The sun was stupidly hot.
It was almost autumn, but doing anything outside still made Zeonly feel like he was melting.
That was still preferable to freezing, of course. Working in the winter months was miserable because the cold would numb your fingers and make you sick. It was easier to move around in the heat.
Just outside the Black Tower—the base of the Royal Sorcerers, located near Hughlia’s royal castle—Zeonly Finroll was conducting an experiment.
He was designing a new magic tool called the Totally Automatic Well-Maker. The completed designs were taking shape in his mind as he tinkered with what he’d built using various instruments.
His colleague, Victo—a water sorcerer—spoke to him.
“Zeon, you got a letter.”
“A letter? From who?”
“From your darling disciple.”
Zeonly had only one disciple.
He would have put off any other matter, but reports from his disciple took precedence. There was nothing he was more concerned about at the moment.
“Hand it over.”
The seal hadn’t been broken. Royal Sorcerers’ letters were inspected when sent from the tower, but not when received, so long as the sender’s identity was clear.
“I told you to hand it over.”
He reached out and grabbed the letter from Victo, but the younger man refused to let go. The two sorcerers struggled over the envelope, pulling it back and forth. They fought so hard their arms began to tremble.
“It must be nice to have such a precious disciple,” said Victo. “Given the time of year, I’m guessing he wrote about the magic school’s entrance exam. Man, I’m so jealous. How did someone like you who has no interest in training his juniors end up with a disciple?”
“Will you drop it already? I’m gettin’ sick of hearing it.”
“No! I’ll never drop it! I wanted him as my disciple!”
“Oh, shut up! Keep your voice down!” Zeon ignored Victo’s complaint and snatched the letter out of his fingers.
“What does it say?”
“Get lost, man! This has nothin’ to do with you!”
“That’s not true! It’s an update from a kid who could have been my disciple!”
“Yeah, ‘could have’! He’s my disciple, not yours!”
It had been years since Zeonly became Kunon’s teacher, but his colleague had yet to give up. Well, perhaps he had given up. He just hadn’t gotten over it.
Just then, more voices chimed in.
“Are you talking about that boy who could’ve been my disciple?”
“I still haven’t given up on Kunon, Zeon.”
Their loud argument right outside the base had attracted a crowd of sorcerers from nearby.
“Don’t come over here!” shouted Zeonly. “Go focus on your own work!”
“Calm down.”
“What’s the big deal? This is about the boy who was all set to be my disciple, right?”
“If you don’t open that letter soon, I’m gonna interrupt your nap again.”
“Let’s make sure his next meal has extra vegetables.”
“I like that. You’ll never get more than scraps of meat from now on.”
The sorcerers pestered Zeonly relentlessly.
Marquess Gurion’s second son had visited the castle just once a few years prior. After that, he became Zeonly’s apprentice and started assisting his experiments and research, which led to the boy’s name coming up quite a lot in the Black Tower.
To Zeonly’s annoyance, that ensured the Royal Sorcerers didn’t forget about him. In fact, their inability to see him had only increased their obsession with him.
There was also the problem of Zeonly’s personality. As Victo said, he wasn’t the type to take a disciple. And yet he was doing quite well as an instructor. That was another reason for other sorcerers’ dissatisfaction… If he let them start complaining, they would probably never stop.
“Okay, okay! Don’t touch me!” he exclaimed. “I’m opening it now, so keep your distance!”
Zeonly was confident in his skill. However, you didn’t become a Royal Sorcerer for nothing. Annoyingly, his stupid colleagues were also quite talented.
He could handle any of them in a one-on-one fight, but he doubted he could beat anyone one-on-two. He was currently outnumbered and had no hope of escape. This situation would only become even more of a headache if he resisted.
And so, he decided to just do as they wanted and chase them away afterward.
“How nostalgic,” said one of the other sorcerers after Zeonly had read the letter and summarized its contents aloud.
There were some things he wanted to keep to himself, so he didn’t let the others read it directly.
