"Hoooo—"
Rubian let out a long breath and spread her mana.
A mana field extending outward in concentric circles in every direction.
The space around her came to feel as though she were groping it with her hands.
Every human being fundamentally holds mana within.
So unless a man's concealment art had reached a considerable level.
Spreading a mana field this way was bound to catch him.
And yet... there was nothing.
Delam's trace could not be felt anywhere at all.
"Hmm?"
This time she wrinkled the tip of her nose.
Rubian had been born with a keen sense of smell.
Ordinarily it was merely excellent, but reinforce it with mana?
She became able to detect every manner of scent.
Besides which, a human being is an aggregate of smells.
The smell of flesh, the smell of grease, the smell of clothing......
However hard one tried to erase one's body odor, there was a limit.
"Hmmmm?"
And this time as well she felt nothing!
She had circled a forest of a bare hundred-meter radius any number of times.
But nothing caught on the mana, or on her sense of smell.
Only the smell of earth carried on the wind now and then.
Which was natural, this being a forest, of course.
"Sir Knight, I simply cannot see him."
"...I cannot find him either. What in the world?"
At Rubian's answer the vice-commander's face hardened.
The vice-commander had mastered a mana formula too, but a general-purpose one.
And he hadn't had long since mastering it, besides.
Rubian was another matter.
Born to one of the kingdom's five great houses, she had entered upon it from a very young age, and the mana formula in question was one of the kingdom's finest.
And even now she was an intermediate knight, no less!
And even that Rubian couldn't find him?
In that case there was one answer.
"He has cheated. He left the forest."
"Good heavens......"
"A poor training result is fine. We can simply teach him again. But a Special Duty man, who carries out special missions, breaking the rules? This is out of the question."
"......"
"Even so, out of regard for Sir Rubian I shall not punish it as desertion. I am sorry for it as well. These past three days... hah!"
The vice-commander's voice climbed higher and higher.
Not from anger but from how badly he begrudged it.
Which was natural.
To summarize Delam's training results in a word—
[Best on record]
A top-ranked talent? A once-in-an-age genius?
It wasn't at that level at all.
Soldiers didn't come near his toes.
To find comparable records you had to go at least as far as knights.
But even so, he must not be accepted.
The Special Duty Corps was an organization whose life was trust and loyalty.
What if he were bought by the enemy?
What if he abandoned his comrades and bolted because a mission was hard?
Take a man in blindly because his skill was good, and he might instead become a dagger leading tens of thousands of the kingdom's soldiers to their deaths.
"No."
"But Sir Rubian—"
"I believe in him. Because the boy I saw is not a person who would do such a thing. He is young, but he is prouder than anyone, deep in thought, and a knight of the highest loyalty itself."
"......"
"So come out now, boy."
"......"
"I have prepared food for you. I did not know what you would like, so I laid out every kind. They are the first dishes I have made in my life."
The vice-commander abruptly felt sorry for the woman knight.
She wouldn't want to admit it.
Because setting aside rank or skill, the experience of being betrayed by someone you trusted is horrific for anyone.
"Is there lamb chop, ma'am?"
"...Ah!?"
And that was when it happened.
A young voice came from somewhere.
It was a little hoarse from hours of not speaking.
But it was unmistakably Delam's voice.
Rustle.
And with it, one side of the undergrowth rose up.
Earth and grass came showering off a head and a back.
The two were more thunderstruck than when they'd heard the voice.
It wasn't somewhere far off, somewhere unexpected.
Delam was right beside them!
"Wha— what? No, what is this?"
"I could have held out longer, but you called, so I came out. It seems midday has already passed, and I'm hungry besides."
Delam said it to the dumbfounded vice-commander.
The vice-commander was so shocked he couldn't even speak properly.
But one of them was different.
"You magnificent little bastard!"
"Ahem."
Rubian sprang forward and hugged Delam tight.
Delam rubbed under his nose, awkward.
Because whatever your age, whatever your skill, someone trusting you sincerely was a rather good feeling.
And from a person he'd met not long ago, at that.
Scurry, scurry.
Which was why nobody noticed.
A single mole digging into the earth and disappearing......
***
The table was lavish to a degree you couldn't call a battlefield.
And, as though to prove she was a knight, there was hardly any greenery.
Only meat, meat, meat.
Among it was lamb chop, which Delam liked best.
Back when he was a shepherd, how badly the sheep had refused to listen.
Every time, he'd wanted to catch and eat them exactly like this.
"Is it good?"
"Yes, ma'am. It's edible."
Chomp, chomp.
Delam ate without end.
Watching it, Rubian snorted a laugh.
He calls it edible and eats like that?
Adolescent pride really is unstoppable.
Unable to bring himself to say it was delicious, and all but shoveling it into his mouth.
'This one really is terrible at cooking.'
But Delam meant it sincerely.
The food Rubian had made with such care was, to put it kindly, not good.
Every dish was saying it with its whole body.
[Ten minutes on low heat? One minute on high does it!]
[Onions are needed? Spring onions are onions too, so these]
Was food completed that way going to taste good?
And yet the reason Delam ate well was simple.
Because soldiers eat anything well, as a rule.
That held even for Delam, who had climbed all the way to Supreme Commander.
Since it was something like a law of the world.
'And it's meat. After regressing, back home I ate nothing but potato stew, potato bread, roast potatoes and boiled potatoes every day.'
The truth was that in terms of food, being conscripted was actually better.
