Magic Scavenger Part 1 Chapter 3

 Chapter 3: The Traditional Posture

"Huh? Where's Kanata?"

The next day, the Karejasu Mercenary Company returned to town alongside the lord's army they'd joined up with. They dropped their gear at the inn serving as their temporary base and free time followed... even the battlefield-scavenger children were granted a brief rest. But Kanata was nowhere to be found so Roa restlessly looked around the inn's dining area.

"Kanata? He got called away a bit ago."

"Bet he did something stupid again. He gets weirdly stubborn whenever it's about that hobby of his."

"Ohh... come on..."

Told this by the other battlefield-scavenger kids, who'd gotten a head start stuffing their faces with bread in the dining area, Roa's shoulders drooped a little. She'd been planning to invite him into town to buy a new sleeping bag since he'd mentioned last night that his had gone up in flames, but of all things, he'd been called away even during their free time.

Even among the other battlefield-scavenger kids, Roa looked out for Kanata more than most. To her, he was a year younger, something like a little brother and also the very first junior she'd ever looked after.

"Ugh... seriously, Kanata... what did you do this time...?"

Her sigh came out heavy and slow, nothing like a child's, half exasperation and half worry in equal measure. All she could do was pray that Kanata hadn't actually done anything.

* * *

At that same moment, in Griare's room, Kanata sat on the floor where he'd been summoned and made to sit. It was just an ordinary town inn, nothing especially lavish, but the captain and vice-captain each had private rooms and no one would interrupt them here. Which was to say, more than enough privacy to pry all sorts of things out of him about what had happened the night before.

"Um, Vice-Captain Griare..."

"What is it."

"This, um, position... what exactly is it...?"

Kanata sat up straight with his knees pressed together on the floor. Standing right in front of him with her feet planted wide, Griare looked down at him with a sharp, piercing gaze. Whether the trembling in his body came from the unfamiliar posture or from the sheer pressure radiating off her, he honestly couldn't say. Probably both.

"That position is called 'seiza'."

Her voice, clear enough to carry across a great distance, answered Kanata's question. Griare, the vice-captain of the Karejasu Mercenary Company. Beautiful but her expression carried the stern weight of countless battles behind it and she held up the core of the company through solid, undeniable skills. Word had it she was far more attentive than the free-spirited Uval, but right now, all Kanata felt toward her was pure terror.

"'Seiza'...?"

"Yes. A posture passed down from a certain island nation. Stay in that position too long and your legs go numb until you can't move. Most likely, it was originally used on criminals in that island nation, during torture or interrogation."

"A country with a posture that terrifying actually exists...? And wait, if you're making me sit like this, does that mean... you're about to torture me?!"

"No? Though depending on how you answer, it's possible I might have to. Please don't make someone as kind-hearted as me resort to something like that, all right?"

Griare flashed him a bright smile... or at least, that was probably the intent. The stiff, awkward expression that actually showed up on her face gave Kanata nothing but terror and all he could do was nod along.

"The very fact that I'm trying to hear you out privately like this, instead of doing this the official way, is already a real concession on my part... So why were you hiding that you could use magic?"

"N-no! It's not like that! It was sudden, just yesterday! Really! Even I was shocked... the sleeping bag too... it wasn't on purpose... Even I don't... know why... I was looking at the Rubbish... and then..."

"..."

Griare's glare, sharp enough to kill, pierced straight through Kanata. He explained himself as desperately as he could, but the anxiety of not knowing whether she believed him made his words come out stumbling and broken.

Kanata's wavering gaze flitted between Griare's expression and the sword at her hip. Young as he was, he knew what war looked like and he knew the company had its own discipline and rules. If Griare decided to, separating his head from his body would be nothing at all for her.

But despite all that fear, Griare's expression softened almost immediately, as if Kanata's desperation had somehow gotten through to her.

"Well, I suppose that's fair enough. Say you really were an enemy mage sent against us... I can't make sense of burning nothing but a sleeping bag. And I've got no intention of losing to that kind of idiocy anyway. I'll believe you."

"Y-yes... thank you... very much..."

For now, at least, it seemed the worst wasn't going to happen, and Kanata let out a breath of relief. But this situation, somewhere between a simple question and a full interrogation, wasn't over yet.

"So then. How did that fire start yesterday? And don't you dare feed me some lie about it catching from the campfire."

"W-well, actually..."

Overwhelmed by Griare's presence, Kanata told her everything that had happened the night before. That he could see something like a pattern inside the Rubbish. That he'd pieced together the patterns from all the Rubbish he'd scavenged during this war. That words had surfaced in his mind out of nowhere... Kanata didn't understand any of it himself, so he told her all of it, as if hoping she might have the answer he didn't.

"...It's hard to believe, but..."

"!!"

