The Adventure Begins
So I was reborn into a fantasy world.
Except—surprise!—the war had left me an orphan with nothing to my name. By the time the question Okay, so how do I actually survive here? started gnawing at me, an old wizard came looking for me.
"Follow me, and I shall reveal to you the truth of this world."
He introduced himself as a great archmage and promised to teach me magic.
"Well, sure. Why not."
Honestly, I had nowhere else to go, and since I'd already been reborn into a fantasy world, I figured I might as well try something. So I took the old man's hand.
Up until that point, I hadn't been worried at all.
Why would I be?
I was a reincarnator, after all. Talent, a status window, some grand destiny—surely something would come with the package. That was just human psychology, wasn't it? I assumed this old man appearing before me was part of the same deal.
But no.
"Agh, you idiot!! What kind of mage can't even manage a proper Fireball?!! By your age, I had already forged a sun, you brat!!"
Reality turned out to be far colder than anything I'd imagined.
I had no talent. And I mean seriously no talent.
"I'm doing my best, Master."
"Best?? BEEEEEEST?!!! You poured in 'effort' and all you've got to show for it is one measly ball of fire?!"
That's what my master said. That I was a dunce.
At first, I refused to believe it.
I was a reincarnator, I told myself—of course magic would feel unfamiliar at first. I just hadn't gotten the hang of it yet. My abilities simply hadn't bloomed.
That's what I believed.
"In all my years of living, I have never once seen a talentless wretch like you! A goblin walking past in the road would have more aptitude than you!!"
"...I am doing my best."
"Argh! Why can't you manage even the simplest of things?! Fine, do it again! It's your will that's lacking! Your wiiiiiiill!!!"
"It's not a matter of will. I really am working as hard as I can."
But a month passed.
The seasons turned.
A year went by.
What on earth is wrong with me?
My talent never changed.
While the kid next door summoned meteors and soared across the sky, I was left panting and wheezing over a single fireball.
A hopeless, wretched dunce.
As time went on, I could no longer deny it.
"Hahh... why on earth did I ever take a hopeless creature like you as my disciple...!"
Still, my master was a good man.
He acted senile from time to time, but he waited patiently for talentless me, year after year. He gave me grimoires, health foods, every kind of help he could muster.
"When I was a boy, by age ten I was hunting small dragons without breaking a sweat! And yet your mana reserves are pitiful! Hahh—fine, then learn to squeeze every last drop out of those pea-sized reserves of yours, you useless boy!"
"The grimoires you bring me don't seem to suit me, Master. It's like a child trying to squeeze into armor far too big for him."
"Haah... how was I supposed to know a creature as talentless as you existed in this world? Very well. I will refine the magic myself and tailor it to you, so study with focus."
It wasn't that there was no progress at all.
As my mana control improved, my mind's capacity for calculation grew with it, and I absorbed magical knowledge faster and faster. I couldn't actually cast the higher-tier spells, but I could at least roughly grasp their principles.
"But Master—even if I use magic as efficiently as possible, doesn't the ceiling stay the same?"
Even so, I was weak.
I had no talent.
No matter how deeply I understood magic, no matter how much I refined and improved it, the high-tier spells my master taught me and the large-scale magic written in his grimoires remained forever out of reach.
However efficiently a man fights, how is he supposed to beat a wild elephant with his bare hands?
A bird flying toward the moon—that was me.
"Can someone like me ever truly become a mage?"
"Lamenting your talent changes nothing. Spend that time pouring yourself deeper into magic instead. Did I not promise you at the start? Food, shelter, and in exchange you follow me and study magic diligently."
But just as my master said, realistically speaking, magic was the only path I had.
I secretly trained with a sword. I threw punches with brute stupidity. None of it rose above the realm of an ordinary man. I had no connections, no home to return to—and with nothing to my name but magic, I had nowhere to go even if I left my master. So I quietly poured myself into the one thing I had.
I'd been reborn into a fantasy world, after all. It would be a waste to end up a farmer, wouldn't it?
