Chapter 6 - The Wizard
“This is the dining room.”
“The dining room.”
“People usually come to eat at 7 a.m., 12 p.m., or 6 p.m., but they can eat at any time they want, too.”
“Who usually eats here?”
“Most of the household members living in the manor eat here. Those who are married and live outside the manor eat outside. The servants have a separate dining room.”
“Can I eat here too?”
“Yes, most squires live in the manor and usually eat here. However, if you want to eat separately, please let us know and we will bring you a separate meal.”
“Just like this morning.”
Arsene nodded quietly and memorized the location of the dining room in his mind.
After meeting the lord, he slept all day from early evening to rest his tired body, and the next day, he followed his maid around to learn the manor’s geography.
The size of the manor was so huge, that it wasn’t wrong to say he learned geography.
It was six stories high and there were various types of facilities on each floor.
The dining room they just arrived at seemed to be able to manage dozens of people at one long table.
“Then I’ll guide you to the training field…”
The maid, who was about to lead Arsene to the next place, looked ahead, then squeaked and took a step back.
In front of the maid was a girl with short black hair. She was at most the same age as Arsene.
Her face was painted with red and blue paint, making it difficult to recognize her appearance.
In her left hand, she held an unidentified wooden stick.
“Ah, ah… Lady…?”
“Usula Armatia Takaraba.”
The girl swung the stick and walked slowly, muttering words of unknown meaning.
‘What kind of performance is this?’
Arsene was staring blankly, speechless, but the maid began to tremble as if she had seen a ghost.
“What is this…”
“Ghyaaa!”
“Kyaaa!”
When he was about to ask her what she was doing, the girl opened her mouth wide and cried out, pointing her stick, while the maid screamed and ran away.
Arsene couldn’t understand what kind of performance that was, so he was just standing there quietly.
The girl, who had chased away the maid after screaming at her, saw Arsene standing still.
“Why aren’t you running away?”
‘Why should I run away?’
Arsene, who was about to ask back, recalled what the maid said a while ago, “Lady.”
Perhaps she was the daughter of the lord if she was called like that in the manor.
“Are you the lord’s daughter?”
He never learned what kind of relationship the lord’s daughter had with the knights or servants, but what Arsene learned from his military and social life was that it was better to respect other people when the relationship with them was not clear.
If the other speaker isn’t a respectable person, there’s no big loss in being impolite, but if it’s the other way around, it must be done well, or you’re bound to incur losses.
Unfortunately, the language of this world, like Korean, was clear and strict, so he had to pay attention to that.
“That’s right. Why aren’t you running away!? Who are you?”
She yelled at him with a fiery temper, but the little girl with the painted face looked funny.
Still, she is the lord’s daughter, so she should be respected. Thinking so, Arsene placed his right hand between his collarbones and bowed his head, as he had learned before.
“This is Arsene, a knight who is training as a squire under Sir Palato.”
“Uh… under training… So are you a squire or a knight?”
“Well, actually, I’m curious about that too, lady.”
Arsene smiled embarrassingly as he looked at her unsure expression.
This ambiguous situation was caused by Arsene’s current status.
It is common for knights to awaken while constantly training their bodies and increasing their adaptability to mana, but for some reason, Arsene awakened as a knight without any such training.
As awakening the mana was the condition for being a knight, he could be called one, but he wasn’t able to take on his duties as a knight yet.
Because of this, he decided to pursue his training as a squire under Sir Palato, but he could not be called a squire either.
Basically, a squire is just a ‘prospective knight’, who may or may not become a knight depending on luck, but Arsene was already a knight in terms of his magical power awakening.
Because of this ambiguous situation, he was given the bizarre status of a ‘knight and squire’.
The girl opened her eyes wide at the sight of Arsene, as if she had never seen a person smile before.
“So can you tell me why I have to run away?”
“I, I’m a wizard! I can use magic! Don’t you know what a wizard is?”
“Ah… you’re a wizard, yes.”
With that said, he couldn’t tell whether she was a wizard, or why she was making a fuss with a stick and her face painted.
She didn’t look like a real wizard in the first place.
The wizard Arsene imagined was either a dignified old man like Gandalf, or at least a grim man with something like a robe, not a tomboy kid who painted her face and threatened her maid.
This childish thing can’t be some kind of magical ritual.
Arsene, who thought it was like playing house, said with a smile as softly as possible.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. If you do it one more time, I’ll run away with you.”
Arsene, who responded to her like that, was just staring at her with a blank expression as if he was shocked.
“Lady?”
“I don’t need it!”
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Then, she suddenly screamed, running to and fro, and disappeared over the hallway.
‘I don’t need to chase her, do I?’
Arsene, thinking that he had offended her by confronting her so openly, moved on to find the runaway maid.
As he had already made an appointment to meet Sir Palato at the training field, he had to at least know where the training field was.
“Lady Elise is a real wizard.”
“What?”
In the end, Arsene had to wander around alone to find the training field, and he had to tell Palato what had happened a while ago to explain why he was so late.
And this was Palato’s answer when he heard the story.
‘Don’t tell me that little tomboy was a real wizard…’
Arsene felt his fantasies about wizards shattered.
