Suspicions
Sezanne, where did you study magic?
“I studied at the Tulcherus Magic Tower, one of the schools within the Flame Faction. But my skills aren’t particularly impressive. It’s mostly because I lack sufficient mana…”
“I see.”
The reason I had seated Sezanne beside me was originally to discuss matters related to my inventory. But I was also curious about the stat levels of a mage from a magic tower.
“By the way, how are you feeling? No fever or anything?”
I pretended to check her forehead with the back of my hand, making contact so I could register her in my status window.
Her total stat points came to nineteen. Compared to Yanne, her intelligence and magic power were higher, but her strength was only one, and her agility was actually lower than Yanne’s. Her HP was just eleven—basically the same level as a patient who had barely survived a severe illness. When I considered that these numbers had only appeared after I’d started feeding her a little something over the past day or two, it was clear she had been in a state where her heart could have stopped at any moment. She really had been on the verge of death.
She was definitely a mage, but her physical condition was nowhere near usable. For now, she was completely out of reach—like a pie in the sky. The priority had to be getting her properly fed and restoring her health.
“You don’t seem to have a fever anymore, and you’re not throwing up after eating, so your body should gradually stabilize. If you just eat properly, you’ll get better.”
“You call yourself a healing mage, yet you can tell everything just by touching my forehead? Is this some secret technique from your tower? Which magic tower did you graduate from, Jinwoo?”
“It’s called the Changing Magic Tower. But it’s fallen into such decline that even its name is fading away. And before we continue traveling together, there’s something I need a firm promise from you about, Sezanne.”
“What kind of promise?”
“A promise of secrecy. I’m about to show you the true secret of our tower, and I need you to swear you’ll keep it confidential.”
“What kind of secret is it?”
“I can only tell you after you give me your word that you’ll keep it secret.”
Sezanne looked curious about what could possibly warrant such caution. When Yanne, sitting beside her, gave a solemn nod, Sezanne swore an oath on her mana that she would protect the secret.
“You probably already realized that before I met up with the Holy Warrior Yoheim this morning, I had planned for just the three of us to travel together.”
“Yes, I know. Is that a problem? Ah… you didn’t want to show them something, did you?”
“Exactly. It’s because of this.”
I stood up, unpacked the luggage from the horse, and placed it straight into my inventory.
“Huh? What? Is that illusion magic? Or space magic?”
“It’s space magic, not a trick or illusion.”
“How large is the space you can store items in?”
“It depends on what I put inside, but I could fit two hundred horses in there.”
Yesterday, while treating the others after killing the saber tiger, I had tested something. I tried storing two of the horses that had been killed in the attack. I wanted to see if bulky objects could overlap and fit into a single inventory slot. The two dead horses had gone into one slot and came out just fine. If they were the same type of item, it seemed like ten or even a hundred could fit in one slot, but I’d have to check that later. For now, I told her I could store two hundred horses—two per slot across a hundred slots.
“Two hundred horses? Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a spatial magic item with that much capacity.”
From Sezanne’s reaction, I realized there were people here who used similar subspaces.
“Even Duke Zalmakhtun of the northern kingdom probably doesn’t have a subspace that large. What kind of bag is it?”
“It’s not a bag. It’s a space bound to my body.”
“What? Not a bag, but a space bound directly to your body?”
Sezanne was shocked that it wasn’t a physical bag but something bound to him. And now she understood why I had made such a fuss about keeping it secret.
“Being able to use spatial magic without a bag is incredible. I’ve never even heard of it.”
I gently coaxed the impressed Sezanne into talking more, and it turned out that quite a few nobles and influential people carried spatial expansion bags.
“After the Magic Circle War, all the mages capable of drawing spatial expansion arrays disappeared. That’s why no new spatial expansion tools can be made anymore. In the place you came from, Jinwoo, do they still have spatial expansion arrays?”
Sezanne asked, but since I had no idea, I couldn’t answer. I simply said I wasn’t sure, but Sezanne took it differently.
“So even a question like that is strictly controlled. I’ll make sure to keep this secret as well.”
Sezanne swore once more that she would protect the secret of spatial expansion.
“Then let’s get going.”
After sorting through the baggage the mercenaries had left behind, I had planned for Yanne and me to ride, but then I remembered the Beast Sphere that Priest Lepe had given me. He had said it allowed communication with animals, but I didn’t know how to use it. I held it in my hand and called out to Call, who was wandering nearby.
···Huff huff··· Why aren’t we leaving yet? Why are you calling me? Huff huff···
It was astonishing. Call’s thoughts, as he tilted his head and looked at me, flowed directly into my mind. Since it seemed like whatever I thought would be transmitted, I tried speaking to him mentally.
You can go on ahead. Go to that fork in the road up there and wait for us.
···Huff huff huff··· Got it. I’m going right now. Huff huff···
Call must have understood me perfectly, because he shot off like an arrow.
“Huh? Why is Call acting like that?”
“I talked to him using the bead Priest Lepe gave me. I told him to go to the fork where we met the priest and wait for us.”
“Whoa! You can really talk to animals?”
“Yeah. This time you try it with the horse. Your thoughts should reach it.”
Yanne held the Beast Sphere and seemed to have a long conversation with the horse the two of them would ride.
