Chapter 1

Prequel The Young Man With No Mana In this world, everyone is born with a god-given role, also known as a vocation. One merely has to visit a temple to learn their role through an oracle. My vocation was Thief, so I had been abandoned by my parents before my earliest memory. The fact that I was born with no mana at all had something to do with it, too, I bet. The paths that a Thief with no mana could take in life were extremely limited. No one needed me, so I had no choice but to live a life of rummaging through the trash heaps in the alleyways of the City of Pleasure. Naturally, this was extremely unhygienic, and I fell ill several times. Eventually, I caught something that could only be healed at the church in the capital after paying a large offering, which was a death sentence. “He’s done for.” “It’s a pity, but we can’t afford to buy him medicine, either.” Everyone I knew abandoned me, and there was talk of making me leave the city in case what I had was contagious. I didn’t want to cause trouble for Mabel, who was like my big sister and had been looking out for me, so I left of my own accord. If I was attacked by monsters, it would only be an earlier escape from my suffering. “It’d be a waste for you to kick the bucket here, kiddo.” Just as I was being attacked by a starving monster, a passing adventurer saved me. He was a depraved priest from some monastery who indulged in both wine and women, but he was just as free with his magic as he was with his purse. After healing me with seemingly no effort, he ruffled my hair. He showed no hesitation to touch me, even when everyone else had been loath to. The female warrior he was traveling with also spoke to me. “Oh? You don’t have any mana? Neither do I. But don’t worry; things’ll work out. If you don’t have mana, you just need to find a friend who does.” “That’s right. There are oddball old fogeys like me out there.” The priest had a mustache, but he didn’t look anywhere near the age to be calling himself an old fogey. In any case, the two of them then stayed in the City of Pleasure for a while, doing what adventurers did. I spotted them around town every so often. One time, I found the priest extremely drunk. While taking care of him, I asked a question. “How can I become someone who helps people like you do?” It was such a childish question, and I felt rude asking something like that to the man who’d saved my life. But he seemed to sober up for a brief moment. “Tell me, kiddo, what do you have in mind when you think of a power that can help people?” “Well…magic. That’s how you saved me.” “What good’s magic gonna do you when you don’t have a drop of mana?” I had no answer. I thought he was telling me to face reality, but I soon realized I was wrong. He showed me a pendant he was wearing. It was a fancy piece of jewelry carved with the image of a goddess. “It’s the gods who decide our vocations and whether or not we have mana. If they wanted to, they could even change your role to Sage—the pinnacle of all magic vocations.” “I imagine they could, but…what am I supposed to do?” “Surprise them. If you manage to do that, they’ll come begging for your attention of their own accord.” After saying that, the priest ruffled my hair again. He might be a man who indulged his vices, but he’d also saved my life. That was the last I saw of his party. Time passed, but I had no way of knowing what happened to them after they set out from the City of Pleasure. I racked my brain for how to get a deity to recognize me. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I should strive to reach my limits by utilizing the full extent of what I had been given…to get the gods to owe me a debt of gratitude. I swore that I would do whatever it took to become a Sage even with no mana.