A Wizard's Life Is Lonely
A wizard's life is lonely. But it wasn't the kind of story about a lone wolf. It wasn't about pursuing ideals no one understood, nor was it about living in a different world all by yourself. Of course, wizards did have those lone-wolf aspects, those personal ideals no one else could grasp, and that sense of walking through a separate reality. Yet fundamentally, the reason wizards were lonely had little to do with any of those three things.
It was because people avoided wizards. Their personalities were all completely broken.
Not wanting to get close to a lunatic was simply humanity's instinctive self-defense mechanism. And since only those humans who behaved that way had survived long enough to pass on their genes, it was only natural. From a wizard's perspective, though, there wasn't much that could be done about it either. A wizard was someone who endlessly drove themselves to the brink in order to discover something within. In fact, if your head wasn't broken, you couldn't become a wizard in the first place.
Well, that was all ancient history now.
Kelton, the thoroughly commercialized wizard, was far removed from such stereotypical mages. Thousands of years had already passed since the first emperor ended the age of myths with a single sword. A great many things had happened in that time. It was only natural that wizards had changed along with everything else.
There's a saying that giving up makes things easier. The same applied to wizards. If you simply stopped growing at the exact limit of your talent and lived a relaxed life earning money, there was no reason for your mind to break. However, even someone like Kelton—who at least carried the title of wizard—had recently begun to feel sudden bursts of ambition for higher ranks. It wasn't that the desire never came; he had simply realized it too late and was in the middle of letting it pass him by.
Kelton was the owner of a truly ambiguous level of talent. He had known it for a long time and felt it countless times, but it was only very recently that the realization had sunk all the way into his soul. Having lived his entire life as a 3-star mage until becoming a 4-star wizard just the year before last, Kelton felt a faint sense of regret. If I'd known it would turn out like this, I should have trained a little harder and reached 4-star while my body could still handle it.
Salmon possess an instinct to return to the river where they were born at the very end of their lives. In that sense, perhaps one of Kelton's parents—whose faces he couldn't even remember—had been a salmon. Once he grew too old to continue working as a mercenary, he had finally returned to the hometown he had never once looked back at during his entire life.
The hometown he visited after decades was vastly different. The uncle who had abused him was long since reduced to white bones, and everyone he had once known had died and disappeared at least thirty years ago. At that point it was no different from arriving in an unfamiliar rural village, yet Kelton still felt quite satisfied. Perhaps people sought their hometowns for a reason after all. Just being there put his mind at ease.
Kelton sat in a rocking chair in the garden, puffing away on his pipe. The weather was pleasant. The sky was high and clear of clouds. On a day like this, eating a meat pie with warm herb tea would be perfect—
“Here's your warm herb tea.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
Kelton accepted the herb tea and took a sip. The tea gently warmed his body. Just the right temperature for the chilly autumn weather. He let out a satisfied sigh.
Kelton set down the empty teacup. Then he slowly opened his mouth.
“What the hell are you?”
It had been so natural that even Kelton, a man who had lived as a mercenary for decades, had accepted and drunk the tea without thinking. Eating food given by a stranger. Considering his habits up until now, it was an incredibly strange occurrence.
Kelton lowered his gaze slightly. There was a girl standing there. Dirty silver hair and skin covered in soot filled his vision, and within that, vivid light green eyes stared straight at him. She looked about ten years old. Extremely young.
The girl spoke.
“My name is Ruina.”
“I didn't ask for your name. What is this nonsense?”
“You looked like you wanted some herb tea, so I made some. Was I wrong?”
It was certainly the exact moment he had wanted herb tea, but that wasn't what Kelton wanted to hear.
“Why did you do this?”
Why had she suddenly come to him and offered tea? That was what Kelton was curious about.
At his question, the girl calmly parted her lips.
“Because I want to learn magic. Could you teach me?”
“Hah.”
Kelton pressed a hand to his forehead. Again?
Right after returning to his hometown, Kelton had dealt with this exact situation every single day for about two weeks. Ever since the rumor spread that a veteran mercenary wizard had settled in the village. The brats who had shown up with solemn expressions declaring they wanted to learn magic had only stopped coming thanks to Kelton's handling of the matter.
Kelton packed fresh tobacco leaves into his pipe and lit it with magic. Hiss. As he listened to the sound of the leaves burning, he spoke.
“If I teach you magic, what can you give me in return? If I told you to offer your life right now, could you do it?”
“That would be difficult.”
As expected.
