A Debt of Gratitude
"Jun! Fortuna!"
"Eek!"
"Hyeek!"
Jun and Fortuna, who had been cheerfully dancing atop their defeated opponents, froze mid-celebration at the roar that erupted right beside them. Their faces drained of color in an instant. Stiff-necked, they forced themselves to turn toward the source of that thunderous bellow — and there he was.
Leonard. Face contorted like a wrathful demon, radiating a presence that burned like open flame.
"B-Boss. You're early."
"You could've taken your time, you know."
Jun and Fortuna plastered on forced smiles and carefully climbed off Frank, as if nothing at all had happened. Frank, still unconscious after Jun's final stomp to his side, let out a pained scream — but the two of them whistled tunelessly and pretended not to hear.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Leonard began his approach. Each step shook the earth as though he were using some iron-weight technique. Jun decided a temporary retreat was the wiser course until the man's fury cooled.
"Haha. Well, now that the Boss is here, I'll just be on my way."
"Hurry, hurry! Poof! Poof!"
Fortuna yanked on Jun's hair, urging him on. She was so adorable doing it that Jun let his attention wander for a single fatal second.
That mistake cost him everything.
Riiip!
"What the hell—!"
In the blink of an eye, Leonard closed the distance and tore apart the Blink magic circles swirling around Jun. Not figuratively — he literally shredded them with both hands, as if ripping paper. Mana without physical form, torn to pieces. The sheer absurdity of it wrenched a curse from Jun's lips before he could stop himself. He scrambled to cast again, but Leonard was not about to stand by and watch.
The man planted a hand on Jun's shoulder and, every time Jun tried to raise his mana, released an equal surge of Divine Power that shattered the forming magic circles before they could take shape.
"Externally projected mana — whether it's magic or Divine Power — can be disrupted or torn apart by the same kind of externally projected mana."
"...Haha. Is that so. Learn something new every day."
"Want to learn one more new thing?"
"...Do I really have to?"
Jun asked with desperate hope. Leonard, of course, paid him no mind whatsoever.
"If you coat an attack with healing holy arts, you can inflict pure pain without leaving a single wound."
"I already know that. I've done it plenty of times."
"But you've never been on the receiving end, have you?"
"I... haven't?"
Fortuna rolled her eyes thoughtfully, then eventually nodded in agreement. If you're just going to agree, why did you even bring it up?! That airheaded cuteness is adorable, but still! Jun shot her a complicated look.
"Then consider this your chance to experience it firsthand."
"No th—"
Flick! Flick!
"Gah!"
Before either of them could finish refusing, Leonard's finger-flicks cracked against both their foreheads. The pain was so immense that Jun and Fortuna clutched their brows and rolled across the dirt in perfect unison. One might think they were overreacting to a mere flick — but Leonard's flicks were no ordinary flicks. Reinforced with Aura and Divine Power, they could shatter stone if he so much as wished it. He had been dealing them out to the orphans whenever they misbehaved. He always held back enough not to injure them, of course — but the pain was beyond imagination.
Exhibit A: the church children, Leon included, whose faces had gone deathly pale from merely watching.
"Father, how should we handle the cleanup?"
Robin — Heni's father, who had followed Leonard — looked down coldly at the thrashers still slumped on the ground after their beating from Jun.
"I'll take the village chief's son and his friends to the chief myself. You bring our children back to the church and explain the situation to the nuns who stayed behind."
"Understood."
"Sorry to trouble you."
Leonard clapped Robin on the shoulder, then seized the fat boy by the scruff of the neck and strode out of the clearing. The boy spat threats about making them regret this and settling scores later — but nobody paid him the slightest attention.
A week had passed since the brawl in the clearing.
In that time, Primuni Village had been anything but quiet — receiving a merchant caravan, transferring the thoroughly exposed village chief to Lemumni, and electing a new one. The church, by contrast, felt like it existed in another world entirely: peaceful, almost serene.
"Jun! Run faster! Faster!"
"Huff! Huff! Y-yes, sir."
In truth, it was a peace enforced at roughly half-gunpoint. After the fight in the clearing, Leonard had declared that if they had energy left to brawl, they had energy left to train — and proceeded to work the church orphans into the ground. He wasn't a complete demon about it. Orphans who had never received combat instruction from him, and those who flatly refused training, he left alone. But children like Jun and Leon — ones who had been taught techniques and still had the will to train — he drove until they collapsed.