At her words, a cold, anxious sweat broke out over Kanata's whole body. Everything he'd told her was true, but if she didn't believe him, it would amount to the same thing as if he'd lied. He opened his mouth, trying to find some way to convince her but...

"What you were seeing was a 'spell formula,' wasn't it."

"...Huh?"

Surprisingly, Griare had believed him without much fuss at all. More than that, she was explaining things that Kanata himself didn't even understand.

"Magic has something called a spell formula, meant to make it easier for the caster to picture what they're doing... What you were seeing in the Rubbish's patterns was probably a fragment of one. If you kept collecting Rubbish from the exact same spell and pieced the patterns together... I suppose the formula ended up whole enough that even you could cast it. Is that... what happened here...?"

"Y-you don't sound very confident about that... Vice-Captain Griare and you're an adult too..."

"So what if I'm an adult. I know a little about magic but... I've never heard of a case like this before. Adult or child, nobody's confident about something they don't understand."

Griare scratched at her orange hair, looking troubled. Up until a moment ago she'd been nothing but frightening but seeing this unfamiliar side of her now, Kanata felt an odd sense of closeness toward her.

"Honestly, someone who can't even handle mana and casting actual magic... that's not skipping one step, that's leaping clean over half a dozen of them. Magic or any other skill, you're supposed to learn it in proper order."

"Even if you tell me that, I don't understand any of it either... I just said it and suddenly the sleeping bag was on fire..."

"Yeah, that much I'll believe. I'm not a mage myself so I can't teach you the finer details but..."

Griare paused, then let out a sigh, looking thoroughly put-upon.

"Leaving you to stumble around without understanding a thing is a problem too... From now on, I'll use our downtime to teach you how to handle mana."

"Yes, ma'am... huh? Huh?!"

"There's no telling when using it out of pure curiosity, is going to turn into a real problem... Learn how to handle mana and get some kind of control over it. So we don't get a repeat of last night."

"Waaaaah!!"

Kanata trembled with joy at her words. It might still be a long way from the romantic dream he'd chased through the Rubbish all this time but this was without question, a first step toward it. Unable to hide his delight, his mouth curled into a grin and his arms rose into a fist-pumping victory pose all on their own.

"Oh, right. Tell me exactly what spell you used to burn that sleeping bag last night. I need to know what I'm supposed to help you control."

"Um, 'Flamme—' gah!?"

The moment he tried to answer with the spell name that had surfaced in his mind the night before, Griare's kick drove straight into his chest without warning. His seiza posture collapsed instantly and he tumbled backward, slamming hard into the wall.

"Are you an idiot?! What if you'd just chanted it blindly and caused another mess like last night?!"

"*Cough!* B-but you told me to say it...!"

"I said tell me, not chant it! Honestly, this is exactly why you're such a menace!"

Griare let out a second sigh, sounding thoroughly exasperated. But her expression turned serious again almost at once.

"Wait... that name you just started to say. Is that the spell you cast last night?"

"Ow, ow... huh? Y-yes... that's right...?"

Magic was divided into five tiers, ranked by power and effect. Normally, when a mage learned magic, they would of course start from the very bottom tier and work their way up in order, but...

(The fact that he started to say "Flamme" means it's Spirit-type magic... Spirit-type magic should start at the third tier, at the very least... There's no way Kanata, who can't even control his own mana, should be able to cast something like that... What in the world is going on?)

What she knew and the state Kanata was actually in simply didn't add up and a crease formed between Griare's brows. But even if Kanata had wanted to lie, he couldn't have faked something like this without knowing the fine details of the magic himself.

"Um, Vice-Captain Griare...!"

"What is it?"

While Griare stood with a hand to her chin, lost in thought, Kanata pushed himself up against the wall with his legs trembling.

"M-my legs... they're numb...! How do I even fix this?!"

"Ha ha ha, that's the power of seiza for you. Quite the lesson, wasn't it? I'm letting you off for last night's trouble with nothing worse than this so take it like a good sport."

"Uugh...!"

The feeling in both his legs was nothing like usual. Every movement sent a faint jolt through them and it hurted. Kanata, despite having just secured a promise that should have thrilled him to his core, instead trembled like a newborn fawn.

"Anyway, come whenever I call for you. I'll give you some training."

"Y-yes, ma'am...!"

"Oh, and one more thing: make absolutely sure Uval never finds out."

"Huh? The boss?"

"What, you didn't know? That man despises mages more than almost anything. If word got out, getting kicked out of the company would be the gentle version of what happens to you... If you used magic carelessly, even once, he'll rip your head clean off without a second thought. Just like picking a nut off a tree."

Griare's threat drained the color from Kanata's face. Feeling as though his soaring spirits had just been slammed straight back down to earth, Kanata made his way back to his own room.

**Translator's Notes**

The Flamme spell has Kanjis saying Fire Spirit hence it is a Spirit-type magic. I only used the furigana in the translation