Genius Wizard Conceals His Origins

T/N: Re-edited 9/3/24.

“Pick up the grimoire. Imagine. And chant.”

– Preface,《Basic Magic Textbook – Volume 1 / Benjamin Oslo》

Suddenly, that phrase flashed through my mind.

A passage devoted ten pages to a subject unrelated to the main content, translated into ten different languages. Unlike the main text, written entirely in Frauvian, the preface was also written in the Imperial language.

It was the only passage from a magic book that I could read.

That’s why I read it repeatedly, at least a hundred times. I could recite it from memory by now.

But why did the author write such a preface?

Why did he have it translated into all those different languages?

“Raitation.” 

Pffft–

“Rovitation.”

Pffft–

Pffft, pffft, pffft.

No matter how much I thought about it, knowing the author’s intentions would be difficult, but I could still make guesses.

I decided to think of it this way:

Sometimes, when learning feels truly cold and lonely; when opening a book seems foolish…

Imagine the ancestors patting your back from above the heavens.

“Levi-“

Dawn breaks into the back alley. The sunlight piercing through the overcast weather illuminates my whole body.

#December 17th. Cloudy.

“Hey.”

Quiet.

“Hey, brats.”

Still quiet.

The dark sky. As the cellar somewhere in the back alley is enveloped in silence, the darkness seems even thicker.

Remy sits slumped in a chair, looking over the five men and women standing at attention.

The silence was so loud that you could almost hear their eyeballs rolling.

He didn’t like it.

Of course, if they had answered, he would have liked it even less. The five knew this fact to the point of irritation, so they obediently bowed their heads in a show of obedience.

That certainly pleased the boss.

Remy snapped his fingers left and right with a smirk.

“*snap* *snap* *snap* Ding! Well, it’s time. Dinner time for those of you who couldn’t catch a single beggar for two whole days.”

“……”

“Why the silence? Go on to the market.”

“…Boss.”

The youngest girl took a step forward.

The other four, terrified, quickly signaled for her to shut up, but the youngest took another step forward. There was no stopping her now.

Remy responded in a gentle voice.

“Hmm. Why is that?”

“I can… skip dinner this time.”

“No, no! There’s no need for that. We have plenty of money. I promised we wouldn’t go hungry, at least having two meals a day, even if not three.”

“No. It’s ok. It’s because I couldn’t find anyone. But could I rest for just one day tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“I haven’t slept… I feel like I’m going to collapse..”

Remy opened his mouth, still smiling.

“Hmm. That won’t do.”

“Wh-why not?”

“I promised, didn’t I? That if you joined us and worked together, I would feed you, let you sleep, and take care of everything. Since I promised, you have to work, right?”

“…You didn’t say it would be like this.”

The youngest girl brought her trembling fists up to her chest.

“You said we young ones should band together to survive. You said we’d help each other out until the Frauvian soldiers withdrew someday. That’s what you said when you reached out your hand.”

Her voice became choked with emotion.

Being still young, the youngest had trouble controlling her feelings even after experiencing the war. Containing her rising indignation was extremely difficult.

The others inwardly prayed while maintaining their at-attention stance:

‘Please, that’s enough.’

However, the youngest ended up raising her voice nonetheless.

The youngest girl shouted.

“But this, this is just being a gang of thugs! Taking advantage of war to rob people of their homes, money, and families – we’re becoming the very people we despised most!”

Insults poured forth at the smiling face.

Not a single curse word was uttered, yet it cut deep.

“When you said we just had to take one book, I thought it would be easy. I thought if we fought back, you’d just brush it off. I thought that would be the end of it.”

But that boy resisted to the end.

Unlike herself, who, as a refugee, could not withstand hunger and traded a toy gifted by a friend for three loaves of bread.

“That beggar kid was about my age.”

“……”

“Actually, it’s funny to even call him a beggar. If you hadn’t reached out to me, Boss, I would have been in that position. I was beating myself up just to get barely two meals a day–!”

Finally, tears streamed down her face.

Out of breath, her whole body trembled. After catching her breath a few times, the youngest realized she had been venting pure emotion incoherently.

She was about to look Remy in the eye and finish speaking.

A palm came flying.

SMACK!

The rest of the gang squeezed their eyes shut.

The girl’s body flew through the air. Her head whipped around violently, and her entire torso roughly tumbled across the dirty wooden floor.

THUD!

So that was what getting slapped meant.

When the gang opened their eyes again, Remy was still smiling.

“Hey. Kid.”

No answer. But she was probably listening.

“Why are you pretending to be so good all by yourself?”

So Remy mocked her with all his might. Guffaws filled the cellar.

