Ragnis Lien da Levien
Ragnis Lien da Levien
The news that a Hero had been selected by the Imperial Divine Council had spread through the village.
That the evil Demon King would fall and peace would finally return, that they were already gathering renowned geniuses from across the continent and preparing a counterattack.
That the light would finally return.
But when, exactly?
The Hero was said to be around my age. If some brat who'd just barely passed twelve could defeat the Demon King, that would truly be a mythical achievement, but there was no sign of that happening.
The reason they were gathering geniuses was surely to teach the Hero. So when would he actually take the field?
Five years from now? Ten? If we had to focus everything on the Hero while enduring that indefinite waiting period, wasn't that proof that we couldn't stop the Demon King's Army's invasions in the meantime?
What about people like me who would die in the meantime? My parents, already dead, and my poor siblings? The servants who had been nothing but kind? When were we supposed to honor the souls of the people of our domain, whose only crime was working hard and living their lives?
It didn't take long for the thoughts that had suddenly surged to reach that point. And the anger quickly cooled before reality.
I knew. Whether gods existed or not, there would be no salvation for myself and the dead for some time.
I'd grow up like this, and when the leader felt like it, I'd lose my virginity. If the leader died before that... well, it'd be about the same.
"Nice to meet you. My name is Eldmia Ega."
And then those days—days when all I could do was think like that and keep living—shattered.
His short-cropped black hair was unusual enough to stand out and made him look like the mercenaries and adventurer warriors I'd sometimes seen. The sword on his back made his shoulders look broad, and he was big for his height. His well-fitted clothes weren't flashy, but they made him look neat and put-together. That was why, despite his high, youthful voice, I'd assumed he was simply a short adult.
But when he turned his head, the face I saw was impossibly young compared with that first impression. Eleven? Twelve? From his height and build, I'd expected him to be only a year or two younger than the leader. Looking at his face, though, he seemed closer in age to my late second-youngest sibling. One thing was certain: he was no adult.
It wasn't remotely what I'd expected. Seen that way, he felt less like an ordinary boy and more like something alien.
Still, his eyes alone were piercingly sharp. I'd merely been studying him casually without much thought. That was why, even when the boy lunged at that split-second opening, my awareness couldn't properly keep up.
"Say goodbye, fucker."
He hadn't shouted, just murmured quietly, but I heard it clearly. The leader who'd flown backward and collapsed—I sensed instinctively that he'd died from one kick unleashed at the end of a movement too fast for my eyes to follow, yet the only thought that came was that, unexpectedly, his mouth was filthy.
What had been coming had simply arrived. Someone stronger had beaten someone strong. Just like the Demon King's Army had trampled our domain.
It was just... a change of leaders. From an ordinarily strong leader to a leader about as strong as an apprentice knight in the domain. Since he seemed to use aura, well, roughly that level.
"Do you want a chance to live honestly, or do you want to crawl out of here crippled?"
Or so I'd thought.
"That's right, you street rats. You looked so damn pathetic I figured I'd at least put you to work."
Something completely different began to unfold.
"See that? Mister Tex knocked another two coppers off the price for you—money doesn't just grow out of the ground, you know."
"This is Madam Alisha, owner and head cook of the inn you'll be staying at. If you've got anything resembling a brain, you'll have no trouble hearing the affection overflowing between that booming voice and all the swearing, so be grateful to her."
"Wake up early and there's more work to do. Places where you work all day pay high daily wages, and even if you only work half a day, you can do other work with the other half. Those are the kinds of things I'll teach you."
He took nothing from us, never laid a hand on us, and showed us a kindness we hadn't experienced once since leaving home.
It took me far too long to realize that what he was showing us was kindness. Once I did, I couldn't hold the question back. I had to ask.
"I'm a textbook war orphan. I was 8 when the Demon King's Army launched the first raid that started this whole mess—my village burned, my friends and neighbors died, and I lost my parents too. If anything, I've got seniority on you."
