The Blacksmith and the Mage, Birds of a Feather (9)

"Ei, Dar, Pitts, Ro, Force!"

By pronouncing the prescribed words exactly, the magical power I released coalesced into a ball of flame and shot out from my palm.

The instant it struck, the flame exploded, shattering the rock that served as my target.

The three archmages watching nearby clapped at the result.

What I had just cast was explosive fireball magic.

Although it took some time to activate, it was an offensive spell with considerable firepower, and being able to cast it was one of the requirements for recognition as a full-fledged mage.

Yes, this was a mage certification exam.

Honestly, as long as I could use magic, I didn't care whether other people called me an apprentice mage or a full-fledged mage; apparently, those around me felt differently.

Since Kaushuman refused to take any other apprentices, the only way for him to become an archmage was for me, his sole apprentice, to become a mage.

It was a thoroughly troublesome situation.

In truth, the other archmages probably didn't want to recognize an elf like me as a mage.

Well, I was actually a high elf, so the spirits lent me far more power than they imagined, but there was no need to mention that.

However, Kaushuman had accomplished far too much in the field of magic-tool research.

Of course, the existence of magic swords was one of his greatest achievements.

Thus, if Kaushuman did not become an archmage, the path to that rank would be closed to other mages whose achievements were less impressive than his.

A mere mage earning greater fame than an ordinary archmage would send ripples through Odine's authority and order.

In short, the archmages who led Odine wanted Kaushuman to become an archmage.

Kaushuman himself not only had no desire for the honor of becoming an archmage, but found the whole thing a nuisance, so ordinarily I wouldn't have cared either.

But there are people who try to get rid of anyone inconvenient who refuses to go along with their wishes, finding one pretext after another to exclude them from society—or even dispose of them physically.

His position and fame as an archmage would protect him, and if he accepted the rank without a fuss, he could avoid earning the other archmages' strange resentment.

That was why I was taking this mage certification exam quite seriously.

The certification exam had five subjects, and passing three was enough to be recognized as a mage, but my goal was to pass all five.

If I passed attack magic, healing magic, general-purpose magic, the written exam on magic history, and the written exam on spell-formula studies, then... I would be recognized as an excellent mage, and Kaushuman, who had trained me, would be deemed fully qualified to become an archmage as well.

In other words, this was my way of repaying Kaushuman, my teacher in magic.

Five years had passed since I began studying magic, and although I hadn't made it alone, the magic sword had finally been completed.

It was about time.

From here on, Kaushuman and I could each follow our own paths.

Our time of flying together, supporting each other, was over.

That was why, once the certification exam was over, I would leave Odine.

Before the half-elf baby grew into a child and noticed how different they were from those around them, I had to go pick them up.

There was no way to hide the fact that the child was adopted, given the difference between our races, but even so, they shouldn't have to suffer from realizing at such a young age that they were different from everyone around them.

When I told Kaushuman why I was leaving, he laughed and said,

"I don't like children—they're noisy—but I'd like to see a child you raised."

Or something to that effect.

I wondered whether Kaushuman intended to pass on his knowledge and techniques for making magic tools to anyone.

In the five years we'd spent together, he had shown no sign of finding a lover, nor had he taken any apprentices besides me.

It was starting to worry me a little, but no, that was none of my business.

If he believed that leaving his creations behind was enough, even if his knowledge and skills did not survive into future generations, there was a certain romance to that, too.

Come to think of it, I wasn't going to do something as cliché as making an ice magic sword to pair with Kaushuman's flame magic sword.

An ice magic sword might certainly look cool, but in practical terms it would be nearly pointless; frozen metal sticks to human flesh, so it would only make the sword considerably less usable.

So I made my magic sword with a blade that wasn't quite as thin as paper, but was about as thin as a stack of several sheets.

A blade that thin would unquestionably be useless under normal circumstances.

If Azvald, my damn dwarf master, saw it, he'd try to smash it apart with a hammer without hesitation—it was that useless.

The reason was that, without even needing to be struck by a hammer, that thin blade would bend and break easily from the impact of clashing swords.

Yet I had engraved it with spell formulas that increased its strength and sharpness, so that once magic power flowed through it, it could withstand even a sledgehammer blow without budging.

There was no flashy effect of the sort one might associate with the words magic sword; instead, I had packed the blade with layer upon layer of formulas focused obsessively on strength and sharpness alone.

Thus, without magic power, this magic sword was a thin, fragile toy blade, but once its spell activated, it became a sword unrivaled in lightness and sharpness.

It was a sword made entirely of quirks and required tremendous skill to handle, but for me, it was probably the best sword there was.

I also used a small amount of the metal called fairy silver in its scabbard—the same metal I had used during the magic aptitude test, with its strange property of drawing out magic power.

Certain monsters take in ore to grind up and digest what they eat; fairy silver is the metal refined inside their bodies as a result.

As a result, merely wearing the sheathed sword at my side would keep it reinforced enough to survive an unforeseen accident.

A sword that absorbed magic power on its own simply by being worn—wasn't that very much like a magic sword, in the worst possible sense?

Provided the user could channel magic power into it, Kaushuman's magic sword would unquestionably be judged powerful by anyone who used it or saw it.

By contrast, apart from me, the only person I could think of, for now, who might recognize the true worth of my highly specialized magic sword was Kaeha, my sword master.

I thought it was interesting—and perfectly fine—for them to be paired in this way.

To me, Kaushuman had certainly taught me magic, but I hardly saw him as my master; a bad friend—or perhaps a rival—fit our relationship better.

We had cooperated and walked the same path up to this point, but I had completed a magic sword of an entirely different kind, putting into it my determination to move forward independently and get ahead of him from here on.

"Kaushuman Fiedel's apprentice, Eisa. Spell Formula Studies examination... passed."

For some reason, one of the archmages announced that I had passed the fifth exam, sounding faintly frustrated.

I was satisfied with the result. I wouldn't call it inevitable, but I had been confident it would turn out this way, so I politely thanked the archmages who had administered the certification exam.

Kaushuman wasn't the type to shed tears over a parting, so I had no intention of making a grand farewell speech either.

There was no way to know yet whether this would be our final farewell in this life.

If the little half-elf child I took in said they wanted to become a mage, I might bring them to Odine.

By then, Kaushuman would probably be a fine middle-aged man—or perhaps even an old one.

I imagined it would be a great deal of fun to show him the new magic sword I had made.

And so, a few days after the certification exam, I left Kaushuman's atelier and set out from the city with the mage's certificate issued by Odine's council in hand.