Blindsided
I'd been blindsided. Honestly, I was the wronged party here.
I had no idea how fast other people learned magic. That was the whole point. All I'd done was ask how quickly a person was supposed to get through the first volume of Foundations of Magic — and somehow that counted as bragging. The sheer absurdity of it left me dumbfounded, so I did what any reasonable person would do: I wrote another post.
Barely had I posted before a comment landed.
"Oh."
That was someone famous on the forum as an actual mage. I fired off a reply immediately.
The guy practically lived on the forum, but comments from him were a rare commodity, so this was the only chance I'd get to ask. I could have asked Sylvia, I suppose... but wouldn't that have been embarrassing? Casually inquiring hey, how brilliant am I, exactly? felt like a step too far.
With that thought, I sat back and waited for the reply.
And a short while later—
The comment landed — and the moment I read it, a little spark of excitement went off in my chest.
A genius. Me.
I'd been moping ever since I arrived in this other world about having no talent for anything, and now it turned out I had a gift for magic. For a moment I felt like I'd become somebody important. And not just any genius — a friggin genius. No, wait. Not even a friggin genius, but an absolute friggin genius.
Certified by DieIllegally himself, one of the forum's most renowned battle mages. My nose was bound to climb into the air. There was nothing to be done about it.
Which was exactly when the next comment came screaming in.
"Gah."
She'd apparently been watching the forum. Nothing else explained a reply that fast. So I went straight to bed. If she'd told me to sleep and then caught me awake, I'd have gotten an earful for no reason.
With that thought, I closed my eyes.
The next day arrived, and with it, my lesson in the second volume of Foundations of Magic.
Truthfully, I'd already finished the whole volume that morning on my own, so this was a day I'd rather have skipped studying entirely. But what could I do? When you're told to grind, you grind. I hauled myself out of bed, took a shower, and headed downstairs.
There was Sylvia, halfway through breakfast.
"G-good morning."
"Mm."
She seemed to have mostly finished eating already, rising from her seat with something still working between her teeth. Honey candy, probably. She'd seemed to love the stuff last time I saw her. Sylvia was clearly loaded — casually munching through candy that cost around ten thousand won a piece. Different worlds, hers and mine, I thought, dunking the bread in front of me into my soup — and then I noticed her staring blankly at me.
"...Did you, um, need something?"
I asked because her gaze was starting to unnerve me, and Sylvia shook her head.
And so began an exceedingly awkward breakfast. I was shoveling bread into my face so frantically I couldn't have told you whether it went in my mouth or my nose, and somewhere in that undignified process, something occurred to me. So this time, I decided to ask Sylvia about it.
"Oh, um — were you up all night yesterday? Not sleeping, I mean."
"...Yeah."
"That explains how you commented on my post so fast."
"The forum's got surprisingly useful information on it, so I check in now and then to keep an eye on things."
There she went, explaining the merits of the forum without my even asking. She clearly didn't want me catching on to how much time she actually spent on the place. Not that I was surprised. I already knew Sylvia had once spammed the forum with posts about her daily life. Knowing that, she seemed a little... cute, actually.
Not that I could go patting Sylvia on the head or anything, so I just smiled.
"Anyway, let's head up. You look about done with breakfast."
"Ah, yes."
I'd wondered why she was hovering around instead of going up ahead of me — turns out she'd been waiting to head up together. I'd been planning to slack off a bit on the toilet scrolling the forum after eating, too. Oh well. With a small sigh of regret, I climbed up to the third-floor laboratory and got to work.
Today's studying promised to be fairly boring as well.
Foundations of Magic II.
Honestly, it wasn't all that hard. But I couldn't afford to call it easy, either — say that out loud and she'd only hand me something harder. So I studied the second volume quietly at Sylvia's side.
And then, at some point—
"Mm. I'm feeling a bit peckish. Is there anything you'd like? I'll pop into town and buy it."
Sylvia glanced down at her stomach for a moment, then looked at me.
"...Then just one tanghulu, please."
"Ah. Of course."
Frankly, I still couldn't wrap my head around tanghulu existing in this other world. I mean, sure, it exists in China, but—
Does it, though?