A story about the Demon King's Army raiding a small village. I'd definitely heard that story before. Even my parents, who'd always maintained composure, had been unable to hide their shock at the incident three years ago.
I'd heard no one survived.
"You all didn't meet someone like Asilie—I mean, someone like my benefactor the elf—so I figured that's why you were like that. You just never got a chance. So I'm just giving you a chance, that's all."
Tears nearly welled up.
He was a boy, yet at the same time he couldn't be. A boy younger than me couldn't possibly tell me what the adults never had, give me what they never had, and understand me when they never had.
How could that be possible? When he'd gone through such things at an age far younger than me?
When he was nothing more than a boy from a small mountain village, not even a noble?
"Naturally, the people of this village are more familiar and precious to me than you are. If you work like shit or seem hopeless, I'll throw everything aside and make you get lost. So whether this is really help or not, you still don't know."
The boy was a light.
A real light that had shone down on me at the end of my despair, just as I was about to give up everything.
How many times had I despaired?
When I'd thrown away a noble's self-respect and pride and lied about my identity, pretending to be a commoner just to survive. When the wages I'd finally earned through gritted teeth were stolen. When I couldn't properly resist the people who sabotaged everything I tried to do. When I'd smashed a vagrant's head with a rock as he tried to rape me. When I'd cut off the long hair I'd once been proud of and gone into hiding. When that bastard they called the leader finally caught me and forced me to trail along at his side like a doll.
I'd despaired countless times through all of it. So much had happened in such a short span that I wanted to scream and cry, asking how any of this could possibly happen. Inside, I begged someone—anyone—to help me.
That's how it had been.
Just when I was about to give up everything, salvation came out of nowhere.
The boy's name was Eldmia Ega.
He was already a local celebrity, always declaring that he'd become an adventurer and leave town in five years. Between the way he spoke, the way he acted, and the way he handled work—none of it remotely childlike—far more people in Ogwen knew him than didn't.
He was the light I could never let go of—the one who rebuilt the hope that even the Hero had failed to restore.
◈
Time passed, seasons changed, and amid utterly peaceful days, I turned fourteen.
That's right! I had entered the stormy period of ad-o-les-cence!
Heh heh heh... an uncontrollable impulse was stirring.
"500 kilos on the Big 3. Just you wait. I'm almost there."
In the meantime, my height had surpassed 175 centimeters. I'd shot up about five centimeters a year. My heart started pounding at the thought that if this kept up, 190 might not be a dream, let alone 180.
No matter how much this was a world with extraordinary people using magic and aura, you couldn't ignore the fundamentals of physical strength and weight class. Unless you became some tall beanpole, every centimeter you gained made you more advantageous in a fight.
And I wasn't just a tall beanpole. I deliberately placed load on my muscles through Magic Power, and the effects of the exercises I'd continued every single day were tremendous.
The biggest reason I'd neglected exercise in my past life was that simply making a living had been hard enough. Another was that I couldn't devote much time to it, so the results were tiny. Training with Magic Power was different: I could feel obvious improvement almost every week, and that made it addictive.
Most of all, the impediments of a child's wanderings, laziness, and urges to play didn't apply to me in the slightest, so time was utterly on my side.
Although the war with the Demon King's Army still hadn't ended, at least the vicinity of Ogwen had been quiet since that day six years ago.
"...Eldi? You're not just randomly picking up and eating weird stuff, are you?"
"Huh? All of a sudden?"
"I mean, fine, you're shooting up like a tree, but..."
My relationship with Asilie had grown close enough that she called me by a nickname.
Since we weren't farming or settling down, the bigger I grew, the more we could split the work, and the more we split the work, the more leisure time we both had. Asilie, who'd made it her hobby to watch me exercise alone while enjoying that increased leisure, stared at me with a subtle expression.
"Your muscles just keep bulging like some barbarian warrior?"
