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Bijo to Kenja to Majin no Ken - Volume 1 - Chapter 4

Published at 18th of March 2018 09:38:00 PM


Chapter 4: 4

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From then on, I proceeded to recover at an astonishing pace. Though my left arm had been broken, it only took two days for me to start moving it again. The injuries to my back and head also closed completely; not even the trace of a scar remained.

In the end, after only four days since waking, I had recovered enough to be nearly the same as I was before the incident. Sure, Aslina and Rodney had used magic, but they were still surprised at how quickly I recovered. Then again, I was more surprised than anyone.

I’m sure it had something to do with my relf-recovery skill being level four. If not, then I was at a loss to explain it. I mean, it’s not like I had healed in just four days, because I spent three asleep before waking; adding it all together, my recovery had taken nearly a week.

For the sake of argument, if we assume a self-recovery skill of four is akin to healing four-times faster than normal, then without the help of Aslina and Rodney’s magic, it would have taken at least a month for me to recover. In other words, my injuries had been nothing to joke about.

Now that I was fully healed, I wanted to leave the church, walk around and see the town. But Aslina hadn’t been very keen on the idea. From what she told me, the church was built a little ways away from the town, so I would need an ID to enter. In other words, it would be difficult for me, who had no identification, to enter the town.

It would take the consent of the town mayor to have an ID made, though I could have one of the various guilds provide me with identification as well. Since I didn’t feel like the mayor would be enthusiastic about issuing an ID to some random stranger, it meant I would need to register with the adventurer’s guild if I wanted an ID, but Aslina wasn’t very optimistic about someone with a fuzzy memory trying to register with the guild.

She had a point; since I was lacking in the common knowledge and social etiquette of this world, I wanted to avoid wandering around aimlessly. Also, I had a hard time believing someone like me, who had no experience as an adventurer, would be able to work effectively at such a career.

There was one more factor that affected my decision; money. Sadly, I didn’t have so much as two pennies to rub together. What’s more, I apparently would have to pay a registration fee to the guild, which I couldn’t afford, being broke.

I guess there was the option of me relying on the goodwill of Rodney and Aslina to lend me the money, especially as they seemed the kind of people who would offer to help if I asked. But, with all the trouble I’d caused them up til now, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. If possible, I wanted to save up the money myself. Which is why I jumped at the opportunity when Aslina told me,

“You could earn some money doing chores and odd jobs around the church.”

She proceeded to explain to me that the chores would consist of hard labor, which was difficult for a woman. For example, drawing water from the well was especially taxing.

Drawing water and carrying it back was extremely mundane, but it allowed my strength skill to grow little by little. To be honest, it wasn’t easy work, but being able to earn money and increase my status; it made it bearable.

Most of the chores Aslina had given me were completed by noon. After finishing the lunch she had prepared for me, as promised, we moved to my magic training and the spells I was to learn.

Aslina was the very essence of a good teacher.

“——Okay? Magic flows through the conscious mind. By focusing your mind, magical energy gathers; but if you lose focus, the magic disperses. That’s why the key to using magic is to never let your mind wander, no matter the situation.”

Focus, huh——

Actually, I had always been confident in my ability to concentrate, and remain calm when making decisions. You could say this was right up my alley.

“The most basic type consists of you concentrating on your fingertip, and imagining the magical energy glowing, which will activate the magic ‘LIGHT’. Light magic is grouped in with the daily-life magics; so there is no affinity requirement. It’s a magic that can be used by anyone, independent of their affinity.”

When she’d finished speaking, Aslina brought the pointer finger of her right hand up to eye-level, before concentrating.

The look of her, slightly cross-eyed while focusing on her fingertip, was very cute.

——Her fingertip began to give off an unnatural light, without her having to yell the spell’s name, or use some complicated incantation. The light illuminated both our faces.

“——Woah.”

“Alright, now you try.”

Just as instructed, I brought my finger up to my face exactly as she had. Then——I concentrated. It was like, this feeling of something thick and foggy began gathering at my fingertip; I’d never felt anything like this in my own world.

Is this what magic is——?

Next, I tried imagining my fingertip growing brighter. The moment I told myself to imagine it, I unconsciously closed my eyes and created a flickering image in my mind.

When I opened my eyes, my finger was not only not glowing, but there had been no change whatsoever.

“When you are imagining something, you mustn’t close your eyes. You need to visualize a light shining within the world around you, so your eyes need to be open.”

“Got it. Let me try again.”

Once again, I concentrated on my fingertip. As the thick fogginess gathered around my fingertip, I tried again, this time imagining a light glowing with my eyes open.

