The Defense Of The Village (4)

That night, all of Keld Village was in an uproar.

First a knight order had turned up out of nowhere, and then a great commotion had broken out in the western forest. The people of Keld Village had never once in all their history come by a piece of news worth calling interesting, and they stayed up late into the night talking it over with one another.

“Did you hear? They say monsters turned up in the forest beside our village! And the knights and the mages got here a step ahead of them and held them off, apparently.”

“What? So you’re telling me that pillar of fire was magic?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I never. Coming all the way out to a backwater like this and going to all that trouble for us. Nothing for it but to be grateful.”

While everyone was busy praising the knight order and the mages to the skies, someone raised a question.

“But isn’t it a bit strange?”

“What is?”

“Like you said, how did they know monsters would turn up way out in the sticks like this, so they could come all the way out here? That’s what I’m asking.”

“Well? That much, I couldn’t really…”

With facts and questions all jumbled together, the villagers greeted the morning sun. And then…

“Hey! You lot!”

“Huh? It’s Rodrick. What’s the matter?”

“This is no time to be standing around! Over at the Felix couple’s house—”

Word travels fast. In little knots of three and four, the villagers set off one after another for the Felix family’s house, and the gathering soon built up into a tremendous crowd.

“Is every last person in this village here?”

“The knights are here too?”

A fine carriage stood parked squarely in front of the shabby house, and the knights had ringed both house and carriage, letting no outsider near. Every one of the villagers murmured in bewilderment.

“Just what in the world is going on inside that house?”

“What did you say?”

“So, as I was saying, your son is going to be enrolling at our acade—”

“What did you say?”

“…”

Driven to exasperation, Ethan pounded at his own chest.

When the knights turned up at the door with Leonard drenched in monster blood, the Felix couple, who had been on the point of going out to look for their missing son, very nearly fainted on the spot. Ethan and Sophia had handed over the unconscious boy and calmed his parents down, then called at the house again the moment it was light to explain what had happened in the forest.

Leonard Felix, entered into the mage management rolls. The monster wave that had broken out at that exact moment. Leonard’s own exploits. All of it had drawn exactly the response just heard, the same words parroted back over and over.

Then again, who could blame them? These were people for whom the most dangerous thing in a whole lifetime had been wild animals. Expecting them to believe, on the spot, the heroic tale of a nine-year-old boy beating monsters to death was asking a great deal; anyone would have been entitled to write it off as nonsense.

In the end, Ethan pointed at Sophia.

“I can’t keep this up any longer. You deal with it from here, however you like.”

With a deep sigh, Sophia went back to the beginning and explained the whole thing again, step by step.

“As of this moment, Leonard Felix is classified not as an ordinary person but as a mage, and under the decree of the Citra Empire he is obliged to enroll at an academy.”

Only then did Leonard’s parents grasp that this was not a dream but reality.

“Normally the standard is to enroll at around eleven or twelve, but Leonard is an extremely rare exception… I will have to explain matters to the Dean, but there probably won’t be any great difficulty.”

“I just can’t take it in. To think our son has become a mage…”

“…Hang on. You couldn’t make head or tail of it when I was the one talking, so why does it all go down smoothly this time? Hey. Excuse me?”

Ethan protested in utter disbelief, but not one person answered him.

“When you say an academy?”

Leonard’s mother asked it carefully.

A nation’s strength is counted in its mages; they are its very foundation. By that measure the Citra Empire ranked among the continent’s more powerful states, with no fewer than three academies: Delonia in the west, Everforce in the capital, and Kestral in the south.

“You may apply to and enroll at whichever of the three you wi—”

“Say it properly, Flavius.”

Ethan cut in abruptly, talking over Sophia.

“I’m sorry to say it, but the only academy your son can attend is our own Kestral Magic Academy. Go ahead and ask me why.”

“…Why?”

Ethan broke into a satisfied grin.

“Because the tuition at the other two is astronomical.”

Delonia and Everforce ran on the nobility’s enormous donations and tuition fees, and a commoner household like Leonard’s naturally had no way of covering the sums they required.

The moment money came up, the Felix couple’s faces visibly stiffened.

“Our Kestral Academy, by contrast, has most of the cost of education funded by the Empire. Students whose finances aren’t up to it, like your child, can attend perfectly well. It was built for households exactly like yours from the very start.”

In other words, the choice had been made for them before they ever got to make it.

“…is what you should have said from the start. Why do you have to tie your words up in knots like that?”

“Informing the parents of every available option is our duty, you know?”

Sophia snapped at him irritably, and Ethan ignored her.

“Anyway, that’s how it stands. Tell your son to pack his things and get himself ready.”

“C-could you give us a little time to think, please?”

Flustered, Leonard’s father dragged a hand down his face. All of this had happened in the space of a single day, and he was nowhere near ready to hand down a decision.

Ethan put on an incredulous face and began ticking the points off one by one.

“Come on. Full tuition covered, and if he completes the entire course of study the Empire hands him a title on top of it. You people have just hit the jackpot, the jackpot! And after hearing terms as extraordinary as that, you still have doubts? Now?”

“Professor Prospero.”

“Hm?”

“Shut that trap of yours before I tear it open.”

“…”

Sophia rarely got angry in earnest, so Ethan, who had been spraying spit as he rattled on, clamped his mouth shut. Sophia turned to the Felix couple.

“The sooner we set out, the better. We can’t stay here long ourselves… so if at all possible, it would be easier for us to take Leonard back with us as a student.”

She gave an awkward smile.

“…”

Leonard’s parents knew it too. An opportunity had come their way so enormous that even the words “let us think about it” were a luxury, and the outcome was already decided.

Still, they were being asked to send their young son, only nine years old, off alone to an academy for years on end, and there was no way to do that without worrying.

