The journey south once more. Fortunately, clear weather continued, so we were able to make relatively smooth progress.
The snow that had piled up before still remained and got in the way with every step, but the farther south we went, the less snow seemed to have fallen; now it was only deep enough for our feet to sink in slightly.
After another day of walking between bare trees laden with snow, the sun began to tilt, and the sky took on the faintest yellow hue.
There were small villages around here, but rather than going out of my way to sleep in one, I preferred simply camping outside.
Preparing camp was simple. I just had to roughly break off some branches or pick up stones of decent size, set them closely around us, then cast spells on them that would react when anything dangerous touched them.
If thieves, dangerous wild animals, or the like touched the makeshift fence enchanted with this magic, the stones would fly at them while making noise, driving them away.
Looking at the sky, it naturally still wasn’t time to eat dinner. But that was no reason to just sit around and pass the time, so I decided to put Cassian through his training for the day.
◇
A clearing in the middle of the forest. Trees rose densely all around, but just this area had opened into a wide space where no trees grew.
I stood on one side, and Cassian stood on the other. In his hand was the staff Kunrot had made for him not long ago.
“Hoo……”
Cassian took a small, deep breath. His breath streamed out at length, scattering white in the air.
In the end, what mattered was real combat, so we did train in a real-combat format fairly often.
But I had only personally served as his opponent a handful of times, and even then it happened at most once every few months, so he always ended up this tense.
“Come at me whenever you’re ready.”
“……”
Cassian took a few more deep breaths, then held his breath and sharpened his gaze. The hand that had been trembling slightly stopped dead the moment he aimed his staff at me.
For a brief moment, he measured my openings and slowly drew up his mana. Then pale blue electricity crackled into being at the tip of his staff.
Arc Discharge.
Whether the opponent was a human or a magical beast, it was one of the most efficient spells for dealing with living creatures. After all, extremely few creatures could react to lightning that was dozens of times faster than sound.
That was why I had used a trick to skip over the theory and teach him only the method, but……
Using it against me was a bad move.
The current surged toward me in an instant, but the defensive spell that unfolded even faster dispersed and scattered its energy.
What came next was fire magic. A fireball appeared in midair and flew toward me, only to change direction and strike the ground directly.
The explosion that erupted in an instant sent the snow piled on the ground flying, obscuring my vision. Steam formed as the snow evaporated and joined in, dyeing the space between Cassian and me white.
Along with the faint sound of feet kicking off the ground in rapid succession, Cassian charged in from beyond the smoke, swinging his staff.
“Haaaaah!!”
His movements still had a lot of excess in them, but considering how long he had been learning, they were clean.
I tilted my head back slightly, narrowly avoiding the staff as it swept past.
The attacks continued. He pressured me while freely using magic to accelerate and decelerate, but every attack missed me by the slightest margin.
“No, come on, just get hit already!!”
After swinging his staff a dozen or so times, Cassian seemed to realize he wouldn’t land a single blow on me like this and stepped back to catch his breath.
After panting two or three times, Cassian once again approached while swinging his staff……
Then, as smoothly as flowing water, he aimed the staff at me and used magic.
Certainly, if he couldn’t hit me from afar, firing at close range was a good judgment.
In an instant, I interfered with the magic and simply overwrote its direction in reverse.
Cassian immediately realized something had gone wrong and deployed a defensive spell, but because he had cast it in a rush, he apparently hadn’t put enough mana into it, and it wasn’t enough to fully cancel the attack out.
The Arc Discharge that had been flying toward me immediately changed direction and flew at Cassian, and the defensive spell Cassian had hurriedly deployed shattered after a very brief struggle.
“Guaaagh……!!!”
Forced back a few steps by the recoil, Cassian sank to one knee from the intense pain, but he glared up at me with eyes that said he hadn’t given up yet.
I looked down at the fighting spirit he showed with a slight smile.
Certainly, if we were only talking about overall combat ability, he was now at the point where he could more or less fend for himself even if I tossed him somewhere nearby.
