Growth
"Huh?"
"For, what's wrong?"
"I thought I heard Father's voice."
Fortuna suddenly twisted around to look behind them. When Jun asked why, she answered without much certainty. Startled, he quickly turned his head in the same direction.
Nothing but the usual peaceful countryside village filled his eyes.
"Doesn't look like anything happened. For, can you tell what it was?"
"…No. Weird. Was it just my imagination?"
"Eh, don't sweat it too much. Could've been a hallucination—or maybe He was talking to someone else."
If the words had been meant for them, Fortuna—an angel and God's own messenger—would never have failed to catch them. Still uneasy, Jun gently caught Fortuna as she fluttered about, set her atop his head, and continued up the mountain path.
"It's farther than I thought. And the slope's pretty steep."
Like most hunters' homes, Heni's house sat not in the village proper but deep in the mountains. Jun had assumed it would be near the entrance—Heni walked to church every day, after all—but that wasn't the case. Thirty minutes past the trailhead, and he still couldn't even see a roof.
"Heni, how the hell do you go back and forth to the village every day?"
"Mm∼. Daddy takes me."
She answered in a drowsy mumble from where she clung to his back. So that was why she'd gone quiet after all that chatter—she'd been dozing off.
"Zzz∼."
A few minutes later her breathing evened out completely, and every bit of tension left her body. She was out cold.
"Should I wake her? Looks like we've still got a ways to go."
"Nah. More importantly, For—stick tight to me. We're Blinking the rest of the way."
Just then his spatial sense picked up a dwelling. Destination found; no more walking required.
"Mrow∼."
Fortuna made a catlike little sound and flattened herself against the top of his head. The adorable reply drew a snort of laughter from Jun as he fired up his mana core.
Hummm∼
The mana core, grown stronger thanks to the electric eel's boon, roared to life with a far grander thrum than before and greedily drank in the surrounding mana. Azure mana dyed in Jun's color wrapped around him, Fortuna, and Heni—and in an instant their forms vanished, reappearing a full hundred meters away.
"Whoa∼. The core's output is way higher than I expected. Fifty meters used to be my limit."
Fifty meters had already been impressive. An ordinary mage pushing Blink to its absolute limit might manage thirty at best. Thirty meters could sound short, but Blink was an emergency evasion spell by design. The fact that Jun could casually cover a hundred meters with it was anything but normal.
He laughed, pleased, as he measured the distance. Fortuna, still perched on his head, nodded in satisfaction.
"Triple cores really are on a whole different level from doubles when it comes to raw output."
Two other factors had doubled his range besides the core's growth. One was the jump to a triple-core setup Fortuna had mentioned. Cores linked with one another; the more you had, the higher the overall output. Even cores of similar quality produced different results depending on how many their owner had awakened. That was why ability users with more cores were valued higher, and why so many of them staked their lives on awakening as many as possible.
"Awakening the third as an Aura Core probably helped too."
The second reason was that his newly awakened third core was an Aura Core. Where magic was the power to alter essence, aura was the power to reinforce it. Wrapping the body in aura strengthened everything—muscle, eyesight, reaction speed—and the cores inside the body were no exception. In short, an Aura Core used its own power to reinforce both itself and every other core, letting them punch well above their weight.
That's why aura's popular not just with non-ability users, but with projection-type and psychic-type ability users too.
Non-ability users favored aura because sheer effort could still awaken it even without talent. Projection and psychic types favored it because it amplified their powers and kept their bodies healthy. Naturally, public opinion of aura towered over every other ability.
The purest expression of that attitude was the Britia Empire—where Jun lived. The empire's other name was the Land of Knights. Commoners, bureaucrats, nobles, even the emperor himself respected and revered knights, the living symbols of aura users. Other ability users might not be outright shunned, but they were quietly looked down on. Mages, traditional rivals of the knights, got it worst of all. How bad was it? Even commoners who feared mages to their faces still cracked jokes about them behind their backs.
Jun himself had occasionally been blamed for other kids' messes for no reason other than being a mage.
Well… that same prejudice is why I get to live this peacefully.
