[V3C25] Those Who Brandish Their Pride
Translated by Jodas 3: The Fateful BrothersWhen Wren turned his eyes towards the training grounds, he caught sight of familiar people standing just in front of it.
Otto and Sevil, as well as a short black-haired boy, which must have been his fellow Apprentice, Finn.
Wren spoke to Gerald, who was still holding the wooden box.
“I’m gonna go check that out.”
“……Go ahead.”
Wren shouted “He~y!” to Sevil and the others as he ran up to them.
Sevil and Otto were not in the middle of a sparring match themselves, but instead standing with their swords sheathed and talking. It was probably a good time to talk to them.
First, Wren greeted Otto.
It was important to greet your elders who have taken care of you. That was a bit of wisdom he’d picked up from Hütter’s lessons.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Otto!”
“Hello to you, too. Are you also here to practice imbuement magic?”
“Nope, I’ve been having trouble imagining how magic was used, so was wondering if I could sit in on a magic battle practice.”
As he spoke, Wren cast a glance towards Sevil and Finn.
Finn was a year younger than Wren and Julius’ roommate in the dorm. The two of them seemed to get along reasonably well, as he’d seen Finn talking to Julius all the time.
Wren had no positive or negative feelings towards Finn, but he’d picked a fight with Julius not long earlier, so he felt a little awkward around him.
To disguise that awkwardness, Wren spoke in a cheery tone.
“By the way, I didn’t expect to see Sevil and Finn hanging out together. Are you interested in magic swords as well, Finn?”
“Umm….. I can’t use a sword at all…… but, I really wanted to see what a magic sword was like…… so I tagged along……”
Definitely, to someone who’d grown up in an environment completely removed from magic, magic swords were an unusual sight.
For Wren as well, the time Otto used one during the encounter with Monsters a few days ago was the first time he’d ever seen it.
That had been a life-or-death situation, so he couldn’t say ‘show me more’, but he really did want to see it up close. It looked cool, okay!
(Yeah, watching how magic swords work…… I get it. I wanna do that too.)
Wren started to feel a little kinship with Finn.
“I want to see what magic swords are like, too! Hey, Mr. Otto, can I watch?”
“I don’t mind, but we’re taking a break at the moment. Also…..”
Otto glanced at Sevil.
Sevil nodded once, then directed her eyes towards the back of the training grounds.
“An interesting fight has just started. Go take a look, Wren.”
In the direction Sevil was looking, a veteran-looking mage from the Protection Office squared off against a young girl.
The girl had orange hair tied in two braids, a pointy hat, and a cape — it was the Classical School mage Roswitha.
Roswitha’s cape billowed out, and she took something from the inner lining. It looked like three small sticks.
Each stick was only as long as a fork, too small to be called a staff, and it was hard to imagine them serving as weapons.
Roswitha then began chanting.
“O, thou fish that have lost thine arms, thy devotion, the rain which dwells within thee……bore through.”
The words she muttered at the end of her incantation carried a distinctive song-like rhythm.
Roswitha then threw the sticks in her hand towards the mage in front of her.
As she did, water began to seep out from the sticks, then solidify, taking the form of fish with the sticks at their center.
The fish weren’t unbelievably big. They were about as long as Wren’s forearm. But there were three of them.
When Roswitha waved her hand, the three fish swam through the air to attack her opponent.
It seemed that the mage she was fighting controlled lightning magic. Roughly a dozen arrows of lightning rained down on Roswitha.
However, the three fish swam up and shielded Roswitha by blocking the arrows with their bodies.
“That kid’s pretty good.”
Otto muttered to himself. He was impressed by Roswitha’s magic.
To Wren, both the raining torrent of lightning and the three fish that could block that attack were unbelievably impressive.
“But it looks like they’re even, right?” Wren asked for confirmation, but Sevil only muttered to herself, having appeared to notice something.
“Those fish are tough.”
“Eh?”
“Look closely. No matter how many lightning arrows those fish block, they keep moving around like nothing happened.”
Now that she mentioned it, that was certainly the case. The fish Roswitha controlled showed no signs of slowing down even after taking that many attacks.
Otto spoke as he stroked his stubble.
“The mana she puts into them must be something else, huh…… It’s nostalgic, seeing this kind of magic again. It reminds me of her mother.”
“No way, is Roswitha’s mother in the Wedge Tower as well?”
Wren asked, but Otto smiled sadly and shook his head sideways.
“That kid’s mother retired a long time ago and went back to her hometown. She was really powerful, though…… I couldn’t ever land a hit on her.”