“——It’s glowing!”

It was extraordinarily bright, compared with Aslina’s version. But the moment I cried out, the light lost it’s size, before puffing out completely.

——Even so, I had been able to use magic.

With just that alone, a powerful sense of elation ran through me. At this moment in time, I was part of the every one in four who could use magic.

Aslina smiled gently at my excitement.

“——Since you were able to activate the magical energy, next is learning to control it. That light just now, for example, was magnitudes brighter than mine, but——”

This time, Aslina spent almost no time in causing her fingertip to glow.

“If the goal is to illuminate your surroundings, there is no need for such a strong light. The stronger the light, the greater the consumption of magic. That’s why you need to control the brightness, so it only uses the smallest amount of magical energy necessary to do the job.

“The level of concentration, and how strongly you picture your fingertip glowing, allow you to control the brightness of the light. Next is maintaining the light. The magic you used before was very bright at the start, but lost that brightness quickly. While offensive magic, for example, doesn’t usually need to last for a long time, you can still increase the range of the spell by maintaining it longer.

“On the other hand, the longer the magic is maintained, the more magical energy is consumed. There is another difficulty with magic that lasts too long. I don’t think it’s too difficult to maintain an image when it’s in your field of view, but trying to keep the image in your mind when the magic is out of sight; it’s extremely complicated. I don’t have any talent for this. ——Here.”

At that, Aslina moved her glowing fingertip towards her back. All of a sudden the illuminated surroundings grew dark. When she brought the finger back in front of her, it was no longer glowing.

“When the object leaves your field of vision, it’s difficult to maintain the image in your mind, and the magic fails.”

“Hmm, I see…”

This seems profound in its own way.

“Aslina, I was also wondering about magic besides the daily-life kind——”

“Of course. Magic can be divided into four main attributes, fire, water, wind and earth; with light and shadow attributes falling into a different category. I can use recovery magic since I have an affinity with light, which I can teach you. But since recovery magic directly affects one’s body, I think it would be best to learn to control your magical power before trying to learn it.”

“I see. In that case, if I wanted to learn about the water attribute, then it’d be best to have Father Rodney teach me, yeah?”

It was something I said without thinking, but Aslina’s expression changed suddenly upon hearing it.

“——Kei, why do you think Father Rodney can use water magic?”

Her question made me reflexively regret my own careless statement. For now, it seemed I’d be better off moving the conversation to safer ground.

“Ah, no real reason—— I’m not real sure or anything, but it just seemed like using water magic would make drawing water from the well much easier——”

At that, Aslina’s expression softened, and she giggled prettily.

“Kei, you’re unexpectedly lazy, aren’t you?”

“Hahaha——”

I laughed dryly. It seems I’d managed to dodge that bullet.

For the next several days, I practiced using and controlling magic. I was able to succeed in controlling the brightness after activating the magic from the first day, but two more days passed before I was able to consciously set the brightness before activation. Controlling the strength of the magic was similar in theory to actively squeezing the magic. Without visualizing this, the magic always activated at full power.

It also took me a while to learn not just how to control the strength, but also how to maintain the magic. Aslina had said she wasn’t good at it, but it was more like the concept of maintaining magic after it left your field of view was just really hard. On the other hand, I didn’t have much difficulty with concentrating on what was in front of me, and maintaining it——

But still, a week passed before I managed to learn the technique to maintain magic even outside my field of vision. It was a little iffy, but if I memorized my surroundings beforehand, then even if I couldn’t see the light, I was able to keep it going by visualizing the area I’d memorized.

By the seventh day, I was able to freely control the brightness of the light magic, and maintain it whether it was within my field of view or not. Aslina was honestly pleased at my progress.

“Kei, I’m sure you were skilled at using magic before, too. I’ve never heard of someone being able to master light magic this quickly, control included.”

As I was under Clancy’s Limitation, and unable to say I was from another world, I was at a loss as to how I should reply.

“I…I wonder——I’m just as surprised as you are this is going so well.”

“Next up we’ll try some recovery magic. Only, the difficulty from here on out will depend entirely on your affinity. Do you know what attribute you can use?”

I thought back on the times I’d looked at my stats. If memory serves, my affinity was listed as “none”. Though, I couldn’t decide if that was something I should mention.

“Well——no, sorry…but I don’t remember.”

“I see. But, since you can check your affinity with the adventurer’s or magician’s guild, I’d recommend doing that if you get a chance to register. I’m pretty sure you don’t have the shadow attribute, so I’m confident you’ll be able to learn recovery magic.”

“——Oh. Well, I’m having a lot of fun just learning about it. It’s a huge help, you taking time to teach me.”

