After finishing Yulian’s treatment at the Magic Tower, we left through the territory’s western gate using Blur.
There was a risk of being spotted in the east because the Dwarves used that route, while the north was still too dangerous for our current strength.
To be precise, I would have been fine.
Yulian and Arisa were the ones who weren’t ready.
“Twist your sword a little more than that.”
“......Like this?”
Yulian twisted his sword and deflected a Goblin’s blade.
His athletic instincts were good enough that he followed instructions well, but his lack of experience meant he still had poor combat sense.
“No. The other direction.”
I demonstrated it myself.
“If you twist your sword that way, you can deflect the attack, but it’ll be difficult to counter immediately.”
I knocked the sword aside and cut through the Goblin’s neck in the same motion.
“This entire sequence is one movement.”
The decapitated Goblin died instantly, its body turning to ash and disappearing.
Just before the fist-sized core beneath its Adam’s apple fell to the ground, I caught it.
“The core is here, so make sure you collect it. Be careful. If you drop it or even graze it with your sword, it’ll become unusable.”
Some Goblins occasionally wore armor.
They possessed enough intelligence to make armor themselves or steal it from humans and use it.
Facing one such Goblin, I continued explaining.
“Remember when you fought that Golem?”
“Yes. I think I somehow managed to deflect its fist without really knowing what I was doing......”
“Deflection isn’t defense. It’s an attack. You’re using your opponent’s strength against them. In other words......”
The Goblin before me swung a hammer as large as its own body.
I knocked the weapon aside, and sparks flew from my blade.
Using the recoil, I cut diagonally through the Goblin’s body.
The armor it wore was sliced apart as easily as tofu.
“You can generate tremendous force even without using sword aura. Since you can use sword aura as well, if you had used the Golem’s attack like this back then, you probably could’ve damaged it.”
Yulian’s eyes widened.
He pulled a notebook from inside his clothes and began writing down what I said.
Perhaps because this was his first time receiving proper swordsmanship instruction, he seemed quite excited.
“So an ordinary sword really can cut through iron armor.”
“It may look ordinary, but a Dwarf made it. The edge is exceptionally sharp.”
After that, I taught him strictly, from predicting attacks by watching an opponent’s shoulders and knees to correcting unnecessary habits in his movements.
I didn’t go easy on him just because we were close.
Tiny habits like those could put his life in danger someday.
Whenever there were no monsters around, I personally sparred with him and struck every opening I found.
‘......I got cursed at plenty too.’
When I was learning anything and everything I could to survive as a wanderer, I had accumulated a lot of unnecessary movements.
I vividly remembered companions beating those habits out of me while saying I would get myself killed in no time.
Watching the harsh lesson unfold, Arisa’s expression darkened in real time.
I saw her slowly backing away.
“Where do you think you’re going? You’re next.”
We needed Arisa’s cold if we wanted to extract the cores intact.
A subjugation involved fighting with your life on the line.
When facing large numbers of enemies, there was no room to worry about preserving their cores as well.
But if Arisa froze them first, collecting intact cores would practically be free.
And magic was my true specialty.
I was far more confident teaching magic than swordsmanship.
“Come on. Over here.”
“Hic.”
Arisa hiccupped and approached extremely slowly, already laying the groundwork as though she knew she was about to be scolded.
“I don’t know the first thing about magic. I’ve only been using it instinctively until now...... You can speak casually to me if you want, but don’t forget that I’m older than you. You’ll go easy on me, right?”
Yulian was a knight who fought on the front lines, so he was far more likely to be exposed to danger.
That was why I thought gaining experience through getting hit was the fastest method for him.
I wasn’t harsh enough to beat a woman who had only just begun learning magic.
But I had no reason to tell Arisa that.
A little tension was useful for education.
“Attack that Goblin over there.”
Standing beside her, I pointed at a Goblin.
Arisa stretched out her hand in that direction, and an icicle shot forward viciously, piercing through the Goblin’s body.
CRASH―!
The Goblin shattered into pieces and disappeared.
“How was that?”
Apparently confident in her ability to fire icicles, Arisa’s voice rose slightly.
“Terrible.”
“......Why?”
“How much magical power did you just use to kill one Goblin?”
Forget the core.
There weren’t even any Goblin bones left.
“Look at the crater you made in the ground.”
“Isn’t stronger better?”
“Wrong. Mages usually support from behind while knights fight in front. Can you guarantee your allies won’t get caught in your attacks?”
“Th-That......”
Yulian and Arisa both possessed extraordinary natural talent.
In other words, they relied too much on their overwhelming power and lacked fine control.
“Aim only for that Goblin’s leg. Make it unable to move.”
“Hmm......”
Arisa closed one eye and aimed.
Yet another massive icicle still slammed into the Goblin.
“I’m not teaching you any spells until you can control your magical power. If you can’t control it, you won’t be able to use any spell when you actually need it.”
“Okay, I understand...... But what kind of magic can you use, Lumio? I heard you need a spellbook to learn magic. Do you have one?”
A spellbook was a book containing magic created by mages, recorded in the form of spell formulas.
Common magic that could be used as long as one could manipulate mana.
Advanced magic that required matching attributes.
Rare magic where a mage created an absurdly intricate spell formula to produce a special ability.
Even forbidden magic that had been discarded because it was dangerous and violated morality.
