Chapter 12
"Eat lunch together?"
"Yeah!"
"D-do you not want to?"
Kain observed their expressions.
'Inviting me to eat together.'
In his previous life, the only times Kain had eaten with anyone within the clan were when he went on missions with his teacher and during the formal gatherings around the time of the clan heir selection.
At the time, Kain was the only initiated disciple among the clan head candidates, and the direct line disciples glaring at him made it difficult to focus on the meal.
In the first place, Kain preferred eating alone and had never thought it was uncomfortable.
'Rather, the times I ate with someone were outside the clan.'
-Sein, are you going to eat alone again? Come eat with me.
-Eat together? I believe your side dishes and mine are the same, so what is the point?
-...Sein. Don't tell me you've always thought the reason people eat together is to efficiently consume a balanced diet by sharing dishes they don't have?
-Wasn't that it?
-Sigh. Listen carefully, Sein. The meaning behind the words "let's eat together" is...
Harman had taught him the meaning of someone inviting him to 'eat together.'
-If it's someone you've just met, it means they want to get closer to you. If it's someone you know, you can take it as an invitation to eat while chatting about trivial things. Got it, Sein?
He never got a clear answer on the exact criteria for 'trivial' things, but at least Kain now knew that inviting someone to eat was a friendly gesture.
'Just like when they defended me when Bolio picked a fight...'
He wasn't sure why they were showing him kindness, but in any case, it was right to respond to kindness with kindness.
"Let's eat together then."
"Yay!"
"I-I'll go get my lunchbox."
***
Kain, Edward, and Fohn came out to the back of the main building with their respective lunchboxes.
Initiated disciples didn't have personal maids, so they ate in the communal dining hall in the South Wing, but direct line disciples usually ate lunch boxes personally made by their maids.
Kain naturally sat down on one of the benches lined up.
In his previous life, he used to come to this quiet space during breaks, and he liked the fact that he could now come here to eat as well.
"There are many other places, so why specifically the back of the main building?"
"This place is familiar and quiet."
"Familiar...? W-weren't you just saying you've never been to the main building before?"
"Well, I meant I'm used to eating on benches. I'm hungry, let's eat quickly!"
As Fohn tilted his head in confusion, Edward plopped down next to Kain and took out his lunchbox.
Fohn quickly sat down on the other side of Kain.
"Wow, Kain. Yours looks really delicious."
Edward exclaimed as he looked at Kain's lunchbox.
There were meticulously prepared side dishes, such as sausages with decorative cuts cooked to a golden brown and thinly battered and fried pork.
Moreover, a clumsy heart was drawn with ketchup on the main dish, an omelet rice.
"......"
Even Kain hadn't expected his lunchbox to be prepared with such care.
Seeing the ketchup heart somehow made him picture Alice's face saying, 'Young Master! Fighting!'
"I-I'm jealous. Kain's maid must be those twin maids, right?"
"Kain, can I try just one bite of yours? I'll give you some of mine. Please."
Kain's expression softened slightly at those words.
"Of course. Now you're showing the efficiency I expected."
"...? What are you talking about now? Anyway, thanks for the food!"
The three shared their lunchboxes and chatted about trivial things.
"I was so surprised, you know. When Bolio shot that huge Fire Ball, I thought you had lost... but then Kain used his Fire Needles to pop it like a balloon! Bang!"
"I-it was amazing..."
"Ugh... Bolio's mana reserves must have been no joke, so how did you do that technique?"
Kain swallowed a sausage and replied.
"If you rotate the Fire Needles at high speed around the axis of their trajectory, you can twist the flow when they touch."
"I saw that they rotated! So how do you do that?"
"How do I do it? You just rotate them."
Kain raised his right hand and demonstrated by strongly rotating a Fire Needle.
The axis was so stable that if the surrounding mana hadn't swirled like a tornado in the direction of rotation, one wouldn't even have known it was rotating.
"Wow..."
"I want to try too!"
Edward confidently raised his hand and summoned a Fire Needle onto his palm.
"Hah!"
Then, he frowned and began to rotate the Fire Needle.
Fohn, seeing this, carefully opened his mouth.
"I-it is rotating, but..."
The problem was that instead of rotating in place around the axis of its trajectory, it was rotating forward as if he had grabbed the end of a stick and flung it.
Kain, seeing this, spoke.
"The effect of coordinate movement is mixed in. Axial rotation must be performed as an action completely independent of the magic's coordinate movement."
"Ah! I must have done that unconsciously! I'll try again."
He couldn't tell them exactly how to separate the two, but just telling them that they needed to do so seemed to help, as Edward continued to attempt axial rotation.
"D-done!"
Edward cheered, having finally succeeded in performing only axial rotation, albeit at a very slow speed.
"Now, all I have to do is rotate this faster and be able to move its coordinates separately at the same time... which looks difficult."
Edward looked dejected for a moment, realizing that he had only taken the first step, but soon smiled brightly again.
"Anyway, thanks, Kain! I'll work hard on the rest!"
"I-I'll go to the training room and practice later too."
"Alright. I hope you get good results."
Kain gave a small smile as he watched Edward, whose forehead was already dripping with sweat.
It felt like seeing his old disciples after a long time.
"Oh! Kain smiled!"