When Kelton said something like that, the usual brats fell into one of two categories. The first type would claim they could offer their life even though they clearly didn't mean it. In those cases, they usually ran away the moment he actually tried to kill them. The second type would say their life was off-limits. Those ones were even worse. They would start spouting sweet nonsense about paying him back in the future or serving him for the rest of their lives. They were the type Kelton hated most.
Kelton lifted his pipe, preparing to shout at her to get lost.
“Once I've mastered all the magic in this world, I can die for you as many times as you want. Would that condition work instead?”
But the girl—Ruina—spoke faster. Kelton puffed on his pipe and stared at her steadily. Ruina met his gaze with an expressionless face, yet her eyes did not waver in the slightest. It was one hundred percent sincere.
Kelton let out a hollow laugh and muttered.
“Even if I took a person's life, I wouldn't have any use for it.”
“You're the one who made the demand, Sir Kelton. By the way, you have no use for it? I thought you might use souls for some kind of special magic.”
“How do you know my na—... You must have heard the villagers talking. I haven't seen your face around here. Where are you from?”
“Another village.”
Kelton didn't ask whether Ruina had parents. Even a child who knew nothing of the world could tell that she either had no parents or was living apart from them.
Tap. Kelton knocked the ash from his pipe and fell into thought for a moment. The main reason he had never taken a disciple was because he hated brats. They were all selfish, cried at the drop of a hat, and couldn't hold a proper conversation. But if he could actually communicate with her...
Leaving behind at least one trace in his later years didn't seem so bad. He also sensed a certain genius in Ruina that set her apart from ordinary children.
Kelton rose from the rocking chair and commanded,
“First, go inside and wash up. You're so filthy it's hard to look at you.”
After running away from home and wandering around, I used the power of the Dongtan Herb Tea Thief to become a wizard's disciple...
If anyone had witnessed the moment of my birth—or rather, my reincarnation—they would probably have been puzzled. Huh? Wasn't this kid born surrounded by her parents' blessings? Why did she run away? That sort of question would naturally arise.
To get straight to the point, I was not born surrounded by any parental blessings. First, let's recall the very first words I heard the moment I was born.
[―――――? Rachel, ――――.]
It was a time when I still didn't understand this world's language well. Right after emerging from my mother's womb, my father's words sounded roughly like this. If you only heard it this way, it might be interpreted as something like, Finally born, huh? Rachel, that's your name.
So for a while, I lived believing Rachel was my name. But as you already know, my name is not Rachel. It's Ruina. So what exactly happened?
I learned the truth the day I mastered this world's language and read the translated version. The truth of that day, now revealed to the public!
[You gave birth to another girl? Rachel, you useless bitch.]
That's right. In fact, Rachel was my mother's name. My father hadn't exactly welcomed me either. In an agrarian society, children were labor power. And among them, sons were considered the best. Women simply couldn't match men in biological strength and stamina. From my father's perspective, my birth was the same as pressing the SCV production button in StarCraft only to have a kakaru pop out instead. In other words, it was an utterly absurd situation.
That said, my mother wasn't entirely at fault either. A fetus's gender is determined randomly. Bad luck isn't something you can blame someone for. Besides, women in this era helped with farm work, handled household chores, and managed livestock. They were quite useful. In other words, both sides had things they could say to each other, so they could have held hands and reconciled. Unfortunately, my parents did not have Teacher Oh Eun-young on their side. As a result, our household was always a complete mess. It stayed that way until I turned ten.
But that was pretty much average for a medieval household. That wasn't the reason I ran away, though. There was another reason.
I had never once been hit by my father while growing up. From what I've already said, you can tell he wasn't exactly a kind person. Nevertheless, he never laid a hand on me. Why? Because even at a very young age, my appearance was outstanding enough that my future was clearly visible.
That's right. I ran away because of my looks. I fled before I could be sold off to a noble family. To be honest, from my perspective, being sold somewhere didn't really matter. As long as I could learn magic, it didn't matter where I ended up. However, if I was sold to a noble house, I wouldn't be able to learn magic. Even if I somehow managed to learn it, I wouldn't be able to learn as much as I wanted. That was unacceptable. So I ran away.
The result was good. Because now I get to learn magic.
So please, hurry up and teach me magic...!
“You don't have any particular talent.”
“Pardon?”
“You have no talent for magic. Your qualities are sufficient, but no matter how hard I look, I can't see anything that could be called talent.”
On the seventh day of lessons, Kelton said this to me.
Uh, um. That was a bit of a problem.