Chapter Thirty-Two: Who Dares to Spy on Me!

"Mirror, mirror, who is the greatest?"
Beside him, Stuart looked at Louis in utter bewilderment. In the next instant, Stuart was pulled into the mirror by an invisible force, and within the glass, a human figure appeared.
It was a sultry woman changing clothes before a full-length mirror, her hair a vivid red, two pointed little ears atop her head, and a fluffy, thick, adorable tail swaying behind her.
As expected, she was an even worse student than Auxicris.
Louis gave her a mark—C+.
"Mirror, mirror, who is the fairest?"
Once again, the same fiery Serin appeared.
"Who is the ugliest?"
This time, the beautiful Helen emerged.
[Impossible! There must be a mistake!] The 'Helen' (Stuart) inside the mirror roared, [Miss Helen is one of the most beautiful princesses I've ever met! How could she possibly be ugly?! And as for the fairest in the land, it's certainly not Serin! At the very least, it should be Princess Auxicris, or perhaps Queen Delphinia...]
"You know nothing!" Louis rolled his eyes.
Indeed, the answers depended on the person asking the question.
Rubbing his chin, Louis tried again, "Mirror, mirror, what is the derivation of universal gravitation?"
Stuart looked completely lost—what on earth was universal gravitation? But before he could ponder further, the contents of his master's mind reflected in the mirror. Stuart dissolved into a cloud of mist, and the scene within the magic mirror began to shift.
In a flash, the mirror displayed a grassy field, with an apple tree atop it. Beneath the tree sat a great scholar in a powdered wig, scribbling in a notebook.
The view zoomed out, and the contents of the notebook appeared in the mirror. The calculations were intricate, but the final result was the formula for universal gravitation.
Louis began to understand.
If the magic mirror were a computer, then Stuart was its administrator. Whether the mirror gave accurate answers depended on the one posing the question, not on Stuart himself.
As for the scenes in the mirror, they weren’t the true experiences of Sir Newton—if Stuart himself were to ask the question, perhaps a mere accountant would appear, and the answer might be nothing at all.
Louis decided to experiment. Waving away the illusions, he addressed Stuart within the mirror, "You ask a math question."
[Uh??] Stuart in the mirror was startled.
What math question should he ask?
Suddenly, inspiration struck. He recalled a problem the Witch Queen had encountered.
Stuart thought back carefully, and with this memory, transformed into mist once more.
A new scene appeared in the mirror.
It was a spacious, luxurious bedroom, where a beautiful woman in her late twenties, clad only in a tight corset—definitely a D-grade student!—stood biting her finger before a mirror. She glanced alternately at the mirror and at a book in her hand, chanting aloud from its pages.
"Um... Young Aux and Young Delph set off from the same tower, taking the same route to the canteen to eat one of Mama Francesco’s little cakes..." Before she could finish, the woman in the mirror blushed and covered her face shyly.
After a moment, she continued,
"...If Young Aux walks half the time at speed x and the other half at speed y; Young Delph covers the first half of the distance at speed x, and the second half at speed y (where x does not equal y)..."
Before the problem was even finished, Louis had already worked it out on a scrap of paper—as long as x does not equal y, Young Aux will always arrive at the canteen first. He blinked, suddenly curious about the answer the magic mirror had given at the time.
This question... was indeed challenging for the Witch Queen, but surely a court scholar could solve it, right?
Surely the magic mirror would give the correct answer?
What had actually happened back then?
Delphinia in the scene was almost finished reciting the problem.
"...Young Delph covers the first half of the distance at speed x, the second half at speed y (with x not equal to y), and there’s only one of Mama Francesco’s little cakes—how dare she try to snatch it from me... ahem (continues reading), so who will get to eat it... Tch, obviously me!"
Suddenly, three words appeared on the storybook—‘You are unworthy.’
Then, the Book of Fate burst into flames.

