Laziness and the Mage (2)

By the time I arrived at the first basement floor of Linea Hall.

This place, which had once been trashed by a magic golem (and by my magic), was slowly regaining its original appearance.

I wondered if the renovations would be finished by the end of summer break.

Then, from somewhere, I heard a brief kiai: huff, ha—

Turning my head, I saw that the indoor training hall in the basement was lit up.

Curious, I peered inside the training hall.

"...Huh?"

A very familiar person was swinging a wooden sword inside.

It was none other than Senior Gaios.

"Whaaa?!"

The voice slipped out of me before I knew it.

Senior Gaios stopped mid-swing and jerked his head around.

"...What? I thought it was someone else. Lunaris, was it you?"

The senior snorted and walked over to me.

"What's with that face? You look like you've seen an undead or something."

"..."

"Well, as you can see, I'm fine. So there's no need to worry about me for no..."

"You said you'd make me a late-night snack, didn't you?!"

"...Hm?"

"Why are you pretending not to know?"

You said you'd make me food if I sparred with you!

When I glared at him, wide-eyed, Senior Gaios let out a baffled laugh.

He wiped the sweat from his neck with the towel around it and said,

"Haha. Right, I'll make it now. Is there anything you want?"

I answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Meat. Definitely meat."

*

The kitchen we entered with the on-duty maid's permission.

"All right, eat."

What Senior Gaios had set down so confidently on the plate was nothing other than a sandwich.

"..."

I looked back and forth between the plate and the senior's face.

"You... said you were good at cooking."

"Nothing I'd brag about, but I'm pretty good."

"A sandwich isn't cooking; it's assembly."

No, seriously, isn't that true?

All you have to do is stack ingredients between bread.

I could do that much too.

When I made my disappointment obvious, Senior Gaios chuckled and jerked his chin.

"First, taste it before you judge. From the bread to the fillings, everything is homemade by me."

"...Huh? Really?"

"I baked the bread myself, cured the ham inside myself, and made the sauce with a secret I learned while working part-time at a restaurant."

Suddenly, the sandwich started to look different.

He made the bread and the charcuterie himself?

Maybe this guy has more talent for cooking than for swordsmanship.

"You're way more serious about this than I expected."

"I started cooking just to make a living, but as I went on, it turned out to suit me surprisingly well."

So that really is knife work honed in the kitchen.

"Then I'll eat."

I set the bread covering the sandwich aside for a moment.

Then I picked up a fork and started digging through the contents.

Lettuce, discarded.

Tomato, removed.

Pickles, quarantined.

Onion, you're out too.

"..."

Senior Gaios, watching from across the table with his arms folded, began twitching at the brow.

"...Why are you taking all the vegetables out?"

"I'm taking out the things I can't eat. Is that a problem?"

"Don't be picky. That's why you're so short."

"Senior, do you know that?"

I pushed the sorted plate to the side and said firmly,

"The world is divided into things you can eat and things you can't. We've decided to call them 'meat' and 'vegetables,' respectively."

"...Technically, isn't bread made from grain too?"

"Oh, come on, senior. Why would you say something like that?"

I clicked my tongue at the ignorant sword worshipper.

"Bread, noodles, and rice are exceptions. They're like air."

"Air...?"

"Yes. They're naturally absorbed, like breathing, so they should be classified separately."

At my perfect logic, Senior Gaios seemed at a loss for words and only gaped.

Soon, he shook his head.

"All right... just eat whatever tastes good."

I took a big bite of the sandwich, with all the non-meat perfectly removed, leaving only bread, sauce, ham, and cheese.

Munch, munch—the more I chewed, the richer the ham's flavor lingered in my mouth.

"The meat seems saltier than I expected."

"...Is it very salty?"

"But when I eat it with the bread, the balance doesn't seem bad, and the sauce is sweet, so the sweet-and-salty balance feels pretty good..."

This is weirdly addictive.

"It's delicious. You really made this yourself?"

"...If you want, I can show you how to bake next time."

"Then please make egg tarts next time."

In an instant, I finished one sandwich and picked up a second.

Of course, I picked out all the vegetables again this time too.

"If you spar with me just once more, I'll make it for you as many times as you want."

"Ah, that's a bit of a hassle."

I waved my hand, clearly disgusted.

"Do you know how much trouble I got into early yesterday morning? The alarm suddenly went off, and then the professors came chasing after me..."

I almost got dragged back to the disciplinary committee and maid-corrupted again.

"Do you know you ended up with less hassle thanks to me?"

Senior Gaios snorted and handed me a glass of water.

"I actively defended you during the hearing, saying it was a sparring match and not an accident. It's not like you got to sleep peacefully until now without being disturbed for no reason."

"Well... now that you put it that way, I guess that's true."

That said, it was true enough.

"No, more importantly, why are you so weak, senior?"

"What?"

"You said you could take a beating, so what kind of joke is it to go down in one hit?"

At my grumbling, the senior let out a dry laugh.

