Why Are You Coming Out Of There? (1)

“What’s the matter, Leonard?”

Samantha asked it as breakfast was winding down. Normally the boy chattered so much he couldn’t sit still for a second, but today, for whatever reason, he was quiet.

“Ah. It’s nothing.”

Leonard had been absently stirring his spoon around his bowl. He put on a faint smile and shoveled the oatmeal into his mouth, but his mother was still watching him with worried eyes, so he said it again, firmer this time.

“I’m fine, really.”

Puzzled, Samantha turned to her husband Marco, but he knew no more than she did and could only shrug.

Damn it all.

Leonard dropped his gaze below the table. None of this was believable, and none of it made any sense. Yet his parents, who should have been dead for years, were sitting right in front of him, alive, so he had no choice but to accept it.

Leonard Felix had come back to the past.

Why in the world is this happening?

He had closed his eyes on a battlefield, so why was he sitting here? And who had that human been, the one who appeared in his final moments? No. Had it even been “human” at all?

More than that…

If this was real, a far bigger problem was waiting for him.

“Did you hear about Colin’s family?”

“They’re moving to a bigger town, I heard. Sounds like a relative talked them into going in on some business together over there.”

The couple kept murmuring back and forth over their meal.

Leonard listened to them in silence, and without meaning to, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. This conversation, this whole scene: every bit of it matched his memory.

Today was April 22nd.

Exactly one week before the day his parents died.

“Leo?”

“Thank you for the meal.”

Leonard rose slowly, handed his mother a plate that was still half full, and went straight back to his room. Marco and Samantha blinked after him, bewildered by an impatience in their son that they couldn’t place.

“Did something happen to him?”

“Kids that age are all over the place, aren’t they… I’ll have a talk with him later, just the two of us. Looks like I won’t be taking him out to the fields today after all.”

With their voices drifting faintly through behind him, Leonard dragged a palm down his face and leaned back against the bedroom door.

April 22nd. The day that turned his life upside down. Monsters had appeared out of nowhere, and Keld Village, the home he was born in, had been laid to waste in no time at all.

Fewer than a hundred people lived there, and it sat so far out that even by the Empire’s standards it was the back end of nowhere. It never stood a chance of putting up a real fight against monsters that poured in like waves.

By the time the army arrived a few days later, the only survivors were a handful of children and adults, Leonard among them. He had lost his family and his home in an instant, and for the rest of his life the nightmares never ended.

Yes. Right up until a few hours ago.

— Scrrritch.

His nails raked the wooden wall and left faint marks behind.

This is a chance.

One week left.

Could he find a way to save both the village and his parents in a single week? Once his thoughts got that far, his boiling blood slowly cooled and his mind sharpened.

What do I do?

The best option was to evacuate the villagers. He had about six days before the monsters came, so if they set out now, they could get a fair distance away.

But however he turned it over, that was impossible. No villager was going to take a brat who’d only just turned nine seriously.

He even weighed something as extreme as setting fire to the land around them, but the village was buried in forest. One wrong move and they’d burn to death instead of escaping.

The village wasn’t completely without weapons, yet turning them against an army of monsters was still asking too much. There were people he could go to for help, too, but if they didn’t arrive in time, he’d have nothing to fall back on.

So in the end only one option remained. He would stand and fight, even if he had to do it alone.

So that’s the only answer after all.

Leonard bit his lip and walked over to the window.

Tonight, he had to “die” one more time.

Early dawn.

Leonard slipped out of the house without his parents knowing and headed for the knoll behind Keld Village. He wandered for hours through a forest without a scrap of light, and all he came away with was a few stalks of grass and some berries.

Next…

He crushed the leaves and berries, then set about drawing the essence out of them with a flint and a pot he’d brought from home. Before long the clear water had turned a cloudy purple.

What he had made was poison, plain and simple. Its smell, though, was sweet, a fragrance that teased faintly at the tip of his nose. He’d thrown in every plant he thought might be toxic, at random, but the effect was certain.

Anyone watching would call this the stupidest thing in the world.

Every living thing carries an organ inside its body that holds mana, the energy of life. It’s called the “blood meridian.”

As a rule, the blood meridian and one’s mana grow together with age. In a few people born with blessed genes, though, the mana sometimes grows past what the blood meridian can hold.

To process that excess, the blood meridian opens a small outlet, which goes by the name of a “Circle.”

Only after going through this can a human finally draw mana out of the body, and only then does he meet the bare minimum for being called a “mage.”

