The Monster of the Labyrinth City (2)
After that, I reported the results of today’s lesson to the Guildmaster seated across from us.
Every single trainee present had neither frozen in fear nor fallen into panic before the monster; they had finished the subjugation cleanly and without incident.
The Guildmaster listened to my report—and Lumine’s—with a look of unexpected pride. The adventurers who had grown under the branch he oversaw were receiving praise from Lumine and me, and that clearly filled him with satisfaction.
Are the people of the Labyrinth City completely fearless?
It still struck me as a little strange that children only fourteen or fifteen years old could stand before a monster as if it were nothing. When I first joined the knight order and was given goblins as a training exercise, I had frozen solid. I even remember crying a little. Orca had pulled me into her arms and stroked my back until I calmed down…
And that was already seven years ago.
“I see. So in Hero Esilly’s judgment, every one of them is ready to graduate?”
I had been lost in the past when the Guildmaster’s question pulled me back. Lumine and I nodded at the same time.
“They should be more than ready for the next dungeon, don’t you think?”
“I agree.”
As a C-Rank adventurer I couldn’t claim perfect judgment, but as a former knight I would have given all fourteen of them a passing grade without hesitation. If I were still vice-commander of the capital’s knight order and still leading the unit I had founded, I might well have accepted every last one of them as soldiers.
The Guildmaster flipped through the logbook we had handed him once more, tapping his fingers against the desk. I could see him turning the decision over carefully in his mind—whether this class should graduate or not. Thinking and deliberating was his job, after all. One mistake on his part could easily produce dozens or even hundreds of casualties. That kind of stress was probably why he was bald now.
Well… if he had a beautiful, gentle wife like Enge, a little hair loss probably didn’t matter much.
Enge stepped up beside him, scolding lightly, “That sort of behavior drives good fortune away, dear. Please stop.”
The Guildmaster—whose ratio of doting husband to henpecked husband sat somewhere around six to four—cleared his throat, lifted his hand from the desk, and gave a small nod.
“Very well. This class’s lessons will end here.”
“As expected of the Guildmaster—so flexible.”
“I was already leaning that way. This particular group was exceptionally talented.”
He gave a wry smile and set the logbook down on the desk. Then, without warning, his expression shifted and he fixed us with an intense stare. The look was familiar…
Ah. I remembered. It was the same searching gaze he had worn the first time I visited the Adventurer’s Guild in the Labyrinth City—when he saw me holding Erna’s hand.
“W-why… why are you looking at us like that?”
“Just a small protest, that’s all.”
Apparently he was objecting to the fact that we had interrupted his lovey-dovey tea time with Enge. If I had known, I never would have forced the door open and barged in.
Tch… Later I’ll have to ask Enge to pat my head as compensation.
“Guildmaster, there is one more matter we would like to discuss.”
“Something additional?”
While I was still pouting, Lumine spoke up first. Explaining things to other people had never been my strong suit, so leaving it to her was the wisest choice.
Lumine glanced quickly around the room, wary of any possible leak of confidential information. If anyone else were listening, it could be dangerous.
But… they were using it so openly. Is it even a secret? The people who need to know probably already do.
“Guildmaster, are you familiar with Miss Matilda?”
“Of course I am. Has the child done something wrong?”
So he doesn’t know after all.
If he had known, Matilda’s name would have immediately brought up the subject of chantless magic. Instead, his reaction was simply to ask whether she had misbehaved. He knew of her, but they clearly weren’t close.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then are you trying to tell me that the girl can use chantless magic?”
“……What?”
Before Lumine could even finish turning her head, the Guildmaster dropped a bombshell. The single sentence left her frozen with an utterly bewildered expression. I was sure my own face looked just as strange.
How does he know that?
No—more importantly, why is he acting as if it’s nothing special?
Chantless magic was a huge deal, wasn’t it?
In this world, casting magic normally required one of two things. The first was a chant—speaking the formula aloud to construct and deploy the spell. The second was a magic circle—already drawn, so all you had to do was pour mana into it. Being able to use chantless magic meant you could construct and deploy a mana formula without uttering a single word.
People might wonder what was so difficult about that… but it was anything but easy. Humans over sixty or elves over thirty could supposedly do it without much trouble, yet a fourteen-year-old little girl?
“How can you know that and still act so unconcerned?”
I felt exactly the same as Lumine. Was the Guildmaster treating such an extraordinary child so casually simply because he himself was a monster? Did he look at a baby monster and think it only natural? If that was the case, I could almost accept it.
“It isn’t particularly strange. The child was born that way.”
He shrugged again, as if it were nothing. Enge showed no surprise either—had she already known?
The Guildmaster and Enge exchanged a few quiet words, then both nodded. Apparently our complete lack of understanding was so amusing that they had decided to simply give us the answer.
“Once you hear the reason, you’ll realize it’s truly nothing special.”
“The truth is, Matilda is a half-elf.”
Enge delivered the bombshell as casually as if she were commenting on the weather—smiling brightly the whole time while she stroked my hair.
……Wait. What?
Matilda was a half-elf?
“What?! A half-elf?!”
Lumine, sitting right beside me, shot to her feet. She was just as shocked as I was.
A half-elf…
What we had sensed from Matilda was neither elven nor half-elven mana—only ordinary human mana. Elven mana was pure and clear. Human mana always carried a faint sense of something mixed in. Elves used that difference to identify half-elves. Ever since Lumine had explained it to me in detail, I could distinguish them not only by their ears but by their mana as well.
Lumine’s own mana felt clear yet lightly clouded—the distinctive signature of a half-elf. Matilda’s, however, had felt like completely ordinary human mana.
“According to Matilda’s father… he deliberately clouded her mana.”
“If the two of you had looked carefully, you would have noticed the necklace around her neck. That is what conceals her true nature.”
At Enge’s words I cast my mind back. Yes—Matilda had been wearing a pretty necklace.
In that instant it felt as though someone had struck me over the head.
Just how badly do elves reject half-elves that a father would go so far as to cover his own child’s pure, transparent mana with something else?
In truth, that wasn’t the real problem. What worried me right now was Lumine sitting beside me. No one understood the persecution half-elves suffered better than she did—she had experienced it firsthand. On top of that, she had been betrayed by subordinates who had once worked alongside her, men so vile she could barely call them colleagues.
Reminding her once again that half-elves were still being cast out was like reopening an old wound. The situation was so terrible that a parent would alter their child’s mana so thoroughly that it registered as human rather than half-elven.
“Lumine…”
I was the only one who could comfort her. I would soothe her carefully while she teared up.
That was what I thought—until I saw her face.
“Th-there’s a magic tool like that?! Where?! Where on earth can I get one?! Guildmaster! Enge!”
Not only I, but the Guildmaster and Enge as well, were left thoroughly flustered. Lumine wasn’t grieving or distressed by the existence of such a tool—she was burning with the fierce desire to obtain it for herself.
Even Enge looked taken aback by Lumine’s obsession with magic tools…
No—perhaps it wasn’t simple obsession. Perhaps the excitement came from the thought that if she possessed such a tool, her own life might become just a little easier.
At the time, I still had no idea.
I had no idea just how far Lumine and I would go in order to get our hands on that magic tool.