Chapter 01 …
Water Magic
It wasn’t a village to boast about.
There weren’t many wild animals around, nor were there any special local products. At least the environment wasn’t so harsh that survival by farming was impossible, so the villagers eked out a living that way.
The most influential person in such a village was the village chief. Under him were dozens of tenant farmers, and he even had his own group of followers, so no one dared oppose him.
After the chief came the hunters. Retired mercenaries trained young men in hunting and patrolling. They weren’t particularly skilled, but on days when they managed to catch a wild boar, the entire village would take on a festive mood.
Other than that, there wasn’t much. The village didn’t need a general store, and a blacksmith was only required for minor tasks like fixing broken farming tools. Most people knew how to handle such things themselves.
Still, herbalists were important. Knowing how to properly identify herbs meant you could survive even by eating roots and leaves. Without that knowledge, you would die.
The herbalist was also the one who treated the sick in the village. People applied the herbs he brought or boiled them to drink, hoping to recover. Otherwise, they had to pray for natural healing. The more affluent villagers had no reason to anger him.
Rael was Dorian’s assistant. To put it simply, he was a presence similar to Dorian himself.
The position of herbalist in the village was fairly high, but Rael was the only one around him.
There was a danger in having no one under the herbalist. People lived their entire lives in the land where they were born. Sometimes, a few would try to escape that life, but most failed. People avoided leaving the forest.
So there were no aspiring herbalists who roamed the outside world. Once you climbed the mountains, you never knew when death might come—such was the life of a herbalist.
Yet Dorian had his reasons for climbing the mountains. The biggest reason, naturally, was that he had no fences—meaning no parents.
A few people had known Dorian’s parents when he was alive, but none had been particularly close. He had only recently settled into the village. Even if he had been there longer and established some distant blood relations, it would have been different. Having lost his parents, he was like an outsider in the village.
In this village, having no blood ties was extremely disadvantageous. Rael knew how cruel villagers could be.
Men often took out their aggression on their wives. During village festivals, the sound of cries from each house was constant, husbands returning drunk and striking their wives.
Unfortunately for Rael, Dorian had no wife. Whether she had died of illness or he had never had one, Dorian lived alone. It was a cruel reality.
This was also why Rael climbed the mountains.
To Dorian, Rael was a manageable target—someone he could hit without fear of reprisal. A messenger who could die at any moment. That was Rael.
Despite this near-abusive routine, Rael didn’t think it was so bad.
If he didn’t do this, he would have starved on the streets long ago, unable to survive without skills.
Of course, that was assuming he brought back all the herbs Dorian asked for today. Rael looked around. He still had a way to go.
Around this time, people sought Caril because of stomach problems. They often ate whatever they could find, and the villagers frequently suffered. Each time, it was Caril that healed them. Boiling it in water for just a week had remarkable effects.
Rael had benefitted from this before. Several times, when he had been beaten by Dorian, he recovered after eating it boiled. He didn’t like to remember those days. Perhaps that was why, though his face looked strained, his legs kept moving steadily.
Caril could only be found past the middle of the rear mountain. The mountain was steep, and it took at least two hours to reach the midpoint. Just the round trip consumed more than half a day.
That applied to Dorian. Rael, being smaller, was even slower. They had set out at the first crow of the rooster, but the sun was already high in the sky.
Rael sat on a nearby rock. Turning his head, he looked down at the village. It looked tiny. He wished he could just cross the mountain and run away.
There was no advantage in staying in the village, and even if he brought herbs, he could barely eat properly. If he hadn’t overheard how many days it would take to reach the nearest city, he would have left long ago.
After a short rest, he got up. Caril grew around him. He dug it up by hand and put it into a sack. This was all money. The only flaw was that it would become Dorian’s, not Rael’s.
After collecting Caril, Rael explored the surroundings, hoping to find something edible.
As expected, there were plenty of things to eat nearby. He brushed off the dirt and put them to his mouth. Chewing, his throat moved. He was thirsty. He regretted bringing only a little water.
Rael filled his stomach with whatever he could find. Dorian would dislike it, but if Rael didn’t eat while climbing the mountain, hunger would make him unable to endure.
Just as he was about to rise, a mushroom caught his eye. It was a mushroom he had never seen before.
Rael sniffed it. It didn’t seem dangerous. Still, to be safe, he ate only a little. It tasted sweet. Delicious.
Before he knew it, the mushroom had disappeared into his mouth. He regretted not saving some when a dizzy spell hit. The surrounding objects distorted, he staggered, and fell.
He tried to force himself up, but his vision grew blurry, and he lost consciousness.
Rael dreamt.
In the dream, he wasn’t an orphan. He had proper parents. Not only that, but they were nobles. And they taught him magic.
A silver-haired master, dressed like a magician as Rael had always imagined, was teaching the noble child Rael magic.
Magic had many attributes, and the one Rael was learning was water magic.
In the dream, Rael chanted spells and gestured with his hands to manifest magic. The master praised him incessantly for his talent.
The dream ended there. Rael awoke on the densely forested mountain. A sack lay nearby. He sat on a rock, holding his head.
“Water.”
The water that dream-Rael had created still lingered in his mind. He stood and imitated the gestures.
“Water. Water.”
Rael waved his hands back and forth. Unknown words flowed nonstop from his mouth. He repeated them without understanding their meaning, thinking of the magic so vivid from the dream.
The result was pathetic.
Nothing happened. After practicing for a long while, he looked up. The sun was slowly setting. He packed the sack and descended the mountain.
Rael returned to the village and headed home. In front of Dorian’s hut, baskets of dried herbs were waiting. The mingling scents of various herbs gave the place a slightly mystical atmosphere.
Dorian was short, with a hooked nose and a mean impression. As soon as Rael returned, he scowled.
“Why are you so late? A whole day has passed.”
He wasn’t wrong. In a remote village, the day’s work ended when the sun set. Rael hunched his shoulders and opened the sack he had brought.
“I was delayed because I gathered a bit more. It was hard to see if the animals had eaten it.”
“Is that so? Let’s see.”
Dorian tied an apron around his waist, entered a room, and appeared with gloves on, his face partially covered with a cloth. Inside the hut was a storage-like space for sorting herbs.
Dorian poured the sack full of herbs onto the pile. He examined them carefully, moving the heaps around, and after a long while, nodded.
“This should last about a month. Well done.”
“Thank you.”
Rael’s expression brightened—not because of the praise, but because Dorian didn’t raise his fist.
Normally, he would have picked a fight, but today, Dorian seemed unusually pleased.
“By the way, Might came by today.”
“Might?”
Might had a son who wasn’t yet married, Ralph. He was quite troublesome, and since there was no one else to take care of him, Might was always stressed.
“Might begged me to take care of Ralph. You’ll have to look after him for a while.”
“What did he give you?”
“A goat.”
“And me?”
“You’ll be going to the city this time. Figure out how to live there.”
Rael’s face stiffened. He had always been at risk of being sent away, but this was sudden. He had no idea what he would eat from now on.
