Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 17 Turan blinked several times, but the words on the flyer remained unchanged.
Keorn. That familiar name...
Wondering if it might be someone else with the same name, he scanned the details below. The play was set against the backdrop of the Arabion-Zahar War twenty years ago. Specifically, it was a story depicting the exploits of Arabion's most valiant knight: Keorn.
Seeing Turan's gaze fixed on the flyer for so long, Asiz spoke up.
"It's actually a pretty decent play. Though the main house commissioned it as propaganda to boast about our victory in the war. Do you want to see it?"
"I'd like to... but maybe you've already seen it and find it boring?"
"Hmm? No, well, it wouldn't hurt to see it one more time. Hey, when's the next showing?"
"It starts in fifteen minutes!"
A short while later, Turan and Asiz were seated in two of the theater's best seats. Naturally, those seats already had owners, but paying ten times the ticket price had a way of making non-existent seats suddenly appear.
Not long after they sat down, the play began.
[The year is 2195, beginning from the moment the heroes of Arabion ventured into the desert of those demons—]
Accompanied by a resonant, booming voice, several neatly dressed actors took the stage. The characters, having stopped for regular trade, got into an argument with the Zahar knights guarding the desert, which soon escalated into a fight.
Before long, the skirmish between knights turned into a conflict between nobles, eventually spiraling into a full-scale war centered around the two families. Later, the heads of the two families emerged to duel. When the two actors playing the family heads mimicked attacking each other with magic, screams erupted from the audience. They had a talent for flamboyantly decorating magic that was actually too weak to even singe a sleeve.
[While storms raged by day and death loomed by night, as the war dragged on and the casualties mounted—there was a knight named Keorn.]
Only after the background was established did the actor playing Keorn make his entrance. The man, with his fierce eyes and brawny physique, was quite a departure from the gentle old knight in Turan's memory. However, such an appearance suited the Keorn in the play much better.
He was a hero who was the first to charge and the last to retreat on the battlefield, a man whose name even the nobles remembered for his vast experience and magical prowess. Though the weight of a single individual was small amidst the clash of dozens of nobles and thousands of knights, Keorn was respected by all as a knight among knights.
And on the day of destiny, Keorn fought against a Zahar noble without any noble of his own to protect him. The opponent mocked Keorn, who was pitifully weak compared to himself. Yet, Keorn utilized every bit of luck—depicted as divine intervention—along with the mementos of his fallen comrades, his bravery, and his wisdom to successfully slay the enemy after a grueling struggle.
As the shocking news spread that a noble born of a Great Family's bloodline had been killed in a duel with a mere knight, the fortunes of the two families diverged, and the fierce two-year war finally came to an end—
As the curtain fell following the narrator's closing remarks, thunderous applause echoed through the theater.
"How was it? Worth watching?"
"Hmm? Oh, it was... very good."
Turan answered Asiz's question feeling somewhat dazed. The first thought that came to his mind was something Keorn had once said. Hadn't he claimed he wasn't a particularly talented knight and hadn't achieved any great feats?
Truly, there was no humility quite like that.
Turan recalled the time he had tested his strength against Keorn back at Hisaril Hill. At that time, the mana Keorn possessed was about one-tenth of what Turan had. Considering that Turan's mana was only at that level because he was a young noble who had only absorbed mana once, it was certain that most nobles were dozens of times stronger than Keorn.
An achievement like that was certainly worthy of being immortalized in a play for future generations. Provided, of course, that it was all true.
"That play just now... did those things actually happen?"
"Probably? I don't know the details since it happened when I was a kid, but it's a famous story."
Even twenty years ago, Asiz would have been twenty-three—older than Turan was now—yet his attitude of speaking as if it were his infancy made Turan chuckle.
"A knight killing a noble is shocking, but I wonder if that's really enough to end a war."
"Well, I heard the mood for ending the war was already there. Hundreds of knights on each side had died, over twenty nobles were gone, and even the family heads were injured during their duel."
In such a situation, after Keorn killed a noble and Arabion publicized it extensively, Zahar—fearing there might be more knights with such hidden power—proposed a reconciliation, which led to the end of the war. That was the extent of what Asiz knew.
'It's a bit different from what I know.'
