A Knight Hates Spell-Slingers (4)
It hardly needed saying again, but Lee Han hated mages. Ask him why, and the answer seemed plain enough. As a child he had been turned into a mage's experimental material, and he had endured it for a full ten years.
Ten years. Ten years. Counted out in days, that was 3,650 mornings of being experimented on without a single one missed. No stretch of time would let him forget the pain he had taken from it. Children discarded every day when an experiment failed. Trials that only grew harsher. The wounds, the scars, and the agony that came of them. Blood drawn in quantities that ought to have killed him; flesh torn open and burned. How bottomless that pain had been, no one could know who had not lived it. Which was precisely why it could not be forgotten.
If he ever laid that life before a priest of the Light of Radiance, the man would surely call it a trial sent down by God, and say that Lee Han existed as he was now because of that trial, so he ought to cast the memory aside. Lee Han's answer would have been this.
—Bullshit.
If someone lived through the exact same ten years and still talked that way afterward, he might be willing to grant them the courtesy of respect. But where in the world was the lunatic who would go looking to be tortured for a decade? So even if someone told him that hatred alone was meaningless, he would keep those tinted glasses trained on mages for the rest of his life.
Of course, one ought not paint every mage with the same brush. Not all of them carried out experiments on living bodies. And yet, why was it? Why is every spell-slinger I've ever met nothing but a madman?
Three years since he became a knight. In every one of the countless unexplained cases he had chased, a mage was tangled up without fail. Watching with his own two eyes as other people suffered exactly what he had suffered as a child—or suffered worse—Lee Han had been certain from that day on. A good spell-slinger? Sure. They probably exist. Only, most of the good ones were spell-slingers who had already stopped breathing.
Irene Windler was no exception. In his heart he knew she looked like a perfectly decent, kind girl, and still the single fact that she was a mage meant he could not stop bristling at her. In a sense, it might have been a compulsive loathing laid upon Lee Han himself: an obsession insisting that a mage was a being one was required to hate.
But now he had succeeded in confirming that the obsession was not wrong in the slightest. Just look.
"So you took my words for a joke, swordsman. You dared treat my command as a joke! You lowborn wretch...!"
Nothing but the ravings of a man whose character had split at the seams. Lee Han was perfectly willing to become the same sort of man.
"You come all the way here to get yourself killed by that lowborn wretch, you old spell-slinger?"
"!!!"
A hush lay over the sword faculty's training yard. Not an ordinary hush. The stillness before a storm: a dizzy quiet, as if a powder magazine might blow at any second. And then, at some moment—
"Hm."
Lee Han rummaged in his coat and drew out a hand axe.
"Let's have a little more conversation first."
"...And what, pray, is the intent of drawing an edged weapon in order to converse?"
"You barge in out of nowhere and waste my precious class time. Why should I put up with it? Everything a spell-slinger says is dogshit anyway, but I'll hear you out, and if it sounds like even more dogshit, I'll throw this."
"...Lowborn swordsman."
"Wonder how it'd feel to take an axe from that swordsman."
"...!"
Whether the old man raged or not, Lee Han flicked the hand axe about as if it were a toy, the gesture of a man who would take a fight whenever one was offered. It was not merely a joke. In truth, his mood was as foul as it could be. He had warned them so very politely only yesterday, and still they had gone and invaded his territory. And not quietly. What else does showing up in a mob like that mean? They want a fight.
A pack of mages, swarming in like a gang. Some seventeen young ones, which was as good as proof the bastard had come for a turf war. For Lee Han, who already held mages in extreme loathing, the situation could not have been more unpleasant. Feeling a duty to teach the old mage that life was live combat, he let a sincere killing pressure roll off him.
"...Ignorant swordsman."
And yet Odwal Bernard, the old mage who had seemed ready to look down on the entire world, swallowed that pressure. His eyes stayed vicious, but neither he nor his students drew their staves. For a knight, that would have been the same as leaving the sword in its sheath. He knew it too. Fighting a knight at this range was suicide. Keeping his head, for a spell-slinger? Well. That's probably why he gets to work as an academy professor.
Still, one had to be careful. A mage was a volcano that might erupt at any moment, a man of two faces who turned savage the instant the mood struck him. And sure enough—
"You don't know."
