first Prince was investigating Aira, who was summoned along with Sei, and was making regular reports under the King.
According to his personal statements, when Aira first entered the Royal Academy her level and magic skill was at 1 and through taking classes at the Royal Academy her level had risen to 16 in the last six months.
Aira's level rose extremely fast considering that it took the other students three years to reach level 15 ~ 20.
It wasn't just her level that rose fast but her magic skill as well. Her magic skill rose just by using it so she has been proactively making use of potions to raise her magic skill. Thus her holy magic skill was now comparable with the Court Mages and was now at level 4.
Nevertheless, her level and magic skill were no match for Sei's.
"Her high level is because she's the【Saint】, is it not?"
"We still do not know that yet. We have people searching for documents describing the details of the 【Saint】's status but we still have not found anything yet."
"If only we had some kind of information on her status……"
"Details about the status are not important. The important thing is information on purifying miasma and annihilating the monsters. There are a lot of documents detailing those things."
There were many books detailing the 【Saint】successors and monster annihilation at the royal palace library but books detailing the 【Saint】's status has yet to be found.
The stories left over about their private lives were love stories involving the royal family or a knight, etc. There was, however, no stories about making potions or bestowing magic like Sei.
There was a reason why the stories on the 【Saint】were bias in this way.
There were 【Saints】in the past who bestowed magic like Sei.
They didn't produce legendary cores like Sei did but they were still able to make quality cores that couldn't be produced normally.
Wisely, the upper stratum of that time, were anxious that the【Saint】would be used by others for something other than her original purpose and forbade people from recording anything other than monster annihilation which led them to the current situation.
The ideas of the upper stratum of that time and the current King roughly matched.
This can be seem from the expression of the King which gradually darkened since the beginning of the discussion.
He was delighted that there was a high possibly that the 【Saint】existed but regardless of whether she is the 【Saint】or not, Sei's ability had a great influence on the kingdom's tactics.
If her abilities were known to the public, it was easy to predict that people who wanted to make use of her would appear from near and far. It also wasn't hard to predict that their actions would cause disarray in the kingdom.
As King, he had to think of ways to protect Sei from those people. It was inexcusable for him to only just be pleased with what was happening.
"We need to increase her guard."
Everyone at the King's office agreed with what the King ended the discussion with.
The Medicinal Herb Research Institute where Sei is located was far from the royal palace. Recently people, who weren't researchers, come and go from the research institute but the number of unauthorized people entering the research institute was still low.
There were people guarding Sei, a saint candidate, in secret ever since she moved to the research institute. It was, however, easy to find when suspicious people entered a building depending on its location so there weren't many people assigned to guard Sei since she mostly stayed at the research institute.
However considering that there was a leak this time, they felt uneasy at the number of guards she had.
Considering that Sei's abilities were already well known amongst the Mages, they concluded that it was important to increase the number of guards Sei had.
However it would also become a problem if they increased it too much.
The King had received a report from Johan stating that Sei wanted to live life as an ordinary person.
Therefore unlike Aira, they didn't assign a guard at her side but instead, had the guards protect her in secret.
They concluded that they would assign guards to the research institute to pose as researchers and chefs, that way they could place people close to Sei.