What I’ve felt from my short time wandering the world is that magic is an incredibly rare power.
The fact that I only got one <Refining> magic after robbing bandits multiple times says it all.
Aboard the bumpy wagon, I drew my dagger.
And I murmured.
“Shine, Azure Night.”
Blue magic overlaid the dagger.
Leon, marveling at its beautiful form, opened his mouth.
“What on earth is that strange incantation?”
“It’s not an incantation, it’s a spell chant.”
“As far as I know, <Refining> magic doesn’t need a chant, does it?”
I sighed softly.
Everyone, every single one of them, is so inconsiderate.
Ignoring him, I carefully examined Azure Night.
<Refining> is a magic that forges weapons by hammering the inner self.
As such, it was important to constantly hammer the inner self to grow the weapon, but frankly, I didn’t have a clue.
I didn’t know what hammering the inner self even meant, or how to do it.
The magic I obtained through the trade was entirely mine. I was free to use it however I wanted, and it was also possible to grow it depending on what I did.
But this “growth” thing was so ambiguous. Frankly speaking, if I were someone who could raise the proficiency of <Refining> magic, I would have learned <Refining> magic a long time ago.
I lacked the aptitude, so I obtained <Refining> magic through a trade, and because of that, I can’t grow <Refining> magic—this endless cycle. It was almost a chain of hatred.
Someone had to break it.
In other words, it was my turn to step up.
I stared intently at <Refining> magic.
Magic obtained through trade didn’t disappear if left unattended.
Therefore, rather than struggling to raise the proficiency of <Refining> magic, it would be more efficient to focus on other aspects, but then <Refining> magic would feel sorry for itself.
That was absolutely unacceptable.
“Ruina! The horse looks thirsty!”
“Let’s take a short break.”
At Chris’s words, I got off the wagon and created a temporary resting space.
I gathered some firewood and lit it, and the surroundings quickly warmed up.
Chris sat in front of the bonfire, blowing on his hands.
“It’s so freaking cold. Are you okay, Ruina?”
“Did you know? Mages with fire element aptitude don’t feel the cold or heat when they reach a higher tier.”
“Isn’t that from Tier 4?”
“So I’m cold too.”
I put a pipe in my mouth and looked at the sky.
Snow was pouring down from the high heavens.
“We’re getting close to our destination.”
“Thanks to you, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.”
“I can breathe a sigh of relief too.”
Currently, Chris’s wagon was loaded with a large quantity of grapes, which were being protected in every possible way.
Baskets were used to maintain ventilation, grapes without any blemishes were carefully selected, and most importantly, unripe grapes were picked
out.
49
Manage Plan
Unripe grapes ripen slowly at room temperature, making them more suitable for transport than fully ripe grapes.
And on top of that.
“The weather suddenly turned cold. You knew this would happen?”
“My hometown is a cold place. I can tell when the weather is getting cold right away.”
The biggest factor was that the weather suddenly turned cold around the time we departed from Shade Grapeton.
It was cold from the start, and the destination was the cold north, so we were essentially keeping the grapes in a natural refrigerator the whole time.
Anyway.
I added firewood to the bonfire and said,
“What has Leon been doing since earlier?”
“…I was thinking.”
It was strange that he was so quiet even though we were making noise, so I turned my head and saw Leon staring at the bonfire.
“Thinking? Thinking about what?”
“What my mission is.”
“Aha.”
That was it.
He was having a completely useless thought, so I told Chris to play quietly.
Leon quietly stares at the bonfire, letting the snow fall on him.
Maybe it’s because his hair is so white. Leon looks quite good getting snowed on.
Beneath his snow-white hair was the face of an innocent boy, and every time I saw that face, I immediately understood.
With a face like that, it’s no wonder mercenaries would try to hit on him.
Understanding complete.
I followed Leon’s lead and looked at the bonfire.
Crackle. The bonfire blazed.
The flickering flames contained countless meanings.
Expansion, annihilation, regeneration, purification, divinity, transformation, life, divination, protection, summoning, fusion, resistance, transfer, manifestation, strengthening, connection, healing, distortion, memory, guidance, mark.
And fairness, predation, trade.
Thus, it was very easy for me to conjure up images related to fire. I had been doing this every day even before my reincarnation, so it could be seen as an extension of my daily life.