“This one says his name is Dawn 2. He wants us to keep calling him that from now on.”
“Dawn 2? Not 808?”
“Nope. Dawn 2. He was really worried because all his friends left and he was the only one left behind.”
Since they were from the Golden Dawn Mercenary Band, it seemed they had roughly named the horses Dawn 1, Dawn 2, and so on.
“Hmm. It doesn’t seem to work with the goose yet. Maybe he’s still too young, but I can’t get through to him. You should try it too, Sezanne. Uncle is gentle, so talk to him yourself.”
Sezanne also held the sphere and spoke with Uncle for a while, stroking him the whole time.
“Uncle says he likes how light I am. Lighter than Yanne, apparently. And he’s asking you to cast that spell quickly. He says his body feels comfortable when the light of magic touches him, so please hurry.”
“Hah, the guy already knows how good the magic tastes.”
When I cast the three buffs—Vitality, Healing, and Growth—on the horses, both Uncle and Dawn 2 seemed to feel good; their steps became noticeably lighter.
“Priest Hergo. So you’re saying that after the mage named Jinwoo from the Arean Continent used invisibility magic and stepped in, the tide of battle completely turned?”
The young nobles riding in the carriage were at an age full of curiosity about the world. They were especially eager to know how the saber tiger, blackened by divine punishment, had been defeated. All they had seen at the scene were the corpses of over thirty mercenaries and the fierce traces of a battle so brutal that even the Holy Warrior had lost an arm. That only made them more curious. They kept pestering Priest Hergo, who was riding with them, to tell them what had happened.
“Yes. He used invisibility magic to move behind the saber tiger and thrust his spear into it.”
“I heard Jinwoo the mage shoved a spear up its ass. He got really lucky.”
“Well, you could say luck played a part, but what’s certain is that he’s quite a skilled mage.”
“But isn’t invisibility magic something other schools and towers can use too?”
“That’s true, but he also cast healing magic without stopping.”
“Come on. Isn’t that only possible because it wasn’t high-level healing magic?”
“No. He’s the one who healed Holy Warrior Yoheim’s left arm.”
Everyone had seen how Yoheim’s left arm had been severed from the shoulder, leaving a massive wound in his side.
“Any other mage would have had to spend the entire day pouring healing magic into just the Holy Warrior’s wound. But he treated five or six people at the same time.”
“Whoa! Then he really is an amazing healing mage. As good as the healing priests!”
Priest Hergo nodded to avoid being pestered any further by the children, but inwardly he thought it was even more than that. Healing priests possessed powerful healing abilities, but because they had to draw on divine power, they couldn’t treat multiple people at once. That was why, on the battlefield, healing mages—who could apply healing magic to many people even if their individual healing power was slightly lower than a priest’s—were highly valued. Yet this man had shown healing effects on par with a priest while treating multiple people at once. There was no doubt he was a mage of tremendous skill.
Now that I think about it, the appearance of his magic when he cast it was similar to that of the priests. Could it be that he was borrowing divine authority?
Priest Hergo was curious, but they had already traveled far. Even if he wanted to resolve his questions, he couldn’t. He decided that once they reached the church, he would send a letter to the church on the Arean Continent asking them to look into a place called the Changing Magic Tower.
“This is the start of Booktoria, the City of Learning.”
They said Booktoria had more academies than even the capital, Daiven. Perhaps that was why the scale of the city felt completely different. Instead of the fortress-centered cities I had seen so far, this was a radial city that spread outward from its roads.
“You’re heading to the capital, right? Would you like to rest here for a few days? I know a good inn.”
Sezanne’s mood brightened as soon as they arrived in Booktoria. It was because her old school, the Tulcherus Magic Tower, was located here.
“We don’t have any urgent schedule, so we can rest for a while.”
If I wanted to make use of Sezanne as a mage, I first had to build up her stamina. So we headed to the inn she knew, the one she had stayed at while attending the tower. It was a high-class inn with bathing facilities in the rooms. Of course, the price was no joke. Instead of taking two separate rooms, we took one large room with two bedrooms. The nightly rate, including breakfast, was nine silver coins. Since Sezanne knew the place, they had taken off one silver coin, but it was still the equivalent of staying at an 180,000-won hotel per night. The cost of staying made me think we should hurry to the capital, but I also worried about how expensive things would be in Daiven.
Don’t reflect real-life prices this accurately in the game!
“I’m going to the Mercenary Guild to collect the reward from the merchants’ request for killing the saber tiger. Want to come along?”
Having returned to a city with good memories, Sezanne was in high spirits, but it was time to decide what to do with the Golden Dawn Mercenary Band.
After thinking for a long time, Sezanne finally spoke.
“If a band doesn’t take any requests for a year, its rank automatically drops. Once it falls to E-Rank, the registration will be canceled. I think it’s best to just leave it as it is.”
It seemed that because her blood relatives had created the band, she felt burdened about erasing it with her own hands.
“And please take this with you.”
What Sezanne handed over was the captain’s badge of the Golden Dawn Mercenary Band.
“There should be money allocated for the saber tiger incident. Please receive it on my behalf.”
“Will do.”
I left Sezanne and Yanne at the inn and went to the Mercenary Guild, where an infuriating situation was waiting for me.