Chapter 1: Derrick (1)
Derrick's first teacher was a shabby old man who used to beg in the slums.
Even in Ebelstein, a great city famous across the continent, there existed a slum where the castaways of society gathered.
At the entrance of a dark alley where thugs and prostitutes came and went, the old man was raising his thin, shrill voice toward empty air, as if he had gone senile, proclaiming himself to be a great mage.
"Back in my day, I was a great mage who soared through the Northern Great War~!"
"Even that famous Duke Beltus came to me in person and asked me to take care of the monsters in the borderlands, you know! Hehehe~!"
On his wrinkled head with only a few strands of hair left, all kinds of filth had caked on, and on his worn-out leather shirt and trouser hems, dirt and the stains of food he had spilled while eating were clearly visible.
He looked, to anyone at a glance, like nothing more than a mad beggar of the streets, so naturally no one believed his words.
"Tsk, these brats… tsk!"
Perhaps his pride had been hurt, because the old man, without anyone telling him to, would shoot fire into the air or stir up gusts of wind.
It was an age where magic itself was rare.
In this cesspool where the castaways gathered, even the most basic magic became an irreplaceable and precious talent.
Passersby would clap or exclaim in admiration when they saw the magic the old man used, but those with a bit of knowledge would instead prop their chins and point out his flaws in a solemn manner.
"Well, I can see that you can use magic, but isn't it a bit small in scale to call yourself a great mage?"
"What, punk? You're young just by looking at you, and you dare lecture me?"
"No, I'm just saying. From what I can tell, you can use magic at the very beginning of the 1-star level, but isn't that something the children of noble families with good bloodlines manage even before they come of age?"
At the man's remark, the old man, who had been mixed in among the crowd, swallowed dryly.
He had never even imagined that someone in this garbage heap of a slum would be able to distinguish the star ranks of magic.
"Of course, being able to use that much magic in this wasteland is certainly a rare talent, but claiming you were once a great mage seems a bit much. Let's be honest, shall we?"
Judging by the man's appearance, he had a sturdy build and clean clothes, looking very proper.
Between the old man rolling around in a corner of the slums and the neatly dressed man speaking logically, there was no need to even consider who was more credible.
The passersby who had gathered nearby all burst into laughter, throwing trash from their arms or clumps of dirt from nearby at the old man while mocking him.
"I knew it! That unlucky old geezer who only ever bragged loudly whenever we passed by!"
"He only knew how to talk big, always rationalizing that he didn't belong in some back alley like this—he was just a piece of crap!"
Even being able to use magic at the most basic level was a skill worthy of admiration to the poor of the slums. But everyday conduct mattered that much.
The old man, who always claimed he was special, looked down on others, drew lines, and spouted arrogant words, fell into ridicule overnight.
After that, whenever he lay sprawled on the street as usual, passersby would spit on him or hurl mockery his way.
"Fools. You can't even recognize true worth, tsk…"
Muttering to himself like that and turning over, indulging in self-justification, was the only form of self-defense the old man had.
Then one day,
It was when he was sitting down on the street, fuming, and taking a bite out of an oat bread he had found while rummaging through a trash can.
"Please teach me magic."
A small boy with white hair and a filthy appearance had come to the old man asking to be taught magic.
Judging by his age, he looked to be not even ten yet. His white hair, untrimmed like a shaggy mop, was full of dirt, and his nutritional state was not good either—a typical orphan of the slums.
The very fact that he came to an old man who was known as a braggart and got pelted with stones on the streets to ask him to teach magic made it obvious that something was wrong with the kid's head.
His eyes, serious beyond his years, were impressive, but in this slum where every day was like walking through a field of thorns, that was an expression everyone naturally came to have.
"My name is Derrick."
"…Alright."
After staring at the boy for a while, the old man finally bared his teeth and grinned.
*
The old man was a braggart.
Far from having once been a great mage, he was a mediocrity who had wandered the magical world with some half-baked talent, trying to make something of himself, only to be treated as a third-rate and grow old without achieving anything.
