2-3 Learning Advanced Magic, Then Training

My lfe in this other world had already reached day twelve.

It was the day after that happened, but I went straight to the Adventurers’ Guild with a totally nonchalant face, like nothing was wrong.

Because I wanted the next spells—advanced magic and the like.

At this age, your skin gets thick as hell.

Stuff like that? I don’t even care.

And when you’ve lived like a hermit for a long time, everything starts to feel pointless anyway.

At the counter, I asked the receptionist from last time if there were any good high-tier healing spells, high-tier offensive spells, and maybe some solid defensive or enchantment magic.

“Understood~. I’ll call the person in charge and have them pick options for you,” she replied all polite and well-behaved—

and then that receptionist immediately snitched to the guildmaster that I’d shown up.

Pretty face, vicious woman.

The guildmaster came over at once, circled behind me, grabbed both my shoulders with a big cheerful grin, and said, “Oh, you’re here. I’ve been waiting,” then dragged me to his office without letting me argue.

The nerve of that old man.

…Well, it’s not like I’m innocent either.

But seriously—old men. That’s how they are.

So now, here I was, scowling on the office sofa, arms crossed, leaning back arrogantly with my legs still crossed and propped right up on the table, sulking as I faced him.

“Don’t look so sour. I just want to talk. Those potions, you see—they’re also military supplies. The situation’s bad right now, so the army’s scrambling to collect them. And those military factions overlap with noble factions too. They come barking, ‘When you get any in, send some to us,’ and crap like that. I could ignore them if I wanted… but sometimes we need to submit documents to government offices and so on, and there are complications. The offices are packed with noble bureaucrats who throw their weight around. There are ties between nobles in places like that, so we can’t just blow them off. And it’s not just that. Advanced potions are made by famous apothecaries who are under state protection. But they can’t produce enough. Even nobles can’t easily put their hands on government channels, but other routes are a different story. If you controlled a production source like that, it’d generate obscene profit. So yes—there are nobles with some very ‘creative’ ideas. You haven’t been selling those in bulk somewhere else, have you? If you get noticed by the wrong nobles, you won’t get off lightly.”

Ah, damn.

So that really was the issue.

Gobson’s shop owner had been right.

As he watched my grim face with clear amusement, he continued:

“I won’t tell you to sell to us anymore. But don’t sell them anywhere else. If you value your life.”

“Roger… If you really need them, tell me. I’ll hand some over. But keep the source quiet.”

Then the guildmaster grinned—and said it with a pitch-black smile.

“Good. Then I want about a hundred advanced potions right now. Hand ’em over.”

I sagged, then plop, dropped a hundred bottles onto the desk.

The guildmaster immediately handed me fifty large gold coins.

He’d clearly had them prepared from the start.

Damn him. What a man.

So this was what guildmasters were like in this world.

From now on, I’d have to deal with that “species” accordingly.

Commercial Guild next, I guess.

I was “a merchant,” after all.

And merchants were probably all slippery bastards anyway.

“All right, now we can get to your request. You wanted to learn advanced magic, yeah? As a special favor, I—the guildmaster—will teach you myself. Come with me.”

He hauled me to the training grounds, and then immediately said this:

“You supposedly learn fast, right? Then as payment, hand over all those large gold coins you just got.”

This guy was a demon…

With a resigned face, I tossed him the bag of coins.

“Don’t make that face. In exchange, you can learn as much as you’re capable of learning, as much as you want. If you want to live long, learn like your life depends on it. Especially you.”

Ugh. I was being treated as a full-on problem child now.

I mean, I did cause a scene at the guild the other day, so I couldn’t really deny it.

And the receptionist reporting me the instant she saw me? Yeah. That was already a bad sign.

I’d just be careful at other guilds.

Though if the Adventurers’ Guild was close with the Commercial Guild, my “problem child” reputation might already be spreading.

But honestly, I was “a rare person” already—so I was probably screwed anyway.

And for me, there was an even bigger issue.

That thing inside me.

Maybe I was already tripping some kind of “rule code” of this world.

Then the guildmaster started firing off advanced magic one after another, without hesitation.

A massive explosive fire spell: Flare.

A gravity spell for stopping and binding: Gravity.

A super-powerful artificial storm: Tempest.

A raging storm of lightning: Thunder Rain.

A searing heat-ray spell: Blaster.

