Chapter 3
The Child of the Monastery (3)
“Uuurgh!”
Overwhelmed by the belated surge of agony, Alfred thrashed about before collapsing to the ground.
What happened?
What? What? What?
What in the world just happened? Did that bitch betray me?
Alfred hurriedly pulled a glass vial from inside his robes, removed the stopper, and poured its contents over his eyes.
The concentrated red potion he had prepared for emergencies seeped into them. Accompanied by a cool, stinging pain, his ruptured optic nerves began repairing themselves.
After a while, Alfred finally managed to see again.
His restored vision revealed men writhing on the ground. Between them stood a young boy, calmly looking around.
“It worked.”
The boy wore a bright smile.
That confirmed it.
The child had used magic.
But since when had a basic illumination spell, meant merely to light one’s way at night, produced enough destructive brilliance to rupture someone’s optic nerves?
Did that child cast the spell just now?
His name was…
“Kaspar…!”
Nearby, Rachel staggered around helplessly.
She clutched her tightly shut eyes, faint screams escaping through her lips.
“Hmm. Rearranging the colors really did increase its intensity. I’m glad I lowered my head beforehand.”
“If the colors in the pattern determine the spell’s intensity, what about their arrangement or relief? What would happen if I altered those?”
Kaspar muttered casually to himself as if someone were standing before him.
An ordinary person would have dismissed him as a mad child, but chills ran down Alfred’s spine.
As a mage, he understood what the boy’s words meant.
Did he modify the spell? That boy? On his own? Right here?
How? And with light-aspected magic? That requires innate talent!
“…Insane.”
Kaspar turned his head, apparently reacting to the involuntary mutter from the old monster of the Magic Tower.
“Oh, you’re unharmed. That’s troublesome… but I suppose it can’t be helped.”
“What do you mean, it can’t be—”
Alfred stopped midsentence and urgently raised his hand.
He had instinctively understood the implication underlying the boy’s words.
Kill him!
No—stop him!
His survival instinct screamed.
His hand frantically swept through the air as activation words spilled from his mouth.
Kaspar, meanwhile, recognized Alfred’s spell and smiled brightly.
This was perfect.
Since things had already come to this, he could compare their versions of the spell.
Alfred’s face turned deathly pale when he saw the boy replicating his exact hand movements.
Is he trying to copy me? My magic?
“Ignite.”
“Ignite!”
The boy spoke first, and the old man shouted immediately after him.
The patterns manifested from the casters’ bodies, absorbing mana from all creation and processing it according to their respective formulas.
The resulting flames were launched toward the points at which the casters had aimed.
Two sources of fire formed between Kaspar and Alfred, each shooting toward the opposing caster.
Once they reached their targets, the flames would release energy of an extraordinarily high temperature.
The heat was easily sufficient to reduce a human being to ashes.
If defense was meaningless, the outcome would be decided by speed.
And the spell modified by Kaspar was overwhelmingly faster.
Fwoosh!
The flames enveloped Alfred’s face before his own spell could reach Kaspar.
“Aaaaargh!”
“Urgh… My eyes!”
“Help me! I can’t see anything!”
The pain was immeasurably worse than that caused by Light.
Not only Alfred’s aged, deeply wrinkled skin but even the eyes he had barely restored with a potion were consumed by the heat.
His mouth opened and closed as if he were attempting to say something.
But with his vocal cords burned away and his esophagus seared shut, all Alfred could produce were choked, guttural noises.
His elderly body, charred beyond recognition, slowly collapsed.
Having lost its caster, Alfred’s spell dispersed.
“Ah…”
Kaspar watched the flames vanish before his eyes.
His faint guilt over killing a person lasted only briefly. The fading remnants of magic captivated him far more deeply.
But he had no time to lose himself in thought.
Beyond the men twitching after taking the intense light head-on, he could see Rachel.
“O Master, have mercy upon your servant and restore the eyes of this body to their original state.”
Light seeped from between her clasped hands.
It was incomparably dimmer than the light Kaspar had created, but the way it writhed like a leech was thoroughly ominous.
Kaspar briefly considered leaving immediately, but soon abandoned the idea.
He had a feeling that these people—Rachel in particular—would pursue him to the very end.
“Goodbye, Sister.”
Kaspar quietly raised his hand.
“No… Goodbye, Rachel.”
Magical patterns formed and coiled around his arm.
***
“Good God…”
The young lord who had responded to the villagers’ report groaned as he surveyed the monastery.
The entire area was filled with acrid smoke and ashes.
There was nothing but blood and ash throughout both the monastery courtyard and the interior of the chapel.
He could scarcely believe that such a tragedy had occurred in his territory—a place so tranquil that its peace often crossed into boredom.
“We’ve identified the mage. He was Alfred, a member of the Imperial Capital Magic Tower—one of the five Magic Towers in the imperial capital.”
A subordinate who had searched the carriage delivered his report.
This keeps getting worse.
The lord clicked his tongue.
Even a mage from the Imperial Capital Magic Tower was involved.
“And the woman?”
The lord asked while looking at the woman in the nun’s habit whose face had been burned away.
A clear tattoo of a black goat’s head remained upon her neck.
“Well…”
“…Never mind. She was a cultist anyway. She isn’t even worth notifying any surviving relatives about.”
After speaking, the lord turned his horse.
At the end of his gaze stood a boy with black hair and dark-green eyes, surrounded by his guards.
The lord was confused.
The testimony given by that boy—the sole witness to the scene—was nothing short of extraordinary.