"Barbarian warrior? With an intellect this refined and civilized, I'm obviously a civilized warrior."
"Seriously, the way you talk is just..."
I understood what she meant. Looking at my body alone, nobody would guess I was a fourteen-year-old in the middle of adolescent turmoil. Physically, I could hold my own even next to a veteran warrior who'd been through hell and back.
"Where the hell do you find and learn workouts like that? Most of them I've never even seen in my life."
"Eldmia—"
"—chance. Yeah. Yeah."
We were perfectly in sync now. When I grinned cheerfully and approached to hug her, Asilie jumped back.
"Hey! Hey! You're sweaty! Wash first, wash!"
Feeling playful, I charged at her, and she darted around laughing and shrieking. By now, the shadows that the events six years ago had left over both Asilie and me had faded considerably.
Since it was about time to head into town anyway, I washed up cleanly, and Asilie smiled and hugged me. Now it felt strange that she had to look up at me.
"You've gotten pretty good at spirit arts now too, huh?"
"It's all thanks to you, Sis."
I could now use the spirit arts that Asilie had shown me on the day we first met, which had seemed like a wondrous skill.
Something that hadn't worked no matter what I tried had suddenly started working, then rapidly improved. According to Asilie, humans as a species simply had very low affinity with spirits. After six years under the same roof with her, though, the spirits had clearly gotten used to me. This one really was entirely thanks to Asilie, separate from anything I'd done myself.
"I'm not so sure. It might not be entirely because of me."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. There've been humans who married elves and lived with them for the rest of their lives, but there aren't any cases where someone with no particular spirit affinity suddenly developed an explosive amount of it."
"Maybe they just never had any intention of using spirit arts?"
"Hmm. Now that you mention it, maybe so."
I watched Asilie quietly as she sat in my arms, her eyes darting around while she thought... and then I started noticing her distinctive elven scent and the feel of her skin! Emergency evasion! Emergency evasion!
"That's! Anyway! Moving on! I'm heading to the village!"
As naturally as I could, I caught her under the arms, lifted her, spun around two or three times, and set her back down. Then I put on my shirt and straightened my clothes as if nothing were wrong. Unlike my ironclad reason, the pubescent corpus cavernosum refused to obey my brain at all. It had been giving me no end of grief lately. No matter how often I lectured it that the woman in question was my benefactor and a 126-year-old elf, it refused to listen.
Seizing the gap, Bad Eldmia and Worse Eldmia appeared and whispered simultaneously in my ear.
'If anything, that's even better.'
Hngh... I-it's not like I hate it, but fuck, that's not the point! It's a crime! A crime! Are you trying to turn Asilie into a criminal?!
'Tsk.'
The damn bastards clicked their tongues and vanished. Where the hell was Good Eldmia when I needed him? I wished he'd come save me from those devils whispering sweet nothings in my ear.
Morning really was the hardest time for my battle with my lower half. Pretending nothing was wrong, I gathered my things and mounted the horse. Asilie, who had been stroking the horse's forehead, suddenly spoke as if something had just occurred to her.
"Come to think of it, Eldi. Did you hear? They found a noble in the village."
"Isn't that wording a little strange? Did they discover late that the person was an illegitimate child or something?"
The nuance was like a dungeon or hidden treasure had been discovered.
"No, literally a noble. I only heard it through rumors, so I don't know the details. Something about being the family's last direct descendant and sole survivor?"
"Isn't it just the storytellers' gift of gab? It's exactly the kind of topic they'd love."
"Hoho. I suppose so."
It really was the kind of subject that would only come out in stories.
In a few more days, it was obvious all kinds of tales would be tacked on—that the family wasn't just any noble family but a renowned mage family, that they'd been called a genius but had been hiding until the day they came of age to avoid factions and wicked schemes, that they'd rise up and set the family straight, and so on.
Maybe this world just doesn't have much entertainment. People here love dramatic stories way too much.