Chapter 3: The Magicless Prodigy

“Wait, Kyla. Could you soften your words a bit…”

“William, you stay out of this.”

Shoving William’s hand away, Kyla shot a glare at Tarsha.

“Answer me. You’re magicless, aren’t you?”

Kyla snapped.

It was only natural for her to react so sensitively.

She was a mage.

Mages are fundamentally far more sensitive to the flow and presence of mana than ordinary people.

In Kyla’s eyes, Tarsha felt as if she had been abandoned by mana itself, with nothing to be sensed.

Like an empty bottle.

Not even a speck of mana could be felt from within Tarsha’s body.

William put a hand to his forehead.

‘Damn it. If I had known there was a magicless person here, I would have just come alone.’

He didn’t particularly despise the magicless.

It’s not like they were born that way because they wanted to be, so what meaning was there in despising them?

But Kyla—mages—were different.

What kind of people were mages?

They were those chosen by mana, who loved mana, and who dedicated their entire lives to studying magic.

To them, the magicless, who were disconnected from mana, were incomprehensible and alien beings, as well as abominations that went against the laws of nature.

It was so bad that in the distant past, there were often cases of mages directly burning the magicless to death.

Amidst the chillingly cold atmosphere, William felt his head begin to throb as he tried to figure out how to apologize to Tarsha and her parents.

However, the reaction of the very person who had received the insulting words was something no one in that room had anticipated.

“Are you perhaps a mage?”

Everyone in the room saw it.

For a moment, Tarsha’s eyes sparkled.

“Yes. I am a mage. So there’s no use in lying. It’s already plain to see that mana doesn’t flow through you…”

“You can see the flow of mana?!”

Th-thump, th-thump!

Tarsha approached Kyla with her eyes wide open.

She seemed like a completely different person from before.

Her somewhat indifferent attitude and expression were gone, and now, she didn’t even seem to think of hiding the corners of her mouth, which trembled slightly with excitement.

She looked like a puppy with its tail spinning, running towards a new and fascinating toy.

At this sudden change, Kyla unknowingly shrank back and took a step backward.

“Can you really see the flow of mana? Does it bend when it receives heat, or does it hit a wall and spread out? No. More importantly, how does mana normally flow? In turbulent flow? Or laminar flow?”

“Wh-What is that? And saying I can see the flow of mana is a figure of speech, it’s not like I can actually see it with my eyes…”

Before she knew it, Tarsha was right in front of Kyla’s nose.

Her eyes were blazing like a furnace with curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.

In her mind right now, there wasn’t a single trace of the feeling of ‘being ignored’.

It was filled only with an engineering curiosity about the unknown phenomena of mana and magic, which she had always been curious about.

Hoo, hoo.

As Tarsha’s hot, excited breaths touched her skin, Kyla felt an unpleasant sensation of all the hair on her body standing on end, along with an instinctive sense of crisis.

‘This child. Even before being magicless, she’s already not normal…!’

“H-Heeek…! Wh-what are you!”

“Ooh. You don’t see it, you feel it? Then how do you feel that feeling? Through a special sensory organ? If you feel it through the skin, there’s a possibility that mana is a particle.”

“I-I don’t know! So get away from me!”

“Perhaps there’s something special about a mage’s skin…!”

Swish-!

With a whooshing sound, Kyla’s vision went dark as if night had fallen.

At the same time, she felt cold air on her stomach.

Only then did she realize what Tarsha had done to her.

She had flipped up her robe, saying she would check her skin.

Unfortunately, under Kyla’s robe today, there was only a pair of stockings and underwear.

It was because she had woken up late in the morning and had dressed hastily in her rush to get out.

Unless someone had a death wish, no one would dare to touch a mage’s robe, let alone a single hair on their head, so she hadn’t paid it much mind.

But the pink-haired woman in front of her was out of her mind.

“Hmm. As expected, there’s no significant difference to the naked eye.”

Her body was starkly exposed.

But Tarsha’s eyes, filled with scholarly passion without a speck of lust, greedily explored it.

“The texture is the same too. Damn it. If I had a microscope, I could have observed it more precisely!”

“Wha… What…!”

Kyla’s face turned as red as her hair.

And then, as if exploding, she shrieked.

“What are you observing, you crazy b*tch!”

Kyla pushed Tarsha with the intention of creating a little distance.

For an ordinary woman, it would have ended with just losing her balance and falling over.

But for Tarsha, who couldn’t even perform basic mana circulation, let alone body reinforcement, it was a different story.

“Ugh!”

Tarsha couldn’t even let out a proper scream.

A nauseating feeling of her organs flipping upside down and a sickening sense of floating enveloped her body.

And not long after.

Crash-!

She slammed into the sofa with a loud noise.

The sofa was neatly split in two.

Through the clouds of dust that billowed up, she could vaguely see people approaching in surprise.

“Tarsha!”

“Tarsha, are you okay?”

Her vision grew darker.

“Data… collection… failed….”

Muttering so, Tarsha let go of her fading consciousness.

---

When I opened my eyes, I saw a familiar ceiling.

“Huh.”

I thought I was completely dead, but when I looked around, it was my room.

Moreover, I don’t know when so much time had passed, but warm morning sunlight was streaming in from outside the window.

When I sat up, my body felt a little stiff, but nothing really hurt.

How could this be, when my body had been sent flying so spectacularly?

I’d never been hit by a car in my past life, but I felt the impact I received yesterday was truly comparable.

“If only I had measuring instruments, I could have made a more accurate comparison.”