The monastery had been attacked and its people massacred?
No, that part was believable. The evidence lay scattered before his eyes.
But what about everything else?
Could he believe that?
The lord decided to ask again.
“…You said your name was Kaspar?”
“Yes, my lord.”
The child answered politely.
Could this boy truly have wiped out a group of armed cultists and their leader, then killed a mage officially licensed by the Imperial Capital Magic Tower?
“You claim you used magic despite never having received any instruction.”
“Yes. If you do not believe me, my lord, I can demonstrate it here.”
His answer was calm.
The guards’ gazes immediately turned hostile.
“You insolent wretch!”
“How dare you! What are you plotting?”
One of the lord’s aides whispered to him.
“Do not permit it, my lord. He may pretend to demonstrate his magic while secretly attempting to take your life.”
The lord raised a hand, silencing the objections around him.
“I believe you.”
There was no other way to explain the devastation before him.
“Thank you.”
Kaspar answered and calmly sat down to wait.
The lord’s thoughts grew complicated as he stared at him.
Investigators from the imperial palace and the Magic Towers were never welcome visitors for a frontier lord.
They would undoubtedly use the investigation as an excuse to turn the entire territory upside down.
If there was a survivor, their stay would grow even longer, and the lord would be plagued by sleepless nights.
But what if there were no survivors?
That would actually make matters easier.
The dead could not speak.
He could embellish the official report as he pleased, writing it in a way that preserved the dignity of both the empire and the Magic Tower.
However…
“I have never heard of anyone reproducing magic merely by watching it once. I cannot yet tell whether that peculiarity of yours is a blessing or a curse.”
Should he kill him?
Should he eliminate this boy to prevent future complications?
As he pondered the matter, the lord recalled an acquaintance who lived in the north.
“Kaspar.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Kneeling in the middle of the courtyard, Kaspar silently looked up at him.
The lord continued.
“You are a peculiar being. But there are people in this world whose lives seem to shorten by the second if they cannot immediately satisfy their curiosity.”
He paused.
“They are called the mages of the Magic Towers. If they discover your existence, they will undoubtedly attempt to dissect every last part of you—from your organs to the smallest fragment of your brain.”
“…”
“As an inadequate lord, I offer you my gratitude for avenging the victims and eradicating these cultists.”
Kaspar merely stared blankly at him.
The guards’ shoulders twitched with indignation.
How arrogant must the boy be to neglect even the most basic display of humility in response to their lord’s gratitude?
Before they could erupt, the lord quickly raised his hand again.
“As an expression of that gratitude, I would like to help you avoid your impending fate as a test subject and give you the opportunity to begin a new life.”
“How… do you intend to do that, my lord?”
The lord answered.
“The northern reaches of the empire.”
“The northern reaches?”
“Ever since His Imperial Majesty proclaimed the ‘Duty of Mankind,’ the empire has pursued endless expansion. Countless mountains and fields beneath the sun and across the seas have entered the empire’s embrace and begun to prosper.”
The lord’s expression hardened slightly.
“All except one—the north, a land teeming with every manner of abomination.”
“…”
“The north is a fair place. Rather than status or one’s past, it values only talent—human talent. For someone possessing a peculiar gift like yours, it is effectively a land of opportunity.”
The lord looked directly at Kaspar.
“Perhaps you may obtain things there that you could never acquire here.”
“…”
“There was once a time when I was driven by youthful passion. Claiming that I wished to broaden my horizons, I threw myself into the world and traveled from place to place.”
Things I could never obtain here.
Countless possibilities flickered through Kaspar’s mind, but only one continued shining in the darkness.
“Do you mean… magic?”
The corners of the lord’s mouth rose.
His gaze became distant as he recalled the past.
“After a series of events, I returned to the place where I was raised. However, I still occasionally exchange letters with a few acquaintances I made during my travels.”
“One of them currently resides in a city in the north.”
Kaspar’s eyes shone.
If he could learn magic, he did not care where he had to go.
Besides, everyone he had known at the monastery was dead. Nothing remained here to hold him back.
Reading the answer in Kaspar’s eyes, the lord smiled warmly.
“Do you have a surname?”
“…My lord, I am an orphan without parents.”
“Commoners often adopt the name of the place where they were born and raised as their surname. Why not choose either the monastery where you grew up or the village in which it stood?”
The lord continued gently.
“Life can be inconvenient for a person without a surname. You would be wise to choose one.”
“The monastery… or the village…”
The lord patiently watched Kaspar sink into thought.
After roughly the time it would take to drink a cup of tea, Kaspar finally answered.
“I will choose the monastery.”
The lord nodded.
“A fine choice. You were Kaspar of Hauser Monastery, so you shall be Kaspar Hauser.”
“Kaspar Hauser.”
Having received a surname for the first time in his life, Kaspar quietly repeated his new name.
“Kaspar Hauser offers his gratitude to you, my lord.”
Several days later, two carriages departed the territory.
One carried a confidential report claiming that Alfred, a mage of the Imperial Capital Magic Tower, had confronted the cultists who infiltrated the territory and attacked the monastery, resulting in their mutual destruction.
The other carried a boy who had received both a new surname and a new destiny.
The two carriages traveled side by side for a time before separating at a fork in the road.
One headed south, toward the warmth and splendor of the imperial capital.
The other traveled north.
Its destination was Wintersteel—the gateway city of the north, which defended the empire against the bitter cold and every abomination lurking beyond it.