The kids all shook their heads. Now that she thought about it, there were a bunch of healing herbs outside of Rosa too, but the people there didn’t gather them either. It was the same in Hydrangea.
“Healing herbs grow outside of town and in the dungeon too, so if you learn how to gather them, you’ll never miss a meal. I know it’s not very exciting, though.”
Some of the kids had already lost interest. There was nothing she could do about that. If they’d become Hunters, it was likely because they wanted to hunt monsters, after all.
“Look at the plant carefully. Memorize the shape of these leaves and pick them five nodes down, at about this length. Okay, over here, everyone!”
She’d taught Allen and Mona and Heather, her friends, this sort of stuff, but Sara was kind of nervous teaching a bunch of children she didn’t know. It was fun, though. Sara had thought that aptitude would just mean whether they were able to differentiate between different types of plants, but she was surprised to find out that there was more to it. You had to not be embarrassed to get down on the ground and look carefully at the grass, and you had to be patient enough to do the same thing over and over again.
In Sara’s opinion, at least two of the ten had the aptitude to gather plants—one boy and one girl. Three others were good enough at it, but they were impatient to get to training with Allen and Kuntz instead. Rod was one of these. It was only an hour-long lesson, but it was shockingly easy to tell who had aptitude and who didn’t.
“Okay, let’s go to the guild’s training room next,” Kuntz said listlessly, and they headed back to the guild from the meadow.
The guild’s training room was underground and free to use. Brawling was prohibited, of course.
They checked the kids’ aptitude for magic and physical strengthening by having them spar with Allen and Haruto and practice basic magic with Kuntz. Sara had disparaged the kids who’d gotten bored of gathering right away earlier, but she reflected on that assessment now that she was observing herself and quickly growing bored of it. It was hard to concentrate on something that didn’t interest you for long.
Allen and Kuntz were wearing frowns just like she was.
“They’re worse than I was expecting.”
“I wonder how much we’ll be able to teach them in ten days.”
Sara was a bit surprised that Allen would just come out and say something like that right in front of the kids.
“What’s that supposed to mean?! They all became Hunters around the same time I did! I don’t want to let any of them fall behind!”
Rod complained, angered by his brother’s casual tone, but the other kids were just hanging their heads meekly.
“I know how you feel, Rod, but I don’t really sense the spirit in these kids to make a living as Hunters.”
“The spirit...? What do you mean?”
Rod seemed to be a cut above the rest, maybe because he served as a sort of leader among them.
“You can work hard at it if you’ve got a clear idea of what kind of Hunter you want to be in the future. If you want to be strong and make a lot of money, then horned rabbits are nothing more than a stepping stone toward that goal.”
Sara didn’t quite understand what Allen meant either.
“What kind of Hunter do you want to be, Rod?”
“I want to beat monsters with magic like you and make money. I want to be able to use shield magic eventually too.”
Rod had a pretty clear image in mind.
“Then what about you?” Allen asked the closest kid to him.
“Umm, I want to make a little more money than I make now, so I can live a little more comfortably.”
“And what kind of Hunter do you want to be?”
“A strong one?”
Sara understood now. If you didn’t know what sort of future you wanted, you couldn’t make a plan to get stronger.
“Everybody, listen up.” Kuntz gathered everyone together. “Starting tomorrow, we’re gonna practice how to use mana, the basics of physical strengthening, and sword swings. Then we’ll split into a plant-gathering team, a magic team, and a physical strengthening team and train in those areas. Be ready for that.”
The kids who were worried that they would be abandoned for not being good enough let out sighs of relief.
“By tomorrow, I want you to think about what kind of Hunters you want to be. Even something like ‘I want to be like Guildmaster Konrad’ is fine, just give it some thought.”
There were some laughs at that, and things got a bit more relaxed. It probably helped to have a role model, Sara mused.
“Okay, we’ll treat you to lunch, so we’re gonna practice using mana in the afternoon.”
This time the children’s energy returned in full force.
Kuntz really had the makings of a teacher. Realizing that she had a friend like that at her side, Sara suddenly felt a bit of reverence toward him.
The next day, Sara took the two kids with aptitude as her plant-gathering team and gave them a thorough lesson on how to identify healing herbs, greater healing herbs, and mana herbs; how to gather them; and how to sell them to the Apothecary’s Guild.
Mana manipulation and the basics of physical strengthening were kind of simple, so it was hard to tell if you were really improving at them. The kids weren’t enthusiastic about them, but at some point they realized more people were joining them for these practice sessions. The most popular lesson was probably the lecture Haruto had suggested where they showed off different types of magic. The training room had been empty when they’d started, but somehow people must have heard that something interesting was happening, and before they knew it, it was packed.
“It’s hard to make use of mana if you don’t understand it. Listen up. Mana will empower you in whatever way you imagine. Existing magic is important, of course, but you can’t close your eyes to new possibilities either.”
Kuntz recited the first line of the magic textbook. Behind the kids were slightly older Hunters and even veterans, so Sara felt like she could hear Kuntz’s internal begging for them to let him off the hook. But she couldn’t remain so unconcerned for long.
“Today’s instructor will be Sara.”
They would probably enjoy seeing an Invited’s magic, and if they could learn to use it, it would no doubt come in handy. Still, she couldn’t hide how nervous she was in front of all these people.
“I’ll use curving magic today.”
She’d bought round loaves of bread to use as targets to make it easy to see her magic. She set the bread down in front of her, diagonally in front, to her side, and behind her. Then she shot magic at each one.
“Flame, go!”
First, the one in front of her. A little flame shot straight out and charred the bread black.
“Flame, curve to the left.”
The diagonal one now. It might have looked like she’d accidentally shot it to the side, but the flame curved.
“Flame, left.”
Flame came out of the hand she held out in front of her and then curved to the left.
“Ooh!”
“What the heck?!”
This time, she finally got a big reaction.
“Next. Behind me. Flame, go!”
Still facing forward, Sara shot out a flame that quickly curved around to shoot behind her. She smelled a nice, crispy scent, so she was pretty sure she’d hit the bread placed there.
“Whoa!”
“How’d she do that?”
“Whoa” was the children, while “How’d she do that?” had come from the adult Hunters. Sara intended to explain anyway, so she carried on without worrying too much about the chatter.