Why Are You Coming Out Of There? (2)

The next day.

Leonard had come home the evening before worn down to nothing, so he claimed he wasn’t feeling well and got out of the field work. With his parents gone and the house to himself, he was free to move as he liked.

To think that in a single day he had climbed all the way to the third Circle. Given that the average adult mage stood at the fourth Circle, the feat was almost too great to believe. Taking on an entire horde of monsters alone would still be beyond him, but at the very least he now had power enough to buy himself the time he needed.

The urgent fire’s out. All that’s left is the reinforcements.

Leonard tore at his hair for a while, rummaging through his mustiest memories, then gathered mana at his fingertips and pressed them to the floor of his room. When he lifted his hand a moment later, a single glowing sign remained where it had rested.

The Sign of Notification.

The Citra Empire had distributed the magical mark across the whole country to keep track of commoner-born mage talents, who could be born anywhere, at any time. Once someone who had just stepped into the first Circle registered their information in the management rolls through the sign, the nearest mage academy would send a mage and a knight to escort them and see to their enrollment. As the one and only route of advancement open to commoners, the sign was known to every last soul, and that made it the best and most natural way for Leonard to call in “reinforcements.”

The closest institution to here was Kestral Academy.

The Empire had established three institutions for raising mages: Delonia Academy and Everforce Academy, called the sanctuaries of the elite nobility, and Kestral Academy, where commoners like Leonard mostly ended up.

There isn’t much time.

Once Kestral Academy received his information through the mark, it would take them at least six days, by rough estimate, to send someone out. That lined up more or less with when the dimensional rift would open. If they were late even after all this, the result would be a disaster. Would they really make it in time?

They say there’s no such thing as preparing too much…

Leonard left the house and headed toward the well to take a casual look around. The moment he stepped onto the main road running through the center of the village, voices reached him from every direction.

“Hey, Marco! Any chance you’ll have business over in Avery Hill today or tomorrow? I’ve got something that needs sending.”

“Why not ask the house next to us instead? I hear they’re going out to sell fruit.”

Peaceful.

No one looking at the scene could possibly have imagined that six days from now, monsters would appear in these parts.

Monsters, huh.

Most monsters in existence cross into this world through rifts opened in the boundary between dimensions. Leonard’s village had been wiped out in the blink of an eye because, by the worst luck imaginable, one of those dimensional rifts had formed right beside it.

It really was swept away in a heartbeat.

The other reason lay in the closed-off character of the village itself. Keld Village had never starved in a famine or had to deal with bandits, let alone the monsters the rest of the world knew. Villagers who had at most chased off wild animals were hardly going to be a match for monsters now.

Fighting with the village’s outer wall for a shield looks impossible… so that means laying traps on the knoll…

Leonard was walking along, turning this and that over in his head, when he stepped into a side alley and somebody blocked his path.

“Hey, Leonard!”

“?”

Leonard looked up at the voice calling him and knit his brows at a face that was familiar in some way he couldn’t place.

Reddish hair that glittered like sunlight. A mean face, and a build too big for a child. This was none other than Zachary Grayson, the village chief’s grandson.

“Wow, now this really is a blast from the past.”

Leonard muttered it with genuine delight soaked into his voice.

Two years older than Leonard, Zachary was the strong, foul-tempered alley boss that every village seems to have, the sort who never walked the streets without at least two hangers-on in tow and picked fights with any small child who caught his eye. Sure enough, two friends were stuck to his side today as well.

Right, this one existed too.

Zachary had been one of the handful of children to survive when the monsters attacked the village. After its destruction, a knight with ties to the village chief took him in, and by his twenties he had begun to make a name for himself as a knight of real skill. Nothing like the thoroughly unpromising impression he gave right now, though.

Come to think of it, his nickname was…

Leonard rubbed the tip of his chin, then snapped his fingers.

“…Candlelight.”

“I told you not to call me that!”

Zachary flew into a rage, bright orange hair swinging, grabbed Leonard by the collar, and hauled him clean off the ground. But when Leonard started snickering at him as if something had come loose in his head, Zachary’s companions cocked their heads in bewilderment.

“What’s up with this kid?”

“Maybe he’s been hit so many times his head’s gone funny.”

Zachary’s voice came out close to a growl.

“Think it’s funny, do you?”

— Thunk!

Without warning, Zachary’s fist flew in and buried itself in Leonard’s stomach. Yet somehow the one who ended up screaming was Zachary, not Leonard.

“Ngh… aagh!”

“Oh, dear. That’s enough of that, kiddo,” Leonard said.

While Zachary hunched over his aching fist, Leonard walked past the three of them, laughing out loud. With no way of knowing what on earth had just happened, Zachary’s group could only stare at his back in confusion.

“Hey, wait! Hey!”

Zachary sprang to his feet and shoved Leonard from behind. Given the difference in their sizes, “shoved” was a generous word for it; in practice it was closer to a flying tackle.

“…Huh?”

Zachary had expected his opponent to go down, yet he found himself standing there with his arms clamped around Leonard’s waist. Since when was knocking over one small child this hard?

“What th—”

Grunting with effort, Zachary pushed and pulled at Leonard, but Leonard stood rooted like a great tree. In the end Zachary wore out first and dropped where he stood, dragging in ragged breaths.

I lost on strength? Me?

A moment’s thought would have told him this was more than simple strength, but Zachary was too worked up to think.

“If you’re all done, I’ll be going.”

Zachary’s face twisted at the sight of Leonard waving so casually. Up until a few days ago, the kid had cowered the instant their eyes met, and Zachary had no idea why he was suddenly so sure of himself. One thing was certain, though: right now, in front of everyone watching, he had been made light of.

