Childhood
Fortunately, Hesti was not a wicked witch.
I had worried that she might treat me harshly like a slave or even try to sell me off to someone, but at least during the time we were together, there was no sign of such behavior.
Instead, she would call me her “body price” and hand over a large sum to my parents, buy expensive gifts in villages we passed through, and even massage my legs gently because I looked tired.
Normally, wouldn’t a disciple have to do something like that for a master? When I asked why she went so far to help, Hesti massaged my thigh with care and replied.
“That happened a year ago. Like usual, I was quietly locked away at home doing magical research when some evil witch came looking for me. She threatened to stretch my arms and legs out like skewers if I didn’t fulfill my duty as a witch who makes successors! Cornered like that, I had no choice but to leave on a journey….”
“Is that witch perhaps your master’s master?”
“That’s right! She’s a mean witch with a terrible temper who’s always trying to bother me and can’t stand it!”
From what I heard, the master of that witch seemed to have a short-tempered and forceful personality. In contrast, Hesti was rather easygoing and relaxed, so it made sense that they were opposites in character.
Before long, Hesti began complaining about her usual grievances toward her own master. This is completely off track. I listened silently with a smile, then subtly asked when I wanted to bring the topic back to myself.
“It must have been hard. But when exactly does the witch’s duty end?”
“There’s only about two weeks left.”
“So you were planning to win her favor in advance because you were worried I might change my mind.”
“…As expected, our disciple is smart enough to read a master’s heart perfectly!”
This person really can’t lie. I smiled at her innocent, grandmother-like innocence. Suddenly, an idea came to mind and I asked.
“What if I had rejected the offer to become your disciple? What would you have done?”
“I was going to run away from the country so that human wouldn’t be able to chase me!”
“That’s pretty extreme….”
I thought about it for a moment, then said I didn’t need to be spoiled this much. I hadn’t even planned to leave until I finished reading Hesti’s books. Even with my past life included, Hesti was a lot older than me, so I felt a little sorry for her.
After traveling, Hesti’s house turned out to be what people called a log cabin. It was located far from the city in some deep mountain area. Thanks to Hesti’s plant-handling magic, no human or beast seemed able to approach nearby.
I boldly opened the door and followed Hesti inside. The moment I looked around, I felt like I’d been hit on the back of the head with a hammer, and tears immediately welled up. Hesti looked startled by my expression.
“Hup, oooh….”
“W-why are you like this, disciple?! Are you regretting agreeing to become my disciple after seeing the house?! D-don’t worry! This is because I rushed the journey and it’s a mess… Normally it’s much tidier!”
“It’s not that… It’s just that when I saw the books, my heart was so full it overflowed….”
“Aah, you startled me! …Ah, I remember now. You said reading books is your greatest wish in life, didn’t you? So happy that you’re crying like this?”
“Yes, I think I’m the luckiest person to have been born….”
“I didn’t know our disciple could make that kind of expression…”
The thing that broke my tear ducts was none other than the bookshelves. This was the first time in my life that I encountered such a moving scene. I could no longer hold back the feeling of something overflowing in my chest.
Maybe I was born for this very moment. I knelt in front of the bookshelves and clasped my hands in prayer, thanking the heavens for my existence.
Finally, after the tears that had made my eyes swell enough to burst finally subsided, I sniffled and turned to Hesti.
“Master. What is the magic introductory text?”
“The book pinned on the far left of the bookshelf.”
“Can I take it out?”
“Sure! It’s fine.”
With permission, I carefully took out the magic introductory text. Then, treating it like a baby, I held it gently in my arms. Ah, aaa… This is it. I had missed this feeling so much.
Deep breath. I pressed my face against the book and took a deep breath. The distinctive scent of leather tickled my brain. It was a codex made of parchment. The heavy, rough texture made the tension in my eyes disappear.
I had never imagined I would see books this quickly. With this alone, I had achieved the purpose of coming along with Hesti. Ah, I was so happy that I could do anything right now.
Still, what mattered most was the content, of course. I liked books themselves, but I liked the content inside even more. The mad thumping of my heart had left my head spinning since earlier.
“Ha, haa, hah… heh heh….”
“The disciple has changed!”
“Master, may I read it now?”
“G-go ahead. But disciple, if you suddenly become normal again, it’ll be really scary, you know?”
“I can’t endure it any longer. I’m dying of curiosity about what kind of content it holds!”
“I’m so worried about the disciple’s heart actually bursting….”
I ran to the nearby table and spread out the magic introductory text. The pages turned with surprising weight, like flipping through a book. Ah, even the feeling of opening a book was adorable.