As expected, Kunon had written about the entrance exam. He’d passed without issue. Zeonly hadn’t been concerned at all about that. He’d known that boy would be just fine.
…What he was concerned about was whether his own troublemaking in the past would negatively affect his disciple. There were still many people at the magic school—and in the rest of Dirashik, for that matter—who had known Zeonly when he was a student.
That said, for better or worse, the school was a place where magic and ability mattered above all else. For that reason, Zeonly had asked an old acquaintance to make the entrance exam more difficult than usual. He figured if the boy proved his ability, his status as “the infamous Zeonly’s disciple” wouldn’t affect him as much. People would act differently around him if he proved himself from the start.
His disciple was truly skilled. So much so that he would likely be worthy of the lowest position among the Royal Sorcerers after just two years of study.
As Kunon’s awkward instructor read the letter, his mind was full of such thoughts.
But Victo and their other colleagues reacted differently. As one of them put it, the contents made them feel “nostalgic.”
“…Yeah, I miss those days, too,” said Zeonly. To tell the truth, he felt the same way.
He had also gone to the magic city of Dirashik, taken the entrance exam, and been admitted to the magic school, just like the rest of his colleagues.
Because they were all different ages, he hadn’t seen many of them at school. But they had all studied in Gray Rouva’s domain. As a result, they had a lot of things in common to chat about.
The more Zeonly learned about his disciple’s situation, the more it lined up with his own experiences. The school building he spent every day in. His total mess of a classroom. Getting carried away with his mischief and having to run from the teachers… That had all happened to Zeonly more times than he could count. He recalled a time when he’d made Gray Rouva mad enough that she chewed him out directly. On another occasion, he’d gotten a reputation in the city for being dangerous and wound up banned from a bunch of shops. He could remember so many faces, though most of them were frowning…
Now that so many years had passed, however, there was one thing he could say for sure: He was grateful to all the people who had spent time with a delinquent like him, even if their displeasure showed on their faces.
“Speaking of the good old days, Zeon,” Victo said, seeming to remember something. “Wasn’t the Hexer of Doom one of your classmates? I’ve heard you were close.”
Hexer.
I haven’t heard that word in a while, Zeonly thought.
“She was one year above me, and we weren’t that close,” he said. “Circumstances just brought us together for a bit.”
“Oh yeah?” said one of the others, starting another chorus of replies.
“I’m curious about the hexer, but I wanna hear stories from your student days, too.”
“Me too. You were a big-time delinquent, weren’t you? I heard you were constantly getting into trouble.”
“I heard he caused his classmates no end of pain.”
Oh, gimme a break, Zeonly thought, grimacing.
Back then, he’d let his considerable talent go to his head and gotten a bit overzealous. There were a lot of memories he would rather not revisit.
“Haven’t I given you enough already? If you slack off anymore, ol’ smiley Londimonde will show up and talk you to death.”
The Royal Sorcerers fled immediately. They clearly wanted no part of that.
Zeonly was only one of many troublemakers among the Royal Sorcerers, and Grand Master Londimonde oversaw them all. He was experienced with handling their type and knew exactly how to get under their skin.
“…Oh, damn it all.”
Talk of his past brought memories flooding back into Zeonly’s mind, whether he liked it or not.
He thought of his young self, and of Aion, the Hexer of Doom.
Hexer.
Just like heroes and saints, the title of hexer could be traced back to the Great War of the Seventeen Kings, and had belonged to people with significant accomplishments.
Back then they were considered very special individuals, but these days the word simply referred to sorcerers who could use unique spells. This was an era in which saints went to magic school like anyone else, so they weren’t so rare you had no chance of ever seeing one, though they were still very few in number.
Because a hexer’s spells were unique, they were difficult to research or incorporate into experiments. Their versatility was extremely low, and others had difficulty reproducing them.
For that reason, and because of their special characteristics, hexers tended to be shunned by more narrow-minded people.
The spell unique to hexers was called Execration.
Put simply, it allowed them to use curses.