Chapter 10

Chapter 10

They say the dynasty had changed several times over the years - I wouldn’t know the details because I’d lived with no interest in worldly affairs, but that was what Master said - so I don’t know what things are like now. But more than nine hundred years ago, the Royal Academy was a place where children who had become 3rd-circle mages or upper-intermediate aura users by the time they turned sixteen entered and received twelve years of concentrated education.

The students who received that education could graduate only after proving their achievements. In the case of mages, they had to conduct magic research on a free topic, produce research results above a certain level, and undergo the committee’s review. Swordsmen, meanwhile, had to volunteer for various tournaments or wars and build accomplishments to prove their achievements.

In such a place, Elclid de Hustein was an inferior student who had failed to produce research results throughout all twelve years of his education. In the end, his graduation had been deferred for the tenth year, and before he knew it, he was nearing forty.

His classmates had long since graduated and were busily establishing their social positions as mages or swordsmen, and some of them had even taken posts as teaching assistants or part-time instructors at the Royal Academy. So it was not particularly difficult to guess just how much inferiority he must have been feeling.

To Elclid, I, who had entered the Royal Academy not as a sixteen-year-old but as a six-year-old 4th-circle mage, must have been the very thorn in his eye, one that made his insides blaze just by existing. On top of that, unlike the other students, I was not a noble. I was of lowly status, hardly different from a half-slave, and as an orphan with no kin, I had been driven out of the domain where I originally lived - or more precisely, disposed of because I was a nuisance - and conscripted to be used as the royal court’s hands and feet. That must have made me even more irritating.

Because of that background, it was not particularly strange for Elclid to make me the target for his anger and harass me. Of course, the others had been wary of me and harassed me from the very beginning as well.

For example, whenever I passed by, they would openly laugh at me and whisper among themselves, spit right in front of me, or try to trip me.

My belongings stored in my locker would disappear or be ruined until they were in tatters.

In the dining hall, they would shove me while pretending it was an accident, making me fall against the food-waste bin, or secretly put shards of broken glass into my soup.

When we paired up for class, there was no student willing to pair with me, so I had no choice but to pair with a teaching assistant. Yet even the teaching assistant made it painfully obvious that they hated me and neglected me.

In front of my dormitory room, there was always garbage carelessly thrown there by other students, and at all hours, I would hear the sound of passing students kicking the walls or door of my room with loud bangs.

Even while going through all of that, I didn’t really think much of it at the time. Because of my status, there had always been people who kept me in check, felt uncomfortable around me, and ignored or despised me. Besides, before I entered the Royal Academy, I had experienced even worse things.

Because of the superstition that “if you boil and eat a baby with mana sensitivity, you can use magic,” I had nearly been eaten by serfs. When those serfs were later massacred on charges of rebellion, I was caught up in it, thrown into a corpse pit, and then pulled out. And whenever I showed interest in magic, I would be beaten nearly unconscious, then locked in a basement where not a single ray of light entered.

Compared to things like that, wasn’t this level of children’s prank more or less bearable? I could even do as much magic research as I liked.

I came to realize just how complacent that thought had been in the year I turned eight. Elclid, who had finally turned forty with no hope of graduating in sight, was the eldest son, and yet his younger sibling had stolen the position of heir from him. Anxious because he was in danger of being cast out of his family, he stole the research results I had nearly completed and presented them as his own.

“That’s my research, not yours! Correct it right now. Before I protest to the review committee and make this a bigger issue!”

“What, why don’t you get lost? How dare a pathetic lowborn wretch act up like that? Protest? As if. In the first place, who would believe that a lowborn wretch like you designed something like that?”

“There’s no way they won’t believe it. I’m the one who knows the most about that formula. If everyone hears my explanation, they’ll realize right away that it’s mine.”

“Ha, don’t make me laugh. Who would listen with any interest to the words of a lowborn wretch? Do you think high-ranking people would care about anything you have to say? Besides, if they hear that a lowborn wretch made it, even its stability will be questioned, and it will just get buried as it is.”

As he said that, Elclid instead puffed himself up and said I should be grateful to him. He claimed that because it was someone like him, many people had come to pay attention to the formula, allowing it to see the light of day.

It was unfair, but I thought there might be some truth to it. Elclid’s main family, the Hustein family, had a fairly firm position even among nobles. I was merely of lowly status, an orphan with no kin, and on top of that, I would eventually become the hands and feet of the royal court and make the nobles uncomfortable. I did not think my words would carry much weight. If things went badly, it might not end with my research results being stolen; the research I had finally done might be erased altogether.

However...... I could not back down as I was. Because the research result Elclid had stolen from me was an incomplete formula whose design had not yet been finished. I had completed it up to the point of delaying the activation of magic, but I had not yet designed the method for releasing it. Elclid had finished that part however he pleased and presented it as it was.

It was already unfair that it had been stolen, but for it to be made known to the world in a state where it had not even been properly completed and had merely been glossed over...... It was more than enough to make a mage burst with rage.

“Errors are definitely going to occur. Will you still be able to insist it’s your research result when that happens? If something does go wrong, you’ll have to clean it up, but you don’t have the ability to do that, do you? You couldn’t even graduate after ten years.”

“What, you little shit? What did this lowborn thing just say?! Do you think your senior is a joke? A snot-nosed little kid like you dares defy a senior as high as the heavens?!”

Raging like that, Elclid used the pretext of “properly educating a lowborn thing with a rotten mind” to commit violence against me together with the group that followed him.

