「Well then, first of all, can you tell me about the magic you use and the skills you know, boy? Of course, if you do not wish to tell me, I will not press you any further.」
「No, I trust you… There’ll be a hundred or so guys who know about it in the future anyway.」
In order to learn the basics of magic, telling Zadiris about his magic and skills was necessary for Vandalieu. He would be able to receive guidance and advice based on her knowledge and experience.
However, that meant giving Zadiris information regarding his death-attribute magic. Even normal adventurers and monsters would be hesitant about freely giving away information regarding their skills. This was because doing so revealed all of one’s weaknesses.
However, sharing that information with people that one trusted was not uncommon. For adventurers, keeping one’s skills a secret from party members would impede teamwork. But for monsters, this may be another story.
And though it was still some decades away, there would be a hundred people coming from Origin and reincarnating here, and all of them would know about Vandalieu’s death-attribute magic.
Even if by some miracle Rodcorte didn’t tell them about Vandalieu’s death-attribute magic, there would likely be data left at the laboratory that he had been imprisoned in, and Magic Items created using his death-attribute magic were already widely circulating in Origin. At that time, those items were advertised as having been created not through death-attribute magic, but independently-developed life-attribute magic, but surely their true nature would have been discovered by now.
Therefore, it could be assumed that Amemiya Hiroto and the others found out about Vandalieu’s death-attribute magic after he died in Origin. It was extremely unlikely that they wouldn’t know about it.
That was why Vandalieu couldn’t see a reason to keep it a secret from someone like Zadiris, whom he trusted.
「A hundred people? Well, in any case, about your magic, boy –」
Right now, Zadiris was under the impression that Vandalieu’s magic was a special kind of life-attribute magic. At first, one would think that the Undead were completely unrelated to life-attribute magic, but in Lambda, the only ones who could control the Undead were life-attribute mages.
They forcefully poured life force into corpses, creating creatures with fake life that moved artificially. Since such Undead were forced into this unnatural state, they were fundamentally weaker than Undead that appeared in Devil’s Nests and Dungeons.
Zadiris had thought that Vandalieu was using a special spell that overcame these limitations, so she was rendered speechless when Vandalieu told her about his death-attribute magic.
「D… Death attribute? A new… A ninth attribute? Such a thing really exists… No, I suppose it is true. You actually control the Undead and cast spells that I have no knowledge about.」
In Origin, the death attribute was the eighth attribute, but unlike Origin, the time attribute existed in Lambda, so that made the death attribute the ninth attribute.
「So you’re surprised after all?」
「That goes without saying! Any monster that knows the potential value of a new attribute’s magic would show interest!」
For monsters, magic was a power that allowed them to survive, as well as rise up in a society where the strong stood on top.
Nobody would know how to fight against a user of unknown spells. Since the entirety of the death attribute was unknown, there would be any number of ways to kill an enemy on sight with no reaction.
Like Origin, in Lambda, one cannot learn magic for an attribute unless he or she possesses an affinity for that attribute. That applied for monsters as well, so not all monsters would be capable of this, but there was a very real concern that monsters with “mage” in their race title could somehow steal the techniques.
「I see. The reason that adventurer mage couldn’t cast spells was because of this death-attribute magic.」
Zadiris shuddered as she recalled how the mage among the adventurers who had attacked her had died. As a Ghoul Mage herself, it was easy for her to imagine the horror of having one’s magic taken away as a mage. It would be equivalent to taking away a swordsman’s arms and telling him to kick his enemies to death.
Thinking this, she felt a little sympathy for the adventurers, though it was far too late for that now.
「In that case, since I only have affinities for light and wind-attribute magic, I cannot directly teach you death-attribute magic, but I can help you make use of the magic that you do know. Magic is such an art that I can do this.」
At first, one would assume that the fire attribute and the water attribute are opposites. However, the essence of the fire attribute is heat, while the water attribute’s is in liquid and cold.
