Aicolman's mansion, where the same boring days repeated over and over, was astir for the first time in ages.
A pillar of blue fire rising in the garden.
The Count and his guard detail leaving as if chased out.
And Count Albert, blessed with sudden hair loss, to top it off.
It was a whole gift set of sensational events that didn't suit the era.
The servants were burning with curiosity.
But Adam, the person at the center of it all, kept his mouth firmly shut, and no employee had the guts to put the question to their master, Aicolman.
Then a girl popped her head out from the crowd.
"Huh? I was there too, you know?"
It was Elise, the blond girl Count Albert had fallen for at first sight.
"How do I know? Well, it all happened because of me. Adam saved me."
"Not Master Aicolman?"
"Then what on earth was that pillar of fire?"
"Tell us what happened that day, right now!"
Elise wavered over whether to talk.
She didn't want to get scolded for running her mouth where she shouldn't.
But standing at the center of the hottest incident going was far too thrilling a feeling for a teenage girl.
"Ah, you mean that day? Something incredible happened."
In the end, Elise sprinkled on a generous helping of MSG and began to lay out the whole story of that day.
"Oh my, really!?"
"Adam did that all by himself?"
"I knew it, I thought he was playing favorites! The Archmage has been teaching him!"
An era of boredom, when the only entertainment was gathering in the square to watch executions.
In a society so dry that telling tales could pass for a profession, the attempted murder of a count was more than enough to set off an explosion of dopamine.
Elise's storytelling was especially more sensational than the original, so the servants listened to her tales every single day.
"Wow, it's gripping again today."
"Senior. But isn't Adam going to get arrested?"
"Why would he get arrested?"
"Well, you said Adam already killed the Count."
"I heard the Count was sealed in a wall of ice."
When an argument broke out among the servants, Elise clicked her tongue.
"I really can't talk to you know-nothings. The story changed again today."
Elise's tale grew more distorted by the day.
The dramatic embellishments meant to entertain her audience had buried the truth.
But even within those fabricated rumors, there was one piece of truth that never changed.
"Adam's finally become Master Aicolman's disciple, so there."
That rumor alone became an immutable truth and ruled the mansion.
The story of a 10-year slave becoming the Archmage's top disciple was a heart-pounding rags-to-riches drama in any era.
In the end, people believed what they wanted to believe, and the rumor soon became established fact.
***
"Master Aicolman, are you in!"
The office door flew open.
"What is it? Must you be so loud."
"What is it, nothing! Why on earth did you take Adam as your disciple!"
Aicolman glared at the man who firmly believed himself to be his top disciple (self-proclaimed).
"You never even took me as your disciple! Why him, of all people!"
"What nonsense is this? I have never once taken a disciple."
Aicolman set down the wooden tablet he'd been writing on and let out a sigh.
"Then you're saying Adam isn't your disciple?"
"That's right. It's only that, unlike you lot, I teach him personally."
"That's what people usually call a disciple!"
The top disciple (self-proclaimed) shouted.
He was a devotee who'd followed him for over 7 years.
His obsession was bad enough to make you wonder about him, but he simply held Aicolman in pure awe as a mage.
That was why he was all the angrier.
Out of all the sons and daughters of prestigious magic families, why did it have to be Adam, a former slave?
All he had going for him was knowing the Archmage the longest!
"Actually, I've known since 10 years ago. Ever since you spent 500 million gold to buy a slave, I knew that child was your first successor!"
Aicolman quietly closed his eyes.
"How many times must I say it's not so before you understand?"
"The rumor's already everywhere. I truly envy that Adam!"
A vein bulged on Aicolman's forehead.
"From now on, if any bastard spreads that rumor, tell me."
"Y-yes?"
"And you shut up, too. I'll say it again: there's no such thing as a disciple! If I hear that one more time, I'll turn every last one of you into wooden dolls, you included!"
"S-so it really isn't true?"
"I said it isn't!"
Only after the man fled the room in a panic did silence return.
Aicolman stared blankly out the window.
'A disciple.......'
Suddenly, what happened at the slave market 10 years ago flashed by like a panorama.
***
Aicolman was a born genius.
10 years ago from now.
Having already transcended the human realm in his early 20s, he was a monster with scarcely a precedent in the whole of the Empire's history.
People naturally predicted his next step would be 'raising a successor,' but he was firm.
It takes months just to open a disciple's mana pores. Wouldn't it be much better to spend that time fishing and reading books?
At that answer, the mages of the world were in an uproar.
'That's this era's Archmage?'
'The magic world is doomed!'
It was pure chance that a man like that met Adam at the slave market.
"Aicolman, isn't that one nice? A pretty face like that......."
"Disgusting. What are you thinking, going after a child like that."
Aicolman met the eyes of Adam, who was up for sale.
He was a child who still had his baby fat, yet his eyes held the cynicism and emptiness peculiar to adults.
It was a rather extraordinary look.
He threw down 500 million gold purely out of interest.
Money was something he had more than enough of anyway.
The people browsing the slave market gaped.
The Archmage, who regarded humans as little more than ants, was buying a slave.
At more than 10 times the average market price, no less.
Aicolman immediately placed a hand on Adam's head. It was to read his fate.
And he found it.
A massive turning point that would shake the boy's life to its roots.
'His magic talent blossoms at 25?'
His pupils trembled slightly.
A blossoming of talent at the level of a turning point meant a talent that would surely shake the continent.
Potential at a level that might have had any other mage dancing and shouting jackpot.
But the Archmage didn't care about something like fate.
'I, who am complete on my own, have no need of a disciple.'
That was why he treated him purely as a slave.
Even if he blossomed at 25, becoming a mage wouldn't be such a good thing.
He'd rather pull up the seed of that talent ahead of time.
