4 – Episode 4
#4
The trip was settled at a breakneck speed.
Eredis was a wanderer; he was used to travel. Ian had no baggage to worry about.
“Mother. Father. I must be going now.”
“Alright. Do listen to the magician!”
“Study hard! Raven!”
“Brother! You must return!”
From Noble mtl dot com
He leaves Youngji amidst the fervent farewells of his family.
Leaving the land where he had lived all of his short ten years for the first time, his feelings are in turmoil.
“Should I… call you… teacher?”
“Not yet. I haven’t taught you anything, have I? Just call me sister.”
He had always wondered, but was it right to call her sister?
A child’s eyes see things very differently from an adult’s. Eredis herself was confident that she appeared quite young. She looked more like an aunt in Ian’s eyes.
Eredis was 35 years old this year. She was older than Ian’s mother.
The fact that Ian’s younger sister called her an aunt was a result of her spine-chillingly accurate insight.
“Sister.”
“Hmm! Is there anything you’re curious about?”
The atmosphere implied that it was okay to ask her anything, but he wondered if it was okay to ask this.
Nevertheless, Ian couldn’t curb his curiosity.
“Why did you make me your disciple, sister?”
Eredis offered a subtle smile. He assumed that Ian was feeling anxious.
Ian was completely ignorant about the world of magic, of time and space artisans. Ignorance soon becomes fear. It was his lack of knowledge that made him nervous.
Why suddenly he, the son of a farmer, had become a magician’s disciple.
It was an adult’s duty to alleviate his fears.
“I received a prophecy.”
“A… prophecy?”
Suddenly, Ian was taken aback by the fantastic word that popped up out of nowhere. He knew that this was a medieval fantasy world, but he hadn’t expected a prophecy.
A prophecy!
Isn’t this an event that any key character in a fantasy genre experiences at least once?
There are typically two types of prophecy events.
One prophesies great success, and the other, great ruin.
Ian involuntarily swallowed his saliva.
“What kind of prophecy is it?”
“Well, what do you think?”
Eredith blatantly violated the first rule of Q&A.
The first rule of Q&A: Do not answer a question with a question.
However, Ian was just as audacious.
“Is it a prophecy that I become a grand wizard in the future?”
He blurted it out. It’s tolerable when children do it. It’s intolerable when adults do it, but when children do it, it’s considered boldness.
Because there are countless ‘possibilities’ for children.
Unlike adults, who have closed their growth plates and are just waiting for death, there is hope for all children.
“Pfft. You dream big. Do you want to become a grand wizard?”
Eredith was no different from ordinary adults, he didn’t loathe the dreams of children, especially if they were his disciples.
“Yes!”
Little Ian responded strongly.
He looked very cute to Eredith.
‘I’ve chosen a good disciple.’
If he had really taken on an official disciple, he would have found a disciple much cuter than Ian.
Wizards choose their disciples at a young age, typically starting at five years old, because the younger they are, the faster they absorb information.
In the industry where age quickly dominates cuteness, the cuteness of a ten-year-old stands no chance against that of a five-year-old. By ten, it’s time to graduate from the industry and move to the next stage. It appears they are simply too old to exude cuteness. It’s a brutal, unsentimental rule.
However, to the eyes of Eredis, Ian’s first disciple, Ian appears merely cute-Indeed, being his first disciple.
For Eredis, who has never had a child, the cuteness of a child was a novel and refreshing pleasure.
“Actually, I’m not sure if Ian will be able to use magic.” “What?”
It was a shocking statement. Ian, who had been chosen as a disciple upon first meeting, could be a complete nonentity when it comes to magic!
It may just be a realm of possibility, but to Ian, the idea was terrifying. If he failed to become a wizard, he could hardly see his way to living.
However, Eredis was confident that this conjecture would be proven wrong.
After all, it was the prophecy of a top-ranked time-space magic user. They had said when she accepted Ian as a disciple, something good would happen. And Ian becoming incapable of magic certainly wouldn’t be a good thing.
“In order to learn magic, you will need to study hard.”
Ian nodded vigorously.
Just like in other fantasy settings, in this world, wizards had to be intelligent.
In other words, an idiot cannot become a wizard.
‘I can do this.’
Jaehan Kwak, a Korean, was a science student. He wanted to go to the math department in college, but people around him chided him for being crazy, and he ended up in computer science.
Although it wasn’t at a SKY-level prestigious school, he did enter a university that would receive a response of ‘oh, that place?’ upon mentioning, so he didn’t think his intelligence was that bad.
The golden rule in fantasy for wizards is the calculation of spells.
Calculation? Jaehan Kwak is a calculation geek who wakes up even from a deep sleep for a calculation.
One could mock him for having no better hobby than to geek over numbers. But calculations were unexpectedly beautifully and a sacred ritual for a clear mind. ‘I can calculate any spell.’
While Ian was having these pipe dreams.
Eredis… had no thoughts in particular.
For someone destined by a prophecy, they would just naturally know what to do.
And so, the two of them continued their travels.
#
For Eredis, who was born a wanderer, there was no such thing as a base.
