Vol 3 Chapter 47.1 – Boyhood: Winter, Age Thirteen・Part 3

I was made to keenly realize that a normal lecture is far better for my mental state than being taunted.

After being taunted for over thirty minutes by that monster, who circled me asking, “Do you even know your own limits~?”, I was on the verge of tears. But if it gets him to cover the repair costs, it’s a small price to pay. It’s not like I could just brush it off and claim it was the machine’s fault for breaking just because someone like me put a little thought into it. Besides, I had made the reservation beforehand, promising I would only be doing simple experiments.

On top of that, Eliza defended me, declaring, “I’ll get seriously angry if you bully my nii-sama,” so I should probably count this as a net positive. My little sister is a true angel. It was a little terrifying how her magical power was leaking out, making her hair stand on end, but she is a true angel.

“Hey, nii-sama.”

“Hm? What is it, Eliza?”

After being freed from my Master—who, after taunting me relentlessly, gave me the mildly gratifying assessment, “Well, you made a pretty decent piece of work”—I was cleaning the disciple’s quarters that served as Eliza’s living space.

When you hear “disciple’s room,” you can’t help but imagine a spartan, Showa-style boarding house. The space, however, was an impressive, spacious room of about sixteen tatami mats, a testament to the fact that this was the dwelling of someone aspiring to a profession you couldn’t enter without money. With my hands working in tandem, I gathered scattered memos and half-read books—I have to remind her to keep things neat and tidy—and used 《Cleansing Purge》 magic to purify various spots. That’s when Eliza spoke to me. When I turned around, she was wearing a casual nightgown, lying on a bed with far more stuffing than the one back home.

The nightgown, made of many thin layers of silk and likely worth more than my older brother and his wife’s entire cottage, was, needless to say, a gift from Lady Reisen, the borderline predator. I’ll let it slide since it’s not see-through, but seriously, what kind of twisted hobby does that life-worshipping, cradle-robbing pervert have? Cute clothes I could understand, but getting joy from dressing a young girl in a nightgown like this is beyond sick. And what kind of disorder makes someone so obsessed with gloves and socks?

“Nii-sama, why do you make scary magic like that?”

My beloved sister asked with an air of genuine wonder. The way she tilted her head, staring at me with pure, adorable eyes, was heart-wrenchingly lovely. My child is an angel, no doubt about it.

Her question, however, was one that struck me deep in my heart.

“Why…? Well, because it’s useful for all sorts of things.”

When she calls it “scary magic,” she’s absolutely right, so I can’t argue. Even I thought the power was a bit much.

“All sorts of things? My Shishou says a lot of dangerous stuff, too, but I don’t really get it. Why is it necessary to ‘willingly’ do something so scary?”

The innocent sentiment, carried on fluid courtly language, flew into my ears, passed through my brain, and seeped into my soul. My justification for crafting combat magic for the vague goal of becoming an adventurer dissolved and wavered under the droplet of doubt she had introduced.

I’m trying to become an adventurer based on a yearning from my past life—in other words, a frivolous motive. It’s needless to say that it’s a brutal world of kill-or-be-killed, not a gentle story where a simplistic plotline of poetic justice is prepared for you beforehand.

Jobs where killing is the premise from the very beginning exist as a matter of course, and depending on the situation, it’s common for quests to leave you with nothing but the worst possible choices right from the start. Routine work like hunting bandits is arguably for the greater good, but that doesn’t change the fact that blood will be shed.

Saving a village from barbarian attacks and storming a labyrinth to plunder its treasures are, in essence, the same. In the end, the one thing that follows you everywhere is simply an exchange of lives.

So if I were asked whether it’s a decent way to live, to do a job that is accompanied by such bloodshed as if it were my spouse… I couldn’t nod my head in agreement right away.

My motive is, for better or worse, “frivolous.” My mentality is no different from a Level 1 Fighter who, inspired by an adventure tale of a hero, bolted from his country village. But the work that awaits is different.

Fortunately, I have yet to kill a human. If you count the demonic beings that were once people, then my hands are already dirty, so to speak.

But I have yet to deliver the final blow to a living person.

I didn’t kill the bandits I fought alongside Mika—though they’re probably being stretched out somewhere by now—and while there were some close calls during the journey to the Imperial Capital, I managed to get by.

Even so, there’s no guarantee things will continue to go so well. In fact, against the former master of the Sword of Craving—an opponent who surpassed me in skill—I was completely unable to hold back. He was an undead, but if he had been human, I would have killed him for sure.

When I think about it, it’s a terrifying story. Even if I’ve grown accustomed to this brutal civilization, where death is so much closer and life so much cheaper than in my previous life, it’s not like my internal valuation of life has wavered.

Being told my fighting magic was scary has given birth to doubt. It’s not that the excitement from conquering that demon palace has faded, nor has my admiration for TRPGs lost its color.

It’s just that a single dark accent has been added to a picture that was, until now, painted only with bright colors.

“Eliza is… um, I don’t understand. Why is it necessary to do scary things? I wish you would just study with me, nii-sama.”

And yet, that color was more than dark enough to make me hesitate. Do I truly have a motive to willingly leave this peaceful life behind?

“…But you see, Eliza, there are a lot of bad people in the world. So, we need a little bit of scary magic so we won’t be in trouble if they attack us. If anything happened to you, Eliza, your nii-sama would be sad enough to die.”

That was the best I could do to deflect her question.

It really is a difficult problem, as it dives into the higher-level philosophical debate of whether any person has the right to harm another. To be honest, it’s a line of thought that’s not good for your health; it causes a lot of mental damage for no real gain.

I can personally vouch for that. I did enough of this kind of pointlessly lofty thinking while I was dying of cancer in my past life. I continued right up until the literal moment of my death, so I’ve experienced firsthand just how bad it is for your mental state. That’s precisely why I took up things like meditation—to escape the pain and not have to think at all.

“Hmm… scary people… to protect…”

Watching Eliza mutter with a look of wonder and fall into the silent contemplation typical of a budding mage, I shook my head. What am I doing, thinking like some shonen manga protagonist who just took a mental attack from the enemy? It doesn’t benefit anyone, and it certainly isn’t fun.

I’m not trying to be defiant, but in this world, you can get caught up in bloodshed often enough even while living a perfectly peaceful life. You could be running a business and fall victim to a violent robbery—where they kill the family and steal your valuables—and the danger of kidnapping is obviously very real, since Eliza herself was almost taken once.

People who fight are indispensable. Even if they don’t have a grand cause, even if their reasons are shallow.

Shaking off my sliver of doubt, I finished my cleaning and prepared a snack for my sister, who was still lost in thought with a difficult expression on her face…