4 — 3

“Thank you for bringing me all the way here. Sniff.”

Although the misunderstanding had been cleared up and she had been let out of that terrifying dungeon right away, Carter had torn off the precious Hundred-Year Grass she had raised with such great care.

Beth was furious at Carter, and also at this magician who had been the reason Carter had torn off the Hundred-Year Grass, and she was so sad that her tears would not stop.

In the first place, if this man had not jumped to conclusions and had listened to her properly, she would never have been locked in a cell, and the Hundred-Year Grass would never have had to be sacrificed.

Perhaps because he did feel bad after all, the magician had gone out of his way to provide a carriage himself and send her from the royal capital to the mill on the edge of the forest where Beth lived, so she thanked him, but her tears still would not stop.

How disappointed would the young village girls without lovers be, after waiting so eagerly for the flower to bloom?

Being escorted home by such a beautiful magician-sama from the royal capital would normally be enough to make her heart soar.

But when she thought that it was because of this man that she would no longer be able to see the Hundred-Year Grass bloom, Beth could not feel satisfied unless she gave this beautiful magician a word or two, while leaving Carter to be lynched later by all the village girls together.

“Look, magician-sama. This is my field. These are the medicinal herbs Carter took without permission.”

Even while sobbing, she said that and pointed out to the magician the corner of the field where medicinal herbs and herbs were planted. There, the bundles of medicinal herbs Carter had pulled out had cleanly disappeared, exactly three bundles’ worth.

(If the magicians-sama had come to check here first, the misunderstanding would have been cleared up right away. He should reflect much, much more on making me suffer terribly because of his own misunderstanding, and on ruining my precious Hundred-Year Grass.)

Beth had intended to show him the field where the medicinal herbs grew in order to make the magician feel even a little more guilty, but after seeing Beth’s field, the magician’s behavior somehow became strange.

“Ho…”

He suddenly crouched down on the ground and began to observe Beth’s crops intently, as if he were admiring jewels.

“Wonderful… What an extraordinarily high-quality finish for medicinal herbs. You truly have been blessed with talent for growing plants.”

The magician muttered to himself in admiration while staring at the medicinal herb leaves, picking them up, tearing off a little and applying magic power to them, and touching them in various ways.

“I-is that so? Ehehe, I’m a little good at growing plants. Thanks to that, I don’t have trouble growing fruits and vegetables, so it helps, but all the elderly people in the village are good at fieldwork too, so it’s not enough to be praised for.”

(Huh, maybe this person is actually quite a good man.)

Beth, who was easily flattered, felt a little pleased after being praised.

After all, although he had caused her extreme trouble, she was being praised by a magician-sama from the royal capital, whom Beth admired so much.

Moreover, because she had been so angry, she had not paid any attention to his face, but when she looked closely, this man was an exceptionally beautiful young man.

He had extremely well-formed features, dark blue eyes, and straight silver hair down to his shoulders.

His attire was so splendidly tailored that even Beth, who knew nothing at all about the fashions of the royal capital, could tell.

He was clearly a magician of noble rank.

She stared, entranced, at the beautiful nobleman crouching on the ground.

(I might be able to brag to Amy later. That an incredibly handsome magician-sama from the royal capital escorted me home.)

Amy, whose mind was always on romance, would surely be jealous.

Beth’s mood had risen a little, but she was soon made to regret having felt that way.

“Medicinal herbs of this high a quality are rarely seen even among the ones whose environment is managed in the Royal Palace Botanical Garden… So what is this, why did it happen in this shabby field?”

“Shabby!”

She had finally re-evaluated this man and was feeling a little better, but what did he mean, calling someone’s precious field shabby?

“This girl does not seem particularly intelligent either, she is just a country girl with no magic power, and her farming tools have not undergone any magic processing. The soil is good soil, but the amount of magical elements is nothing remarkable, and it is utterly ordinary soil…”

“Hey! You’re being rude!”

Nothing but rude, worthless content was being spun from those beautiful lips. He seemed to have entered his own world, as if Beth no longer existed.

And this time, unbelievably, without even asking permission, he suddenly pulled out a carrot from Beth’s field planted nearby.

Beth screamed.

“Hey! What are you doing to someone else’s field?!”

“Ho, as expected, this is a splendid carrot. One rarely gets to see such a perfect form of a plant.”

And then, unbelievably, he bit straight into the carrot that still had dirt on it.

“Hey! Hey!”

Even as Beth hurriedly tried to stop him, he seemed not to hear anything.

“How sweet. How fresh. Wonderful. A perfect carrot…”

And then, unbelievably, he began pulling up, tearing off, and tasting the vegetables Beth had carefully grown one after another. It was like the actions of someone who had gone mad.

“Hey! Are you out of your mind?! Seriously, stop already!”

Beth pleaded loudly with the magician and tried pulling on his sleeve, but the magician was absorbed in some thought and seemed not to hear Beth’s voice at all.

(If he ruins my field any more than this, I really won’t be able to stand it!)

Beth could not bear it anymore, so she drew river water with a bucket that had been placed beside the waterwheel and splashed it over the magician with a splash!

His beautiful silver hair and his high-quality black robe were soaked.

(Insulting a noble… or something like that should be fine, right?)

After pouring water over his head, she finally realized that this magician man was probably quite a high-ranking noble, and her face went pale.

Having water dumped over his head finally brought the magician back to his senses.

“Ah, sorry, I got carried away.”

Saying that, he caused a burst of hot wind with magic.

In an instant, his drenched body dried completely.

(This is magic…)

Beth nearly lost herself in surprise and emotion at seeing real magic for the first time in her life, but when she spotted the unripe green strawberry fruit that she had been looking forward to eating in the magician’s hand, her anger returned again.