"...Know what?"
"I said you don't know! How delicate a being a mage is...!!"
The cool composure of a moment ago was gone. The old mage jabbed a finger at him, shouting like a man whose temper had snapped its leash.
"Lowborn swordsman! What trick did you play on that genius, that she neglects her magic training! You villain of all the world! You...!"
"Get that finger out of my face before I cut it off."
"It's your fault! You spouted some strange nonsense! That's why she has gone so wayward!"
"I warned you."
Their words never meshed. Each of them was only saying what he wanted to say. One thing, though, was clear: neither meant to yield an inch, and neither had the slightest intention of holding an actual conversation. An old mage who despised knights—no, who despised everyone incapable of magic—and a knight with a deep loathing of mages. A normal conversation between the two of them had never been possible. In the end, all that remained was a fight.
And into that—
"I-Instructor, please restrain yourself!"
"You mustn't fight!"
Students of the sword faculty crowded in to hold him back. The time had been short, but they had already grasped enough of his nature to know that if Lee Han said he would do a thing, he really would. The mages were no different.
"Professor! We agreed we'd settle this with words first!"
"You can't do this here."
"If not for our sakes, then please, just—!"
The seventeen students of the magic faculty had not come for a show of force, it seemed, but to stop Odwal from causing an incident. They knew their professor's temperament all too well, which was why they had tagged along; and so, ironically, knight and mage alike, both seized by their own students, had no choice but to let the heat drain out of them.
And there, a man stepped forward and appointed himself mediator.
"For now, I think it would be best if both of you calmed yourselves."
"Y-Young Lord Roen..."
When the likely heir of Lionel spoke—noble blood, a noble air, and a faint mystique hanging about him—even Odwal, who had been nothing but savage, visibly faltered, as if he had never imagined the young man would step in himself. Once a current had formed that put him somewhat in command of the scene, Roen went on.
"Both of you are far too agitated. And so each of you says only what he wishes to say, with not a shred of effort toward calming the situation."
Roen's gaze, deep and dark as a black pearl, turned on Irene. She flinched, but he kept only that cold look, as if her reaction were none of his concern.
"Arin, did you do something to that handsome one?"
N-no, I didn't? ...Probably?
For an instant Irene felt something unsettled inside the cold look shot her way, but she had no room to pick out where the unease came from, and Roen was already speaking.
"Professor Odwal Bernard. Compose yourself, and then speak. Why you brought your own following into another faculty, and what it is you wish to say to Lady Irene Windler—I should like both explained clearly."
A flat tone that never lost its courtesy, and yet not the tone of a man taking one step back. If anything, an uncommon charisma came off it. The dignity of what they called a hegemon. Lionel. A majesty worthy of the royalty of the North.
"Hmm..."
Before that dignity, even Odwal could not act as he pleased. He might hold every human who was not a mage to be worthless, but he was not so far gone as to treat someone of this caliber carelessly. He straightened his collar, reaching for composure—
"—I'm disappointed, old man. I thought you'd come at me like a man, and you're just going to flap your mouth and quit? I'm hurt."
"...You bastard...!!"
Lee Han, reloaded at some point no one had noticed, fired the taunt at once. Odwal flew into a rage again, and the magic-faculty students could only glare at Lee Han in resentment as they held their professor back.
"...Instructor."
"What? Better we just go at it hot than squabble like cheapskates. My conscience is clear."
"......"
Once the scene had settled to a degree, a student of the magic faculty came forward as their representative and conveyed the tale of why Odwal was angry. It was a long story, with quite a tangle of complications wound through it, and yet—
"So in the end, you came to take him to task because the instructor restricted her telekinesis. Is that the meaning?"
That was Arno's summary. The magic student looked sour, as if his account had been compressed far too far, but he made an effort not to show his displeasure and nodded.
"Th-that's right. Roughly summarized, that would be it."
Lee Han had urged exercise for Irene's health—no, for her survival—and had restricted the telekinesis she used as naturally as breathing. Not a ban on using it altogether. Only this: cut back on it in daily life, as much as she could. It was nothing other than his consideration, and his effort, in wanting her to walk a little more and grow a little healthier. The problem was that, to Odwal the mage-supremacist, the whole thing had landed as endlessly offensive.