The problem being that you die after only a few meals.
"But aren't you eating, ma'am?"
"I am full merely from watching you eat."
Rubian said it with a faint smile.
Delam smiled outwardly too, but grumbled inwardly.
This is the trouble with people who can't cook.
They don't taste it while making it, or after making it......
At any rate, dishes amounting to nearly five servings were emptied clean.
Seeing that, Rubian rang the small bell in the tent.
A servant who had been outside came in and cleared the place neatly.
Reach the level of an intermediate knight, and the level of a scion of a great house, and you could enjoy luxury like this even on a battlefield.
"That's someone who came with you from your house, I take it?"
"Correct. How did you know?"
"It's a battlefield, so he might well be afraid, and there's nothing of that in him. That means his trust in you is that thick, which in turn means you haven't been acquainted a year or two."
"You have a remarkable eye."
Rubian marveled.
It hadn't been many days since they met, and he always surprised her.
And she thought.
Unshakable mental strength, outstanding skill, a transcendent capacity to learn.
The boy had any number of merits, unbelievably many — but the most remarkable was precisely that power of observation.
'Yes. Let us pass it on.'
And Rubian made her decision.
To do [that thing] she had been holding back on, though the impulse rose in her now and then, because however she thought about it it seemed like a madwoman's act.
But the more she looked, the stronger the intuition.
That she had to secure this boy now.
Even at the cost of giving him what she treasured most.
"Boy... would you have any thought of learning a mana formula?"
"...Ma'am?"
***
'Has this girl lost her mind?'
Delam looked at Rubian with dumbfounded eyes.
A mana formula wasn't simply a method of gathering mana.
It was the foundation on which the class called [noble] rested.
The difference between one who had mastered it and one who had not opened as wide, quite literally, as heaven and earth, and the system had formed naturally from that.
So the value of a mana formula was tremendous.
Not that mastering it made everyone a noble, of course.
You had to become at least a low-grade knight to receive a baronetcy.
Learning a basic-grade formula at a late age made it a distant prospect.
But if the man himself couldn't, then what about his children?
Teach them from childhood and the house becomes a noble house.
Which was why it was a truly precious thing, and—
'And she's going to teach me it?'
Naturally, a mana formula is not taught carelessly.
And here she was handing one out to a commoner soldier.
'And to me, whom she's known a mere few days?'
Delam was glad and sad at once.
He'd thought he'd luckily grabbed a rope to climb by......
Because he was worried she might be mentally ill.
Still, he had to answer.
Delam made an effort to look startled and asked back,
"A-a mana formula, for me?"
"Ahem. It is not our house's secret formula. It is the entry-level formula our squires master. But it is better than most basic formulas, so it will be a great help to you, boy."
Normally a great house had at minimum three mana formulas.
[The secret formula the head and the direct line learn]
[The advanced formula taught to the collateral lines and to knights]
[The entry formula passed to squires]
What Rubian meant to pass on was the third of these.
An entry formula, but a great house's.
It would certainly amount to the advanced-formula grade of anywhere else.
"I'm not sure you should give something so precious to me......"
"It is fine. It is an entry formula anyway. But you must never pass it on to anyone whatsoever. Boy — not your friends or your family, and not even a child you may one day have."
"Understood."
"Can you swear it?"
"I, Delam, swear that I shall never leak the mana formula you have taught me to another."
Rubian nodded vigorously.
It was an oath with no compulsion whatsoever behind it.
But wasn't Delam's own firm character the proof?
'To think I could receive a mana formula already.'
Delam, meanwhile, was uncommonly pleased.
Of course it was no comparison to Flurex Arts, one of the continent's finest mana formulas, bestowed on him by the Emperor himself.
But what mattered was the [justification].
The truth was that Delam beating a barbarian warrior had been a bit of a stretch.
A boy without a drop of mana, against a mana user?
It made no sense, but with Rubian's intervention there had been a certain amount of letting it be acknowledged and passed over.
In an army, the higher you go, the more your background matters.
Part of it was connections, blood, and regional ties.
But unexpectedly, the biggest part was [trust].
The belief that this fellow is not a traitor to the kingdom.
Certain proof that he is not a spy.
And once a background was certain?
Such fellows could be filtered out in the first pass.
Delam killing the barbarian warrior was a problem for that reason too.
It was a situation that could quite reasonably raise the suspicion that some house of a foreign nation had taught him a mana formula and planted him covertly.
And that had vanished.
Thanks to a backer named Rubian.
Nor would there be any need to hide his mana from here on.
Because a single line — [Sir Rubian passed it to me] — and no suspicious gaze would follow him any longer.
"Now that it has come up, would you like to learn it here and now?"
"Would I be able to do it right away?"
"That depends on your talent, boy. First of all you must feel mana. It is hard to do alone, so I shall help you."
"Thank you, ma'am."
Rubian took Delam's hand.
Calluses far harder than his own, farmer that he had been, could be felt.
The product of pain accumulated through long training.
Rubian had been proud of such hands her whole life, but today, embarrassed by something, she seemed slightly stiff.
"What do you feel from my hand?"
"I feel all the effort you've built up until now, ma'am. It's hard and yet soft."
"D-do not say strange things...... I meant that I am channeling mana in now, so try to feel that."
"Ahh! Hmm... there seems to be something warm. Like heated air, but with a clearer substance than that?"
"......!"
Rubian's eyes went wide.
No — he had felt mana already......?