Shrugging off the philosophical detour, I grabbed my money and set out for Barukh District 3. The estate was wonderful and all, but the fact that I had to trek back and forth every time I wanted to buy anything was a genuine inconvenience.
So thinking, I arrived at the gate of Barukh District 3, where the guards wore the same expressionless faces as always. A few more visits and I could probably start acting like we knew each other. I pulled back my hood and went through the security check — which, of course, turned up nothing.
"Clear. Move along."
"Ah, thank you."
Through the gate, I checked my map and headed for the tanghulu shop. In this world, tanghulu — fruit coated in hardened sugar — counted as a genuine delicacy, so the shop sat in one of the pricier parts of the district. Its location: just left of Amelia's General Store.
"Back again, I see."
My hand, still swollen from the iron bead incident last time, remembered this place all too well. No weird accidents this time, I told myself as I stepped inside — and was met with a blast of cool air. Fitting for a shop selling luxury goods; they were probably maintaining the chill with magic. Can't have the sugar melting, after all.
With that thought, I placed my order.
"One lafchimon tanghulu, please."
Lafchimon was a fruit native to this world. How to describe it — imagine an apple crossed with a pineapple. Genuinely delicious, actually.
"Here you are."
"Ah, thank you."
Tanghulu in hand, neatly wrapped, I left the shop. Keeping it from melting on the walk home required ice magic, so I channeled mana into a frost formula — and—
Whooosh—
The paper bag holding the tanghulu went arctic. Cold enough to freeze solid at any moment — but that was only because I'd fine-tuned the formula. Without the adjustment, wouldn't the tanghulu have turned into a popsicle on the spot?
So thinking, I carried my tanghulu out of the town center, taking in the sights as I went. Having always lived in Lukfelton, the scenery of Barukh was still fairly novel to me. A good experience, you might call it.
There were kids playing football again today, fruit sellers hawking their wares. It wasn't so different from Lukfelton, really — except that in Barukh, notably more people were nicking things in broad daylight. That was the district's signature charm.
And then—
Right in front of me, I spotted a pair of kids running the oldest con in the book: one of them drawing the fruit seller's attention while the other swiped the goods. The moment the seller chased the decoy, whatever remained on the stand got stripped too. There was a reason these classic tricks survived the ages.
They worked.
I'd pulled the same stunt myself, back in the day. Got caught, too — the guards beat me until the blood on my head ran free. Good memories, honestly.
Nostalgic, I walked over to the fruit seller as he chased after the kid, and pressed a bit of money into his hand.
"They're just kids having a rough go of it. Take this and let it slide, yeah?"
"...Very well."
The fruit seller was a remarkably composed sort. Not a single shout at the thieves — just a calm reach into his right sleeve, and out came a club. If that thing connected with a kid's skull, said skull would likely split like a melon. Even for my own memories' sake, I couldn't just stand by and watch. The physical gap between a child and a grown man was enormous. Without me stepping in, that kid's head would have been caved in.
Having done my good deed, I turned away with a swell of pride.
And right at that moment—
Slap—!
The same kids who'd stolen the fruit earlier — now sprinting away with my money pouch in hand.
For the record, that pouch held twenty-four gold. Which is to say, those little bastards had just made off with the equivalent of 2.4 million won.
The instant that math finished running through my head—
I pumped mana straight into a flame-wind formula.
And a short while later—
FWOOOSH—!
The alley they'd fled down, the spot where they'd been standing — both were scorched black. Naturally, the fleeing brats lay sprawled on the ground, writhing. They wouldn't be dead. Not at this setting. I'd throttled the firepower down.
But the more I thought about it, the more my blood boiled.
"Ugh, infuriating."
For the first time in ages I'd gone out of my way to do something kind — walked up to a fruit seller, handed over my own money — and these little punks had watched me do it, then swiped the pouch and bolted. Fuming, I stalked over to the beggars writhing on the ground and, with a hand reinforced by a strength-enhancement formula, gave each of them one solid knuckle-rap on the head.
And then, at that exact moment—
The tanghulu surfaced in my memory, unbidden.
"...Ah. Damn it."
Somehow, without my noticing, the tanghulu had melted into a shapeless, unrecognizable blob.