From what Turan had heard from Keorn, the war between the two families had ended in Zahar's favor. Perhaps there was more to the story hidden beneath the surface. Or perhaps, since this was Arabion territory, they were dramatizing it to their own advantage.
Regardless, he wanted to ask Keorn if that story was true whenever they met again.
*
After watching three more plays following Hero Keorn, the sun was beginning to set. Turan no longer thought of the profession of an actor as something akin to a clown performing tricks. They were artists. Just as a painter draws with a brush or a writer writes with a quill, they used words and actions to recreate figures from the past who could no longer be seen.
Delighted by how absorbed Turan was in the plays, Asiz chattered about the performances he had watched over the past decades, trying his best to pull Turan deeper into that world. As they returned to the mansion while sharing such small talk, they saw a bolt of lightning strike inside with a loud crack.
This was despite the fact that there wasn't a single cloud, let alone rain, in the crimson sunset sky. Asiz's expression as he watched this was perfectly calm.
"Looks like Meisa is practicing her magic. She really is diligent."
"That was Arabion's bloodline magic, right?"
"Right. The Storm Bloodline. I've never hated my own bloodline, but... I am a bit jealous of that one. It makes you look like a real god."
Just as the Enchanters worshipped the Lame Goddess as their ancestor, Arabion claimed to be the descendants of the Thunder Lord among the Frea Divine Clan. Indeed, their bloodline ability to manipulate wind and lightning was renowned for possessing both immense destructive power and versatility.
Furthermore, it wasn't just about destructive power; the prosperity of this region was also maintained by their abilities. After the harvest, the Arabion nobles would fly over the empty Dakein Plains and strike down countless bolts of lightning. Strangely, doing so prevented the soil fertility from being depleted and maintained the land's abundance for the following year.
'I'm curious.'
Asiz had called her a genius mage of his own caliber; just how great was the skill of the person who would become the future master of Arabion? He wanted to see for himself, but if he were caught peeking, he would have no excuse if he were called an assassin. After all, hadn't he sought refuge here precisely because of the threat of being assassinated?
"Want to go take a look?"
"I am curious, but... it might not be good for a suspicious outsider like me to approach."
Asiz laughed and shook his head at Turan's words.
"What does it matter? It's not like you're an assassin. I can vouch for you! Honestly, I'm curious too. Between you and Meisa, who's more outstanding?"
"I think that's the real reason you want to take me there."
"To be honest, I have a bit of a grudge from when I trained with Meisa a few years ago. I want to see her get frustrated for once."
Turan almost burst out laughing at the sheer childishness of the motivation.
"But I won't be a match for her with my mana capacity."
His current mana capacity was, at best, average among the mages of the Great Families, roughly equal to or slightly less than the head of a remote, peripheral family like the Baltas. In contrast, hadn't it been said that Meisa possessed power that didn't fall short even when compared to the core members of Arabion?
"Whoa, so you're saying you could win if it weren't for the mana capacity? That's some confidence."
"That's not what I meant."
By the time the two reached the garden inside the Berk mansion, the grounds, which should have been well-tended, were already a ruin after being struck by the lightning storm. In the landscape made even more desolate by the bright glow of mana lamps, the skeletal young lady they had seen yesterday turned her gaze toward them.
"Hey, Meisa!"
"Asiz? And the person next to you is..."
"I am Turan, My Lady."
"Ah, right. Turan. That was the name. So, what brings you two here so suddenly?"
Surprisingly, for someone who had almost been assassinated, Meisa didn't seem to care much about the presence of the highly suspicious Turan. At her question, Asiz scratched his head, slightly avoiding her gaze like someone with a guilty conscience.
"Just, well, it looked like you were practicing magic, so we wanted to join in. We used to do that in the past, didn't we?"
"Ah... I remember. You ran away crying because I succeeded in two tries at something you'd been struggling with for a whole week."
"Hey!"
The way the two bickered looked less like a successor of a Great Family and a member of a vassal family, and more like ordinary cousins. It was like Izella and Marvin of the Baltas, yet it felt much brighter and less gloomy. When Turan couldn't help but let out a small laugh, Asiz glared at him.
"My apologies."
"Are you laughing at me too? Anyway, this Turan here is second to none when it comes to magical talent among the people I've seen. Why don't you two have a duel?"
