“You’re mine, Abel!”
Yeah—maybe you’d have a chance if you stopped announcing your attacks. I easily deflected his arm with the spine of my book. Hm? Wait a minute.
“Ted, did you just say my name?”
He let out a triumphant laugh. “You really think after all the times we’ve played together, I wouldn’t know your name by now?”
It was so heartwarming watching kids grow. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside...but also, the logical side of me knew that I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Most kids would’ve been able to immediately remember my name. This rich brat simply had an extremely horrible memory.
“Of course I’m gonna try to remember the name of my future underling!”
Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that ever happening. After the past few days of observing Ted, I’d learned that though he had Crimson Eyes—meaning that he should’ve been proficient at fire magecraft—he wasn’t. First of all, one needed to understand the complex compositions of magecraft, their applications, and their expansions in an instant, meaning that one’s intelligence was extremely important. For a kid as simple as Ted, that may have been too great of a burden.
Even so, Ted made up for that with his decent ability with Body Fortification. Unlike elemental magecraft, which required logical thinking, Body Fortification relied on one’s primal instincts. For better or worse, Ted’s simplemindedness was a good fit for this magecraft.
He let out another yell as he threw a straight punch at me. He seemed to have gotten a little better at this over the past few days. The only caveat was that this was something that anyone could’ve managed back in my day. He’d progressed from being simply pathetic to somewhat decent.
I caught his arm with my hand and swept his legs out from under him.
“You’re too slow. A snail could’ve dodged that.” He let out a yelp as he rolled a few meters away. “What’s the matter? Done already?” I asked, egging him on.
Ted cursed loudly and got back up. What happened next, though, took me by surprise.
“Wah—”
“Hey!”
Him getting up so quickly spelled disaster. He slipped on the piled-up snow and fell backwards off the roof. Oh no. That’s bad. He’d even fallen on top of the stone paving. Fortunately, he was very sturdy, so this wasn’t enough to kill him.
“Ow!” he moaned as tears began to spill out of his eyes.
Oh, looks like he broke his leg when he landed. Phew, glad it’s nothing too serious. Back in my day, getting a couple of broken bones was almost a daily occurrence. It would’ve been another thing if he’d damaged an organ, but reconnecting bones was much easier than the healing magecraft required to repair one’s insides.
“Don’t cry. You’re a guy.” Although, to be fair, he’s also a kid.
Maybe it was a little much to ask a kid to endure the pain of breaking a bone, though. Also, I couldn’t deny that I was partly to blame for his injury. I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t great at healing magecraft, but this level of injury should’ve been easy enough for me to—
“Ted! Are you okay?!” Frantic, Barth ran over. “Be strong, okay? I’m going to use healing magecraft!”
Barth began casting Heal. Interesting. Even though he didn’t have Ashen Eyes, he was able to use healing magecraft, albeit one of the more rudimentary ones. Maybe I’d underestimated him. He may have had potential...or not?
“U-Uh... What are you doing?”
“What, never seen healing magecraft before? Anyway, mind shutting up? I’m trying to focus!”
This isn’t good. Healing magecraft was like working with building blocks. The higher the level of healing magecraft, the stronger of a base you needed for it to succeed. It was very delicate, so naturally you’d want to ensure it had a good foundation to prevent it from falling apart. And yet...it was like he was forcing pieces together, gluing them haphazardly and trying to finish this as quickly as possible. I couldn’t bear to watch. I was beginning to think he hated his little brother. The way he was doing it would make nerve endings rub against each other, causing pain.
Ted screamed in agony.
“Are you okay? I know it hurts, but hold on!”
Even I felt bad for Ted. He looked like he was about to pass out from the shoddy healing job that his own brother was subjecting him to.
“I think you’ve healed him enough. Maybe you should take him to a doctor.”
Barth had honestly made any further treatment more complicated than it would’ve been if he’d just left it alone. But there was still time. If he got the appropriate treatment, he’d be able to fully recover.
“Wait. Before that... You.”
“Me?” Take him to the doctor already! Your shoddy healing job did more harm than good.
“How’d he get hurt?”
“He fell while we were playing.”
“You mean, you pushed him, don’t you?”
“Uh...what?”
“I was watching. You swept his leg.”
“If you were watching, you would’ve seen what happened after that. When Ted tried to get up, he slip—”
“That’s Lord Ted, to you!”
Good grief. What is up with this (older) rich brat? This wasn’t the time to get hung up on something so trivial.
“You’re a commoner and Ted’s a noble. Regardless of how young he is, he’s the legitimate second son of our house, the Rhangbalts.”
“Okay... And?”
“What’s with that attitude?!”
“Commoner, noble—none of that matters right now. Take Ted to the doctor already so he can rest.”
“It ‘doesn’t matter’?!” Barth clenched his fist quietly, obviously furious. “You backwater fool with Inferior Eyes! I will make you rue the day you decided to disrespect nobles!” Barth then threw something at me.
I had a faint memory of what this meant—it was a very old tradition.
“I challenge you to a duel to defend the honor of the nobles you’ve besmirched. And unfortunately for you, I show no mercy to insolent scoundrels like yourself!”
To be honest, from what he’d said, I already got the feeling this was where things were headed. It seemed the situation was only going to get more complicated with this older noble brat intervening, completely oblivious to what was really going on.
“Wait. I don’t have any reason to fight you.”
In the first place, he was an inconsequential existence to me. There was no way I was ever going to lose to him. We could’ve fought tens of thousands of times without him winning even once. But also, I wanted to spend my time living peacefully. Even right now, the townspeople were beginning to gather round due to the commotion. It was best if I didn’t earn their ire.
“I-Insolence! Do you mean to ridicule a noble’s honor as well?!”
He was seething. I guess he is just a child. Telling an angry kid to not be angry was pointless. Well, what to do...? Accepting and ending the duel just as quickly as it started would have drawn too much attention. And I had a feeling that the angrier Barth got, the more attention he’d attract. I exhaled deeply—really deeply—before uttering my next words.
“Fine. I accept your duel.”
I didn’t have a choice. I’d play along with Barth’s stupid duel. I’d been wanting to get a taste of how strong nobles were nowadays. I’d have to be sure not to use any flashy magic, though. That way, I could probably avoid drawing a lot of attention to myself.
He chuckled. “Very well, I’ll explain the rules! We’ll face each other one-on-one. The first person to yield loses. Since there’s an age difference, I’ll give you a handic—”
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t need a handicap. Let’s just get this over with.”
I was much more concerned about Ted’s injury than this duel. As the person who was partially to blame for hurting him, I had a responsibility to heal him.
“Wha— Just how far will you go to mock me?!”
Oh no. This is bad. My attitude had apparently had the opposite effect on him, throwing him into an even bigger fit of rage. He was now shaking with anger and emanating a very palpable desire to kill me.
“Fine. I’ll make you regret humiliating me!” He unsheathed the sword at his hip.
Huh. The blade was a little bit longer than any a kid should’ve had. Most likely it was a sword for adults. However, the construction of it seemed slightly different from a normal sword.
“Wind Edge!”
He swung his blade down and simultaneously released a slicing wind. Not too shabby. The force behind the attack was average, but the speed with which it’d come out was unbelievably fast. I was the only one who could compose magecraft this quickly back in my day. This led me to believe that his speed had something to do with the sword he was holding. There had to have been something in its construction that allowed for a child like Barth to quickly produce magecraft in this way.