Prologue — Twenty Years a Dunce
Twenty years since I reincarnated into a fantasy world, and up until now I had believed myself to be a dunce.
"What? Mages can fly through the sky and call down thunderbolts? You've got to be kidding me. That's the kind of nonsense only a bard would believe."
"Mages? Hah! I've never once seen a so-called mage amount to anything! All they can do is conjure a little flame, and it doesn't help one bit when we're fighting monsters!"
"A mage...? Then shut up and stay holed up in your room reading your books! Stop getting in the way! We should be hiring archers, not mages!"
But I had been wrong.
I'd been laboring under a colossal misunderstanding all this time.
Then again, who could blame me? Every mage I'd known of could command the weather, summon meteors, and raise the dead — transcendent beings, the lot of them.
However.
That was all something out of the fantasy novels of Earth, where I lived before my reincarnation. It had nothing to do with the world I'd been reborn into.
Yes, I had reincarnated.
Straight into a low-power world.
"Water magic of this caliber, in a place with no water source...!! That's truly incredible...!!!"
"Damn it all!!! A legendary spell passed down from ancient times actually worked!!! Am I dreaming right now?!!!"
"Elam! Magnificent, simply magnificent! In all my years, I have never seen a mage with talent like yours!"
No, hold on — why is everyone so pathetically weak?