Chapter 38 - Premiere

Being trounced once again turned Hyrlan's attention away from Pong as she looked at Joshua and Sir Weissenasche walk out of the room.
"Joshua, is your discussion done? Ciri... you should come with me to the academy, then."
Hyrlan still underestimated Ciri's "favorable disposition" toward Joshua, plus Joshua had already reminded them that the talk could take some time before he entered the room.
So, Hyrlan was going to take Ciri back to the academy to try to salvage her student status. However, Ciri stuck fast by the door and refused to budge.
It was as if Ciri would die the moment she strayed a little too far away from Joshua.
That was a fact only Ciri and Joshua knew. Until now, Ciri had yet to find a good opportunity to explain her relationship with Joshua to Hyrlan.
Fortunately, the theater's hospitality for its guests was top-notch. Coupled with the charm of Pong, Ciri managed to distract Hyrlan's attention.
"Sister, it's already late in the evening now."
Ciri pointed at the clock on the corridor wall. It was one of the arcanotech appliances produced after the patent revolution thirty years ago. Since the advent of the rune-powered clock, humans in this world had finally been able to accurately count time to the second.
"Evening? It's obvious that ten-plus minutes have just passed..."
Hyrlan's sentence came to an abrupt end when she saw the clock on the wall. The hour hand of the clock was pointing unerringly at seven.
It was five when Hyrlan arrived, so that meant she and Ciri had been sitting there for two good hours!
Yet, Hyrlan felt like the two hours had passed in the blink of an eye. All she did that afternoon was play a few rounds of Pong with Ciri.
It was... terrifying!
Hyrlan felt a chill run down her spine as she looked at the white Pong window in her vision.
She had always thought that wasting time was a cardinal sin, and the game just wasted two hours of her life.
She was now hesitant about using magic to erase Pong from her consciousness.
The reason for her hesitation was that she had not reconciled her losses. She had lost three games to Ciri earlier, and she would only win whenever she persisted.
So, Hyrlan gave up the thought.
"Sorry for making you ladies wait. The next agenda is to prepare for the premiere. I'm afraid that she may not want to go back that early," Joshua said.
Joshua's words prodded a little thought within Ciri's mind.
A real movie buff would not feel bored even if they were to watch a movie a dozen times, and Ciri did not receive the same treatment as the Duke of Bones. She had not seen the completed final part yet.
Hence, she had been waiting for this day for a long, long time!
"But, Joshua..."
Hyrlan was a little conflicted. The academy she studied in ended its classes at eight. If she was to rush there now, she might be able to make it in time for the teacher's classes.
Ciri had not been reporting to school for half a year now. If not for the fact that Ciri's magical talents were much more terrifying than Hyrlan's, Ciri might have already been expelled by the academy. In fact, there were whispers of the crazy little brat's half-year absence from school among the teaching staff.
Being a mage was a real symbol of status in Norland, and Hyrlan truly hoped that Ciri would continue her studies in the magic academy.
"I've already been absent for half a year now. It doesn't matter if I wait for another day. Sis, I'm choosing to stay for the premiere. I'll regret it for life if I miss it," Ciri said.
Hyrlan always believed that a stage play was just something to past the time. She had been dragged to one by her classmates before, but she was not interested in it.
Even if Hyrlan dragged Ciri to school as her older sister, it would be useless because... she was no match for Ciri.
Despite possessing a Rank 3 mage certificate, she was not a match for a Rank 2 magic adept.
The magic Ciri used was more inclined toward actual combat, while Hyrlan's magic was more toward academia.
"Alright..." Hyrlan finally relented and agreed.
So, with Sir Weissenasche at the lead, Joshua went straight to the theater's performance hall.
There were two performance halls inside Weissenasche Theater, and the first hall was the one used for formal performances. The auditorium was divided into upper, middle, and lower floors with enough seating to accommodate two thousand people during a single performance.
Although no one had visited the theater for a long time now, the seats in the auditorium were spotless. The ceiling was inscribed with intricate pale-gold patterns, which made the entire theater feel a little more glorious...
And the theater indeed had its glorious days...
"Sir, what do you think?"
Sir Weissenasche moved to Joshua's side, and his humble air from earlier totally disappeared, as he was very pleased with everything around him and he could stand with pride before others.
"The stage is too small."
Joshua walked to the side of the stage and looked at the back of the auditorium. It was definitely a worthy place for an opera, but for a stage play, the audience sitting on the third level and above would need to use "Eagle Eyes" magic in order to see the scene on the stage.
"Sir, I swear that this is the biggest stage in all of Norland. Even that despicable theater cannot match it."
"It is still too small."
The theater was indeed much larger than a normal cinema, and if Sir Weissenasche could accept it, Joshua would have torn down the entire theater and rebuilt it.
However, Joshua did not have the luxury of time now, and Sir Weissenasche, who saw the theater to be more important than his life, would definitely not accept it.
"Take the curtains above down."
Joshua pointed at the curtains hanging above the theater. They would usually be drawn during the switching of scenes in a stage play.
Sir Weissenasche hesitated for a while, but he still ordered his men to take down those red curtains, which had been hanging above the stage for decades.
After the curtains were taken off, the entire stage was completely displayed before the audience. Joshua did not care about the stage but the huge whiteboard at the back of the stage that almost occupied the entire space of the stage.
"Sir, that is a white wall used for background decoration..." Sir Weissenasche explained to Joshua.
"Can it be moved?"
Joshua did not expect this world to achieve circular-screen movie levels yet, but a giant screen was the most basic... The convenient part of the originium crystal's projection was that no matter how big the screen was, it would not affect the picture's quality.
The whiteboard behind the stage was undoubtedly an excellent projection medium.
"Of course."
"Push it to the front of the stage."
As per Joshua's order, Sir Weissenasche had his men slowly move the huge whiteboard to the front of the stage.
"Perfect. Sir Weissenasche, please turn off all of those glowing stones."
Joshua felt that the whiteboard could indeed serve as a projection medium... He walked up along the steps to the tenth row of the auditorium's first level, and after infusing mana into the crystals, the image was magnified many times over onto the whiteboard.
The effect was... not bad at all.
Joshua sat with a soft cushion and looked at the picture that was projected on the whiteboard screen. He finally experienced the feeling of watching a movie in the cinema again.
"It's starting." Ciri straight up planted herself in the seat beside Joshua before she whispered to Hyrlan, "This... is a stage play?"
Compared with Ciri's concern about the movie's plot, Hyrlan was more concerned about what was appearing on the whiteboard. It was nothing like any kind of stage performance Hyrlan had ever known.