Because I had slaughtered more monsters of the Otherworld than anyone else, I was called the Otherworld’s Number One Enemy.
Because I appeared unpredictably in every direction, from east to west and north to south, I was called the Wind Mage.
Because I was a genius capable of wielding all five elements, I was called the Five-Colored Genius.
The epithets used to describe me were as varied as those. And true to those brilliant titles, I could indeed be called the greatest archmage in history.
As long as I could actually use magic properly.
“Urgh….”
Burning rage and helplessness consumed me. Amid it all, I wondered.
Why had we failed?
The answer was simple.
Humanity had come to rely far too heavily on magic.
Because of the Archmage Ruben Seirin.
Because of me.
The emergence of an archmage, the first in several centuries, had caused nations across the continent to concentrate their power on magic.
As a result, the balance that had once existed between martial might and magic collapsed, and naturally, that imbalance worked against us in our battles with the Otherworld.
Perhaps I was reading too much into it. Perhaps this was merely another form of self-reproach.
Even so, I could not stop thinking about it.
Humanity was going extinct because I had been born.
“Haha, truly…. What fleeting power….”
I had never imagined the title of Archmage could prove so meaningless.
The beings of the Otherworld specialized in weakening their opponents’ strengths. And as humanity’s armies came to consist mostly of mages, their abilities gradually evolved toward suppressing magical power.
Eventually, by the time we reached this final battle, they had become capable of sealing the very flow of mana itself.
As a result, humanity’s army suffered a complete defeat.
The corpses strewn around me were proof of that.
“Locke….”
The knight lay dead with a massive hole through his chest.
Locke, hailed as the continent’s greatest prodigy, was an undefeated swordsman who had never once been driven back in battle. He was also my oldest friend.
And he had crossed into the afterlife without even being able to close his eyes.
Even without the support of the mages, he had been the only one capable of landing a blow on the King of the Otherworld.
But he could not endure alone.
If only there had been one more person capable of supporting him.
You must feel wronged.
I understand, my friend.
I will be joining you soon.
“Sepia….”
Sepia, the continent’s greatest Saintess, who had once shone so brilliantly, had been torn in half at the waist and reduced to a gruesome piece of flesh.
Without her divine magic, she was nothing more than a fragile human being.
And beyond her, countless corpses of those who had died like dogs for this noble battle covered the plains of the Otherworld.
Me?
I did not have much longer, either.
My left leg and right arm were gone, and perhaps from the blood loss, my vision had turned a dark crimson.
I, the Five-Colored Genius and the Wind Mage, had been afflicted by a curse and rendered completely helpless.
“Damn it!”
A curse became my final testament.
If I had known this would happen, I would never have learned magic.
What was the point when I could not even use it when it mattered most?
“Haa… haa….”
Now the King of the Otherworld would invade the entire continent.
We had failed to stop him.
Because of me.
Because I had relied on something like magic.
If I had been a great swordsman capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with Locke instead of an archmage, I could have protected everyone.
“Magic…. Fucking…. garbage…....”
I breathed out one final curse along with my last breath.
As though I would never be able to grasp it again, the thread of my consciousness slowly slipped through my fingers.
And thus I, the Archmage [Ruben Seirin], died.
“Young Master! Young Master! Are you all right?!”
Someone was shaking my body like a madman.
I wished he would be a little gentler.
I had just lost an arm and a leg, for goodness’ sake.
Be gentle.
“Young Master! Please wake up! Hey! Hurry and bring Lord Freda here! Quickly!”
Unable to withstand the rough hands shaking me, I reluctantly opened my eyes.
I could see the sky.
Blue and clear.
Had I gone to heaven?
Ah, but if this was heaven, why did my back feel so unpleasantly damp?
Had I fallen into a mud puddle in heaven or something?
“Oh, heavens…. Oh, heavens…. Young Master. I told you that you were still too frail to ride a horse! Sob….”
The voice crying as it patted my body sounded familiar.
Judging from what he was saying, it seemed I had fallen off a horse….
But wait.
Had he just said Lord Freda?
Lord Freda had been one of my family’s retainers.
My mind suddenly snapped awake, and I pushed myself upright.
“Wh…. Where am I?”
“Young Master! You’re awake?! Do you recognize me?!”
Only then did his face enter my field of vision.
It was an extremely familiar face.
And one I could never have forgotten.
“T…. Tyr?”
“Yes! Young Master! Thank goodness. I thought you were going to die…. Please remain lying down for just a little longer. Lord Freda will be here soon.”
