How to Turn a Genius into a Dunce. (4)
How to Turn a Genius into a Dunce. (4)
My body felt drained, as if I'd caught a severe flu.
My body shivered, as if a winter gale were slicing through me.
My ears were muffled, as if someone had shouted loudly right beside them.
I loved my mothers.
That was the truth.
If you asked if I loved them from the moment I first opened my eyes, that wouldn't be true.
But over the years, we changed, love blossomed as we cared for one another, and I truly considered them my mothers and acted accordingly.
But this... this is too much.
Really, this is too much.
You know how hard I tried, you know how difficult it was.
It's not wrong for a hero's son to want to resemble a hero, and to wish for his mothers to be happy.
"Why do you hate me so much...?"
Kael parted his lips to speak.
For the first time, he asked not about love, but about hate.
"W-what is that...."
Aria covered her mouth.
However, Kael just kept staring at his mothers with bloodshot eyes.
He recalled the moments years ago when his mothers postponed his lessons, and the day he was scolded severely even though he had successfully threaded a needle.
The moment he survived a wolf, only for them to shout at him about what he was protecting instead of worrying about him, flashed by like a revolving lantern.
No matter how much he thought about it, his mothers didn't want him to learn anything.
Even if he tried to think differently, the conclusion didn't change.
Kael hesitated for a moment before parting his lips—.
But soon, he couldn't stop himself and spoke.
"... Is it because I'm so lacking?"
"W-what are you saying, Kael!"
"Am I, heh-. Am I such a fucking idiot who can't do anything right, no matter what I learn?"
Profanity spilled from Kael's mouth.
How a young boy learned such profanity wasn't important right now.
The fact that they treated him like a fucking idiot—the mothers froze at those words.
"T-that's not it-. Kael, we were going to apologize to you today...."
"What apology...? You hit me. You said I had no talent, you said all my prayers were fake!"
"There, there is a reason-."
"... Why? Do you have problems if I learn something?"
Thud-.
His heart sank.
Cold sweat ran down his back, and his gaze trembled.
"There's no way there would be problems, we were just, just so worried about you-. That you might live like, like us-."
Alicia hurriedly offered an answer that sounded like an excuse.
"Lies.... You just don't find me acceptable."
Kael just smiled faintly, as if he had already reached his conclusion.
"No, Kael! A, Alicia too, and Aria.... We, we just wanted you to grow up normally, s-so-."
"... W-we were wrong, Kael. That, that wasn't what we meant to do-."
"We hoped you wouldn't kill something and suffer like us, Kael. I, I mean it...."
Tears welled up in the mothers' eyes, but Kael couldn't do the same.
He only blamed his own 'incompetent' talent.
"... Normally. Heh. Moms kill monsters.... And even if you have nightmares at night.... Is it normal to just pretend not to know and sleep in your arms?"
Just as the mothers sometimes saw Kael having nightmares.
Kael also saw his mothers having nightmares.
"... Don't learn? I, just live normally? Because I'm lacking, are you worried that I'll end up getting hurt badly?"
Even though they weren't blood-related, they had become family.
He wanted to be a pillar of support for his mothers so they could lean on him, but he wasn't even good enough for that?
"No matter how lacking I am, I can just try harder."
Flop-.
Kael sat down—.
"... I don't want to let go of magic, archery, or prayer. Even if you don't teach me, I'll just do it alone. I'll learn on my own-, and when I'm old enough, I'll go to the Academy and learn more there.... So, please don't tell me to give up...."
Only then did he take his gaze off the mothers and look at his own small hands.
"I'm your son, and if I don't learn anything, and Moms get insulted like at the banquet.... If we're family, but I have to hear that we're not family.... Even then, if I have to endure and live 'normally'...."
Swoosh-.
The waterfall was still falling, making a pleasant sound.
The birds were chirping, but his voice was not.
"Then I'm not a son, I'm just a stranger...."
The mothers' bodies turned cold.
Their vision shook dizzyingly, as if the ground were rising to the sky and the sky were becoming the ground.
They felt like they might collapse at any moment, but they couldn't take their eyes off Kael.
Kael was visible.
They saw the child they had abused under the pretext of making him let go of magic and other things.
The mothers stood still and sobbed for a long time—.
It wasn't until sunset that they took Kael and returned to the mansion.
They didn't take the carriage.
...
It was dinner time, but no one appeared in the kitchen.
This was true for Kael, Aria, Alicia, and Laika.
The words that he wasn't their son remained as a shock.
They realized how much Kael cared for them, but their method was not good.
They had gone to him abruptly, trying to apologize on their own terms, open up on their own terms, and tell him to let go on their own terms.
They wanted to apologize to Kael and resolve the misunderstanding, but the result was the worst.
'... Now, what should I do?'
This was the only thought in Alicia's, Aria's, and Laika's minds.
They knew that the reason they had lived on the battlefield since they were young would not be a valid reason for hurting Kael.
"... Hiccup."
Aria wrinkled her nose and shed tears.
Even after returning to the mansion, she was so worried about Kael, who had locked himself in his room instead of having dinner....
But she knew that Kael wouldn't want the mothers to approach him right now.
"Laika, Alicia...."
"Don't cry."
"... B-but, K-Kael...."
"He must have done that because he was clumsy at apologizing...."
Alicia spoke to Aria, pretending to be calm.
"... Kael needs to eat dinner."
