Chapter 1: Derek (1)
***
Derek's first master was a shabby old man who begged in the slums.
Even in Ebelstein, a great city renowned across the continent, there was a slum where the downtrodden poor gathered.
At the entrance of a dark alleyway, frequented by thugs and prostitutes, the old man, as if he had gone senile, was raising his lilting voice to the empty air, proclaiming that he was a great mage.
"In my day, I was an archmage who soared and crawled through the Northern Great War~!"
"Even the famous Grand Duke Beltus would visit me privately, asking me to take care of the magical beasts in the borderlands! Ke-he-he~!"
His wrinkled head, with only a few strands of hair remaining, was caked in all sorts of grime, and his worn-out leather shirt and trouser cuffs were vividly stained with dirt and bits of food he had spilled while eating.
Since he had the appearance of nothing more than a street beggar who had lost his mind, naturally, no one believed his words.
"Aish~ these punks... Tsk!"
As if his pride was greatly wounded by this fact, the old man would, unprompted, shoot fire into the air or stir up the wind.
Magic itself was a precious thing in this era.
In this gutter where the cast-offs gathered, even the most basic magic was an irreplaceable and valuable talent.
The passersby would clap or let out exclamations of awe upon seeing the old man's magic, but those with a bit more knowledge would instead stroke their chins and gravely point out his flaws.
"Well, I understand that you know how to use magic... but isn't the scale too small to call yourself an archmage?"
"What, you brat? You look young, who do you think you are to be pointing fingers?"
"Well, it's just an observation. It seems you can use magic at the entry-level of 1-Star, but isn't that a level that the children of noble houses with good bloodlines master even before their coming-of-age ceremony?"
At the man's criticism from within the crowd, the old man swallowed a dry gulp of saliva.
He looked as though he had never even imagined that someone who could distinguish the star-ranks of magic would be mixed in this gutter-like slum.
"Of course, being able to use magic to that extent in this barren land is certainly a rare talent, but saying you were a great, successful archmage in your heyday seems a bit too much. Let's be honest with each other."
Judging by the man's appearance, he had a fine build and his clothes were neat, looking quite respectable.
Between the old man rolling around in a corner of the slums and the neatly dressed, articulate man, the question of which of the two was more credible was not even worth considering.
The passersby who had gathered nearby all burst into ridicule, throwing trash from their pockets or nearby piles of dirt at the old man as they jeered.
"I knew it! An unlucky old geezer who did nothing but boast about himself in a loud voice every time I passed by!"
"He only knew how to raise his voice, he was just a piece of shit trash who rationalized that he wasn't the kind of person who belonged in a back alley corner like this!"
The ability to use magic, even at the most basic level, was a talent worthy of admiration to the poor of the slums. However, one's usual conduct was just that important.
The old man, who looked down on others while claiming he was special, drew lines, and spouted arrogant nonsense, had thus become a laughingstock overnight.
After that, as always, when he lay sprawled on the street, passersby would spit on him or toss insults his way.
"Foolish things. Can't even recognize true worth, tsk..."
Muttering to himself like that and turning over to lie on his other side, indulging in self-justification was the only self-defense the old man could muster.
Then, one day.
It was around the time he was huffing and puffing, plopped down on the street, and taking a bite of an oat bread he had found while rummaging through a trash can.
"Please teach me some magic."
A white-haired little boy with a grimy appearance had come to the old man, asking to be taught magic.
Guessing his age, he looked to be a little under ten. His unkempt, shaggy white hair was caked in dirt, and his nutritional state was not very good; he was a typical slum orphan.
The very fact that he would seek out an old geezer who was pelted with stones on the street for being a braggart, asking to be taught magic, clearly showed he was a kid who wasn't right in the head.
His serious eyes, unbefitting his age, were impressive, but that was an impression everyone naturally acquired in these slums, where every single day was like walking on a path of thorns.
"My name is Derek."
"...Alright."
After staring silently at the boy, the old man finally bared his teeth and grinned.
<> <> <>
The old man was a braggart.
Far from having been a successful archmage in his heyday, he was a mediocre talent who had roamed the magical world trying to make something of himself with his worthless skills, only to be treated as a third-rate nobody and grow old.
