Even after Lowe left, Gald continued drinking alone. Just gets what he wants and then skedaddles—I see Lowe is as cold as ever, he grumbled in his head, despite thinking the opposite.
Lowe was cautious around Gald. And his discretion was justified. He really had a good intuition.
When Gald gave a hollow smile, a loud voice flew at him abruptly.
“Hey, buddy. Got a Sigurth skill?” A burly, drunk adventurer holding a tankard of booze cheerily approached Gald.
Gald made it seem like he was startled to have been spoken to suddenly, but privately, he wasn’t particularly shocked. From the corner of his eye, he had seen the drunk adventurer notice him and come striding over.
“We’re in need of a ranged attacker—you wanna join the tournament together?”
“A Sigurth skill? Ahhh, I don’t have one,” Gald answered with a flippant smile.
Instantly, the drunk got a haughty attitude and clicked his tongue. “Oh, so you’re a small-timer?”
Gald’s eyebrow twitched upward. “Isn’t that being a little harsh? I may not have a skill, but I’m plenty strong. Since I’m a mage.”
“A mage?” Instantly, the man burst into peals of laughter. “A mage without a skill is strong? C’mon, c’mon, just what year do you think this is? These days, an adventurer is useless without a skill.”
“That’s not true. If you master magic, you can beat someone with a skill, too…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Unlucky bastards who weren’t blessed with skills can’t get through life unless they deny reality like that!”
“…”
“These days, magic is something for street performances. There’s no point in having a mage with no Sigurth skill in a party—”
“Flama,” Gald muttered, cutting off the man’s nonsense. The instant he invoked the spell, there came a short sizzling sound of something burning.
Gald’s right arm, wreathed in a mysterious blue flame, had pierced the man’s abdomen.
“…Ah…”
Not even permitted to scream, the man died on the spot.
Quiet at last, the man toppled over. The tankard slipped from his now-limp hands. Gald smoothly took the tankard, while with his free hand, he pushed the man by the shoulder, causing him to slump in his chair like a puppet. If he returned the half-empty tankard to its spot in front of the adventurer, the man would look as if he had drunk too much and fallen asleep.
Nobody would notice the hole in his stomach, with his abdomen hidden by the table—since the wound had been cauterized by high-temperature blue flame and there was no bleeding.
The noise and chatter continued in the tavern as usual. Nobody would imagine that an assassination had been carried out in the blink of an eye, one that you wouldn’t notice unless you looked closely.
“Have a nice rest there until someone notices, you piece of trash,” Gald whispered with a smile. He left enough money for the “passed-out drunk” old man, as if nothing had happened, and left the tavern.
“…Magic is strong. But nobody gets it,” Gald muttered into the cold darkness of the night after leaving the tavern.
Well, of course they wouldn’t understand. That was because the really strong mages were all with the secretive Dark Guild. While the Dark Guild had long since developed magic that surpassed skills, they made every effort to hide their existence.
“That’s why no matter how much time passes, these skill-brained idiots get so full of themselves…!” he spat bitterly, and then he recalled a sickening memory of not so long ago.
“Exposing forbidden techniques to the world is not allowed,” the guildmaster of the Dark Guild had stated bluntly.
Without any consideration, he rejected Gald’s suggestion that the Dark Guild officially reveal their magic techniques and knowledge to increase the esteem of mages.
“I can’t accept that,” Gald had replied. “If we don’t do that, then those skill-brained idiots will laugh at us forever, saying that magic is lesser than skills…!”
“Let them talk. The people you describe as ‘skill-brained idiots’ wouldn’t understand our findings even if we explained them.”
“But…”
“Continuing to protect the secrets of forbidden techniques is a part of protecting the mages who are members of the Dark Guild. One day, you, too, will come to understand this.”
Protecting mages?
The guildmaster’s weak claims made Gald want to puke. They couldn’t protect anything. The history of magic, which had been used way longer than skills, and the pride of mages who used that magic were being disrespected by skills.
“I’ve got to make them understand—those idiots—that magic is stronger than skills,” he muttered darkly, and then he heard a scream in the distance. It was from that tavern. They must have finally found the body.
Ahhh, they really are nothing but idiots— With a little smile, Gald vanished into the darkness of night.