Paving a Path of Flowers for My Nephew Made Me the Hero — Episode 4
"That was so delicious!"
Leo patted his stuffed belly with a look of pure satisfaction. His smile was so adorable that Alex found himself smiling right along with him.
[That really was delicious...]
[Alex, let's try a different cut next time.]
[This one was a little lean, though.]
By now Alex was well practiced at tuning out Lee Baek's voice, which now and then rang through his head like so much noise. He opened his mouth.
"Leo, let's get you washed up and ready for bed."
He honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd been able to say those words. Back in the "future," Leo had cried so hard that he would fall asleep without ever finishing the meals the neighbors brought him.
"Okay!"
Leo answered so bravely that Alex nearly burst into tears.
[So this guy's a total "nephew fool," huh.]
It was a word Alex had never heard before, yet somehow it made sense all the same. Letting Lee Baek's remark slip in one ear and out the other, Alex went to get ready for his own bath.
Perhaps because so much had happened in a single day, exhaustion had settled deep into him. The battle with the Demon King. Leo's death. His regression into the past. His meeting with an otherworldly lich. And then, at the end of it all, his reunion with little Leo. And on top of everything, I have a body again.
After twelve years as a ghost who had never felt fatigue, having actual flesh made his whole frame feel that much heavier.
Alex took Leo to the washroom and filled the wooden tub to the brim with warm water. The boy had spent the entire day down by the river, catching fish and playing, so a long, warm soak was exactly what he needed. When Alex stepped in with tiny Leo, the water lipped gently over the rim.
"It's warm!"
"Aaaahhh..."
His first proper bath in twelve years wrung a groan of bliss straight out of him. It felt as though his body were melting clean away.
[Ahh... so refreshing...]
Lee Baek had to be feeling something similar, though why he'd call it refreshing Alex couldn't imagine. He paid it no mind. He simply savored the peace — a peace so sweetly happy that he felt tears might spill from his eyes.
Freshly scrubbed, Leo came tearing toward the bed, and Alex swept him up into the air. Leo shrieked with giggles, and Alex grinned and played with him every which way until, at last, he laid the boy snugly down and tucked the fluffy blanket around him.
"Uncle, grill the meat for me again tomorrow. It was really, really delicious!"
On any ordinary night, Leo would have been chattering excitedly about what he and his friends would get up to tomorrow, but tonight's dinner had evidently been that good, because it was nothing but meat, meat, and more meat.
"It was the best meat of my whole life!"
The best of his life, from a boy of six. Alex burst out laughing — and then a twinge of guilt crept in, as if all this time he had never once managed to feed the child anything truly delicious. Maybe that was why he felt, of all things, a little grateful to Lee Baek for teaching him the recipe.
"All right. I'll make it again tomorrow night."
"Wow!"
Leo's sky-blue eyes, so like the heavens they resembled, sparkled brightly.
"Hey, Uncle? If we grill extra, can I share it with my friends?"
"Of course we can."
"And Mister Mark, and Granny Jessy, and...!"
Tucked beneath his blanket, Leo counted off his friends and the villagers one by one, folding down his small fingers with every name.
[At this rate, we're going to end up throwing the whole village a feast.]
He wasn't wrong. Sweet Leo seemed determined to share the wonderful meal he'd had with every last person in the village.
"And... Grandpa Dean, and..."
And there, mid-list, he drifted off. Leo — who had played to his heart's content, gotten his uncle back safe and sound, and eaten the finest meal of his life — fell asleep with pure happiness written across his face.
So different from back then... Not a single trace of tears marred Leo's young face, and Alex's throat went tight, his heart swelling with gratitude.
"I'm going to keep you this happy from now on, too. I promise."
What would it take to make Leo happy?
I'll have to destroy the Demon King and the demons. And he would have to hold back the monsters that had bled the continent as well. Which means I can't simply stay in the village. He needed to grow stronger, using his knowledge of the "future" to claim the treasures scattered across the land.
Thankfully, I know plenty of swordsmanship. His years as a ghost had let him watch not only "Hero Leo's" swordplay but countless knights and mercenaries besides — the blade arts of the Knight Empire's knights and the Holy Empire's paladins, the wild techniques of mercenaries, even secret styles passed down through a single line of succession. Training grounds that no outsider could ever set foot in were effortless for a ghost to slip in and out of, which had made learning all the easier. All of that accumulated knowledge now filled Alex's head. He could choose any style he pleased and make it his own.
Of course, it will take quite some time. But if it was for Leo's happiness, he would study as hard as it took.
