Magic Scavenger Part 1 Prologue

 Prologue

Whoa... so pretty...!

A mud-streaked boy picked up a red pebble, his eyes lighting up. The blunt delight in his voice was hopelessly out of place here.

The battlefield stank of smoke, scorched earth and rust. Nothing here smelled of anything good. Figures in armor who'd been fighting only moments before now lay scattered around the boy. In a place where so many people had risked their lives for something, the boy scavenged through the wreckage just to survive.

He ranked below even the lowest grunt in the mercenary company... something lower, a "battlefield scavenger". Things worth money. Things that might be worth money. Things worth nothing at all. He'd rush into whatever ground the fighting had just vacated and pick through weapons, ornaments, trinkets, anything he could find. 

To help support the mercenary company that had taken him in after he lost his parents and had nowhere else to go. To prove that he was worth something.

...But that little stone was the one thing he picked up purely because he wanted to.

"Hey, Kanata! We've gotta go, there's a mage up ahead! Fall back!!"

"I got three today...!"

"You're picking up that trash again, you idiot?!"

A girl came sprinting out of nowhere, with her dull red hair swaying and caught the boy everyone called Kanata by the hand. He stuffed the red pebble she'd just called trash into his pocket and let himself be dragged into a run. A moment later, an explosion boomed somewhere not far from where the two of them had been standing.

"Roa... that was an explosion."

"That's exactly why I said a mage came! Probably the same one dropping all that trash you love so much. Ha! Anybody desperate enough to fight way out here has gotta be a total amateur. Nothing to be scared of, so relax!"

"Once that fight's over, you think there'll be more to find...?"

"How should I know?! Would it kill you to be a little scared?!"

Kanata pulled the pebble back out of his pocket. The stone Roa called trash — Rubbish, its proper name — was, just as she'd said, unmistakably trash.

The color might catch the eye, but it had none of a real gem's shine and given enough time it simply vanished. In truth, it was nothing but excess mana, the magic power a mage wasted whenever they cast a spell.

To a mage, it was proof of inexperience, evidence that their focus had slipped and they despised it. It served no purpose at all, just something in the way until it vanished on its own. It really was just a plain and simple trash.

Naturally, it wasn't worth a single coin. And yet, Kanata loved this Rubbish all the same.

"You... you're collecting nothing but trash again, what about your quota?!"

"That part's fine! Look, pat pat!"

Kanata patted the ragged cloth pouch slung over his shoulder. It rattled and clinked with every movement, proof enough that he really had gathered something worthwhile.

"Well, fine, I guess! But slack off and the boss'll chew you out, you know!"

"Yeah, I know..."

"Get thrown out of here and that's it for us, got it!?"

"...I know, I know."

The clang of metal echoed somewhere in the distance, an explosion booming every so often. The stink of something scorched and burnt hung in the air.

This was a battlefield. The spot where Kanata and the others stood might be one where the fighting had mostly died down, but if the front lines shifted or the enemy moved, they could still get caught up in it. It was hardly a safe place to be but they had no choice except to live here.

There was nowhere else to turn and gambling on some country with a slave system was completely out of the question. And besides,

"Actually I really like working for the boss."

"Huh?! Are you some kind of pervert?!"

"What's a pervert?"

"...You're too young for that."

Kanata liked the mercenary company that had taken him in. That was exactly why he made sure to do his work properly.

It was also so that no one could complain about the little red stone in his hand... the Rubbish he kept collecting along the way. It has been two years since he'd been sent out as a battlefield scavenger... and he liked to think he'd gotten pretty good at it.

It wasn't that he loved the battlefield. He just had to be there to survive. And in this place, the only beautiful thing no one could ever take from him was the Rubbish. Even if it was nothing but a scrap of leftover magic, a fragment with no meaning at all—

"Wow... hey, look, Roa. Fire-attribute Rubbish looks even prettier when you hold it up to the sunlight. Look, look!"

"That's just the sunlight being pretty. You really are a pervert."

—it was still beautiful, like some light he could never quite remember seeing.