by Funa
She pulled some of the pebbles from her pocket.
“Umm, if you could keep your voices down…”
Fwip!
She walked away briskly and returned with a jackalope in hand.
Zip!
A large bird tumbled out of a tree.
Bwoosh!
Vwip!
Ka-shunk!
“M-Mile…”
Reina’s mouth hung open.
“What? I use compressed air to make the pebbles fly. It’s really just normal wind magic…” In actuality, Mile was doing it with her finger strength alone—there was no magic required.
“W-well, even if that’s the case… how are you finding the prey so easily?!”
“Um… Intuition?”
Mavis and Pauline looked at each other and shrugged, trading looks that said, “There’s no point trying to understand this one.”
***
When Mile and company returned to the guild, they turned in their birds and jackalopes and were paid twenty-four silver pieces in total. The male students stared, wide-eyed.
“Thanks, but…are you sure you want to share this?” her friends wanted to know.
“Yep! We all went hunting together, after all!”
“Mile, you—well, that’s fine. I will gratefully accept. And I will definitely return the favor someday!”
“I’m looking forward to it!”
The girls split their earnings for six silver each and happily made their way out of the guild, with the young men’s gazes still fixed on them, a bit jealous of their productivity.
***
And so, Mile continued giving Reina and Pauline magic lessons. In order to keep things from getting out, she forbade them from telling others what she was teaching them. They worked in private, going over spells, magical effects, and information about physics and chemistry in their dorm room, saving any actual practice for the hunting trips they took on their days off.
In time, Reina’s fire magic became much stronger, and even Pauline began to learn some combat spells. Mile also taught the latter about the structure of the human body—bones, internal organs, blood vessels, nerves, cells, and the like—so that she would be able to use her healing and recovery magic more effectively.
The two of them made steady improvements, and as they practiced hunting, even their aim began to improve, so that they could earn more on their own, without Mile’s help.
And they all lived happily ever after…
Except for Mavis, who Mile had forgotten about entirely.
“Miiiiiiile!” Whenever she spoke Mile’s name, dissatisfaction could be heard clearly in her voice.
***
As it wasn’t a huge problem to be seen practicing with Mavis, they used the indoor training grounds during their free time, including their lunch and dinner breaks.
“All right! First, let’s try it at about 1.2 times the speed of our fastest classmate.”
Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack!
“All right! Next, 1.3 times.”
Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack!
“All right! Next, 1.4 times.”
Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack!
“All right! Next…”
“W-wait! Wait just a minuuuuuute!!”
“Hm? If we speed up just a little bit at a time, you should be able to acclimate yourself to the quicker speed, right? That’s what the ninjas did: they planted a hemp seed, and every day they practiced jumping over it…”
“I have no idea what a ninja is, but this is impossible! Impossible, I tell you! Anyway, I’m assuming what you’re saying is that they improved a little bit every day. They didn’t get faster every two minutes!”
Mile didn’t understand what Mavis was so unhappy about, but since her friend looked as though she was about to cry, Mile tried a new approach.
“Okay. Wrap this long sash around your waist and try running fast enough that the sash never touches the ground.”
“Um… Okay.”
Mavis agreed, put the sash on her waist, and started running. She didn’t come back.
There was no way she could turn around without letting the sash touch the ground. After some time, she finally came back, her feet dragging. She was exhausted, and there was a bruise on her forehead, as though she had run into something.
“Let’s… let’s try a different method…” she said, still short of breath.
“Well,” Mile mused, “there were once people who would hang upside down and move water from a barrel on the ground to one higher up, using a tiny cup…”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do anything if it will make me stronger!”
Unfortunately for Mavis, every special training method Mile knew came from manga, anime, or movies.
And so, the long days of “Mavis’s Speed Improvement Plan” began. The goal was to get Mavis to measure up to Mile. In looking forward to that day, Mavis prepared a name for the special technique that she would surely invent in the future.
That technique was called “Godspeed Blade.”
It would be an invincible sword technique, one that could slice down enemies with divine speed—or so she hoped.
***
In spite of their hunting, Mile and her roommates still didn’t have much money to spare.
Because they were responsible for providing their own lighting, their lack of funds meant that they couldn’t burn their candles very long at night. However, as they also couldn’t possibly fall asleep immediately, they spent every night after crawling into beds talking with one another before they drifted off.
They talked about practice, and their classmates, and rumors they’d heard—but because they spent much of their time together, and always saw and heard the same things, they often ran out of things to talk about.
Even when they talked about themselves, Mavis was the only one who would speak freely of her family and upbringing. As the first daughter, she always had stories to share about how her parents spoiled her, or the way that her three older brothers were just a little too doting. Mavis herself was the only one who seemed unaware of how these stories sounded.
