The North's Savior
The sturdy castle gate, made of thick ancient wood, shook violently.
Everything before my eyes seemed on the verge of collapse at any moment.
"Brace for impact!!"
I shouted to the soldiers behind me, gripping my sword and shield tightly.
—BOOM!!
A ferocious blast erupted.
In that split second, my vision flickered.
A high-pitched ring pierced my ears.
Prismatic light blinded me, and an explosion like hundreds of thunderbolts deafened everything.
All I could feel was the quaking earth.
Sensation returned only after what felt like an eternity.
In my hazy vision, the completely shattered castle wall came into view.
And beyond that wall, the curse that should have been there... was gone.
As if nothing had ever existed there in the first place—truly nothing.
In place of the magic beasts, a chasm like a canyon had appeared. That was all.
"Ruen—!!""Professor!"
Two voices overlapped in my still-muffled ears.
I stabbed my sword into the ground to steady myself and looked up at the wall.
"Hey! Did you just see...! Ahem, did you see that?"
In my blurred sight, a girl with shimmering silver hair appeared.
The North's mage. The bringer of gold.
Countless names for her flooded my mind.
It had been just one or two months since our unexpected first encounter.
The transformed Grand Duke's Castle flashed before my eyes. The expressions of the northern folk when she shared the heating magic flickered by.
Ruen.
The quirky culprit behind all that change.
A sparkling stream descended onto the now-silent wall.
I, who could never see mana.
I could sense aura, the power of humans, but not mana—the will of nature itself.
But now, in this moment, I saw it. That radiant light.
"Hah..."
It resembled the aurora.
The myriad titles this girl had claimed in such a short time faded away.
The Ruen reflected in the knight commander's eyes now was utterly different.
An overwhelming presence piercing through flashy titles. Dignity.
"The savior indeed..."
Mana overflowing in the air wrapped around Ruen like wings.
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*
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The idea had worked perfectly.
"Ruen!!"
As I mentally reviewed the formula from moments ago and tweaked the numbers, Arwen came rushing over and hugged me tight.
The soft sensation burying my face.
"Mmph—!"
It was a bit hard to breathe.
"Ah, sorry."
I wriggled out of her embrace and looked beyond the wall, leaving Arwen with her sheepish expression behind me.
The magic beasts, now without a trace, and the cannon towers grinding to a halt.
A truly satisfying sight.
"I knew you'd succeed."
"Mm!"
As I placed both hands on my hips, I recalled introducing the heating magic before.
Rule number one: No showboating.
It was for cool bragging moments.
"Ahem. No big deal."
I casually dropped my hands and turned, spotting the stunned soldiers below the wall.
Always a fresh reaction, no matter how many times.
A thrill shot up my spine from their stares.
"Your Grace, the speech."
The knight commander leaped onto the wall in one bound and stood beside Arwen.
"Ah, right."
Arwen cleared her throat and began.
"Proud soldiers of the North!"
Her voice boomed.
"If you have eyes, you've seen it. If you have ears, you've heard it."
Victory speeches needed no subject.
No one here misunderstood what Arwen meant.
Her speech dragged on after that.
Personally, not having lived in the North that long, it didn't move me much, but seeing soldiers wipe away tears one by one, it must hit different for them.
I was spacing out, gazing at distant mountains.
"Eh, uh...?"
I felt myself floating.
Arwen had slipped her hands under my armpits and hoisted me up.
Like that pose from the lion king's animated movie.
"We now have a mage!"
Her shout rang out boldly. Arwen was totally lost in the moment, by the look of it.
In this massive roar, no one would hear whatever anyway.
Half-resigned, I thrust my clenched right fist high into the sky.
Got to give the boss what she wants.
"“Woooaaahhh—!!!”"
The crowd below the wall erupted at my tiny gesture.
Arwen, still soaked in excitement, kept the speech going.
Right after she set me down again.
"The North will endure forever! Even the capital's sanctimonious fools will soon witness what we've seen today!"
...Huh?
Isn't that kinda controversial...?
The Grand Ducal House started as a branch of the imperial bloodline.
Arwen had imperial succession rights too.
With the capital in dire straits, central support cut off, and the North suddenly rising...
"Mm..."
It felt oddly familiar.
"...Let's go." "Pardon? Yes. Understood."
We slipped away from the wall, leaving the cheering soldiers behind, with Kian.
"Professor." "Yeah?"
Turning, I saw Kian deep in thought.
Smart kid—he might've interpreted Arwen's words the same way I did.
If my assistant really is a spy...
As I subtly gathered mana without Kian noticing.
"If you're going to use the cannons like that, was the targeting function really necessary?" "......"
Not what I worried about, but yeah, it made sense.
The initial plan was arrows flying only at magic beasts amid soldier combat.
But in practice, it was pure area bombardment.
"You'll use it all someday." "I see. I failed to grasp the deeper meaning."
I nodded nonchalantly at Kian's reply.
"But seriously, you really can't see this?" "...See what?" "Never mind if you can't."
I shook my right hand lightly, dispersing the sticky mana rising from it.
The same eerie energy that writhed inside the magic beasts.
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*
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Kian's grunts echoed through the inner castle courtyard.
"No, not like that—you have to extract just the water element from the mana, got it?" "...I'll try once more."
We were practicing the most basic spell: creating water.
Kian's 42nd attempt ended in failure again, despite his shout.
He could now flawlessly follow the magic circles I'd pre-drawn, but crafting his own was still far off.
"Hmm... Why won't it work."
"...It's too different from the standard method."
"Different? How's it usually done?"
"Instead of natural mana, we use the mana core."
Kian indicated the mana core in his dantian.
A sphere filled with single-color mana.
A vivid green one.
"As you know, Professor... It's where we store mana matching our affinity. We draw from here normally."
Looking closely, it was the same human-specific mana I'd used to distinguish humans from beasts in the targeting spell.
Just far more vivid than an ordinary human's.
He seemed to gather mana exhaled from his body through breathing.
"Switching from a lifelong method is tricky..."
He'd been brimming with confidence when I first offered to teach him seriously, but now he looked utterly deflated.
"I thought I'd grasped your magic just by imitating it..." "Mm... Then mix it with that."
"...How?"
The trick hit me the moment I saw his mana core.
"Don't use raw natural mana—route it through your core first."
"I'll... give it a shot."
The trick was simple: raw natural mana is finicky, so absorb it and use your familiar method.
Kian closed his eyes in focus. Natural mana flowed into his dantian, and soon a droplet formed in his palm.
"Whoa! It worked!"
A good professor knows to boost morale now and then.
I clapped, looking at him.
His first personal success, yet his face stayed heavy.
"Not easy..."
Right then.
Kian's eyes rolled back, and he toppled backward.
"Wha—hey??"
I rushed over and slapped his cheeks a few times—he came to, thankfully.
"Hey! You okay?"
Thought he was a goner...
"I... need more practice." "Uh, do you have to?"
Despite my protests, Kian hammered the method dozens of times, fainting and reviving repeatedly.
"Haa..."
The reason I was suddenly mentoring Kian like this was one.
The Golden Light Magic Tower invites Kian's master.
That was the first line of the letter in my hand.
I'd planned to sightsee the capital and check out the protagonists' faces since I was stuck in this novel anyway...
—Thud.
If my reliable guy ends up like this, not sure I can even go.
I tucked the letter into my bosom to wake Kian from his latest collapse.