“Want to eat together?”
“Yeah!”
“Do… do you not want to?”
Cain observed their expressions.
‘Inviting someone to share a meal together.’
In his previous life, the only times Cain had eaten with someone within the family were when he went on missions with his master, and at formal occasions arranged around the time of selecting the family successor.
At that time, Cain was the only apprentice disciple among the candidates for family head, and it was difficult to focus on eating because the direct disciples kept glaring at him with hostility.
To begin with, Cain preferred eating alone and had never thought it uncomfortable.
‘Rather, it was outside the family that I ate with others.’
-Sein, eating alone again? Come eat with me.
-Eat together? As far as I know, you and I have the same side dishes, so is there any meaning to it?
-…Sein. Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking all this time that people eat together to efficiently share different side dishes for balanced nutrition?
-Wasn’t that it?
-Sigh. Listen carefully, Sein. The meaning behind asking someone to eat together is…
Harman had explained what it meant when someone invited you to ‘eat together.’
-If it’s someone you’re meeting for the first time, it means they want to become closer. If it’s someone you already know, it means they want to eat while chatting about trivial things. Got it, Sein?
Though he never got a clear answer about the exact criteria for what constituted ‘trivial’ conversation, Cain now understood well enough that inviting someone to eat was a gesture of goodwill.
‘The way they defended me when Bolio picked a fight too…’
He wasn’t sure why they were showing him goodwill, but in any case, it was right to respond to goodwill with goodwill.
“Let’s eat together then.”
“Yay!”
“I’ll… I’ll go get my lunch box.”
Cain, Ed, and Fon came out to the back of the main building, each carrying their lunch boxes.
Apprentice disciples didn’t have personal maids, so they ate at the communal dining hall in the South Hall, but direct disciples usually ate lunch boxes personally prepared by their maids.
Cain naturally sat on one of the benches lined up there.
In his previous life, he used to come to this quiet space during breaks, and now he was pleased to discover he could come here for meals too.
“There are plenty of other places, so why specifically behind the main building?”
“I’m familiar with this place, and it’s quiet.”
“Familiar…? Wasn’t this your first time coming to the main building?”
“Well, I guess I mean I’m used to eating on benches. I’m hungry, let’s eat quickly!”
When Fon tilted his head in confusion, Ed plopped down next to Cain and pulled out his lunch box.
Fon also quickly sat on Cain’s other side.
“Wow, Cain. Yours looks really delicious.”
Ed exclaimed in admiration upon seeing Cain’s lunch box.
There were side dishes clearly made with great care – golden-brown sausages with knife scores, thinly battered and fried pork, and more.
Moreover, the main dish of omelet rice had a clumsy heart drawn on it with ketchup.
“…”
Cain hadn’t expected this much care to go into his lunch box.
Seeing the ketchup heart, he could almost picture Alice’s face shouting, “Young master! Fighting!”
“I’m… I’m jealous. When you say Cain’s maid, you mean those twin maids, right?”
“Cain, can I have just one bite of this? I’ll share my side dishes too. Please.”
At those words, Cain’s expression brightened a little.
“Of course. Now we’re finally getting to the efficient aspect I was thinking of.”
“…? What’s that supposed to mean? Anyway, thanks for the meal!”
The three shared their lunch boxes while chatting about trivial things.
“I was really shocked, you know. When Bolio fired that huge fireball, I thought you’d lost… But then Cain used Fire Needle to pop it like a balloon – pow!”
“It… it was amazing…”
“Wow… Bolio’s frost mana output was no joke, so how did you pull off that technique?”
Cain gulped down a sausage and answered.
“If you rotate the Fire Needle at high speed along its trajectory axis, you can twist the flow when it makes contact.”
“I saw it rotating too! So how do you actually do that?”
“How to do it? You just make it rotate.”
Cain raised his right hand and demonstrated by strongly rotating a Fire Needle.
The axis was so solid that if the surrounding mana hadn’t swirled like a whirlwind in the direction of rotation, you wouldn’t even know it was spinning.
“Wow…”
“I want to try too!”
Ed confidently raised his hand and summoned a Fire Needle above his palm.
“Hup!”
Then he frowned and began trying to rotate the Fire Needle.
Watching this, Fon cautiously spoke up.
“It… it is rotating, but…”
The problem was that instead of rotating in place along its trajectory axis, it was tumbling forward like a stick thrown by its end.
Seeing this, Cain spoke up.
“The coordinate movement action is mixed in. Axial rotation must be performed as a completely independent action from magical coordinate movement.”
“Ah! I must have done that unconsciously! Let me try again.”
Though he couldn’t explain how to separate the two actions, just knowing that they needed to be separated seemed helpful, as Ed continued attempting axial rotation.
“I… I did it!”
Though very slow, Ed finally succeeded in performing only axial rotation and cheered.
“Now I just need to rotate this faster and be able to do coordinate movement separately in that state… which will be difficult.”
Ed realized he had only taken the first step and looked dejected for a moment, but soon smiled again.
“Anyway, thanks, Cain! I’ll practice hard on the rest myself!”
“I’ll… I’ll go to the training room and practice later too.”
“Good. I hope you get good results.”
