Sometime in the past, Master once asked me, “Do you know the most basic quality a proper mage must possess?”
What had I answered back then? Curiosity toward all things? Or perhaps infinite admiration and interest in the order of the world? I did not remember clearly, but I thought I had probably given an answer along those lines.
-That is merely a quality a mage should possess. What I asked was the most basic quality a “proper” mage must possess. Without it, no matter how much care you pour into research, you cannot draw a proper conclusion.
-What exactly is this quality a “proper” mage must possess, then......?
-It is the ability to observe all things with almost obsessive meticulousness. No matter how much curiosity and spirit of inquiry one possesses while conducting magic research, if one does not observe meticulously, something is bound to be missed. Then proper research results cannot possibly come out, and one will draw an absurd conclusion instead, will one not? Therefore, a “proper” mage must never let even the most trivial thing pass by carelessly, but observe it obsessively.
Your unworthy disciple realizes anew that your teaching was truly correct, Master....... As you said, I should have observed carefully without ever letting anything pass by, no matter how trivial. Because I failed to do so, I have ended up facing such an unexpected result.
“U-Um...... that child is your younger sibling, right? She looks exactly like you.”
“She is Harriet. My only blood relative born under the same parents, with quite a large age gap between us.”
“No, that’s not the problem....... That woman just called your younger sibling ‘Your Majesty’.......”
“Hmm...... that is.......”
After hesitating for a moment as if slightly troubled, Edelred nodded with an awkward expression.
“It is only natural that she calls her that. My younger sibling, Harriet...... is the king of this country.”
“No, what is...... what.......”
I was beyond confused and simply dumbfounded. Did he not say he was an extremely ordinary commoner with no status whatsoever? Then how could his younger sibling be the king of this country? Had the definition of a person with the king as their younger sibling changed to “an extremely ordinary commoner with no status whatsoever”?
“Y-You...... were you lying to me?”
“It may be hard to believe, but...... I did not particularly lie. Legally, I am a commoner with no status whatsoever.”
What kind of ghost-chewing-rice-chaff nonsense was that? I wondered what sort of ridiculous story this was, but after hearing Edelred’s explanation, I could not say much else. Because Edelred truly was, legally speaking, a commoner with no status.
In other words, because of a law enacted when the present kingdom was founded, which stated that “children born outside marriage are unconditionally classified as illegitimate children and excluded from all status and rights, including succession rights,” Edelred had become a commoner despite having the king as his younger sibling. Edelred had apparently been conceived while the previous king and queen were still only engaged, and though they hurried to advance the wedding, Edelred was born the day before the ceremony and ended up a “child born outside marriage,” or something like that.
“D-Does that...... make any sense? It’d be one thing if you were born from your parents’ adultery, but you were just born right before the wedding. And yet they have to treat you as an illegitimate child no matter what?”
On top of that, his parents were not some ordinary man and woman, but the king and queen of a country. Treating a child born between a king and queen as illegitimate just because “he was born before the wedding” was...... a loss in many ways, was it not? If they excluded children from the royal family by attaching one reason or another, then succession issues would give them headaches.
“That is true, but...... the previous kingdom fell because of succession rights. From what I heard, even illegitimate children were recognized as royals, causing the number of royals to grow too large. A war over succession rights broke out, and the kingdom destroyed itself.”
“S-Something like that...... happened......?”
“Therefore, when the founding king established the new kingdom, he enacted the ‘law excluding children born outside marriage from the royal family,’ so that they would not follow in the previous dynasty’s footsteps. Thus, despite being born from the same parents, I am a commoner, and Harriet is a royal.”
“.......”
It seemed I really had turned my back on the world for too long. All sorts of things had happened in the world. To think a kingdom had fallen because there were too many royals.
But...... even so, did this not seem a little excessive? If they weighed and measured everything this way and that, would they not simply mass-produce royals who could not become royals? Then the number of remaining royals would be only a handful, and if that happened, would fights not become inevitable instead?
Sure enough, it seemed a fight had actually broken out. When the previous king, in other words Edelred’s father, was still the crown prince, his older half-brother - this one truly was an illegitimate child - tried to change the law while building up his own faction to be incorporated into the royal family and keeping Edelred’s father in check. In the end, he was defeated by Edelred’s father and driven to the northern region.
“The Grand Duke of Villant in the north...... he is the uncle I mentioned who threatens Harriet. He was originally a commoner, but he married the widowed Grand Duchess of Villant at the time and obtained the position of her consort. After the original Grand Duchess of Villant died of illness, he became the Grand Duke of Villant.”