An orphan with no relatives who had awakened not one but two top-tier cores? Under normal circumstances, even with a divine Stigma, the empire or some noble house would have forced an adoption. A powerful orphan made the perfect disposable pawn. But stack "psychic ability only useful for paperwork," "spatial mage—natural enemy of knights," and "virtually zero chance of awakening aura," and suddenly no one but merchants wanted him. A problem Jun had never even considered—being forcibly adopted—had resolved itself in the most ridiculous way imaginable.
When he first learned that, he hadn't known whether to laugh or cry.
Still true now. Being left alone is nice… but the contempt is a little…
Wearing a complicated expression, Jun triggered Blink again. A few more spatial leaps later, they arrived near a cabin that practically radiated human presence.
"They built it really nicely."
"Right? When the war's over, let's build something like this for ourselves."
"Heh. Don't forget the rocking chair and the hammock."
Jun chuckled and played along with Fortuna's premature retirement plans, then headed for the shed beside the cabin where he sensed someone.
Had they been noticed? A commotion rose inside the shed, and out stepped a middle-aged man of rugged charm—Robin—to greet them.
"Hello, Uncle Robin."
They had only ever exchanged greetings when they happened to cross paths, but since Jun would be training under him from now on, he put on his brightest smile. Whether Robin saw a pretty boy or a pretty girl, the effect was the same: the man who normally received greetings with a blank face awkwardly lifted the corners of his mouth. Looks really did matter.
"That… Jun?"
Of course he had to ask. Jun gave a bitter smile and nodded, already bracing for the same question several more times in the days ahead.
"Yes, it's me. Changed a bit, huh?"
"A bit seems like an understatement… Did you receive some kind of blessing?"
"That's right! Our Juni did something good, so Father gave him a present!"
Sensing Jun's irritation through their soul bond, Fortuna answered in his place. She sounded so proud that Robin simply nodded as if that explained everything.
"Uncle Robin, could you take Heni for me?"
"Of course. Wait here a moment."
Jun turned so Robin could lift the sleeping girl from his back. Robin carried her into the cabin and was back in front of the shed in under five minutes.
"…"
"…"
Facing each other, Jun and Robin both rolled their eyes in awkward silence. They weren't close, and neither was much of a talker; neither knew how to start.
Ugh∼. This is painful. Painful.
"Why are you two making this so hard? Start with thank-yous. You each accepted the other's request, didn't you?"
Fortuna, unable to watch any longer, opened the conversation. Playing matchmaker at a blind date left her with a strange feeling.
"Uncle Robin, thank you for accepting the training offer. Honestly, I had no idea how I was supposed to train."
"Ahem. Don't mention it. It's an equal exchange. I'm the one who should be grateful. If you hadn't wanted training, I would have had to pay you… and frankly, I couldn't afford it."
"I understand. Artificially awakening a mana core costs a fortune. And even after becoming a mage, spellbooks, equipment—it all adds up."
"Ahem. Y-yes, that's right."
Embarrassed at being understood so thoroughly by a child, Robin cleared his throat and looked away. Jun had thought the man was emotionally barren; up close, he was simply taciturn. The quiet type was easier to deal with than a chatterbox, so Jun let out a small breath of relief—then asked the question he hadn't been able to put to the sleeping Heni.
"So why did Heni suddenly decide she wants to be a mage?"
"Urgh∼."
Just thinking about it must have given him a headache. Robin clutched his forehead with a pained groan.
"A little while ago she came home with a stack of thick novels she said she'd borrowed from Leon."
"Ah—Breath of the Dungeon, that one?"
"That's it. After she finished them she started throwing tantrums about becoming a mage. The mage in the books must have left quite an impression."
"Sh-she decided to become a mage over that?"
"Why didn't you stop her, Uncle? Tell her to quit even now."
The motivation was so flimsy that both Jun and Fortuna wore identical looks of pure disbelief. Robin scrubbed his face dry several times, equally frustrated, and pressed on.
"I tried everything to talk her out of it. I laid out the harsh reality and coaxed her. I even tried bribing her with snacks and dolls."
"…I see."
"Why bother with any of that? Just refuse to support her and it's over."
Robin shook his head hard at Fortuna's incredulous suggestion. His expression was deadly serious; clearly there was a special reason.
"And if she stops talking to me after that? If that child ignores me… I couldn't go on living."
…Ah. Right. Of course.