Irie Argensia (2)
As I strolled out along one edge of the garden, every eye—servants and Ellen alike—snapped to me in an instant.
"Oh... Young Master Irie?"
"Huh? What's this? Since when does dear big brother leave his room?"
Blatant sneering. The way the surrounding servants snickered along with Ellen's jab told me everything I needed to know about how this body was usually treated.
Instead of answering him, I swept my gaze over the ground and picked up a branch of roughly the right size. Fwoosh! I gripped it and gave it a test swing—the feel of it in my hand wasn't half bad.
I suppose this will have to do.
At my nonchalant attitude, Ellen's brow knotted. Apparently he'd decided I was ignoring him on purpose.
"Are you even listening—"
"Hey, squirt."
Branch held loosely in my right hand, I flicked my gaze up at him.
"Hit me with the spell you're most confident in."
"...What?"
In an instant, Ellen's face hardened like stone.
"Did you eat something bad for lunch today... or are you just tired of living?"
The servants' reactions weren't much different from his.
"Why is Young Master Irie acting like this all of a sudden? He couldn't cast a single spell before."
"He's been cooped up in his room every single day—no doubt about it, he's finally lost his mind."
"Though he does look strangely confident, doesn't he..."
Honestly, I couldn't call any of that a strange reaction. Anyone who knew the Irie of the past would have thought exactly the same.
"You think you can block my flames with that rotten old twig? You get hurt, that's your problem, not mine."
A voice blended half of irritation, half smug superiority. Ellen stretched one hand out lightly in front of him, as if swatting away a bothersome insect.
"..."
But when I didn't so much as twitch from my stance, branch in hand, Ellen heaved a deep sigh.
"Phew... Looks like someone's in need of an education."
The words were barely out of his mouth before he began his incantation.
"Burn the foe before me—"
⟨ FIREBALL ⟩
Fwoooosh!
True to his deliberate incantation, a fireball of genuinely massive size came shooting from his fingertips. He'd poured everything into firepower and left the thing slower than molasses, but it was more than enough to send the magic-ignorant servants shrieking and scattering.
What caught my eye, though, wasn't the Fireball bearing down on me.
So I can still see it—even in this body.
From the moment Ellen had begun to chant, tens of thousands of crimson threads had been weaving themselves together at his fingertips. It was a sense I'd honed in my past life, staking my life against every strongman worth the name.
Magic, in the end, was nothing more than a geometric artifice born of those threads tangled together. And no matter how colossal the spell, at its heart there invariably existed a single core that held the entire structure together.
It was never an ability bound to my old body.
I couldn't say by what principle, but even in this frail young noble's flesh, without so much as a pinch of mana, that 'eye' had carried over perfectly intact. No—if anything, this clean, mana-free body was so free of impurities that the weave of the threads stood out even more sharply than it had in my past life.
The flames were nearly on top of me before I knew it. I lightly extended the branch in my hand and thrust—precisely at the core at the center of that tangled web.
Hup!
At my briskly driven strike, the enormous fireball vanished as if it had all been a lie—without leaving behind so much as a wisp of heat.
"...Huh?"
"What just..."
"Young Master Ellen's spell—it vanished...!"
A peculiar silence fell over the garden. Ellen, who had been jutting his chin in arrogance not a minute before, now stood with his mouth hanging open like a fool's.
"What in the world... why did my spell...?"
The magic he'd believed flawless all his life, wiped away by a single jab of his mana-less brother's stick.
To the boy reeling from the impossible, I flicked the branch clean and spoke.
"First problem."
"...What?"
"You were so busy chasing firepower that the attack itself came out sloppy. Honestly? Dodging it wouldn't be hard."
Ellen's lips trembled. Here was a genius who had never once in his life heard a single word of criticism about his magic. Now that the family's failure had handed one out, the boy's red eyes flooded with shame and confusion.
"D-Don't make me laugh!! You can't even use magic properly, and one lucky block and suddenly you're qualified to judge MY magic?!"
Reason gone, Ellen thrust out his hand again, veins standing at his temple. The arrogance had died long ago; what remained was a boy desperate to prove his talent.
"O flames—!"
But...
Ellen's incantation never ran its course.
Tat!
Kicking off the ground and closing to point-blank range in the same breath, I drove the branch once more into the fireball he was cobbling together.