Naturally, he had no qualifications to teach anyone magic. To begin with, he had no intention of properly teaching magic at all.
Those who grow old without achieving anything sometimes need a follower who will take their boasts seriously and listen with sparkling eyes. The appearance of one empty-headed boy to satisfy his parched desire for recognition would be a great stimulus in his life.
"Heh heh, Derrick, you should consider it an honor to have me as your master. Even though I'm sitting on the street like this now… back in my day…"
While giving a long-winded speech to the tiny boy like that, he was satisfying his paltry desire to show off.
The passersby who saw that scene at the entrance of the slums would click their tongues or cast sympathetic looks at Derrick. But Derrick listened to the old man's story without showing any sign of caring.
The old man, having poured out his long speech and looking satisfied, would occasionally, out of a sense of obligation, recite some simple magical knowledge.
However, that level of knowledge was shallow in the extreme. He took content that mages raised systematically in famous noble houses would get through in a few days and wrapped it up as if it were some profound truth, inflating it greatly.
Whether he knew or didn't know the old man's paltry nature, Derrick just sat there quietly and absorbed the magical knowledge the old man spoke of.
And so time passed. The seasons, too, flowed by like a river.
The brightly colored autumn leaves disappeared, it seemed to get a bit cold, and then before long, warm spring days came.
The boy and the old man sometimes slept outdoors by the river, sometimes stole from a bakery and ran off because they wanted to eat warm butter bread, and sometimes endured the cold in a makeshift shelter patched together with shabby planks.
They say it's harder to know a person's heart than to know ten miles of road, but as time passes, a person's true nature eventually reveals itself.
After a year had passed, even the old man, who had only been feeding his desire to show off, could not help but notice that the boy named Derrick was extraordinary.
"You… are you some noble's bastard or something?"
"…"
In magic, the most important thing was first bloodline, and second bloodline.
Even to the old man, whose level could hardly be called high, there was something remarkable in the way the boy named Derrick absorbed things.
Teach him one thing, and he knows two. Apply those two, and he derives three.
Before he knew it, in the theoretical field, he had already reached a level comparable to 1-star mages. It was a realm that even the children of noble houses with full support would find difficult to reach at this age.
"It would be nice if that were the case."
Derrick just said so indifferently. Steam was rising from the bread in front of his face.
It was a day when they had succeeded in stealing a large amount of steaming bread and escaping for the first time in a while. It was a haul like no other.
The old man picked out a few from the piled-up bread and stuffed them into his leather pouch, then took a few and began chewing them down.
Then he pushed the remaining pieces of bread toward Derrick and said,
"I don't know why you're so desperate to learn magic, but you know as well as I do that no matter how much a commoner trains, there's an obvious limit."
"…"
"They say that beyond the northern wall of Ebelstein, among the nobles, there are often those who reach the 3-star level before they even come of age. A realm that someone of base blood would have to polish themselves for decades to reach.
When the wall is that thick from the start, do you even feel motivated to try?"
Affection grows from familiarity.
It wasn't easy to feel fondness for Derrick, who acted world-weary despite his young age. Especially from the standpoint of a shabby old man who needed a follower to look up to him. Derrick was an old man in a child's body.
Even so, as time spent together piled up, some small affection also piled up, and the old man gave some life advice that didn't suit him at all.
"Right now, your ability might seem extraordinary and outstanding, but when the time comes, you'll feel like you've run into a huge wall."
That wasn't someone else's story.
The magic skills the old man had polished diligently in his youth were mastered by the second son of Duke Duplein's house in just a week. The memory of his younger days, crushed by that gap, brushed past the old man.
The magical aptitude that flows through one's bloodline, and the profound depth of mana that is awakened instinctively. Mages from noble families were born with qualities that were on an entirely different level from those of the lowborn.
"…Rather than harboring grand ambitions, just live stubbornly, only thinking of yourself. Like me."
"It's not like I'm doing this because I have some great ambition. I just need a way to make a living."
"Tsk. A kid this young, muttering like he knows everything about the world… chomp chomp… The butter aroma really comes up strong, it's tasty. Looks like we got lucky and stole some high-grade bread." My bread only smells like grain, though.