There were several thousand spell formulas inside my head.
There was probably no one in this world who knew more spell formulas than I did.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Well, I suppose you are the son of a Count. Of course you’d have several spellbooks.”
Muttering to herself, Arisa focused on her magic again.
But it didn’t seem easy.
Massive icicles continued forming one after another.
‘......This is going to take a while.’
The easiest way to describe her condition was as a huge barrel.
Normally, she could put a lid over it and prevent herself from going berserk.
But whenever she used magical power, the opening was so large that she couldn’t regulate how much came out.
What she needed in a situation like this was a straw.
“Or, put another way, a Magic Wand.”
A Magic Wand was made by binding together durable wood and embedding a processed magic stone at the tip.
Its purpose was normally to enhance the level of a spell through the magic stone.
But Arisa needed to learn restraint, so she didn’t need a magic stone.
‘And most trees that survive in the North are extremely sturdy.’
I cut a branch from a nearby tree and shaped it so it would be easy to grip.
A branch about one handspan long.
All I had to do was carve a spell formula into it so magical power could flow through it, and the temporary Magic Wand was complete.
Once the Magic Forge opened, I intended to make her a proper one.
“Try using this. It’ll probably break after about thirty uses, though......”
“Is this really a Magic Wand?”
“I just made it. It isn’t anything good.”
It didn’t even have a magic stone, and it would have to be discarded after only a few uses.
It was barely worthy of being called a Magic Wand.
Yet Arisa smiled brightly and bounced up and down.
“Thank you―!”
As she bounced, the necklaces around her neck swayed.
She was wearing two, including the pendant I had bought her.
“Why are you wearing two necklaces?”
“O-One was the first gift I ever received from a friend, and the other is something my mother left me. They’re both precious to me, so I keep them both.”
I stared at the jewel embedded in the necklace she said belonged to her mother.
That was a magic stone.
“I’ll make you another Magic Wand later.”
Arisa nodded and pointed the Magic Wand at the Goblin.
The magical power that had once poured out like a waterfall became refined as it flowed through the wand.
An icicle now only the size of a fist shot forward at even greater speed and pierced the Goblin’s thigh.
“Wow...... It worked!”
“Now you’re finally starting to look like a mage.”
***
From that day onward.
Every morning, we left the territory together and spent the day hunting.
“They have bows. Be careful!”
Sometimes we cleared out hideouts containing around ten Goblins.
“It’s a trap. There’s a Garm hiding over there.”
Other times, we spotted Garms hiding in the bushes first and wiped them out in one sweep.
Over four days, we collected around fifty low-grade monster cores.
It was fewer than I had planned.
Because there were far fewer monsters nearby than I had expected.
On the day the North fell, large numbers of monsters had clearly attacked every gate except the southern one.
“Strange.”
‘If there are this few monsters here, where did enough of them to destroy the North come from?’
“We’ve practically wiped them out around here. I can’t even see a monster anymore.”
“Is it normally like this?”
Yulian answered Arisa’s question.
“......More or less. Once they get close to the territory, monsters instinctively understand that they’re in danger.”
“Then I’m hungry. Should we eat here? Uncle Aleph packed some bear meat for us to share.”
The fifth day ended with us lighting a campfire beneath the setting sun and roasting meat.
On the sixth day, we brought a map and decided to travel farther out.
After walking for some time, a stone wall began to appear in the distance.
Yulian examined the map and spoke.
“It’s called Marka. Indigenous people from this area live there.”
They belonged to no kingdom.
Nobles from the royal capital sometimes called northerners barbarians, but strictly speaking, the insult was originally used to demean indigenous peoples like these.
“Should we turn back? Nothing good will come from getting involved with them.”
They were extremely wary of outsiders.
They were known to attack first if anyone so much as approached them.
Yulian looked at me, silently asking what I wanted to do.
But my gaze was fixed on the black smoke rising from inside the stone walls.
‘What are they burning?’
“Let’s go a little closer.”
The closer we got, the stranger it became.
“There’s no one guarding the gate.”
“Maybe they went to take a break?”
I immediately answered Arisa.
“Guarding the gate is a matter of life and death. They wouldn’t handle it that carelessly.”
“Then why?”
Our pace gradually quickened.
It was far too quiet.
As though no one lived there at all.
We soon reached the main gate.
It stood wide open.
Arisa covered her mouth as though she were about to vomit when she saw what lay beyond it.
Yulian immediately drew his sword and watched every direction.
Even I found it difficult to maintain my composure.
The ground was littered with corpses torn apart as though beasts had fed on them, along with bizarrely emaciated bodies.
Looking at the burned-out houses brought back memories of the day the North fell.
My body trembled on its own.
Fear?
No.
This feeling was anger.
“Lord Lumio, we have to run!”
“No. We’re subjugating them here.”
I spread my mana outward and checked how many monsters were present.
Thirty.
“There are quite a few, but they’re all inside the village. If we fight at the main gate so they can’t scatter, we can win.”
Their next target would probably be our territory anyway.
If I intended to run from something like this, I would never have suggested coming outside in the first place.
“They’re coming!”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than two horned Garms charged toward us.
Yulian stopped one lunging maw with a single hand while swinging his sword with the other, cutting the beast in half.
Through the spray of blood, dozens of pairs of red eyes approached with a chilling gleam.