Laika spoke briefly, but no one moved.
It was because of fear.
Fear that Kael might hate them even more.
Tick-.
The clock's second hand moved continuously.
It didn't stop, as it always had.
The three mothers owned a large mansion, but they stayed in one bedroom and couldn't step outside.
Like animals trapped in a cage, they just paced and walked around inside the bedroom.
They needed time to sort out their emotions.
They needed time to sort out their feelings.
Tick-, tick-.
The second hand rang out again.
The clock in Kael's bedroom moved just the same.
'I can do it if I try. Until everyone acknowledges me.'
He knew what the mothers were trying to say, and now he vaguely understood what they expected of him.
However, that was exactly why he couldn't let go.
Kael took out the notebooks he had written in so far from under the bed and spread them out on the desk.
From the time he first started learning mana, the half-year he received useless teachings.
And the notebooks he had written in for a week while learning things he couldn't achieve were filled with writing.
He examined every letter, every word.
Even if the mothers wouldn't teach him, he wanted to be a hero's son.
He knew that the more he grew up 'normally,' the more his mothers would be insulted.
He thought about letting it all go, but he hated that the people who saved his life and even offered him love were being insulted like that.
'And, it's a world where strength is everything.'
Above all, it was a world where the strong were treated well.
So, it wasn't for his mothers, it was for 'me.'
He thought he had to become strong for his own sake, even if his mothers disliked it, and he believed so.
Scratch-, scratch-.
'I want to get stronger, even a little faster.'
Kael wrote down the contents of the magic book that were still vivid in his mind into a new notebook, exactly as they were in the original text.
And he began to examine what he had studied one by one.
Most of it was criticism of his own inadequacy, but occasionally useful content appeared.
'Remembering' and 'recollecting' were different.
Looking at the text, Kael recalled the day he first moved mana.
Clearly, the colorful clusters of light moved following his fingertips, and....
He didn't know the details, but it felt like it had permeated his body.
The day he threaded a needle was the same.
He felt something move and permeate his body.
At the time, he was scolded so badly he didn't have the leisure to think about it in detail, but now it was different.
Creeak-.
Kael threw open the window.
The moonlight rippled softly, and the cool breeze blowing in fluttered the curtains.
It was just a dark sky, but at least in Kael's vision, clusters of light were visible.
Unlike what he had always seen in the mansion.
The mana scattered in nature, where all kinds of colors resided, was like that.
'When I killed the wolf, I think I moved something inside my body....'
Even if he didn't understand it, Kael moved first.
He reached out to the clusters of light and watched the clusters of light winding around his fingertips.
Remembering and recalling the time he fired magic, he closed his eyes—.
Soon, he realized the three rings wrapping around his heart in his mind.
Two were glowing blue, but one had lost its light.
'Circle.'
Kael intuited that the three rings engraved on his heart were Circles.
Since the only magic book he had read was written by Alicia, it didn't contain definitions or concepts of Circles.
But it did contain information about how some magic required a minimum number of Circles.
"... If there are more Circles, I'll definitely be able to get stronger quickly."
Kael focused all his attention on the empty Circle.
Just as the heart circulates blood, he felt the Circle engraved on his chest circulating mana.
He realized that when that mana circled his body once and came out, the mana in the Circle increased, even if only a little.
It was the principle of 'Tonap'.
Inhaling the mana of the great nature through breathing, refining it, and accumulating it in the Circle.
It was part of the process of a mage creating a Circle and accumulating mana in the empty Circle.
Hummm-.
Kael looked at the mana gathered at his fingertips and muttered inwardly as if commanding it.
'Come into my Circle.'
Kael was someone who handled mana even without a Circle.
Naturally, the mana of the great nature, moving according to his will, gathered around Kael's body and—.
Whoosh-!
Breaking through the restrictions that were waiting for his body to forcibly adapt.
He forcibly engraved a blue light into the third Circle.
The first and second Circles were originally blue, but now they shone brightly like a meteor shower.
A faint blue light began to hover in the third Circle.
"... H-hng-!"
Blue veins popped out on his skin, and the blood vessels in his eyes burst, turning his eyes red.
The bruise he got from sparring with Laika deepened, and now it was turning black.
"U-uuaaaagh-!"
Before long, the third Circle shone blue, but the mana did not stop and permeated Kael's body.
The mana that had lost its place eventually gathered in Kael's heart on its own and began to create a vessel.
Hummm-!
Above the three rings, a fourth Circle began to form.
At the same time, as the price for accepting mana he couldn't handle into his body, the mana began to turn into poison.
Kael couldn't withstand the pain, knelt down, and collapsed.
Creeeeak-!
"K-Kael-!"
At that moment, Alicia, who noticed the abnormal flow of mana, threw open the bedroom door.
Together with Laika and Aria.
"A, w-what on earth are you doing...!"
Alicia approached to scatter the mana, but it was mana in the process of forming a 'Circle'.
She didn't know what would happen if she scattered it.
Crackle-!
Eventually, Alicia opened a dimensional gate.
To the place where the Blue Tower Master, the Pope, and the Elf Chief were, to the inn in the Mayhead territory.
Because Kael would be poisoned by mana the moment the Circle formed, and it was clear he would be badly hurt....
Somehow, to save the dying child.
To ask for help.
To forcibly scatter the Circle through 'Forbidden Magic'.