Chapter 27
*
The blizzard's ferocity had already begun to subside.
By the time the heaps of snow had melted in the steam from the lamp oil and washed down into the sewers.
“You wanted to learn the exception-handling concept in just a fortnight?”
Schmidt, the tutor hired by the Nihiirit baronial house, adjusted his monocle and said.
“Miss Freya. That was only possible because it was Young Master Julian.”
Schmidt shook his head.
Even as a basic concept, exception handling was not an easy one.
There were thirty formulas alone.
It took at least a month just to make them second nature, to the point where you could rattle them off by reflex.
But the real difficulty of the concept began after you learned the formulas.
“Then, to check how well you’ve mastered the concept, let me ask you this. Right now, the enemy and your companion are clashing swords and fighting. You’re about forty-five paces away from them. In this situation, if you were to use fire magic, which formula of exception handling would you use?”
“Huh? Um… wouldn’t you use formula 4, the one for specifying range?”
“If you use formula 4, it becomes invalid if the enemy hides behind an ally.”
“Uh, then….”
This was the problem, above all else.
'Memorizing the formulas' and 'mastering the concept' were entirely different things.
Memorizing the formulas was manageable in about a month, but figuring out which formula to use in actual combat usually took much longer.
“If you add formula 4 to formula 1….”
“The casting time would double, and the two conditional clauses would contradict each other, so it would fail to activate.”
“Hooee…”
Schmidt's stern correction sent Freya's eyes spinning.
It was a cruel question for a girl who had just turned twelve.
“Haa….”
The tutor let out a deep sigh.
“Please don't be too disheartened. Even those called prodigies usually need three months before they can barely take their first steps.”
“B-but my brother did it in four days…”
“Let's make him an exception.”
Schmidt gave a bitter smile as he recalled his former student.
“You don't need to imitate Young Master Julian. In the end, what matters isn't getting there fast, but getting there in the end.”
Julian.
He was a sore point for Schmidt too.
A genius who had raced through a three-year course in just three months, to the point that even compared with the Great Sage, he was no less impressive.
What if he had had talent for magecraft as well?
Even a year later, Schmidt still thought God was truly spiteful.
If only He hadn't granted him even a firefly's worth of talent, it would have been less heartbreaking.
“So, Miss.”
Schmidt readjusted his crooked monocle and gently admonished Freya.
“If you push yourself this hard from the start, you may tire yourself out later. Your current pace is already on par with geniuses, so there's no need to be impatient.”
“But I want to be able to use magic quickly too.”
“Why? Do you have some special reason?”
“It's not any special reason. I just want to follow my brother, like my sister does….”
“Hm?”
“Ah, it's nothing.”
She wanted to follow Julian down to Limbus Pit.
Because the way he went below to help people in need felt just like the stories of the heroes she admired.
More than that, she also enjoyed learning something new every day by Julian's side.
But she remembered her mother's words and cut herself off.
— “Freya. Please keep it a secret from the other noble houses that your brother Julian is going down below.”
— “Why?”
— “I think they might point fingers at him.”
— “Why would they point fingers at someone doing something good? Are they jealous?”
— “Hmm… jealousy… perhaps you could look at it that way.”
Freya raised her head and looked at the tutor.
This tutor, she had heard, was the third son of some count's family.
Of course, Freya didn't think Schmidt would point fingers at Julian either. But there was still the chance that rumors would spread among the nobility because of it.
So Freya hurriedly corrected herself.
“It's just… I thought that if my brother could do it, maybe I could too.”
At Freya's answer, Schmidt smiled warmly.
Because that sort of competitiveness a twelve-year-old might have was adorable.
“That's fine, Miss. Since you're Young Master Julian's little sister too, you'll be able to catch up if you don't rush.”
At the tutor's words, Freya briefly remembered that Julian and she shared not a drop of blood, but she did not say it out loud.
Because right now, that wasn't very important.
“All right, then. Shall we begin?”
“Yes, sir!”
Freya nodded energetically and tightened her grip on her quill.
Even if they were strangers with not a drop of blood between them, to her Julian was the finest, most wonderful brother in the world.
***
Meanwhile, Freya was having a pleasant time with Tutor Schmidt,
I had returned to Limbus Pit after a long while and spent a hectic day.
Since the blizzard had just ended, the backlog of patients had all arrived at once.