As I was talking to myself, my mother opened the door and came in.

“You’re awake, Tarsha. How’s your body? Are you okay?”

“Ah. Yeah. It’s a little stiff, but.”

“That’s a real relief. The mage cast a healing spell on you after you collapsed yesterday.”

Healing magic.

I see.

So that’s why I’m this okay.

…What’s the principle?

If I had any related knowledge it would be one thing, but medicine wasn’t my major, so I couldn’t even begin to guess.

It would probably be faster to ask her directly.

“Huh? By the way, where are those people now? Did they go back?”

“They should be at the forge with your father right now.”

“The forge?”

“Yes. Your father was absolutely furious. It was really the first time I’ve seen him that angry since we got married.”

At the forge, my father was prickly and irritable, but at home, he was a completely different person.

Whenever he fought with my mother, he was always the one to back down first, and he had almost never gotten angry at me.

For him to get so angry that my mother would say this.

For some reason, I couldn’t quite imagine it.

“When did they go to the forge?”

“They went out early this morning. He said he would prove that this sword was made without using any magic… It seems he really didn’t like you being looked down upon.”

Are they making a sword in front of those people?

If so, I can’t be left out of that.

I hurriedly got up and changed my clothes.

My mother suggested I rest a bit more, but I said I was fine and immediately ran out of the house.

As I approached the forge building, I could see smoke rising from the chimney.

From inside, a rhythmic clang! clang! echoed.

Stepping inside, I saw my father’s back as he was engrossed in something.

Next to him, the two people I saw yesterday were watching him with bated breath.

The three of them were so absorbed that they didn’t even notice me approaching.

I didn’t want to break their concentration, so I watched the scene from a distance.

‘Looks like he’s starting the heat treatment now.’

My father took a lump of steel from the furnace that had already been shaped into a sword, but looked anything but ordinary.

The steel had a subtle wave-like grain etched on its surface, as if multiple layers were overlapping.

Then, after confirming that the steel had turned a vivid orange color, he plunged it into a prepared oil barrel.

Chiiiiiik!

Amidst the violent sound, I heard the two people’s voices.

“He’s quenching it in oil, not water.”

“So far… I don’t see any signs of magic being used.”

My father, regardless of what the two were saying, kept his lips sealed and focused on his work.

The sword had cooled sufficiently in the oil.

Taking the sword out, my father wiped the rough surface of the steel clean.

The subtle grain pattern that was barely visible before had now become a clear wave pattern.

My father once again placed the sword into a weaker fire than before.

As heat was slowly applied, a feast of various colors unfolded upon the silver-shining sword.

From a pale straw color to golden, then passing through brown, and finally, when a deep, brilliant blue uniformly colored the entire blade, my father quickly took the sword out and placed it on the cooling rack.

Finally, the entire process was complete.

Once the finished sword had completely cooled, my father wiped it dry.

Then, he held it out to the two people, along with a plain, quenched-only sword that he had made earlier and placed beside it.

“Here, try comparing them. This is the sword made with the method my daughter taught me.”

William first took the two swords and examined them from all angles.

He clashed the blades against each other and lightly struck the edge of the anvil with them.

The result was clear.

The regular sword’s edge was easily damaged after a few clashes, but the sword made with the new method barely even had a scratch.

“…Astounding. I’ve swung almost every sword available on the market, but this is the first time I’ve seen a sword like this. Is such a thing truly possible without magic?”

William exclaimed in admiration and handed the sword to Kyla.

Kyla, still with an expression of disbelief, took the sword and examined it with intense concentration.

But the more she examined it, the wider her eyes grew with shock.

“Th-There’s no trace of magic being used. This can’t be… How on earth? Hey, how did you do it? Did you use so little mana that I couldn’t detect it? Explain it to me, quickly!”

“I don’t know the detailed reasons myself. I only know what my daughter told me… Oh. Tarsha!”

As our eyes met, my father wiped his hands with a towel and came running over in a flurry.

“How’s your body? Was it not too hard walking all the way here?”

“Yes. I’m fine. More importantly, you’re doing well on your own now, aren’t you? The heat treatment.”

“Of course. Whose dad do you think I am?”

Over my father’s shoulder, I could see William and Kyla flustered.

William was continuously muttering something while holding the sword, and Kyla, with her eyes wide open, was frantically searching for something as she moved around the forge.

It was a familiar sight.

It was the same reaction my father had when he first made a sword according to my advice.

There were more people back then.

The sight of all the blacksmiths in the forge crowding around a single sword, muttering how such a thing could be possible, was truly a spectacle to behold, even in retrospect.

Recalling that time, on one hand, my head felt dizzy.

Explaining the principle of how the sword becomes hard was incredibly difficult.

Hardness, strength, ductility, toughness, brittleness, and so on.

Terms that are used as a matter of course in the modern world were not even defined here, so it was only natural.

Thanks to that, I had to deal with the blacksmiths who were constantly throwing questions at me, which drained me for a while.

“Excuse me. Miss Tarsha.”

‘Here it comes.’

Looking at William who had spoken to me, I steeled myself.

A flood of questions would pour down soon.

Why is this like this?

Why is that like that?

Well, I’ve gained confidence in teaching at their level while dealing with the blacksmiths.

‘No matter what question you ask, I’ll answer it in a way you can understand. Now, bring it on!’

Thrust.

As I struck a pose in my mind with that thought.

However, the words that reached my ears were completely unexpected.

“Would you be interested in enrolling at Ceylon Academy?”

…What?