Since the 「Fire」 was bigger and hotter than expected, Alex had to take a couple of steps back.
Even so, he could feel the heat.
"I think there was too much mana."
[No, that was the proper amount.]
[For 1st circle mages, that is.]
Two Hundred examined the enormous ball of fire and Alex's body as though he found it curious.
[Use it one more time.]
"Understood. But how do I get rid of this?"
[Think of scattering the mana. It's fire made of mana, after all.]
When he did as Two Hundred said, the mana dispersed and the blazing ball of fire vanished like smoke at the same moment.
Alex cast 「Fire」 exactly as he had a moment ago.
"「Fire」."
Then once again a large fire appeared in front of Alex's hand.
[This is fascinating.]
[Normally 1st circle mages learning magic for the first time waste mana, you know?]
"Waste it?"
[I mean, when you cook for the first time you don't know the proper amount of ingredients, right? So you waste them.]
[Conversely, cooks who are used to cooking use exactly the right amount of ingredients.]
At Two Hundred's words Alex understood as well.
It had been that way when he first cooked, too. Though he had eaten it all anyway, since it would be a waste of ingredients.
"So magic is similar to cooking?"
[Yes. That's right.]
[There's a reason proficiency exists.]
[The more you use magic and the more used to it you get, the less mana you waste and the more efficiently you can use it.]
Two Hundred went on.
[But this is your first time using magic.]
[So brilliant me calculated in the amount of mana you'd waste when I told you.]
[And strangely, not a single bit of mana was discarded. Because it was all used with no waste, the 「Fire」 came out that huge.]
"Is this because of talent too?"
Since being able to move mana easily had been thanks to his talent, Alex thought perhaps this had the same cause.
[No.]
[No matter how much of a cooking genius you are, it's impossible to perfectly make a dish you've never seen in your life without wasting ingredients, right?]
From the fact that every single example was about cooking, Alex felt he could tell how enormous and deep Two Hundred's desire for food was.
[This is, um, how do I put it.]
[It feels like you've used my magic for more than ten years and gotten skilled at it.]
"I used your magic?"
Alex, who had never used so much as the first letter of magic in his twenty years as a human or his twelve years as a ghost, was puzzled.
[No, I said it feels that way.]
[Which makes it even more fascinating. This is my magic.]
[The kind that doesn't exist in this world.]
Even Two Hundred, the otherworld lich who had reached the extreme of magic, did not know why it felt that way.
"It's not a bad thing, is it?"
[It's a good thing, if anything.]
[It means you can use my magic efficiently, with no wasted mana.]
"Then it's fine."
Alex decided not to mind it if it was not going to be a problem.
Having an otherworld lich inside his body was already an enormous problem to begin with.
[I'm curious, though.]
[Well, we can look into it slowly.]
Two Hundred, who had plenty of time, decided to set it aside for now.
"To make it smaller, I just use less mana?"
[Right.]
[This time let's shrink the size and make several of them.]
At Two Hundred's words, Alex reduced the amount of mana slightly, looked at the position where the spell would appear, and cast.
"「Fire」."
Then three small fires appeared in front of Alex.
[Good. No wasted mana this time either. It really is fascinating.]
[Next let's try using as much mana as possible.]
As Two Hundred said, he used all the mana in the ring to cast the spell.
"「Fire」."
Then more than twenty fires appeared in the back yard.
[Wow! I'd believe it if you said 2nd circle — no, early 3rd circle!]
His head spun a little as his mana ran short, but when he used the mana cultivation method Two Hundred had taught him, mana began to fill his heart again.
[Your mana recovery is fast too.]
[Impressive.]
Letting out a light breath, Alex looked at the 「Fire」 spells he had made, filling the back yard.
His decent talent for swordsmanship, the magic Two Hundred was teaching him, and his memories of the 'future' on top of that.
His heart bolstered, Alex made his decision.
"Let's leave."
To leave right away, without delay.
For Leo's happiness.
