I kicked off the ground, and the broom shot into the sky like an arrow from a bow. The acceleration was immediate and intense—I had been flying alone during my training, and I'd grown accustomed to speeds that would make most riders nauseous. The wind screamed past us. The castle shrank below us. And Noelle, who had been determined to maintain her royal dignity, let out a shriek that could probably be heard in the capital.
"TOO FAST! TOO FAST! SLOW DOWN!"
"You said you didn't need to hold on."
"I LIED! I LIED, OKAY?! SLOW DOWN!"
I eased back on the acceleration, leveling the broom out at a more reasonable cruising speed. Noelle's arms had wrapped around my waist—not around my shoulders, which would have been the practical choice for stability, but around my waist, her hands pressed flat against my abdomen. I could feel her fingers through the fabric of my robe, could feel the way they trembled with adrenaline and something else.
"This is—this is still too fast!" she said, her voice muffled against my back. "But I suppose it's acceptable! For an emergency situation!"
"We're not in an emergency situation."
"WE MIGHT BE! YOU DON'T KNOW!"
"Are you going to let go now that we've slowed down?"
Silence. Noelle's arms remained wrapped around my waist.
"...No," she said finally, her voice very small. "I might fall."
"The broom is stable."
"I MIGHT FALL!"
I didn't argue. The persona I had constructed—the protective older brother, the patient guardian—required me to be accommodating. If Noelle wanted to cling to me for the duration of the flight, that was her choice. The fact that her fingers were now tracing the outlines of my abdominal muscles through the robe was probably unconscious. Probably.
I accelerated again, just slightly, and her grip tightened.
"YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE!"
"The wind caught us."
"THERE IS NO WIND!"
"We're in the sky. There's always wind."
---
Saussy Village was a small settlement nestled in a valley between two low mountain ranges. From the air, it looked peaceful—a cluster of thatched roofs and winding dirt paths, surrounded by farmland and patches of forest. The wild boars were visible even from this height, dark shapes moving through the underbrush at the edges of the fields.
Magna landed first, his broom touching down in a clearing just outside the village boundary. Asta tumbled off the back, his hair even more disheveled than usual, his eyes spinning with the aftereffects of Magna's "Crazy Cyclone" flying Broom.
"That was AMAZING!" Asta shouted, stumbling in circles. "You flew so fast! And you did all those spins! And the loop-de-loop! Can we do the loop-de-loop again?!"
"Maybe on the way back," Magna said, grinning. "Gotta save some tricks for the return trip."
I landed a moment later, my broom touching down with the smooth precision of practice. Noelle released her grip on my waist immediately—almost guiltily—and slid off the broom with the stiff posture of someone who was trying very hard to appear unaffected by the last half hour.
"Your flying is acceptable," she said, not meeting my eyes. "For a commoner."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me! It wasn't a compliment!"
"It sounded like a compliment."
"Your ears are defective!"
Before I could respond, a thunderous roar echoed through the valley. The ground trembled. Trees splintered and fell somewhere in the forest ahead of us. And then it emerged—a boar, but not a normal boar. This creature was the size of a small house, its tusks gleaming like polished ivory, its hide covered in bristles that looked more like iron spikes than hair. Flames poured from its nostrils and flickered around its head like a mane of fire. Its eyes, small and piggy and filled with mindless rage, fixed on our group with the single-minded intensity of a creature that had decided we were threats.
"That's..." Magna swallowed hard. "That's a lot bigger than I expected."
"IT'S HUGE!" Asta shouted, his eyes sparkling. "IT'S THE BIGGEST BOAR I'VE EVER SEEN! I'M GOING TO FIGHT IT!"
"Wait, Asta—"
But Asta was already running, his grimoire open, the massive anti-magic sword materializing in his hands. "COME ON, BOAR! LET'S SEE WHAT YOU'VE GOT! I'VE BEEN BITTEN BY WOLVES AND BURNED BY FIRE AND THROWN THROUGH WALLS! ONE OVERGROWN PIG ISN'T GOING TO—"
The boar charged. Asta swung his sword. The anti-magic blade connected with the boar's flaming mane, and the fire around its head flickered and died. But the boar itself—a creature of flesh and bone and momentum—kept coming. It plowed into Asta with the force of a battering ram, sending him flying backward through the air.
"I'M OKAY!" Asta's voice called from somewhere in the underbrush. "THAT WAS A GOOD HIT! I'M GOING TO TRY AGAIN!"
Magna turned to me and Noelle. "Okay, new plan. Asta's got the big one distracted. We'll split up and take out the smaller boars. Noelle, you're with Ouga. I'll circle around from the east. Meet back here at noon!"