The problem was that Leonard’s mana had first shown itself when he was around sixteen. The average age of awakening was thirteen, so he had been late. Very late.

So what was he supposed to do?

— Gulp.

Leonard looked down at the poison, which had gone cold by now, and swallowed dryly.

If he deliberately pushed his body to the edge of death, then the instinct that thrashes to stay alive would make his mana react too, violently enough to break out through the blood meridian.

…In theory, at least.

There’s no other option.

It was a gamble.

Would he master his mana and cure the poison first, or would the poison kill him before he could? If it was the first, he lived. If it was the second, he lost even this second chance at life.

Quit whining, you idiot.

Leonard heaped curses on himself. This body had already resigned itself to death once. If he was going to die either way, he’d gladly stake his life on this.

Mother. Father.

He’d gotten to see his parents’ faces again, so he had no regrets. Leonard steeled himself, took one short, deep breath, then tipped the bowl back and drank it down in one go.

Then, so he wouldn’t bite his tongue when the shock hit, he stuffed a strip of cloth he’d torn from his own clothes beforehand firmly into his mouth.

“Haah, haah!”

He waited long enough for the drug to work its way through him, and then, all at once, his vision and the inside of his head flooded pure white.

“Khhrrrggh!”

Blood rushed to his belly and chest, where the blood meridian lay hidden, and his pale skin darkened to a deep red. The pain came without warning. Leonard staggered under it, let out a groan so beastlike it was hard to believe a small child had made it, and collapsed right there on the ground.

Once. Twice.

Then five times, ten times.

Every time the keen edge of his mana scraped the blood meridian, a shock like electricity tore through his whole body. Blood seeped out from under the nails he’d dug deep into the dirt, but he gritted his teeth hard enough to shatter them and held on.

If he passed out now, all of it would come to nothing.

Endure it!

There had been times he’d gone into battle clutching his own spilling guts. Next to that pain, this was nothing. Leonard talked himself through it and curled up tight.

About an hour passed that way.

By the time the sweat pouring off him had soaked both the ground and his clothes, Leonard gasped. Something had exploded inside his belly.

“Haaugh!”

The blood meridian had been pierced, and through the hole it left (the Circle), a clear, cold energy stretched out to the furthest tips of his body and drenched the exhausted frame of a nine-year-old boy.

His body couldn’t hold all the mana that had burst out at once, so it let the surplus out through the pores of his skin. The energy spread into the air, tangled itself in the grass and trees, and scattered into a mist of light that lit up the forest around him.

“Ah…”

For an instant, Leonard lost himself completely in the sight.

Overflow.

The instant the first Circle opens, all the mana built up from birth to that moment gushes out at once. It’s a rare sight that comes only when a mage first awakens, and a light only a mage can see.

It worked… it actually worked!

He had awakened later than everyone else, so naturally he’d lagged behind in ability, too. While classmates younger than him pulled far ahead, he’d worked to close the gap without missing a single day.

He had always been scrambling after someone else’s back. Now he was ahead of everyone before he’d even reached the starting line. It was a success so huge that even he had trouble grasping it.

Now then.

The poison had vanished without a trace, and the blood meridian had settled. Leonard brushed himself off, stood, and opened and closed his fist, and mana he couldn’t have felt even yesterday began to flow through his whole body.

— Tap!

Leonard kicked off the dirt and shot high into the sky. Even the trees, five times the height of a grown man, were all beneath his feet.

He took a light look down over the whole village as he hung in the air, then dropped and landed on the ground.

I expected it, but this much really isn’t enough.

A mage’s Circles were the total mana he could put out and the measure of his power, and the strength of a mere first Circle couldn’t hold off every monster that attacked the village. What he badly needed was reinforcements who could help him at the decisive moment.

Though before any of that, I’m the one who isn’t ready yet.

Normally, new Circles form as a mage grows more skilled at handling mana or simply grows older. Yet the closer one gets to old age, the harder the blood meridian sets, and that blocks a Circle from opening on its own.

But what about him as he was now, with a body still young and the mana-handling skill of an Archmage?

…I’m probably the only person in all of history who’s ever tried something like this.

From here on he didn’t need the poison’s help. All he had to do was handle and release mana without pause and let his body build up new experience. Now only one problem was left.

Could a child’s stamina really hold up under the pain of forcing a Circle into being?

Leonard hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind. If he wanted explosive growth in a short time, this was the only way. He let out a short sigh and gripped the thick trunk of a nearby tree tightly with both hands.