Light of annihilation: Megiddo.

A rain of meteors: Meteor Rain.

A giant tornado: Tornado (about F6 by Earth standards).

A massive tsunami: Water Wave.

A huge earthen shackle bind: Earth Bind.

An incredible lineup of absurd spells.

So he wasn’t just some guy with the title “guildmaster” for show!

He was holding back in this place, but even so, I could tell he had insane versatility and power.

Not logically—instinctively.

This was the path I should be on.

And the magic in this world was all practicality—pure utility.

Nothing like the “tasteful” witchcraft or sorcery from Earth.

More like some grim “Jane’s Annual of Magic.”

I’d already more than gotten my money’s worth.

For a payment worth five hundred gold coins, I’d learned advanced magic worth a total of a thousand gold coins—about a billion yen.

To learn this kind of stuff, you’d need aptitude, mana capacity, and either extreme wealth or a generous sponsor.

And you could only learn it in a special place like this.

No wonder advanced magic was rare.

For normal adventurers, wouldn’t it go the other way?

You’d only become rich after you could use strong magic—and you’d still have the aptitude and mana issues on top.

And this guy… he was ridiculously skillful.

Using spells like Meteor Rain in a confined area, neatly, precisely.

That shouldn’t be possible.

Meteor Rain was practically art.

He made tiny meteors fall from the ceiling and forced them into the floor, one by one.

Since this was just for demonstration, maybe he was recovering mana by “recycling” the spell.

Like regenerative braking on a hybrid car.

Not that a car can recover all energy—but this man looked like he was reclaiming mana at terrifying efficiency.

And, well…

I copied his technique too.

Every time he demonstrated, I cast the spell right after him—and I even performed the mana recovery cleanly, about as well as his example.

His “template” magic was excellent, after all.

And I’ve always been good at doing things carefully, piece by piece.

The guildmaster looked mildly impressed.

He wasn’t the kind of person who showed praise in his expression, either.

But he probably dealt with lots of rough young types here—people who’d get cocky the second you praised them.

This was dangerous work; you couldn’t run a guild by being meek.

It reminded me of the auto industry I used to be in.

That was a rough battlefield too, back in the day.

Wherever Japan’s auto industry goes, it brings booze, women, and gambling.

Because—hello—this was basically indoors. A roofed space.

Going all-out with my mana capacity would be suicide.

Maybe the guildmaster had been a high-ranked adventurer himself.

Actually, that was probably why he was guildmaster now.

Next, he moved into support magic.

So he’d planned to shut down my advanced spells with Dispel from the start, huh?

Then he moved into defensive magic.

I didn’t use swords much in daily life, so I probably wouldn’t have much use for it, but he even demonstrated magic sword techniques.

Magic sword—fire, ice, wind, earth, lightning.

Then he showed off a ridiculous amount of detection and stealth too.

What a multi-talented bastard!

So where’d that “too many aptitudes makes you a jack-of-all-trades, master of none” theory go?!

Was he a rare person too?

Rare people wouldn’t necessarily all be Japanese.

Maybe I could fish that out of him later.

Reincarnators could exist too.

“So? Pretty good deal, wasn’t it? Still… I can’t believe you memorized all that in one shot.”

“W-well… Yeah. I’ll admit—I appreciate it.”

This was like an all-you-can-eat premium conveyor-belt sushi course—insanely cost-effective!

Didn’t I get like four times the value compared to what I paid?

I mean, total cost was about five hundred million yen.

But it was money I’d gotten from “them” originally anyway.

“And you. You’re hopeless with a sword, aren’t you? I can tell just from your body movement and footwork. I’ll teach you a basic training form. The rest you do yourself. Unless you want to die. There are countless mages who get killed up close.”

And for some reason, it turned into intense practice.

But with my enhanced physical ability, I somehow got through it.

My “copying” skill was for reading magic casting—so it was useless here.

That was Seventh Sense stuff, after all.

It didn’t help with using my body.

“Also, start taking some proper adventurer requests and raise your rank.”

“Huh? Why?”

“If you’re still E-rank when it matters, people might look down on you and you could end up at a disadvantage. Even if you’re also a merchant, it can still matter. This is advice from the guildmaster of the Adventurers’ Guild—listen. It won’t hurt to work on it. You never know what life will throw at you. There are other reasons to rank up too, but we’ll talk about that another time. That’s enough for today.”

