CH 20

Their first impression of Chaos was that of an unreliable-looking foreign boy who looked nothing like an adventurer. This was because his clothes were shabby for an adventurer, all he had was a staff that looked just like one a beginner would use, and he had black hair, which was rare around these parts.

Despite their concerns, Chaos was the only adventurer they could get, so they had no choice but to add him to their party for the extracurricular training, although this may have been planned by someone. And since he said he didn’t need any compensation even though they were hiring him, Irene was even more wary of him, even suspecting him of being a saboteur that someone hired. In a situation like this, when he told Irene that she shouldn’t participate in the party, these suspicions only grew. However, when she listened closer, he wasn’t telling her that she couldn’t accompany them, he was only warning her that it wouldn’t benefit Alexia for Irene to fight. Even though they only just met, he saw that there was a difference in ability between the master and servant, and on top of that, made remarks showing his consideration for the master. Irene relaxed, concluding that he genuinely seemed to be an adventurer who accepted their request.

Alexia, on the other hand, felt envy and a bit of jealousy towards him, knowing that his abilities as a mage would certainly surpass her own, the struggling student that she was. When they faced the blood rabbit, the difference in their abilities became apparent. Unlike her crude, feeble Mana Bolts, Chaos used a Mana Bolt comparable to the other students’. She had a faint, baseless hope that, even as talentless as she was, she might be able to do something in her first real battle, but after witnessing that scene, even that faint hope was shattered.

When she was then asked, “Do you want to become stronger as you are now?” it stands to reason that her response would be “Yes.” She didn’t know yet what the phrase “as you are now” meant, but in her despair of craving strength as a mage, those words in that moment were a sweet and deadly poison to her. Even after all of her struggles, she still hasn’t been able to acquire the strength of an average mage. If she could truly become stronger, she would even agree to offer herself as compensation if asked.

Therefore, she had no choice but to simply nod in response to his proposal.

“Basically, the power of a spell is connected to Intelligence and Wisdom. You got that?”

Alexia nods. There’s support magic that clerics use called Intelligence Boost and Wisdom Boost. They’re ability boosting spells that improve Intelligence and Wisdom. Mages can improve the power of their spells with Intelligence Boost and clerics with Wisdom Boost. That’s why mages seek knowledge and clerics refine their wisdom. This is common sense to them.

“With a few exceptions, the power of a magic attack skill is affected by Magic Attack Power. This is greatly affected by Intelligence and somewhat affected by Wisdom. In other words, since we have a lot of attack skills, we Magicians become more powerful the higher our Intelligence is.”

She judges from context that ‘Magician’ probably means ‘mage’, contemplating irrelevant thoughts about whether he calls it something different because he’s foreign, but it seems that spell power isn’t simply directly linked to intelligence. There was nothing like this mentioned in the books she studied, and even the teachers shouldn’t know about it. Is an entirely different line of thought being taught in foreign countries?

As she’s experiencing this shock, Chaos tells her something even more shocking.

“Well, even if your Intelligence is high, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.”

Chaos meant for it to be a joke, but for Alexia, these words are shocking enough to plunge her into darkness. In other words, her ancestors’ teachings were fundamentally wrong, and she feels that all the time she spent putting in so much effort that she vomited blood was pointless. Chaos said it so nonchalantly that it’s only natural that a slight urge to kill him grows within her.

But when she thinks about it calmly, that’s exactly right. No matter how much she studied as her professors’ taught her to, her magic didn’t improve at all. So it’s not like she never considered the theory that spell strength might not be affected by level of intelligence. However, it was true that other people’s magic improved the more they studied and accumulated knowledge. Because of that, it was never anything more than a theory, and she began to believe that, although magic improves as knowledge increases, this differs by person and she just doesn’t have the talent for it.

But thinking about it this way, it would explain one thing. The support spell, Intelligence Boost, which is said to raise intelligence. However, even if it increases the power of one’s spells, she’s never heard of it temporarily making someone smarter. If she thinks of it as increasing something else other than intelligence, that would be the natural result, but the thought that they’ve been using magic without even understanding its principles and blindly trusting in an academic system based on such uncertain information is terrifying to her.