Sophia nodded, understanding how the father felt.

“I understand very well what worries you. But Leonard is more grown-up than the two of you can see, and his mental strength is considerable as well. As his parents, you must know that better than anyone.”

“Not especially, as far as we’ve seen.”

“Up until barely two weeks ago he was still a child who wet the bed and cried about it…”

“…”

Unwittingly made privy to a secret she had no wish to know, Sophia cleared her throat and carried on.

“Ahem. I do hope you will have finished preparing yourselves within the next few days. For today we’ll withdraw and—”

“I’ll go.”

Every head in the room turned toward the voice. Leonard, whom they had all thought out cold from exhaustion, stood leaning against the bedroom door, looking at them.

“Leonard.”

“You’re up already?”

Startled, his parents fussed over their son, badly afraid he was hurt somewhere.

Not that I’m actually doing all that well.

For all of Sophia’s healing magic, the aftereffects of the Colitol Aroma and his mana deficiency left Leonard’s limbs feeling wrung out and twisted. He let none of it show. He went over to his parents, took both their hands in his own, and held them tight.

“Mom, Dad.”

“Y-yes?”

“I’m all right.”

The two of them looked down at him blankly. After a moment’s hesitation, they slowly laid their hands on his back and drew him into their arms. Their hands trembled faintly, proof that for all their worry over him, they were straining to keep it from showing.

I did it.

The parents holding him now were living evidence that the future had changed. He had saved the village, and he had saved his father and his mother as well. That alone made coming back to the past worth it.

If my life ended right here and now…

He could have set it all down and been content.

Leonard closed his eyes for a moment. Would everything still be there, just as it was, when he opened them again? Of course it would, and sure enough, the first thing he saw when he lifted his eyelids was his parents.

Then I’ve still got work left to do.

The greatest disaster of all, the one he had to stop, still lay waiting for him in the future.

“I’ll manage fine on my own.”

“But…”

Sometimes a single gesture says more than hundreds of words. Leonard answered his parents’ worry with a light embrace, then spoke.

“…I’m glad you’re alive.”

He had wanted to say it to the parents he had lost, and to himself as he was now.

When Leonard drew back from their arms a moment later and raised his head, he saw the wetness gathered and glistening at the corners of their eyes. The sudden change in Leonard struck them as thoroughly odd, but they were too moved to dwell on it.

“Right. Well, it’s not as though you could get out of going, anyway.”

“Go and land one on those noble bastards.”

At his father’s and mother’s encouragement, Leonard laughed heartily.

“Once I graduate, we’re going to be ‘those noble bastards,’ though?”

“Oh. Is that right?”

Thanks to that, the gloom in the house lifted considerably.

“A large shelter is going to be built here before long. That way, even if something blows up next time, they’ll at least be able to hold out until the army arrives.”

“Good.”

Leonard nodded at what Ethan said.

“You got all your things packed?”

“There wasn’t anything worth calling luggage in the first place.”

What Leonard had slung on his back was less a backpack than a bundle on a stick, and his clothes were a typical commoner’s. Ethan snorted a laugh at how unburdened he looked, and Sophia stepped carefully up to Ethan.

“Anyway, what do we do now?”

“About what?”

“A nine-year-old child cooperating with a knight order to kill a High Class monster, and playing a part in closing a dimensional rift. How am I supposed to describe something like that in a report?”

Ethan shrugged.

“What do you mean, how? Just write it down exactly as it happened.”

“Sorry?”

“I’ll grant you it leaves a strange taste. But that’s no reason to go denying reality along with it.”

Was there any way to account for Leonard Felix’s ability other than “natural-born talent”? If he had not lied about his age or his origins either, then all that remained was the plainest of plain facts.

“That kid was simply born with it. At a level no ordinary person can come anywhere near.”

“…I see.”

While Sophia and Ethan held what was, in its way, a serious conversation, Leonard gazed blankly at her face.

Teacher.

Leonard had enrolled at the academy at the late age of sixteen. Wedged in between younger classmates and older students, he had fit in nowhere and drifted along the edges of it all. The first person to reach out a hand to him had been none other than Sophia Flavius. Had she not been there, he would never have become an Archmage; he would have lived out his days in misery. A faint smile crept onto Leonard’s face before he knew it.

— Bang.

When Leonard opened the door and stepped out, he saw the knights struggling to keep the villagers back from the house. He had thought it sounded noisy outside, but he had never imagined this many people had gathered.

“Well now, Leonard! Look at you, you’ve made it!”

“They say you’ve become a mage?! Does that make you a lord now?”

“You’re the pride of the village!”

Listening to the villagers, Leonard snorted in disbelief. Since when had they known him well enough to be this friendly?

“Huh?”

He had meant to brush past them without much ceremony, but before long he found himself stopping in his tracks.

Zachary.

The knights had him blocked off and he could not come close, but he looked as though he had something to say. Leonard thought it over for a moment, then walked over to him.

A brief silence.

“If you’ve got business with me, how about saying it quickly?”

“…Sorry.”

He said it with his head hanging low.

“For doing something pointless… for getting in the way. I’m sorry.”

The apology came out unexpectedly honest, and Leonard blinked. He threw Zachary a sidelong look and let out a heavy sigh.

“So you do know you got in the way. Since you know, go live like someone who’s learned from it.”

“I’ll pay this debt back somehow. I swear I will.”

At that, Leonard huffed out a laugh.

“A debt, from a brat like you? Forget it.”

And you’re a brat yourself, aren’t you?

Zachary stared at him dubiously, but Leonard had already turned his back and was walking away. Leaving the villagers’ cheers and his parents’ send-off behind him, he climbed into the carriage with Ethan and Sophia.