Which means I have to leave the village. It was now twelve years before the collapse. This was a precious chance to get ahead of the Demon King's and the demons' schemes — to stop, in advance, the incidents and disasters that had once hastened the age of ruin. But I can't leave Leo alone for years on end, either. He had no idea how long it might take for a mere farmer like him to bring down the Demon King; he might even die somewhere along the way. Not that. That would be exactly like the future. What mattered most was Leo's happiness — for Leo to grow up happy and carefree. So his present has to be happy, too. Not just his future.
And so Alex decided that he would leave the village and travel together with Leo, so that the boy would never be lonely. I'll teach him the sword, help him make plenty of friends, feed him good food, take him out to see the world. He wanted to give Leo everything that death, come too soon, had cut short. Picturing the boy delighting in the wide world beyond their little village, Alex smiled to himself, warm and content. The dangerous parts were his alone to shoulder.
"Mind if we have a little chat, otherworldly lich?"
Because first, there was this matter to settle.
[Lee Baek. Call me Lee Baek.]
Careful not to wake Leo, Alex slipped out of the bed and made his way to the living room.
"Have you come up with a way to get out of my body yet?"
[The surest way is to make another Life Vessel.]
That much Alex had guessed as well.
"The materials won't come easy, though."
[Right. You'd need a top-grade magic stone, and a mountain of gold and silver on top of it. Every other ingredient is vanishingly rare, too.]
[Gathering them all together won't be easy.]
"For something that hard to make, how did yours end up so flimsy?"
Alex was remembering the glass orb that had crumbled to powder from nothing more than being held. At his question, Lee Baek hurried to defend himself.
[I made it plenty sturdy!]
[It probably got weakened — first by the shock of crossing over to this world, and then by being transferred into your body.]
"...The shock is that bad?"
[Crossing dimensions is hardly a gentle trip.]
At that, Alex quietly shelved his plan to flee to another world with Leo. If even a lich's Life Vessel — guarded by every warding spell its maker knew — could crumble to dust, then dragging a soft, mortal body across dimensions was bound to be worse. One misstep, and his entire body might tear itself apart. Frowning, Alex steered the conversation back to the point.
"So making a new Life Vessel is out of reach."
Thanks to his years traveling with the hero's party, he did know the places where such rare materials could be found — but with his current strength, obtaining them would obviously take ages. And knowing my luck, the Solenium Church will catch me and kill me long before that. Alex let out a sigh.
"Any other way?"
[Nope.]
Lee Baek's breezy reply — as though the thought had never once crossed his mind — made Alex grit his teeth.
"You little... You have no intention of leaving my body at all, do you?"
[Nope!]
The answer was blindingly, infuriatingly cheerful.
[Think about it.]
[The moment I leave your body, I lose the sense of taste. Would you want to leave?]
[It's the first food I've had in decades.]
Alex could see the logic. That didn't mean he could simply keep a lich lodged inside him forever, though.
He had weighed a few options of his own. The first — easiest and fastest — was to report Lee Baek to the Solenium Church. But if that happened, the lich would be destroyed, and Alex himself would almost certainly suffer for it too. Death, at the very least. With no intention of dying a second time, Alex moved straight on to the second option: petitioning the mages of the Magic Tower Federation for a solution. But that choice was every bit as catastrophic as the first.
"Those lunatics are out, too."
He could see it all too clearly — the mad mages swarming him with a shriek of "A test subject!!" — and a chill ran down his spine. As if he'd have to fear for his life there as well.
"Which leaves hunting down an ancient artifact..."
A fair number of ancient relics and cursed objects dealt with souls; perhaps he could use one of them to pry Lee Baek's spirit free. The problem is that anything delicate enough to separate and extract a soul that cleanly is extraordinarily rare. Naturally, none of it lay anywhere near home — such things were all hidden away in the deepest reaches of distant lands.
"If that's the case, then finding an ancient artifact and making a new Life Vessel come out to just about the same thing..."
Another sigh escaped him, unbidden. It seemed he had no choice but to put up with the otherworldly lich for quite a long while yet.
[Works for me!]
"It's a nightmare for me."
Alex dragged a hand down his dry face, and Lee Baek snickered.
[Look on the bright side.]
[I'd rather you live a long life anyway. It means I get to feel things.]
It was the first sensation he had known in decades. Lee Baek wanted to go on eating delicious food, feeling warmth and coolness on his skin, for a long, long time to come.
[So I'll protect you. Can't have you dying on me.]
Was he actually supposed to be grateful for that?
"By the way, you can't use magic right now, can you?"
Lee Baek answered as though he had been waiting for exactly that question.
[Which is exactly what I've been thinking about.]
[If I can't cast from inside your body, then wouldn't it work if you cast instead, Alex?]
Alex's eyes went wide.
"...Me?"
[Yep. I'll teach you mana cultivation and magic myself.]
