The Magic in this Other World is Too Far Behind! Volume 1

by Gamei Hitsuji

  That’s right. I am a glorious court mage of Astel.

  Felmenia assured herself of her pride in her identity. The king’s dignity, order in Castle Camellia, and her self-respect as a court mage all had to be protected. And she would be the one to protect them. That was exactly why she’d become a court mage in the first place.

  So no matter what that insolent young man was up to, Felmenia was going to put her foot down. She didn’t know what the magic and mages from his world were like, but he had to learn his place here. Regardless of his origins, if he got a taste of the greatness of this world’s magic, he would surely fall into line.

  Just you wait, Suimei Yakagi! I’ll show you. I, the White Flame, will put an end to your damn foolishness.

  Felmenia was a court mage, the mage known as White Flame, and the hero’s instructor. She was without peer in that regard. No other mage held all three of those honored titles. And a mage of her caliber should be able to handle a meager problem like this with ease. She was more than qualified.

  ★

  “My goodness, you are still so young, Felmenia...”

  After watching Felmenia exit the audience chamber, King Almadious muttered to himself. He could tell just by looking at her that her youth would lead her astray. Indeed, her eyes were not the eyes of a girl who had given up. Surely she was intent on acting in secret from here on out.

  But perhaps there was nothing that could be done about it. The king felt a bit sorry for that young man, but it could also be said that he was merely reaping what he’d sown. But after Felmenia acted on her own, what would be a suitable punishment?

  “It is also a difficult thing to have talent, I see...”

  Recently, Felmenia’s self-conceit had grown considerably. It was the flipside of her strong sense of responsibility, but it was also a problem when it manifested like this. King Almadious sighed once more.

  ★

  “North wing, all clear... Huh?”

  The sound of military boots tapping against the stone floor rang out in the hall as a soldier wearing the standard equipment given to him by the kingdom marched down his patrol route. An open door had caught his attention, but after peering into it with a torch, he shut it and moved on.

  It was the last room in the north wing, and since there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, that marked the end of this section of his patrol. Tonight, this soldier was in the middle of doing his evening rounds around the castle. The daily patrol was divided among the soldiers, and didn’t just take place during daylight hours. There was an additional check once everyone had gone to bed for the evening.

  Camellia at night was very different from Camellia during the day. Naturally, the firelights didn’t illuminate the entire castle. Candlesticks were stationed in the darker areas so that it was relatively easy to get around, but between the candlelight and the pale moonlight, the castle could be rather dreary at night.

  Thus, the nighttime patrol wasn’t a particularly popular job. Not only did it mean missing out on a good night’s sleep, but it took quite a bit of backbone to navigate the vast and complex castle in the dark. Add to that the somewhat spooky atmosphere, and the whole task seemed rather daunting and ominous. No one enjoyed the job, so it was inevitably pushed onto the younger soldiers by the older ones. They would justify it by saying it was important to learn their way around the castle inside and out.

  “Hahh, will this ever end...?”

  This soldier in particular was one who’d had the night shift pushed on him. Fed some line by his senior and more domineering colleagues, it was a task he’d been forced to take on often quite recently. But night after night, it was all the same. No matter how you cut it, no idiot would dare attack or invade the castle where the hero was staying.

  The soldier muttered to himself in the darkness as he proceeded along, quite understandably. Ever since the hero had been summoned, there had been a directive to strengthen security around the castle. However, after having seen the hero training, anyone would realize that such measures were unnecessary.

  This soldier had happened to witness it by chance, and it was honestly a terrifying sight. He’d seen Reiji holding his ground and squaring off with the most idolized and feared knight in all of Astel, the esteemed captain of the royal guard. And nowadays, Reiji was regularly taking on the captain in addition to ten or so other men all at the same time.

  Reiji was the hero who would be protecting the whole world, so did he really need protecting himself? It made sense on a certain level as a courtesy, but this slightly selfish soldier could hardly see the value in that as he wandered the halls at night. And just about the time he was grumbling about his discontent with the higher-ups...

  “...Hmm?”

  He heard a clang behind him, a sound like metal slamming against something. The soldier immediately turned around and held out his torch.

  “Is somebody there?”

  The soldier called out, but no reply came. He couldn’t see anyone where his light was shining. The only thing in that direction was the hall to the room the court mages allegedly used for their special rituals. The door to that weird room was at the end of the hall, and nothing more. The soldier had just patrolled that hall as well, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing of note was that, unlike the previous day, some ornamental armor had been placed in front of the door.

  “Harris, is that you? Cut it out with the bad jokes.”

  Hiding the anxiety sprouting in his heart, the soldier called out to his comrade who had also been stuck with the night shift. This part of the north wing was the place none of the soldiers wanted to come, especially on evening patrol. There was a possibility that, knowing this, his comrade had come to play a prank on him and get a rise out of him.

  It was irritating, but he was also hoping that was the case. As the soldier suppressed the desire to curl up and hide, he stared down the dark passage before him. The only answer to his call was the blackness that was so dark it seemed to absorb his very voice. There was no sign of his smiling comrade lying in wait for him. Then once again, a little louder than before, a clang rang out.