“Kid. Poor kid. You must have thought this way. That you alone were pure. Even in this war, you alone did not lose your humanity and showed kindness to others. That you alone were innocent. Am I right?”

“But here’s the thing.”

“You haven’t actually done a damn thing, kid. You’ve never struggled to survive, have you? You’re past due to graduate from being a little brat who thinks bread will just drop from the sky if you sit still.”

“Let me remind you – the Empire started this war.”

“It’s best you don’t play the tragic heroine. No one cares how mature you are. No matter how much you thrash around, we can’t lay a finger on the Federation. Why? Because we’re from the rogue nation, the bloodline of Imperialist savages!”

When he finished speaking, his sneer had turned into a full-blown guffaw.

The youngest cried, fallen on the floor, and the gang bowed their heads with eyes closed. 

They wished Remy really was just a simple thug, as the youngest claimed. But he was a proficient villain who, by whatever means, made sure the gang got two meals a day.

Among the downtrodden, distinguishing good from evil is as meaningless as it gets. So, in this situation, the only thing that matters is one fact:

There is no lie in his words.

“Ah, I’ve had a good laugh.”

The laughter was gone, and a sinister blankness settled on Remy’s face.

“Kid, you were right.”

He said:

“We’ll stop searching here. That bastard must have grown wings or something; he won’t be caught. Whether he was too good or you all sucked, it seems a waste to go any further… James?”

The young man was called and perked his head up.  

“Uh, yes?” 

“From tomorrow, take the kid and collect dues as usual. Educate her more thoroughly.”

The young man nodded.

Two were assigned tasks. The remaining three looked bewildered at the boss. 

“The rest of you, come with me.”

“Where to…?”

“Where else? The military base. If a beggar wizard is roaming the city center, we obviously have to report it to the soldiers, right?”

“Oh? You saw him use magic?”

Remy grinned slyly.

“200 pounds if he uses magic. 50 if not. It’s not like that money is coming out of the officers’ pockets anyway. We have evidence of him wandering around – who would be the loser here?”

#December 18th. Rain.

At the Frauvian Federal Army Base in Leman…

The drizzling place was quite idyllic. No different from usual.

Lining up in formation and marching, or going on street patrols, was the lot of the rank-and-file soldiers. The officers had nothing to do – hence the pot bellies, though they weren’t pregnant. 

Civilian-led magic suppression had more or less wrapped up a couple of years ago.

From then on, it became rare for officers to leave the camp on official duty.

“The Imperial bastards don’t even resist. If it were me, I’d have learned magic stubbornly and knocked out enemy officers from behind.”

Sayings like those were very common.

After successfully halting the Imperial Army’s advance, the Federation’s occupation of the Empire progressed smoothly. Narratively iconic figures like ‘war heroes’ or ‘leaders of the revolution’ did not emerge on either the Imperial or Federal side. 

To make matters worse, eight out of ten officers at the Leman base were personnel separately dispatched after the armistice – in other words, salarymen – so their ennui was even more profound.

Due to these combined circumstances, the ‘wizard sighting’ case drew considerable interest within the camp despite the dubious credibility of the informants.

At the camp entrance.

An officer with a potbelly stood before the gang in an at-attention stance. He had aides flanking him, but the arrogant way he held an umbrella over just himself while letting the aides’ shoulders get soaked was quite overbearing.

The officer narrowed his brow and spoke.

“Captain Carno. These people claimed to have seen someone using magic.”

“Yes, Captain Carno. We–” 

“Tsk.”

The moment Remy opened his mouth, the officers’ expressions instantly soured.

Their upturned gazes looked at them like animals.

They clearly disdained even mingling words with them.

“Treating these things like people, honestly…”

Though the gang had the initiative naturally taken from them, all they could do was listen quietly.

The officer to the captain’s right responded.

“That’s what they say.”

“I see? Well, then, we’ll have to root them out immediately. Prepare an investigation squad.” 

“Understood.”

“And you. You, alleyway boss. What was your name again?”

This question, too, was not directed at the subject himself. After getting a rough answer from the officer – ‘Remy, was it? No last name? Ah, got it.’ – Captain Carno gave a perfunctory nod. 

Meanwhile, Remy inwardly cheered. 

The unpleasantness was nothing new. But for a captain, a high-ranking officer like this, to take the bait – any resistance from a mere beggar would be meaningless now.

A foregone victory. 

As Remy silently celebrated, the captain leisurely gave instructions.

“You lot will accompany this person. She’s an elite, so obey her dutifully.”  

No sooner had he finished speaking than the officer to the captain’s left stepped slightly forward.

Sleek black hair cascaded over the shoulder boards of her olive uniform. 

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Second Lieutenant Dorothy Oslo.”