Mages Are Selfish and Arrogant
Mages are, without exception, selfish and arrogant.
That was a conclusion I had reached long ago, back when I was still a child.
Mages look down on anyone who never learned magic. It is a pitiful truth, but next to a mage, an ordinary person might as well be a monkey. No matter how hard a man trains with a sword, can he cut down fire and lightning as they come screaming toward him? He burns. He fries. That has been the way of the world for a very long time, and it is why mages rule every corner of it.
Even the empire’s most celebrated emperor is nothing but a monkey to a mage—a slave who pays tribute. The world turns around mages. And again: mages are selfish and arrogant.
I held that blasphemous thought again today, watching a mage hunt a monster thrashing wildly in the distance.
In the far north of the Kingdom of Runheim—the land of dragons and moons—there stood a border city called Laoren. There, a mage wrapped himself in lightning and slaughtered monsters without mercy.
“Whoa, now that’s a mage for you. If it’d just been us, we’d be dead for sure.”
A chattering voice came from behind me. There stood a sly-looking man with the face of a mouse—someone who had scraped by as a monster hunter alongside me for a long time. His name was Oble. He had gotten married last year and had worn a grin from ear to ear ever since. I was thoroughly sick of his sermons on the glories of married life.
“We did die, though.”
“Just a little.”
A little or a lot, dead was dead. We had known full well that charging a monster we could not handle meant dying like dogs—and we had died anyway. That was our role. That was our life.
Mages were arrogant, and they spent their power only on their own greed. There was no justice in them. Then again, for the weak, even crying out for justice was a crime. Justice, in the end, was a privilege reserved for those who held power.
My reflection caught in a shard of glass shattered by the rampaging monster. Jet-black hair. Bright amber eyes. A body that had been sickly from the moment of birth, so frail that muscle never came—only skin stretched over bone. I looked nothing like a monster hunter.
“If the mage hadn’t dragged his feet and moved sooner, everyone would still be alive.”
“Haren, for heaven’s sake, watch your mouth around the mages. Keep that up and you’ll vanish without a trace.”
He had always been the meddling type.
“Yeah, he’s right. Weakling Haren.”
Another familiar voice cut in. I cracked my eyes open and looked that way. A big, solid man had appeared. He slammed a hand the size of a pot lid down on my shoulder. Pain shot through it—he had put real force into the blow on purpose. That bastard.
His name was Trenba. Problem child Trenba, they called him. I was small and thin, and to someone like me his hands might as well have been a storm.
“Weaklings like you don’t even need a mage. You’d die just standing in front of me.”
A piece of trash who never stopped sneering at anyone weaker than himself. Today, as always, Trenba was pure garbage.
“Maybe it’s time you quit monster hunting. Doesn’t look like you’re bringing in any results.”
I did not bother listening. There was no point taking in words that empty. Instead I watched the mage drive a bolt of lightning clean through the monster’s skull.
Magic truly was a wondrous power—the kind that stole a person’s gaze and would not give it back. If I had been strong like them, would my world have been different? I did not know. Even if I went back, I would still be a worthless monster hunter. The kind who could do nothing while his own parents died. A hunter left with nothing but faded scraps of justice.
“Tch. Boring bastard.”
When I ignored him, Trenba left me alone and walked off. Off to find the next weakling to sneer at, no doubt. That was all he was good for. And still he was far stronger than I was—a proper monster hunter.
“Trenba. Does that guy really have nothing better to do?”
“It was a monster that needed a mage.”
“Fair enough. Once a mage steps in, there’s nothing left for us. Still—thanks.”
“Thanks for a mage who only came because of the taxes we pay.”
“Haren, you are genuinely going to die soon.”
Oble meant it. He was worried about me. Don’t be. As if a mage would ever bother listening to a monkey’s chatter. Not a chance.
At last the mage cut the monster’s life short. That done, he turned without a word and vanished into the sky. Watching a person simply fly away was still a sight I could not get used to. I also knew perfectly well that a single one of them was enough force to wipe a kingdom off the map.
“Anyway, that’s it for today. I’m going for a drink. You’re coming, right, Haren? They treat us better when you’re with me.”
Oble stretched hard as he spoke. His wife had chewed him out over the drinking not long ago, and here he was again.
“I’ve got corpses to clean.”
“Come on. Can’t they stop sticking you with cleanup duty already? How many years has it been?”
“It’s true I don’t bring in results.”
I was weak. Against monsters my sword broke more often than not, and I ended every job laid out with injuries. Trenba was irritating, but the nickname he used—weakling—had stuck to me for years. Born frail, no amount of training fixed it. Not that I had ever stopped training. Having no talent was simply a fact I could not deny.
“I’m going to clean, then.”
“Yeah. Be careful out there.”
With Oble’s encouragement at my back, I gathered the cleaning tools and returned to the street. Farther off, villagers had gathered, waiting for the mess to be cleared so the day could end early. In their eyes I was not a monster hunter. I was a janitor. Nothing new about that.
“Every time it’s these monsters. What a miserable life.”
“Tell me about it. Without the mages we’d all have been dead ages ago.”
