Fortunately, there was a large map near the city's plaza. According to the bird's-eye view, the city was circular in shape, divided into four districts. The place I was in now was...
District 4. A place where knight cadets trained. No wonder the people around here had such incredible physiques. My view was that of a child, so I couldn't be certain, but even by a conservative estimate, there were plenty of men who looked to be over 190 centimeters tall.
"My public duel next week is against an ogre. I'm going to die."
"You unlucky bastard..."
It was my first time seeing knights, and their gait was certainly different. Their strides were uncannily uniform. Hands at their waists, their eyes constantly scanned their surroundings even while talking with acquaintances.
It must be part of their training. I walked for a long while, trying my best not to attract any attention. This place was ridiculously vast.
I wasn't joking; it was like a small city in itself. The one silver lining was that District 3, where the mages lived, was right next door.
"Huh."
The first thing I saw as I neared District 3 was a spire. A magic tower. But there was a magic tower on every other block, like some neighborhood tailor shop.
Don't they usually have just one per city? It was absurd. So this was the academy...
By this point, I was feeling a sense of awe as I entered a building nearby that looked like some kind of school.
Pretending to wipe the area with a rag, I made my way to the information board in the building's hall and read its contents— [Advanced Magical Studies Lecture, Auditorium 5-1, 3 PM] It seemed I had found the right place. But Advanced Magical Studies? I probably wouldn't understand a thing even if I eavesdropped.
Was there no Basic Magical Studies? No, wait, was learning magical studies even the right thing to do? Was this magic— "Excuse me."
"Gahhhhhh!!!"
I jumped.
My heart nearly leaped out of my chest. I turned around to see a cadet wearing round glasses, tilting his head as he looked at me. In other words, a noble.
I bowed my head at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
"Hello. Is there something you need? I am sorry. I will not come here again."
"Ah, no. Are you a janitor? I was just going to ask you to throw this cup away..."
"Yes, sir."
I immediately took the empty cup and stuffed it into my back pocket. Thankfully, the cadet didn't seem to be angry that I was looking at the information board. No, on second thought, that was only natural.
What crime was there in looking at an information board? Even if I was a janitor, it wasn's like I had rubbed the cadets' faces with my rag. The cadet looked at my face with a curious expression, studying it from different angles.
"Is that so? The janitors these days are very young."
"I'm here for a job experience."
"A j-job experience? You're doing a job experience as a janitor?"
"Yes. It is a tradition at our orphanage."
"Ah... I see."
The cadet was rather dense. A 10-year-old wearing clothes twice his size was claiming to be a janitor, and he just passed it off as 'janitors are quite young these days.' Feeling like it might work, I blurted out a question.
"This is my first time at the academy, so I was wondering if you might know where the Basic Magic lectures are held?"
"Basic Magic? What kind of magic do you mean?"
Magic is magic.
"I just heard it was a complete beginner's class."
"Aha, you're looking for the children's class?"
"Yes!!!"
So there was one. I shouted without realizing it in my joy, and the cadet tilted his head as he told me the location.
"It's close from here. Go straight, and when you see a hill, just make one turn."
"Oh, I see. Thank you."
I had finally found it. I gave a deep bow and ran toward the location he mentioned. Just because it was the children's class building didn't mean it was small.
Of course, rather than just being large, it was painted with gentle curves and warm colors, making it look friendly. It was obvious at a glance that this was a place for kids. It seemed a class was in session, as I could hear someone lecturing inside.
"Hmph, hmph..."
I picked up a broom and, pretending to sweep, hummed naturally as I approached the door. ... Not just eavesdropping, but eavesdropping on a lecture. Well, as an orphan, I had to endure this much humiliation to attend an academy class.
Focusing all my senses on my ears— "Now, what did I say were the three components of a mage?"
"Me!"
The scene unfolding was identical to the one at the orphanage. The children were still full of energy and didn't seem to be paying much attention to the lesson. But the teacher of the children's class was undeterred, diligently teaching something.
"Mana, a person, and... will! Right?"
"In a narrow sense, that is correct, but more precisely, it is the world, the self, and the will."
"Huh? Where did the mana go?"
"Where do we get mana from? We get it from this world."
"But do we really have to call it 'world' instead of 'mana'?"
"When our Ria becomes the greatest mage someday, she'll be able to create her own world, not the physical-realm we live in, and draw mana from it. So, it's more accurate to call it the world rather than mana."
"Create a world...?"
"You don't need to understand it right now. Just know that it's possible."
"Okay..."
The content was very basic. I listened intently.
"And finally, the will... This is a matter of debate even in academic circles. That's because the will of a mage has a certain... murky feeling that can't quite be expressed by the word 'will' alone."
"What's a murky feeling?"
"Well, you see. Exceptional mages have such an unshakeable will that the word 'will' becomes a little distorted, you could say."
"Ehh... what do they call it then?"
"Two hundred and ten years ago, Corphenius used the words madness or frenzy, and these days, we use the slightly more refined word, conviction."
"Those all sound like bad things."
"Are mages bad people...?"
"N-no, no, no!! It's not a bad thing. It's, um... mages who can deceive the heavens are that type of person."