"Still, I did get right back up, didn't I? Of course, thanks to you holding back."

"Either way, the fact remains that you fainted. Roasted to a crisp, well-done."

"...To be honest, if it was me, count yourself lucky that it ended with a faint. If it had been someone else, it would have been at least a serious injury."

"Then there would've been a disciplinary committee meeting right away if it had come to that," the senior said, tapping my forearm.

His stamina really wasn't bad for a student.

Of course, I'm a student too, but anyway.

"Well—if it weren't for you, Senior Gaios, I wouldn't have used magic that strong."

"You really never let a single word slide, do you?"

"More importantly, do you have any more sandwiches?"

"..."

Senior Gaios quietly looked at the plate piled high with nothing but vegetables.

"I can make more, but... aren't you overeating? Where does food even go in such a tiny body?"

Even while tilting his head, he stood up and took down one of the hunks of meat hanging from the kitchen ceiling.

The well-aged pork hind leg looked absolutely delicious.

Sss—just looking at it makes my mouth water.

With practiced knife work, Senior Gaios began slicing the meat thinly.

"By the way, the more I look at you, the more impressive you are."

The senior opened his mouth while piling the meat on top of the bread like a mountain.

"Honestly, it's hard to understand how you reached that level at such a young age."

"Well— I can't deny that I was born with it."

That's because I, "Lunaris Evermoon," am that kind of character.

The original work's officially certified cheat character.

But Senior Gaios seemed to think a little differently.

"Haha. How many talented people do you think I've seen by now? Besides, is there any student who entered Elterion Academy without talent?"

"Of course, Lunaris, I can't deny that your talent is on an entirely different level, beyond the norm—but"

With that said, the senior looked at me quietly and continued in a serious voice.

"However, there are realms you can't reach with talent alone."

"..."

"To obtain titles like 'best,' 'first,' or 'youngest'... you can't do it just by being born that way."

The senior grinned and handed me a meat-bomb sandwich.

"Even you, who are on the verge of becoming the youngest archmage, must have put in blood, sweat, and tears without realizing it. You just didn't notice."

"That's why you're in that position."

Senior Gaios was praising me to the skies.

I could only blankly fiddle with the sandwich.

"...Effort? Me?"

Come to think of it, I really had been living pretty busily.

That made the vow I made when I burned the recommendation letter for the Imperial Mage Corps seem meaningless.

'Come to think of it, I'm really contradictory.'

I studied magic harder than anyone else, under the pretense of becoming lazy.

I came all the way to this annoying academy, claiming I was going along with the fate called the "main story."

And once I got here, I was spending my school life so diligently(?) that I'd taken first place in my year.

Far from putting off today's work until tomorrow.

I was already scrambling ahead with the excuse that I didn't want tomorrow to be a pain.

For the ridiculous reason that I didn't want to end up in trouble later.

I threw myself into the original story's events with my own two feet.

Why on earth had I done that?

If I'd really made up my mind to be lazy, I could have just lain in bed and breathed.

'An ingrained habit...?';

Suddenly, memories from my past life flashed through my mind.

I wondered if the habit of living as a corporate slave was still lingering.

'No, that's not it.'

I bit into the sandwich.

The salty ham and savory bread flavor spread through my mouth.

It's delicious. It makes me feel good.

...Yeah, that's right. I just want to feel these small bits of happiness.

This is what the laziness I pursue looks like.

Simply doing nothing can't really be called laziness.

That's not even being alive in the first place.

The life I want isn't some corpse-like life like that.

A life where I sprawl out and sleep as much as I want when I'm sleepy, and eat to my heart's content when I want to eat.

I want those dopamine-spiking thrills too.

Above all, I want to escape the original story's unfair nonsense and grasp my own happy ending—everyone's happy ending, too.

Yes, I'm greedy.

Very greedy.

But unlike the original protagonist,

or like me in my past life,

I don't want to go through foolish suffering in the name of effort.

If that's the case, there's only one answer.

'Efficiency.'

Isn't laziness, in the end, the most efficient kind of action?

Creating the desired result with the minimum amount of effort.

Compressing the process, leaving it out, skipping it.

Taking only the sweet fruit.

That is the true sloth I should pursue.

And.

'The means to do that is magic.'

In that instant, starlight flashed through my mind.

That's right... magic isn't merely the imitation of natural phenomena; it's a power that defies them.

But until now, I'd been using magic inefficiently.

I worked out formulas, linked circuits, and drew magic circles one by one...

Stupidly enough, I'd faithfully followed the laws nature had set and gone through the 'process.'

'I really was an idiot.'

Come to think of it, wasn't the reason I'd been rolling around and suffering like this all this time because I hadn't understood the true meaning of laziness?

It was because I lived inefficiently and used magic inefficiently.

For me, magic is simply.

The embodiment of sloth.

-Swooo.

At that moment, I felt my mind clear all at once.

Centered on my body,

the flow of mana began to subtly reverse.