Bam!
A spell struck down before its core could properly take shape lost all its strength the instant my branch touched it, bursting apart into nothing.
"Hhk..."
In the same moment the spell was erased, my strike had come to a stop at Ellen's throat. A little further, and it would have been a mortal wound.
"Wh-What is this..."
From Ellen's frozen mouth—having forgotten even how to speak—there escaped nothing but a hollow breath.
Watching him, I added in a low voice.
"Second problem."
"...!"
"You were so focused on your attack that you left your whole body wide open. In a real fight, you'd already be dead."
Thud.
When I finished, tucked the branch away, and turned to go, Ellen crumpled onto the lawn in a graceless heap.
Only once the scene had more or less wrapped up did the servants, who had been watching with bated breath, begin to find their voices one by one.
"Y-Young Master Irie just beat down Young Master Ellen...!"
"Impossible... how, without a drop of mana...?"
"Has he been hiding an ability like that all this time...?"
Their attitudes had flipped so completely that I nearly laughed. Well, I could understand the fuss. The family's resident failure had just toyed with the family's golden boy—never mind that the kid was barely twelve. Of course they were floored.
Easy. So this is all it takes.
Inside, I let myself feel thoroughly smug. The reality was a little different.
I hadn't used any particular technique—had barely warmed up, really—and yet the blood had drained from my legs and every muscle in my body was screaming. This frail body simply could not keep pace with the instincts of my past life.
Haah... this is seriously going to drive me crazy.
My breath had climbed all the way to my chin, but I put on a show of calm and wiped the sweat from my brow. Getting this stamina-starved body into working order, it seemed, would take some time.
And Ellen... was still staring blankly into empty air. Apparently the shock of this defeat ran deeper than I'd thought.
Granted, it was maybe a bit harsh a pill for a twelve-year-old brat to swallow. But what could I say? That's combat for you.
Tossing the branch, its purpose served, onto the ground, I left the sea of bewildered faces behind me and strolled out of the garden. I'd come for exactly one thing, and I'd gotten it.
I thought that would be the end of my dealings with Ellen...
It took precisely one day for that comfortable assumption to blow up in my face.
The next morning, the boy turned up at my door, haggard and dark-circled, hammering on it without mercy. Then he dropped to his knees on the spot and started bawling his eyes out, begging me to teach him.
Too annoyed to deal with it properly, I tossed him a few stances and breathing techniques and shooed him off.
That was the seed of my ruin.
Over the month that followed, I somehow acquired one very large pet dog.
Its true identity: Ellen. Yes, that half-brother of mine—the very one who never shut up about being a 3-Circle mage.
"Brother! No—Master!!"
"Ah, seriously—get off. Please."
Ellen clung to my leg without the slightest intention of budging. I pressed a palm against his forehead and pushed.
"Brother! That breathing technique you taught me yesterday! I stayed up all night practicing it—seriously, all night! And my casting speed feels at least twice as fast now! Did you see it just now?!"
"Didn't see it, don't care. Now go play by yourself somewhere else."
"Aw, come on, just watch one more time! Please! I still need to know if my spell structure's too simple... You'd be able to tell, Brother!"
Where had the arrogant genius of a month ago gone, leaving behind only this ceaseless chatterbox of a brat? Sure enough, no good ever came of sticking my nose in where it didn't belong.
"Fine, fine—I get it, okay? So let's start by keeping some distance. Please!"
Just as I was trying to pry the leech off me by force—
Knock, knock.
A polite, rhythmic rapping at my door.
"Young Master Irie, this is Alfred. May I come in?"
"Come in."
Creeeak.
Alfred, the old butler who ran the entire Count Argensia household. His hair had long since gone snow-white, but those sharp eyes of his were still very much on active duty.
He paused for a moment at the sight of Ellen sprawled on the floor, hanging off my leg. Then he smoothed his expression back into professional neutrality with practiced ease and bowed his head.
"The Lord of the House requests your presence in his study, Young Master."
"...The Lord of the House? Me?"
The old man who'd spent my entire life treating me like I didn't exist, calling me the family's disgrace—why now, of all times? None of it made sense.
To my gaze, searching desperately for a reason, Alfred added in a voice that was impeccably polite and somehow cold all at once:
"He says there is a matter to discuss concerning what is to become of you, Young Master Irie."