No, wait.
Tyr had definitely been my attendant from my ‘childhood.’
He had been a loyal servant and friend who had even followed me to the Academy.
But he had definitely died of illness more than ten years ago.
“Tyr. So you came to heaven too.”
“What?”
“Then Lord Freda is here as well? Huh, how strange. Does that mean all my comrades came here too? Come to think of it, heaven looks exactly like the living world. It doesn’t smell particularly pleasant, either.”
“You…. Young Master. What is wrong with you?! You’re frightening me! Hey! Is Lord Freda still not here?!”
Tyr looked utterly bewildered.
Yet somehow, his face seemed a little different from the one I remembered.
His skin was smooth, and there was still a youthful softness to his features.
He practically looked like a child.
“Tyr. Your skin looks good. Do they have some kind of excellent cosmetics in heaven?”
“Young Master! Please come to your senses!”
Tyr was almost in tears now.
Come to think of it, the sensations coming from my entire body felt strange.
It was unquestionably my body, and yet it felt as though it were not.
I slowly raised a hand and saw a small, delicate hand before me.
My legs were shorter than I remembered as well, and terribly skinny.
I had been teased quite a lot because of these legs when I was young.
“Hey, Tyr.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
An uneasy feeling rose inside me.
“What’s today’s date again?”
And the answer I had been dreading came.
“It is October 8th, Imperial Year 1927.”
“Oh, for fuck’s… sake….”
I had returned thirty years into the past.
Back to the time when the Archmage Ruben Seirin had taken his accursed first steps into the world.
Back to when he had begun breaking the swords of warriors and raising the banner of the Magic Tower high.
After receiving treatment, eating dinner, and even taking a bath, I sat in my room and organized my thoughts.
Yes.
My damned room.
It was exactly as I remembered it.
Just in case, I compared everything I knew about the history of thirty years ago with the history of the present.
Fortunately, I had not returned to the past of some alternate dimension.
This was exactly the same world I had lived in.
Only time itself had been turned back.
I had been so bewildered earlier that I had wondered countless times whether this was a dream, but this was undeniably reality.
So I decided to accept this inexplicable phenomenon.
This was no longer the time to deny reality.
It was time to think about how to move forward.
“This is driving me insane.”
If so, history from this point onward would probably proceed exactly as I remembered it.
I was sixteen now, which meant I would be enrolling in the Royal Magic Academy in just three months.
I still remembered it vividly.
There had been few moments in my entire life when I had felt so excited, expectant, and happy.
But not anymore.
If I devoted myself solely to studying magic until it killed me, I would still be unable to do anything at the decisive moment.
Martial strength was the answer!
That was the only path to survival!
“And there’s no real reason for me to learn magic again, either.”
I casually formed a hand seal with one hand and drew the nearby mana into my palm.
Light.
It was a simple spell that even an apprentice mage could use.
But still.
How many mages in the Empire could cast it with a one-handed seal right now?
I smiled as I stared at the glowing sphere floating before me.
Fortunately, my knowledge and sensitivity to mana had remained intact.
Of course, there was practically no mana accumulated in my mana core, but that did not matter.
Archmages did not need to use the mana stored within their own bodies.
They could draw upon the mana spread throughout nature itself.
Provided their sensitivity to mana had developed far enough.
And I could already do that despite being only sixteen years old.
There was nothing for me to learn at the Academy.
That gave me even less reason to attend a magic academy.
“I just have to convince Father.”
That was my first objective.
Enter the Warrior Academy instead of the Magic Academy.
And to accomplish that, convince my father.
“I can do this!”
I tried to psych myself up, but hearing the voice of a young boy come out of my mouth still felt strange.
I needed the encouragement.
My father was absolutely not an easy man to deal with…!
“No.”
My father rejected me without a moment’s hesitation.
Count Lucian Seirin.
As befitted the head of a family that had produced exceptional mages for generations, Father was an extraordinary mage himself.
At this point in time, he was even a member of the Empire’s Supreme Magic Council.
Of course, he was far below me at my peak.
There was, however, one field in which he surpassed me by an overwhelming margin.
His ability to look down on and dismiss other people.
He was practically pride given human form.
As though to demonstrate his innately aloof and even arrogant personality, he did not so much as glance in my direction as he savored his tea.
He probably considered my request nothing more than a childish whim.
“Father. I have already made up my mind. And frankly, I do not believe there is anything for me to learn at the Magic Academy.”
