A Blessing in Disguise (3)
His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were not.
“A person needs to keep improving, improving.”
“What do you mean by that, sir?” the Village Chief asked quickly.
“We’d better bring Ben over first.”
“B-but…”
“Curse, my foot. Chief, I’m sorry to say this, but it looks like you hired a swindler, not a fortune teller.”
“What?”
“In that case, we should get that deposit back, don’t you think?”
At Patrick’s firm declaration, the two men who had been holding Ben exchanged grim looks and started toward him.
“Hey, buddy. Watch that loose mouth of yours!”
“Your scams haven’t improved at all, and your intimidation tactics are just as cliché. Don’t you think?”
Instead of backing down, Patrick only grew more sarcastic. Taking advantage of the distraction, Ben darted into the crowd of villagers. A few residents snapped out of their daze and quickly hid him behind them. They had only been momentarily swept up by the fortune teller’s sudden words and the threatening atmosphere. None of them wanted to see the cheerful boy who served as the neighborhood kids’ ringleader and kept the village lively handed over to some stranger.
“If you care about that child, hand him over right now! We need to lift the curse!”
“How long are you going to keep spouting nonsense?”
“What did you say? You have no fear of the gods!”
The fortune teller, now robbed of Ben by the sudden interference, began barking at the villagers to return the boy, but Patrick stepped in front of him once more.
“Swindler—or should I say human trafficker?”
“You have no idea how dangerous the world can be!”
“What’s the going rate these days?”
Patrick’s smile had vanished. The robed fortune teller’s face hardened as well.
“I heard you were offered five gold for the big job.”
“What kind of nonsense is that!”
“Too bad you didn’t understand.”
Shing! Shing!
At Patrick’s words, the thugs drew the swords at their waists and moved to shield the fortune teller.
“Tsk. I had a bad feeling about this. Let’s go! We wasted our boat fare for nothing. Ptui!”
After confirming that the thugs had their swords pointed at the villagers, the fortune teller turned away as if there was nothing more to see, intending to board the boat.
“Where do you think you’re going? Hand over the deposit first.”
“You insolent—! You need to see some blood before you come to your senses… Huh?!”
The thugs and the fortune teller, who had spun around with irritated shouts, froze with wide eyes. What they saw was Patrick slowly spinning a Waterball above his palm.
“Looks like you really didn’t understand. How do you even do business like that?”
“……Why would a wizard be in a place like this…?”
“News travels slow, doesn’t it?”
“……”
“I was exiled. From the Capital.”
Bang!
The moment he finished speaking, the Waterball struck the fortune teller square in the face.
***
“Thank you, thank you, sir!”
“It’s nothing. I’m just glad Ben is safe. That could have ended very badly.”
“It’s all my fault. I suspected he might be a fake fortune teller, but I never imagined he could be a human trafficker.”
“You thought he might be fake?” Patrick asked, surprised.
The Village Chief scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
“Yes. To be precise, I thought it wouldn’t matter even if he was fake.”
“Why? I heard you paid quite a bit.”
“Strange things have been happening on our island, after all. The villagers are anxious, too. So I figured that even if he was a fake, it wouldn’t hurt to have him say a few reassuring words. I never expected something like this to happen……”
He added that when they made the contract, he had already set the condition that if nothing was wrong, the fortune teller should at least put the villagers at ease.
“Anyway, that’s what worries me now. Ben is safe, which is a relief, but the villagers’ anxiety will only grow……”
As the Village Chief voiced his concerns, Patrick was about to reply when a commotion suddenly erupted outside.
“Chief! Chief!”
“What’s got you so worked up?”
“It’s terrible! Lightning is striking right in front of the village!”
“Huh? Lightning? In a clear sky? What’s going on?”
“Come and see for yourself—it’s no ordinary lightning!”
Patrick followed the young fisherman he had become acquainted with outside. The fisherman pointed toward the sea. There, bolts of lightning were crashing down in a way that could not possibly be called a natural phenomenon. The strikes were confined to a radius of several dozen meters right off the island’s beach, as if there were an invisible barrier. Though it was only a tiny portion of the vast ocean, that very fact made it seem all the more unreal.
“……What on earth is that……”
Even the Village Chief, who always wore an easygoing smile and never lost his composure, stood speechless, pointing with a dazed expression.
“It’s a curse, a curse!”
“The mermaid must be angry!”
“Oh gods……”
The villagers sitting haphazardly along the shore each chimed in while staring at the lightning. Gradually, their gazes turned toward Ben, who was hiding behind his parents’ legs.
“Don’t tell me the fortune teller was right……”
“Hey, watch your mouth! What fortune teller?”
“But what if it really is a curse?”
“Are you saying we should blame this child just so you can feel better?”
“Shut your mouth!”