It was an obvious fact that he wasn't competent enough to teach magic to anyone, and he had no intention of teaching properly in the first place.
Those who have grown old without achieving anything sometimes need a follower who will take their boasts seriously and gaze at them with sparkling eyes. The appearance of one empty-headed boy who could satisfy his parched need for recognition would be a great stimulus in his life.
"Eheheh, you brat Derek. You should consider it an honor to serve this body as your master. This body may be sitting on the street like this for now... but in my heyday..."
And so, he was satisfying his paltry vanity by delivering a long-winded speech to the tiny boy.
The passersby who saw them doing that on the street at the entrance to the slum would click their tongues, tut-tutting, or send looks of pity toward Derek. However, Derek listened to the old man's story silently, without any sign of caring.
The old man, while delivering his long speech with a satisfied expression, would once in a while, overcome by a sense of obligation, recite some simple magical knowledge.
However, the level of that knowledge was shallow beyond compare. He would package and inflate content that mages systematically trained in renowned noble houses would master and move past in a matter of days, talking about it as if it were a profound truth.
Whether he knew of the old man's petty nature or not, Derek simply sat still and absorbed the magical knowledge the old man spoke of.
And so, the seasons passed. Time also flowed like a river.
The colorful autumn leaves disappeared, and just as it seemed to be getting a little colder, a warm spring day soon arrived.
The boy and the old man sometimes slept outdoors by the river, and there were times they robbed a bakery and fled because they wanted to eat warm buttered bread, and they also endured the cold in a makeshift shelter patched together with shabby planks.
It is said that knowing the heart of a person is harder than knowing the depths of ten-fathom water, but with the passage of time, a person's inner thoughts are bound to be revealed.
Even the old man, who had been merely satisfying his vanity, couldn't help but notice that the boy named Derek was no ordinary child after a year had passed.
"You, are you some noble house's illegitimate child or something?"
"..."
In magic, the most important thing was, first, bloodline, and second, bloodline.
Even to the eyes of the old man, whose own mastery could not be described as lofty even with empty words, he felt a certain extraordinariness in the boy Derek's ability to absorb knowledge.
Teach him one thing, and he understood two, and he would apply those two to deduce a third.
When he came to his senses, Derek had already reached a level comparable to 1-Star mages in theoretical fields. It was a realm that even the children of noble houses, who received full support, would find difficult to achieve at this age.
"I'd rather it were so."
Derek merely said so indifferently. The steam from the bread was rising gently in front of his face.
It was a day they had succeeded in stealing a large amount of steaming bread for the first time in a while. There was no greater jackpot than this.
The old man picked out a few pieces from the pile of bread and shoved them into his leather pouch, then took out a few more and began to munch on them.
Then, he pushed the remaining bread pieces toward Derek and said.
"I don't know why you're so desperate to learn magic, but you must know well that there's an obvious limit to what a commoner can achieve, no matter how much they train."
"..."
"They say that among the noble lords beyond the northern walls of Ebelstein, there are those who sometimes reach 3-Star before even coming of age. A realm that those from the lowly bottom, with their base bloodlines, can only reach after decades of honing their skills. With such a thick wall from the very beginning, do you even feel the motivation to try so hard?"
Even resentment can turn into a kind of affection.
It was not easy to show fondness for Derek, who acted as if he had transcended the world at such a young age. This was especially true for a shabby old man who needed a follower to prop him up. Derek was the very definition of a boy wise beyond his years.
Nevertheless, as the time they spent together accumulated, so did a lingering affection, and so the old man gave him some unfitting life advice.
"Right now, your abilities might feel extraordinary and special, but the time will come when you'll feel as if you've come face to face with a colossal wall."
That was not someone else's story.
The second son of the Duplein ducal family had awakened on his own, in just one week, the magic skills the old man had diligently honed in his youth. The memory of his younger days, when he had been utterly crushed by that gap, flashed past the old man.
The aptitude for magic flowing through the bloodline and the profundity of mana that was instinctively understood. Mages from noble houses were beings born with a mage's disposition that was truly on a different plane from the common folk.
"...Rather than harboring great ambitions, just live tenaciously thinking only of yourself. Like me."
"As if I'm doing this with some grand ambition. I'm just doing it because I need a way to make a living."