But fate twisted fate itself for Aicolman, who rejected fate.
"This can't be......!"
Aicolman slammed the desk.
"What's wrong?"
Adam, seated across from him, asked indifferently.
"It's absurd. Fate has shifted by a whole 10 years!"
The blossoming that should have happened at 25 had begun at a mere 15.
"This means the world's law of causality has been turned on its head!"
"Does that mean something big is going to happen to me?"
"Who knows. It may have nothing to do with you, or it may be nothing much."
"So basically, you don't know anything?"
"Y-you could see it that way."
At that, Adam answered with a nonchalant expression.
"Hmm, then just forgetting about it is probably the best move for now, isn't it?"
"What?"
Aicolman looked at Adam as if he were looking at a monster.
'Does he not realize his fate has been overturned from the roots?'
No, he must know.
He knows, and he still talks like that?
"We don't know the cause or the result anyway, so there's no point worrying about it, is what I'm saying."
"...Very well. Now that I hear it, that may be the wiser course."
The two were flustered at first, but they quickly and cleanly forgot about the matter.
Thanks to their inborn resilience.
Rather than anxiety about the distant future, the two focused on the present.
After all, he'd come to Aicolman to solve the problem in front of him.
***
Adam had wanted to learn magic for a long time.
If you got reincarnated into a fantasy world and had no fantasies about magic, then you were missing either a heart or a brain.
On top of that, the other party was the greatest Archmage of the age, wasn't he?
Should I learn theory first?
The basic system of magic?
Or how to draw magic circles?
As Adam waited with a fluttering heart, Aicolman solemnly opened his mouth.
"Suggesting we forget about fate was a brilliant idea. So let's get the most urgent homework done first."
"What's the homework?"
"Opening your mana pores (essence apertures)."
Adam tilted his head at the unfamiliar word.
"Mana pores are the passages that circulate mana throughout the whole body. Normally it takes months at the very least. Plenty of people can't open them even if it takes their whole lives. But since you've been chosen by a grimoire, if you don't open your mana pores now, there's no telling when your body will burst from overload."
The risk of someone who wasn't a mage using magic was only now starting to come back at him.
"Then is there a way to open my mana pores as fast as possible?"
"There is, but it comes with side effects."
Opening the mana pores takes a long time.
But Adam's body was already overloading.
There was a chance his body would burst while the pores were being opened slowly.
Die slowly, or die fast.
At the moment of the either-or choice, the impatient Adam's decision was quick as always.
"I'll do it."
Aicolman placed a hand on Adam's shoulder, seemingly satisfied.
"Good. I'll infuse the mana myself."
Following Aicolman's instructions, Adam sat cross-legged.
Like a kettle full of scalding water, the heat passing from Aicolman's hand wrapped around his entire body.
"The talented are born with mana, but ordinary people all start with their mana pores closed. This process forcibly opens the closed pores and awakens you to the existence of the mana your senses have forgotten."
Adam closed his eyes and meditated.
"For your reference, if forcing the mana pores open fails, the mana crowded into the narrow passages gets blocked, and the body ends up bursting."
In that instant, Adam's eyes flew wide open.
His concentration was blown in one shot.
He was just about to yell, 'Wait, time out!'
But Aicolman beat him to it.
"Here, it's going in!"
The mana seeping in from Aicolman's fingertips flowed down his spine like fire.
He could vividly feel the mana swirling through his whole body.
It was a sixth sense (the six senses) that had been with him from the start, but that he had never once been aware of.
Adam awakened to a new sense, completely different from before.
Mana wasn't an external power.
It was another heart that had been sleeping inside his body.
The mysterious sensation soon felt like a threat.
Mana overflowed in his body.
He was brimming with strength, but he could feel the mana gradually draining away.
Adam immediately set his posture and drove the mana to circulate within his body.
Aicolman watched the process with his arms crossed, not lifting a finger.
It was a kind of test. If he failed here, then even if he was a grimoire's master, he wasn't worth teaching.
"Your mana's scattering. Focus!"
"Could you shut up for a second!"
Adam's eyes lost their focus.
It was a concentration so profound he forgot 10 years of master and slave.
The mana that had been rampaging every which way gradually gathered at his heart, and before long it began circulating along an orderly path, like blood flowing.
A cold sweat ran down Aicolman's temple.
The mana circulated perfectly, from his shoulders to his torso, from his legs back to his heart.
A while later, Adam slowly opened his eyes.
"Why are you opening your eyes already?"
"It seemed like this was more or less good enough."
"......."
Just as he'd said, the mana had entered the stable zone.
"You. Have you ever learned how to manage mana somewhere?"
"No."
"Then how did you apply the heart circulation method to move your mana?"
"Hmm, it just felt like the right way?"
"That's right. Yes. That is the right way."
Aicolman slowly nodded.
"Yes, we were right."
"We?"
A smile came to Aicolman's face before he knew it.
He'd given his juniors this very advice a hundred, a thousand times, at the Academy and at the Imperial Palace.
But no one had ever understood it.
Adam had known it by instinct.
Only now did he understand why the ancestors of old raised disciples.
Seeing a talented disciple made greed well up on its own.
Of course, he didn't acknowledge him as a disciple yet.
But he did want to teach him more.
"Adam, from now on, focus on mana training instead of cleaning."
"All of a sudden? Then what about handing over my duties?"
"Those chosen by a grimoire often find their power closer to a curse. For now, at least, there's no curse, so it's more efficient to throw yourself into training quickly."
Aicolman added in a low voice.
"You pass. Starting tomorrow, I will teach you magic personally."
The next day.
Adam was freed from the cleaning and chores he'd done for 10 years.
It was an ultra-fast promotion without precedent.