“What did you say?”
Apparently, that statement went too far to be dismissed as childish impudence.
Father furrowed his brow and glared at me.
As his son, I had to admit that being stared at like that by my own parent was still somewhat frightening.
But I was not just some ten-year-old child anymore!
I had the mind of a forty-six-year-old!
I was forty-six years old, damn it!
I did not want to keep asking my father for permission to do everything!
Refusing to back down, I met his gaze head-on.
“Hah. It seems you are not merely speaking on a whim.”
Had he seen the passion(?) in my eyes?
Father’s expression softened slightly as he rose from his seat.
Why?
I had a bad feeling about this.
“You bear the blood of Seirin, yet you wish to become a warrior? And on top of that, you claim there is nothing for you to learn at the Magic Academy?”
Damn it.
Only his expression had softened.
The atmosphere around him was terrifying.
He looked like some Demon King radiating a black aura behind him.
Father slowly walked toward me.
“Very well. You must enter an academy three months from now, so I will give you exactly two months. Complete two tasks within those two months, and I will grant your request.”
“Yes. I will do my utmost.”
Not wanting to look like a child, I rose from my seat as well.
Then I slowly lowered myself onto my right knee in a formal bow.
It was the gesture by which a noble expressed submission to a superior.
“First, this is a problem for an arrogant boy who dares to look down on magic. You will solve a mana counter-formula devised by me personally.”
Perfect.
I was an archmage who retained all the knowledge from my previous life.
A problem devised by the head of a count’s household?
I could solve something like that over breakfast and finish before I emptied my bowl.
“I do not particularly care for that excessively confident look on your face. Follow me.”
As expected of my father, he could read his own child like an open book.
A truly calculating man.
He strode out of the mansion and led me all the way to the training grounds used by the estate guards.
“The young talents of our territory are training at this hour. Some of them may one day join our order of knights. Watch carefully.”
What was this sly old man plotting now?
Why had he come all the way here himself just to tell me something?
I was suspicious, but for now, I did as instructed and observed the training grounds.
Just as Father had said, training was in full swing.
Roughly fifty tanned young men had divided themselves into two groups and appeared to be conducting some kind of tactical exercise involving offense and defense.
And among them stood one person who was unmistakably a cut above the rest.
He was fighting more than a dozen opponents by himself without being pushed back at all.
In fact, he was overwhelming them.
“Tyr…?”
It was my attendant, Tyr.
Slightly tanned skin.
A muscular build.
A spirited young boy whose short red hair suited him perfectly.
That was how I usually thought of Tyr.
But the Tyr swinging a sword before my eyes now looked like a ferocious beast.
Seeing him display a completely different level of strength among the elite prospects considered promising fighters within our territory filled me with a strange sense of nostalgia.
Come to think of it, there was a reason he had become my attendant.
Maids and attendants also served as their masters’ bodyguards.
In other words, Tyr possessed the greatest martial prowess among everyone his age in our territory.
I had known that, of course.
But seeing it with my own eyes was reassuring.
Mm.
As expected of my attendant.
He should at least be capable of that much.
While I watched him with satisfaction, Father suddenly spoke with a faint smile.
“This is your second task. It will determine whether you possess the aptitude to become a warrior. Defeat your attendant Tyr in a sparring match.”
…What?
No, wait.
That was a little….
The ‘reassurance’ I had felt only moments ago transformed into fear in an instant and filled my heart.
I had never even held a sword properly in my life.
Tyr, on the other hand, was a monster among monsters who could probably take on a hundred scrawny weaklings like me without breaking a sweat.
How was I supposed to beat him?
“Why? Can you not do it?”
Only then did Father notice the dismay on my face.
He looked down at me with a sly smile.
This damned old man….
But Father.
There is something you do not know.
There were two main reasons I had managed to become an archmage.
The first was that I had been born a genius at magic.
And the second was that when it came to sheer perseverance, I was a complete lunatic.
“No. I can do it!”
I became worked up and shouted my answer before I could stop myself.
All I had to do was defeat Tyr within two months, right?
“Haah!”
At that moment, Tyr let out a powerful shout and quite literally sent one of his opponents flying.
Even a doll made of paper would not have flown that well.
As expected of the strongest boy in the history of the Seirin territory.
And what in the world were those bulging things on his arms?
His face looked so innocent, too….
I can beat him, right?
Desperately ignoring the cold sweat running down my back, I gave myself a timid little battle cry.