Whether Frieren could be considered a good teacher was something Yakumo couldn’t confidently judge.
But there was absolutely no doubt that she was an extraordinarily powerful mage.
Whenever Yakumo and Frieren went out together and encountered magical beasts, Frieren handled virtually all of them.
There were only a handful of exceptions.
Occasionally, Frieren wanted to test Yakumo’s strength and deliberately selected an appropriate magical beast for him to fight.
Thanks to her, Yakumo’s level rose rapidly once again.
He broke straight through the Level 50 mark.
At long last, he was able to learn the MP Eater he’d been waiting for.
He also gained enough Skill Points to put more into Teleport and Meditation.
Then there were the Ability Points he received from leveling.
The results confirmed that increasing INT really did improve his understanding of magic.
The higher his INT became, the faster he could analyze complicated spells.
Once Frieren taught him the fundamentals, she never had to teach the same thing twice.
Only a few days had passed, yet Yakumo had already mastered all the foundational material.
According to Frieren, everything that remained was something he would have to expand upon and explore himself.
And as his knowledge of magical theory became more complete, Yakumo began to realize that his own strange condition really could be explained using this world’s magical principles.
Unfortunately, his current understanding of magic still wasn’t deep enough to completely analyze the phenomenon.
Magic.
Pretty amazing, wasn’t it?
“It’s fine.”
“My lifespan is long anyway.”
“As long as you solve the problem before you die, that’s more than soon enough for me.”
Frieren’s words made Yakumo pause.
So this was how Frieren viewed life?
“That way of putting it…”
“Feels a little sad.”
Yakumo looked at her.
Frieren showed no reaction to his words.
She had merely been calmly stating what she saw as a fact.
“If every meeting is only the beginning of waiting for someone to die, that’s… pretty tragic.”
Yakumo’s voice became slightly subdued.
Unfortunately, Frieren remained unmoved.
“Humans have very short lives.”
Her words sounded partly like a sigh and partly like an explanation.
“…”
Yakumo had nothing to say.
He was just an ordinary former office worker who wasn’t even thirty yet.
He didn’t possess some protagonist’s supernatural ability to win arguments and change people’s hearts with a few passionate speeches.
Frieren, meanwhile, was an elf who had lived for more than a thousand years.
“Looks like I really don’t have the ability to convince you.”
Yakumo rubbed his forehead and sighed.
For the moment, he gave up.
“I’ve seen quite a lot, you know.”
Frieren looked slightly smug.
“When it comes to experience, I’m very confident.”
“All right, all right. I’m going back to researching magic.”
Yakumo shook his head.
“What do you want for dinner? I’ve still got some bread I bought in a nearby town, and there’s rice left too.”
“Mm…”
“Rice is this interesting new food and tastes really good, but the bread from town is delicious too…”
Frieren looked unusually expressive.
“What a difficult choice.”
“You’re not allowed to say ‘anything is fine.'”
“Then anything is—”
Frieren’s expression collapsed.
“Ah. You beat me to it.”
“I hear you say ‘anything is fine’ every single day. My ears are about to grow calluses.”
Yakumo sighed.
Nothing was more terrifying to the person cooking than hearing the words “anything is fine.”
“Sometimes having too many choices is a problem too.”
Frieren sighed as well.
“Fine. I’ll make rice bowls.”
“We can use the bread with soup tomorrow.”
Yakumo ultimately made the decision himself.
If he left it to Frieren, there was a genuine possibility they still wouldn’t have decided what to eat by tomorrow.
“Frieren, is all the magical knowledge you’ve been teaching me something anyone on the continent could access?”
Yakumo was curious.
If so, could he teach the same material to other people?
“Yes.”
“You could probably find all of it in any decent magical library on the continent.”
Frieren lay across the table and answered lazily.
Incidentally, Yakumo had assembled both the table and chairs himself.
He had Shu to thank for that.
Shu claimed she wasn’t particularly skilled at carpentry, but even her casual advice had saved Yakumo a tremendous amount of trial and error.
“Then I can teach this magical knowledge to other people later?”
“Of course.”
“It’s only foundational instruction.”
“Anyone who wants to become a mage would learn it sooner or later.”
Frieren remained completely unconcerned.
“If you can find rare grimoires, you might even learn more interesting spells.”
“Do you think magic is interesting?”
“Of course.”
Yakumo answered without hesitation.
If all he possessed were the preset skills granted by the system, perhaps he wouldn’t describe them as particularly interesting.
But the system gave him the ability to genuinely study and research magic.
That was completely different.
“Learning magic itself is already incredibly interesting.”
A smile appeared on Yakumo’s face.
“I see.”
“So you really do like it.”
Frieren turned her head.
A faint smile appeared on her face as well.
Yakumo, whose back was turned toward her, never saw it.
He was busy washing rice and preparing dinner.
Another day of eating the cross-world food deliveries sent by Mama Shu.
That night, Frieren had already gone to sleep while Yakumo sat outside chatting with everyone in the group.
[Yakumo: I’ve obtained the basic theory for learning magic. Anyone interested?]
[Furina: Huh? There’s actually a systematic method for learning it? Doesn’t that mean you could manipulate elemental energy even without a Vision?]
After spending the past several days talking with everyone, Furina had gradually become much more relaxed inside the group.
Yakumo occasionally found operas online and sent them to her, and the two of them would exchange their thoughts afterward.
[Shu: It sounds somewhat like Originium Arts, except… magic without side effects, where one need not worry about Originium, truly sounds wonderful.]
[Shu: If it could be widely taught, perhaps it might bring considerable hope to this land.]
[Yakumo: Or it might create entirely new conflicts. Besides, we don’t know whether this world’s magic would even work in Terra. The fundamental rules of our worlds might be different, so it’s hard to say.]
[Yakumo: Aren’t we missing someone?]
Gngh…
Eriri stared at her phone screen.
The conflicted expression on her face was practically turning into visible words.
Of course she was interested in magic!
It was magic!
And from the sound of it, this was actual magic that she might be able to learn!
But she and Yakumo were always bickering in the group.
They argued constantly.
If she suddenly asked him to teach her now, wouldn’t that be incredibly embarrassing?
More importantly, magic sounded far too valuable.
She didn’t have anything suitable to offer in exchange.
Her family might be well-off, but there wasn’t much she could actually do to help Yakumo.
Asking him outright for a way to learn magic made her feel far too embarrassed.
[Yakumo: I’ll upload the materials to the group files later. You can download them yourselves.]
[Yakumo: Oh, Sister Shu, do you want me to investigate whether there are any spells here that could help crops?]