The rowdier, more energetic kids tended to fall into that second category, so once they were exhausted into silence, the church grew quiet all on its own.
"All right, that's enough. You three go rest in the shade."
Leonard finally granted a break to Leon, Donald — a physical-enhancement type with a hardening ability — and Jun, who had been barely managing to trail after them as they completed lap after lap of the training ground. The three children staggered over and collapsed beneath a tree.
Leonard was genuinely pleased that all three had finished a course that would have dropped a grown man. Jun, though, stood out even among them. Unlike the other two, he possessed no physical ability of any kind. That he could keep pace at all was thanks to relentless training and the constant consumption of elixirs. Every time Leonard thought of it, he marveled at the sheer strength of Jun's will.
The path Jun had walked was so grueling that even Leonard shook his head at it. Steady training was something you could force through with gritted teeth — but the elixirs... Ugh.
The mere memory of their taste from his own childhood sent a wave of nausea surging up Leonard's throat. He hastily banished the thought — and simultaneously revised his estimation of Jun another notch higher. Just how ironclad did a person's willpower have to be to keep drinking those things?
Young Leonard had been known around him as a stubborn little monster, and even he had never managed more than a single proper sip. Jun, on the other hand, took the elixirs steadily — and increased the dose day by day. Lately he had been single-handedly consuming the entire shipment Lemumni sent for every orphan at the church. Leonard had been forced to write every month requesting extra. The churches in the other subordinate villages were practically begging him to stop sending any more, saying they had leftovers piling up.
What a waste. A real waste.
If only Jun had been born with a physical ability of some kind. If he had taken that ability and that iron will into the Labyrinths... Leonard was certain the boy would have become a Ranker.
Hell, even if his elemental specialization had just been low or nonexistent...
When Jun was about six, a mage who owed Leonard a favor had come to the church. Asked how he might repay the debt, Leonard requested that he teach Jun magic — and the mage agreed readily. Teaching the boy, the mage had both marveled and despaired.
Jun's magic core was so exceptional that even that exacting mage couldn't help but gasp in admiration, and his five senses — sharpened by his psychic ability — were outstanding as well. This child will become a great mage of the age. Early on, the mage had declared it with absolute certainty.
Not long after, he had swallowed bloody tears and taken the declaration back.
The boy had a specialization. And not just any specialization — a spatial one so rare it barely appeared in the historical record. It let him wield space magic almost like a psychic ability. The trade-off: he could use no other elemental magic at all. At best, he could manage the most basic cantrips — lighting a match-flame, nothing more.
Space magic was scarce in this world. Its efficiency was poor, its applications severely limited. And so the greatest talent became the worst possible flaw.
Haaah... Enough regretting it.
Jun himself was perfectly content with that greatest-and-worst talent of his. Leonard fretting over it would only sour his own stomach.
And that one seems even happier about how things turned out.
Leonard pulled his gaze from Jun sprawled on the ground and looked instead at Leon beside him. A fond smile rose unbidden to his face at the sight of Leon surrounded by girls who had come bearing towels and water jugs.
Heh. Popular with the ladies — just like that guy.
Then he spotted Donald, who was secretly eyeing one of the girls while pretending very hard not to, and a bittersweet, nostalgic smile tugged at Leonard's mouth.
"Up we go."
At that moment, Fortuna — who had been resting in the shade with them — stretched and floated up into the air. Leonard addressed her.
"Going to Jun, are you?"
He used formal speech, unlike usual. He always did when it was just the two of them, so Fortuna accepted the courtesy without comment.
"Of course I am. Jun's looking all lonely watching Sparkles soak up the attention, and I can't just leave him like that. Honestly, that boy needs so much looking after."
Her answer reminded Leonard of the fact that her soul and Jun's were bound together.
"That... soul-thread of yours. Even you can't sever it at will, Lady Fortuna?"
Leonard had a vague sense of what she truly was. The residual Divine Power he had felt from her at their first meeting had been so pure and overwhelming that his knees had nearly buckled of their own accord. Only one kind of being could possess Divine Power like that.
An angel.
A child and messenger of the Father who dwelled in the high heavens. There was no mistaking it.
I don't know why she fell — but if the world ever learned what she is...
Those with power and influence would invent any number of reasons and stop at nothing to bind her to their side. Both she and Leonard knew it, so they kept silent and maintained the fiction that she was simply a fairy with an unusually deep religious streak. Fairies were such an eccentric race to begin with that, fortunately, no one ever questioned her identity.