Chapter 33
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 33
Chapter Title: The Reason for Distrust (6)
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Scarlet Burns was born into the Burns family.
As the youngest of one son and two daughters, she had received a thorough noble education from a young age.
And among them, Scarlet received the most support for her studies.
The Burns family was renowned down the generations as a lineage of mages.
True to their name, they specialized in fire magic. Not only the family head, but her older sister and brother as well—all wielded fire magic as their specialty.
To carry on that legacy, the family head had even taken as his wife a noblewoman from another house who specialized in fire magic—Scarlet's mother.
Within such a family, Scarlet had demonstrated her prodigious talent from childhood, boasting an enormous mana capacity.
The family head, her mother, her older brother, and her older sister—all showered Scarlet with attention and affection, delighted by her gifts.
The young Scarlet basked in the love and focus of everyone around her, living a childhood filled with joy.
Even after entering the academy, Scarlet consistently ranked at the top of her class.
Her innate vast mana reserves and her insatiable curiosity about magic caught the eyes of her academy instructors.
And so, Scarlet graduated from the academy as the top student.
Her family proudly declared her academy valedictorian a point of honor for the house.
They said she was the family's true pride.
At that time, Scarlet believed this moment—right here, right now—was the pinnacle of her happiness.
But that happiness soon plummeted into an abyss.
After graduating from the academy, Scarlet wanted to prove her abilities to the world.
Her family fully supported her ambition.
Had this been a time of peace, they might have urged her to rest on her laurels as the academy's top graduate and live quietly as a noble.
But with the Demon King on the verge of resurrection, demons and heretics lurking in the shadows, they judged that joining a hero party and achieving results would bring even greater honor to the family than staying idle.
When she first set out for the guild, Scarlet was brimming with dreams and hope.
She could bring even more glory to her family.
Through her exploits, she could earn even more love from her family.
She could see her family's joyful faces more often.
Scarlet's true motivation lay not in flaunting her magic, but in receiving the affection of her beloved family.
At the guild, she met her first hero and his companions, forming a party together.
They were thrilled to hear her family name, excited that a mage from the famed Burns house had joined them.
The first month's journey went smoothly.
Monsters around F-rank difficulty posed no challenge to the newly formed hero party, and Scarlet's magic dispatched them with ease.
As the party honed their skills, they progressed to hunting E-rank and even D-rank monsters.
And then the trouble struck—one month in.
It happened on the road to the next village.
A horde of monsters, all D-rank or higher, ambushed Scarlet's hero party mid-travel.
The party, used to facing no more than three monsters at a time in sequence, suddenly confronted over ten.
It was their first taste of chaotic melee.
But the party members didn't panic too much, even as they struggled.
Because Scarlet Burns was with them.
They trusted that if they just held out a little longer, Scarlet would unleash her high-powered magic and sweep the monsters away.
But as Scarlet tried to cast her spell, it fizzled out midway.
The first failure left her flustered, but she hurriedly tried again.
Try after try—second, third time—her spells kept unraveling.
"W-what are you doing, Scarlet! Hurry up and cast the spell!"
"Scarlet, fire already!"
"I-I know! Just wait, why! Why is this...!"
-Kraaaah!
"Kyaaak!"
In the end, Scarlet desperately focused and managed to cast on her sixth attempt, wiping out the monsters.
Fortunately, no one in the party suffered serious injuries.
But it had been a close call, so her comrades laid into her.
"What were you thinking, taking so long to cast?!"
"We almost died!"
"Think you can slack off just 'cause you're a noble?!"
"N-no, it's not like that! I was trying to cast! But it just... unraveled in the middle!"
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"Hold on, Scarlet's telling the truth. I saw her try to cast several times, but it kept failing."
"What?"
At the words from another rearguard member who had been standing by with Scarlet, the rest of the party turned eyes filled with doubt and suspicion toward her.
Scarlet's hero party put off heading to the next village for the moment and tested to verify her issue.
