CH 1

Episode 1 – Exile

My name is Lewin Jade, and I’m fourteen years old.

I was from a small village on the outskirts of the village of Dono, but now I live in a big city called Grezesta, which is one of the five major cities in the kingdom. I work there as a staff member of the Healer’s Guild. Since I was from a remote village and didn’t have any mentors or connections to speak of, the reason why I work in such a big city is probably because the Gift I manifested was Rare.

A Gift was a blessing from God that manifests in each person on their tenth birthday. Typical gifts include being able to learn skills that use magical power to perform abilities such as [Slash], or [Fireball], which let you perform a powerful attack or launch fireballs. With Gifts, most people used these kinds of ordinary skills, but there also existed extremely rare skills in this world that could only be learned through Gifts and could not be acquired otherwise. Only the skills learned through those types of Gifts could be called “Rare”.

One of the important traits of the Rare was that it allowed the activation of skills without the consumption of magic power. For example, there were powerful combat skills such as “faster learning of magic” or “mastery of all weapons”, as well as a wide range of non-combat skills such as “see other’s mana capacity”, or “weather forecast”. While Rare Skills could have a wide range of applications, there were also many skills that were useless. However, the skill endowed by my Gift was Rare, and was relatively practical in its use.

The skill’s name was [Plant Master]. If you do an appraisal, you could understand to some extent what kind of skill you had, but the appraisal literally only revealed these exact words to me at the time. At first, I thought it was a failure of skill, but later it turned out that this Gift could be used to appraise and identify plants, and it turned out to be a Rare Skill that could be used to some extent. After it was discovered that it was Rare, one thing led to another, and regardless of my own wishes, it was decided by the government that I would work for the Healer’s Guild, which is where I’m working now.

My father passed away before I could remember him, and my mother, working as a female laborer, was forced to raise me alone. When I was only 9 years old, she ended up dying from overwork after pushing herself too hard. From there, at an immature age, I somehow managed to eke out a living by serving as a helper for people in the village. Although it was through no wish of my own to become a staff member in the Healer’s Guild, it ended up being an extremely fortunate situation for me. The only regret I had was that I couldn’t visit the grave where my parents were buried… but I had to keep on moving forward with my life so I couldn’t say much about that.

Just like that, five years had gone by. Using the [Plant Master] skill, I worked to classify the various medicinal herbs in the Healer’s Guild, but the circumstances were not flattering to say the least. The biggest reason for that would probably be the fact that the Healer’s Guild was rife with total elitists. That was probably the case since being a Healer required a high degree of technical expertise and knowledge, so a commoner who normally couldn’t spare the time nor money wouldn’t be able to become one. Hence, among the Healer’s Guild personnel, everyone was a noble aside from me. That was also why all of the discrimination was directed at me alone, oppressing me beyond imagination.

Aside from the obvious odd jobs and chores, I was verbally abused every single day by the other personnel as an outlet for their stress, and was used as a test subject for clinical trials of potions which made me suffer many experiences where I wandered along the abyss of death. Being raised in a remote village, I had nothing going for me other than the fact that my Gift was Rare, so I couldn’t even run away. I was working hard to survive with a small wage, but now those days were finally past me.

Early in the morning, I was called by the Guild Chief, Brandon Gage, before I could get enough sleep because I had just barely finished doing the chores that had accumulated like crazy from the day before. Thinking I would get chewed out as usual, I frantically moved my heavy legs to the guild chief’s office.

“Excuse me, it’s me, Jade.”

“You can come in.”

After knocking four times and announcing my name at the door, the deep voice of the Guild Chief replied from inside the room.

However, the usual moodiness in his voice was nowhere to be heard, and instead, a slightly pleased tone took its place.

It was a bit unsettling, but there was no use thinking about it, so I took a deep breath and then opened the door.

“Lewin. You’re here.” As the Guild Chief reflected in his voice, he seemed to be in a good mood, and his expression was bright.

Also, this was his first time actually calling me by my name.