Immediately after, the same three words appeared on the mirror—‘You are unworthy.’
Adding insult to injury.
Delphinia stared blankly at Stuart in the mirror.
[Your Majesty, Your Majesty! I’m innocent, truly! The mirror must be wrong! I am loyal through and through...]
The Witch Queen, furious, reached out and seized the mirror, dissolving the scene in an instant.
On site, Louis: "......"
On site, Stuart: [......]
Thus, the mystery of why Stuart had been forcibly dragged from the mirror and flogged by the Witch Queen was finally close to being solved.
He really was innocent...
The storybook recorded every word and deed of its reader.
Delphinia’s impulsive aside—‘Tch, obviously me’—was faithfully captured.
That answer was wrong, so the storybook told her—‘You are unworthy!’
Such was the mischief of the storybook—it was a double entendre.
‘You are unworthy’ was both a rebuke and the correct answer to the problem. It was the storybook’s way of telling the Witch Queen she was wrong.
The mirror’s display confirmed it—the answer was that Young Aux would get the cake.
Louis rubbed his face.
First, he realized he had underestimated the difficulty of the question—it wasn’t grade-school arithmetic after all.
Second, he underestimated the usefulness of the magic mirror—it could indeed give the right answer.
But most underestimated of all was Delphinia!
Honestly!
He’d thought she simply couldn’t find the answer and was being made a fool of.
But given the answer to copy, she still copied it incorrectly!
She missed her chance to finish elementary school—though at best, she’d only make it to junior high, where the fantasy professors would surely kick her out. With her as a student, she’d either be beaten by the teachers or fail out of middle school.
[Ahem, sir, is the mirror fixed now?] Stuart wiped cold sweat from his brow, trying to change the subject—he always found the Queen intimidating.
"No," Louis shook his head, "there’s one last test."
With that, he pulled Stuart out of the mirror, signaling that he wouldn’t need him inside for the next step.
Then Louis asked, "Mirror, mirror, who is the greatest?"
The image changed: a Victorian palace, a graceful young noblewoman had just finished attending a banquet, now changing clothes with the help of her maids. From her elaborately styled hair and ornate accessories, she was clearly a young matron, not a maiden.
Stuart stared at the woman in the mirror, his eyes wide with shock, nearly fainting in terror, too frightened to utter a word.
"Who is that?" Louis frowned, not recognizing her.
Stuart stared blankly at his master—are you face-blind?!
But his master soon recognized the woman.
As the beautiful lady before the full-length mirror removed her evening gown, revealing her tightly-laced corset, she sighed with relief as she slipped out of it, feeling utterly freed.
Louis, too, breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh, so it’s you."
It proved that a teacher always remembers their worst student most vividly.
Suddenly, the woman seemed to sense something. She spun around, brows arched, glaring into the air, her eyes blazing with fury, "Who dares spy on me?!"
Stuart nearly fainted, scrambling desperately to shut off the mirror’s image.

Louis shook his head, sighing with regret. It seemed that those as powerful as the Witch Queen could sense such things.
Otherwise, he’d planned to ask about ‘Francesco’—he strongly suspected that Francesco was in the palace at this very moment!
And Delphinia knew it!
When she’d heard about ‘Mama Francesco’s’ cakes, her expression was nothing like someone recalling the deceased.
In fact, she’d looked rather bashful...
How strange.
[Sir, would you like to try again...] Stuart wiped his brow, asking cautiously.
"No need," Louis looked at the magic mirror and nodded in satisfaction. "The mirror is fixed."
Evidently, the magic mirror could be repaired, and its user could continually be reborn through it. But sadly, its creator could not do the same. Even if she could, it would be meaningless, for even with endless life, her wish would remain unfulfilled, forcing her to seek another path...
When it came to the First Dark Lord’s wish, Delphinia and Stuart had different interpretations.
Stuart believed Francesco simply wanted his daughter to live a peaceful, ordinary life—to find a partner, that sort of thing.
But Delphinia felt she bore her mother’s burden, though what that burden truly was...
It certainly wasn’t to have her marry her own father...
As for the true ember in Francesco’s heart—perhaps it was her deep disappointment in the world’s wizards.
The youth who was supposed to court Auxicris now felt much the same—he thought he’d fallen into a kindergarten, spending every day playing with children!
As for Delphinia herself, she rather liked this world, feeling nothing of that disappointment—after all, she had never experienced her foster mother’s sense of solitary invincibility.
She was only a little regretful about not finishing elementary school.
Her foster daughter never even graduated elementary school—her foster mother must be disappointed too...
Wiping the still-dusty mirror, Louis examined the new annotations in the storybook.
He found that when Stuart was inside the magic mirror, his blood and mana were both NA—as long as the mirror did not shatter, the mirror spirit would not die.
If Louis himself entered the mirror, it would be the same.
Moreover, after repairing the mirror, a new note appeared: [Louis +1]
Now, his personal description read: [Louis x2].
What did this mean?
Had he ‘added a life’?
Two lives now?
Checking the storybook’s notes, Louis discovered he could now restore himself to the state he was in the last time he looked in the mirror—if wounded, he could summon Stuart to possess him and be made whole again. However, each use would chip the mirror.
If he died outright, he would awaken in the mirror world; but after returning to the real world, the mirror would shatter.
Nevertheless, he could repair the mirror—so, in other words...
[In your terms, this would be called ‘corpse running’.]
[A ‘mysterious man’ who can corpse run...]
[This world is growing ever more interesting...]
Louis blinked.
"Does this mean I can throw all caution to the wind now?"