Chapter 405
Chapter 405
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: World 4 (9)
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“Are you insane? You want to put a nine-year-old on the train now? And not even as a passenger, but as one of our own!”
“Yeah.”
“‘Yeah’? A tiny kid like that will have health problems just from breathing in this cramped train!!”
“No problem. Even at his age, in a few years he’ll be more physically developed than you are now—”
“Volteus Strauge!!”
Whoa. They’re going at it.
I’d finished my tea, so I cracked open the door. The booze stench had faded a bit, but now shrill shouting filled the air.
Drunken passengers stacked like luggage in one corner, and a small hall where entire tables had been shoved aside.
The woman tearing into Volteus heard the door and glanced over, locking eyes with me as I peeked in.
“That’s him? The one you picked up off the street?”
“If you put it simply, yeah.”
Tall frame, neat silver bob haircut. The woman, who’d apparently come up from train maintenance, tossed aside her oil-stained gloves....
Ziiiiiing—
“Ugh, it’s hot! Why doesn’t this station have any cooling? Let’s buy one out of pocket! Maintenance crew doesn’t get to relax even when we come to the station!”
“...Cover up, Naelda. This is a public space.”
“I sleep tangled up with these guys ten months out of the year—what’s there to cover? What, is there someone here who hasn’t seen it all? Show me who, and I’ll stop nagging.”
Thwack!
“Number Four Fireman Gerry Corralhand reporting! Due to insufficient stamina, there are still some areas I haven’t observed, but if the trainmaster permits, I’m willing to diligently explore until Volteus’s moral compass is completely worn down—”
Spplaaat!
She’d flung open the top of her jumpsuit and leaped up like a shot, smashing a wrench into the dwarf fireman’s skull.
Sounded like something cracked.
“H-his head’s caved in...”
“He’s fine. Dwarves have thick skulls by nature.”
No, that’d retire even a battlefield soldier. He’d go home to a wife whose finances are in ruins, muttering, ‘As long as you come back alive. Just stay alive...’ Wheelchair-bound on some hill, mouth agape.
While some assault—or manslaughter?—unfolded before my eyes, Naelda yanked (!) the tool out of the convulsing fireman’s head with a crack, wiped the blood off the massive train wrench, and approached me.
“Kid. You’re the new crew member for our Rail Ship that Volteus was talking about?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sis—nearly slipped out, but I choked it back.
“Hmm. I don’t let just anyone on my train. Come back when you’re a bit older, yeah? Taking a child your age aboard could be a crime in all sorts of ways.”
That just makes me want to hop on even more, sis.
Tall stature.
Fierce upward-slanting eyes and oil smudges aside, a stunningly beautiful face.
Extremely open and violent personality.
And. Silver bob, with pointed ears peeking through.
“Volteus. How old were you when you first boarded my train?”
“Fifteen. And I’ve told you a million times not to phrase it like that.”
She looked a good decade younger than Volteus, who appeared mid-thirties, yet she’d been on the train before him.
Trainmaster Naelda.
Chief engineer of the so-called “Rail Ship,” and trainmaster to boot.
Her wild swings evoked someone oddly familiar. She was an elf.
****
“Professor, Brastol?”
“Yup.”
“Brastol as in, that Brastol? The noble Brastol family, client for this run and owners of Pardau Fortress?”
“That’s right.”
Crunch!
Naelda, who’d veered wildly off the elf stereotype, bared her teeth at Volteus like a beast the moment I gave my name.
“You said you picked him up off the street.”
“Yeah.”
“Who the hell are you trying to ruin? Why bring the fortress lord’s son here!”
“He’s a kid in the same boat as me. A little maneuvering, and we can snag him easy. Plus, I took a quick look—his potential physique surpasses anything possible at his age. Raise him right, and—”
“So you sweet-talked a random healthy kid into getting kidnapped! You’re a total menace! Take him back now!”
“Uh, sis? Sounds like the Professor kid’s got a rough deal—maybe reconsider—”
“What? Not enough? Want me to balance it out on the other side?”