“In your case, Lady Alexia, your Wisdom is high, so you’re what’s known as a Wisdom-type Magician, which means you’re fundamentally incompatible with Magician magic. Mana Bolt especially is a spell for which its power is directly linked to how high your Intelligence is. That’s why there’s a clear difference compared to Intelligence-types, Magicians with high Intelligence.”

So the cause of her low spell power is because her Intelligence is low and her Wisdom is high. However, the meaning of these words plunges Alexia into an even greater despair.

She was declared to be an unquestionably talentless mage. She’s been abandoned by her professors and ridiculed by those around her, but nobody has ever told her to her face that she has no talent. As she starts to believe his words, this harsh reality is such a shock to her that she immediately starts to feel lightheaded and Irene helps to support her.

She finally understands why he asked if she wants to become stronger as she is now. In short, it was a question of whether she wants to become stronger as a mage or become a cleric, which she has an aptitude for. She might have talent as a cleric. However… Even so, she has to be a mage.

“That said, there are Magician spells where power is affected by Wisdom or unaffected by Intelligence. If you use those, you can definitely become stronger than you are now. If you make it to Rank 2 and become a Sage, you’ll become even stronger.”

In the midst of her despair, a ray of light shines down on her. That’s right, he said there was a way to become stronger as a mage. He also used unfamiliar terms like Rank 2 and Sage. He seems to have vast magical knowledge unknown even to Weichsel. And so, as if grasping at straws, she decided in her heart to believe in his words.

Alexia hides herself in the bushes so that she doesn’t enter the blood rabbits’ field of vision. As she looks over to Chaos and Irene nearby, they nod back at her.

Seeing this, she chants the incantation.

“Sleep Cloud.”

A white fog surrounds the blood rabbits. Assailed by drowsiness, the blood rabbits close their eyes and collapse.

“Poison Mist.”

A green mist enshrouds the sleeping blood rabbits, obscuring them. After a short while, the mist clears up, but the blood rabbits still don’t make even the slightest movement. Time passes as Alexia and the others continue to observe them.

“It’s about time now,” Chaos remarks, and they all approach the blood rabbits. Confirming that the blood rabbits have stopped breathing, Alexia realizes that she finally killed a monster all by herself for the first time.

“Irene, I did it. I killed a monster by myself!” Alexia says, hugging Irene in excitement. As a chamberlain, she should reprimand her for this improper behavior, but it’s so nice seeing her master trembling with joy that all she can do is hug her back. But at the same time, she has mixed feelings about it.

‘Putting it to sleep and killing it with poison… It’s like an assassin’s technique. However, it is a fight, so perhaps this is normal.’

Since she’s learned proper swordsmanship, she just can’t erase the phrase ‘dirty trick’ from her mind, and this conduct which feels unbecoming of a noble is distressing to her.

Irene glances over at Chaos, who has made her master’s talent blossom. It seems that a part of her was convinced that Alexia had no talent in magic. And so, although he has aided her master by bringing out her talent, to a small extent, she has dark feelings towards the boy who brought out an emotion that she hasn’t seen in her master’s face in all the years she’s served her.

Meanwhile, although Chaos doesn’t show it on his face, he deliberates, ‘Status ailment magic is way stronger than I thought. It was only supposed to weaken them before she attacked. Maybe I should get one too. Oh, but then I wouldn’t have enough skill points. What should I do…?’

“Status ailment magic?” Alexia repeated.

“That’s right,” Chaos said. “A lot of Magician spells are direct attacks, but there are some spells that affect the enemy in a way that benefits us in combat. That’s status ailment magic. For example, there’s the spell Spider Net. It’s a spell that creates an effect centered around yourself which causes the enemy to be Slowed, decreasing their movement speed.”

“But you can’t defeat an enemy by slowing it down, can you?”

