With a serious look on his face, father stared at me for a moment more before finally asking, “Have you learned frost magic already?”
“No, I was just going to start today.”
He hummed. “Show me,” he ordered, then turned around and walked down the hall.
I watched him in a daze until the butler beside him gave me a look that seemed to be telling me to follow, so I hurried after him. We eventually reached a large sitting room with a fireplace. Father had called a maid along the way and ordered her to pull a seat over.
“Go on,” he urged as he sat down.
“O-Okay.”
I was a little confused, but after thinking about it, all I really had to do was what I always did. I’d gotten the hang of things from practicing flame magic, and since I still had to rely on the grimoire, it wasn’t like I could do anything flashy anyway.
Thus, I made the wise decision to start with something simple.
I opened the grimoire up and followed the instructions. What caught me by surprise was that, although I had been expecting frost magic to have instructions opposite to those of flame magic, it seemed like I was completely off the mark. I had assumed beforehand that since I had to gather power for flame magic, then I’d have to be relaxed and calm for frost. But in actuality, it seemed like I needed to gather my power the same way to use frost magic.
I controlled my breathing and gathered my power, imagining it all flowing through my body as I carefully followed all the grimoire’s instructions. I didn’t know how long it took, but I eventually felt the grimoire in my hands faintly frosting over the surface.
“I did it...”
“Goodness! You really froze it...”
Father stood from his seat, walked over to my side, and held the grimoire to check its condition. His eyes grew wide when he felt the crispy layer of ice and the cool air surrounding it.
“This is truly...”
Father’s butler lowered his head. “Congratulations,” he said—but to my father, not to me.
Why him? I wondered, considering I was the one who succeeded in casting the magic.
However, father accepted it with a nod. “Yes! The heavens truly are on my side!” He looked far more pleased than I had ever seen him before. This was the first time I saw him in such a good mood; he wasn’t this happy even back during the banquet.
“Liam,” he called.
“Y-Yes?”
“Do you like magic?”
“Huh? Oh, yes. I like it.”
“Good. Then I will collect more grimoires for you. If there is a particular grimoire you want, then feel free to let me know.”
“Huh? O-Okay.”
I didn’t get why he was in such a good mood, but he was saying he’d gather more of these precious grimoires for me, so I gladly accepted.
“Now, show me more magic,” he ordered.
“All right.”
I tried to focus on magic practice again, but just then, somebody knocked on the door. The butler answered it and listened to the other person, then shut the door and returned to Charles’s side.
“Master, that man has...” He leaned over and whispered in my father’s ear.
“What? You mean to say that he’s fled into my territory?”
“It seems likely.”
Father groaned. In a complete change from his good mood earlier, he scrunched his face up in bitter displeasure. Then, without a single word, he and the butler left me behind in the room.
What was all that about?
The next day, I went to the woods as usual with Beginner Frost Magic in hand. Father said that he’d bring me any grimoire I wanted, but magic wasn’t so simple. Throughout the past month I had spent as a noble, I’d come to learn that it was something I needed to diligently practice one-by-one through repetition every day. Thus, just as I did with flame magic, I decided to learn all the frost magic spells first.
With that in mind, I headed for my usual spot. However...
“Who...?”
Somebody was already there. In the clearing located farther inside the woods, one man sat limply on the ground with his back against a tree.
Hearing my voice, he lifted his head and looked at me. “Those clothes... You’re Hamilton’s kid?”
“Huh? Um, yeah. I’m Liam Hamilton,” I said, introducing myself without much thought.
“Well, I sure screwed this up. They say it’s hardest to see what’s right under your nose, so I never expected you to come here on the very first day.”
I frowned in confusion at this man’s rambling.
“Well, this must be fate,” he went on. “Go on. Do what you must.”
“Um... And that would be what, exactly?”
The man looked at me weirdly. “Didn’t you come to catch me?”
“Why?”
He fell silent and stared at me for a while—observing me, as if he could see right through me, all the way to the deepest recesses of my mind. It was a little unsettling.
His gaze continued to linger until one corner of his lips curled up. “I must’ve been too on edge,” he said with a huff. “If they’d really found me, they wouldn’t have sent this kinda kid my way.”
I was still confused, but it seemed like the misunderstanding—at least, I think it was—had been cleared up.
“Oh? So you’re studying magic?” The man looked at the grimoire in my hands and hummed. “Can I see that?”
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
I handed it over to him—and then realized that I might have messed up. Unlike Bruno or father, this man was a complete stranger. Moreover, nobles considered grimoires as valuable items. It had only been a month since I became a noble myself, so it didn’t occur to me how bad an idea this was until after I passed it to him.
While I was panicking internally, the man said, “Wow, this is amazing.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Are you the last person who used this?”
“Yeah.”
“So this residual mana is yours. It’s not every day you see this kind of talent.” Still seated on the ground, he let out an impressed hum as his gaze flitted between me and the grimoire.
“Er... May I have that back now?”
“Oh, my bad,” he said as he nonchalantly gave it back.
I guess I was just overthinking things. Now I felt a little awkward because I almost suspected him of something bad. In an attempt to brush the thought off, I started practicing frost magic with the grimoire. The man watched me silently for a while but eventually spoke up again.
“Don’t you wanna know a more efficient way to learn that?”
“A more efficient way?” I asked.
“That’s right. Oh, I’m not suggesting anything weird, I assure you,” he added immediately. “That’s beginner magic, right? You’re at the stage where you learn through repetition—that’s not about to change.”
“Right...”
“What I’m talking about...is this.”
Without budging from his spot, the man held his right hand out with his palm facing me. Then, he cast a different type of magic on each finger—fire on his index, ice on his middle, electricity around his ring, and a whirlwind swirling over his pinky. Lastly, his thumb was glowing like a burning metal rod.
“Using multiple magic spells at the same time,” he elaborated. “I know that grimoire too. It teaches Ice Needle, Freeze, Frost Nail, and also a bunch of other spells, right? And you just tried to cast them in succession, yeah? Well, I’m saying that you can save so much more time if you just practice them all at once instead.”
“I-Is that even possible?”
“See for yourself,” the man said as he waved his right hand.
“Th-That’s true... How did you do that?”
“Oh? Nice! I like you, kid. You don’t have that useless sense of pride other nobles have. Any other noble kid would’ve been too prideful to even ask me that.”
“Er...”
Well, I certainly am not a “noble kid,” I thought with a wry smile. I just entered this body for god-knows-what reason. I wasn’t originally a noble, so I didn’t really understand that sense of pride they had.
“Let’s check first,” the man began. “Try drawing on the ground—a circle with your right hand and a square with your left, both at the same time.”
“Okay...”
I had to wonder what exactly he was checking for, but I still listened to him and drew a circle and a square with both my index fingers.
“Oh, nice. Have you done this before?”
“No, only just now.”
“Then you have a good affinity for this, it seems. Since you can do that, there’s no need for any tricks or twists. Now try using any magic you know—one on your left hand and another on your right. I just showed you, so you should still have a feel for it if you try now.”
As instructed, I cast Flame Cutter on my right hand and Fireball on my left. I managed the task with ease.
I nodded in understanding. “I see.”
It wasn’t until some time later that I found out using different magic spells at the same time was a special technique so difficult that only one in a hundred thousand could pull it off.
Back then, though, I didn’t know this just yet.