6-6 Preparing For The A-Rank Exam

The next day, I was drinking tea with Antonio in the guild cafeteria-bar.

I had asked a guild staffer to pass a message to him.

“Long time no see.”

“Yeah. Some kindergarten director sounded busy.”

In front of me sat a young man who, compared to before, seemed to carry a certain ease about him.

It was a sight I had seen plenty of times back on Earth, too.

I smiled in satisfaction and took a sip of tea.

“The A-Rank exam got pushed back, huh.”

“Yeah, it really is a problem. Well, I’m not exactly in a panic, but not being able to see what’s ahead is genuinely frustrating.”

Antonio grumbled as a slight cloud passed over his handsome features.

“Well, if they pull something like this, the Empire will only make diplomacy harder on themselves, and if things go badly, they won’t get to host the next one. Maybe this whole mess is because they were originally planning to invade this country, don’t you think? They called off the invasion, but they can’t quite let it go, so the ones who still want to attack are fighting among themselves back home or something.”

“Hahaha. That might actually be it.”

Antonio gave a small shrug.

Right now, he was just Antonio the rogue adventurer.

National wars weren’t his concern.

Orston House—once praised as the “Kingdom’s Sword,” the linchpin of the kingdom’s defense—had been destroyed by none other than a ducal house within the Albatross Royal Family.

Still, as one of those who had once inherited that honor by blood, his profile looked a little lonely.

“I wanted to go as backup too, but I’ll pass. Anything involving the Empire is a mess I personally kicked off and then crushed, after all. And besides, I’m technically an honorary marquis of this country.”

“Yeah.”

From that faint, wry expression, I could tell what was floating through his mind: my talent for causing trouble.

“If you need a training partner, I’ll do it.”

“Yeah. I’ll take you up on that. If we’re going to do this seriously, there’s no one else but you. The Guildmaster is busy. But are you sure things are fine at that beast-eared nursery of yours?”

“That’s fine. It’s not like we’ll be training from morning to night, right?”

“That’s true.”

“That whole incident involved you too, so I wanted to go to the A-Rank exam with you, but if I carelessly go to the Empire with you, it’ll turn into a fiasco and might end up being a disadvantage for you.”

“Hahaha. Yeah, just spar with me for training, and that’ll be enough.”

And the place we moved to for training was, as you already knew, the magic training ground: the Glass Garden.

It had been a while since we’d gone head-to-head in magic armor.

The first time I used that thing here, it had turned into one hell of a situation.

With a low roar, my magic armor formed as if it carried real, physical weight.

“Hm? What’s wrong, Antonio?”

He was just standing there, frozen.

“Y-y-you… what is that?”

“Oh, come on. It’s obviously magic armor I stole from you. Why are you acting like this now?”

“Hold on—just watch.”

With that, he threw a full-force punch at me.

Huh. Hardly any damage.

“What’s wrong? If you don’t go all-out, it won’t count as training, you know?”

“I am… I’m doing it like I’m trying to kill a dragon. What the hell is going on with your magic armor?”

“Come to think of it, my mana level went up by two.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh, right—speaking of which, I had something like this.”

As I said that, I took out Besmagil.

“W-what is that weird object? …Besmagil?”

Antonio appraised it and tilted his head.

“Yeah. Besmagil is a magical metal one tier above orichalcum. There’s nothing beyond it—the ultimate magical metal. Put simply, it’s got, like, a thousand times the performance of orichalcum in every way.”

Antonio went speechless at the unbelievable claim.

“It was something the first king only ever proposed as a theory, and because it takes an absurd amount of mana to manufacture, even he apparently said Besmagil would probably never be born into this world. It didn’t exist anywhere until now, but yesterday, while sipping tea, I tried making it on the side. Then my mana level jumped by two. My mana reserves are completely ridiculous now.”

He went even more speechless, but then, as if resigning himself, he forced the words out.

“I was trying to decide where to even start, but there’s no point saying anything about what you do. So? What about it?”

He really did catch on fast.

That was exactly what made him Antonio.

“I made it as a substitute for a magic stone so I could store mana for Mari, but I figured if you had this, you wouldn’t be short on mana either.”

I manipulated the Besmagil battery—crafted into a multi-faceted prism—with mana, spinning it in the air and making the space between us glitter.