Maybe it was because I had breathed in too hard. My whole body was tingling. After swallowing once, I widened my eyes and focused on the written content.
Page two following the introduction. As I read sentence by sentence, I suddenly froze at a certain part.
When I slowly raised my head, Hesti was gazing at me with delight. Yes. She had known this would happen. She should have said something earlier. I held back my embarrassment and asked her.
“…Master. There’s a word I don’t know. Can you tell me?”
“Of course! Leave it to this master!”
I memorized every unknown word as fast as possible. I couldn’t forgive myself for not being able to read the book alone, so I burned with passion.
***
One year after becoming Hesti’s disciple, I turned eleven years old.
Thanks to being able to touch and read real books, during that time I truly felt like I was living in this world.
Metaphorically, it was like a fish that had fallen into water finally flying through the sky again after a long time. The happiness was so intense that my brain felt like it would melt from the sensation of reading.
What was truly regrettable was that Hesti only owned about ten books. All of them were grimoire-type books filled with magical content.
Of course, in this world that was an enormous number. But as someone who had reincarnated from modern Earth, I couldn’t hide my envy.
“Disciple, you’re a magical genius that appears once in a thousand years… or even once in ten thousand years!”
“Really?”
“Of course! I felt it from the very first moment I saw you! An incredibly clear magical power that even people far away can sense. It’s a size that a child who doesn’t even notice their own magical power could possess!”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Legendary genius Liber! Future great magician Liber!”
“Master, you’re embarrassing me too.”
Ah, so I apparently had magical talent as well. According to Hesti, I was a magical genius that appears once in ten thousand years.
After only a year of studying magic, I supposedly had the ability to rival an ordinary magician who had served for ten years.
Conveniently, all the witches I met were superior to me, so it wasn’t felt that strongly. I cared more about books than magic.
“Master, shall we eat?”
“Disciple, what kind of food is this?”
“Meatballs. I minced the meat, rolled it into a ball, baked it, drizzled sweet-and-sour sauce, and topped it with herbs. It should suit Master’s taste.”
“Uuuuh! It’s really delicious! How did you make something like this? Not only magic, but cooking is also a genius, disciple!”
“If I’m being praised, I can only give meatballs.”
Getting along with Hesti was easy. She was subtly lacking in daily life skills. When I cooked simple meals, she was overjoyed. What had she been eating before?
There were a few other things I remembered. I had met Hesti’s master and been recognized as a formal disciple. I had gone home a few times to check on my parents and Arthur’s well-being.
Three months ago, I had fought with Hesti’s rival and compared skills with her disciple. Last month, I had chased away a gang of bandits that had invaded the nearby village.
Thinking about it, that year had been busy in many ways. But overall, it had been a peaceful and calm daily life. Peace was best, after all.
Doing nothing and lounging while reading books… there’s no happier thing than this.
However, recently a stifling feeling like being submerged in water had sometimes come over me. It was because I had read all the books Hesti owned.
Well, if I had only read them once, it would have been fine. But because I had repeated the same sections dozens of times, I had memorized every content from beginning to end.
At that point, my body began to show withdrawal symptoms, as if I could no longer endure the book that had run out of ink. My hands trembled, my memory deteriorated, and my skin worsened.
In the end, I clung to Hesti’s hem and, making the most uncharacteristic cute face, begged.
“Master. I want to read a new book.”
“Ah, aah… I’m sorry, but I don’t have any other books. I only inherited them from my own master….”
“…Then there’s nothing I can do. Even though I’ve already read them, I have no choice but to read them again.”
“That book must have been read over a hundred times, right…?”
“Exactly 128 times. So there are still 172 more times I can read it.”
“To be able to happily read the same book three hundred times… the disciple’s love for books feels heavy!”
I needed a new book now. But even Hesti, a witch recognized for her skill, found it difficult to obtain books.
In that case, I had no choice. I declared that I would also learn a magic to protect my own body and travel the world searching for books.
Then, in contrast, Hesti clung to me like a barnacle and begged me to stay until she became an adult.
Adults in this world are fifteen years old. My current age is eleven. So does that mean I have to continue practicing magic in this house for four more years?
No, if I did that my head would definitely break first. I had to find a way to convince Hesti without making her sad.
Gradually, the madness began to leave my head. One day, I told Hesti, who was sorry she couldn’t find a book for me.
“Master. I want to create magic.”
“U-uh? Creating magic isn’t an easy task… With the disciple’s talent, it should be possible! Alright, what kind of magic do you want to make?”
“I spoke too soon. I’ve already made magic. Please evaluate it.”
“The speed isn’t too fast, is it?!”
