Once upon a time, a long time ago, in Eldora, a snowy country, there was a girl.
Her name is Anastasia.
It was a beautiful girl, and her beauty and her loving tricks had become a reputation throughout the village.
One day, I want to take a beautiful girl like her as my wife and live in peace.
The young people of the village wished that and acted to be so, but nothing could make that dream come true.
The girl's ideals weren't high.
I didn't ask for the opposite sex to match its beauty.
Instead, the girl was an ordinary girl who could be in love, and there was a boy in the village who had a heart.
As much as I exchanged a couple promises to marry the boy one day.
It wasn't the girl that was the problem, it was the father.
The girl's father was known as a magician and stranger living outside the village.
No - he was not named a raw gentleman, such as a stranger, but a mad-filled sorcerer.
Back in the mountains, he lived a life where he never interacted with the villagers, and hunted animals to peel out their guts and repeat suspicious experiments.
Black smoke leaking out of the chimney of Anastasia's house, plus the odor was enough to keep the villagers away.
Anastasia, born to such a father, but she grows up limp and celebrates her fifteenth birthday.
And that night, when we celebrate fifteen birthdays, a turning point comes to her.
I heard Veronica's old story. I frown.
I heard from her mouth that the witch Anastasia's condition is somewhere to wear with me and Fiona.
Where his father was in an obnoxious mood, abandoning secularism and dawning in research in the mountains.
Where my daughter respected her own father and loved him more than anyone else.
The two fathers and daughters were treated as strangers by the human beings of the village, but lived together.
"But also, as I mentioned, until Anastasia turns fifteen"
"What happened on your fifteenth birthday?
I ask.
Veronica gives it a mouthful or an eye. I looked lightly at Fiona.
"And now you're hiding something from my daughter. I've come this far. Tell me everything."
We had already traveled the capital and headed to the Snow Witch Hall. It would not be morally or educationally good to leave my daughter alone alone now.
Veronica shook her head vertically when I said so.
"As I explained, Anastasia's father was a stranger, but he loved his daughter so much. It was all about research, but it seemed to me that I was loving and nurturing it. But when Anastasia celebrates fifteen birthdays, it changes"
"What the hell happened?
My daughter asks roughly.
"Anastasia's father was studying homunculus"
"I'm with your father......, did you succeed?
"No way, I wouldn't have been here if I had succeeded, and you and your father would have lived in peace"
"Indeed."
I accidentally leak a bitter laugh.
"Shall we get back to it? But Anastasia's father was approaching homunculus manufacturing. One day, we succeeded in creating organic life forms in the flask."
"Organic life?
Fiona shakes her neck.
I'll supplement.
"I mean bacteria, single-cell organisms, primitive organisms. Broadly speaking, it includes humans."
Veronica nods.
"This has gone all the way to the village where Anastasia was born and my men have confirmed that Anastasia's father was successful in creating organic life forms. First, primitive single-celled organisms, then lower organisms such as bowlflashes and featherworms, plus amphibians and mammals, were also successfully manufactured."
"Is that true?
I visited him unexpectedly because I couldn't believe it.
The creation of homunculus is extraordinary, but it was the reality of alchemy that made it difficult to produce even single-cell organisms and insects.
The creation of life is the realm of God and cannot be easily reproduced.
That's why so many magicians are obsessed with the creation of life, blood-eyed and dreaming of homunculus creation.
The path, the creation of life, which has been challenged and frustrated by many eminent magicians and sages, including the great mages of antiquity. My master and others have given up a long time ago, and it is also an area where I throw a teaspoon that we cannot create a presence from nothing.
Was Anastasia's father reproducing what I couldn't have done in a thousand years?
That's how Veronica explains it.
"I also equate opinions with Lord Kite. To be rude, there's no way a magician in the province can produce a life form that even a wise man like Lord Kite can only produce by chance. I thought so. I did my research."
She went on like this when she took a breath there.
"It's a bingo! My guess."
"What do you mean?
"It means Anastasia's father didn't succeed in imagining life. Indeed, every day from his laboratory, new life forms were emerging. He was also surprised, and the local sorcery association sparkled his eyes, but strangely, the creation of life could not be reproduced when a visitor was sent by the Central Sorcerer's Association."
"Did you mean he was blowing you?
Veronica shook her head sideways when I visited.
"Indeed, you were blowing it, but that is not the will of the person. No, rather, he's the victim. He himself did not suspect that he had succeeded in creating life, nor did he intend to deceive others."
"That's roundabout. I'd love to hear you say it more terminally."
"Well, then let me get this straight. I mean, all life's creation was faux. Moreover, the fake was not set up by the person. My apprentice set it up."
"Apprentice......,?
"Oh, Anastasia's father has one disciple. He worked on his experimental tools to distract his master."
Veronica punctuated the words there, and took out the water bottle to moisten her throat, and oozed it.
"I have no talent because I am an unknown sorcerer and an assistant to a local zero sorcerer. But there was no talent, but there was little wisdom"
"Is that clever wisdom"
"Oh, the disciple had his thoughts on Anastasia, the master's daughter, and he had managed to turn himself around. Anastasia had a childhood friend who even made a couple promises."