Alex fell into thought. Being able to learn magic was appealing — it was powerful, and useful in any number of ways. And maybe, just maybe, I could find a safe way to cross into another world. He hadn't given up on that yet. Escape to another world: if things ever turned truly desperate, Alex was fully prepared to run with Leo, the two of them and no one else.
But... He didn't want to give up the sword, either. He knew so many styles from the "future" — letting that knowledge go to waste would be a crying shame. Besides, there are enemies magic doesn't work on. Yet the mana cultivation method that formed the foundation of magic and the aura cultivation method that formed the foundation of swordsmanship could not be learned together. You can only ever master one. Magic or the blade — which path would make him stronger?
Alex sank so deep into thought that Lee Baek grew puzzled.
[You don't want to learn magic?]
[Weird. Back home, everyone and their mother wanted to learn it.]
"I do want to learn it... it's just that I'm planning to train the sword as well," Alex said, the words coming out half like a sigh. "Since I can't have both, I'll have to choose whichever holds more potential."
[? You're training the sword too?]
[Hmm.]
[Then why not just learn my mana cultivation method? It handles both at once.]
[Like a Magic Swordsman.]
"A Magic Swordsman?"
[A class that wields magic and swordsmanship together.]
[You don't have those here?]
It was a word Alex had never heard before. He shook his head. "We don't. Mages use only magic, and swordsmen use only the blade."
[Ahh. So that's the kind of world this is.]
[Then that makes you the very first Magic Swordsman, Alex!]
[That's amazing, actually!]
[I'll teach you!]
Alex shot back, astonished. "You're telling me one person can really wield both sword and magic?"
[Yes! Whether it's the magical power mages use or the aura swordsmen use, the root of it all is "mana."]
[And the mana cultivation method I built is a way of working mana itself, directly!]
[On top of that, you can use it while moving or talking. As long as you can hold your focus, you can train it as naturally as breathing.]
Alex couldn't help but marvel. Apparently the lich squatting inside his body had been quite the extraordinary existence back in his own world.
"All right. Teach me."
If he could learn Lee Baek's magic — if it would help secure Leo's happiness — then perhaps leaving the lich's soul exactly where it was would be acceptable after all. The Solenium Church is a danger, granted. But couldn't he simply steer clear of them as best he could?
"Hold on — can I even learn magic from a different world?"
[You'll be fine.]
[If the laws governing magic were different here, I'd have been erased already.]
[The same way a human can't live underwater.]
A lich was a being made of magic. If Earth's magic and Solenium's magic had been fundamentally different things, the lich Lee Baek would not be sitting there perfectly intact.
[Well, it may feel a little alien at first,] Lee Baek conceded, [but you can talk your way around that yourself.]
"Right. Understood."
Just as swordsmanship had its secret single-line inheritances, magic had its small schools and traditions — an unusual style shouldn't cause any real trouble.
[First, let's get you feeling mana.]
[Sit down on the floor.]
Alex did as he was told, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with his hands resting on his knees, exactly like the mages he had once watched in the "future."
[Huh. You look pretty natural at that.]
[Wasn't this supposed to be your first time learning magic?]
"I've watched mages at their training before," Alex said. But magic, unlike the sword, could not be learned through the eyes alone, and so his knowledge of it was shallow at best.
[I see. I suppose the mages here train much like ours did.] Marveling a little, Lee Baek continued. [Now close your eyes and reach for "something new" in the air. You'll sense a feeling unlike anything from your everyday senses.]
[In our world it usually takes people weeks. No telling how it'll go in this one.]
"It's much the same here. A few days if you're gifted, a few weeks if you're average, and the slow ones take over a year. Those with no aptitude never feel it at all."
[Exactly like home, then.]
[Still, with me inside you, you won't come up completely empty, Alex.]
With a lich's soul — magic itself made flesh — dwelling within him, there was no way he would be entirely untouched by it.
[Mana is the wellspring of life. People, animals, plants — every living thing carries it, in greater or lesser amounts.]
[And when it enters a human body, it becomes either magical power or aura.]
Alex hung on Lee Baek's every word.
[Mana feels like solid rock. It's heavy, too, so it doesn't stir easily.]
Alex closed his eyes. A commoner farmer like himself would surely need his time, so he reached for the mana patiently, without hurrying. Something new. A sensation unlike any other. Heavy, solid stone.
And just as Alex was sinking into true focus, straining to feel the mana in the air—
...Huh?
[...Oh?]
Lee Baek, sharing Alex's every sense, had felt something. Something heavy and solid, carrying a presence so overwhelming it was nothing like the surrounding air—
[Holy crap! You're sensing mana already?!]
It was mana.