So I worked like a madman.
I accepted that I had no talent, and I calibrated my effort to my own level.
"Hahh... so at last you've earned the right to be called a novice mage."
"Wait, this is novice mage level?"
"That's right, you brat! And don't you dare go around telling people you're my disciple! I'd die of embarrassment!"
"That was TEN YEARS of my life!!"
Frankly, it stung.
Reborn into a fantasy world, and yet not a single one of those dopamine-pumping elements—no academy, no harem, no munchkin power fantasy. Nothing. Just a life buried in the mountains, studying and training with an old master. In practice, it was no different from the life of a monk.
But for a dunce like me, there was no other choice.
"Remember this, Elam. This world has countless true mages stronger than you. Death comes in a heartbeat to those who swagger around carelessly. So keep a humble heart, and always tread carefully."
"I know."
"Even men who look weaker than you may be hiding all manner of weapons. Treat everyone as a con artist. Even that five-year-old runt of the Madou family could beat you."
That was why my master was always worrying about me.
He never showed it on the surface, but I didn't need him to say it out loud. To me, he had become a father and a close friend both.
We'd lived together for over ten years by then—enough said.
But then.
"...Master?"
One day, without warning.
He was gone.
At first, I didn't think much of it.
He'd always had a habit of disappearing without a word now and then.
Knowing him, he'd gone out to forage for food, or to hunt some mana beast or other.
"Ah, don't tell me he's off catching some bizarre monster again under the pretense of 'training.' Hahh, that means more backbreaking work for me. He'll set us up to spar, then just stand there and watch."
But hours passed.
"..."
Then days.
"..."
Then weeks, and still my master did not come home.
"...Why hasn't he come back? He's never been this late before. Not once."
And then a thought struck me, sudden and cold.
"His memory's been slipping badly lately, but surely he didn't...!"
My master was old, granted, but his body wasn't frail enough to keel over somewhere on the road. If anything, his mastery of magic had kept him healthier than even younger me.
His mind, though, was another matter.
Perhaps because magic had granted him such a long life, there were times when his mind drifted—saying things that defied common sense, mixing up the days, that sort of thing.
"That senile old fool!! It IS dementia!!"
After more than a decade living under the same roof, I could say it with certainty.
We are so screwed.
Lately he'd been repeating the same things over and over, and it seemed the old man had finally gone and done something about it—by wandering off.
I hurriedly began packing.
"I TOLD you to say something before you leave the house...!!"
But this was a fantasy world. There were no police stations, no GPS trackers, nothing of the sort.
And I couldn't exactly just sit here waiting forever.
Little by little, it fell to me to step up and search.
And to be absolutely clear, the fact that we were out of food at home had nothing to do with my decision. Absolutely nothing.
"Ah, but I haven't set foot outside since I started learning magic. That's a problem."
The real issue was that I knew next to nothing about the outside world.
I had virtually no memory of my earliest childhood. And thanks to my master's draconic rule—no playing around until you become a proper mage—I'd never even met other people.
Which meant there was a very real chance I'd go looking for my master and end up a lost child myself.
"Can't exactly stay holed up here either, though. Ugh."
If I stayed, the only thing waiting for me was starvation.
So I made up my mind.
"Hahh... he spends all that time worrying about me, and then loses his own way. That ridiculous old man."
I began gathering everything I could carry.
My first adventure since becoming a mage—and its noble purpose was hunting down a senile old man. A little pathetic, but what could you do? At least I could get out, eat something good for once, and see what actual people looked like.
Truthfully, part of me felt it was good timing. I'd been feeling restless and cooped up lately.
I was a little worried about my master, but with skill like his, there was nowhere he could actually get into danger.
"He said a dunce like me wouldn't even be treated as a real mage out there. Well, I've got to try something. And this is all his fault for locking me up in these mountains my whole life."
That was the moment it happened.
Ding—!
Name: Elam
Trait: Dunce
"...Huh?"
A status window had appeared before my eyes.
Yes.
As if to say: the long, long prologue had finally come to an end.