Cain looked at Ed, who was already sweating on his forehead, and smiled slightly.
It felt like seeing his old disciples again after a long time.
“Oh! Cain smiled!”
“Wh–when you smile, you look even more handsome. I’m jealous.”
“Ahem.”
Cain cleared his throat and changed the subject.
“May I ask a question this time?”
“Oh, ask anything! If I know it, I’ll answer everything!”
Ed brightened at the thought of being able to repay Cain for teaching him axial rotation.
“Are there any families currently supporting the Thears family?”
This was a question that had occurred to him when entering the main building today.
The family had fallen so far as to be exiled to the Gahril Snowy Mountains, yet they had rebuilt such a massive main building, the interior facilities were very clean, and the equipment in the training rooms seemed to be replaced regularly and on time.
‘Come to think of it, fallen families usually have a severe shortage of servants, but from what I’ve observed, there seem to be quite enough.’
That meant they were receiving financial support from somewhere.
‘Could there be a family that was previously allied with the Thears family, or a surviving subsidiary family?’
If so, he wanted to have a conversation with them.
Ed’s eyes widened at Cain’s question.
“Cain. Were you hoping that a new supporting family appeared while you were holed up in the training room? Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
“Right. I heard there’s only been one since back when our family almost collapsed, and probably won’t be any more in the future…”
“So what’s the name of that family?”
At Ed’s following answer, Cain’s expression instantly hardened.
“Now, let’s begin theoretical education. Open your books.”
Rowen looked around the classroom.
The atmosphere inside the classroom was completely different from when he had come this morning.
At the center of it all was naturally Cain Thears.
‘Impressive. He completely took control of the internal atmosphere in less than a day after entering the hall.’
He had immediately responded to Bolio’s provocation by making it impossible to refuse a duel, and won.
He had perfectly defeated Bolio, who had always shown the strongest performance in practical combat if not in theory, and additionally brought down all the disciples who challenged him afterward.
‘That’s not all. He has a peculiar charisma.’
You can’t take control of the atmosphere like this with just superior magical skills.
Even after losing to Anyas, a direct disciple, Bolio had remained unbroken and always maintained a hostile stance toward her.
Yet he had turned everyone, including such a Bolio, into docile lambs.
Talent for magic, natural combat sense, and even the charisma to handle people.
A disciple with all these qualities had appeared in the main building overnight.
‘Perhaps… an unexpected wind might blow in the succession competition.’
Having such thoughts, Rowen inwardly chuckled.
‘No, what am I thinking?’
He’s still just a disciple who has only reached the 2nd Circle.
Rowen had seen many mages who showed tremendous talent in the early stages of growth but gradually felt walls as they passed the 4th and 5th Circles, or gave up because they couldn’t endure the exponentially increasing time it took to reach the next level as circles advanced.
‘His talent is certainly outstanding, but it’s still too early to judge.’
Magic is not such an easy discipline.
Even with outstanding talent, only those who continuously study and research theory can keep breaking through their limits and advancing.
‘And if he’s the type strong in practical combat like Cain, that possibility is even higher.’
…Or so Rowen thought, but he soon had to admit his prediction was completely wrong.
‘No, why is his posture so straight?’
Throughout the entire educational period, Cain sat with his back perfectly straight, listening to every word Rowen said without missing anything.
It was such a textbook attitude that even an instructor who disliked Cain would have difficulty finding fault.
Wondering if he was just pretending on the surface, Rowen had him solve several problems, but Cain immediately came forward, wrote the correct answers, and returned to his seat.
Once, when given a very complex and difficult equation problem, he stood at the front looking only at the problem without writing any solution process. When told he could return to his seat, he suddenly picked up chalk, wrote the answer in one go, and went back down.
‘Since I changed the variables, he couldn’t have memorized the answer… Did he solve all that mentally?’
Rowen looked at Cain, who had returned to his seat and was sitting with proper posture.
And he thought.
It seemed that in many ways, an extraordinary fellow had appeared.
As soon as theoretical education ended and he left the main building, Cain headed straight to the records hall.
The records hall required even disciples who had entered the main building to apply for access for security purposes, but unlike in his previous life, Cain was now a direct disciple and could freely enter immediately upon entering the hall.
Cain’s steps were uncharacteristically faster than usual.
‘I need to confirm it with my own eyes.’
The question he had asked Ed and Fon during lunch.
Cain needed to personally verify whether their answer was true.
The interior structure of the records hall was similar to his previous life.
The document sorting criteria had changed slightly, but there wasn’t much difference in the overall framework, so it didn’t take long to find the records he wanted.
“Here it is.”
Cain took out the records about family support and examined the contents.
And he confirmed the family name written without fail on the first page, the next page, and the page after that.
‘…It was real.’
Rustle. Rustle.
With each page he turned, Cain’s eyes grew darker.
Thud.
Having checked all the records, Cain closed the record book.
“Bederman family…”
The name of the Bederman family leaked out between his clenched teeth.
“Don’t tell me it’s you bastards.”
Two hundred years ago.
Before the Thears family entered the ranks of the Four Great Magical Houses, two of the four great houses of the Plondia Empire were occupied by flame-type families.
One was the Flameforce family where Harman belonged.
And the other was the Bederman family.
