Treasure Chest
Creak. A bright light spilled out and washed over James’s face as he opened the chest.
!!
Thud.
James hurriedly shut the chest and clasped his hands toward the sky.
“I love you, Master. Long live the Great Mage Mercia Lynchberg! May you be blessed with endless fortune! May you live long and prosper! Ah! Of course, you’re already gone, aren’t you? May you rest in peace, and may you have gone straight to heaven!”
The light inside had come from gold and jewels. It was a real treasure chest.
“Heehee. I’m so glad Colt didn’t come with me.”
Creak.
James flung the chest open and took in its contents. His eyes gleamed gold.
Inside were ancient gold coins, a necklace strung with gems, and a few rough, worn cups and plates. The object on top, especially, caught his eye.
“Oh. Is that a crown?”
A crown set with a large jewel rested on top of the gold coins.
“If I sold just this at Sotheby’s, I could get tens of millions of dollars.”
James pulled the treasures out one by one and set them around him as he dug deeper into the chest. Coins and valuables began to pile up around him.
Clatter.
The gold coins piled so high they toppled sideways, and jewels kept coming without end.
“...Excuse me?”
He had clearly been pulling treasure out of the chest for a long time, but it was still packed full of gold coins.
“...Master. Why isn’t it getting any emptier?”
James could tell there was still some magical effect at work inside.
He cast a spatial expansion spell on this chest?
After that, James spent several more hours taking gold coins out of the chest, and only then did he finally reach the end.
“Huff... Thanks, I guess. But there’s far too much of it.”
His fingers had gone numb from pulling out so many coins. James dumped the gold coins and jewels scattered around him into the storage room.
Whoosh.
What remained was the chest and the books inside it. In truth, this mattered more to James than anything material.
Swish.
He took out one of the books, opened the cover, and read the first page.
“I, known as Merlin Ambrosius, am... Huh?”
Thud.
James closed the first book and quickly opened another.
“Merlin. Merlin. Merlin...”
Every book named its author as Merlin, not Mercia Lynchberg.
“Mersia Lynchberg... Mer... Lin...”
Spellings could change however people chose to pronounce them.
“Merlyn... and Merlin... Mercia Lynchberg...”
At last, James understood the historical name of the master he had always thought of as Mercia Lynchberg.
“So Master was Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur...”
The crown he had just tossed into storage was probably once King Arthur’s, the crown that had been with the wizard Merlin.
“Hah. So Master was Merlin?”
Perhaps it was only natural.
“Right... there couldn’t have been two such magicians...”
All this time, James had wondered why his master, who was plainly a true magician, had never appeared before the world. He could not believe that a great mage and archsage would live hidden away alone without ever displaying any magic. But if his master’s true name was Merlin, everything was explained.
“Still...”
There was one thing that remained unresolved. In the opening pages of the first spellbook he had found, the author had recorded his own origin.
“Didn’t you say you were the court mage of the Tessar Kingdom?”
James did not know the details, but it was clear King Arthur had not used the name Tessar as the name of his kingdom. And it seemed more likely that his master’s true name had been Mercia, while Merlin was simply a shortened form of Mercia Lynchberg. In other words, his master’s real name was Mercia, and Merlin was the alias.
Click.
James took out the last book and opened it from the back rather than the front.
“One time being deceived is enough for me.”
His master had always liked leaving the important part for the end.
[After Arthur died, I was grieved, so I erased as many records of him as I could. The records of me, Mercia Lynchberg, will likewise be erased and left behind only as legend.]
!
Accounts of Arthur, Merlin, and the other figures from that era had long been disputed, with some insisting they were “real history” and others calling them “mere fiction from a novel.” This was the reason why.
[I will return to my homeland, Tessar.]
Gasp!
What followed was something even James, as a magician, found hard to believe.
[My homeland, Tessar, is a world different from this one. Magic is widespread there, and knights tempered by mana are strong. I came here by executing newly developed dimensional travel magic, and remained because I could not gather enough mana to return. But through the growth of my magic, I have become able to go back again.]
Another world... dimensional travel...
That explained why there had been no magician in history comparable to him in the first place.
[The spellbook I left behind is only one. You who came here after reading my record are my precious disciple.]
“...Master.”
Whether Merlin had come from another dimension or not, one thing remained unchanged.
“I am James Kane, disciple of the Great Mage and Great Sage Mercia Lynchberg.”
His instructions were not yet finished.
[If you ever grow weary of life here, come to me anytime. I have recorded the magic related to dimensional travel in the final volume.]
“I’m not sure that will ever happen.”
There had been a time when James had wanted to turn his back on this world, but now he had found a kind of happiness of his own and given his life meaning.
“I’ll accept your heart, Master.”
Thud.
He closed the book and carefully packed away the important spellbook before putting it and the chest into storage. Of course, he left the first book out. From here on, it was time to delve into a new kind of magic.
“Then let’s become a higher magician starting now.”
The legacy his master had left behind, a spellbook of a completely different level, was unlike the one-volume grimoire he had had before.
“Hah... So this is the foundation of magic I’ve been building all along.”
The standard for a great mage capable of dimensional travel was as high as high could be. But James did not feel the advanced spellbook was an insurmountable wall. The most important quality for a magician, mana affinity, surpassed even his master Mercia’s.
Flip.
In the quiet room, the only sound was James turning the pages of the spellbook.
* * *
The special thing that happened to James, who had been lost in magic for days, came a few days later.
Buzz. Buzz.
It began with his phone vibrating.
“Hello?”
“-James?”
He could tell who it was from the voice alone, but in the first place there was no one other than Colt who would call him.
“Colt?”
