Chương 39: The Zero-Mana Problem

The villagers first felt relief when they saw Kichan return. The shoulders of the people gathered in front of the fence lowered slightly at the same time, and someone only then set down the water bucket they had been holding. Morning mist still lay low between the furrows. Then they were surprised. Because he looked too intact. The person who had been taken almost like a prisoner to the lord's manor had returned in a day. His clothes were a little wrinkled and his face was tired, but he did not seem hurt.

Dust was flattened on his shoulder, and there was a document in his hand. Ren ran over first. He grabbed Kichan and spoke quickly. There was strength in his hands. Kichan held up the document.

"Lord. Promise." He mixed the words he had learned with gestures. Taxes. Herb field. Soldiers. Tana. The villagers' faces slowly changed. The village head took the document and looked at it for a long time. Several people who could read gathered around him. At first they doubted, then they were surprised, and finally they exhaled long. The wrinkles at the corners of the village head's eyes relaxed late, and Ren almost smiled before pressing his lips together. The lord's seal.

The elder rubbed the edge of the seal with his fingertip and slowly nodded. Still, even after putting the document down, the village head's hand did not fully relax. He looked once toward the road to the lord's manor, then briefly met the eyes of the old man in the village who could read. The elder pressed the corner of the document one more time with closed lips. Kichan did not miss that look. The child who had been coughing approached Kichan. In her hand was the small salt pouch.

She held it out as if trying to take back what she had given him yesterday, or perhaps to give him more. Kichan pushed the salt pouch back toward the child.

"You people eat that." Kichan placed the pouch back in the child's hand, pointed at his own stomach, then pointed toward the village kitchen.

"Bap." The child smiled. The child's mother took her shoulders from behind. She said something short to Kichan. Her expression hid worry behind an angry face, and it was too familiar. Kichan stopped breathing for a moment. You are eating properly, right? He remembered the message from his mother on his phone. He could only make an awkward smile.

"Bapkkap." Kichan closed his eyes.

"That nickname is still alive?"

That evening, Kichan cooked meat soup. A larger pot than usual hung over the village hearth, and the children sat in a line just outside the smoke, sneaking looks into the pot. As the sun went down, the walls of the wooden houses turned red, and the faces that had been stiff all day gradually loosened in that light. The beast meat was tough and smelled strong. But when he cut away the parts that made the smell with his fingertips and boiled it a long time with root vegetables, it became edible.

He added only a very small amount of salt. Really very little. The villagers seemed sorry when they saw that. Kichan waved a hand.

"We have to save it." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Still, it was warm. The villagers sat around and shared the soup. The children rolled little pieces of wood toward Dust, and Dust dodged them, then deliberately pretended to be caught. Ren checked the lord's document again and again. Tarok still limped, but laughed loudly. When Kichan's bowl was empty, the child's mother quietly served him more soup.

Kichan raised a hand to refuse, but when he saw her look at the empty bowl and lift the ladle again, he lowered it. He could not put down his spoon. Could I stay here for a long time? The thought came suddenly. The food was bland, the language did not make sense, and the bed was uncomfortable, but the people were not bad. At least this was a place where counting a meal as the price of medicine worked. But he could not stay long. Kichan did not know where he had come from. He did not know how to go back.

He did not know why the paper fragment inside his clothes still grew hot. If there was someone higher than the lord, he had to find that side. If talking worked, good. If not, he would have to make them get their heads straight somehow. He put down the soup bowl.

"A library, a temple, somewhere with higher people. I need to find one of those." Ren tilted his head. Kichan pointed at the sky, mimed turning pages in a book, then pointed toward the city. Ren's face darkened. A bigger city. A bigger power. A bigger danger. It came through without being spoken. Kichan shrugged.

"Still have to go."

That night, a report was written in the lord's manor. New candles had been lit in the great meeting room after the day's commotion, but the cracked marks on the wall and the crooked decorative cloth remained. Every time the clerk dipped his pen into the ink bottle, he watched the lord's eyes first. The lord wanted to bury this matter. A local lord had failed after trying to keep a mana-0 foreigner as an honored guest. The senior knight had rolled under the table, and the mage had vomited blood mid-chant.

A tax reduction document for the village had even been stamped by force. And the lord's seal was plainly on that document. It could not simply be torn up and destroyed. The lord thought of the small silver knife inside his desk drawer. A tool for scraping the edge of a contract and blurring its effect. But there was no mage in a border manor who could properly do that work. A greater mage. A higher noble. Or the name of the center.

The lord wanted to erase the report, and at the same time he had to join hands with central power. But the mage and the priest were different. Even lying in bed under treatment, the mage kept saying the same thing. There was no mana. And yet the binding slipped aside. The chant was cut off in the middle, and the magic power returned. Mental pressure did not enter either. There were no traces of healing or prayer, but the patients recovered. And something like wings had appeared behind his back.

The lord told them to shorten the report. The mage did not shorten it. In the end, the title of the report was written like this: `A foreigner who uses unknown magic` The lord grimaced when he saw the title. The mage smiled. His pride had been broken, but his academic greed was alive. The priest did not smile. He wrote a separate short report. Its contents were far fewer than the mage's report. `No divine reaction. ` `No demonic reaction. ` `However, the light of the sacred object was erased.

` `A shape resembling wings confirmed behind the back. ` `Unclassifiable. Approach with caution. ` The report was sealed and sent toward the Central Magic Institute. The priest's report entered the temple's sealed box.

The archive room of the Central Magic Institute was dark. Blue magic lamps floated sparsely between the high shelves, and the smell of paper and leather covers settled coldly. The city outside the window slept, but here only the scratch of pens and the turning of pages remained faintly alive. Even late at night, someone read records. He stopped once at the report's title.

"No mana, but he returned magic?" His finger moved down to the next line. `No healing trace. No mana trace. No prayer trace. However, patient recovery. ` `Witnessed shape resembling wings. ` He smiled quietly. At the end of the report was a brief description of the foreigner. Black hair. Strange clothing. Metal rod. Poor language. Zero Mana. No affiliation. He did not fold the paper. Instead, he took out a new sheet.

"Cheap for the price of overturning a contract." He muttered that and wrote briefly on the new paper. Bring him in. When he drew the last stroke, one blue magic lamp in the archive room wavered very briefly. There was no wind in the archive. The air between the high shelves lifted and settled like a thin sheet of paper. The archivist stopped his pen and raised his head. The sensation of someone, somewhere far away, pulling the same name into a condition. For a moment, he stopped smiling.

Then he folded the paper more carefully.

The next morning, Kichan stood on the road outside the village. Kichan thought about his next destination. A place with greater records. A place that knew something like Loagaeth. A place where he could meet someone higher than the lord and make them stop touching this village again. And a place where he might learn why the boundary of this world sometimes shook. A place where there might be a clue for going back. He set the wake-up rod on his shoulder. Dust flicked its legs there. Kichan suddenly sneezed.

"Achoo." He rubbed the tip of his nose.

"Is someone cursing me again?" The village children laughed. Kichan smiled faintly too.