But knowing something in your head and actually realizing it are completely different realms. At least, that was the case with magic.
What good is it to know in your head that fire has the characteristic of annihilation? I don’t know ‘how’ to create the characteristic of annihilation.
Therefore, raising the understanding of elements was, to put it metaphorically, like this.
Sensitively realizing how to ‘actually use’ the many characteristics that you only knew in your head.
This is why people say that the most important thing in magic is sensation, and everything else is meaningless.
The characteristics of fire that I have currently realized are two: fairness and predation.
Among these, fairness found the principle of rules and restrictions and reached Tier 3, and predation found the principle of digestion, further deepening the magic.
I’ve been learning magic for 7 years and I’m at this level.
I don’t know if this is fast or slow.
The person who could tell me is waiting for resurrection in the afterlife, so there’s nothing I can do.
I quietly took in the blazing bonfire.
Training must continue without rest. That was my personal belief.
…Is the wood that has been burned and turned to ashes hot? If it’s hot, how hot is it?
“Ruina, what’s your goal anyway?”
I was awakened from my reverie by the sudden voice.
Chris was watering the horse, and it seemed he was bored since he was talking to me.
I calmly replied.
“My goal is always the same.”
“To be the world’s greatest tycoon?”
“To try using every magic in this world at least once.”
“Is your dream to be a great mage?”
“It’s a little different.”
As an extreme example, if I could experience every magic once, I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t use magic for the rest of my life after that.
That’s what magic is to me.
Chris, having finished watering the horse, sat down next to me and muttered.
“Complicated.”
“I’ll try to guess Chris’s goal too. To be the world’s greatest tycoon, right?”
“How did you know? Ruina, are you perhaps a mage?”
“That’s right.”
I replied casually and mixed the cigarette smoke into the bonfire.
Immediately after. Grumble. A cute sound echoed.
I blinked.
The culprit was obvious.
“Is it because you’re growing? Chris, you’re always hungry, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who eats the most food.”
“That’s why I’m not hungry. Shall we have a meal? We still have a little further to go, right?”
“Yeah.”
Chris was in charge of our meals.
I’m quite confident in my cooking too, but Chris is also quite good at cooking.
If I’m mechanically good at cooking, what should I say about Chris? He makes food that warms the heart.
To have this skill even without a cooking pouch. If he had a full cooking pouch, he might make food that makes people cry.
Where does all the food Chris eats go? It’s one of the three great mysteries of Happy Medieval Land.
I took a sip of the stew that Chris made.
Then my body warmed up.
I can’t stand this.
I got up from my seat and took out the mead I had packed from the wagon and took a sip.
The sweetness of the mead permeated my body.
Mead was a liquor made by turning the sweetness of honey into alcohol. Therefore, if mead was sweet, it meant that the fermentation was stopped
midway, which would normally cause it to spoil quickly in Medieval Land.
But the mead of Happy Medieval Land was different.
It doesn’t spoil even if you leave it at room temperature, it’s as sweet as plum wine, and it even stays cool.
“This is really amazing. How is something like this possible?”
“Huh? Didn’t you know, Ruina? That’s liquor made with holy magic.”
“Liquor made with holy magic?”
No wonder. It was too miraculous to be magic, it was imbued with the power of God.
Kelton doesn’t drink alcohol, so I’ve never talked about it, and personally, Happy Medieval Land is a closed place, so I learned about it for the first
time.
“It’s liquor made by the priests of the God of Alcohol. Isn’t he the most famous here, except for the God of Creation?”
“Is that so?”
But why didn’t Leon know about this? When I asked him about mead before, he said he didn’t know much about the outside world, but he should know about liquor made by the same priests.
Well, the Church of Genesis, which believes in the God of Creation, is exclusive to other gods.
If he only lived within the church, he might not have heard about related information.
The Church of Genesis has so many followers that it even created a nation. Even if they reject everything in that way, they can be self-sufficient
internally.
“No wonder Leon is so ignorant of the world. He grew up in that kind of environment.”
“Let’s go.”
Having finished our meal, we got back on the wagon.
And so we rode the wagon for a long time. All the way until the sun was about to cross the horizon.
“Ruina! There!”
Chris shouted in a bright voice.
I looked ahead.
In a world where snow was falling endlessly, red dots that illuminated the darkening sky were scattered here and there.
Belmonte Winterhaven.
That was our destination this time.