The Mage Milia (1)
Mages are those who understand the laws of this world better than anyone.
They sense mana, move its currents, and use them to meddle with the world itself. Whether one could do such a thing depended on talent, on training…… and yet.
"So this world is layered."
From the moment she was born, Milia could see every one of those currents.
It was an anomaly so profound that even calling it talent felt like an insult to the word. From the instant she opened her eyes, Milia could behold two worlds at once—the ordinary one, and the one saturated to the brim with the flow of mana—and that made her different from everyone else.
And being different……
"Uuu! You witch!"
…was a surefire way to invite discrimination.
Unloved by her parents and regarded by her peers as something unsettling to be around, Milia learned first of all how to protect herself. Yes—she learned how to go numb to all of it.
As she drifted one step further from other people, she drew all the closer to that world overflowing with mana.
The things others called magic. Abilities accumulated, analyzed, and realized over dozens, hundreds of generations. The power to twist and splice the currents and impose one's will upon the world.
"If I do it this way, it sparkles."
That was how Milia came to manifest magic purely by instinct.
A mage only truly earns the name at the point they can touch the currents. And Milia had already been a mage the very moment she was born.
A child born not as a human, but as a mage. And so, a child who was discriminated against.
It did not take long for word of such a child to reach the Magic Tower.
"Those who scorn and blame you are nothing but the ignorant."
"You are more special than anyone—a being that shows what lies beyond the human."
"You are the very symbol of evolution."
"So there is no need to lend your ear to the voices of mere common folk, no need to humor them at all."
The masters of the Seven Great Magic Towers of the continent. They had reached the very extreme of magic and now lived half a step inside another world entirely.
Naturally, their perspective was different too. They looked out upon a world much like the one Milia saw.
That was why they never paid any mind to the strangeness Milia had carried since childhood. From where they stood, she was simply more gifted than the rest.
But no. For all that she resembled them, Milia differed from them in one decisive way.
"What shall we do about those people?"
The moment Milia was sold to her parents for a mere handful of gold coins, the Tower Masters had wanted to punish them. Even they had never imagined someone would sell off their own child.
Blind, witless fools who could not recognize a treasure. Idiots who did not know how to love their own offspring.
Yes—in a sense, the Tower Masters were completed beings. Their confidence came hand in hand with the knowledge and insight to justify it.
"How does it feel?"
"Do you not resent them?"
"No."
"Does it not sadden you?"
"It doesn't sadden me either."
"Do you pity them? Or do you miss them?"
"Do I need to think about any of that?"
"I see."
But Milia was not a completed being. For all her extraordinary aptitude, she made no effort to come to know the world of her own accord.
Watching the girl with her heart sealed shut, the Tower Masters sighed.
Not because they possessed some particularly humane streak—it was simply that they knew emotion, in and of itself, could serve as an engine.
"For now, we'd best do what we can."
And so they reached a conclusion regarding her situation: deferment. Perhaps emotion would prove necessary at some juncture, but they could hardly let the innate talent of a girl so abundantly gifted simply rot away unused.
And with that, ten years passed.
"Have you understood all of it?"
"Yes."
"Then this one is next."
From each Tower Master in turn, across the towers they governed, distilled from lifetimes of accumulated history—the very essence of magic. And Milia was absorbing all of it like a sponge.
"This is a spell you can handle at your current level. Memorize it within three days."
"Yes, sir."
She remained as expressionless as the day the Tower Masters had first come for her, living each day absorbed in nothing but magic—aside from the bare minimum of food, clothing, and shelter.
It was not that she loved magic. She simply did as she was told, because she had been told to do it.
A puppet with almost no will of her own, questioning nothing of her masters' commands, whatever they might be. That was Milia.
"Now, if I pierce here……"
Jolt!
"Haha! Just like that, we can observe the rigid contraction! The human body is a universe unto itself—so many mysteries to unravel."
She had lost her morality, her sociality, her humanity. To her, another human being—so long as her master commanded it—was nothing more than a specimen.
Perhaps that was why.
"Mom?"
It was on one of her routine experiments on a human subject that she noticed the face on the corpse looked familiar. Whether the person had been murdered and preserved from the start, or had simply drifted into the tower by coincidence, she did not know.
Even as she looked down at her parents' bodies laid out on her experiment table, Milia felt nothing at all.
Yes. That was probably why.
"……I'm a strange one, aren't I."
It was then that she first noticed her own wrongness.
No one had intended it. The Tower Masters could surely have investigated whose bodies ended up on her table, if they'd cared to. But from the moment the girl's uncanny blankness began to make her look less like a disciple and more like a puppet, something had already gone crooked.
"……"
Emotions long forgotten budded quietly inside her heart.