Alexia also knew about Spider Net. However, it wasn’t a spell that could defeat enemies.

“Slow isn’t the only status ailment. There’s also Burn, Poison, Sleep, Paralysis, and Silence. In this case, we’ll use a Burn or Poison spell to deal damage to the enemy. Intelligence and Wisdom don’t affect the power or success rate of status ailment spells. So our strategy this time is to inflict Burn or Poison on the enemy to have it accumulate damage and then defeat it while it’s weakened.”

“I see…” Alexia said as a look of realization appeared on her face.

“But there’s a problem. Both of them have a high success rate but are inefficient, so if you don’t want it to escape, you need to trap it with Sleep or Paralysis. This time, we’ll use Sleep since it works best for beast-types.”

“Sleep… That would be Sleep Cloud, correct? But isn’t it only a light sleep where a single hit can cause it to awaken?” Alexia voiced her doubts.

“That would be the case for a normal attack spell, but status ailment spells deal damage indirectly, so it won’t wake the enemy up.”

“In other words, we can defeat the enemy without it attacking us back… What a dreadful thought,” said Irene, who hadn’t opened her mouth until now, grimacing as she imagined that gruesome spectacle.

“There are also enemies that are immune or resistant to status ailment spells. For example, Sleep and Poison don’t work on undead-types. In cases like that, you can fight them by combining the ones they aren’t resistant to, Paralysis to restrain it and then Burn. Lady Alexia should be able to defeat most monsters by mastering status ailment magic.”

‘Unlike Intelligence-type Magicians, there isn’t much point for a Wisdom-type Magician to use skill points on attack skills. Conversely, that means she’ll have many skill points that she can take all the status ailment spells she wants.’

“All of that makes sense. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that I still haven’t learned any spells other than Mana Bolt.”

“It’s true that you wouldn’t be able to learn them yet at your level, but if we keep hunting like before, you should be able to learn them soon.”

‘It’ll take 3 skill points to learn Sleep Cloud and Poison Mist, and they can be learned at level 6. If we go at the same rate as yesterday, we’ll make it there in no time.’

Alexia closed her eyes. This was to calm her mind which had been filled with shocks the likes of which she hadn’t experienced until now. She couldn’t let go of the light that she had seen at last. Suppressing her feelings of impatience, she prays that Chaos will make her stronger.

And so, she was finally able to take a step forward in her progress as a mage which had been at a standstill.

This was the first meeting of the celebrated national saint formerly named Marie Alexia von Zavarish and her mentor, Chaos.

It can be assumed from her diary and the Adventurer’s Guild records that most of this is true. Her diary in particular, in addition to having high historical value, is rated highly as a story, giving a detailed account of how she met her mentor Chaos after a harsh childhood and, as he transformed her into a girl befitting her age, she began to yearn for him. Because of this, many plays about the tragic love between her and Chaos have been performed.

An Introduction to Magic, which was written by her and is a cornerstone of the study of magic to this day, caused a stir in the academic world. It contained unknown spells as well as unique logic and data that differed in various ways from the magic theory of the time, which was ill-defined up to this point. All of the other books she wrote followed a similar pattern. In the first edition of each one, there was always a thank-you note to Chaos in the foreword. It is likely that all of the writings she left to us would not exist without Chaos.

If all that was written in Marie Alexia von Zavarish’s diary is true, then Chaos is a hero who saved the Weichsel Empire, these achievements included. However, at the time, the people of the Weichsel Empire did not know of his achievements nor even his name until the Commune Battle of Liberation which shook the world and made the name Chaos known to all.

This series of achievements was not revealed until decades later, after her death and the discovery of her seventeen diaries.

She regretted this all her life, and judging by the fact that she wrote about this in her diary until the day she collapsed from illness, we can infer that it was a considerable regret.

Why was his achievement concealed, and why was she revered as the national saint?

Let us continue to use her diary to uncover history.

***

Author’s note: In addition to normal paralysis, Paralysis also includes restraint with magical rope.