Therefore, a master mage of the fire attribute would be able to freely increase the heat to burn something, or lower it and freeze it. A master of the water attribute would be able to manipulate molten lava like his own arms and legs, since it is a liquid.
A user of the earth element would be able to manipulate mercury and lava, while a user of the wind element would be able to use the flammable components of air to create a large explosion.
「Things regarding this were written in a book that the chief showed me when I was a child.」
Zadiris had gained that knowledge from books looted from adventurers. For monsters, books could only be obtained by stealing them from humans or other monsters, so they were hard to come by.
「In other words, the important thing is not the number of attributes that you have an affinity for, but how much you increase your skills. Of course, it is convenient to be able to use multiple attributes. However, there are cases where adventurers skilful enough to cast spells of multiple attributes, but only have superficial knowledge of those attributes, are defeated by Goblin Mages that can only use the fire attribute.」
「Now that you put it that way, I’m starting to feel motivated.」
For Vandalieu, to whom the researchers of Origin had said「you should focus only on death-attribute magic and your Mana pool」, Zadiris’s teachings were refreshing and a source of happiness for him. He even began to feel passionate about it.
Though there was no change to his outward appearance as he was expressionless as always.
「And what is necessary for that skill is Mana. The amount of Mana you possess is directly related to the length of time you are able to cast your spells. How much Mana do you have, boy? I will have to adjust the length of our lessons based on that.」
「Ah, yes, it’s around a hundred million.」
「I see, a hundred million… What?!」
As Zadiris was astonished once more, she wore a facial expression suitable for her young appearance that Vandalieu thought was adorable.
「A-a hundred million… Is that true? I do not even possess ten thousand, but you, boy… No, considering that you are using unknown magic as well, it is… not that unusual, I suppose?」
Zadiris was bewildered by the unbelievable number given in Vandalieu’s self-report of his Mana pool. Normally, one would laugh this off as a poorly-told lie, but the child in front of her eyes had a persuasiveness that prevented her from doing so.
At the very least, that was how Zadiris felt.
And in any case, Vandalieu would not benefit from telling such a poor lie. Exaggerating his Mana pool a little to impress her would be one thing, but a hundred million was a number that was beyond exaggeration. And since he was about to undergo lessons to learn the basics of magic, such a lie would be quickly exposed.
「… Well, it is fine. I will understand your Mana pool soon enough, boy.」
Zadiris managed to swallow her surprise, with difficulty. Meanwhile, Vandalieu realized from her reaction that having a Mana pool of a hundred million was abnormal after all. He decided not to mention it too much if he ever found himself in human society… though it would be exposed if he registered himself at a Guild.
「Well then, what magic-related skills do you possess?」
「To start off, I have the【Chant Revocation】skill. And the【Golem Transmutation】skill, does that count as a magic-related skill?」
「… Boy, just how much do you plan to shorten my remaining lifespan? In fact, I should ask you to teach me the basics I need to learn the【Chant Revocation】skill. And I have never even heard of this【Golem Transmutation.】」
Vandalieu had heard about how rare the Chant Revocation skill was from Darcia, but seeing as even Zadiris was surprised, despite having lived for nearly three hundred years, it seemed to be rarer than he had thought.
However, since Zadiris seems to have the【Alchemy】skill, he had thought that she would know about his【Golem Transmutation】skill. He had assumed that Golems were created using Alchemy, based on the fiction that he had read on Earth.
「Even if you want me to teach you the basics for【Chant Revocation】, all you have to do is use magic in a situation where you can’t chant to cast spells, you know?」
「The only one who can do that is you, boy, thanks to that Mana pool of yours.」
In order to cast a spell without its chant while maintaining the same effect, dozens or even hundreds of times the Mana would be required. Therefore, even skilled mages would be able to perform such a feat only once a day, if at all. Vandalieu was only capable of repeating this to the point of obtaining the skill because of his abnormally vast Mana pool.