To burn the schemes and plans of demonkind out root and all before they could grow.
[Leave? Where to?]
The lich freeloading in his body would be of help too.
***
Lunchtime.
Having happily listened to the stories of Leo, who had come back from playing to his heart's content with his friends, Alex looked at Leo and opened his mouth.
"Leo."
"Hm?"
Leo looked at Alex with a face that resembled his sister's and sky-blue eyes that resembled his brother-in-law's.
Leo's face, the one he had looked at whenever he missed his sister and brother-in-law.
But now, before that, the face of the 'Hero Leo' who had died at the Demon King's hands came to mind first.
And so Alex had decided to leave, so that such a 'future' would not come.
He had been wondering how to persuade Leo, and as it happened, there was a plausible reason.
"Should we... go looking for Leo's mother and father?"
'Sister, brother-in-law, I'm sorry.'
But he did truly intend to look for them as well.
Of course, since even the 'Hero Leo' had never found them, it would be tremendously difficult.
At Alex's words, Leo's eyes went round.
Mother, father.
The ones he had only heard of in the stories his uncle and the villagers told him,
'Leo!'
'Leo.'
the owners of those voices that had called his name so warmly, coming back to him very, very faintly.
But whose faces he could not remember, his....
"Mother... and father...?"
At those unfamiliar words, which he had rarely had occasion to say, Leo's small heart thudded.
"That's right. Leo has grown a lot, and your uncle has gotten stronger."
[Oh! You're going to look for his mom and dad!]
[I'll help too!]
Alex, letting Two Hundred's words slide past with practiced ease, looked at Leo.
"How would it be to go and look for your mother and father?"
"But they said... mother and father died."
Alex's expression clouded.
The villagers were not the sort to say such a thing in front of a child, so he must have overheard it somewhere.
Of course, Alex had thought so himself at times, so he did not blame them.
"Yes. But they might be alive...."
Alex's voice trembled without his meaning it to.
"They might be alive and waiting for your uncle and Leo."
A long time had passed, but they were still the sister and brother-in-law he wanted to see. Faded though it was, longing was longing.
Leo, who had been quietly listening to Alex, looked at his uncle. Along with the longing and sorrow he had often seen on his uncle's face, he saw hope there for the first time.
That hope was passed to Leo as well.
Leo missed his mother and father as much as his uncle did.
The mother and father he could not even remember.
"...I want to go!"
The mother and father he had never once called by those names.
"I want to go find them!"
Leo said it with a face already full of tears.
"Me too, I want to see mother and father too!"
Remembering the 'future' in which this child, who had wanted to see his mother and father this badly, went on to lose his uncle as well, the emotion welled up all the more.
Alex hugged Leo tightly.
"All right, let's go and find them."
In his uncle's warm arms, Leo bawled and bawled. As much as he had longed for his mother and father, as much as he had wanted to see them.
Alex, who was patting Leo's back,
[Sniff, sniff. I'll definitely find them for you.]
thought, at Two Hundred crying that, 'I really don't think this one is a lich.'
"We'll set out tomorrow."
Alex said to Leo, whose eyes were puffy and swollen.
"Understood! But where are we going, Uncle?"
"First we'll go to the lord's castle. And then to other countries."
"The lord's castle! Other countries!"
Leo's eyes shone brightly.
"So we have to pack. We're going by cart, so let's only take what we really need."
"Understood!"
At Alex's words, Leo answered with a face full of enthusiasm.
[He's so stout-hearted.]
[He's been raised well!]
At that praise, the uncle, Alex, smiled contentedly.
"And we have to say goodbye to your friends."
"Yeah!"
"Aren't you sad about parting with your friends, Leo?"
"I'm sad, but we can meet again!"
Just as Two Hundred said, Leo was very stout-hearted.
"Everyone! I'm going to look for my mother and father!"
And there was no hesitation either.
He ran off to his friends shouting it, at a pace fit to spread the news through the whole neighborhood.
