“U-Ummm...”
Inside his study, Liam’s father, Charles Hamilton, was busy writing something at his grandiose office desk. Even after I entered the room, he never once raised his head and simply continued writing.
“What is it, Liam?” he asked, still looking down.
“Well, about our grimoires...”
“Our grimoires? Did something happen to them?”
“No, I just wanted to ask if I could take them out of the archive room...”
I had just entered this body and suddenly became a noble yesterday. Without any idea of how their etiquette and speech worked, I ended up asking my question rather clumsily.
“Take them out? You want to read them?”
“Yes.”
“Do as you wish.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you very much.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s all.”
“Then leave. I’m busy.”
“I-I understand.”
I turned around and left the study. Although I looked back one last time, Charles, in contrast, didn’t tear his eyes away from his paperwork, so I stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind me.
I went in, talked, and left. During that time, Charles never once raised his head; he didn’t even turn me down. He was apathetic till the very end.
“I kinda understand how Bruno feels now.”
I found myself sympathizing just a little bit with the rebellious fourth son who had lost hope in the future and gave up on studying.
Having gained permission, I took Beginner Flame Magic out of the archive room and went to the manor’s garden. The Hamiltons ruled over this territory, so while we called it a manor, it was actually the size of a small castle. Even the woods behind the garden were big enough to contain an entire village.
In fact, when I grabbed a maid before leaving the manor and asked her how far the Hamilton family’s territory spanned, I got a rather crazy answer in response.
“As far as your eye can see.”
Nobles really are amazing, I marveled.
If the next generation took over right now and we became commoners, all this land and even our manor would be confiscated by the country, so I totally got why Charles was so desperate about this.
I walked into the huge woods owned by our family and settled down on the ground after reaching a clearing. There, I opened up the grimoire.
I focused, controlled my breathing, and formed a clear image in my mind. After concentrating for three straight minutes, a faint, elongated flame appeared around one meter in front of me.
This flame blade was one kind of beginner flame magic.
A grimoire was a magic book that served as a guide. You could use magic you hadn’t mastered yet as long as you held the grimoire in your hands; in this way, it provided support for you to learn how to use the magic. However, magic took a long time to master, and until you did, you wouldn’t be able to use the magic without the grimoire. When I actually tried letting go of it, the flame blade that I made disappeared without a trace.
“If you practice every day, the activation time will shorten, and eventually, you’ll even learn how to activate it without the book,” I read aloud from a page on the grimoire.
Basically, it was like a baby walker that toddlers used to learn how to walk. If I kept practicing while holding on to the grimoire, I’d eventually learn how to cast the spell even without it.
I’d always wanted to learn magic, and it turned out to be much simpler than I thought. No wonder nobles kept these grimoires stored away like valuables.
I continued practicing making the flame blade spell, or Flame Cutter, as it was officially known. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. Before entering this body, I had to go to work every day, but I had no such responsibilities as Liam. Even the fifth son of a noble was still a noble, and nobles looked down on physical labor as unsightly.
Left with no real need to work, I was all too happy to focus on my magic each day given how I’d always admired it. Slowly but surely, the time it took for me to activate my magic while holding the grimoire grew shorter, and I could tell too, which only made me all the more enthusiastic to practice.
Day in and day out, I continued to practice magic.
“Oh, there you are. So you were playing out here.”
“Hm? Bruno?”
Today, I was practicing in the woods as usual when my older brother Bruno came up to me. A month had passed since I first became Liam; I’d grown familiar with the Hamilton house, so I could now comfortably speak with this cynical fourth son as if he really were my older brother.
Bruno let out a huff and strode right over to me. “I heard you were practicing magic.”
“Yeah. Father gave me permission to use our grimoires.”
“’Course he did. I know that,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “That guy has nothing but his marry-Sarah-to-the-emperor plan in that head of his. He doesn’t care ’bout us anymore.”
“Ha ha...”
Bruno was right. That was how father had been when I asked for his permission to use the grimoires a month ago, and that hadn’t changed one bit over the past month. He never looked me in the eye, and even when we talked, he would always be doing something else at the same time.
“So? How much have you learned? Show me.”
“Yeah, so...”
I put the grimoire down on the ground.
By the way, grimoires were apparently treated with a special coating, so they didn’t get damaged or dirty unless hit with an especially powerful attack.
Having set the grimoire down, I closed my eyes, focused, and cast Flame Cutter to make a flame blade.
“I can do this, I guess.”
Bruno stared at me wide-eyed. “Huh?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Y-You can use magic...without a grimoire?”
“Uh?”
“N-No way. It should normally take an entire year to master magic to the point where you can do that... Are you saying you learned it in only a month...?”
Suffice it to say that Bruno was utterly and thoroughly shocked.