Chapter 21 - School Connections

“I've made up my mind!”

Galahad squinted at Gwen's sudden shout.

“Private First Class! Tom!”

“It's nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Yes, sir!”

Tom promptly fell fast asleep again. Gwen grabbed him to apologize, shaking him as she said she was sorry for waking him.

'... That's downright cruel.'

Galahad chuckled.

“What exactly have you decided?”

“I'm going to become an incredibly strong Mage.”

Gwen learning magic was good news. That was why he had put her in the Special Operations Unit in the first place.

However...

“An incredibly strong Mage is a rather abstract goal. It's better to have a clear objective.”

“... Huh? It is?”

“First, set yourself a precise goal.”

Gwen blinked, then abruptly pointed. Galahad squinted at the calloused finger aimed at him.

“You want to be me?”

“Yes! I want to become a powerful Mage like you, Master Galahad!”

Her answer boomed. Tom sprang upright, then sat back down.

“That's impossible.”

“Why?!”

“A difference in temperament. I prefer quick, efficient methods. Clean methods, like bursting heads or punching holes through hearts.”

“C-clean methods?”

Gwen's eyes widened.

“Your heart is far too kind for that.”

“Thank... you?”

“That wasn't a compliment. It means you can't become an efficient Mage like me. Could you put a hole through someone's head?”

“Nooo!”

“I thought not. Since you're softhearted, you'll need to annihilate your opponents with enormous spells, leaving no trace of their bodies.”

“... Whaaat?! Annihilate them?!”

Apparently giving up on sleep, Tom pulled over the hide beside him and began stitching it with thick thread. He seemed to be making a coat.

“Remember that to protect someone, you must kill someone else.”

There was no humor in Galahad's voice.

Tom nodded. The coat was taking shape. Then Damian woke up. Tom offered him the meat he had set aside, and Damian started eating again.

“... I know that too.”

Gwen hung her head. Galahad saw no need to press her.

He eased open the small hatch beside him, an opening made for smoking at Tom's suggestion. The cold dawn air drifted in, carrying a little moisture.

The scenery beyond remained unchanged: tall, bone-dry trees, with white snow between them. “I'll die of boredom,” Galahad grumbled quietly.

“... Then! I'll become a Mage who only beats bad people to a pulp!”

“A pulp? You have a cruel streak beneath that innocent appearance.”

“What?! No—”

“So you want to learn magic?”

“Yes!”

Gwen nodded, looking like a squire standing beside a knight.

“You have tremendous talent as a Mage. With that immense mana capacity and exceptional mana sensitivity, you could rightfully be called a genius.”

“Hehe.”

Gwen scratched the back of her head and smiled shyly. She seemed susceptible to praise.

“Now, let's start with something simple. This is ordinary fire. A very simple Tier 1 spell. Copy me.”

Gwen's eyes grew slightly unfocused. Then an identical flame appeared on her finger.

'Impressive.'

Galahad was genuinely amazed. Copying something simply by watching was no easy feat.

'A genius indeed.'

Apart from that fellow at the Twilight Mage Tower, she was the first person Galahad had acknowledged as a genius.

“Now, focus on that flame. Compress the mana, imagining you're pressing down on it.”

“Compress it?”

“Imagine pressing down hard.”

Gwen opened her eyes wide. She concentrated so hard that her finger trembled, yet, astonishingly, nothing happened.

“I don't really understand.”

“Imagine pressing down hard. Think of it as pulling on an invisible muscle.”

“I don't have any invisible muscles, so I don't understand!”

“... If you really can't manage it, try bending your finger first.”

Galahad detested using physical movements to compress mana, but she couldn't grasp it at all, leaving him no choice.

The problem was that even this didn't help.

Casting magic inevitably allowed you to feel mana. Once they could feel it, most people quickly understood the principle of compression.

And yet she couldn't manage even that basic step...

'Ah.'

Looking into her innocent eyes, Galahad sighed softly.

“There is one problem.”

“A problem?”

“You're stupid.”

“... Pardon?”

“You're stupid.”

“I know!”

Gwen nodded. She was quick to admit it.

“So is that a problem?”

Asked what was wrong with being stupid, Galahad shook his head. It wasn't really a problem.

“Quite right. You don't need to pursue the truths of magic. Just watch my spells and copy them.”

“Oh! Yes! What a relief!”