Still, it was better than last year. Thanks to Eri.
In situations like this, Eri's presence was extremely helpful.
Once Eri filtered out who had a problem with their bone marrow, things went much more smoothly.
After the morning consultations ended,
we had a brief lunch break.
“Si jaco ∈ {socii}, tunc damnum → 0… no, what was it again. Was Si jaco first, or objectum first….”
The private room at Bure Suho-bu.
While waiting for the food to arrive, Eri was muttering as she stared at a scrap of paper.
“Si objectum.signum = protectum… no, was there a comma here? Or not? Ah, I don't know!”
In the end, Eri reached her limit, tore at her hair, and flopped onto the table.
“Seriously, I only just learned my letters and now they want me to memorize thirty formulas!”
Over the past two weeks,
unlike Freya, who had managed to memorize thirty formulas to some extent, Eri had only learned fifteen.
Part of it was that she had only recently learned her letters, but more than anything, she still hadn't built the habit of sitting still for long.
“Ah, I don't know! I'm taking a break! Teacher! I'm on delivery duty—”
“You're not an errand runner anymore. As my assistant, go back to the duty room and study.”
“Gah! Teacher, when did you get here?”
“Since the moment you said Si Jactor instead of Si jaco.”
Even that was only because I had forcibly seated her and made her study, so she had barely managed to learn fifteen.
I glanced sidelong at the scrap of paper in Eri's hand.
Indeed, they were formulas I had already memorized, but never wanted to memorize again no matter how many times I saw them.
But as the genius-setup protagonist, there was a line I absolutely had to say.
“That's difficult….”
“I'm not a genius like you, Teacher!”
Eri let go of the hair she'd been tearing out and complained.
Meanwhile, I ignored her and sipped my pre-meal tea while correcting the typos on her memorization notes.
Creak—
At that moment, the door to our private room opened with a rusty hinge squeal.
“Teacher. I heard you were here for a meal, so I came to greet you.”
“Long time no see, Boss. How are your toes?”
“Hehe… I had a rough time while the blizzard was falling.”
“I told you to cut back on the booze and meat.”
At that moment, Eri wedged herself between us.
“Boss is a hyena beastkin. Teacher, does it make sense for a hyena beastkin not to eat meat?”
“I clearly told you that rabbit meat or duck eggs could be used instead, and that beer could be distilled before drinking it.”
As if I hadn't already considered that.
At my reply, even Eri, who had been trying to defend Boss, clamped her mouth shut.
Feeling embarrassed, Boss blatantly changed the subject.
“Ah, bro. Did your face heal up okay?”
He waved at Otto, who had been sitting in the corner of the private room in silence as if he weren't there.
Otto's face, which had been covered in scars until just before we left Limbus Pit, was now clean and neat.
“Wow, the priests up in the upper district really are something. I thought scars like that would last a lifetime. There isn't a trace left.”
“It's all thanks to Teacher Schnabel.”
Otto glanced toward me.
“I heard your first aid was done well. Thanks to that, even low-grade healing was enough to treat me properly.”
Hmph.
Of course.
As befits a world where magic is complicated, divine magic here is complicated in principle too.
The deeper the wound, the dirtier it is, and the more poorly it has been treated, the exponentially greater the divine power and difficulty required to heal it.
But in Otto's case, because I had treated his wounds so artistically beforehand, he was able to recover without any issues.
‘This is still trauma surgery, you know.’
Obstetrics, pediatrics, and internal medicine may be borrowing the power of a misunderstanding trope, but trauma surgery is all my own skill.
Heh.
It sure would be nice if I could use healing magic too.
The lack of faith is the problem.
Anyway.
“Oh, wow, this is the first time I've ever heard you talk this much, bro.”
“…”
“Hey, look at bro keeping his mouth shut.”
Boss joked around as he patted Otto on the shoulder.
Otto didn't brush off the hand as if it were annoying, but simply stared out the window with his usual blunt expression.
“Jokes aside.”
Boss flopped down in the chair across from me and let some of his usual sly grin fade.
I, in turn, hardened my expression.
Though it didn't mean much while I was wearing a crow mask.
“Teacher. For the time being, please be careful when traveling through this district.”
“Has something happened?”
“It just happens to be ghoul season again this year.”
Ah, come to think of it, that's right.