“So why does lady wizard bother her servants and maids?”
“Well, it gets a bit complicated if we talk about it. First of all, what do you think of the wizards?”
It’s not a good way to answer a question with a question. Thinking inwardly, Arsene recalled his thoughts about the wizards.
A wizard.
A being able to build and repair territories and fortresses, which are the foundations for mankind to live in this world, and create and repair a jin, a knight’s mount.
Also, there were quite a few magical objects in the manor, that an ancient wizard had made himself.
Simple and practical objects, such as pipes where water comes out, toilets, lights without fire, etc.
It was only yesterday that he was terribly surprised to see these objects in the room assigned to him, which reminded him of the Earth from his previous life. On the other hand, there were also negative impressions.
Everyone knew that a wizard was responsible for making the world impossible to live in without a territory and fortress, and there were stories of wizards eating a child or taking his brain out of the cemetery at night and…
To be honest, the latter story seemed to be made just to scare the children, so I skipped half of it.
“I think it’s a great but dangerous existence.”
Arsene himself was not sure if it would be an exemplary answer because it was extremely theoretical, but Palato unexpectedly shook his head with a rather pleasant look.
“It’s nice that you saw a wizard in person and think they’re very friendly.”
“Is that so?”
“Most people, after meeting a wizard, think that they are illegitimate children of the devil who climbed up from hell and committed adultery with a woman.”
Arsene was momentarily stunned by the savage medieval-like words, but when he realized that Palato’s words contained a nuance of disagreement with them, he looked different.
It was also because he considered the intelligence of a knight based on Sir Lenock, who, frankly, didn’t have any intelligence at all.
“Of course not everyone believes in such an exaggerated superstition, but in fact, Lady Eloise had a little problem. She became a wizard at such a young age that she couldn’t control her magic and hurt those around her a few times.”
“What kind of harm?”
“There were cases where it shocked the surroundings, emitted light powerful enough to temporarily lose sight, or cause the hair of people around her to fall out.”
“Other things aren’t that serious, but the last one is particularly scary.”
“I agree.”
Palato’s forehead, who said so while patting his head, looked unusually wide today.
‘Don’t tell me the victim is Sir Palato…’
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Arsene put those thoughts aside and asked again.
“So, I still don’t understand why she played such a strange prank.”
“Sir Luden… Oh, he’s the consultant and wizard of our estate. Sir Luden says she seems to be doing it out of anger with those people around her who are reluctant and afraid of her.”
“Is everyone around her like that?”
“You didn’t feel it? Usually, people feel fear and strong repulsion from the evil magic of a wizard. If you’re a knight or a person whose body is well-trained, you won’t feel that bad, but you’ll still feel a bit rejected.”
At Palato’s words, Arsene swept his hair back and recalled the meeting a while ago.
Certainly, the maid’s reaction was a little exaggerated, but he didn’t feel it at all, as if she didn’t have that kind of power.
At best, she seemed like a prankster and a tomboy.
“It’s the same with me. I know that it’s not the lady’s fault for not being able to control her magic, and I know that mana can’t do any harm to a knight anyway… but I was physiologically disgusted, so it was hard to be nice to her at first.”
Saying that, Palato’s face looked very gloomy, different from his usual expression.
“I… didn’t feel it at all.”
At Arsene’s words, Palato looked at Arsene like he was a mysterious person for a moment, and smiled as if he did well.
“So after morning training, do you want to go see Sir Luden? He’s a bit eccentric, but he knows a lot of things, and he’ll be glad to hear a good story. Maybe you could be friends with the lady if things work out well. She’s a poor child.”
“Alright.”
Arsene agreed without hesitation.
‘I don’t know if there’s something special about me that doesn’t respond to the magician’s magic, or if there’s another reason, but at least it won’t hurt to gain knowledge.’
In particular, he felt a strong interest in magic, as it was almost a mystery until now.
“That’s it, let’s start with physical training. The first one is a warm-up race. Make a circle around the training field starting from that pillar over there. Until I tell you to stop running. Use all your strength.”
The training field was so big, he thought that one lap would be around 300m.
“I believe you can run at least three hundred laps.”
“Three… hundred… laps?”
It’s roughly 90km.
In addition, it was the distance he had to run during the morning training, so considering that the bell for 10 o’clock rang a while ago, he had to finish within two hours.
Two hours while maintaining an average speed of 45 km/h, according to Arsene’s calculations. He thought that it wasn’t okay to sprint for two hours just because he had magical powers.
He didn’t know whether this should be regarded as a barbaric discipline of the Middle Ages, where the concept of ‘overworking’ itself was lacking, or as a training policy for skilled knights from veteran knights.
Thinking about it, there was no choice in the first place. As long as he was just a squire in training, he had to accept it.
“It’s a little tight, but isn’t it because you’re late? You’ll have to bear it.”
Seeing Palato’s smiling face, Arsene wanted to attach the description of the wizards he had heard a while ago - the devil who crawled out of hell - to Palato.
‘Damn it, I hope all your hair falls off.’
Cussing at Palato’s hair, Arsene began warming up.
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