Blegh…
Apart from the members of Mavis’s family, the three girls probably knew more about Mavis’s childhood than anyone in the world—despite the fact that they had never wished for such knowledge. Since hearing only Mavis’s stories had begun to feel a little grim, Mile also began joining in with the evening chats.
Her talks were on the fundamentals of magic, but—in order to include Mavis—she spoke of other things, too. She told them folktales and legends from Earth, or stories from action dramas, anime, and games, readapted to fit their world.
Her roommates were hooked. Reina loved the stories of powerful sorcerers and magical girls. Pauline loved the rags-to-riches tales, and of course, Mavis loved the heroic legends and epic adventures.
They pestered Mile into continuing every night, none of them realizing that they had contracted a serious illness—one said to afflict all children around the age of thirteen: the obsessiveness of adolescence known as chuunibyou.
***
One day, on the way back to the dorm after dinner, Mile realized that she had left a letter behind in the classroom. One of her male classmates had handed it to her earlier, saying, “Please read this later.”
As she always did with such letters, Mile planned to take it back to the room to look over with the other girls, then come up with a reply. Forming a reply was always a collaborative project—Reina was always the author and Pauline the editor, while Mile took on production. As for the theme, well, it was always heartbreak.
When Mile returned to the classroom to retrieve the letter she had left behind, she heard a strange tapping sound from the direction of the lectern. Upon looking up, she saw a boy who appeared to be practicing writing characters on the board.
“Writing practice?”
“Y-yeah. It’s embarrassing to do it
in my room in front of the other guys, and if I use the chalkboard I don’t have to waste my paper or ink. I don’t even need a quill for it.”
“Oh, I see! That’s smart!”
Mile was moved by the boy’s pleasant, straightforward explanation. She felt a sense of fondness and kinship welling up, as she remembered how she had been unable to purchase paper, pens, or ink when she had first arrived at Eckland Academy so long ago.
“Um. If I remember correctly, you’re a swordsman, right?” she said.
“Yeah. I can also use magic, a little bit beyond basic utility even, but not well enough to actually become a magic user. So, I fight with my sword and just use my magic for the extra things, like drawing water and recovery. It really is a big help, though. It’s hard going solo…”
“Solo?” Mile asked, perplexed.
Except for special cases like herself, solo jobs were too dangerous and inconvenient for anyone but a true veteran to undertake. Unless you were an oddball or the circumstances demanded it, solo work was not something one undertook willingly.
“Yeah, I’m an orphan from the slums. Er, well, I guess I haven’t left yet, so I’m still a slum dweller… Anyway, I have a lot of little guys to look after, so I can’t go off adventuring with a party.
“At the moment, I go check on them after dinner, and on rest days I hunt food for them to eat. If I join a party when I become a real hunter, that means I’ll be traveling far away for days at a time, you know? But if I do that, there’ll be no way for me to look after those little squirts.”
“But wait—once they turn fifteen, they’ll be able to live on their own, won’t they?” Mile asked. “And the next generation will be able to look after the little ones for you…”
At Mile’s words, the boy looked a bit surprised. “That’s wise of you. And, well, I guess most of them are about that age. I’ve already paid back the favors that were done for me, so really, I suppose my role has ended. Still, I don’t mind keeping an eye on them.
“The thing that really bothers me is that no matter how much time passes, life in that place is never going to change. But if I become a C-rank, I’ll be able to take the little ones out on expeditions to gather herbs and things whenever, you know? It’s rare for the guild to sponsor guarded gathering expeditions, and even when they do, you still have to pay for the guard’s participation. With me, it would be free, and under my supervision, they could even try a bit of hunting. I’ll be able to train them, and if they can become D-ranks, forming a party of just us orphans someday wouldn’t be out of the question.”
He shook his head. “But maybe that’s just one man’s foolish dream.”
Watching the boy smile to himself, Mile thought, A swordsman who can use magic.
He was a generous soul who, despite having a chance to escape the slums, remained for the sake of the other orphans. Not only that, but he was obviously a hard worker, studying writing as he did, all on his own.
Since they had begun their power leveling, Mile and her party had more or less risen to the top of their class. Even if she had placed herself at the bottom of that pack, that meant she was ranked fourth in the class. In other words, she needed one more person ahead of her to put her in fifth.
The term “sacrificial lamb” suddenly popped into her head.
“S-say, just hunting with a sword isn’t very effective, is it? What if I told you there was a magic you could learn that’s perfect for hunting birds and jackalopes?”
“Huh…?”
***
“It sure took you a long time just to go and get that letter.”
“Oh, well, there was a guy in the classroom, and we were just talking for a while…”
“What? A guy?!”
“It was just a chat! A short chat!”
Reina was smoldering, but Mile simply waved her hands as if it were nothing.
“Anyway, here’s the letter in question.”