It was not even simple assault.

It was a group lynching using magic and aura.

Naturally, the incident became a major commotion, and as a case of school violence between students, a disciplinary committee was held. Originally, something like simple assault would be resolved between the parties themselves - in other words, family against family - so disciplinary committees were not held for such things. But because it was an assault case where several students had used magic and aura, a disciplinary committee had no choice but to convene.

So was the matter handled fairly, with Elclid’s group punished and my grievance resolved......? No, it was not. Even though adults well over twenty had assaulted an eight-year-old child as a group, the disciplinary committee punished not them, but me.

The fire magic I had deployed while defending against their attacks grazed Elclid’s face and left a scar - Elclid claimed one eye had been rendered useless, but I do not know whether that was true - and the disciplinary committee seized upon that. They concluded that I had assaulted Elclid with magic and that the others had tried to save Elclid, then closed the case as it was.

At first, I could not understand at all how that result had come about. For an authoritative institution like the Royal Academy to reach such an absurd conclusion. On top of that, Elclid was an incompetent bastard who had failed to produce even one result despite being nearly forty. Long-term, it should have been more beneficial to side with the one who had truly produced results than to side with someone like that. Why would they make such an irrational decision?

But that was merely how I saw it. In truth, this was an extremely rational judgment for the ruling class known as nobles. The world at the time was a feudal society from before centralization had occurred, so the royal court’s power was not particularly strong, and the people who composed the disciplinary committee were nobles. Naturally, there was no way they would take my side, since I would one day become the royal court’s hands and feet.

Moreover, even if the position of family head had been stolen from him by his younger sibling, Elclid was still the eldest son of the Hustein family. And the Hustein family had a firm position even among nobles, so from the nobles’ perspective, they had no choice but to hesitate to touch that family’s eldest son and throw their interests into chaos for no reason. Honestly, it was not as if taking the side of the talentless one would immediately cause something terrible to happen to the world. If groundbreaking progress were delayed, inconvenience in daily life would not be resolved, but people had lived perfectly well until then, so they probably wondered what the problem was.

And so, without resolving a single part of my grievance, I lost the magic scroll formula to Elclid forever.

And now, more than nine hundred years later, the result manifested through that stolen formula had entered my hands.

Still incomplete, exactly as Elclid had shoddily finished it.

“.......”

As emotion welled up and I gripped the magic scroll, the sound of the parchment crinkling and breaking came from inside my hand. The startled mercenaries caused a commotion here and there, their voices boiling up noisily.

“U-Uhh......!”

“Wait, if you just break that......!”

“The magic inside......!”

Just as the startled mercenaries were thrown into confusion, flames surged from the damaged formula. But that was all. Nothing happened, such as the flames burning something. Because I had disassembled and deleted them at the level of design code.

Instead, what the mercenaries encountered was my sunken voice.

“......Do you know where the source formula is?”

“Y-Yes......? Wh-What?”

“The source formula of the magic scroll. This was made by copying and pasting from there, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, um...... That would be...... the Hustein family is probably keeping it, right......?”

Well, of course Elclid had taken my formula, so his descendants would be keeping it. But did they think I asked because I didn’t know that? As I let out an irritated sigh, the mercenaries, who had been making foolish faces, flinched and watched my mood. Then, after a moment, the 3rd-circle mage hurriedly added.

“Th-The Hwirel region! The Hustein family’s headquarters is there! Southwest from here! About 2,000 kilometers away!”

“Ah...... really? They didn’t used to live there...... I guess they moved.”

Well, more than nine hundred years had passed, so that could happen. Of course, that bastard might have lied...... but I’d know as soon as I went there.

After thinking that far, I immediately deployed a spatial movement formula.

***

In the silence where only the wind blew.

The mercenaries, who had been staring at the faintly vanishing traces of spatial movement magic, came back to their senses one by one.

“Uh......? Wh-What was that?”

“He just left?”

“Th-Then...... what happens now?”

The magic scroll that had been their original objective had been disassembled and vanished because of the boy, and the boy who had seemed ready to kill them all at any moment had left without a single shred of lingering attachment.

Unable to get their bearings after the sudden conclusion, the mercenaries began murmuring and wavering in confusion. But that lasted only a moment, as gunshots and the shouts of the domain residents struck the mercenaries’ eardrums.

“Gah, what is it?!”

“C-Captain! Look over there!”

“The domain residents are already here......!”

At the mercenaries’ cries, the mercenary captain hurriedly looked below the tower. The domain residents who had gathered before he knew it were shooting the mercenaries below the tower with those strange weapons, and in the mercenary captain’s eyes, the lord’s side appeared to have already been subdued. The lord was tightly bound together with his retainers, hanging upside down from the top of the tower and dangling as he swayed.

“Damn it, everyone, dodge!”

“B-But how? We’re already surrounded......”

“Then are you just going to die here?! Huh?!”

“No, that’s not it......”

“Then escape somehow!”

The mercenaries, flinching at the mercenary captain’s shout, hurriedly tried to escape. However, since the domain residents were already climbing up from below the tower, the only ways the mercenaries could escape were to jump from the tower while wrapped in aura, or to flee with flight magic.

The mercenary captain also tried to escape with levitation magic. He had no doubt that if he floated gently into the air, he could at least avoid the humiliation of being caught by the domain residents.

However.......

BANG.

“Urk......?!”

Feeling his chest pierced by a lead bullet and his insides crushed, the mercenary captain plummeted straight toward the ground.