The Days of Training

When I got outside from the entrance, the falling rain is stopping.

I carried the Giant Spider’s torso that is tied with straw rope on my shoulder, passed the garden that is planted with few vegetables and various types of herbs and carried it until the processing place.

「Surly disciple, put that on the table. I’ll only teach you the method, but you’ll do it yourself.」

「Roger, master.」

「First is the legs.」

I placed the Giant Spider’s torso on the table, then I cut off the from their joints using the knife for dismantling. Master nodded after I cut off the first leg, then she also entrusted me to deal with the rest while she took out the Giant Spider’s head from the bag. Then she began the work of taking out its eyeballs. It seems that the spider’s eyeballs can become a powerful neurotoxin if it’s allowed to ferment, but I haven’t learned until that far so I’m not getting involved with that work.

Master is a sorcerer, but she said that her true occupation is an alchemist. Until now I have been doing things like boiling medicinal herb or poisonous grass by imitating her, but I’m also learning the way to create potions bit by bit.

Also I misunderstood but, it seems that there is no skill for alchemy. To be more precise, the skill of Mana Control is necessary because mana is used to refine the medicine, but I was told that the most important thing for alchemy is the amount of your knowledge and precision.

By the way cooking is in the same category. It looks like there are skills for cutting ingredient and judging ingredients, but they are only useful to make it harder to fail in cooking. What decide the cooking’s tastiness is the ingredients and the sense of the cook.

「Have you finished with the preparation?」

「Yes.」

After I nodded, master cut open the Giant Spider’s stomach with a cleave and put in the chemical that had been prepared beforehand at the mucus that is the base for forming the string inside the body.

This mucus will turn into string the moment it touched air, so from here it has to be processed quickly.

「Now.」

With that signal I made a small cut on my palm with my knife and dripped that blood into the spider’s body.

My blood and chemical reacted and the yellowish white string base changed to red. After that I patiently stirred that mucus using a wooden stick. After a while the stick’s tip became dyed dark red and a lump of fiber is finished.

「……Well, good work. The result is also good because of the fresh ingredient.」

Master said that after she inspected the lump of fiber. I too sighed in relieve hearing that.

Other than my circumstance, I also told master about my fighting style. Master’s appearance is of someone at the middle of her thirty, but as a dark elf who is called as evil race, it seems that she has actually lived for more than 300 years. She hasn’t told me the reason why a dark elf like her is living in this country like this, but master said that not only she can do sorcery and alchemy, she can also fight as a scout.

Even that strange shaped knife that had small ring with diamond shaped blade attached on top of it was something that master used at the past. She is lending around ten of them to me.

Type wise, it was something similar to the 『kunai』 in that woman’s “knowledge”. But there was almost no part for holding with that knife. It seemed that the way to use it is as a hidden weapon by putting your finger through the ring part and hide the blade in your palm.

But, as expected the field of combat that master specialized in isn’t close quarter combat, but “sorcery”.

It seemed that she is level 4 in light and darkness. And she has obtained as far as level 5 in fire and wind. Furthermore master is using 『magic』 instead of 『sorcery』 as though it’s only natural.

I thought that sorcery is widely used and magic is an old skill that has become obsolete, but according to master, apparently anyone who research sorcery will one day arrive at magic. Most likely it’s only one among several hundred sorcerers, but a 『magician』 definitely exist among that number.

I’m glad I was able to learn that at this point of time. If I don’t know, it might become a fatal blunder for me when I’m facing a magician.

After being taught that much, I can’t keep saying that I can’t expose my hands to her. On the contrary, I should display all the weapons in my possession to her and beg for her teaching.

My weapons that drew master’s interest were illusion and pendulum. She was especially interested with how I mixed blood with string and manipulated it with mana. She then said that I should carefully selected what kind of string to use.

And so in the end I decided to use a string that is made from the material of spider monster. But, the best kind of material to use in that case is apparently Arachne, however such item rarely appear in the market. And so this time I ended up using the string of Giant Spider that is living around here as the material. As a material, Giant Spider’s string is moderately good, but when processing monster string, master taught me that the ingredient’s freshness is more important than the monster’s type.

All the strings that Giant Spider shot out is sticky, but it could be processed to be a tough string without stickiness if a chemical is mixed with it while the string’s base is still inside the spider’s body. However although monster string is tough, that’s because the monster’s own mana is flowing inside it. It seems that mana will get in my way if I try to manipulate the string with my own mana. I’ll be able to control that string to some degree if I mix my blood to that ingredient, but I’ll need a cauldron worth of blood for that.

There master thought up an idea. The idea is a brute force technique of mixing my blood into the monster mucus during the processing time so that the material will get familiarized with my mana. Furthermore that method will be difficult if it’s not done within several hours of the monster’s death. I spent more than one month to search for a Giant Spider and finally hunted it successfully.