“Let’s deal with it like we usually do.”
“O-okay!” Mile and Pauline agreed, powerless.
***
Veil was an orphan.
He had never known his parents’ faces. By the time he was old enough to be aware of his surroundings, he was already living in the slums, in the shelter of a crumbling, abandoned house along with the other girls and boys. The eldest was a boy of twelve or thirteen, who they all called Andy.
It was only a few years after Veil’s first memories that Andy disappeared.
Perhaps he had died from illness or an accident. Maybe he’d gone off somewhere to become a hunter.
No one ever told them, and Veil never asked.
After Andy, there had been “Big Sis.”
He remembered the day when Big Sis went away.
Instead of the rags she always wore, Big Sis showed up in a pretty new outfit and brought the orphans lots of food and clothing. Then she went away with some adults they had never seen before. She never came back again. That was the last time he ever saw her.
The next leader was Brother Jon. After him was Brother Dahl.
Each of them vanished when they were around fourteen or fifteen years old.
Perhaps they died, or perhaps they simply became adults who could finally live on their own and left the slums for a happier life elsewhere.
Before he knew it, Veil was the second eldest, with only Brother Dahl ahead of him in age.
He thought to himself: It’s my turn now—my turn to protect everyone, to take care of them. To pay back all the help the ones before me gave.
But this time, I won’t disappear. I’m always going to look after them.
Because this is my home, and these people are my family.
***
The capital was a difficult place for an orphan, and yet in some ways, it was also kind.
If one were caught stealing or picking pockets, one would swiftly be caught and indentured. Several bands of orphans had been captured in this way, and their homes demolished. However, if one did honest work, people tended to overlook the house-squatting, and now and then some charitable adult might even donate a scrap or two of food.
Particularly egregious abuses were rare. The authorities were relatively just and made little distinction between rich and poor. More importantly, many of the local thugs and hunters had come from the slums themselves and were thus kind to their juniors—at least in the cases where they themselves had nothing to lose.
At the age of six, Veil registered as an associate hunter, so that he could do odd jobs around the city and help pay for everyone’s food. The moment he turned ten, he registered as an official hunter.
At that time, another hunter, himself from the slums, gifted Veil a cheap sword that was destined for the scrap heap, as he had recently acquired a new one.
Veil was so happy he wept. He had never felt so lucky in his life. Previously, he’d planned to fight with a wooden staff until he could afford to buy a sword of his own.
And then, when that precious sword of his finally broke, he saved up a bit of money to purchase a slightly older, used sword.
Someday, he would give his sword to one of his juniors. He swore it to himself.
So that the little ones could eat.
So that they could purchase medicine when they got sick.
So that, now and then, they could buy new clothes from the secondhand store.
The smaller kids earned a little from odd jobs and guild-chaperoned gathering expeditions, but it didn’t amount to much. Even though Veil became an official hunter at age ten, he was still an F-rank, and his earnings weren’t enough to fully support a number of orphans.
He had to earn more. He had to get more money.
However, there weren’t many parties who would take a boy from the slums with no special skills, and even if he found one, he couldn’t join a party that would travel far away and leave him unable to look after the little ones.
There were solo jobs that wouldn’t take him far and required no special skills, but they didn�
�t grant him much experience, nor did they let him challenge himself. He spent his days gathering herbs and hunting jackalopes and other small beasts, with no hope of promotion. Furthermore, his skills as an amateur swordsman were his only means of hunting, so his efficiency was low.
There was no point in buddying up with others from the slums, either. They were F-rank amateurs, just the same as him, so the jobs they could accept would be no different, and they had no unique skills that he could learn from them. If he formed a party with hunters the same age as he, he would have no way to progress. The only thing that could change with this method would be if he could become more efficient at locating prey.
And then the day came when Brother Dahl disappeared.
One night, he simply didn’t come home.
And that was that.
Maybe he had perished, or perhaps he fled.
If he had left the slums behind and joined a hunting party somewhere, he would be fine. Perhaps he joined a party that had gone off to another town, or perhaps he’d gone off to another town, and then joined a party.
Either way, the orphans were left without their top earner.
Veil, now suddenly the eldest, was caught, anxious, between the weight of his new sense of responsibility and the dark and hazy future ahead of him.
It was then that a man’s voice had called out to him.
“You there! You’re still rough, but I can tell yer pretty handy with a sword. Whaddya think? You gonna take the entrance exam for the Hunters’ Prep School?”
The man, who was associated with the guild hall in the capital, told Veil that while he was in school, he would himself check in on the orphans now and then. And at any rate, even while Veil was at the school, he would be able to go look in on them during the evenings and on days off, too. More importantly, the training the school offered was completely free. Veil would be able to work on his days off, and if he and the other orphans worked hard, in just half a year, the quality of their lives would improve immensely.