For safety, they took a quest to clear low-difficulty monsters that appeared in large numbers.
It was the kind of quest no one usually picked—too many foes, exhausting to finish, and meager pay.
And there, they witnessed Scarlet's problem again.
In the chaos of multiple monsters swarming, her spells formed only to unravel repeatedly.
Having identified the issue anew, they shifted from their previous friendly demeanor to grilling her relentlessly.
Why is this happening?
Scarlet knew full well how serious her problem was.
That's why she desperately analyzed it and pinpointed the cause.
It was a form of divided concentration.
Casting magic required immense focus, and Scarlet's talent included that very focus.
But the instant a battle turned chaotic, or a comrade was in peril...
Her attention veered elsewhere.
Worry for her comrades' safety.
When hordes charged in, calculating how many her magic could fell.
Those thoughts pulled her focus excessively away from the spellcasting.
An ordinary person could balance it out.
But Scarlet's focus was too sharp; the moment any worry or distraction arose, she couldn't distribute it evenly—her spell collapsed.
It never surfaced at the academy.
Demonstrations were controlled, duels one-on-one—few distractions to worry over.
Past monster hunts involved few enough foes that three or four didn't scatter her concentration.
But more than that? She fretted.
Anxiety from numerical disadvantage.
Even knowing they could be picked off one by one, the sight of so many shattered her focus.
Scarlet explained her self-diagnosed root cause to her comrades.
"Don't worry. I can fix this kind of thing in no time! Just give me a little patience."
Scarlet believed her comrades would wait for her.
And that she could resolve her issue quickly.
"No, we can't wait."
"Huh?"
"How can we drag around a mage with such a critical flaw?"
"Hero parties can't stay in one place for over a month anyway."
"W-we could file for an extension..."
"Think the guild will approve? 'Can't leave 'cause our useless mage can't cast when monsters swarm'?"
"Useless?! I'm...!"
"You are useless. A mage's job is dropping heavy firepower on strong foes or mobs alike! If you can't handle mobs, you're useless!"
Stunned by the cold, cutting words from comrades she barely recognized, Scarlet reeled in shock.
The smiles that once said "With you here, we're invincible" were gone.
"Even top of the academy—that a lie too?"
"Hey, let's just find a new mage in the next town."
"Yeah, better idea."
"W-wait! What are you saying?!"
"What else? You're out."
With those words, her first-ever party abandoned her and headed to the next village without her.
Faced with such heartless rejection, Scarlet could only stare blankly in despair.
But she couldn't just collapse there.
Scarlet joined another hero party.
This time, to avoid repeating the ordeal, she disclosed her weakness upfront—and expressed her determination to overcome it.
Some parties rejected her, but others accepted.
Each time she joined a new one, Scarlet burned with resolve to fix her problem.
But her issue never resolved.
And no party stuck with her to the end.
Repeated failures and farewells eroded her confidence bit by bit.
Anxiety and impatience began gnawing at her heart.
'Why, why, why, why, why!'
Scarlet hated it.
She hated hearing she was useless.
She hated herself for failing to fix the problem no matter how hard she tried.
Born to the prestigious Burns family, academy valedictorian.
Yet now, tarnishing her house and past glories—she hated that self most of all.
'Right... the academy...!'
In her desperation, Scarlet thought of the academy.
She recalled her mentor there, the one who taught her.
If the teacher who praised her most, called her the most rewarding student—surely they could offer a solution.
Scarlet headed to the academy and consulted her former instructor.
The teacher greeted her warmly at first.
The one Scarlet revered in her heart as her mentor.
But upon hearing her out, the teacher spoke in a flat, chilling tone she'd never heard before.
"You've wasted your time. Who'd have thought you had such a defect. Now leave."
"T-Teacher?"
"Can't even control your focus? After all those battles? The verdict's in, then. Scarlet Burns, your problem is incurable. What a spectacle."
Scarlet still couldn't forget the teacher's icy words from that day.
"Who knew the Burns family would produce such a failure."