「After that you will pound that fiber with a stick while unraveling the string bit by bit by yourself. If you also pour your mana into it during that time, the flow of the mana will become even better so don’t slack off-」

「Got it.」

「Bring the string to me when you finish making it. I’ll process it to be fire resistant with alchemy.」

「Yes.」

「Now then, let’s eat first before that-. Obviously it’s the disciple’s job to prepare meal, so prepare it quickly.」

Master like to nag but I don’t really hate it. On the contrary, she accepted suspicious people like that woman and me to become her disciple, so I thought of her as a softhearted person instead.

I don’t believe other people. But……I’m thinking that it’s fine to also trust master just like how I trust Elena.

.

「──Clean──」

I cleaned up the processing area and began preparing the “ingredients” at the kitchen.

During these four months, I too had finally learned the spells of light magic level 2, Clean and Treat.

As expected as someone who is researching sorcery, master knew a lot about sorcery vocabulary. I learned the vocabulary for light and dark element until level 3, then I was given the task to compose the sorcery myself. Through that I finally became able to use the spells until level 2.

A sorcery’s composition is something like a sentence that is created from a completely unknown language with only its vocabulary and the meaning taught to me. The sentence’s meaning will become completely different just from different ordering of the vocabulary, so in order to create new sorcery, the only choices are to create a short sentence using few words, or spending a lot of time to diligently research, but this time I somehow managed because there was the base sentence.

But it seemed that master is dissatisfied that I’m just memorizing it. As an additional task, I was ordered to shorten the sentence if I understood the words’ meaning. I still can only omit one or two words, I’m able to shorten the sentence only a little after one month working on it.

As the result my light sorcery’s level increased and changed into light magic. But that isn’t caused solely by shortening the light sorcery’s spell, but also because I correctly understood the sentence’s meaning.

Unlike sorcery, my close quarter combat skills haven’t increased in level except for Throwing. I think it’s not only because I have been using nothing but throwing, but also because my body growth is insufficient. Even though my body is growing from the increase of my mana capacity due to my sorcery related skills, I still haven’t reached that phase yet.

There are still various problems with my sorcery and close quarter combat, but right now I should prioritize preparing the ingredients rather than thinking that.

「──Treat──」

In this world, there isn’t a way of thinking that sickness is caused by microbe that cannot be seen by naked eyes like in that woman’s world, even so it’s considered that “dirt” is producing unseen poison that become the cause of sickness. That knowledge was spread by the holy church several generations ago. Now even the commoners knew to wash the ingredients and their body to prevent sickness.

I don’t only use Clean but also Treat to finish the preparation. Then with a stupidly huge kitchen knife that looked more like a hatchet, I began dismantling that ingredient……the Giant Spider’s leg.

I split the outer skin that was like a shell and took out only the muscle part. I swung down the kitchen knife to cut it apart into bite sized parts, then I boiled them with a strong fire together with ginger and herb root.

I added water several times and made it boiled over while adding even more herb after the smell had been reduced to some degree. After boiling it for around one hour, I replaced the broth, added medicinal herb alcohol with strong sweetness and chopped root vegetables, boiled them all until they became soft, adjusted the taste with salt and pepper while at the end I added a bit of lard. With that the stew of spider meat is done.

「……Surly disciple. We have deer meat right? Why are you using the spider?」

Master murmured with a heavy tone when she saw the finished stew.

「It’s a waste not to use this. It’s all the same as long as it’s nutritious right?」

「Perhaps I need to teach you about the common sensitivity of human from the beginning……. That stupid disciple was really stupid but, she could at least make a decent meal.」

「I cooked it properly based on the method in my knowledge but, the boiling wasn’t enough.」

The precious protein source cannot be wasted. Master sighed deeply seeing me biting off the sinewy meat with force.

「…………You’re going to practice light magic after we finish eating, so finish it quickly.」

「Roger.」

.

Master taught me two new unique magic. It’s a level 2 light magic and a level 3 dark magic.

The dark magic is the sorcery that I thought up and master reconstructed for me after she checked it, but as expected with my current skill and mana capacity, I still can’t use level 3 dark magic. As for the light magic, I somehow managed with the learning itself with the application of dark magic, but this magic’s “usage” is far more difficult than learning it.

「Let’s go. Block this properly. ──Fire Arrow-」

I got out to the garden and took my stance. Then Master fired Fire Arrow at me without chanting.

It’s a level 1 sorcery, but fire sorcery has high attack power. It’s even possible for it to kill instantly if it hit somewhere bad. But I’m not allowed to avoid this attack. I pointed my palm forward the instant the Fire Arrow was fired. I focused my mind while constructing the magic’s composition.

「──Shield──」

This magic converged light particles with the same principle like dark magic. It formed a shield of light with the shape of a round plank. Master said that this is an original magic that was taught to her from her teacher.

