Chapter 21
Chapter 21
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: All Nobles Are Mages
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All nobles are mages.
But not all mages are nobles.
Blue blood is innate. However, it doesn't always come solely from parental lineage. Sometimes, it manifests naturally at a certain point. Just like the ancestors of the current nobles.
In such cases, the family that recognizes the child's magical talent adopts them and raises them as a family mage. This was the most common path. Children born with mana independent of their parents' bloodline often displayed exceptional talent.
And yet.
There were those who gained mana through their own talent but were not nobles.
"Baby, baby, you're my treasure..."
A noble's bastard.
This was the case for children of commoners blessed with so-called 'grace'.
Ald was born in this manner as well.
When the late Sorren Baron was young, he had bestowed his grace upon a maid working at the academy. Once her pregnancy was discovered, she was forced to leave the academy. But in her womb lay a treasure far more precious than any job.
"Ald, you are that lord's grace. Someday, you will surely repay him..."
From birth, Ald was raised with constant indoctrination about his father. As a result, his mind burned with ambition to one day find and meet his father.
For him, there were two strokes of luck.
One was that he didn't meet his father until he turned twenty.
The other was that he was born with stronger magic than his father.
That was the only reason Ald survived. He was a mage powerful enough to defeat his father head-on when the man tried to kill him.
The Sorren Baron, nearing forty, was a cunning noble who could cast aside his pride to acquire a mage stronger than himself.
The Sorren Baron praised Ald while binding him tight.
Ald fell for it completely.
Because he yearned for a noble's life.
Because he craved his birth father's love.
For the Sorren Baron, who fulfilled his lifelong desire, Ald would do anything. Even kill knights in secret or extort citizens—deeds that would shame him in public.
Ald did it without hesitation.
And then.
The baron died.
'This guy.'
Ald glared at the green-haired man he suspected of killing his father. He hadn't expected a knight to disguise himself and invade like this, or to be so young, but even so.
It wasn't reason enough to hesitate on revenge.
The bastard raised his staff.
To avenge the one who had kept him a bastard his entire life.
Piiiing-.
A faint sound reached Enri's ears. He knew it was the hum of mana activation—mistakable for a motor, but experience told him a spell was incoming. Enri rolled across the floor to evade.
Moments later, an invisible wave crashed where he'd been, the same spell that had blasted him to the first floor earlier. Glancing at the chairs flung with the table and scattered debris, Enri mentally calculated the spell's range.
'About 2.5 meters... Casting speed-.'
Enri scooped up a nearby weapon and hurled it. It shot like a beam, only to rebound off the ceiling with a thunk! in under 0.1 seconds. Instant cast.
Assessing the speed and range, Enri clicked his tongue. This was a troublesome mage type—the natural predator of knights and soldiers.
A spell that instantly repelled arrows or attacks touching his body. It meant no surprise attacks outside the mage's awareness or another mage could touch him. Normally, such spells weren't spammable like this...
'Damn, if I'd known it was a mage, I'd have brought something.'
This was the organization's hideout.
Ald's workshop.
In his own workshop, a mage could rival a knight. He could prepare all sorts of tools and reagents in advance.
What would make a knight scoff—like summoning a pre-swing sword to strike—was possible for mages.
If mages holed up in workshops were invincible, knights wouldn't be called their counters.
Enri rolled around, eyeing picked-up debris. He hurled an axe upward hard. As Ald sneered at the spinning, visible axe...
Shoooaaa-!
Enri flung a dagger fiercely.
Paaang-!
The dagger rebounded.
"It won't work—."
Ald cut off mid-sentence, hastily casting. He stared incredulously at the axe flying toward him. Why was it coming at him?
It was simple physics.
The deliberately slow-tossed axe collided late with the fast-flung dagger mid-rebound, redirecting toward Ald. Possible because his spell repelled objects sequentially in radial waves, not everything visible at once.
"...How?"
Even witnessing it, Ald couldn't comprehend. It required perfectly calculating his spell's power, speed, and range—impossible even for him, the caster.
In this short time since meeting, he'd analyzed it fully? Beyond Ald's common sense.
"Charging type, huh."
"...You."
"Takes about a second to max output, right?"
Ald aimed his staff at Enri, now boldly exposed. But he didn't spam spells like before. Wary of more tricks from this impossible foe.
Enri smirked at the tense, glaring Ald.
"Got you figured. Ends in three moves. Surrender?"
"...You're."
"Yeah?"
"You can't kill me anyway. Then you won't get what you want."
Right.
Enri sought the secret funds the baron had hidden.
If he were truly the duke's knight who killed the baron, why need those funds? No clue...
Anyway, killing him meant no funds. If he knew the location, he'd have taken them already—why seek him out?
He wouldn't kill him. Couldn't. Ald was certain.
But.
"—You really think so?"
Enri assumed a stance, ignoring such trivialities. His blade poised to charge emanated no killing intent, yet death loomed. Like sensing execution on the scaffold despite no malice, Ald foresaw death from sword-gripping Enri.
Gulping involuntarily in tension, something sharp slammed into Ald's shoulder.
"Ugh-!?"
Paaang-!
Ald instinctively cast.
Glancing sideways, one of the earlier-repelled debris pieces was embedded in his shoulder.
He grasped it instantly: a weapon he'd flung to the ceiling had succumbed to gravity, falling onto him. Unbelievable to the end. How did he predict this position?
'—From the start.'
From beginning to end, he'd danced on Enri's palm.
By then, Enri was charging, weapon in hand.
'Damn.'
Late cast lacked power to repel a knight. Enri's weapon tip pierced the wave's weak point, collapsing the spell.
A strike precise enough to buckle knees. Accepting his end, Ald closed his eyes.
And then.
"...Why am I still alive?"
"What? You said it yourself."
Moments later.
Ald, awakening from blackout, stared at Enri incomprehensibly. Enri shrugged—what nonsense now?
"As if I'd kill you."
"Ah..."
"Plus, our Lady loves picking up talent. An unknown mage counts as talent enough."
—Pointless stabbing would earn a scolding.
Watching Enri grumble, Ald felt his rage melt away like snow. Such emotions arose only toward understandable foes. This man was incomprehensible.
Ald's conclusion was singular.
"—Bake or boil me, do as you please."
Total surrender.
Staff taken, subdued—what more could he do? Seeing Ald abandon resistance, Enri demanded one thing, as promised from the start.
"Secret funds, right? Need that money for something..."
"What?"
"Well..."
Hearing Enri's plan for the funds, Ald eyed him like he'd lost his mind.
"...For real?"
"Yup."
"What the... Sigh, fine."
Ald headed to the funds' location, chuckling dryly nonstop.
Thinking he'd fallen to someone even stranger than expected...
Ding-a-ling-.
"W-Welcome!"
"Yes! How many? All of them? N-No! It's fine!"
"Customer! Please wait a moment!"
A dessert shop on the outskirts of the barony.
This shop, built with Urara's remaining fortune on Cordelia's whim, was inexplicably booming. Customers flooded in relentlessly, leaving no time to breathe.
Yet Cordelia, watching, didn't frown or complain. She beamed as if it were her own triumph.
She'd truly earned Urara's tuition...
And proven her idea right once more.
'As expected.'
Cordelia smiled brightly.
'My ideas are never wrong.'
Despite countless worries, doubts, suspicions.
Look.
I've proven it again.
This moment solidified Cordelia's convictions further.