“I-I see. That might be an interesting idea.”

“I’ve got Besmagil here with a capacity of twenty quadrillion MP. Can you leave it inside that item-box bracelet and still draw mana out of it?”

“Well, if you’re saying it, then that means you can do it, right?”

“Exactly.”

I nodded repeatedly.

Then Antonio casually tossed the Besmagil battery into his item box.

“Alright, let’s try it. And—whoa.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I mean, I can do it, but unlike you, my mana pool isn’t that huge, so it fills up instantly. This thing is storing an insane amount of mana.”

“Think you can use it once you get used to it?”

It was basically like using a portable power station while charging it with a solar panel.

That kind of usage might shorten a battery’s lifespan, but in this case there was no problem at all.

“Yeah. Not only do I not have to worry about running out of mana, I might even be able to use stronger magic.”

“Yeah—and if you use it as the power source for magic armor, you won’t have to worry about running dry, so you can go all out.”

“Mm. Let’s practice all sorts of things.”

“One thing I forgot to say. Never take it out of your item box, okay? If anyone sees it, the whole world will come after you.”

“Again with something outrageous… well, that’s normal for you.”

“You’re starting to get it. But this is still just the warm-up.”

I changed the subject.

“Also—at the A-Rank finals, there were three monsters. More accurately, two people and one… thing.”

“One… thing?”

“Yeah. A dragon had transformed into human form and blended in.”

“…Why would a dragon enter an A-Rank exam?”

“Apparently it married a human girl and even had a kid. The kid’s race was a dragon half-breed. They’ve got a livelihood on the line, so they’ll probably enter the A-Rank exam again for sure. That guy even breathes real dragon breath.”

Across from me, one adventurer gave a wry smile as he remembered a desperate battle with a dragon in the labyrinth.

“One of the other two wore a cursed suit of armor that completely nullified physical attacks and magic. He said it even nullified poison.”

“Come on. How did you beat that?”

“I sealed the whole thing inside a shield, then sucked out all the air inside until he collapsed. I just collected the air with my item box.”

Did this guy even properly understand what “air” was?

He wouldn’t understand even if I started talking about oxygen concentration.

And it’s not like more oxygen is always better.

Oxygen has the power to oxidize things, so for living creatures it’s also a kind of poison.

That’s why our bodies are heavily protected by skin.

Creatures from eras when oxygen levels were higher probably couldn’t survive in today’s atmosphere.

Just tweaking the composition of the surrounding air might be enough to wipe out a massive monster army.

With something as absurd as magic in this world, I couldn’t quite tell what their level of scientific knowledge was.

Maybe an alchemist would understand it—but what about Orston House, a family of muscleheads?

“Hmmm. That feels like it might be useful… or might not.”

“Bottom line: it’s an opponent you can’t beat with a straightforward fight. Still, it’s not like there’s no opening. There are ways to deal with it, and I’ve thought of countermeasures. Just don’t ever fight that guy head-on. His swordsmanship looked completely insane. You won’t stand a chance. Even I felt it was seriously dangerous. Your sword skills are about on my level, right?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

That was how terrifying the power of the legendary magic armor really was.

Now I understood it.

As for swordsmanship, I only got that far after a ton of training at the guild.

“And there’s a monster with magic, too. He made it to the finals, and he traded flashy spells with me—the rare visitor with an absurd mana pool—for a full hour. That guy was just naturally ridiculous. A true monster who kept training with a sincere spirit and reached that level while still young. Not a shred of arrogance—he was the real deal. He’s the kind of man every mage in the world should look up to—the mage among mages. So deal with him using that Besmagil battery. His offensive magic is insane, so strengthen your defensive magic. In my match, he surrendered because he ran out of mana. Up to this point, their personalities are still decent enough to be likable. But then you’ll also see assassin types. People from the neighboring country will probably find you a nuisance too, so be careful. When I was wearing magic armor, I got hit by some weird technique and went down right from the start.”

“Yeah. I’ll be careful.”

After that, we trained together every day, trying all sorts of ideas and adjustments.

And like that—though it wasn’t perfect—we finished preparing for Antonio’s A-Rank exam.

Soon the exam date was set, and it was officially decided that the A-Rank exam would be held with a one-month delay.