This Shield can block attack magic that the enemy fired. But, its flaw is that it only produced a shield with the solidity of a glass because it used light particles to form the shield, it will break if it blocked sorcery with physical destructive power like earth or ice element.

*Pashi-!*

Master scolded me the moment she saw that the Shield that I created deflected her Fire Arrow.

「The mana that you put into it was too big-, feel the sorcery’s capacity and adjust your strength-」

Another Fire Arrow is shot. I matched the Shield’s mana with it. this time the Shield is annihilated with the sound of breaking glass.

「If you sense that the mana you put isn’t enough, parry the magic by diverting it-」

「Roger.」

This sound of glass breaking isn’t an actual sound but an auditory hallucination that only I heard. I could hear it is the proof that the mana I poured into the magic was insufficient.

It’s a level 2 magic, but theoretically it can defend any kind of sorcery depending on the amount of mana you put into it as long as it’s not against physical type magic. But, with my current skill and mana, it can only defend against level 1 attack sorcery at best. Against level 2 attack spell, not only the Shield will get smashed, I’ll also receive damage.

If it’s impossible to block than the only way left is to parry. In fact the Shield has the actual physical defensive power of a glass, so if I tried then perhaps I’ll be able to parry something like a knife with this, but to do that I need the skill of parrying magic itself using shield or sword to do such feat.

Focus the mind in constructing the magic. Ascertain the type of magic that the enemy fired and its amount of mana instantly, put the appropriate amount of mana, and change your method of defense. Just doing one step of that process is already difficult, but here I have to do all of them simultaneously. It’s something next to impossible to do. Furthermore maintaining the Shield after it’s invoked also consumed mana, so I need even more training to be able to use it skillfully in an instant.

Even so if I can use this perfectly, it should become a formidable weapon in battle against sorcerer.

「……Study it yourself later. Good grief, it’s really tiring to keep up with a brat.」

「……You alright?」

Master ended the training when my stamina and mana have decreased until below half.

It’s not because she is being considerate to me, but because master’s stamina consumption rate is fast despite her high stamina value.

「A brat shouldn’t be considerate with adult-. Also, the sorcery on your hair is unraveling. You should remember its effective time with your bodily sense.」

「Yes.」

The ash that is smeared on my hair in order to hide its conspicuous pink color isn’t real ash, but “illusion” that was made with dark sorcery.

It was just as Viro feared, the luster of my hair increased along with the increase of my mana. A normal ash can’t hide my hair’s shine anymore. When I consulted to master about that, she taught me several sorcery words and gave me the task of changing my hair color with illusion.

I had completed the sorcery to change hair color more or less, but the words’ ordering apparently didn’t form a proper sentence so its mana consumption was too big and the effective time became short. And so I gave up on changing my hair color and performed an illusion of directly showing ash using darkness particles. With that I succeeded in lengthening its effective time and suppressing my hair’s luster.

The result strayed from the task that master assigned on me, but she gave me a barely passing score because apparently that kind of improvisation is important for magic.

.

The training ended and night came. Under the light of the magic lamp that is using magic stone to function, I pounded the spider string’s fiber with a stick while unraveling it to turn the lump into string. Master is drinking a homemade medicinal herb alcohol in small sips while talking to me about that woman who attacked me.

「That stupid disciple first came here when she was sixteen years old I think……. She was already stupid right from the start. She suddenly came here one day and asked me to teach her sorcery because I have the 『role to help the hiroin(?) when fighting the evil race』. Can you believe that? She asked that to me who is from the evil race you know?」

「…………」

So that woman was already like “that” from the past……or rather, from the very beginning huh.

「To be honest, I couldn’t understand almost all of that stupid disciple’s nonsense. But, she was just too delusional while acting so full of confidence. That excessive stupidity made me pitied her. That was why I made her my disciple against my better judgment.」

「Did she train seriously?」

「She did it seriously. That was her only good point. But you see……her fickleness was so horrible that in the end she was only half-baked in everything. But, to think that stupid disciple managed to create such odd magic stone using the failed method of a past sorcerer to make a toad learn art, she might actually had real talent.」

「Frog……」

So she tried to steal other person’s body using such vague method…….

But whether it was a coincidence or not, she managed to create a magic stone that was imprinted with her own mind based only on such vague information, so her talent……no, her “obsession” must be out of the norm. However it was a misfortune for that woman that the directions of her efforts were all directed toward the wrong ways.

Time is passing slowly inside this peaceful forest.

There are things that I have to do. However, my life with master(Serjura) here made me felt the warmth like a family that I hadn’t felt since my parents died.

I trained in sorcery and magic, learned alchemy, hunted monster, and trained my close quarter combat skill.

One more month passed as I lived such life. Then, a mysterious 『visitor』 appeared at this house inside a forest that no ordinary people should know about.