And then he was gone, his broom carrying him into the forest, leaving Noelle and me alone at the edge of a field that was very quickly filling with angry, fire-breathing boars.
"This is beneath me," Noelle muttered, her grimoire opening in her hands. "Hunting pigs. A Silva, hunting pigs. If my siblings could see me now..."
"They'd probably be impressed that you're doing field work at all."
Noelle blinked. "That's... that's actually... no! They wouldn't be impressed! They'd be disgusted! They'd say I was degrading the family name!"
"Then prove them wrong by being good at it."
She stared at me for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she turned toward the nearest boar—a smaller one, only the size of a pony—and raised her hand. "Water Creation Magic: Aqua Lance!"
The spear of water materialized above her palm. She aimed it at the boar, her face screwed up in concentration. She released it.
The lance veered wildly to the left and obliterated a hay bale.
"I HIT THE HAY!" Noelle shouted, her voice cracking with frustration. "WHY DO I ALWAYS HIT THE HAY?! THERE'S NOT EVEN THAT MUCH HAY! WHY IS THERE HAY HERE?!"
"Agricultural village," I said.
"THAT'S NOT HELPFUL!"
The boar, apparently deciding that the hay-destroying girl was a threat, turned and charged. Noelle's eyes went wide. She raised her hand for another spell, but her mana was already fluctuating—too much, too fast, the Stage Zero reserves surging out of control. The water sphere that formed above her palm was the size of a carriage. She couldn't control it. She couldn't aim it. And the boar was still coming.
I moved.
My body crossed the distance between us in a single bound, my legs launching me forward with the explosive power of muscles that had been conditioned beyond human limits. I landed between Noelle and the charging boar, my feet cracking the earth beneath me. The creature's tusks were aimed at my chest, flames pouring from its nostrils, and I met it head-on.
My hands closed around the tusks. The impact shuddered through my body—a notification of force, catalogued and dismissed by the Pain Resistance and Reinforcement Magic that were always active, always ready. The boar's momentum, which should have carried it through me and into Noelle, stopped dead. I held the creature in place, its hooves scrabbling against the ground, its flames washing over my arms and finding no purchase against skin that had adapted to fire months ago.
Noelle stared at me. Her mouth was open. Her grimoire was forgotten, its pages fluttering in the breeze. And her eyes—her pink eyes, wide with shock and something else—were fixed on my arms, where the muscles bulged against the fabric of my robe, the outline of every fiber visible beneath the strain of holding a charging boar at bay.
"You have courage," I said, my voice calm despite the flames licking at my skin. "That's good. Courage is the foundation of growth. But courage without control is recklessness. Until you can control your magic, don't put yourself in positions where you have to rely on it."
"I... I..." Noelle's voice was barely a whisper. "I wasn't trying to be reckless. I just wanted to prove I could do it."
"You will. But not today. Today, you watch and learn."
I twisted my grip on the boar's tusks, and with a single, decisive motion, I snapped its neck. The crack echoed through the field. The boar went limp, its flames extinguishing, its massive body collapsing to the ground. I released the tusks and stepped back, my breathing steady, my heart rate unchanged.
Noelle stared at the dead boar. Then at me. Then back at the boar.
"You... you killed it. With your bare hands. You killed a magical boar with your BARE HANDS."
"It's not difficult. I've been hunting these since I was eleven."
"Eleven?!"
"The jungle where I grew up had bigger ones."
Noelle's brain appeared to be struggling with this information. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, "What do you eat to get that strong?"
"Mostly mana beast meat. And training. Lots of training."
"I... see." She was quiet for a moment. Then, so quietly I almost didn't hear it: "Thank you. For saving me."
"You're welcome."
"Don't—don't make a big deal out of it! I would have been fine! I had the situation completely under control!"
"The boar was about to gore you."
"I had a PLAN!"
"Was the plan to get gored by the boar?"
"THAT'S NOT—you're impossible to talk to! Absolutely impossible!"
But she was blushing again, and her voice had lost its edge. The rabbit, I thought, was starting to trust the wolf who protected her. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.
---
By noon, we had cleared the fields.
I had killed fourteen boars—some with my bare hands, some with precise applications of water magic, one particularly stubborn specimen with a well-placed boulder. Noelle, after her near-death experience, had hung back and provided what she called "strategic support" and what I called "watching from a safe distance while occasionally firing spells at inanimate objects." She had managed to hit one boar, entirely by accident, when a water lance meant for a tree had ricocheted off a rock and struck the creature in the flank. She had immediately claimed this was intentional.
Magna and Asta met us at the rendezvous point. Asta was carrying three boars slung over his shoulders. Magna was covered in soot and bruises and grinning like he'd just had the best morning of his life.