"Only someone who genuinely believes with an immense stubbornness that this world is wrong and they are right can become the master of a new world. Because in that world, their belief is the truth."
Even though they were noble children, they weren't so different from the kids at the orphanage. If anything, they seemed even more ill-mannered. Perhaps it was because the teacher couldn't hit them.
"Still, I don't like it..."
"H-how about we learn how to gather mana with me instead? This is fun."
"Yes!"
To lift the children's drooping spirits, the teacher of the children's class switched from theory to practice. This was it. I focused even harder.
"Mana resides in all things in the world. So, you can replenish mana even by breathing and eating."
"Then we don't need to gather mana, do we? We can get it from eating."
"Magic consumes a great deal of mana. Just eating and breathing is far from enough."
"Even for a very basic spell like Illumination, you would need to eat and sleep for three months to gather enough mana to use it."
Then, I heard the children exclaim in surprise, as if the teacher had demonstrated some magic.
"That's why the first mages researched ways to make the acts of eating, sleeping, and breathing dozens of times more efficient, to compress and accelerate them."
"And among those, the one we do for the longest time is breathing, isn't it? Naturally, that type of breathing technique evolved."
"Aha..."
"Now, follow me. Let's imagine you are inhaling something other than air when you breathe."
"Be conscious of something else around us besides the air, and with the thought of inhaling that, slowly..."
Something other than air. I tried to follow along— "... It's not working."
Well, what else was there in the world besides air? Was this a scam? As I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, I heard the sounds of kids succeeding one by one from inside.
"Oh, wow! I really feel something building up in my chest!"
"Right?"
"I did it too!"
While almost all the other kids had succeeded, I still couldn't even comprehend what they were talking about. Honestly, it was a little infuriating. Even if this was knowledge from a new world, I couldn't even beat a single child?
The only thing I could think of besides air was seawater. Should I try inhaling that? "...Cough, hack, gack!
I shouldn't have done that. The moment I tried breathing while consciously thinking of seawater, I truly felt my lungs fill with water. I couldn't even breathe.
I fell to the ground and threw up several times. Since nothing came out, it turned into dry heaves.
"Cough, cough... Ah, I really thought I was going to die..."
After barely calming down, I staggered and hid behind the building. The class would be over soon, and the kids would be coming out. In my current state, they would immediately notice something was wrong.
I wiped the drool from my mouth and shivered. I'd never been submerged in water before, but if I were to drown, I was sure it would feel just like this. While grumbling, I wondered if this had actually accomplished anything.
I tried using Illumination. And then— A light, incomparably brighter than the one in the library, filled the area behind the building.
"...?"
I dazedly examined the ball of light floating on my hand. Strangely, I didn't feel the squeezing sensation in my chest that I had felt the first time I used magic. I did feel like something had left me, but if I had to make an analogy, it was like pulling a single strand from my full head of hair.
So...
"... Maybe I should just die quietly." ...
It seemed I couldn't gather mana without experiencing drowning.
It wasn't all bad. The seawater I could feel sloshing inside my body didn't seem to decrease easily, no matter how much magic I used. Of course, the only magic I could use was Illumination, but compared to last time when I was completely drained after just a few seconds of light, it was a night-and-day difference.
Maybe it wouldn't work if I drank it? Instead of inhaling it like I was breathing, I tried swallowing the seawater as if drinking water. To be precise, I imagined that image. ...
Nothing happened.
I tried several other methods, but all I learned were a few despairing facts that were useless to know. 1. I must put seawater into my lungs to convert it into mana for use. 2. The feeling is very similar to drowning.
3. But it fills up a truly, truly massive amount. Enough to maintain Illumination for at least three days. I erased the notes I'd written in the sand with my foot and sighed.
"... Why does it have to be the lungs?"
It would have been much more convenient if it were my stomach. Even without knowing much about magic, I could tell this wasn't a normal method. It was probably because I was born in the heart-realm.
If I could get used to the sensation of my lungs filling with water someday, it might not be so bad... 'Can you even get used to this...?' It was just a loss.
Still, I had filled up my mana for now, so I wouldn't have to worry about it until it ran out. I pushed thoughts of the future to the future and picked up my broom again. My senior was probably about to finish his cleaning.
"W-what? Where did you go? I was looking all over for you!"
Indeed, even though I had hurried back, I found my senior searching for me. I put on a timid expression and blinked.
"I was looking for the restroom, but I couldn't find one, so I went a long way."
"Of course it's inside the building...!"
The senior let out a sigh that was half relief and half anger, then looked around with a bewildered expression.
"But what's this? You've already finished all the cleaning. How did you do it?? This place was big enough to take at least two hours."
"I'm good at cleaning."
"Really?... No, that can't be right. How does that make sense? It takes me two hours, so how did you—" Seeing that my senior seemed to think something was strange, I immediately put on a dark expression and used my ultimate move.
"A-actually..."
"Huh?"
"I'm used to this kind of thing... The director said that if I didn't clean a yard bigger than this every day within thirty minutes, he would beat my bottom until it burst..."
At my tearful tone, the senior made an indescribable expression and then let out a deep sigh.
".... Right, right. I asked a foolish question. Anyway, you worked hard..."
It worked every time.