Galahad lit another flame. A flame appeared on Gwen's finger.

“Now try it on your own.”

Gwen looked down at her finger. Her brows furrowed in concentration, but unfortunately, nothing happened.

“Didn't you manage perfectly well on your own against the Demon?”

“It was an emergency then... Now I don't really know how.”

He could guess the cause. Her subconscious aversion to magic seemed to be the problem.

The way to overcome that was simple.

Repetitive practice.

There was no problem it couldn't solve.

“Now, concentrate.”

A flame sprang up on Galahad's finger. One appeared on Gwen's as well. His shrank, and hers shrank in turn.

“Good. Well done. Now, again—”

The flame lit. It shrank, grew, then went out.

“Well done again. Now, once more—”

“Again—”

“Again.”

Despite the many repetitions, Gwen kept up well without complaining.

How many times had they repeated it?

Around the time Tom finished the coat and Damian patted his stomach and closed his eyes again...

“Burn! Fire! It... It worked!! I did it!”

A flame blazed on Gwen's finger.

'So it takes forty repetitions to sink in.'

Compared with the time it took to study mana, memorize magical principles and spell formulas, and even analyze concentrations before learning to cast a spell...

'Overwhelmingly fast.'

There was simply no comparison.

“Good.”

Gwen wore a complicated smile.

It was the expression of someone born to gamblers, tormented all her life by her parents' gambling, who had just discovered she possessed an innate talent for gambling herself.

“It's all right. You can win back what your parents lost too.”

“... Pardon?”

“Now, next is the Tier 4 spell Explosive Fireball.”

“We were just doing Tier 1! Isn't that much too big a jump?!”

“It's fine. You can't understand the principles anyway. You might as well learn higher-tier spells.”

After a moment's thought, Gwen nodded.

Gilberton looked at Damian, who had come out to the driver's seat.

The two rode on in silence for a long while.

* * *

“Each battalion on the northern front has its own base.”

Gilberton pointed ahead as he spoke. Soldiers stood in small groups warming themselves by fires. It looked like a checkpoint.

“Like nobles.”

“Yes, much the same. They probably wield more power than nobles. This is the military, after all.”

“So there was a reason people called it a duchy.”

White snow had piled up on his shoulders. “To think it snows this much, even in the North...” Galahad murmured, brushing it off.

“Halt!”

A soldier shouted at them. The others hastily drew their spears.

“The Fifth Battalion commander is somewhat isolated among the commanders.”

“They're ostracizing him?”

“Yes. He always did things differently, but lately rumors have spread that he's training Mages, and now they're shutting him out.”

By then, the soldiers had come right up to them.

Their spears had remarkably large heads, resembling whaling harpoons.

“State your affiliation.”

A soldier held his spear up to Galahad like a microphone.

“Galahad, commander of the Special Operations Unit.”

The soldier knitted his thick brows.

“Special Operations Unit? Ever heard of it?”

“No, first I've heard.”

Their conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

“Show us your identification token.”

Galahad looked at Gilberton. He had never been given any such thing.

“The tokens are made from demon-beast bones, so they take time to produce.”

It wasn't incomprehensible. Even the capital processed things slowly in this world. How much worse would the North be?

“Show them yours for now. Don't you still have your First Battalion token?”

“No.”

“Why not? You belonged to the First Battalion until recently.”

“Because I don't belong to the First Battalion.”

“You're more honest than I expected. What were you planning to do at checkpoints?”

“The First Battalion doesn't get stopped at checkpoints.”

“But you're not in the First Battalion now.”

“Your token!”

At the soldier's shout, Galahad clicked his tongue and searched his inner pocket.

“Here. My appointment order from His Highness the Grand Duke.”

Galahad produced the familiar document. It had worked at the commanders' meeting too.

The problem was...

“I can't read!”

“Neither can I!”

“Showing us writing? Suspicious!”

The soldiers were illiterate.

The mood turned hostile in an instant, all because he had shown them writing. How on earth did they read identification tokens?

Gilberton gripped his sword hilt.

“We can probably beat them up a little and go inside. You have an appointment with the commander anyway, don't you?”

As Gilberton proposed negotiating the northern way, the carriage door flew open.

“Ah, I made a temporary identification token just in case.”

Tom held out a crude wooden token. After checking it, the soldiers let them through. Apparently, they only checked the emblem.