Disregarding the fear in my heart from the gap from his usual demeanor, the Guild Chief continues talking.

“I’ll jump to the main point. Lewin is fifteen years old today, right?” As he said that to me, I glanced at the calendar above his desk. It certainly was my birthday. Since my mother died, I didn’t really celebrate any of my birthdays. I was so busy every day that I didn’t have the time to be worrying about any birthday anyway, so the last few years going by have felt like only a few days in comparison. Thinking about it, it was natural for me to realize that I had grown another year older somewhere along the way.

“That is correct. Today is my fifteenth birthday.” Realizing that today was my birthday, the fears I was holding in my heart dissipated quickly, and I replied in a flutter. The reason why the Guild Chief seemed to be in an unusually good mood must have been because he wanted to celebrate my birthday.

Fifteen years old was the age when people are normally considered adults. Even though I worked my ass off and was oppressed for these five years, I thought it would be good if I could, for the first time, celebrate my birthday in the year I become an adult.

“I see… As I thought, today was your birthday, Lewin! …Alright! Then, from today, you’re fired.” He declared with a beaming smile, grinning from ear to ear. Those words were the exact opposite of what I imagined, thinking I would be celebrating today. My whole body stiffened as my thoughts froze. Thinking I must have somehow misheard, I repeated the words of the Guild Chief over and over in my head, but no matter how many times I thought about it, the words “you’re fired” continued to echo throughout my empty mind.

“Oh, I’m fired….?”

“Yep, that’s right. Geez, you’re really a dumb bastard, aren’t you. You should understand the first time someone says something. Look at you, going out of your way to repeat the same things.”

“Wait a second! What did I do? Even though I’ve been working without a single complaint all this time… How can I suddenly accept that I’ve been fired?”

For the first time, I raised my voice at the Guild Chief. I had resolved to myself in the past that I would never rebel, argue, or raise my voice, but as expected, I can’t accept this so easily. Looking back over the last five years, I could confidently say that I had never done anything to the detriment of the Healer’s Guild.

“Hmph, the reason for firing you? Isn’t it obvious from the fact that you’re a peasant? I had no choice but to hire you by order from the government, but now that you’re fifteen, that restriction is gone.”

In response to the Guild Chief’s shocking words, I was rendered speechless. Fired because I was born a farmer. I couldn’t be convinced by that logic… but that was also why I couldn’t argue against it. After all, there was nothing wrong with my own birth.

“Also, I’ll tell you this out of my own good will, but since the job performance evaluations I gave you were of the lowest rank every time, you wouldn’t be able to get hired anywhere else even if you tried. Hurry up and pack your things, return to your hometown, and go play in the dirt with the other peasants. You were born to be a loser.”

With a vulgar smile, Brandon looked like he was having fun as he said all this in a fit of intense rage.

…However, I really didn’t have the courage to face his anger. As Brandon says, I was a loser through and through. I bit my lower lip hard, until blood began to flow from my torn lips.

“Well then, you can go. Ah, pack up your things and get out of the dorm by the end of today. Otherwise, I’ll have the soldiers punish you for trespassing.”

“…….I understand.”

With nothing I could say in return, I could only give a small reply, and turned my back to leave. Anger at the Guild Chief, anxiety about the future, and a sense of powerlessness and self-pity. A tempest of emotions swirled up inside of me, making me feel sick to the stomach.

“Oi, Lewin! Shouldn’t you thank me for hiring and taking care of a peasant like you who has no knowledge?”

“……..Ah… th-thank… you… very much…”

Suppressing those feelings of humiliation as I insincerely said my thanks to Brandon, I left the Guild Chief’s office. Soon after, I left the Healer’s Guild for good.

TL Note: Thanks for reading. This is my first Japanese to English translation work. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! If you want to receive notifications whenever I release a chapter for this series, you can subscribe to @crescent’s croissant rolls in the Foxaholic Discord channel under the text channel #get-your-roles.

I’ll try to release at least one chapter daily until the preface arc (chapters 1-18) is over, to push the story along.

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