"Aish, tsk. So young and yet you mutter as if you know everything about the world... Chomp chomp... The buttery aroma is rising strongly, it tastes good. It seems we were lucky and stole some high-quality bread."
"My bread only smells of grain."
"Ke-he-he..."
When Derek looked at the old man while crunching on his bread, he was smiling, revealing his yellowish teeth.
"I've already packed away all the tasty buttered bread. How dare you try to put better food in your mouth than your master."
"..."
"I told you, didn't I? Life is about living tenaciously. If you're really that upset, you should have set aside your bread in advance. The buttered bread is already all in my food pouch. Heh heh."
The sight of him picking out only the expensive buttered bread to pack in his own pouch, intending to swindle his young student, was indeed befitting of a beggar.
Derek couldn't even muster a hollow laugh, so he just shoved the dry and tasteless bread into his mouth.
He only thought that from next time, he would have to tenaciously set aside the tasty buttered bread in advance.
<> <> <>
The next day, around sunset. The old man who called himself Derek's master was lying collapsed by the riverbank, covered in blood.
By the time Derek returned from roaming the streets practicing pickpocketing, the blood loss was already so significant that his life could not be guaranteed.
From what he heard, the old man had been caught trying to steal from the guards of the northern wall and was beaten to the brink of death.
He had apparently tried to steal a 2-Star magic tome that was in the guard post's confiscated items storage, but no one knew why the old geezer, who claimed to have no ambition, would do such a thing.
Messing with the guards belonging to Ebelstein was close to a suicidal act.
Moreover, he was a shabby old man from the slums whom no one would raise an issue for, even if he was beaten up. His usual conduct was so disagreeable that there was no one who would side with him and intervene.
"Master."
"Gack... Heok..."
His ribs seemed to be broken as he couldn't even breathe properly, and the old man trembled in a pool of blood, trying to say something.
However, the sound did not take the form of language. He merely gasped for breath with his heaving body.
He made a movement as if trying to leave some last words for Derek, but soon, with a final tremor of his trembling fingertips, the old man's shabby life came to an end. It was truly a fitting end for a street beggar.
Derek silently looked down at the cold corpse, then eventually dug up the earth with a broken shovel he had previously picked up from a construction site and buried the body.
He quietly placed the shovel down at the humble grave in a corner of the trash-filled riverbank, nodded his head a few times, and then returned to the small shelter where they usually stayed.
There, a few smelly leather sheets that the old man used to cover himself with when he slept, a small wooden drawer that the old man had picked up from the street, and a few pieces of cloth he used as a pillow were rolling around.
He searched here and there, but naturally, there was nothing of value. However, under the sheet, he was able to find a leather pouch, and when he opened it, he found the leftover bread from yesterday.
Derek took the pouch, and to ward off the cold, he draped the shabby leather sheet over his shoulders like a cloak.
Then he left the old man's shelter, which was filled with nothing but trash, and headed toward the wide main road of Ebelstein.
The old man had asserted that there would be no great achievements for Derek, who had no bloodline, even if he trained in magic.
He was not wrong. Not just the old man, but anyone on this continent would say something similar. It was an age where magic had become a privilege.
It was just that the old man had not realized. Of course Derek could not have been born of noble blood.
[The Basics of Magic] has been mastered. You can now access 1-Star magic.
Please select a main school of magic. This choice cannot be undone.
That was because Derek was not a person of this world in the first place.
Reviewing the message that appeared in his mind, Derek thought.
Derek had only needed a master who would recite the basics of magic. If he wanted to learn great and high-level magic, he would have to revere an equally great mage as his master, but if he was simply mastering the basics, anyone could serve as a mentor.
However, in the depths of a slum like this, even such talent was scarce. That was why the old, shabby man, who only needed someone to listen to his boasts, was a suitable person from whom to be properly handed down the basics of magic.
That was all there was to the story.
Nevertheless, even though the old man was a pathetic human who had walked a wretched path in life, he had tried to teach Derek something.
He had wanted to pass down the desperation of clenching one's teeth and surviving from the bottom, enduring in a cowardly and tenacious way.
On the road leading to Ebelstein's main thoroughfare.
Derek, wearing his usual precociously solemn expression, took out a piece of bread he had taken from the old man's pouch and put it in his mouth.
It did not contain any butter.