I lined up the prepared items on the table one by one: wood chips cut from the inside of the bark, ash water made by pouring water on the ashes from burning wood, and the frame made from the cut wood.
I dropped the wood chips into the ash water, then pulled up mana and used the original magic I had conceived from the beginning of learning magic.
“Carta.”
“This is…!”
“This is the magic that makes paper.”
“Amazing! This is the paper that disciple was always singing about! It feels completely different from parchment! How did you do it?”
“The method is simple. First, you need wood chips from the inner part of the tree, cut small. The next process is the most important. You boil the wood chips in ash water to remove unnecessary components and make pulp. Then, using water magic, you wash the brown pulp thoroughly until it turns white, pull out the tangled fibers evenly, and press them into the frame to form the paper shape….”
“Ah, the principle is surprisingly difficult. That’s enough explanation.”
The magic to make paper. Its principle was to implement the modern paper-making process through magic.
First, using Hesti’s plant-observation magic, which was her own, I found trees that could serve as paper material. Preferably trees whose fibers would suit paper.
I chopped the trees found with wind magic into small pieces to make wood chips, submerged them in ash water, and applied all kinds of magic sequentially… and in just a few minutes, I could make paper.
Of course, I had to understand all the necessary processes and principles in my head, perform delicate magic through precise mana control, and there was the drawback that mana consumption was high. But those were parts that could be improved later.
“This isn’t the end. I made one more.”
“Even this is amazing, but you made something else?!”
“Yes. Actually, the magic to make paper is only an intermediate step for this.”
I neatly aligned the warm bundle of freshly made paper and held it in both hands. Then, pulling up mana in that state, I used the second original magic.
“Biblion.”
With mana fluctuations as great as the previous magic, one corner of the paper in my palm stuck firmly to the other.
The outer part of the paper became hard and durable, while the inner part became soft enough to turn easily.
Great. The theory worked safely. With a confident feeling, I handed the result to Hesti.
“What did you make?”
“Would you like to touch it?”
“This… no way, a book?!”
Yes. The true nature of this magic was the magic to make books. Strictly speaking, it might be closer to bookbinding magic.
If you just thought it was simply gluing paper together, you might think it was trivial magic, but the real face of this magic was the ability to write text on paper.
In other words, magic that prints and binds in the form I want. Simply put, it was the magic to make books.
Hah… it’s definitely different from parchment. This paper feels easy to turn… I can’t stand it!
Maybe because I had researched without sleeping to complete the magic, my brain reached a strange state, complaining about lack of sleep.
Especially when I was looking at the finished book, it was so adorable that tears almost came out. Maybe this was maternal instinct.
I held back the urge to kiss it. Hesti, still in shock, covered her face with both hands and shouted.
“To create books with magic, this is truly a revolution in the magical world… or even an era!”
“A revolution of the era….”
“As expected, the disciple is definitely a genius! To achieve such a feat after only a year of studying magic, the master is going to cry from emotion!”
“Hehe. As expected?”
Being praised for magical skill didn’t give me much satisfaction, but being praised for the books I made made me extremely happy.
Yes. She was a knowledge person who understood the importance of books. She would understand better than anyone the excellence of making books.
Indeed, there is no one better than Hesti. So she would surely help me, right? I looked at her with a bright smile.
“Master. Please learn this magic.”
“U-uh? Me?”
“I want to spread Biblion throughout the world.”
“D-disciple? Are you saying that seriously?”
“Yes. I want a world where there are more books to read in the future than the ones I’ve read so far. How beautiful would the world be where everyone reads books as naturally as breathing?”
This was sincere, without a single lie. After all, if I monopolized this magic and kept printing books, I might become the richest person in the world.
But what I wanted was not money or fame, but a world where I could keep reading books without stopping. I sincerely hoped everyone would use this magic.
“To do that, we’d have to drastically lower the difficulty of the magic. Right now, the calculations and mana consumption required for magic are too high. To solve this problem, it would be good if a master with excellent magical skill could help find the shortcomings.”
“Ah… I think the attributes don’t match…”
“It’s fine. This magic is based on basic magic, so anyone who is a witch can use it.”
We’ll make this world even happier together. Holding both of Hesti’s hands with mine, I begged earnestly.
She was skilled at handling magic through intuition, but she knew she struggled with my magic that required calculations and operations.
Since Hesti cherished and loved me, she wouldn’t be able to refuse my request.
“Uuu… I understand… I’ll try my best as a master….”
“I love Master!”
“Heh? Ufufu, trust only your master!”
Great. Now I had secured one excellent worker.
Then, shall we cause a revolution across the entire world? I smiled with confidence.