The Mage and the Crow
The Mage and the Crow
Ungiit!
Rebecca let out a kiai that sounded almost like a scream of climax, then quickly returned to her senses.
The radiance that had been pouring from her eyes faded, and her crimson hair, which had been floating in the air, fell limp once more.
But her presence had completely changed — she no longer seemed like an ordinary girl.
'Just looking at her, I could feel an incredible force radiating from her.'
It was like the pressure you'd feel when coming face-to-face with a large predator in the wild.
Rebecca, sitting on the floor in the Lotus Position, gave off a ferocious presence akin to a wild beast.
As I stared at her, swallowing hard, Rebecca finally released the Lotus Position and rose to her feet.
Rebecca murmured, still stunned.
"I... I did it..."
"What did you do? Ungiit?"
"That's not it! I became a third-rate martial artist! My gi-hyeol opened up cleanly and now I can properly handle body energy! It's all thanks to your head flick!"
So my head flick had worked a miracle and turned Rebecca into a third-rate martial artist?
Just as I was about to strike a pose and think, 'Another job well done,' Rebecca started hopping up and down on the spot, expressing her excitement with her entire body.
"Long live Luke's head flick! Kyaaaahoooooo!"
But when I say hopping, the height she was jumping was anything but normal.
Having awakened as a third-rate martial artist, Rebecca was performing a standing sergeant jump reaching nearly two meters just by lightly kicking off the ground.
The world record for the sergeant jump on Earth was about one meter, and she had just doubled that figure in a single bound.
Watching Rebecca bounce up and down between the rooftop floor and above my head, I felt my mind go blank for a moment.
But after recalling just what a third-rate martial artist was capable of, I quickly regained my composure.
'I'm a third-rate mage myself and I do all sorts of crazy things like manipulating waves. A third-rate martial artist is considered the same rank, so they ought to be capable of at least that much.'
As the party leader, I tried to coolly reassess Rebecca's specs.
"Hey, how much stronger have you—"
But before I could even finish the question, my words caught in my throat.
Because Rebecca, who had been bouncing around like an excited rabbit, suddenly lunged at me and threw her arms around me.
Thanks to the sudden tackle-hug, we ended up rolling across the rooftop floor locked in each other's arms.
Thud!
"Agh! You're hugging too tight, I can't breathe!"
"S-Sorry. I still can't control my strength properly. I meant to just hug you lightly, but we ended up rolling together."
Thanks to all that rolling around on the rooftop, my body was now covered in dust.
Rebecca, fresh from becoming a third-rate martial artist and still struggling with strength control, beamed brightly while still holding me in her arms.
Honestly, I was a little pissed from getting tossed around so roughly on the floor, but the moment I saw Rebecca smiling bashfully while pressed right up against me, my anger melted away like snow.
Squish squish.
The breasts pressed against my body also helped keep my anger in check.
If we could distribute a pair of breasts to every person in the world, there probably wouldn't be anyone left suffering from anger management issues.
"Are you really that happy about becoming a third-rate martial artist?"
"Of course I am! I was originally destined to never even become a third-rate martial artist because of my unusual constitution. Do you know how much I was ostracized by the other trainees back home because of this?"
"There were bastards who ostracized you? Who the hell were they?"
There were pieces of trash who dared to bully my lover?
I wanted to fly over right this instant and deliver a Falcon Punch to their faces, but sadly, Rebecca's hometown was a desert kingdom far, far away.
Delivering proper re-education would require an investment of time and money.
Which, conversely, meant I fully intended to wreck them all, even if it took time and money.
"You don't need to know who they are. I'll never see them again anyway. I can't even go back home because of the sandstorm."
"But I really want to know. If I ever get the chance, I'd like to visit your hometown."
"In fifty years, you mean?"
"Yeah. I'll go visit in fifty years."
"Pfft! Then I'll tell you when the time comes."
The sandstorm was a colossal natural disaster that cut off the Zakarta Kingdom from the outside world.
Because of that storm, Rebecca couldn't return home and had to live as a stranger in the outside world for at least fifty years.
When we were alone together, Rebecca would sometimes bring up stories of her homeland with a wistful expression.
Why she had fled to the outside world when she missed her home so much was still a mystery.
I'd asked her a few times why she had left her homeland, but Rebecca never gave me an answer.
Each time, it felt like my lover was drifting away from me somehow, so I stopped asking why she'd left home.
So I decided not to pry any further into the topic of her homeland and changed the subject.
"But is it really true that you became a third-rate martial artist because of a head flick? Does that even make sense?"
"I'm telling you, it's true!"
I stood up, brushed the dirt off my clothes, and asked Rebecca — who was doing the same — with a puzzled look.
Because I simply could not believe that a single head flick from me had shattered the wall to the third-rate that she hadn't been able to break through all this time.
Rebecca mulled it over on her own for a bit, then offered me a plausible theory.
"At the end, when you did the head flick, you did something extra, didn't you?"
"I did channel mana into my hand, yeah. But I'm a mage, so putting mana into my body doesn't actually make me stronger. The head flick hurt the same either way."
"Well, your head flick definitely hurt just as much... but that was probably the cause."
The mana I channeled into my hand was the cause?
I fell silent for a moment, confused, and Rebecca carefully explained.
"I told you earlier in the dining hall, remember? The proper way to open my gi-hyeol is to have a high-level martial artist send mana into my body. But actually, there's something even more important than their level."