  A chill ran down the soldier’s spine. Was it an intruder? Even his joking comrade wouldn’t go this far just to play a prank. And if it wasn’t him, the soldier didn’t know where they might have gotten the information from, but it might be a demon pawn who had come for the hero.

  The soldier was skeptical that any intruder could get through the magical security systems put in place by the lauded White Flame, but the soldier drew his sword, took a deep breath, and slowly moved closer to where the sounds were coming from. Worst-case scenario, he had his emergency whistle. Even if something happened to him, he could use that to inform his allies of the danger.

  “Hmph. What’s this? There’s nothing here. Seriously, fucking scaring me like that...”

  In the end, the soldier’s fears all turned out to be groundless. When he went back down the hallway, all he saw was the ornamental armor that had been placed in front of the door. Everything was as it had been. There were no intruders, and certainly no demons. But that was good news, and all was well. The only person who could possibly be prowling around Royal Castle Camellia in the dead of the night like this was the young man right before his eyes, after all.

  It turned out that there was never a need to draw his sword in the first place. He had wasted his energy getting worked up over nothing, which was a crying shame. After getting stuck with the evening patrol, he was tired enough as it was already. All he really wanted to do was get some rest. In fact, a sudden wave of drowsiness overcame him, and the boy in front of him smiled and bid him goodnight with a wave. Raising one hand up to respond, the soldier turned around and headed back down the hall once more. His shift had finally come to an end.

  ★

  “Pheeew, holy crap. By the skin of my teeth...”

  As Suimei waved goodbye to him, the sleepy soldier vanished around the corner. Suimei then let out a sigh
of relief. He hadn’t thought that soldier was still on patrol.

  He’d been a little negligent in just assuming that there wasn’t anyone around, so this risky encounter was the fault of his own carelessness. But everything had turned out fine. The soldier was no magician, just an ordinary person with no magic training. He was caught by Suimei’s magicka immediately, and was none the wiser to what was going on. That soldier would go immediately to the barracks to sleep, and would wake up without a single memory of what had happened.

  It was an unexpected encounter, but that soldier was the least of Suimei’s worries. More importantly was the matter of the suit of armor standing in front of him.

  “To think they’d put an automaton here... There was nothing here last time. That woman is really getting spiteful...”

  Suimei passed a cold gaze over the ornamental armor. Was he mad at the suit, or the person he believed to be responsible for it?

  Automata. Generally classified under alchemy, they were the products of one of the techniques used to manufacture golems. Earthen and wooden figures and puppets, or sometimes even armored suits like this one, were stitched together with mana to imitate a living being using a core and a spell. They were given a predetermined condition that would activate them, and they would take specified action accordingly. In modern terms, they were something like programmable androids.

  In Suimei’s world, it was one of the techniques that stemmed from the Judaic secret art of Kabbalah. Since this was a different world entirely, the spell behind it was probably completely unrelated, but that didn’t matter.

  When Suimei touched the ornamental armor, it collapsed into a neat pile of scrap on the floor as if it had been completely disassembled. It was loud, but there was now no longer anyone around to hear it. Suimei then let out a sigh. The first clang had rung out when the automaton attacked him, and the second when Suimei broke it.

  But in all seriousness, it’s quite well made. It doesn’t look new, though, so it isn’t likely that someone here was the one who made it...

  Just where had they gotten a relic like this? Suimei had sensed its presence and the danger it posed on the way over, so it hadn’t caught him off guard. But nevertheless, he couldn’t help admiring it.

  Just as he’d suspected, the automaton was programmed to activate when an intruder endowed with mana entered a certain range. It would automatically start sucking up the mana in its surroundings. Its anti-magicka and physical defenses were quite high, and it was aggressive. When it had detected Suimei, it came at him with its sword raised high and the intent to kill. It was vicious, but impressive.

  “...Seriously, just what the hell was that woman thinking? No matter how much I’ve been sneaking around the castle, arranging for my murder is a little over the top. I’m not even her enemy, damn it. Is she just that much of a goody two-shoes?”

  Suimei griped about Court Mage Felmenia in a tizzy. He was pretty pissed about the whole thing. Even as someone else walking down the path of magicka, just how much value did she put in her pride and her service to the royal court to be so calculating as to set up a trap that could have easily gotten him killed? This seemed like a pretty blunt way of saying she’d have no mercy to any potential threats in the garden that was Castle Camellia, and she would act without hesitation to nip any danger in the bud.

  “I guess... That’s normal for a magician, right? Right...? Surely.”

  That was just the law of the magical jungle. He didn’t need to read into it so much. Even if this was another world, magicians were still magicians. It was perfectly normal to use lethal force against other magicians who dared to trespass or tried to steal research. That kind of behavior may not be quite as pronounced in this other world where magic was as common as saying hello, but Suimei couldn’t overlook that possibility.

  But still, how violent... Is that it? Is this what she meant by paying me back a million times over?