“Huh....... But why does he threaten your younger sibling? If he went from commoner to Grand Duke, isn’t that enough?”
“Human greed, by nature, has no end. Because it was a seat he had once dreamed of, he could not let go of his obsession with the throne all the more.”
Thus, that scumbag of an uncle had apparently been watching for an opportunity to somehow abolish the “law unconditionally excluding children born outside marriage as illegitimate children” and had been threatening Edelred and his younger sibling. He was said to have kept Edelred especially in check, because if that law disappeared, Edelred would become the royal first in line for succession, so there had apparently been quite a few people saying, “If the law is going to be abolished anyway, would it not be better to support Edelred?”
However, Edelred said he had not been pleased by the idea of the law being abolished and himself becoming first in line for succession. Because if he became first in line, the position of his younger sibling, who had been the only royal until then, would become ambiguous.
“She’s your real younger sister. If you become king, can’t your younger sibling just live as a princess?”
“That would be good, but...... politics is rather...... complicated, you see. For me to ascend the throne, I would have had to kill Harriet with my own hands...... It was that sort of situation.”
I did not know what exactly he meant, but I understood that the circumstances were complicated. And...... I also understood that, to me, these complicated circumstances did not matter at all.
Yes, honestly, whether Edelred’s family circumstances were complicated or not was none of my concern. It was not particularly important to me. What was important to me was...... that until Edelred had poured everything out with his own mouth, I had never properly doubted his identity. I had simply believed him at face value when he described himself as “an ordinary commoner with no status whatsoever,” and as a result, I had misunderstood his younger sibling as “a pitiful orphan with no kin who would die from adult abuse” and trotted after him all the way here.
Thinking about it, there had been an enormous number of points that should have made me doubt Edelred’s identity until now. His platinum-blond hair, which one could not see among commoners, and his noble appearance; his disciplined attitude and polite way of speaking; his behavior, which might make one think he resembled an old man worn down by harsh years, but never gave the impression that he was uneducated. On top of that, had he not even entered a library with a secret archive?
Of course, he had said, “I only sneaked in”...... but in truth, there was a massive trap hidden in that. A “library with a secret archive” was often so secret that even its location was top secret, making it impossible for a commoner to sneak into it in the first place. How could one sneak into a place one did not even know existed?
Even if I conceded a hundred times over and assumed Edelred had learned that top-secret information by chance, Edelred still could not be a commoner. Because...... he said he had seen Master’s name in an ancient book. Where in the world was there a commoner who could read ancient books......?
And one more thing. The fact that Edelred handled aura with incredible delicacy was also a sign that this bastard could not be a commoner. Just like mages, swordsmen could not handle aura to that degree without proper education. Besides, commoners usually stopped at the level of high-grade aura user at best. A bastard who reached the level of intermediate Sword Expert in his youth and became a swordmaster at some point in the future...... could not possibly be a commoner.
There had been countless clear clues like this, so why had I failed to properly catch all of them and missed every single one?
The reason was extremely simple. The entire way here, Edelred had shown an enormous amount of interest in me and driven me half out of my mind. He kept pretending to be close to me and talking to me so much that I had no choice but to desperately focus all my attention on restoring animals and plants. Because of that, I had no time at all to mull over the clues Edelred was dropping.
Ahh, Master...... It seems I am still not a “proper” mage after all.......
......Even if I cried like that, Master would probably say this.
-Have you realized what the problem is? Then what should you do now? It is not to sit there crying, but to seek a way to correct it and put it into action immediately. Yes, that is what you must do.
Master was certainly right. There was no meaning in only retracing past mistakes. Only the present could make up for mistakes. So I had to start with what I could do right now.
“You said your younger sibling’s death was the beginning of the disaster, didn’t you? Does that mean if your younger sibling doesn’t die, the future will change greatly?”
“.......”
Despite my questioning, Edelred only made a complicated expression and did not answer at all. Because of that, I could be certain. Only if his younger sibling died here would the future flow according to its original course. Therefore, what I had to do now was stop Edelred from approaching his younger sibling and prevent him from doing anything, even now.
It sounded tragic and solemn, but in truth, there was no need to do anything particularly grand. All I had to do was deploy spatial movement magic and send Edelred far away from here.
However...... in the end, I could not stop Edelred. Because just before I deployed spatial movement magic, Edelred asked me this.
“Reu Rel, do you think the future must never be changed? Even if that future...... ultimately ends in the great disaster known as the destruction of the world?”
“Uh......? What did you just say......?”