The only others who would be capable of obtaining the【Chant Revocation】skill normally were incredibly talented mages who had mastered multiple magic-related Jobs and legendary monsters.
「At this rate, it seems that I will not need to teach you the basics after all. I am sure that your ability with no-attribute magic and the【Mana Control】skill is perfect, is it not?」
As Zadiris spoke in a tone that sounded as if she had lost her confidence, this time it was Vandalieu’s turn to be surprised.
「What is no-attribute magic?」
「How is it that you do not know what it is? It is the most fundamental, basic magic!」
Zadiris was surprised again as well.
As its name suggests, no-attribute magic is magic that uses Mana before it has changed into any attribute. Since no attributes are involved, anyone can use this magic as long as they have Mana, so it was common for mages to first learn no-attribute magic to learn the fundamentals of controlling one’s Mana.
No-attribute magic is weaker than magic with an attribute, and only consists of simple spells, but since it is simple, it is also easy to learn and use.
「Even we who live in the Devil’s Nest know it.」
「I don’t know it because I’m self-taught.」
And the biggest reason that Vandalieu didn’t know about it was because No-attribute magic hadn’t existed in Origin, the world in which he had lived his previous life.
Did it really not exist, or did the researchers at the laboratory deliberately not tell him about it… The chances of it being the latter were eighty or ninety percent, but he had no way to confirm that now. Vandalieu decided to ask Hiroto and the others when they reincarnated here, if he got the chance.
At the very least, the researchers had never mentioned No-attribute magic to Vandalieu. Their spirits likely knew, but other than answering Vandalieu’s questions, they had only talked nonsense.
If Vandalieu had supplied them with Mana like he was doing for Darcia now, then perhaps they could have been preserved without having their personalities collapsing, but at the time, he had been unable to use his own Mana freely.
Of course, Darcia knew about No-attribute magic. When Vandalieu asked her about it later, she told him that she had simply assumed that Vandalieu had known about it and not bothered teaching him.
『You were able to use magic without anyone teaching you, Vandalieu, so I was sure that you knew about it…』
Something like that.
「Well then, we shall start with No-attribute magic, I suppose. It took me three years to obtain the skill; I am sure it will not even take you a year, boy. With your Mana pool, you will not have any problems practicing all day, after all.」
Vigaro, leader of the Ghoul warriors, suddenly spotted a weed growing near his foot and knew that spring was coming soon.
For Ghouls, who didn’t use calendars or civilized agricultural techniques, seasons were nothing more than things that they could feel around them. Humid air and pouring rain meant a rainy season; hot weather was summer; when it became a little cooler and more fruit was available than normal, it was autumn; when the air became dry and cold, it was winter.
And when it became warm again and these weeds whose names they didn’t know began to grow, it was spring.
「It’s already been half a year since he came, huh.」
Considering the number of years and months that Vigaro had lived, half a year wasn’t a significant amount of time. However, in that short period of time, life had changed in the village that Vigaro had lived in for over a hundred years.
As thanks for taking care of him, Vandalieu had used death-attribute magic to preserve the Ghouls’ food. With a spell called【Preservation】, raw meat that even the Ghouls with their strong stomachs couldn’t eat after several days lasted for several months.
Up until now, the only preserved food the Ghouls had used were Gobu-gobu and meat dried on sunny days, so this was a source of great convenience. The Ghouls no longer had to go out to hunt every day, which meant they had more time to train themselves, and there were fewer cases of injuries as well.
Well, Ghouls were a race that were sloth-like in nature, so this caused some individuals to slack off as well. That was kept in check by Zadiris who had been teaching the importance of studying and putting one’s effort into things, and Vigaro who knew the importance of those intuitively.
「And the meat that he prepares for us is incredibly delicious.」
Vandalieu applied the【Maturation】spell on the raw meat that the Ghouls ate, just before it was served. To produce the same effect on earth, one would have to cure the meat for days or weeks in a room with carefully regulated temperature and humidity, but with this spell, it was possible to produce such meat in this village that had nothing but pit dwellings and a warehouse.