“Tom, you really are capable.”

“Haha, you're too kind.”

Tom laughed awkwardly and put away the wooden token. At that display of modesty, Galahad stared at Gilberton.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“... Nothing.”

At Gilberton's surly question, Galahad discreetly looked away.

The Fifth Battalion's base was larger than he had expected. A long palisade of thick logs stood before them, with pointed wooden barricades placed here and there along the road through it.

Unidentifiable chunks of rotting flesh clung thickly to the barricades. A soft blanket of snow covered them, lending the scene a certain charm.

The palisade was thicker and taller than it had looked from a distance, enough to feel like a fortress wall. Crossbows were positioned along it as well.

A musty smell greeted them as they entered.

'A real army, all right.'

Galahad put a cigarette between his lips. Its lemon scent drove away the mustiness.

“The unit is in better shape than I expected.”

“You call that good?”

“Yes. The soldiers are healthy and well equipped. The Fifth Battalion's finances must be better than I thought.”

Looking around after hearing that, Galahad noticed subtle differences from headquarters. The soldiers were clean—by northern standards, of course.

There were also quite a few people in Imperial dress. Some looked like merchants, while soldiers tended to carts.

'It feels like somewhere on the border between the Empire and the North.'

In some respects, it was livelier than headquarters. He could smell magic everywhere.

Then a young woman greeted him. He had seen her at the council.

“My name is Lumian, adjutant to Commander Mark of the Fifth Battalion.”

She led Galahad to a large building among the barracks. It was heavily guarded.

Out of habit, he studied its layout and the placement of personnel. An occupational hazard.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

“Come in.”

Lumian opened the door and stepped aside.

Mark, the Fifth Battalion commander, was a man steeped in exhaustion. Seeing Galahad, he rose and extended a hand.

“You've come even sooner than I expected. Did you discover something?”

After a brief greeting, Mark went straight to his question.

“What makes you think that?”

“Adrianna is a stickler for procedure. She probably wouldn't finish until she'd visited every watchtower, and there hasn't been enough time for that. You couldn't have arrived this quickly unless, for example, you found something, caught the culprit, and closed the case.”

The man's mind worked faster than Galahad had expected. Perhaps that explained why he spoke so quickly too.

“Correct. We dealt with one intermediate-ranking Demon, two Mages, and sixteen mole crickets on the way. Adrianna's late arrival held us up.”

Mark narrowed his eyes for a moment, apparently trying to discern what Galahad meant.

“You have no reason to lie, so it must be true.”

He accepted it surprisingly quickly.

“So His Highness the Grand Duke had good reason to entrust you with a unit. Hmm...”

Mark tapped his fingers on the table.

“Are you planning to establish your headquarters at my battalion's base?”

The subject had changed again.

“We're midway between headquarters and Adrianna's First Battalion, making this a suitable location. Isn't that why you've come straight here? Admittedly, that's something of a leap...”

Galahad readily nodded.

“I see. Providing you with space wouldn't be particularly difficult, but there are a few problems.”

KNOCK, KNOCK.

The door opened as the knocks sounded. A robed figure entered—a man with a goatee.

He had no weapon, meaning he wasn't a soldier.

“Perfect timing. This is Corton, our unit's outside adviser.”

Mark greeted him with a smile.

The goateed man called Corton extended his hand, wearing a merchant's smile.

“A pleasure.”

Galahad shook his hand and, out of habit, sent mana into him.

'He has quite a lot of mana...'

A telltale sign of the Black Mage Association. They stopped at nothing to increase their mana, and consequently possessed large reserves.

“If you have a guest, I can come back later.”

“Not at all. This is Commander Galahad, the man you were curious about.”

Corton sat down near Mark.

'Things are taking an interesting turn.'

Catching Black Mages wasn't particularly difficult. Locate their residence, put a hole through their head, and file a report. Problem solved.

Galahad had expected the same solution this time.

But the case was developing differently.

“We owe Corton a great deal for improving the Fifth Battalion's poor conditions.”

Mark's voice was quite warm as he introduced the bald man.

'So that's the problem Mark mentioned.'

The two seemed fairly close.

Presumably, with one Mage already established here, accepting another would be awkward.

“Are you, by any chance, that Galahad?”

Corton's eyes widened. An unpleasant flush rose in his face.