"A duel?"
At Asiz's suggestion, Meisa tilted her head and then released her presence.
'Ugh.'
Turan gasped at the pressure he felt. Three times, five times, maybe even more... A violent torrent of power that he could never hope to match with his current strength lay dormant within that gaunt young lady's body. So this was the true power of a Great Family's successor.
After a moment, Meisa withdrew her presence, and interest had already vanished from her face.
"I'm sorry to say this, but it looks like it would be difficult for you to duel me."
"No, of course he's no match for you in terms of mana. What's truly amazing about this guy is his ability to learn magic."
Asiz blustered, claiming that Turan was a magical genius the likes of which he had never seen in his life, and that even Meisa wouldn't be able to match him. Hearing this, a faint spark of interest appeared on Meisa's face.
"To that extent?"
Turan considered being humble and saying his friend was exaggerating, but he kept his mouth shut. If he acted humble here, wouldn't it just end with her thinking, 'As I thought'? He also wanted to personally experience the skill of this noble lady.
"How about we each show a magic the other doesn't know, and the one who succeeds faster wins?"
"That's a good method. Meisa, what do you think?"
"Fine. Come to think of it, Mr. Turan, you said you don't even know what your bloodline magic is, right? It would be unfair for me to use wind or lightning magic. Shall we exclude those?"
Having said that, Meisa tilted her head for a moment and then lightly stamped her foot on the ground. Turan thought she might use the magic to make spikes rise from the earth, which he had used before, but—
"Whoa."
Rustle. Asiz let out a strange exclamation as he saw vines sprout from the ground. The vines didn't just sprout; they moved on their own, wrapping around the arms, torso, and legs of the dazed Asiz before lifting him up and swinging him around.
"Aaaaah—!"
"It's plant creation and manipulation magic. Can you do it?"
"Let—me—go—!"
"Stay like that for a bit. It's fun."
While Asiz was being swung through the air by the vines, Turan quietly retraced what had just happened. Creating vines from the ground—that couldn't be true. According to the laws of nature he had learned, it was impossible to create matter even with the power of magic.
Fire-starting magic merely manifested the 'phenomenon' of burning, and water-creating magic merely drew invisible moisture from the air. Therefore, those vines must have been made by rapidly growing seeds that were already buried in the ground.
To perceive it as 'growth' rather than 'creation.' Knowing or not knowing such principles was a crucial element in the use of magic.
"Grow."
Since it was an unfamiliar magic, Turan softly chanted the spell and placed his hand on the ground. A moment later, several vines, much scrawnier than Meisa's, grew from the ground. Turan made the vines wrap around his own right hand.
"Oh..."
Though it was at a level pathetically lacking compared to the power Meisa had shown, both of them let out exclamations of surprise. They knew how difficult it was to see a completely unknown magic once and imitate it, even clumsily. Of course, Turan had used it assuming that seeds of the vines would remain in the ground, so the loss of power had been relatively small.
"Seeing as you said 'grow,' it seems you realized the true nature of this magic immediately. Have you seen it somewhere before?"
"It is my first time."
"I guess there are days when Asiz is actually right."
Meisa's eyes sparkled as she looked at him. The sight of her eyeballs protruding from her sunken sockets was grotesque, but it was enough to feel the anticipation she held.
"Then it's your turn to set the problem. Let's see what you've got."
At Meisa's challenging expression, Turan pondered which magic to choose. Since he was doing this, he wanted to use a difficult magic that she wouldn't even dare to try and imitate, but nothing immediately came to mind. Using Zahar bloodline magic would be a suicidal act even before it was a rule violation...
Just then, Turan's eyes caught sight of a rat scurrying quickly through a corner of the ruined garden. When he summoned the rat with a light gesture, Meisa asked in a somewhat disappointed tone.
"Animal manipulation?"
"Hardly. This fellow is merely a material."
Turan lightly gripped the rat's neck and cast his magic. A magic that granted power to the countless microorganisms inside this living creature's body—those that originally existed but could not be perceived...
A moment later, the rat began to rot away while still alive in his hand.
"It is done."
The problem he presented was 'Decay,' a magic he had derived through the laws of nature learned from the Librarian.
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