I Became the Number Three in a Fantasy World
I became the number three in a romance-fantasy novel. The third son of Count Serdis, to be exact.
The Serdis family was a prestigious magic house—more famous than I’d expected. My brothers and I all had considerable talent for magic.
“Our Arsen truly has a gift for magic. Mastering basic spells at just seven years old!”
That was what my eldest brother heard from our father.
“Our Asel is a genius! Mastering basic magic at five and nearly grasping intermediate spells already!”
That was what my second brother heard.
“What the hell is this… it’s terrifying…”
And that was what I heard from my father when I was four.
…It felt like the reactions were a bit different for me, but anyway.
It wasn’t strange for a son of a renowned magic family to be good at magic. Naturally, the family poured every resource into honing my skills, and my abilities grew steadily.
Then one day, while I was diligently walking the mage route—
“So, second brother, why exactly are we playing with wooden swords in a family of mages?”
“Knights are cool, aren’t they? That heavy, solid feeling when you swing a blade—it’s completely different from shooting magic!”
Thanks to my second brother, who chased after romance like it was oxygen, I picked up a wooden sword for the first time.
He claimed that while magic had its own charm, swords possessed a different kind of romance. Since I was an old soul who remembered my past life, I decided to humor my much younger brother’s whims.
“The book said when you hold the sword…”
“Like this?”
“Whoa! Exactly! How did you know?”
“Just… instinct?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
My brother stared at me like I’d said something incomprehensible. What? Wasn’t it obvious to just hold it in the most comfortable way?
“Uh… anyway! Now you just swing it around like this!”
“Sure… whatever.”
I’ll just swing it randomly. No big deal.
After all, there was a huge difference in our sizes. I was nine and he was thirteen—it was like a second-grader fighting a sixth-grader.
Recalling the time I’d swung a broom during classroom cleaning duty back in elementary school, I sparred with my brother using the wooden swords.
-Thud.
“Uwaaah!”
“…?”
My second brother couldn’t withstand my strike and fell flat on his back.
“Brother! Are you okay?!”
“Ugh… yeah…”
Even though he was my older brother, he was still just a kid. I carefully checked on him as he groaned that he was fine.
“Our little brother is amazing…”
“Huh?”
“You’re already the best at magic among us, and now it looks like you have talent for swordsmanship too!”
“Out of nowhere…?”
“No, seriously! That was incredibly cool!”
“Uh… thanks.”
I appreciated the compliment, but I wished he’d at least brush the dirt off his backside. The servants were rushing over, and he looked pretty pitiful.
“Young Master Asel! Are you alright?!”
“We’re sorry! We were waiting on that side because we thought Young Master Ashen might fall…”
“It’s fine. I’m not hurt at all.”
While my brother was surrounded by the servants, a giant figure clad in armor slowly approached me.
It was Reinhart Shield, the knight commander who protected our territory. Despite his usual intimidating appearance, he normally wore a gentle smile. But this time, he looked at me with an incredibly serious expression.
“…Young Master Ashen.”
“Yes?”
“If you find this uncomfortable, you may simply ignore me, but…”
Reinhart hesitated for a moment, then finally spoke.
“…Pardon?”
He was asking if I wanted to learn the sword. To me—the third son of a prestigious magic family, acknowledged by everyone as a magical prodigy.
For a second I wondered if he was joking, but his face was far too serious. So I had to ask seriously in return.
“…Do I, by any chance, have talent for the sword?”
It might have sounded incredibly arrogant coming from someone standing before a man on the verge of becoming a Sword Master. But—
“Yes. From the trajectory of your sword just now, the movement of your muscles, and even the way you handled your gaze.”
Reinhart knelt down to meet my eyes and placed one of his massive, pot-lid-sized hands on my shoulder.
“You already surpass the skill of rookie knights. All you need is time. If you begin training at such a young age, your body will grow alongside your technique, and you’ll display absurd growth in swordsmanship.”
A near-Sword Master’s guarantee of talent. It was hard to believe I possessed something my father, mother, and both brothers didn’t, but… if Reinhart Shield said so, it had to be true.
“Alright then. Let’s give it a shot. Swordsmanship, I mean.”
I decided to open up the knight route as well.
…I thought I was just going to be a mage.
And so, while steadily cultivating my talents, I eventually reached the age to attend the academy.