"You're going to look for your mother and father?"
At Leo's words, the children blinked.
"Yeah! With my uncle! We're going to the lord's castle and to other countries too!"
Light seemed to pour out of Leo as he said it with a wide smile.
"Whoa! The lord's castle?!"
"You're going to other countries too? Amazing!"
The children envied him, without even knowing how long or how far their friend Leo was leaving for.
"Mother! Father! Leo says he's going to look for his mother and father!"
"Leo says he's going to the lord's castle with Uncle Alex!!"
The news spread through the village at once.
"You're going to look for Serena and Glick?"
Before he knew it, Alex was surrounded by villagers who had heard the news and come to him.
They vividly remembered eleven years ago, when Serena, then a girl of sixteen, and Alex, then nine, first settled in this village.
And Glick, the mercenary Serena brought home a few years later saying she was getting married.
Recalling Glick's face, joy plain on it despite his gruff expression, still made them laugh.
And when Leo was born, too.
Alex, Serena, and Glick, all smiling widely, had looked truly happy.
And so the villagers, though their faces were worried, could not stop Alex.
"I knew you would."
Mark said, looking at Alex, who had grown up so quickly and was twenty now.
"Every time I saw you staring at the village entrance day after day waiting for Serena and Glick, every time I saw you practicing swordsmanship alone, I thought to myself: one day this boy is going to go looking for them."
Every time they saw the lonely sight of Alex's back as he held the young Leo, all the villagers had thought so.
At that, Alex ended up smiling a little.
'So that's how it was.'
Before he had died to the wolf.
Alex had planned to go looking for his sister and brother-in-law once Leo was a bit older. That was why he had trained with the sword every day after the farm work was done.
It seemed the villagers had known that as well.
"And Leo? Is he going with you?"
At the villager's question, Alex nodded.
"Yes. I mean to take him along."
"It'll be hard on you."
Traveling with a six-year-old would not be an easy thing, but at Alex's face, which somehow seemed to have grown up all at once, they all simply offered advice.
"It's not only monsters — you have to watch out for strangers too."
"That's right. Don't let him get kidnapped!"
"Yes. I'll be careful."
Alex was probably the one who knew best of all how dangerous it was outside the village.
"Wait right here a moment."
"Yes. Stay right there!"
The villagers hurried off toward their homes. It seemed they meant to give Alex something before he left.
Mark was about to head home to fetch something as well when Alex caught him.
"Mister. There's something I'd like to ask of you."
"Say whatever it is!"
Mark answered at a pace fit to agree before he had even heard the request. At that, Alex smiled and said,
"I'd like to ask you to look after our house."
Our house.
The house full of memories with Leo.
Alex wanted the house to still be there as it was now, whenever he finished everything and came back.
"And please manage the field together with the villagers. Aside from the taxes, you can all divide up whatever grain comes out of it."
It was better for the villagers to work the field than to leave it lying empty.
[Oh, thorough.]
Mark hurriedly waved his hands.
"That's not necessary! I'd do it for you without any of that!"
"It puts my mind at ease this way."
When Alex was little, and when Leo was a baby — without the villagers' help, they would not have grown up so well.
After several rounds of back-and-forth, Alex won in the end.
"I ought to pay you rent for the land, though...."
"I said it's fine."
In the meantime.
The villagers came out, each carrying something.
"This is emergency medicine, so take it when you're ill."
"This is dried jerky."
"Thank you. We'll enjoy it."
Before long, Alex's arms were full of things.
"Can you carry all this?"
"What are you riding? Walking would be hard."
"I'm planning to buy a cart and a horse."
At that, Mark, who owned a cart, and the man who owned a horse both shouted.
"Buy, my foot!"
"We'll just give them to you, so take them!"
In the end, Alex was able to buy a suitably sized cart and a brown horse to pull it for a very cheap price.
[This really is a good village.]
At Two Hundred's words, Alex ended up smiling in agreement.