Melv's and Cory's eyes bulged.
Neither of them had dreamed the kid would slit Shine's throat without a second's hesitation.
"...You crazy little bastard!"
Shoving Shine's spasming body aside by the hair, Leo rose to his feet.
His face a blank mask, he reversed his grip and settled into a low combat stance.
"Eeeek—!"
White as a sheet, Louise frantically kicked Shine's bleeding corpse off her legs and scrambled out of her sleeping bag.
That monster had been seconds away from violating and murdering her, and the young porter had just killed him cleanly.
Panicked as she was, she knew instantly whose side she was on.
"Melv, Cory, Shine. Scum who lure rookie adventurers into their party to rob and murder them."
"...You're no ordinary porter."
"Who the hell sent you?!"
Melv and Cory glared daggers at him, yet neither dared rush in blindly.
No ordinary village kid slit a veteran's throat with eyes that cold.
Leo let out a dry snort.
In his right hand was his own hunting knife; in his left, the dagger he had plucked from Shine's grasp.
"You bastards talk like you're some kind of big-shot villains. You're just bottom-feeding trash. And tonight, you picked the wrong mark and got yourselves killed."
"Big words, brat. Let's see who's the one dying tonight! Hehehe."
Melv and Cory quickly sized up the odds.
The kid named Leo clearly knew how to fight. However, the other boy was shaking like a newborn fawn around his dagger, and the useless mage girl was still hyperventilating on the dirt.
Two against one, the advantage was still theirs.
Melv shot Cory a quick glance.
I'll hold off Leo—you gut the other porter.
Once Cory cut down the trembling kid in one swing, the two of them could pincer this cocky brat and chop him to pieces.
"Fucking die!"
Melv lunged forward, throwing all his bulk behind a heavy downward slash.
Seeing Leo raise a puny hunting knife to parry a broadsword, Melv grinned viciously.
CLANG—!
Reinforcing his muscles with Aura, Leo effortlessly knocked Melv's heavy blade skyward.
A pale blue glow shimmered along the edge of Leo's knife.
"What?!"
"Here. Catch your buddy's knife."
Leo's left hand flashed forward, burying Shine's dagger up to the hilt in Melv's throat.
Gurgle—!
Without even a scream, Melv's massive frame crashed face-first into the dirt.
A dark pool of blood spread rapidly beneath his twitching body.
"A-Aura?!"
Cory, who had been mid-dash toward Dex, froze in his tracks at the sight of the blue Aura coating Leo's blade, every ounce of fighting spirit evaporating on the spot.
Years ago, he had glimpsed an Aura-wielding knight in battle from afar. To ordinary men, an Aura user wasn't a fighter—he was a walking natural disaster.
"Milord! Spare me, please just spare my life...!"
Tossing his sword aside, Cory dropped to his knees and slammed his forehead into the dirt.
Begging like a dog was the only way he was walking out of these woods alive.
The next day, Leo's group marched back into the Shur guild office with Cory bound tight in rope ahead of them.
Between Louise's testimony and Cory's blubbering confession, every last crime the three adventurer hunters had committed came to light.
As it turned out, an official bounty had just been issued for the trio in a neighboring city.
The wanted posters simply hadn't reached the Shur branch office yet.
Thanks to that, Leo pocketed a hefty bounty on top of their porter wages.
"Hehehe, nothing beats a surprise bonus."
Better yet, he had stripped the dead bastards clean of everything valuable before leaving the woods.
After selling off their gear—including Melv's sword, which had been notched to hell by Leo's Aura—he walked away with roughly 50 silvers. Combined with the bounty from the guild, his coin pouch was delightfully heavy.
"Thank you both so much. If it weren't for you two...."
Outside the guild hall, Louise bowed deeply from the waist.
One wrong turn and she would have been violated and left to rot in an unmarked grave in the woods.
Looking back on how excited and naive she had been about her first real expedition made her want to slap her past self.
"Your names were Leo and Dex... right? I want to repay you properly for saving my life, truly, I just don't have any money to my name right now. Please let me make it up to you somehow."
Leo was about to wave her off with a casual 'Don't sweat it,' when a sudden thought struck him.
Wait—hadn't part of the reason he came to Shur to make money been to buy basic magic books for Dex?
"Forget the money. How about you teach us some magic instead?"
When a real mage offered to pay a life debt, getting live tutoring beat buying a dusty book any day of the week.
Caught completely off guard by the request, Louise blinked up at him in shock.
"Pardon? You want to learn magic?"
"Not me. Him."
"Huh? Me? Magic?"
Listening blankly beside him, Dex looked even more dumbfounded than she did.
Renting three rooms at a clean inn, meals included, only cost 3 silvers a day.
Louise insisted she could pay for her own room, but since she was serving as Dex's full-time magic tutor, covering her board was a bargain as far as Leo was concerned.
"Just teach him for one month. If he doesn't have the knack for it, we'll drop it cleanly."
Leo said that to keep things simple, though he already knew the truth: a guy who had taught himself magic out of a looted book while marching with mercenaries had talent to spare.