"What else is there?"
"Yeah! How well the martial artist's mana compatibility matches with mine is really important. If the compatibility is good, your gi-hyeol can open even with just a tiny amount of mana. If the compatibility is bad, opening the gi-hyeol is incredibly difficult. And your mana and my mana are a perfect match, right?"
Mana compatibility.
It refers to how well the mana accumulated in two people's bodies harmonizes with each other. If the compatibility is good, the mana blends easily and can be transferred to the other person. If it's bad, it causes a severe rejection reaction.
And naturally, the compatibility between Rebecca and me was the absolute best.
After all, the very reason we'd formed a fixed party together in the first place was because our mana compatibility was so perfectly suited.
"Luke. When you flicked my head, the mana you drew into your hand flowed into my head. When I got flicked, I felt a crackle! like sparks going off."
"That must have hurt like hell."
"No. I'd say it felt more ecstatic than painful? The mana that flowed in from you blew right through my blocked gi-hyeol. It honestly felt like I got a taste of heaven."
"Ah, so that's why you went 'Ungiit'?"
Only then did I realize the true nature of that bizarre kiai.
—Ungiiiit!
That resounding kiai had been laced with a moan like a woman on the verge of orgasm.
She must have let out that kind of shout because she was feeling ecstatic.
Now that it was over, however, Rebecca seemed embarrassed about the kiai she'd let out.
"Y-Yeah. Ungiit... Ugh, this is so fucking embarrassing! What the hell is 'Ungiit' anyway!"
"Pfft!"
I considered teasing her more but held back.
After all, I could use today's events as blackmail material to tease Rebecca for the rest of her life.
Meaning I'd have plenty of opportunities to mess with her later.
"Anyway, Luke, even though you're a mage and not a martial artist, you still handle mana. Plus, our mana has an abnormally good compatibility. I think that's why your head flick managed to break through the wall to the third-rate."
It was a fairly convincing theory.
Well, what mattered was that today, Rebecca had finally joined me in the ranks of the superhuman.
The combat strength of the fixed party under my command had grown even stronger.
As long as we were doing adventurer work where you could drop dead anytime, anywhere, continuing to grow stronger wasn't a choice — it was a necessity.
"Shall we head back down to the room now?"
"Let's stay here together just a little longer."
Rebecca and I sat at the rooftop table, holding hands in silence as we gazed up at the night sky.
It was a chilly autumn night, but thanks to the warmth of my lover beside me, I wasn't cold.
*
From the next day onward, my magic performances took place every afternoon at the same time.
Performing without missing a single day not only brought more customers to the Tabad Inn, but also improved my skill at handling spells.
The speed of casting spells.
The efficiency of magic power used for the same spell.
The power of the completed spell.
All of it was gradually increasing.
This wasn't just my own headcanon, by the way — it was a fact confirmed by my magic teacher, Rumi. Every time I went out, I'd prop Rumi, the magic grimoire, up by the window, and that allowed her to observe and evaluate me casting spells in the backyard.
[Master Mage. Your casting speed for the Liquid Ring spell has decreased by one second compared to the beginning. If you can shorten the casting by another ten seconds, you will reach the fastest casting speed achievable at the third-rate mage level.]
"How do you know that?"
[If you cannot trust my advice, I suggest you record the daily changes yourself while casting spells. I suspect there will be little to no discrepancy from what I have told you.]
Since she told me to record the changes, I actually did it.
And sure enough, when I calculated things like casting speed and magic power efficiency and compared them against Rumi's assessments, there was almost no margin of error.
It was practically on the level of an AI system that computes magic.
Thanks to that, I was able to objectively analyze the degree of my own growth.
I spent the next few days training my magic through these performances.
During the performances, an unidentified flying object always appeared in the backyard — a large crow.
'Hwajilguji.'
The crow I had personally named.
Contrary to my expectation that I'd never see it again, the crow showed up without fail at every single performance.
Flutter flutter!
Caw! Caw!
It was a crow that perched on the horns atop my head and played its mascot role to perfection.
By now, even the citizens watching the performances were giving the crow an enthusiastic response.
"Hwajireuguji! Look over here!"
"Give us a double-handed salute with your wings!"
"Kyaa! That crow just winked at me!"
Hwajilguji the crow really did understand human speech.
Even complex requests like performing a salute with its wings were understood without difficulty, and it would actually do them.
Swish—!
"There it is! Lord Hwajireuguji's signature double-handed salute!"
"Oooooooh!"
Occasionally, my lovers Rebecca and Kate would come to watch in the backyard, and this clever crow would put on an even more special performance whenever they appeared.
It would fly off into the sky, disappear somewhere, and then return with a rose clutched in its beak.
"What's with the rose?"
Caw!
"You picked it yourself?"
Caw caw.
"Good job."
When I handed the flowers the crow brought to my lovers, the reaction was unmistakably positive.
"Luke! This crow is seriously smart. How did it know I like roses?"
"I like roses too, Rebecca. Hey, what if this isn't actually a crow but a person inside?"
"Pfft-haha. There's no way that's true."
Before I knew it, the crow had naturally earned the affection of my lovers as well.
It felt like we'd gotten a pet.
But in that moment, we had no idea.
We truly had no idea that Kate's casual remark would turn out to be foreshadowing.