Fortunately, the voices and movements protecting the child were still far stronger, but if similar incidents kept happening, it was obvious how things would turn out.
Patrick observed the situation and decided there was no time to waste.
“It’s a mana awakening.”
His voice wasn’t particularly loud, but because everyone had been focused on him, the surroundings fell silent in an instant.
“It means a wizard with high mana affinity has been born. This isn’t a curse—it’s a blessing. Though whether it’s a blessing for the individual’s life is another matter.”
“What?”
The Village Chief looked surprised once again that day.
“Tch.”
The fortune teller—now exposed as a swindler—tied to the workshop pillar that had remained unrepaired since the fire clicked his tongue in displeasure.
“Chief, when you were looking for a fortune teller, did you explain what’s been happening in the village?”
“Yes, I did……”
“He probably caught on then. That a wizard with quite strong affinity had appeared on this island.”
“W-wait a moment, sir! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Not every wizard is born with strong affinity. Besides, the Mage Tower isn’t the kind of place that spreads rumors about these things. As you know, it’s a very closed-off community.”
Everyone nodded at Patrick’s shrug. Even nobles couldn’t enter the Mage Tower freely. It was a place full of secrets and isolation. Wizards themselves were extremely rare, and if this was a phenomenon that only a small fraction of them experienced, there was no way the people of this tiny island village would know about it.
‘If anyone had heard this story through rumors, they wouldn’t have even thought of hiring a fortune teller believing it was a curse. It would’ve been perfect for scamming.’
It finally sank in just how different this world was from the twenty-first century, where a few minutes of internet searching could reveal everything.
“Those guys were probably planning to sell Ben to the Mage Tower. Talented children fetch quite a high price.”
“Why would the Mage Tower buy children from people like that?”
“Because the number of wizards directly represents the Mage Tower’s power.”
Once again, wizards were expensive to train. But having money didn’t mean just anyone could become one. There was the prerequisite of having the talent to awaken mana in the first place, so talent mattered more for this profession than any other. There were ways to check for wizardly talent, but they required high-purity mana stones and were quite costly. Naturally, the only ones willing to attempt such a low-odds gamble were the wealthy and the nobility.
However, relying solely on those who voluntarily came forward for testing made it difficult for the Mage Tower to maintain its numbers. Commoners who didn’t even know whether they had mana or not, and a Mage Tower desperate to increase its wizard count—under those circumstances, swindlers like that fake fortune teller naturally thrived, even though their actions were illegal.
“Sir! Does that mean our child is really going to become a wizard?”
“Only if he learns properly.”
Ben’s parents, who had been calming their frightened son, approached Patrick as if to ask what he meant.
“No matter how talented someone is, they can’t become a High-Circle Wizard without proper training. Having talent doesn’t guarantee success as a wizard, either.”
“Then what should we do?”
“Knocking on the Mage Tower’s door or seeking out a wizard at the lord’s castle wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“……Do we really have to?”
Yet for some reason, both of Ben’s parents seemed hesitant.
“I heard being a wizard’s disciple costs a lot of money……”
In the end, it came down to money.
‘Even people who don’t know how wizardly talent manifests seem to know that wizards are money-eating ghosts.’
Patrick, himself a wizard, felt oddly detached from the matter.
“I won’t deny it. If you don’t catch a master’s eye, you’ll end up at best like me—a 2-Circle Wizard. In the world of wizards, you need at least three circles before you’re considered useful for combat or research. My level is nothing more than a fancy business card.”
“I want to learn from you, mister!”
It was Ben who broke the adults’ silence.
“Teach me, mister!”
“What are you talking about? What could I possibly teach you?”
“Magic! You can make water and wind come out of your hands, can’t you?”
“That’s all there is to it.”
“If I want to learn more after studying with you, I can go to the Mage Tower or the lord’s castle then. ……Or is there some reason you can’t teach anyone?”
At Ben’s baseless confidence, Patrick couldn’t help but let out a chuckle.
Ben’s parents exchanged glances, then quickly pleaded with Patrick.
“Please, sir!”
“You said yourself that talent doesn’t guarantee success. We don’t have the money to send him to the Mage Tower right now, either! In the meantime, couldn’t you just take him around and talk to him a bit……? Isn’t there any way?”
“Of course we’ll pay for lessons! We can’t offer much, but…… Ah, alcohol! We can provide as much alcohol as you want!”
It was a somewhat shameless request, but parents never cared about pride when it came to their children.
“Kid, from now on, call me ‘teacher,’ not ‘mister.’”
After all, he was stuck living on this island anyway. Raising a disciple he never expected to have wouldn’t be so bad.
‘And his father’s sweet potato soju does suit my taste, so it’s not a loss.’
Just like that, teaching a child was added to his daily routine of wandering the island pulling weeds and cleaning fish.