“Exit’s this way, young Master Brastol.”
Current meeting attendees: six total, including three who’d sobered up from the sudden uproar.
“Adding crew to our Rail Ship, which is basically a freight hauler, isn’t just overloading—it’ll end with us dumping a crushed body somewhere—”
“We’re already selling our underwear to cover payouts for the dead kids’ families—whose flesh do you plan to slice off to feed another mouth—”
“Send him straight to work, and a useless brat gets left alone on the train with no one to watch him—”
“One wrong touch on the engine, train barrels out without stopping, plows through the next city—then you’ll regret it—”
Damn, she’s savage.
Must be the long-lived elf thing—ripping into him point by point, never losing logical ground while tearing him apart.
Naelda’s logic boiled down to: ‘No spare capacity to raise a useless kid for years.’
Plus,
“Above all, I don’t like the look in his eyes!”
An elf of this era—formerly called “half-elf”—she was good-aligned, so my innate [Evil Aura Lv.3] rubbed her wrong on principle.
‘Good-hearted. Extremely pragmatic, with strong charisma keeping the crew in line. Not terror rule—they accept her as is. A leader with real respect.’
Sticking around a family that barely tolerates me offers way fewer opportunities than hopping this train.
I’d picked my birthplace as ‘island closest to the safe zone range,’ so leaving Polgrad Central Island should be fine for wandering a bit.
‘Gotta convince that rogue elf sis.’
Luckily, her sharp realism made persuasion seem doable.
Clink!
“Agh! Look at him! Can’t even handle the teacup right in front of him—train life my ass!”
“S-sorry.”
“No way! Take him back! Contact the Brastol family right—”
Shrrr—
“Wha—contact... contact...”
Naelda’s hand, forcing me up, froze at the sight before her.
Water from the spilled teacup hung mid-spill, precariously rippling before flowing back into the cup.
‘Cutting it close, but doable.’
No mana in my body or air meant no basic hydrokinesis spells, but insight-based water control was barely within reach. Body changed, but insight doesn’t vanish.
Ripple ripple~
One of them, staring at the restored tea, muttered absently.
“...Magic?”
Crash clatter!
The slurred word from a half-sober engineer lit a fire under the stacked drunks—they jolted awake like struck by lightning, flailing.
“M-magic! Mage!”
“Just one! If we could rent even one...!”
Half-sober faces lit up at “magic,” spewing nonsense.
Volteus and Naelda wore similar looks, just a tad more grave than the boozers.
“H-hey, hey hey hey... V-Volteus! Wh-what the hell? What’d you pick up! We just kidnapped the Brastol family’s top asset! A mage! Shit, a water mage!”
“Dunno... I just met this oddly aura’d kid by the station fence, followed me all the way in...”
“That’s why I told you not to pick up strays, you moron!!!! The Brastols been quiet like rats these years because of him! A pea-brained kid born with water mana—they’d wanna keep it hidden and raise him quiet!”
“Naelda. The kid’s a bastard, neglected at home—”
“You believe every word from a kid? Probably threw a fit for house-sized magic crystals, didn’t get ‘em, so ‘Daddy abandoned me, sob!’ and bolted, idiot!”
...Over-the-top reaction?
Magic’s rare in this mana-poor world, so mages are valuable—expected that. But this blew past my estimates.
The half-naked elf paced the hall in panic, then plastered on a friendly-ish smile and approached me.
“K-kid... Did you, uh, tell anyone at home? That you were going to the station to play?”
“The maid who left first probably did.”
“Shit, everyone up!!! Brastol strike team’s coming for the kid!! Or nah, they catch wind of a pint-sized mage, they’ll silence us! Magic bullet to the head—no explaining then!”
“Um, Naelda?”
“Kid—no, young Master Brastol! Listen to big sis from now on, okay? Today, you tour the knights and engineers you’ve always admired, the train too, but don’t talk to us grumpy locals, then head home. Got it? You can fib that much, right?”
