Chapter 37
Chapter 37
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 37
Chapter Title: The Mage Slave's Tale
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After a somewhat long, boring, cruel, and one-sided conversation, Yutin managed to extract quite a bit of information from the prisoners.
The situation in Atar Territory, their total forces, objectives, plans, and even how they had laid their traps.
Some of the knights who learned about the tiger white poison grass ground their teeth as they looked at Ludas's corpse.
"That bastard—if it weren't for him!"
Patrolling the area around the castle stronghold to assess the surroundings and potential dangers was one of the most important duties of a castle lord.
If Ludas had faithfully carried out his mission, they would naturally have known about this deadly poison in advance and prepared countermeasures.
While it was an unwritten rule not to take a knight's life for anything short of treason, no one would have objected to a death sentence for causing this level of damage.
Palato shook his head at the knights venting their frustration.
"Getting angry won't change anything. What good does it do to blame a dead man? We're not holding his family responsible, either."
"...Sir Palato is right."
The knights nodded in agreement, though they couldn't hide their sense of injustice and anger.
With the interrogation concluded, Belluan's army began tidying up and resuming their original mission.
First, they had to dispose of the bodies, as the smell of blood and corpses would attract magic beasts.
The enemy corpses were thrown into a pit and buried, while allied bodies were sent with a separate detachment to be interred in the cemetery near Ilen Castle.
Fortunately, they had ample manpower thanks to the reinforcements Knight Amund had brought from Ilen Castle in advance.
On top of that, they obtained an antidote as spoils of war that could neutralize the tiger white poison grass's toxins, so they sprayed it from a distance to detoxify the area around the meteorite before resetting up camp for an extended stay.
The extraction of the black star iron proceeded much faster than planned, thanks to the addition of one more mage.
Arsen and Eloise chatted with the mage and gave him the name "Groom."
Groom showed some fear and reluctance at having a name, but his expression brightened considerably under their kinder treatment compared to before.
His ingrained slave mentality hadn't vanished entirely, though.
A few days later, the amount of black star iron they extracted was enough to make everyone smile.
It nearly filled the prepared storage chests, leading to jokes that, combined with the spoils, every knight in Belluan could get an extra suit of armor.
On the way back, one of the wagons carrying the massive haul of loot had a wheel break.
Eloise also gained something new.
"Like this?"
"Yes, miss. A little higher up with the twist... Yes, that's it."
Instead of riding back with Arsen in Jin like she had on the way there, Eloise spent the time on the wagon learning new spells from Groom.
No one wanted to ride next to a wagon with two mages, so it was placed at the very end of the procession, with Arsen circling around alone to provide escort.
Mages were generally classified into three types of spells based on their innate aptitudes.
The first were spells they could use proficiently without learning, thanks to their natural talent; the second were spells they weren't born with but could learn; and the third were spells they could never acquire, even with training.
This depended on the mage's aptitude for certain fields.
For example, Luden could naturally handle illusions and warp space, while Eloise could instinctively generate and manipulate plants or create explosions without training.
Both could learn purification, fire magic, and various other spells, but they weren't as proficient in those as their specialties. Magic of the innate or long-trained varieties could even be made into one-use artifacts.
That was why Eloise could create powerful one-use items like explosion orbs.
In exchange, Luden couldn't cast healing spells at all, and Eloise couldn't handle illusions whatsoever—fields they could never learn.
Eloise could learn healing spells but had no teacher, so she'd had to figure it out on her own. Her recovery spells were still basic, only able to heal minor scratches after much effort.
In this situation, encountering a natural healer who could teach her healing spells allowed Eloise's skills to improve rapidly.
Groom, blind but perceptive, taught the young lady—who was a fellow mage but worlds apart in status—with all his effort.
Fortunately, his blindness wasn't a major obstacle in teaching magic.
When Eloise cast a healing spell, Groom would reach into the spell and offer advice that was hard for ordinary people to understand, causing the light's color to shift this way and that.
Advice like "twist it upward" or "loop the flow rising from below-left twice" was difficult to grasp, but it was similar to Luden's teaching style, and Eloise's diligent practice seemed effective.
Even during dinner, Arsen saw her waving her hands around, engrossed in magic, and instead of scolding her to eat, he interrupted with a question.
"How's it going?"
"Yeah. I think I can heal most wounds quickly now. Haven't tested it yet."
"Good. If I get hurt later, I can just run to Ellie."
"You should focus on not getting hurt!"
Arsen smiled wordlessly at Eloise, who pretended to scold him sternly.
She relaxed her expression with a giggle and held her hands facing each other.
"I learned this too. Watch."
A crackling sound came from between Eloise's hands as electricity sparked.
It was the first lightning spell Arsen had ever seen, so he clapped in admiration.
"Impressive. How strong is it?"
"Not sure since I haven't used it, but he says once I'm proficient, it can kill or knock out an ordinary person instantly."
Eloise dispelled the electricity with a casual face as she spoke of something frightening.
"It'd be great if I could enchant weapons with this later, but the guy born with it is already dead. Too bad. It would've been nice to bring him along. Right, Groom?"