"There is something Professor Odwal often says. 'Telekinesis is the whole foundation and the marrow of magic, a mage's primordial power.' Just as those words imply, to restrict telekinesis is also to restrain a mage from growing in power. If I were to put it in a knight's terms, it would be the same as telling him not to train his strength. Yes..."
"That the old man's teaching too?"
"...This is merely my personal view."
"Figures."
"Haha..."
Of course that old man would talk like that. But just as all things have a thread that runs through them, Lee Han conceded there was a point here he had to grant whether he wanted to or not. Telekinesis is a mage's strength. Their muscle. Their stamina. Just as exercise only took effect if you kept at it, magic too would advance only if telekinesis was trained without pause. He had restricted it, so the old mage would have felt offended on any number of counts. In a way, Irene was doing something that went against a mage's teachings, and it was Lee Han who had forced it on her.
This was a gentleman who had flown into a rage at the entrance ceremony because a single student coughed. Seeing that a man like that had stayed quiet until now, it seemed he did check who he was dealing with before he started being a bastard.
"...Tsk. Should've said it like that from the start."
It was a reasonably rational account, and if they had led with it, he would not have gone at them this sourly. Of course, he was not sorry. Feel sorry toward a spell-slinger? What would I even do with that? Lee Han snorted.
"I-I'm sorry, Instructor. If we're assigning blame, this happened because of me..."
"Chick No. 2 did nothing wrong."
"B-but..."
"Let me ask you one thing. Because she's taking my class, has Chick No. 2 ever once slacked on her magic training?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
This, she could stake everything on.
"Right? I nag her every day. Arin has never once skipped training."
The ghost girl in her head nagged her daily, so she had not skipped her magic training in the slightest. The same went for limiting telekinesis in everyday life.
"I use it for everything except when I'm exercising. Bringing a cup of water over when I don't want to get out of bed, or when I'm doing my hair."
"...I'm a little jealous of that."
"Hehe."
She had a diligent sort of laziness(?), the kind that knew how to keep steadily at the work of catching two rabbits at once. And listening to her say it, he jerked his chin at the old mage as if to ask whether that settled things.
"See? I don't see a problem. Don't know why you're making such a fuss, old man."
Odwal trembled as he shot back.
"You fool, that isn't the problem! Magic must be pure! Foreign matter must not enter her genius!"
"...I don't see how getting healthy counts as foreign matter."
"And why would a mage need that thing called health in the first place! So long as we have telekinesis—no, so long as we have mana—we can live as healthily as we please! It is more efficient to train mana than to waste time piling up useless impurities like exercise and stamina...!!"
"...Lunatic."
How could a line of reasoning be that extreme? It was no different from claiming you could skip food entirely, live on supplements alone, and have nothing wrong with your health. A madman's logic.
"Old man, I'll say it again. Your logic is—"
"You wretch! Old man, old man! Do not address me in that fashion! I am still twenty-eight!!!"
".........Huh?"
Had his ears gone bad? Lee Han blinked, then looked around at the students. The look said, I think I just heard something bizarre. Did you? And they—
"...Twenty-eight? Kunta is not yet used to the common speech. Kunta thinks he heard something strange. That old man looks older than our high priestess granny."
"You didn't mishear, Kunta. You heard it exactly."
"What did he do to..."
They whispered as if to confirm it had not been a mishearing, and Lee Han stared in shock at the old man—no, at the mage whose face had aged grotesquely past his years. ...Two whole years younger than me? Could it be.
"You didn't offer your lifespan to a demon, did you?"
"Youuuu...!"
At last Odwal seized Lee Han by the collar.
Crack.
"Gyaaaah!"
It did fold right away, though.
Meanwhile, looking upon this old mage—no, upon the face of a young one—Irene Windler heard the voice in her head.
"Arin. We're going to exercise hard, and we're going to stick to the diet the instructor gave us. Understood!"
...Yeah. I was already planning to.
She began to think she ought to fix the lazy life she had been living. Sure enough, what stirred a person to want better was the entire reason a bad example existed.