Leaving Dex and Louise cooped up at the inn, Leo headed back to the guild hall alone to find real work.
Technically, he was still a year too young to take mercenary contracts, rules were always bendable for the right person.
After watching Leo drag in a gang of wanted murderers single-handedly, the Shur guild office was more than happy to bend the rules and let him take E-rank and D-rank novice contracts under the table.
"Let's see here... looks like there's an open goblin culling contract in the Great Forest?"
"Yep, that time of year again."
"Can I take this one?"
"I can sign you up for it, sure, but... you are joining a party first, right? Going deep into the Great Forest alone is suicide for a novice."
After bantering across the counter for a few days, Leo had warmed up the previously stone-faced receptionist considerably.
Seeing actual human expressions on her face beat that stiff, painted-on smile by a mile.
"Nah, I work faster solo. Just need to slice off their left ears for proof of kill, right? See ya in a few days!"
"Hey, be careful out there~!"
Half a day's march from Shur stood a sprawling woodland known as the Great Forest.
Because the forest was so massive, its deeper reaches were rumored to crawl with intermediate monsters like orcs and trolls. Consequently, novice mercenaries were strictly warned to stick to the outer perimeter.
Those outer woods, meanwhile, were overrun with goblins.
The little bastards bred like rats, and whenever their numbers swelled past a certain point, raiding parties would spill out of the forest to attack outlying farms.
To keep their numbers in check, the guild posted periodic open culling contracts—just like the one Leo had taken today.
"Hmm, let's see. A steel shortsword around this weight ought to do."
"Forty silvers, kid."
"Man, shopkeepers in this town have no conscience. Keep it."
Everywhere you went, merchants tried to fleece anyone who looked young or green.
After walking out of a few overpriced shops, Leo stopped by an armorer recommended by the guild receptionist and picked up a decent sword, a round shield, and fitted leather armor at a fair price.
All told, the gear set him back about 50 silvers.
The guild paid 2 silvers per goblin ear; how fast he made that investment back depended entirely on how many he could butcher.
Before long, he stepped beneath the eaves of the Great Forest.
Even at high noon, the woods were steeped in gloom, the thick canopy choking out most of the sunlight.
If the outer edge was already this dark, the deep forest must be pitch-black.
Rustle—!
Wind whispering through the undergrowth, the buzz of insects, and the distant cries of wild beasts.
Keeping his ears pricked, Leo tracked through the brush for a good while before spotting his first pack.
'Five green goblins.'
Five of them were huddled around the base of a mossy boulder.
Green goblins—also called forest goblins.
Cowardly individually, they were vicious and cunning in packs, making them plenty dangerous if a rookie let his guard down.
If he were an actual rookie, that is.
STEP—!
Leo kicked off the dirt without a sound.
His first slash took the nearest goblin cleanly across the back of the neck; his backswing split the second bastard's skull down the middle.
"Kiek?! Kegegek!"
As two of their packmates dropped dead in a spray of blood, the remaining three shrieked and snatched up their crude, rusted blades.
Activating his Aura Eye, Leo watched crimson lines flare to life across the goblins' bodies.
Just like humans, their energy converged at the heart. He didn't need the Aura Eye to kill goblins, of course—he was activating it deliberately to train himself to maintain it effortlessly mid-combat.
SLASH, SLICE—!
Two crisp flashes of steel put the remaining three goblins down in the dirt.
Nothing shook the rust off combat instincts faster than live blood.
Getting paid for it was just icing on the cake.
Better yet, his Aura Sword felt noticeably more stable, staying active longer with less strain than a few days ago.
How old had Sword Saint Klein Vandite been when he first manifested an Aura Blade? Seventeen, wasn't it?
'Since I've already regressed once, maybe I ought to aim for Sword Master this time around.'
Coating a weapon in raw Aura to reinforce its cutting power was called an Aura Sword.
Manifesting one's Aura into physical reality through pure mental imagery was an Aura Blade.
Only those who achieved the Aura Blade were recognized as Sword Masters—and the Empire's sole living Sword Master, Count Vandite, was famous for sheathing his blade in roaring crimson flames, the signature art of his bloodline.
'Well, first things first—back to slaughtering goblins.'
Pitching a hidden camp along the outer woods, Leo spent the next three days and nights doing nothing but hunting goblins.
The only reason he called it quits after three days was the warm weather; any longer, and the severed ears at the bottom of his sack would start rotting into mush.
"Oh, you made it back in one piece! Not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"From a bunch of goblins? Please. Here—all left ears, just like the notice asked."
Leo hoisted two bulging leather sacks out of his pack and dropped them onto the counter with a heavy thud.
One sack held an even hundred, and the second was packed even fuller—easily over two hundred ears in total.
"H-Huh?! You hunted all of these by yourself in three days?!"
"Take your time counting 'em. I'll swing by tomorrow for the payout."
Leaving the wide-eyed receptionist gaping at the mountain of ears, Leo strolled out of the guild hall.
'That's another 400 silvers in the bank.... Now, let's see how Dex is holding up.'
He had asked Louise to tutor Dex for a month, and it had only been four days so far.
Still, he was way too curious not to check in.