"H-he's even more handsome when he smiles. I'm jealous."
"Ahem."
Kain cleared his throat, changing the subject.
"May I ask a question this time?"
"Ooh, ask anything! I'll answer anything I know!"
Edward's face lit up at the thought of being able to repay Kain for teaching him axial rotation.
"Are there any clans currently providing support to the Siers clan?"
This was a question that had arisen as he entered the main building today.
The clan had fallen so far as to be driven to the desolate snowy mountains, yet they had rebuilt this enormous main building, and not only that, the interior facilities were very clean, and the supplies inside the training rooms seemed to be replaced regularly at appropriate intervals.
'Come to think of it, usually, the number of servants in a fallen clan is severely lacking, but based on what I've seen so far, it seems quite sufficient.'
That meant they were receiving financial support from somewhere.
'Could it be a clan that was allied with the Siers clan in the past, or a surviving clan among their subordinate clans?'
If so, he wanted to talk to them.
Edward's eyes widened at Kain's question.
"Kain. Did you perhaps hope that a new supporting clan would appear while you were holed up in the training room? Unfortunately, no such thing has happened."
"Y-yeah. I heard there's only been one ever since our clan was about to go under a long time ago, and there probably won't be any in the future either..."
"So, what is the name of that clan?"
At Edward's subsequent answer, Kain's expression instantly hardened.
***
"Alright, let's begin the theory lesson. Open your books."
Rowen looked around the training room.
The atmosphere inside the training room was completely different from when he had arrived this morning.
At the center of it, of course, was Kain Siers.
'Amazing. He completely took control of the internal atmosphere in less than a day after entering.'
He had immediately confronted Bolio, who had picked a fight, making it impossible for him to refuse the duel and then winning.
He had perfectly defeated Bolio, who had always shown the strongest appearance in practical combat even if he lacked in theory, and on top of that, he had defeated all the disciples who had challenged him afterward.
'And it's not just that. He has a unique, strange charisma.'
You can't just seize the atmosphere like this just by being skilled in magic.
Even after losing to Anya, a direct line disciple, Bolio had never given in and had always maintained a hostile stance towards her.
To make everyone, including such a Bolio, as docile as lambs.
Talent for magic, innate combat sense, and even charisma to handle people.
A disciple with all these qualities had appeared in the main building overnight.
'Perhaps... an unexpected wind of change might blow in the heir competition.'
Rowen, who had even thought that far, suddenly chuckled inwardly.
'No, what am I thinking?'
He's just a disciple who has reached the 2nd Circle.
Rowen had seen many mages who had shown tremendous talent in the early stages of their growth gradually hit a wall after surpassing the 4th and 5th Circles, or couldn't endure the exponentially increasing time it took to reach the next stage as their circle rose, and ended up giving up.
'He's definitely talented, but it's still too early to judge.'
Magic is not an easy discipline.
Even with outstanding talent, only those who constantly study and research theory can continuously break through their limits and rise.
'And that possibility would be even higher for a type like Kain who is strong in practical combat.'
...or so Rowen had thought, but he soon had no choice but to admit that his prediction was completely wrong.
'No, why is his posture so straight?'
Throughout the lesson, Kain sat with his back ramrod straight, listening to Rowen's words without missing a single one.
It was such a textbook attitude that even an instructor who looked down on Kain couldn't find fault with it.
Wondering if he was perhaps just pretending on the surface, he had him solve a few problems, but Kain immediately came out, wrote down the correct answers, and went back to his seat.
He had even once given a very complex and difficult formula problem with a complicated solution process, and when he told Kain he could go back to his seat since he was just looking at the problem without writing down a single line of the solution, Kain suddenly grabbed the chalk, wrote down the answer in one go, and went back to his seat.
'It was a problem with changed variables, so he couldn't have memorized the answer... Did he solve all that in his head?'
Rowen looked at Kain, who had returned to his seat and was sitting in a correct posture.
And he thought.
It seemed that a remarkable fellow had appeared, in more ways than one.
***
As soon as the theory lesson ended and he left the main building, Kain headed for the archives.
To maintain security, even disciples admitted to the main building had to apply for permission to enter the archives, but unlike his previous life, Kain was now a direct line member, so he could freely enter as soon as he was admitted.
Kain's pace was uncharacteristically faster than usual.
'I need to confirm it with my own two eyes.'
The question he had asked Edward and Fohn during lunchtime.
Kain had to personally verify if their answer was true.
The internal structure of the archives was also similar to his previous life.
The document sorting criteria had changed slightly, but there weren't many differences in the overall framework, so it didn't take long to find the records he wanted.
"Here it is."
Kain, having taken out the records about clan support, examined the contents.
And on the first page, the next page, and the page after that, he confirmed the name of the clan written without fail.
'...It was true.'
Rustle! Rustle!
With each turn of a page, Kain's gaze sank lower.
Thud!
Having checked all the records, Kain closed the ledger.
"The Bederman clan..."
The name of the Bederman clan leaked out from between his tightly clenched teeth.
"Could it possibly be you bastards?"
Two hundred years ago.
Before the Siers clan joined the ranks of the four great magic clans, two of the four great clans of the Plondia Empire were fire-based clans.
One of them was the Flameforce clan, where Harman belonged.
And the other was the Bederman clan.