"The one called Yokohama."
"Kicked to death by a horse, that's the one. Well, I don't know what it's like to burn yourself into unfulfilled love."
And Veronica looks a little farther away.
I come to ignore it.
"So the apprentice struck a total," he said?
"Guess what, Lord Kite?"
Veronica loosens her mouth gently when she says so.
"The disciple worked hard on the experimental apparatus to distract his master and allow him to marry his daughter, making it look like life was born."
Here's the point, she goes on.
Anastasian fathers used life for life-generating experiments.
Mijinko's body to create a bowflake.
To create a monsieur chow, we need a corpse of a feather.
To produce sheep, a corpse of a rat was taken.
"It's called a lower exchange."
Magic is not omnipotent. There's always some price to pay for creating something.
It seems Anastasia's father was trying to create a life form by sacrificing the lower creatures.
"Regardless, as I explained earlier, in the end, no organism could be produced in the lower exchange. But his disciple snuck into the lab late at night after the experiment to get in the mood of his master and put a life form inside the experimental apparatus. The day after I put the corpse of the feather, I took the monsieur chow, and the day after I put the corpse of the mouse, I took the sheep into my master."
"I see, you're a clever man, indeed"
I concluded that, but I asked Veronica some questions.
"But such lies will be disproved one day. In fact, it didn't seem to work in front of the sorcerers' association from the center."
"That's awkward. Indeed, the disciple is a fool, but he knew that such fraud would not prevail in front of the Mage's Church. So there was no such thing as a magician sent from the center."
Veronica punctuated the words there, making her expression look awkward.
"The disciple is a crumb. But Anastasia's father was crazier than that crumb. That produced the greatest tragedy."
"... the greatest tragedy, is it?
"Oh, you don't have to ask, do you?
That word seems to take Fiona, my daughter, into account, not against me.
I saw Fiona lightly, but Fiona was staring at me and Veronica with a serious face.
When I saw that, I couldn't tell you not to ask now.
I stand ready to listen to Veronica with my daughter.
Did you feel ready for that, Veronica told me about the tragedy that happened to Anastasia, "That's just the man I expected"?
A disciple who had a lateral affection for Anastasia.
The apprentice was working on the experiment to get Anastasia's father in a good mood.
In fact, the day the experiment worked, Anastasia's father became in a good mood and praised the help of his disciples.
Neither did his disciples miss the opportunity, and he was petitioning his daughter, Anastasia, for what she deserved.
At the heart, however, the experiment of life creation failed only on the day when a bewitching and listening magician came from the centre.
Naturally, because his disciples did not work in detail.
Anastasian father also noticed there the suspicious behavior of his disciples,
Neither did the disciple have a case if he confessed his sins, but such an opportunity did not come.
That leads to the tragedy of one girl.
The unhelpful disciple at the heart was swept away by Anastasia's father's inquiry (Kanki) and broke.
The broken disciple spewed the curse.
"Your experiment won't succeed because it's focused on substitution."
I left behind those words and left the village.
His father, who had been possessed by the madness of the name of the magical truth from the beginning, truly received the word of his disciple.
"Well, won't we succeed because we stick to lower exchanges? Stupid apprentice, but the word makes sense"
So enlightened the father gave up the lower exchange,
"Equivalent Exchange"
decided to challenge life creation by
That was Anastasia's birthday, the night of the fifteenth.
Veronica explained so with a sinking face.
She didn't say anything directly about the tragedy that happened that night, but me and Fiona could see what happened that night.
Fiona, who had lost her words to much, but eventually moves that thought lips.
"... Could it be that Mr. Anastasia's father tried to use Mr. Anastasia as an experimental bench to build a homunculus?
The voice is filled with sorrow. There's no way a real father would do that.
That's how my daughter's common sense denied it, but Veronica's expression had only an affirmative component.
"The information I have grabbed is all over the place. That on the night the girl named Anastasia turned fifteen, she was no longer a 'human'. That the father was a corpse and the mansion where they lived burned down. The fact that materials that are equivalent to homunculus are not conceivable except by man. That's all."
Veronica opened the water bottle again when she tied it like that.
If you look closely, your breath was rough, and your face was slightly vermilion. Maybe the contents of the water bottle are alcohol.
I guess it was something I couldn't talk about without the power of alcohol.
She also has a real father - that is, an emperor and a certain obsession.
Or maybe Veronica is sympathetic to a witch named Anastasia.
I felt that way, but I put it in my mouth and didn't point it out.
If I put it in my mouth, I might have pity and sympathy for Anastasia, like Veronica and Fiona.
But I can't get into cheap human love (humanism) right now.
Because I was the father of one girl before I was one person.
Because I'm the parent of the most precious daughter in the world called Fiona.
Being a father was a priority over being human.
I wanted to make it a priority that I was Fiona's father, whether I was snuggled up with a cold blooded, cold man or my daughter hated me for that.
I wanted to devote my heart to protecting my daughter.
When I held my daughter's head, I tried to forget the old story of the Snow Witch in the swinging carriage.