Zachary trembled for a moment, then stepped up behind Leonard, whose back was wide open, and raised one hand high.

— Smack!

The hand came down on the back of Leonard’s head so hard that the sound carried clear out of the alley. Zachary’s friends, who had seen what those hands could do before, sucked in a breath and looked away entirely.

“…Ah, shit,” Leonard muttered.

Memories are at their most beautiful while they stay memories.

That one blow drained Leonard’s patience completely, and the bad memories he had buried deep in his heart came bursting out all at once, his irritation along with them.

“Ngh.”

Groaning in pain, Zachary peeled his hand off the back of Leonard’s head with real effort. Slapping it had felt like slapping not human skin but a lump of rock.

“If you hit a man,”

In truth, Leonard’s gifts as a mage had been lacking, barely enough to keep him off the list of the substandard. Because of that his awakening had come late, and unlike the other students he had even struggled to release mana outside his body.

“you should be ready to be hit.”

So, to solve the problem, he had concentrated on controlling the mana inside his body, which was comparatively easier to reach. What he ended up with was a grotesque creation, “strengthening his own body and fighting with his fists.”

And since this was that fist, it was going to hurt. Very much.

— Krrrk.

Mana spilled out of his blood meridian, flowed through his veins, and soaked in between the muscle fibers of his whole body. His skin hardened until it was as tough as steel, and a terrifying brute strength began to settle into his fist.

…I said all that, but using this on a bunch of kids feels a bit much.

When Leonard unclenched his fist, Zachary swallowed dryly.

What the hell?

Something was off. The brat had only just turned nine, and yet wasn’t he giving off exactly the same pressure as a grown man with a weapon in his hands? Zachary’s friends must have felt it too, because neither of them could get a single word out.

“Y-you crazy—!”

In the end, one of the boys ran out of patience and closed the distance first. He swung his fist exactly as Zachary had, and Leonard raised his forearm and took the punch on it.

“Urgh!” the boy cried, shaking his hand.

Leonard went past the boy, who was folding over at the waist, and walked up to the other one, who stood there blankly. He hooked the boy’s ankle to bring him down, took hold of both legs, lifted them, and stomped on his groin without mercy.

“Agh! Aaaaaagh!”

“Quit the theatrics. I went easy on you.”

Leonard let go of the boy’s legs as he said it. The first had simply hurt himself, and the second he had only put down lightly.

“Now it’s just you left.”

“…”

“Go ahead and try something more, if you like. But if you do…”

— Crack.

Leonard stretched his neck one way and then the other as he spoke.

“your family line ends right here, right now.”

Zachary didn’t really understand what that was supposed to mean, but one thing had become clear: if he kept thrashing about here, the threat would be carried out. He bit his lip in frustration and stepped back.

Whatever he wanted, he had always been able to get; whatever he did, he had always been forgiven. Now that unshakable principle had crumbled in front of this brat.

“Go on.”

Zachary walked off unsteadily toward the far end of the alley. He was arrogance incarnate, so the sight of him running away stunned his companions, who stared blankly for a long while at the spot where he had vanished.

What a nuisance.

Leonard looked them over as though they were pathetic, then headed for the knoll behind the village.

“Professor Prospero?”

“…Ah, Flavius.”

Ethan returned Sophia Flavius’s greeting with a soulless wave of his hand. He was nothing like his usual, pointlessly energetic self.

“Why are you so limp today?”

“Because I just got an earful from the Dean about being a lazy good-for-nothing.”

“Ah-ha.”

For all his reputation as a genius, Ethan Prospero left teaching at the bottom of his list and had never put out a single proper paper. With all that painstakingly built-up knowledge rotting away for nothing, the Dean could hardly help being exasperated.

Ethan looked slightly wounded at how readily Sophia accepted it, without a second’s hesitation.

“Isn’t there something that needs doing? I’ll help.”

“It’s fine. Just go.”

“Please, give me anything at all. If I go back like this I won’t even have an excuse to offer the Dean.”

Sophia sighed at his pleading. He clearly wasn’t going to back off until she threw him something.

“…This morning, a child’s name was newly added to the mage management rolls.”

“Good for them. More mages is always something worth welcoming.”

“We ran a location trace, and I’m told the signal came from a place called Keld Village. It doesn’t look like nobility, at any rate.”

“Lucky them. Raise one child right and the whole family’s set to turn noble.”

Commoner-born students are granted a title equivalent to a semi-noble the moment they graduate from a mage academy, which in practice lets them climb into the ranks of the nobility relatively easily, without a scrap of effort.

“So, what’s your reason for telling me this?”

“Because I’m the one who’s been sent out to meet the child.”

Ethan’s brows drew together at that. A professor going out in person to fetch a candidate who can’t reach the academy on their own is not especially unusual, but it was past the middle of April now, and with classes in full swing she had to be busy.

“Why you, of all people? There must be plenty of other mages with time on their hands.”

“Well, the thing is.”

Sophia glanced around, then murmured into his ear.

“The measurement record puts the child at the third Circle.”

“The third Circle?!”

Startled, Ethan had blurted it at full volume, and Sophia gestured for him to keep quiet.

“It could be an error, but there’s never been one until now. The Dean personally ordered me to go and confirm it.”

“Then I’ll come along too.”

“What? No, but this is something the Dean—”

“I said it a moment ago, didn’t I? That I have to do something.”

Ethan flashed a wide grin.

“With work this interesting in front of me, how could I ignore it?”