Gazing upon the remains of the parents she had dissected with her own hands, Milia wept, tear after tear, her face utterly blank.
But she could not yet understand why she was crying.
Why was she weeping? Guilt toward her parents? Resentment? Or had a speck of dust simply landed on her conjunctiva?
The Milia of that moment could not even tell that much. For all she had drawn near to the essence of magic, she stood endlessly far from humanity and society alike.
And even at that turning point in her life,
"Milia, are you there! Today I've compiled a new spell just for you! The other dolts couldn't manage it, but you'll surely learn it. This is nothing less than a simplification of a high-tier……"
"Yes. I'm coming."
Not a single soul noticed. Milia said nothing of it either—she considered it no more remarkable than anything else.
And so, without even realizing it, Milia was going quietly, piece by piece, mad.
Several more years passed.
Then came an unusual occasion—all the Tower Masters gathered in one place, just as they had been on the day they first came for Milia.
"A Hero, you say? Hah. Though I confess I don't follow—why would you share such intelligence with the rest of us?"
The Tower Masters had never been particularly fond of one another, so the question followed as naturally as night follows day. Information like that would have been far more useful hoarded alone. Yet here it was, handed over with no strings attached. Suspicion was inevitable.
"Hmph. You think this is for your benefit? This is work for the world's sake. Work for the sake of evolution. I assumed that even among rivals, certain compromises stood—I was wrong, apparently?"
"You mean to say……"
The Tower Master who had brought the intelligence in the first place governed Sidus Magic Tower, the tower devoted to divining the future and fate through the sun, the moon, and the stars. He was the mage who saw furthest in all the world—and the one most desperately obsessed with humanity's evolution.
"Milia. For the time being, we place that child at the Hero's side."
"Hmm……"
The words were bare conclusions, but the Tower Masters understood exactly what the Master of Sidus was thinking.
Each tower wielded different magic and ran itself by different methods, yet they all shared a single creed: the evolution of mankind. Becoming something more. And the Hero was a being whom fate itself had burdened with becoming humanity's Transcendent. The more treacherous the destiny, the more extraordinary the reward.
And the Tower Masters regarded the Hero not as a human being, but as a existence one step beyond human.
"With Milia's eyes—if anyone can uncover it, that girl can."
Create a Hero artificially. Turn every person alive into a Hero. And through that, stand upon this world as the one completed, singular species. That was the shared, secret ambition of the Seven Magic Towers.
"If only we can study the Hero and pry open the secrets of that existence! Would even a few sacrifices not be a small price to pay?"
And so the observation of the Hero through Milia began.
What Milia was instructed to do was, in truth, simple.
"A plea— it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Milia Asrin. Ah, a—a mage. I look forward to working with you?"
Uncover the Hero's secret. And to that end, she was to use that body however she saw fit—so ran her orders.
"Wow! Thank you, everyone! Let's all work hard to save the world together! We're the proud Hero Party, after all!"
"……"
But Milia, entrusted with such a special mission, was, regrettably……
How am I supposed to respond to that?
…blessed with the worst social skills imaginable, and could do absolutely nothing with the Hero.
Esmeralda, the Hero, stared for a long while at Milia as she tilted her head alone in silence—before long, she gave up and wandered off to talk to someone else.
And so Milia's journey began.
Not that she had been idle in the meantime. Her first order of business was to observe the Hero, Esmeralda.
"Is something the matter, Milia?"
"Ukh—ghk…… N-no, nothing."
But unlike the corpses she was used to, Esmeralda was alive—and she spoke to her.
It was unprecedented terror.
Until then, the only "conversation" she'd ever had was with the Tower Masters, who were nearly as broken as she was. Dealing with Esmeralda was unbearably difficult. And since the Tower Masters had warned her not to get caught, Milia couldn't approach the Hero or speak to her any more than strictly necessary.
A problem with no discoverable answer—the first she had ever faced in her life.
I don't know what to do. What do I say? What do I ask, and what am I supposed to investigate? I could manage it fine if it were a discourse on magic.
She simply had no idea how to talk about anything other than magic.
And so Milia shuffled along at the edges of the Hero Party, hovering awkwardly—until one day,
"Sob, sob! The monsters in the forest did this to our village! I'd love revenge, but I don't have the strength! Please, Hero—please, I beg you……! Please……!"
…she met a demon who approached them disguised as a human. Yes—she saw through him in a single glance.
It wasn't through any special power. She simply knew. The moment she laid eyes on Jim, she knew he was a demon.
As a mage, she'd always had a fair amount of confidence in her own discernment. Indeed, she had seen through Jim's identity at first sight.
And yet she never brought it up. The reason was nothing more than—
Everyone else is staying quiet about it, so I'll just keep my mouth shut too.
…she was simply too timid.