Maybe my ears had always been sharp. The villagers’ talk carried clearly even from a distance. Mage worship even here. Mage-solves-everything, as usual.
“Was it really thanks to the mages, though?”
A boy who looked young spoke up. People turned, wondering what he was talking about. An orphan, by the look of him—clothes barely fit to wear. He muttered with empty eyes.
“I’ve heard the monsters only started crossing over from other worlds because of the mages.”
“What kind of nonsense is that child saying!”
Startled, people tried to cover the boy’s mouth. He shook his head hard, eyes full of tears.
“My mom and dad died to monsters too. If the mages made this happen, they’re the ones who gave us the disease and then sold us the cure. So why are we thanking them!”
The boy’s cry rang out, raw and desperate.
Monsters crossed into the world by a strange means called dimensional travel. Once here, they left trails of dead and wounded. To them, humans were convenient daily food, so they hunted people without hesitation. Dimensional travel itself had appeared out of nowhere one day. Lately a rumor had been going around that some mage’s failed magical research was to blame. Of course no one ever said that in front of a mage. It was only the kind of grumbling people shared among themselves over drinks.
“The monkey says interesting things.”
Yes. Truly a story meant only for other people. Never something you spoke in front of a mage.
Behind the boy stood a man. He wore an extremely pleasant smile. The mage who had just killed the monster had come back.
“M-Mage, sir!”
In an instant the people flattened themselves to the ground and bowed their heads. Outside of a monster outbreak, daring to look a mage in the face was blasphemy. The boy trembled as he looked up at him, only now realizing what he had done.
“Is there any other monkey who agrees with this monkey?”
He asked the question. Naturally, not a single person agreed.
“I see. A pitiful creature, unrecognized even among monkeys.”
He tapped the boy lightly on the head. That was all it took. The boy’s body burst into pieces. He died without even managing a scream. The people pressed flat to the ground only shook; no one made a sound. They knew perfectly well that if anyone opened their mouth here, they would be next.
The mage’s gaze swept over the crowd and finally settled on me. I hurriedly bent at the waist. Mages tended to be somewhat gentler with monster hunters—they needed the mana stones that came from the beasts. He looked at me and nodded with satisfaction.
“Mm. For a monkey, you work hard.”
“……Thank you.”
I had to thank the man who had just exploded a child. I knew how sickening that was, and there was nothing I could do about it. Mages and ordinary humans were different beings.
With that, the mage left as if his business were finished. Why he had come back at all, I could not say.
“H-He’s gone.”
“……We’re alive.”
Relief broke over the crowd. Not one of them looked sorry for the boy.
“Damn it. That little brat almost got us all wiped out.”
“What rotten luck.”
Most of them were angry instead. There was not a scrap of justice left in any of them. Myself included.
People turned away after that. I simply started cleaning up the monster. All the while the boy’s shattered corpse left me with a strange feeling—as if it were somehow set against me.
Then the boy’s blood began to run along the grooves in the ground and gather in this direction. I froze at the unexpected sight, and a beat later I realized where it was going. A chill ran up my spine. The monster’s corpse. The blood was pooling at the monster’s corpse.
A bad feeling took hold. What if the monster was using the boy’s blood as a medium to come back to life? Every other hunter had already left. I was the only one still here.
I drew the sword I always kept at my hip. This was a situation that could spiral into something far worse. While the corpse still was not moving might be my only chance. Split the body. Pull out the mana stone at its core.
Without hesitation I swung and carved into the monster’s remains. The mage’s lightning had already seared through the tough muscle fibers, so the blade went easier than it might have. I worked my way deep into the carcass, and after a while a blue light caught my eye. I shook the blood from my hands and looked up—and my face locked solid.
Inside the enormous mana stone was something shaped like a person. A human form, hairless, curled in on itself. Five years as a monster hunter. Years of cleanup duty. I had seen more monster corpses than I could count. I had never seen anything like this.
“What the hell is this?”
Why was there a person inside a mana stone? I decided to move closer for a better look.
My foot caught on something. My body pitched forward, and my hand struck the mana stone.
A sharp sting.
“Ghk—!”
The edge of the stone was sharper than it looked. Blood welled from my fingertips. I yanked my hand free and stared at the cut, then fumbled at my belt for a bandage—and something felt wrong. I slowly raised my head.
What I saw next made my vision swim. Inside the mana stone, a pair of human eyes had snapped open and were looking straight at me.
Oh, shit.
The thought hit, and I tried to push myself up.
“Kh—!”
In that instant my vision went red and blank. Every ounce of strength drained out of my body. My sense of balance shattered. A violent nausea rolled through me, and every sensation spun. My head slammed into the ground, and consciousness began to slip away.
Had the mana stone been leaking poison?
Why did I have to go and feel a sense of duty as a monster hunter…
So this was how my life ended. What had any of it meant? In the fading dark, all I could do was curse the life I had lived.
I should have lived a little better. I should have lived a little more justly. Like my father, who had been righteous when I was small. Like my mother, who gave her life to save the children of the village. Their justice had been crushed under raw power, of course. But I had still wanted to become someone who would not bow to force—someone who would save people the right way…
Holding that regret, my mind finally went dark.