  Suimei knit his brow as he remembered what had happened between them last time. He didn’t have a problem if she didn’t want to be indebted to him over even a small act of kindness, but this was extreme, to say the least. She was totally trying to kill him.

  “...Well, whatever. If that’s her intention, I just have to respond in kind.”

  There was no way he could let this slide after she’d gone so far. He scoffed as he muttered to himself and began thinking of what he might do. And it wasn’t just the boasting of a teenage boy; it was a declaration by a trained magician.

  Suimei then casually shifted his attention to the collapsed armor at his feet. He couldn’t just leave it this way. He didn’t really care if Felmenia found it, but it wouldn’t make him happy if somebody else found it in the morning and raised a fuss over it. After all, it would only be a pain for him if they increased patrols because of something like that.

  “I guess I’ll fix it...”

  With that, Suimei optimized his mana and began invoking a spell. At his feet and centered on him, a small magicka circle giving off a red light slowly spread out and became bigger. It rotated while it expanded, and after a fixed amount of numbers and characters were set within it, it stabilized where it was, and then...

  “Renovato, atque restituito.”

  [Restore, and then reconstruct.]

  It was fundamental restoration magicka. It was a technique that didn’t repair anything per se, it simply returned something to its previous condition. And he put that to good use.

  Two magicka circles appeared below the automaton and split apart. They were both rotating, and one steadily rose up into the air. As it did, the broken parts began stacking themselves together in the reverse of the order they’d fallen in. It was like watching a tape rewind, and by the time the magicka circle reached its peak, the automaton looked just like it had when Suimei first arrived.

  “Okay. Not good and not bad, just as usual.”

  Suimei praised himself for his smooth, practiced use of magicka with no abnormalities. The automaton stood before him in good condition. It could no longer move, however. Since Suimei had completely destroyed not only its body and core, but also the spell that was engraved into it, it was now just a mere shell in the shape of an automaton.

  ★

  Leaving behind the restored automaton, Suimei snuck into the room it was guarding. This was quite a casual affair for him by now.

  The ritual chamber where he was originally summoned was one of the few rooms that Suimei visited aside from the library. His objective, of course, was to continue to investigate and decipher the summoning circle drawn on the floor with the ultimate goal of figuring out how to return home. To that end, Suimei had read every book that he could get his hands on and had been coming here to research the summoning circle whenever he had the chance.

  He wanted to get home no matter what. Suimei had the magicka thesis that his father entrusted him to take care of. To complete it, it would be fastest to return to where his research results, research materials, and various magickal items were. Certainly, given the time, it may have been something that he could accomplish in this world, but he wasn’t even sure if he had enough time to do it in his own world. Time was of the essence, and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it.

  That’s why he was so desperate to return home. Yes, that was certainly his primary reason for it, but...

  “Surely those two want to go back too, don’t they?”

  Suimei looked up at the ceiling of the stone room illuminated by the glow of mana and muttered to himself. Suimei knew. He would catch Reiji looking up into the empty sky every now and then. Beyond that void, beyond the horizon he couldn’t see, was a vision of his hometown. It was a sign of longing, and a sign of regret that he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to his loved ones.

  Suimei knew. He knew that Mizuki would sob all alone in her room. She mustered her courage to be with the boy she loved, but the price for that was all-consuming fear and loneliness.

  And when Suimei thought about the two of them, he could
feel something bubbling up in the depths of his heart. It was difficult to describe and he didn’t know how to express it, but it was a heavy feeling.

  He didn’t want his friends to remember leaving for school that morning as their final farewells with their families. He didn’t want them to wallow in the regret and sorrow of never being able to see them again. He didn’t want them to struggle with that weight in their everyday lives. Tragedy may strike, and they may even be separated from each other, but Suimei didn’t want his friends to suffer. As long as there was hope, he didn’t want them to give up.

  That’s why on the day his father had asked him to become a magician, he’d accepted. It was so that he could stand up in the face of unfairness. To prove conclusively that there wasn’t a single person in the world who couldn’t be saved, and that no one should have to feel that way.

  “...It’s not like me, but I just thought I’d give it my best shot too.”

  Suimei put that feeling into words, and once he did, it could no longer be denied. He’d said it himself. Those words were a manifestation of his determination. They were proof. Even though he wasn’t accompanying his friends on their foolhardy quest, he would do his part to help them here. He wanted them to have a choice too.

  Yet as he spoke those words to himself, as if to pour cold water on his noble determination, a mana presence appeared nearby. It was being skillfully concealed, but Suimei recognized it. Indeed, there was no doubt in his mind who it might be. It was the court mage called the White Flame, Felmenia Stingray.

  Felmenia drew closer to the room, and after stopping for a moment near the automaton, she leaned against the door. It seemed she was using the gap in the ajar door to peek at what was going on inside.

  Just how many times had they gone through this song and dance before? She’d been shadowing him for a while now. Naturally, he pretended not to notice and left her to her own devices, but this was getting to be incessant. She would spy on what Suimei was doing for a time, but then eventually withdraw without making a sound.