“No, there’s a misunderstanding—”
“Wants compensation! Brastols trained you noble-like! Good boy, our young master! Right, su-sugar? Got some from those backwater growers past Strauge...”
As sober crew grabbed heavy protective gear and rifle-sized arcane shooters, Naelda—biting her lip over something precious—shoved a sugar pouch into my pocket.
“Naelda.”
“I yelled a bit, but... n-no bad intentions!”
“Naelda?”
“Elves curse a lot! Living in a treeless world twists the personality—”
“Um... I’ve never learned magic.”
“Think of it as saving one human—or elf and assorted others...?”
Naelda, desperately coaxing me, paused to mull my last words.
“Young master. What’d you just say...?”
“What’s magic? You’ve been saying I learned it.”
“N-no magic training? Never stood days in a magic circle center, starving amid mountain magic crystals?”
“Nope.”
Twitch.
“Th-then what was that earlier! Some noble kid’s anti-hot-tea magic tool?”
“Uh... Just kinda learned to handle water somehow.”
“Kinda? Somehow????”
“Yeah. Last year, messing around home, I fell into a rain barrel by accident. No one came to save me, so...”
Twitch twitch!
Her and Volteus’s faces softened at my innocent act.
“...No one at home watches over you? Heir to fortress-owning Brastols?”
“Told you. Just one maid raised me from little—no one else cared. Cartrea’s got duties, can’t watch me all day. No playmates, so wandering the house alone, I fell into the basement cistern, lid slammed shut—”
Grab!
“Fell in! Kid, what happened after!”
“Felt like dying... then comfy somehow. Much later, Cartrea found missing me and pulled me out.”
“How long inside!”
“Past lunch going in... sun down coming out...”
“D-drowning training...”
Thud!
Frowning, hanging on every word, Naelda collapsed to her knees before me.
“Naelda. Figured something out?”
“...Long ago, pre-East-West Empire War, I heard mages awakened elements with brutal primitive methods. Water mages dunked kids in wells—survive, apprentice; die, float downriver silent...”
“How could they be so cruel!”
Cruel! Ignorant magic-blind fools! Spot-on method, but still!
Naelda knowing that ‘drowning training’ lent credibility to ‘Professor Brastol’s magical talent.’
Staring blankly a moment, she crawled over on knees and scooped me into a hug.
Squeeze!
Mm. The half-naked elf’s eager embrace wasn’t pure joy—blame her gleaming eyes and iron-bar arms.
“Volteus...? Calm the rest, seal lips tight so no rumors spread, then round everyone here.”
“Got it.”
“Anyone who saw the teacup water—keep ‘em inside a while.”
“On it.”
“And one more thing.”
“What now?”
Clutching me like an insect with prey—arms and legs all—Naelda drooled down at me.
“Good job, Volteus. Best thing you’ve done in your life!”
“...Coming from someone whose life you’ve saved dozens of times, that stings.”
“Hee hee hee! Compare a worthless elf life to a free mage?!”
Drip... drip...
Uh... something’s off. If I’m not imagining,
“Um... Naelda ma’am?”
“Huh... hee hee hee... mine mine...”
This elf’s drooling.
“A mage... natural mage... family ignores near-drowning... free mage!!”
“Th-that hurts a—gyaa! No, hurts a lot—let go—”
“No way... You’re Rail Ship’s mage now! Our train, my ship has a mage! City-level strategic asset water mage! Natural-born! Talent piercing the heavens!”
“No, I wanna be a Shard Knight!”
“No! Be a mage! Shard Knight as hobby! You can do both!”
Squeeeze!
The oil-smeared elf rolled side to side, pinning me in maintenance overalls, ecstatic.
“Well, damn.”
“Kid’s marked by sis too.”
“Volteus sir. Didn’t sis act the same when that shard fragment you saved stuck to you?”
“Hm.”
Volteus, rounding up the downstairs crew, gazed down at me pityingly.
“...Welcome to the Rail Ship crew, Professor.”
“Hee hee hee! Mage! Got a mage! I’ve got a mage now too!”
A distant voice faded under the half-mad elf’s cheers.
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