'That Galahad...'

It had been a long time since anyone had called him that.

“Yes, I'm that Galahad.”

“What do you mean, that Galahad?”

“Ah, he's famous among Mages as the youngest person to graduate at the top of his class from the academy in the capital.”

Corton spoke in a voice that firmly suppressed his true feelings. Mark's eyes widened a little further.

“You attended the academy?”

“Yes. In fact, I saw you there.”

“Really?”

There was something subtly off about the man's reaction. He seemed displeased.

“Yes. You enrolled when I was in the graduating class, and graduated before I did.”

“You spent four whole years in the graduating class?”

It had taken Galahad precisely three years from enrollment to graduation. That meant this man had spent at least four years in the graduating class.

The man's crumpled expression confirmed his guess.

“Most people spend about that long.”

His gaze turned hostile.

'An inferiority complex.'

Galahad knew that look well. It had followed him ever since he became the youngest student to enroll in the academy.

People with that look always gave something away when prodded.

“I only spent half a year in the graduating class, so I wouldn't know. My apologies.”

The man's eyes narrowed. Galahad smiled.

“Oh, did it take you longer than four years?”

Apparently, that was a sore spot. His face turned scarlet.

“I had no idea you were so famous, Master Galahad. So the Empire had a reason for sending you.”

Mark chimed in with a curious look in his eyes. He seemed to be calculating something.

Which of them would benefit him more. A clever man.

Mark's praise provoked an immediate reaction.

“What does it matter when you graduated? What matters is what you've done since. I haven't heard a single thing about the great Galahad since his graduation. What exactly have you been doing?”

The fact that nothing had been heard was proof of what an outstanding agent Galahad was.

Praising him to his face... Galahad scratched his cheek self-consciously and answered.

“Keeping busy with this and that.”

“Oh, you've been busy.”

Mark chimed in again. Corton sneered.

“Ah, I did hear the news. You've done well to survive.”

That was the natural reaction to hearing that a Count's third son was being married off to the Grand Duke's eldest daughter.

He would assume Galahad had been sent to die to provide a pretext.

Since the Grand Duke had originally intended to lock Galahad in a dungeon, that wasn't entirely wrong.

“Corton, what's gotten into you?”

“I'm simply pleased to see an academy classmate here.”

The man grinned at Mark's intervention. Mark seemed to have cast himself as the supposedly restraining bystander who only made things worse.

“I'm pleased to meet a classmate this far north too.”

At Galahad's pointed answer, the man ground his teeth.

“Unlike you, I'm here on business. For me, the North is a land of opportunity.”

“Oh, doing business in the North, a magical wasteland? Impressive.”

At Galahad's tone, the man's brows drew even tighter.

“Ha! I've discovered three magic-stone deposits recently. You must know what those are worth.”

The slightest pressure, and his inferiority complex had him blabbing.

He was a man who had gone so far as to join the Black Magic Society. Twisted even by Mage standards, his violent reaction was hardly surprising.

“It's a joint venture with Commander Mark. It would be nice to have you join us, but... you're such a talented man, aren't you? You couldn't possibly work under a poor student like me. What a pity!”

He sneered.

'A poor student, was it?'

Galahad thought he might have called him that before. He had been rather prickly during his academy days.

“Our illustrious Galahad, the academy's pride and youngest graduate, would never work under a poor student like me. Isn't that right?”

He extended a hand as he spoke, clearly certain Galahad would never accept.

It was blatant mockery.

Galahad met Mark's eyes. That relentlessly calculating gaze seemed to ask which of the two would benefit him more.

Galahad grinned.

“Excellent. Now that's the spirit of fellow alumni.”

He promptly seized the offered hand, and the man's eyes widened almost to bursting.

Mark's lips curved slightly, as though he had seen something entertaining.

Belatedly, Corton tried to withdraw his hand, but Galahad wouldn't let go.

Three magic-stone deposits... Even one could earn as much as the lord of a respectable castle.

It wasn't merely about money. Plenty of mana stones would make teaching Gwen easier too. If he ran short of mana, he could simply use the stones.

And with enough mana stones, he could add all sorts of features when building the Special Operations Unit's headquarters.

In short...

“Well then, where do I report for work?”

It was a gold mine.

To think the man was handing him three magic-stone deposits...

That was how important school connections were.