“Is that him?”
“Yeah… that’s the guy.”
“He’s not your average lunatic.”
“Hey, don’t make eye contact.”
I was receiving gazes filled with both fear and admiration from my classmates.
“…Guess making friends is out of the question?”
What the hell did I even do wrong?
Ashen Serdis. Just the guy who got third place in the Magic Department at Mandela Academy.
Yeah. Third place.
Fuck.
Why did the number three keep haunting me? If I was going to be good in this world, I should’ve been first. If I was going to suck, I should’ve been a total extra-level weakling. Instead I ended up stuck in this awkward middle ground as third.
The silver lining was that compared to the stares the first and second place got, mine were somewhat diluted. Since there were actual monsters among us, I at least looked relatively human.
But so what? If the looks they gave first and second were like staring at something inhuman, the looks I got were like staring at a crazy person. It was seventy percent fear and thirty percent admiration, so making friends was pretty much impossible.
I didn’t even do that much compared to what those two pulled off.
I recalled what happened during the Magic Department entrance exam.
A long line of students. The test was simple: place your hand on a mana-measuring crystal orb and cast your strongest spell. The faculty would evaluate it and assign scores.
Naturally, first place caused an incident. And unfortunately, both first and second had been standing right in front of me.
-Crash!
The moment the first-place candidate touched the orb, it shattered instantly, unleashing mana it couldn’t contain.
The terrified staff immediately marked him as first. Then the second-place candidate touched the newly prepared orb and—
-Shatter!
It split cleanly in half, mana pouring out once again. Second place was decided on the spot.
Then it was my turn. Extremely nervous, I placed my hand on the orb and—
-Crack!
A pathetically small sound compared to the previous two. All I managed was a few cracks in the orb. While the others had made it explode or split in half, I only caused a little mana to leak through the fissures.
That was when I realized—the world was wide, and there were plenty of geniuses. I’d been pretty confident in myself, too.
With that bitter feeling in my chest, I arrived at the classroom, and just as expected, everyone avoided my eyes.
Fuck.
With no other choice, I found a seat in the corner. The chair next to me scraped as someone sat down.
“What am I supposed to do, Louis?”
The pretty-faced male student sitting beside me was Louis. My personal attendant.
Since nobles attended Mandela Academy, it was possible for their servants to enroll as well. They could even take classes as proper students. Louis had enough skill with magic to safely enter the Magic Department. He was somewhere in the middle-to-lower ranks, apparently.
Well, everyone had their own strengths.
Thinking that reminded me again that I was third.
“…Louis.”
“Yeah?”
“I thought I was the strongest, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Turns out I was just a delusional psycho who thought he was the strongest.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call you a psycho…”
“It’s just an expression.”
It was a relief that Louis and I had been together for so long and could talk like friends. If he’d treated me with the same stiff formality as the other servants, my academy life really would’ve been completely friendless.
While chatting about random nonsense with my only conversation partner, the Magic Department professor eventually entered and began the lesson.
When class was almost over, I turned to Louis again.
“It’s the first day and it’s already a full lecture… I hope the next class isn’t like this.”
“Isn’t it good that there’s so much to learn?”
“I already knew all of it, so not really.”
“…That’s because you’re a genius, you know that, right?”
It was only covering the absolute basics. What else was there to do but be bored?
As soon as the tedious class ended, Louis and I quickly packed up and left the classroom.
“You brought all your equipment, right?”
“Yes. Madam prepared new ones for me…”
“Mom really pays a lot of attention to you. Good job.”
After confirming the equipment was properly prepared, we headed to the next lecture.
And of course, the moment I opened the classroom door, I felt the students’ gazes immediately dart away.
“Fuck.”
Once again, I found a seat in the corner with Louis. While we were chatting, the professor opened the front door and entered.
The professor, who had been wearing a bored expression the second he walked in, suddenly made eye contact with me.
“Huh. So the infamous madman was in my class.”
He called me a madman right from our first meeting.
When I stared at him with wide eyes, the professor looked at me like I was the weird one and continued.
“In my twelve years of teaching swordsmanship, you’re the first student to double-major across the Knight, Magic, Magic Engineering, and Economics departments, you lunatic.”
The reason was, absurdly enough, because I was doing multiple majors.
What, a guy can’t double-major or something…?