Arriving back at the inn, he heard the two of them talking inside Dex's room.
Studying magic hard in there, right, buddy? Not studying anatomy instead?
With a wicked grin, Leo eased the door open without knocking.
Catching his best friend red-handed in an awkward situation would give him teasing material for the next ten years.
"Oh, Leo! You're back?"
The two of them were sitting primly on opposite sides of the table, books spread out between them.
Completely innocent, normal studying.
Tsk. Boring.
His hopes of lifelong blackmail dashed, Leo scratched the back of his head and asked in a slightly deflated voice.
"So, how's the studying going? Figured I'd check in."
The words had barely left his mouth when Louise slammed her palms onto the table and shot to her feet, eyes blazing behind her glasses.
She looked like she had been holding in a speech for hours.
Whoa, what's with her?
That intense stare is seriously uncomfortable.
"Wh-What? What's wrong?"
"Dex is a genius!"
Oho....
Looks like the bastard had even more talent than Leo gave him credit for.
When Leo had first asked her out of the blue to teach his friend magic, Louise had been thoroughly flustered.
She was barely more than an apprentice mage herself. Still, she couldn't refuse a simple favor from the boy who had just saved her life—especially when he said she only needed to test whether Dex had any talent.
On the first day, she had covered basic mana theory.
To her surprise, Dex absorbed the concepts like a sponge—completely overturning her initial assumption that he was a simple country boy better suited to manual labor than book learning.
On the second day, she introduced him to mana sensing.
In truth, mana sensing was the first great wall every aspiring mage faced.
Until you could feel the mana in the air around you, you couldn't take a single step down the path of magic—and plenty of hopefuls wasted years staring at that wall without ever feeling a thing.
"Huh? Wait... is this it?"
When Dex tilted his head on the second afternoon, she hadn't thought anything of it.
"I think I kinda feel something? I'll try grabbing onto it again tomorrow."
She had merely smiled and nodded, not wanting to discourage him.
Every beginner mistook random chills or wishful thinking for mana at first; he would inevitably hit a wall soon enough.
Then came the fourth day.
Just as she was wrapping up the afternoon's theory lesson, Dex spoke up.
"Louise, could you check if I'm doing this right?"
Dex reached across the table and lightly touched his fingertips to hers.
He was trying to channel mana externally so she could feel it.
'Haa....'
Louise let out a silent sigh.
Trying to move mana externally when he had barely started sensing it two days ago?
That was like a toddler who couldn't even stand up straight trying to run a steeplechase.
'I should let him down gently before he hurts himself.'
Right as she opened her mouth to correct him, a distinct, unmistakable current brushed against her fingertips.
'Wait... this is—!'
Pure, controlled mana.
Her jaw dropped.
"D-Dex, are you actually moving your mana right now?!"
"I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, I'm just following the diagram in your book. Hold on, I'll push a little harder."
A moment later, a warm wave of mana flowed cleanly from Dex's fingertips, wrapping around Louise's hand.
Louise couldn't speak.
It had taken her two full years of grueling meditation just to sense mana. Another year on top of that to move a single thread of it, and yet another year to bind it into a First Circle and become a proper mage.
And this country boy had just cleared three years of her blood, sweat, and tears in four days flat.
He was an undeniable monster of a prodigy.
"Look at this bastard grinning from ear to ear."
"What genius, cut it out... Hehehe."
Magical talent was one of the rarest blessings in the world.
For a commoner especially, awakening as a mage was a life-changing miracle that guaranteed wealth and status overnight.
Yet the two boys were acting as casual as if Dex had just gotten an extra skewer tossed in for free at a street stall.
Louise couldn't wrap her head around the pair of them.
"Well, since he's got the knack for it, mind teaching him a few actual spells while we're here, Louise? Just for the rest of the month."
"I'll teach him everything I know! By the way, I've been meaning to ask—why did you set the limit at exactly one month?"
"Oh, we're planning to take the entrance exam for the Imperial Academy. We have to hit the road in a month if we want to make it to the capital in time for registration."
"Th-The Imperial Academy?!"
The greatest institution in the Ashlen Empire, where every prodigy on the continent gathered.
It was shocking to hear, yet it made complete sense.
With talent as terrifying as Dex's, anywhere less than the Imperial Academy would be a waste.
Even among the elite of the Imperial Academy, how many mages could possibly match his learning speed?
"Wait—the Imperial Academy? Who's going there?"
"You are. Well, both of us."
"Me?! Why the hell would I go to the Imperial Academy?!"
Dex stared at Leo as if he had started speaking another language.
Sure, messing around with magic for the past few days had turned out to be pretty fun.
But how the hell did learning a few magic tricks in a small-town inn suddenly jump to enrolling in the Imperial Academy?!
"You already promised you'd come with me, remember?"
"When did I ever promise that?!"
When Leo calmly reminded him of their conversation back in the village, Dex's jaw dropped open—"Ah."
"...You crazy bastard! When you said 'come somewhere with me later,' you meant the Imperial Academy?!"
As his brain finally caught up, Dex's voice echoed off the inn ceiling.