The Reason I Knelt (3)
“Brady, you’re starting to get on my nerves too. Even for you—if you keep this up, I won’t look the other way forever.”
Gronlead glared at the squad leader, Brady, with open dissatisfaction.
“That’s not it. Word is the royal inspectors will be making their rounds soon. Shouldn’t you be careful as well, Lord Gronlead?”
“Tch. Those damned inspections—do they have to show up as regularly as meals?”
Gronlead spun on his heel and turned away.
“You stay out of sight too.”
“Ah, yes! My apologies.”
For some reason he answered Brady’s words with a startled jump, then hurried back to where his group was waiting.
“Rest time’s over. Everyone move to the mining site.”
Just as Ellen was about to ask Rev about the dark mage’s strange behavior, the guard’s order cut him off.
“Even honey-sweet free time has to end sometime. Let’s move before those bastards find something to pick on us for.”
Rev dusted off his rear and stood; Ellen rose after him.
“Form up by section.”
At the guard’s command, the prisoners lined up according to their assigned teams.
“Move out as you are.”
Clang. Clang.
The sound of pickaxes rang through the dark mine. Roughly ten prisoners were hacking away at Magic Stones.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Among them, one set of strikes was far faster and more regular than the rest.
“Does that kid get an extra bread ration every morning or something?”
“No idea. His form’s a mess, so how is he swinging that well?”
“His output’s better than guys who’ve been here five years.”
“Tsk. What’s the point of working that hard in a place like this?”
“Hey, thanks to him we hit quota early and get to knock off sooner, so I’m not complaining.”
Every eye in the group was on the same boy: Ellen.
“Hah… hah…”
When he exhaled, a faint blue mana shimmered around him—so fine that even a close look would miss it.
Doing this all day must be why it’s kicking in so fast. Feels like I’ve almost clawed my way back to the level I had when I learned it from him.
Ellen was circulating mana through his entire body, maximizing his physical performance. It was a body technique created for mages, not so different from a knight’s physical reinforcement.
Come to think of it, that guy should still be alive. If I don’t save him, will he die in that battle?
In his previous life, Ellen had once rescued a mercenary who had once been a knight. The route had been empty of villages, and the man’s wounds had been severe, so Ellen had carried him all the way to their destination. From him, Ellen had learned the very technique he was using now.
Knights refined their own unique mana and used it to strengthen their bodies. Mages, lacking the ability to refine the mana within them, normally needed a separate spell for reinforcement. Physical-enhancement magic required continuous chanting and was therefore inefficient. But the body technique the man had taught him let a person reinforce the body without refining mana at all. That was why even Ellen—once a mere Magic Assistant—could use it. Because it was nothing more than circulating the mana already inside him, no chant was required, and that same fact let him slip past the detection of the binding bracelets designed to suppress mages’ magic.
If only we’d had a little more time together, I could have learned it properly…
Ellen pushed the regret aside and kept mining. Finishing the work ahead of schedule meant the remaining time became free rest—an incentive meant to raise the prisoners’ efficiency.
“Finished early again today. Rest if you want, but stay inside the mining zone.”
At the guard’s words the prisoners all set down their picks.
“Thanks to you, we get a little break again.”
“Appreciate it, Ellen.”
The men in Ellen’s team always managed to earn rest this way.
“It’s nothing. Better if we all get to rest.”
Ellen found a spot deeper inside the mine and sat. The tunnels branched like an ant nest; the guards were too few to cover them properly—only one per team. Every guard was a former knight, confident enough to handle several magicless mages without trouble. That confidence let them sit right at the entrance and doze off.
Ellen chose a place just out of their line of sight.
“Shall we continue, then?”
The moment Ellen spoke, Proveng’s voice filled his mind.
Good. The formulas you use are stuffed with far too many inefficient calculations. Why do the young ones these days cram so much unnecessary rubbish into their formulas?
Because the entire island ran as one communal system, private time was almost nonexistent. Only in these stolen moments could Ellen study magical theory with Proveng. The spells the Lich taught were never the same as the standard ones. Sometimes he slashed the formulas ruthlessly; other times a small addition made the magic far more powerful.
I keep telling you not to draw mana that way. You grasp the theory so well, yet on this one point you never listen no matter how often I say it.
Even the method of drawing mana was different. Ordinary magic felt like pulling power from the mana heart. Proveng’s method felt like squeezing the heart until mana erupted outward.
“Isn’t this putting a strain on my body?”
Ellen clutched his chest as a sharp, stabbing pain lanced through his heart.
That’s because you still can’t extract mana this way. Once you grow used to it, you’ll be fine—and you’ll draw mana far more efficiently. Your magical talent is so abysmal that you need every scrap of help you can get.
“Hah… Anyway, tomorrow we rotate into the mine that holds the laboratory. Once we’re there, we can find the mark that leads into the Tower of Intellect, right?”
Roughly two hundred prisoners cycled through twenty mining sites in teams of ten. Starting tomorrow, Ellen would finally enter the site that contained Proveng’s old laboratory. He had been assigned there once before, but without enough free time he had never managed a proper search.
“I can finish about an hour early now, and we have a decent amount of free movement. From tomorrow we should be able to investigate.”
Find the laboratory first. Once you’re inside, you’ll not only discover the mark—you’ll also be able to neutralize that bothersome bracelet of yours.
Ellen glanced at the bracelet locked around his arm. Because of it, neither he nor anyone else here could cast magic. That single fact was why so few guards could keep all of Enis under control.
“That’s when the real work begins.”