This was nothing short of a blessing for the Ghouls.
Perhaps thanks to this delicious meat, their bodies felt healthier and they somehow felt even stronger than before.
It seemed that Vandalieu planned to leave once it was spring, but there were many, including Vigaro, who wanted him to stay in the village.
If he were an adult, they would offer him several women for his personal use, but such an offer was rather difficult to make to a child less than two years old.
However, it seemed that the lessons for his skills with Zadiris would take some more time, so he might end up staying until summer.
Vandalieu was a good person, so Vigaro wanted his studying to go well, but at the same time, Vigaro wanted him to stay as long as possible. What a complicated mix of feelings.
While Vigaro was dealing with these difficult emotions, his apprentices were hunting a powerful enemy.
「WOOOOOHHHHN!」
「GAAAAH!」
「Kill the ones with the bows – no, the one with the staff first!」
Vigaro’s apprentices and their prey were engaged in a group battle.
But their prey were not adventurers. Vigaro and his warriors attacked adventurers less frequently than Vandalieu had imagined, and adventurers didn’t come to the Devil’s Nest very often in the first place.
When the current chief Zadiris was younger, there had been an incident in which two thirds of the village’s population were hunted down by a group of adventurers, so not attacking adventurers unless necessary was a law in the village. If adventurers were discovered, the Ghouls hid and waited until they passed by, and only fought if the adventurers attacked them.
Ghouls knew the delicious taste of adventurers’ flesh and how valuable their equipment was, but they knew even better than that just how terrifying adventurers could be.
But it was unknown how adventurers were dealt with by other Ghoul villages.
And though Vigaro and the others were unaware of this, the reason that few adventurers came to this Devil’s Nest was because of its location.
The size of this Devil’s Nest and the monsters that appeared in it was perfectly suited for D or C-class adventurers to venture into. However, the nearest human town was three days’ travel away.
And there was another similarly-sized Devil’s Nest only a few hours away from that nearby human town that even had multiple Dungeons.
Therefore, it was natural for the adventurers to focus on the Devil’s Nest that was closer to the town, since it even had Dungeons as well. Of course, leaving this Devil’s Nest alone and allowing the monsters to multiply and overflow out of it would be a big problem, but the Adventurers’ Guild had decided that the risk of that happening was low.
The reason for that was that the Devil’s Nest that Vigaro and the other Ghouls lived in had many demi-human-type monsters. It was filled with villages of Goblins, Kobolds, Orcs as well as Ghouls, and they often fought each other, so even if adventurers didn’t come to thin out the monster numbers, the monsters regulated their own population.
That was why the humans had decided that it wasn’t necessary to come all the way out to this Devil’s Nest. It was a problem to leave it alone completely, so the Adventurers’ Guild regularly sent out requests to survey the area. So the only adventurers that came here were ones who accepted the request thinking that they could gain great profits here, since there were no competitors – such as the adventurers who had attacked Zadiris.
For these reasons, the village Ghouls fought against adventurers less than once a year. If one were to ask what Vigaro’s apprentices were fighting, the answer would be Kobolds.
「WOOOOHHHN!」
「GRRRR!」
Kobolds were like dogs standing on two legs, a little smaller than humans. They were about as strong as humans, or perhaps slightly weaker. However, they were very agile, more intelligent than Goblins and adept in group battles.
They were Rank 2 on average, and the higher-rank ones had race titles like Kobold Chief, Kobold Geronimo, Kobold Mage and Kobold King.
The apprentices were fighting thirty normal Kobolds armed with daggers and bows, four* Rank 3 Kobold Chiefs who were a little larger and armed with swords and spears, as well as a single Rank 4 Kobold Mage wielding a staff.
TLN: This number is actually 5 here, and then later on in the chapter it changes to 4. I think 4 is the correct number, and this is a mistake on the author’s part so I’m leaving it as 4 here.
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