“-Where are you?”
“I’m at the hotel.”
James had moved from the hotel he had booked before stopping by Stonehenge. It was a cheap place, but it was fine for staying alone, so he kept himself there. He had no intention of leaving England until he finished reading all the advanced spellbooks.
“London City Hotel.”
“-You’re still in London? Then come over here.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“-I... got pickpocketed.”
“What?”
“-It’s hard to explain right now, so come here first. My location is...”
After that, James met Colt and heard the whole story.
* * *
“...Colt.”
“James!”
Colt had a dark bruise around his eyes, and his clothes were tattered everywhere, torn to pieces as if he had rolled through half the city.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Colt said that after spending a sweet few days with a stewardess he had met on the flight, he had sent her off with a bright smile when her work schedule came up again and she had to leave.
“Hah. And then...”
After that, the pounds he had exchanged at the airport ran out. Of course, he had dollars left from before parting with James, so there had been no problem. But the trouble started after he exchanged more money in England. Colt, having exchanged as much as twenty thousand dollars, became a target for pickpockets and eventually had all his cash stolen near the nightlife district.
“Putting the money aside... how badly did they beat you?”
“...I did manage to keep my phone until the end.”
Colt had been dragged off by the pickpockets, beaten, and robbed. But he had kept his phone, and that let him call James.
“Let’s go back to the hotel. Honestly.”
“Go back where? First I’m getting revenge on those bastards.”
Colt seemed to think that if James used magic, he would be able to exact a satisfying revenge on the thieves who had stolen his money.
“...How am I supposed to find them?”
“You can track traces if they’re left behind, can’t you? Like in Las Vegas.”
“...Colt.”
That only worked if he had deliberately marked the place with traces of mana. There was no way to track money Colt had exchanged in the first place, money that had not even been his originally. James explained slowly enough for the agitated Colt to understand.
“...So I can’t find them either.”
“Damn it. I’m definitely getting my revenge on those bastards.”
“Did you report it? What the hell is the British police doing?”
“I... couldn’t report it.”
Colt had forgotten where he had exchanged the money and had never reported it to the police. To exchange such a huge amount as twenty thousand dollars, a bank simply wasn’t an option.
“Why not?”
“I changed it through a black-market route. I had to exchange twenty grand...”
“...I told you over and over to use cash in moderation. If you’d exchanged a reasonable amount, none of this would’ve happened.”
“......”
James realized he was saying something unnecessary to Colt, who had already been beaten senseless and robbed of everything, so he quickly added a follow-up.
“When did I ever say that?”
“...I got hit last night, and when I came to, it was morning.”
It was a miracle he had kept his phone while unconscious. But above all, the fact that he was still alive was fortunate.
“Phew. Do you remember where it was?”
“Over there...”
Just in case, James walked into the alley where Colt had been robbed of his money.
“Here?”
“Yeah. I woke up here.”
“Wait outside and keep watch.”
“...Okay.”
James began to cast his magic.
Mana, the memory that will not scatter...
Only a day had passed, so there was still a chance the memory of mana remained.
“Luckily, it’s still there...”
James was tracing the memory of mana while picturing Colt being forcibly dragged away by the pickpockets, but Colt was walking into the alley as if he were chatting amiably with the men. He looked like an old friend stepping in with them.
“......”
Of course, that did not last. Something must have gone wrong, because Colt suddenly started shouting, and the men surrounded him and began beating him. There were too many of them, so Colt could only take the blows while they searched his pockets and pulled out his wallet and cash. After that, the faint mana record scattered completely, but James’s eyes were shining.
“I remember every face now, you bastards.”
A little later, James came out of the alley and asked Colt, who was still on lookout duty, “What did they say when they brought you in? Why did you go in here with them?”
“They said they’d introduce me to a good club where only pretty girls go...”
“Too easy... Are you going to fall for anything just because they say ‘woman’ now?”
“......”
Colt had no excuse, even if he had a mouth for it.
“You didn’t forget your passport, did you?”
“No. I left the passport at the hotel.”
“And the cards?”
“In my wallet... I reported the cards as lost to the card company.”
“...Phew.”
“Think you can catch them?”
He still could not be certain.
“I saw their faces through magic.”
“Oh! Really?”
“They’re all too similar to tell apart. Even now, the men walking these streets all look alike to me.”
London had far too many men who looked like the ones who had emptied Colt’s pockets. Most of them had short hair, and the men who had harmed Colt were the sort of typical British thugs you could point to without hesitation.
“Is the place where you exchanged the money far from here?”
“It’s near the hotel.”
“Then let’s go back to the hotel first, get you showered, and change your clothes. After that, we’ll check there too. We should be able to find them pretty quickly.”
“...Yeah.”
* * *
James had Colt, freshly washed and changed, sit down and then focused his mind.
“...What. Why?”
“Just wait a second.”
James’s hand drew lines of mana as he cast his spell. This was not the kind of magic Colt usually saw him use.
The power of mana that aids healing and recovery... Cure. Action.
James watched the mana seep into Colt’s injuries and heal them, then lowered his hand.
“Treatment’s done.”
“Huh?”
Colt hurried to the mirror and checked his face.
“Whoa. The bruises are gone in one shot...”
The dark marks around his eyes had vanished, and the traces of violence left on his body were gone cleanly as well.
“Put your clothes on. It seems that illegal exchange office Colt visited is connected to those guys.”
James explained that this time he would exchange a large amount of cash at the money changer.
“...What if those guys come looking again?”
That was exactly the kind of situation James wanted for himself.
“Leave those bastards to me. For now, Colt should eat something first, and then we’ll go back there around evening.”
---
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