Roswitha’s fish slammed into her opponent.
To be more precise, the snouts of the fish were sharp like knives, so it was less ‘slamming’ and more of a slashing attack.
Inside a magic battle barrier, he wouldn’t be harmed even if the fish pierced right through him, but their mana would decrease in proportion to the damage received.
The Protection Office mage, knocked over on his butt, raised his hands in surrender.
Finn raised a shriek of surprise with wide eyes.
“Huh!? ……He lost after only taking one hit? Can’t that guy keep fighting, though?”
“That’s just how much mana was put into those fish. In magic battles, the more mana is in an attack that hits you, the more damage you get dealt.”
While listening to Otto’s explanation to Finn, Wren finally came to understand just how critical mana reserves were in a magic battle.
People with high mana reserves might be able to take one or two attacks and keep up the fight, but people with low mana might be knocked out after the first hit.
In a magic battle, your endurance was equal to your mana.
On top of that, not only would getting hit decrease your mana, but making attacks would also cost mana as well.
(For someone with low mana reserves like me, I would get knocked out of the fight just by casting a few offensive spells……)
Wren groaned internally. This put him in quite the conundrum.
Unless he found a way to hit his enemy with high-efficiency attacks while limiting the drain on his mana, he would never win a magic battle.
(Plus, our opponent next month…… Frederik is super duper good at flight magic. If he just flies around back and forth like that, I’ll run out of mana and lose without getting a single hit on him.)
As Wren pondered over the issue, Sevil spread the palm of her hand wide and grabbed onto Wren’s head.
Then she pressed into his scalp with just the strength in her fingers. She held herself back to the point where it just barely didn’t hurt him.
He slowly tilted his neck up to lock eyes with a smirking Sevil.
“I like that. That’s the face of you using your head, Wren.”
“Umm…… What are you doing to me?”
“I’m giving you a scalp massage. So, how about it? Have you thought of any ideas to win us this magic battle yet?”
He felt Sevil’s expectations for him in those words. She expected him to be the guy who comes up with the plans.
He felt the pressure for sure, but he didn’t mind the feeling of being relied on.
“I’m still trying to gather information, so wait a little longer, okay? Then I’ll unleash the full power of a brainy pretty boy!”
“Good.”
The moment Sevil released her grip, he heard a loud voice coming from the area where Roswitha was.
“Like I said, you Protection Office fools are useless!”
Finn’s already small body shrunk even further under the power of the voice.
A huge man was scolding the Protection Office mage who lost to Roswitha.
His reddish hair was clipped short, and you could tell by a glance that this man was strong. He looked to be about thirty years of age. He wore flexible leather clothes and an ornament made from a beast’s fang hung from his neck.
The most eye-catching part was a huge X-shaped scar across his whole face.
(What a gnarly scar…..)
Too clean to have been made by accident, that scar cut clean across the center of his face. Was it made by a Monster?
While patting the trembling Finn’s head lightly to calm him down, Otto sighed.
“Dammer, again…….What a piece of work, that guy.”
His voice dripped with exhaustion.
Wren looked up and asked Otto a question.
“Is Dammer that guy with the scar on his face?”
“Yeah. He’s part of the Extermination Office and a true powerhouse……. but his personality is another issue.”
His personality. That one word carried more exasperation than anything else.
Sevil didn’t hide her disdain either and spat.
“Anywhere you go, you’ll find rascals like him.”
As if he was trying to show off ‘that personality’ that Otto was talking about, Dammer screamed angrily at the Protection Office mage.
“Compared to us who risk our lives fighting Monsters, you Protection Office rats are spineless garbage! Do you have no pride as a warrior!?”
Dammer smirked as he lifted the fang hanging from his neck to show it off.
That fang must have been a Monster’s fang. He was trying to show off a piece of a Monster he had slain.
(……I hate guys like that.)
Wren’s face silently tensed up while he watch Roswitha speak with a grim expression.
“Hey, that scar……”
Dammer noticed her stare and looked down on Roswitha.
“You’re Ohlendorf’s kid, huh? I’ve heard the rumors.”
A smile showed itself on Dammer’s face.
Wren knew that smile very well. It was the same condescending, ridiculing smile that Wren’s brothers had given him.
“That woman ran away from the Wedge Tower after losing to the Primordial Beast. I wonder if you’ll be any different?”
All emotion drained from Roswitha’s face.
Beneath the brim of her pointy hat, the eyes on Roswitha’s emotionless face gleamed dangerously.
“…….You dare to slander Mama?”