“Not at all, magic is really useful on a daily basis; so I don’t think there’s anything to lose by studying it.”

With that, Aslina began lecturing me on the principles of recovery magic.

That evening, I crawled into bed much later than usual. In the end, I hadn’t been able to learn recovery magic on day one. Since I wasn’t injured anymore, and neither was Aslina, there were no wounds to heal. This made it difficult to ascertain whether I’d actually succeeded or not; more so because I was having trouble grasping the concepts.

I used “LIGHT”, a magic I could now activate without much conscious effort. The room was lit by a pale glow. I wondered if maybe I could use it more than once? With this thought in mind, I tried concentrating on two fingers at the same time. I held a picture in my mind of both fingers glowing.

————

They were lit. No trouble at all. Next, I wondered if I could illuminate something other than a body part. I stared at one of the empty candle stands beside the bed, and concentrated. The concept of a candle-less stand giving off light was hard to picture. But, by firmly telling myself this candle stand can give off light, I visualized it glowing.

————

————

It lit. What’s more, it was lit in two separate places. I could maintain the brightness, too.

It almost seemed like things were going too well. But, for someone like me who had landed here from another world, I needed to do everything I could to train myself. In that case, I shouldn’t hold back.

On the bright side, that old coot had given me a special ability. I could see things in this world no one else could. By knowing the status of a thing, I was able to identify the most efficient, and least efficient, methods of advancing myself.

Before drifting off to sleep, I decided to check my status once more.

**********【Name】Kei Arakawa【Age】21【Class】Commoner: Novice【Level】4 (38)【Status】HP:244/244SP:41/86Strength:93(02)Endurance:68(84)Fortitude:121(43)MP:100(01)Agility:58(87)Dexterity:59(14)Evasion:42(32)Luck: 9(00)Attack:93(+0)Defense:68(+1)【Attribute】None【Skills】Status(All), Appraisal, Daily Magic, Martial Skill 2, Cudgel Skill 1, Penetration Skill 1, Negotiation Skill 2, Mental Defense 7, Sleep Resistance 4, Pain Endurance 2, Sickness Resistance 2, Self-recovery 5, Debuff Self-recovery 1, Gathering 2, Weaving 1, Housework 1, Language of Florence【Titles】Clancy’s Disciple, Foreigner, Searcher, Savages Hunter, Church Handyman, Sorcerer, Company Slave【Equipment】Linen Clothes(Defense+1)【Debuffs】Clancy’s Limitation LV98▼**********

Compared to the time I had collapsed after the fight with those kobolds, my level had increased by one, and was now level four. This showed that it was possible to increase my level without the need to undergo combat.

Aslina was level three, and assuming she’d never experienced combat, this didn’t seem strange.

I felt my training and helping out around the church had increased my related stats dramatically. But, it was odd that my SP value, which should correspond to my mana, was still really low after all this practice. I hoped it didn’t mean that even though I could still use powerful spells, I’d run out of ammo in no time… Sort of like those games I played as a kid, where once the mana ran out, you were unable to activate the high-level skills you’d learned——

————

——Wait a moment?

Clancy’s Limitation had dropped to LV98. When did this happen? Does the limitation get weaker as time passes?

No, hang on. What’s this “▼” mark? It means down, right? It almost looked like that icon you see on tablet devices in my own world, so I reached out a finger to the stat, and touched the symbol. As expected, the ▼ moved, and an explanation appeared.

 【Debuffs】Clancy’s Limitation LV98▼Clancy’s Limitation is a protection bestowed by the god, Clancy. By honoring the agreement, the grantee may receive protection for the specified number of times. When the grantee’s life falls into grave danger, the power will drop in exchange for reviving that life.

————

The level had not dropped because of time passing. It was apparently related to how close one was to death. It also said that when revived, the power drops.

To summarize, after being attacked by the red kobolds, I had been on the edge of death. Clancy’s Limitation had recognized how dire my situation was, and activated in order to revive me.  In turn, Clancy’s Limitation had fallen by one point.

“So, it’s not that I just recover quickly then——”

It was a little depressing, but the important thing was that my life had been saved.

——There was something about the word revive that nagged at me. It wasn’t recovery; it was revive.

————

After I considered this, a thought raced across my mind. It was a scenario I really didn’t want to consider. But taking the possibility into account, I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.

If——the situation I was in now resulted from that scenario, then I needed to train myself on a completely different level. If I couldn’t get stronger, then there was a high probability I would be unable to confront the approaching crisis.

Playing the harsh scenario over in my mind, I thought hard about what I could do to face what was coming.





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