“This isn’t something you can just say sorry for! First you kidnapped me, and then you ruined my precious field! I didn’t schedule any milling today because I planned to repair the waterwheel, but now this is no time for repairs! What are you going to do about it?! Just what grudge do you have against me?!”

He was a magician-sama she admired, but at the moment, what with kidnapping someone because of a hasty assumption and ruining someone’s important field, this magician-sama was nothing but a walking disaster.

“Hm? Is some part of the waterwheel broken?”

The magician looked toward the waterwheel, seemingly unconcerned by Beth’s anger.

“Look, the metal fitting over there is broken. Today I have to dam up the water upstream, wait until it stops moving, set up a ladder, and change the fitting inside. It’s a pretty big job, so I don’t have time to deal with you. Go home already!”

Beth said that and pointed at the worn metal fitting on the waterwheel’s axle. She decided she would stop getting involved with this man, who was like a walking disaster, any further. If she did not repair it quickly, once it rained and the river water increased, repairing the waterwheel would become very troublesome.

“So I just need to fix that.”

The magician took something like a rod out from inside his clothes, muttered an incantation under his breath, and activated magic. Before Beth’s eyes, the worn metal fitting floated up lightly, gave off light, changed into a brand-new fitting, and slipped into the waterwheel.

To Beth, who was staring in blank amazement, the magician said,

“The axle rod was merely worn down, so I restored it to its original state and connected it.”

He said it as if it were nothing.

(Amazing…)

It was a major task that would have taken three days if she had done it alone.

The fact that this man had caused her terrible trouble, and that he had also ruined her important field just earlier, completely fell out of Beth’s mind.

“Um, magician-sama, was what you have been doing since earlier magic?”

“Hm? What, have you never even seen magic? Yes, this is magic, but… I see, I mistook a country girl who had never even seen magic for a witch… No, I was not at fault. That potion was undoubtedly of such quality that raising its purity would turn it poisonous, and no one should have been able to predict that medicinal herbs of such impossible quality would be handed over by such a dull, low-class adventurer from such a backwater.”

He was muttering extremely rude things under his breath again, but Beth, on the other hand, was so excited she could hardly breathe, having seen magic that she had only ever read about in books being refined before her eyes, and having had a major repair job that would have taken three days completed in an instant by magic.

“M-m-m-magician-sama, thank you very much!!”

“Is there anything else that needs repair? As an apology for ruining your field, I will fix it.”

The magician said that, still seeming not very interested in Beth.

“Eeeh! Th-then please! Come inside the shed!”

Beth guided the magician inside the mill.

Although she lived alone without any real inconvenience, after her grandfather died, there had been jobs she could not handle herself, such as repairs and maintenance of the waterwheel, so she had actually been in a bit of trouble.

“One tooth on this gear is missing.”

Before Beth could finish speaking, the gear tooth was reassembled into a new one.

“This screw here is cracked.”

Likewise, just as she thought light had flashed for an instant, the cracked screw returned as if it were brand new.

“Amazing!!”

Beth was now extremely excited.

The parts she had spent years worrying over how to repair changed one after another before Beth’s eyes as if they were brand new, and the magician also applied what seemed to be small clumps of light to other parts Beth had not even noticed.

Each time the light was applied, some bad part was probably being repaired. The waterwheel made a sound she had never heard before, and the pulley began to run round and round very smoothly and in excellent condition.

It was truly a miracle. It was magic.

Beside Beth, who looked like she might faint from excitement, the magician man, looking uninterested, picked up the book that had been on a chair in the shed and looked through it.

“Is this your book?”

“Yes. This is my first time seeing real magic, but I often read books that contain magic.”

The magician man flipped through the pages of the book and sneered, speaking mockingly.

“To use this magic, this many people and potions are not needed. This magic over here, conversely, requires magic stones. It is a worthless entertainment work written by an author who does not know much about magic. The protagonist who became the model for this character was not actually such a man of justice either. Truly foolish.”

That book was Beth’s favorite, an adventure tale about a magician.

She had borrowed it from the village library, wanted it for herself no matter what, gone out of her way to order it from a peddler, and waited three months for it to arrive. It was a precious book.

And yet, despite that, he spoke this way about someone’s precious book.

(This person has an incredibly beautiful face, and he must be an amazing magician-sama, but his personality is rather bad…)

As Beth reached that conclusion and stood there speechless, the magician man thought for a little while, then turned back to Beth and said,

“Do you want to see it?”

“Huh?”

“The magic written here. You read this page of this worthless book many times, did you not?”

Tap, tap. The page the magician man pointed at was Beth’s favorite scene in the entire book.

The magic the magician deployed in that scene was a beautiful magic like something from a dream world, as if the stars of the night were all falling at once. In her imagination, Beth had recreated the sight of that magic activating over and over again and had been entranced by it.

“If that magic truly exists in this world, I would very much like to see it.”

The magician man grinned wickedly.

“Yes. This is a real magic. It is not such a difficult formula either. If you will lend me your strength for a little while, I would not be opposed to actually showing you this magic.”

“My strength?”

“Yes. I want you to look at the condition of the medicinal herbs in the greenhouse I manage. If you help me bring their condition in a better direction and make them bear fruit, I will personally show you this magic.”

“If that’s all, then it’s no trouble at all! You’ll show it to me for something like that?!”

After all, plants were Beth’s specialty. If she could see the magic she admired just by looking at the condition of the magician-sama’s unwell plants, like the grapes in Amy’s family garden, then it was more than she could have wished for.

But Beth did not know.

She did not know that this role she casually accepted at this moment was itself a great event that would change Beth, the magician, and even the fate of this country.