In her life up until now, not once had she felt a need for a base. This was because she was a quite skilled sorcerer, and so by solving a few inconvenient tasks, she could usually handle her daily meals in one fell swoop.
She was the kind of wizard that nobles strived to invite and yearned to die for, why would she need to buy a house when the whole empire felt like her home?
But Eredis, for the first time in a very long while, bought a house.
Northwestern Empire, at the foot of the Golden Mountain Range.
Eredis purchased a house that was built as a hunting lodge for the nobility. She then remodeled it into a cozy dwelling.
She would live here until her disciple grew up and became recognized as a sorcerer in their own right.
“How is it? Pretty nice, right?”
Eredis was of simple taste. If she enjoyed profligate things, then wandering around the empire aimlessly with no home wouldn’t have been possible.
However, with a big determination, she bought a nice house. It was for her adorable apprentice.
To Ian, who had spent his lifetime in a cramped and run-down cabin, the house looked no less luxurious than a palace.
“Yes! I love it, thank you!”
“hahahaha. Your big sister spent quite a chunk of coin!”
The only downside was that the house was based in the mountains—it was somewhat inconvenient to manage.
But for a former nomad like Eredis, her sense of settled life was poor. So again, she didn’t think much of it.
She was simply pleased with the rows of magic books lining her shelves.
“Now that everything is sorted, shall we start the lesson?”
Ian’s heart started to race.
A historic moment of taking the first step to become a wizard.
“Ian Raven. From this moment, you will serve me, Eredis Mancal, as your master.”
“Yes, Master!”
“Good. Your name is now Ian Eredis Raven.”
Ian’s nickname has grown.
Ian Eredis Raven.
In simplest terms, it means Ian the Large Crow, who’s Eredis’s pupil.
The first formal lesson commenced.
“Magic is an extremely dangerous skill. You cannot start anything without thorough preparation.”
Eredis was deadly serious. His usual lax attitude was nowhere to be found.
Ian also buckled down to the lesson.
“Open your grimoire.”
Ian cautiously opened the book, careful not to shake his hand.
The unfamiliar characters sprawled out like a sea. Ian was a raft adrift in this sea of knowledge.
“This is…”
“The basics of all basics for magic. The Marionius language.”
His stomach was churning.
This magical language, the Marionius language, was both familiar and new.
The Marionius language was eerily similar to the ancient Asian characters.
So.
‘Chinese…characters?’
Sophisticated pictographs.
Ian’s vision went pitch-black…!
‘Such an outrageous! It is Chinese characters!’
Ian was capable of doing math even in dreams.
But Chinese characters weren’t his major.
Studying literature was a thing for those filthy liberal arts students!
Those liberal arts students need to know Chinese characters to recite the poetry they so love to talk about. Well, unless it’s not their major, then they needn’t bother.
But to Ian, who was a science student, this was an irrelevant matter.
But who would have thought that same Ian would end up studying fantasy iconography!
“You’re going to be studying 100 characters a day, starting today.”
“Isn’t that a bit much?”
“If it’s burdensome, I can reduce it.”
This is 100%. No, it’s 200% burdensome.
There’s no way I can digest that. Ian thought.
“But this is just the basic thousand characters. It’s easy, so you should be able to finish it in a month?”
Ian was astounded. A basic set of 1000 characters?
He thought they were similar to Chinese characters. This was a true Thousand Character Classic…!
“Shall we start slowly then?”
Ian’s first magic class began.
The teaching method was simple. Eredis would teach the name and pronunciation of the character, and Ian would follow diligently.
Afterwards, she would explain how the character came to have its shape.
“This character is pronounced ‘Ere.’ It’s the same as my name, right? When Maronius created these characters, he borrowed a considerable amount from ancient language, so there are many overlapping pronunciations.”
Eredis, who had made magic the topic of conversation for the first time in quite a while, led the lecture enthusiastically, as if her body was warming up by itself.
She was innately a magic enthusiast. She loved magic so much, she has hardly any memories of the struggle she had from learning the basics to becoming independent.
As a result, she became the incarnation of a talkative talker who could talk on the same topic for hours if it was about magic.
But Ian didn’t know the first thing about magic.
In addition, Ian, a purebred science student who hated all foreign languages familiar to Koreans, including Chinese, English, Japanese and Chinese, found the time to learn the iconographic characters from other worlds called Maronius too painful.
After the marathon class that went on for six hours, Eredis evaluated Ian’s achievement.
“Ian! How do you pronounce this character?”
“…”
After teaching the complete 100 characters, she picked a word at random and asked Ian.
She blithely threw out what she thought was a simple, no-pressure question.
But all Ian’s mind could muster was blankness.
‘What was it…?’
He recalled seeing maybe six similar characters.
‘I’m screwed.’
He got it wrong. It was over for Ian.
If he knew it would come to this, he wouldn’t have been so lazy about studying liberal arts!
No! He should have been a liberal arts student from the beginning!
This was when Ian was babbling to himself.
[Ian Raven – Magic Beginner]
[Skill: Magic Language]
[Ability to learn and utilize the magic language]
[Maronius language – in progress]
‘Huh?’
It was the status window.
Ian was surprised to see the status window that popped up in front of him.
This thing… works?