"FOURTEEN?!" Magna's sunglasses nearly fell off when he saw my pile. "You killed FOURTEEN?! By yourself?!"
"Noelle provided support," I said.
"I fired seventeen spells," Noelle said proudly. "And one of them hit a boar."
"Intentionally?"
"...Intentionally."
Magna stared at the mountain of boar carcasses, then at me, then back at the carcasses. "You know what? I'm not even surprised anymore. The captain brought back a monster. I've accepted this. This is my life now."
"The old man should be happy with this much," magna said.
Noelle, who had been examining her nails with studied indifference, looked up. "The old man? You mean the one who defeated Captain Yami in a card game? Do you know him, Magna?"
Magna's expression softened. It was a surprising look on him—the brash, loud, sunglasses-wearing senior Black Bull suddenly looked almost... nostalgic.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know him. His name's Seyhi. He's from Rayaka Village—my village. It's not far from here." He leaned against a tree, his arms crossed, his gaze distant. "I used to be a real handful when I was a kid. Always getting into trouble. Always picking fights. When I got my grimoire, I thought I was invincible. I got arrogant. Tried to take over Saussy Village, can you believe it? Me, a snot-nosed kid with a fire bat, trying to conquer a whole village."
"What happened?" Asta asked, his eyes wide.
"Seyhi happened." Magna laughed, but there was no bitterness in it. "He whooped my ass with his weapon creation magic. I'd never been beaten so badly in my life. So I came back. And he beat me again. And I came back again. And he beat me again." He shook his head. "Every single time, he'd knock me flat and then give me this lecture: 'Real men don't trouble others. Real men protect the weak. Real men use their strength to make the world better, not worse.' Eventually, I started listening."
"That's..." Noelle hesitated. "That's surprisingly heartfelt."
"He's the reason I became a Magic Knight. The reason I joined the Black Bulls. He taught me that being strong doesn't mean anything if you're just using it to push people around." Magna pushed off from the tree, his expression returning to its usual brash confidence. "Anyway, that's why the captain and I couldn't just ignore the bet. We owe the old man. If he wants some boars cleared out, we clear out some boars."
Asta was practically vibrating. "Magna-senpai, that's such a cool story! You had a mentor who taught you what it means to be a real man! I have someone like that too! His name is—"
"We can talk about mentors later," I interrupted. I had noticed something. The edge of the forest was beginning to shimmer. A grey mist, thin and wispy, was seeping through the trees like breath on a cold morning. It moved against the wind, spreading with a purpose that no natural fog could possess.
"Mist," I said. "Magical mist. It's designed to confuse human senses. Someone's casting an illusion spell over the village."
Magna's expression went hard. "What? Who would—"
And then he saw it too. The mist was thickening, coiling around the village like a serpent, and beneath its grey veil, the faint sounds of screaming were beginning to rise.
"The village is under attack," I said. "Asta, your sword. Anti-magic can dispel the mist."
Asta's grin vanished, replaced by the fierce determination I'd seen in the exam arena. His grimoire opened, and the massive black sword materialized in his hands. "Got it! Just point me at the mist and I'll cut through it!"
"Stay behind Asta," I said to Noelle. "His sword will clear a path. Magna, you take point with me. We don't know how many attackers there are."
"Right." Magna's fire bat blazed to life. "Let's move."
We advanced into the mist, Asta at the front with his sword swinging in wide arcs. "ORA ORA ORA! GET OUT OF OUR WAY, STUPID MIST! WE'VE GOT A VILLAGE TO SAVE!" The anti-magic blade carved through the grey veil like a knife through cloth, dispersing the magical fog with every swing. The screams grew louder as we pushed deeper into the village, and when the mist finally parted, we saw what we were dealing with.
The villagers were bound and gagged in the center of the square. An old man with a weathered face and a massive axe strapped to his back—Seyhi, I assumed—was standing between them and four figures in dark robes. The robes were familiar. The iconography was familiar. The cold, clinical evil that radiated from them was something I had felt before, a year ago, in the ashes of another village.
The leader of the robed mages turned toward us, his face hidden beneath his hood. His voice, when he spoke, was cold and sharp with irritation.
"How dare you interfere," he said. "You're putting me behind schedule. Do you have any idea what happens to people who put me behind schedule?"
I stepped forward, the wheel behind my head beginning to rotate faster. "Enlighten me."
"I execute them."
The mist swirled. The villagers screamed. And the battle for Saussy Village began.
(Author note: big surprise coming in the next chapter, but suddenly i don't have the motivation to upload it🥱😮💨 It's in my drafts, if only i could get motivation.)