This Limbus Pit has one peculiar season.
Roughly once every three or four years, right after a heavy snowfall and the snow starts melting.
The natural appearance rate of undead in Limbus Pit skyrockets.
And because the principle behind it happened to be related to something Eri needed, I asked her about it.
“Eri. Do you know why ghouls erupt in Limbus Pit once every four years?”
“I'm already starving, and now I've got to freeze to death too—”
“Eri, mind your language.”
For mages, language is life.
Technical knowledge matters, but vocabulary is just as important.
“…A ghost that starved to death and a ghost that froze to death have stronger grudges. Maybe it's something like that.”
“That's from a normal person's perspective. You're in the process of becoming a mage now.”
Mage.
At that word, Boss's eyes went wide as he looked at Eri, but I ignored him and continued.
“Want to think about it in magical terms?”
“…I never learned that.”
“More like you just don't remember it.”
I roughly ruffled Eri's hair and reminded her of the material again.
“All right, Eri. What were the five elements needed to activate magic?”
“Ritual, chant, catalyst, mana, and… um… what was it?”
“Symbolism.”
Symbolism is very important in magic.
Of course the other four are needed too, but that's not what matters right now.
“Ghouls absolutely need the symbol of 'death that has not fallen under God's gaze.' That's why corpses in cemeteries where funerals or requiem rites were held don't naturally turn into ghouls.”
That is, unless some insane black mage performs a rite that desecrates death.
“For this reason, ghouls often appear in slums or battlefields. No one there mourns or prays for the dead.”
That's also why the ghoul season in Limbus Pit happens once every four years, right after a snowfall.
“The accumulated symbolism of desecration finally bursts. The frozen corpses preserved by the cold act as catalysts and react with the mana pooled in the city's mist, causing ghouls to appear.”
Still, four years was a longer interval.
Before I came, it had apparently been ghoul season once every two years.
Since the death rate dropped exponentially after I arrived, only D Sector saw it again after four years.
I’d heard that the other sectors were still having a hard time because ghouls were still running rampant there every two years.
“But Teacher, there's something weird.”
“Go ahead.”
“Then if there's no ritual or chant, why does it happen naturally?”
“Rituals and chants aren't actually essential for magic to activate.”
A ritual is a kind of framework for using magic at the time and in the form a person wants.
Therefore, the absence of a ritual does not mean magic won't activate.
It just means the magic will activate on its own schedule.
Chants are the same way; they aren't essential to magic either.
A chant is, in effect, the process of bargaining with the world on behalf of insufficient symbolism, catalyst, and mana.
Therefore, if symbolism, catalyst, and mana are sufficient, neither chants nor rituals are strictly necessary.
“Of course, if a person wants to activate magic, in the end both are essential.”
Still, unlike the vast natural world where everything is abundant, humans have too little mana, symbolism, and catalyst to work with, so those two are effectively semi-essential.
“All right, does that make sense?”
“Roughly.”
“I didn't understand it.”
Ignoring Boss, who just shrugged.
Anyway, Boss's point was that ghoul season had returned to D Sector after four years as well.
'Hiss. If I'd done a little better, I might've been able to stretch it to five years.'
While I was thinking that to myself, Otto, who had been silent, spoke to Boss.
“…Are we not supposed to go up this time?”
“Oh, bro. Did you get scared because of last time?”
Click.
Without a word, Otto cocked the hammer of his revolver.
Boss answered with a look of open disgust.
“Man, you really can't joke around.”
“…”
“Fine, fine. I'll answer your question only. You asked whether we have to go up, right?”
Nod.
“No need. How strong can ghouls even be? What’s so scary about dead things that starved to death and froze to death getting back up?”
Just as Boss said.
Unlike battlefield ghouls, slum ghouls were weak.
To put it bluntly, even if a whole mob of ghouls came, Otto could just drive the car straight into them and run them over.
“The original bodies are too weak. Unless the corpse belonged to some superhuman who died somewhere and became a ghoul, they’re not that dangerous. So relax and eat your meal, bro.”
“…”
The moment I heard Boss say that, I thought to myself.
What an incredibly reassuring line, that is….
notes
I corrected the closing joke so lines 357/359 no longer repeat the same sentence; line 253 was rendered as “mind your language” for the crude-scolding nuance, and I kept neutral role-based wording where the original context was ambiguous.