"Heh heh…"
When Derrick looked at the old man while chewing his bread, the old man was grinning, showing his yellowed teeth.
"All the tasty butter bread, I already took for myself. How could a disciple dare to eat better food than his master."
"…"
"I told you. Life is about living stubbornly. If you're that annoyed, you should have set aside your bread in advance. The butter bread is already all in my food pouch. Heh heh."
The sight of him picking out only the expensive butter bread and stuffing it into his own pouch, saying he'd fleece his young disciple, really was just like a beggar.
Derrick couldn't even bring himself to give a hollow laugh, and just stuffed the dry, tasteless bread into his mouth.
He simply thought that next time, he should stubbornly set aside the tasty butter bread in advance.
*
The next day, at dusk. The old man who had called himself Derrick's master was lying by the riverside, covered in blood.
When Derrick returned after roaming the streets practicing pickpocketing, the bleeding was already severe, and his life could not be guaranteed.
They said he had tried to steal from the northern wall guards and had been beaten to within an inch of his life after being caught.
Apparently he had tried to steal a 2-star magic book from the guard post's confiscated goods storage, but no one knew why an old man who claimed to have no ambitions would do such a thing.
Messing with Ebelstein's guards was practically a suicide mission.
On top of that, he was a shabby old man from the slums, someone no one would complain about even if he were beaten to death. His usual conduct was so unpleasant that there was no one who would stand up to defend him.
"Master."
"Ghk… huff…!"
Perhaps his ribs were broken, because he couldn't even breathe properly. The old man trembled on a pool of blood, trying to say something.
That was all.
However, the sound never took the form of language. He just forced out ragged breaths with his heaving body.
He seemed to be trying to leave some last words for Derrick, but after one final twitch of his trembling fingertips, the old man's shabby life came to a full stop. Truly a fitting end for a street beggar.
Derrick quietly looked down at the cold corpse, then after a while dug into the ground with a broken shovel he had once picked up at a construction site and buried the body.
At that small, shabby grave in a corner of the trash-filled riverside, he quietly set the shovel down, nodded his head a few times, and then returned to the small shelter where he used to stay.
There lay a few smelly leather sheets the old man used to cover himself with, a small wooden drawer the old man had picked up from the street, and a few scraps of cloth used as a pillow substitute.
He searched around, but of course there was nothing worth money. However, he did find a leather pouch under the sheets. When he opened it, there was some bread left over from yesterday.
Derrick took the pouch, draped the shabby leather sheet over his shoulders like a cloak to block the cold, and then left the old man's trash-filled shelter and headed toward the broad avenue of Ebelstein.
The old man had asserted that no matter how much Derrick trained magic without a bloodline, he wouldn't achieve much.
That wasn't wrong. Not just the old man—ask anyone on this continent, and they would say something similar. It was an age where magic had become a privilege.
However, the old man simply hadn't realized it. After all, Derrick could not have noble blood.
–[ Fundamentals of Magic ] have been understood. You can now approach 1-star magic.
–Please choose a major school of magic. This choice cannot be undone.
That was because Derrick was not originally a person of this world.
Reviewing the messages that appeared in his mind, Derrick thought.
Derrick had only needed a teacher who could recite the fundamentals of magic. If he wanted to learn truly great and high-level magic, he would have to serve an equally great mage as his master, but if it was just a matter of grasping the basics, anyone could serve as a mentor.
However, in the depths of the slums, even such people were scarce. And so, that old, shabby man, who only needed to be humored a bit and listened to, was the perfect person from whom to receive the fundamentals of magic.
That was all there was to it.
Even so, though the old man was a pathetic human who had lived a miserable life, he had tried to teach Derrick something.
He had.
He wanted to pass on that desperation of clinging on and enduring cowardly and stubbornly, grinding his teeth and surviving from rock bottom.
On the road leading out to Ebelstein's main avenue,
Derrick, wearing his usual world-weary expression, took out a piece of bread from the old man's pouch and bit into it.
There was no butter in it.