But being able to fend for oneself and being able to protect one’s own body were two different things.
Now it was time to train his defense.
It would become closer to a one-sided beating than actual combat, but……
If he didn’t want to die somewhere, shouldn’t he at least be able to block this much?
With that thought in mind, I created dozens of electric spheres in the air and set them afloat. I could see Cassian’s eyes, which had been full of fighting spirit, beginning to fill with the thought, This is going too far.
“You’re ready, right?”
A high-voltage current fell from one of the spheres and mercilessly scorched the ground at Cassian’s feet, producing a small burst of sparks.
“W-wait. If that hits me, I’ll di……”
There was still plenty of time left before the sun set.
◇
We continued south. We stopped by small cities to replenish supplies, and whenever there was time, I trained Cassian harshly.
During that time, it didn’t snow even once, but even after we had come far enough to pass straight through a kingdom of moderate size, snow still crunched beneath our feet.
It seemed the scale of the blizzard that had fallen before was quite considerable. No wonder there weren’t that many merchants traveling the roads.
For now, Cassian could still endure it while shivering, but in another month or so, it would become too cold even for that. It might be time to start considering stopping somewhere for a while.
Then, the moment we crossed a low mountain.
A rather strange sight came into view.
It was a basin a bit too narrow to call a plain, but wide enough that there was no shortage of land for farming. A village had formed along a small river.
What was unusual wasn’t the village, but the hill rising beside it. It wasn’t large enough to be called a mountain, but it was still a hill that could certainly be called big. At its summit—
That part was sunken in as though a volcano had erupted there, and what was even stranger was that it was continuously burning, as if a volcano truly were erupting.
Looking closely, it was clearly not lava but fire that was burning, which only made it seem all the more bizarre.
No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem like a temporary forest fire, nor did I sense any kind of magical influence from it.
I wondered if natural gas was coming out, but I had never heard of oil or gas being found around here.
Seeing that the snow had melted all the way down to the foot of the hill, it was clearly not an illusion or mirage, but something actually burning.
“Master, do you know what that is? It’s burning—is that all right?”
“Well. I don’t think something like this was here when I came before……”
I slowly searched my memory, and though the terrain had changed slightly, this was definitely a place I had passed through before. And back then, it had just been an ordinary hill.
If something like that had been here, I would definitely have remembered it.
“There’s a village right there, so shall we ask?”
“Then are we sleeping in the village tonight?”
“The sun’s dipped a bit, so I suppose we should.”
“Yes!”
Taking Cassian, who was delighted at the prospect of sleeping under a roof rather than camping out tonight, I went down to the village.
It wasn’t a large village. Counting roughly, it seemed about two to three hundred people lived there, but when I thought back, I remembered it being a little larger in the past.
Sure enough, looking around, I saw quite a number of buildings that had collapsed with time or been abandoned and left unused.
Because it was winter, there weren’t many people walking around outside, but I spotted a middle-aged man nearby with a bit of white mixed into his hair, so I decided to stop him briefly and ask.
“That hill? It’s been burning since I was a child, so I don’t really know either. According to those who’ve already passed away, it’s been about eighty or ninety years, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Eighty years? Wow, Master. He says eighty years.”
“By the way, are you travelers? Impressive at such a young age. Still, don’t go near that hill. Sometimes the flames shoot up, and more than a few people have gotten hurt by barging in carelessly. If it weren’t for the mage, who knows what would have happened……”
“The mage? There’s a mage in this village?”
“Yes. You see that shabby house over there? They live there. They came to this village before I was even born, and whenever the village has trouble, they help us. A grateful person, truly. But don’t go knocking on their door as you please. Their temper is a little eccentric, you see.”
It didn’t seem like I would get any more answers even if I asked further. I thanked him and tried to take out a few copper coins as payment, but he waved his hands, saying there was no need for that, so I simply bowed my head.
In any case, a mage, huh. Mages weren’t rare, but they weren’t common enough to be found in a village like this either.
For now, I decided to meet this mage.