“Yessir. Good work.”

Yeah, the “big old man” understood that better than anyone.

The moment you end up in another world, you learn that lesson the hard way.

That was why I’d aimed for the royal capital, and why today happened the way it did.

It was already evening by the time I returned to my inn, totally exhausted.

I’d switched to a slightly higher-class inn after that, but it still didn’t have a bath.

Whatever—there were bathhouses in town.

And thanks to training, Physical Enhancement hit Level 9 and I had 1,000,000 HP, which was kind of funny.

Then I collapsed face-first onto the bed.

As I drifted off thinking pointless things—like why only MP got such ridiculous correction—I fell asleep.

Morning of day thirteen.

Honestly, Armon probably was guildmaster because he was good at taking care of people.

He had to be busy too.

And speaking of yesterday—I’d been so tired I fell asleep without dinner!

So I ate curry for breakfast.

Instant curry, but still.

I ended up going hard and ate two full plates.

A hungry teenager who shovels down five bowls of rice a day could probably do five plates for breakfast.

But learning Fly was huge.

In an emergency, I now had an escape route: flee through the sky.

All right.

I had money, I had magic to protect myself, and I’d gotten top-class weapons.

And I even had magical escape options.

What was left?

Leveling my magic… and sword training.

At my current skill level, that copied orichalcum sword was going to cry.

And I also needed to enjoy the royal capital.

I came here for that, after all.

Ah—finding a way back to my original world.

I’d forgotten that one.

I was already getting used to this world.

I’d been a shut-in back in Japan too, barely going out.

I could manage with what I had, and I could even enjoy Japanese food as much as I wanted.

Being in this world was turning into escapism.

And the otherworld language skill—being able to communicate freely in a foreign land—was bigger than I’d thought.

Normally you don’t get that.

Some people struggle for years and still never learn the language.

Especially at my age.

I could barely speak English.

Surviving monster combat and a bandit attack on my own had made me bold—and maybe even more brazen.

But whatever.

This country even had Japanese-style bath culture—maybe spread here by a rare person—and the food suited my taste.

And there wasn’t anyone in Japan I particularly wanted to see.

And my magic PC could connect to Earth’s internet, which made it even easier to detach.

A blessed otherworld life like this probably wasn’t common.

And being an old guy just made it worse.

No matter what I did, it was just killing time.

Even if I looked a bit younger, I wasn’t about to become energetic like a kid at this point.

Still, if I tried to raise rank without training first, I’d probably die.

And I still hadn’t seriously run into monsters.

So I went back to the guild again.

The counters were pretty empty today.

I asked the receptionist from yesterday.

“Is the guildmaster in?”

“Yes, he is.”

Nice.

“Can I see him?”

“I’ll take you to him. What is it you need?”

“There’s something I want to ask him.”

She guided me straight to the guildmaster’s office.

“Guildmaster, Alphonse-san is here. May I let him in?”

“Yeah. Send him in.”

“Hey!”

“What is it?”

“Just wanted to ask something. So… are monsters strong? I’ve only fought an E-rank one once, but even that freaked me out.”

“You said before you barely met any monsters on the road here. Maybe they sensed your mana and instinctively avoided you.”

“What?! Isn’t that fatal for an adventurer?”

So that Grion guy…

Was he just suicidal?

Or starving?

He did look like he was drooling…

“It makes you good for escort work. You’ve got Storage too. Working for a merchant company is another— Wait, weren’t you a merchant to begin with?”

“Ah. That was my ‘setting,’ wasn’t it. I totally forgot.”

“What even are you…”

The guildmaster said, sounding mildly exasperated.

“Anyway, if you go into a dungeon, monsters will attack you no matter what.”

“A dungeon?! So there really is something that awesome?!”

“To think there’s someone in my guild so ignorant they don’t know that much. As guildmaster, it makes me truly sad.”

“C’mon, c’mon. So where is it?”

“There’s one about twenty kilometers west of the royal capital. Ask the staff for the exact route. And train your sword and magic more before you go—so you don’t panic once you’re inside. Before you go, come to me first. I’ll take a look at you.”

“Roger. All right then—sorry for bothering you.”

Hmm… a dungeon that spawns monsters.

Now that really got the blood pumping.

A classic game treat.

With this absurdly tough body and all these powerful spells, maybe even a brutal place like a dungeon would be manageable for me now.