Groom nodded vigorously at Eloise's words, flattering her in an agitated voice.
"Yes! Anyone who could escape that place would weep with joy! I've never lived so satisfactorily as now. Truly! You, sir knight, and miss must be apostles sent by the gods!"
In truth, Arsen and Eloise hadn't treated Groom so exceptionally as to earn that praise.
They'd heard his mana was far inferior to Eloise's, so he couldn't cause much trouble anyway. They simply removed the shackles from his arms, gave him clean clothes, let him wash off the smell, and fed him food similar to what others ate.
Even that was enough for Groom to shed tears of gratitude and repeatedly praise the merciful knight and lady.
From Groom's stories, he normally had to eat scraps left over from others' meals and could only leave the cauldron when nature called, lest his appearance sour moods.
His arms had been bound so long that even after the shackles were removed, his twisted shoulders prevented proper use.
Even black slaves probably weren't treated this harshly.
It would have been nice if healing spells could fix such permanent disabilities, but unfortunately, they weren't that convenient.
Healing could reattach severed limbs if held in place, but his gouged eyes had long rotted away, and his leg tendons had healed shrunken, so dumping healing spells on them wouldn't work.
Arsen wondered if transplanting eyes from an executed prisoner might do it, but Groom said transplants from others rotted soon after.
With his superficial modern medical knowledge, Arsen could only guess it was due to immune rejection.
"It'd be great if healing spells could fix eyes or arms too. Shame."
"I wouldn't dare hope for that much! I'm happy enough as is. I'll be loyal forever!"
Thinking Arsen's words a test, Groom shook his head and professed his loyalty once more.
Of course, Arsen didn't believe a word of it.
Human hearts weren't so shallow that a few days of kindness could buy true loyalty.
If war broke out with Atar again and Groom were recaptured, he'd wag his tail for his old masters without hesitation.
Arsen handed Eloise some porridge made from hardtack, then questioned Groom.
"I'd like to hear more about Atar's mages. Do they abuse all of them like this?"
"Well, not all of them, from what I heard. But the story's a bit long..."
Unlike his earlier agitated praise, Groom whispered in a fearful voice.
He glanced around as if checking for listeners, despite his sightless eyes.
"I was born in the castle stronghold and abandoned young, so I lived alone. Never knew my parents or had a name. Then around ten, a knight suddenly appeared and dragged me to the territory. Right away... they gouged my eyes and cut my leg tendons. Horrific."
Groom's face twisted in pain as he recalled the memory.
Scars, blemishes, and wrinkles from hardship had made Arsen initially think he was an old man, but Groom was actually in his early twenties.
Without sight, he couldn't track days or calendars accurately, so even he wasn't sure.
"Then they put me in the place where they keep mages separately. When I first arrived, there were three including me. One was an old woman called 'Lightning,' the other a young man called 'Brazier.' I never saw them, but they said they'd had their eyes gouged too. Lightning died a few years after I arrived."
Arsen noticed Eloise, pale-faced, gently stroking her own eyes.
What if Eloise were captured by Atar and suffered the same?
Arsen briefly imagined it and concluded he'd raze the entire territory in revenge. He gave a bitter smile.
It wasn't full romantic love, but after spending so much time together—like with a niece or younger cousin—she felt like family, a step beyond friends or comrades.
"Lightning told us why we were treated this way. A knight rebelled to oust the estate lord, and she sided with him against the rebels. The rebellion succeeded, the lord died, and she was caught then—her eyes gouged. She said we used to face discrimination but not this bad... She often apologized to me and Brazier. Said if she'd fought harder and won, we wouldn't be like this."
No tears flowed from Groom's eyes, but Arsen felt like he was crying.
Groom swallowed, throat tight, then continued.
"Soon after the rebellion, I heard a ridiculously powerful mage burned the territory and fled. Others said mages are cursed bringers of ruin, so they rightly atone with bodily suffering."
Arsen averted his gaze, suspecting who that powerful mage was.
Fortunately, Eloise showed no sign of guessing.
"I never dared rebel, but always... wanted to escape. I cursed my ancestors, but thank them for this chance."
Arsen silently placed water-soaked jerky in Groom's hand as he answered in a wet voice.
Groom thanked him profusely before nibbling at it slowly, like the world's finest delicacy.
* * *
The trip there had taken days, but hauling heavy cargo by wagon stretched the return to over a few weeks.
Only after crossing Belluan Territory's southern wall did the expedition sigh in relief.
As they ascended the road to the estate hall, a particularly lively commotion caught their ear.
"Come see! Not every day you get this chance! Mysterious goods from farther north than Air—far-off lands! Just come take a peek!"
A few people in exotic attire were hawking in one corner of the market district.
Among them, a man standing atop stacked crates shouting—with a gold front tooth glinting—drew special attention.
Arsen felt a spark of curiosity but turned away, knowing reports at the estate hall came first.
Eloise noticed.
"Why? Something weird?"
"Nah, just exotic merchants from afar. Kinda intriguing. Maybe check it out later."
Looking up the hill, the estate hall's pristine white walls gleamed in the sunlight far off.
Feeling like he was home, Arsen smiled contentedly.