Mage? Spell Engineer!

"Going home" is the same journey as going to the Black Forest, because Rorschach's birthplace is in a mountain village in the southwest corner of the empire. The Black Forest covers the entire mountain range, and the village is at the foot of its branch.

Rorschach also has very little memory of his hometown, especially the mountain village. His parents were free farmers with a small amount of savings, and they had the foresight to support the five-year-old to attend a school set up by the principality in the township instead of herding sheep and playing around with other tenant farmers' children.

Of course, the principality's schools are not rural sage-style charitable institutions. The purpose of their establishment is to cultivate a group of people who have a simple education, can understand instructions, and can do simple calculations for the principality's army, trade, and rural management. They will become assistants to frontline officers, bookkeepers in shops, and village chiefs.

Since the rise of the Kingdom of Marin in the core area of ​​the empire and its dominance over the major states, its system has been promoted, including such limited basic education.

Most of the students in these schools came from families of knights, craftsmen and small businessmen with very little land. Rorschach was an outlier from the beginning as the son of a farmer, even though his parents were free farmers with small land holdings.

By chance, Rorschach was spotted by the Viscount and selected as a follower of the Viscount's son. They learned and practiced simple martial arts together. It was during this time that Rorschach learned his equestrian skills.

By hanging out with the viscount's son, there is a possibility of crossing paths with the resident mage.

In the test of spellcasting potential, the Viscount's bloodline did not have the ability to cast spells, but dramatically, his humble follower did. So the resident mage gained an apprentice who was born as a free farmer. When the news spread back to his hometown, Rorschach instantly became the hope of the whole village. The village chief and his parents finally scraped together a sum of money, and with the support of the resident mage, he was sent to the imperial capital to officially start his magical journey.

To sum up, Rorschach only has vague memories of his first five years of life in the countryside. When he was hanging out with the Viscount's heir, he would go home occasionally and use the Viscount's daily rewards to support the family. He never returned home after that - Rorschach In the past, it was impossible to pay for travel across most of the empire.

He took an airship to the capital of the principality, then rented a carriage to drive into the mountains. The roads became increasingly difficult to walk, and the mountains and forests became more and more lush. Returning to his "hometown" that is not his hometown, Rorschach traced the trajectory of his predecessor on this journey, and had to say that the original Rorschach was considered a lucky person in this era.

Although his reincarnation skills were poor and he did not become a noble, his parents were not propertyless sharecroppers. They were enlightened and far-sighted, and he was able to seize the opportunity and miraculously embark on the path of magic step by step.

The difficulty level is no less than that of passing the Qingbei exam in Shangoogou. Rorschach couldn't help but sigh, but what made him even more sad was that when a scroll king like him came to the Imperial Magic Academy, he couldn't afford to learn scrolls, and he couldn't spend a lot of money to hire a wizard from the academy to open a small stove. In the past four years, he could only study a few low-level skills. Level magic.

Even though he studied various theories assiduously and had two friends and teacher Caroline to help him, in the end he almost couldn't pass the examination for becoming a full-time student.

"If he hadn't time traveled, maybe he just died suddenly in the dormitory, and maybe he wouldn't be discovered until a long time later." Then he thought to himself, if he hadn't time traveled, maybe the advantage of being in a university dormitory is that he could be discovered before it was cold. The spirit in heaven can also generate a wave of immeasurable merit - allowing all three roommates to study in the school.

"The bones are falling apart." Rorschach was a little confused. He could obviously go to another plane, but why the teleportation circle in the main plane was only used to transmit letters. He asked the receptionist at the guild, but he only said he didn't know. Unclear reply.

At this time, the middle-level mage who was tortured by the muddy road and the shock-absorbing carriage obviously did not expect that even if he could move between the guild's branch offices by teleporting the magic circle, the branch offices would only be in large-scale cities, from the station to the mountains. This bad journey is still inevitable.

"Master, we are here." The coachman reminded Rorschach.

"Great, great, I'll pay you the rest."

From dawn to dusk, when Rorschach set foot on the land of his "hometown", the sky was already dark, and a little bit of afterglow shone among the mountains and villages, outlining the shape of the farmhouse.

One characteristic of the farmhouse here is that its pitched roof is extremely high, and the angle between the two slopes is very small, making the roof alone the same height as its stone or wooden walls or even higher.

Smoke was rising slowly, not from the house, but from the shacks along the road.

shack? The small village seemed to be going to a market, with large and small straw huts set up along the dirt road and open-air bonfires. Under the light of the torches, Rorschach could clearly see the situation in the hay hut: a large pot was boiling grain paste, and the peasant woman was going to the hut. A clay pot of milk was added to it, and wild rabbits were roasting in some sheds. The largest shed served light beer, which attracted half the village to raise their glasses.

"Who are you?" The nearest villager came over and asked Rorschach. He observed that the boy's clothing should be that of a noble man, but strangely he did not come on horseback, but in an inconspicuous carriage.

"I'm here to see the Merkle family. Are they here? I'm Rorschach."

Rorschach also didn’t know their current situation. Sending letters was an extremely expensive and luxurious thing for cheap parents and apprentices in rural areas, whether it was through the guild system or the empire’s high mail loss rate and extremely long time. post.

Therefore, during the four years in the imperial capital, the apprentice Luo Xia only communicated with his parents once - at the expense of eating black bread and water for three months, in exchange for a reply written by his parents from the village chief.

After becoming successful in recent months, Luo Xia wrote three letters according to the instructions of the agency director, but did not wait for a reply.

Don't tell me that your parents are moving.

The villager who was communicating with Rorschach opened his eyes wide and looked at Rorschach directly for a while, which made the boy uncomfortable. He suddenly turned around and shouted to the largest straw shed: "Old Mekler, old Mekler, you guys My eldest son is back!"

…

Am I some rare species?

The seventeen-year-old intermediate spell caster seems to be real.

Rorschach was now pinned down in the middle of the largest straw shed, accepting the curious onlookers of the whole village. He always felt that the person closest to him wanted to pinch his face or arms, so he could study the differences between humanoid creatures like "mages" and other people.

It turns out that the largest straw shed belongs to my family!

During the slack season in winter, people always find ways to have some fun, so it is a common phenomenon in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad, and even in other worlds to hold major festivals in this bad season.

The Winter Festival is a common solemn festival in the imperial countryside. The time is not very fixed. In some places, it is in the last ten days of the year, and in some places it is in the first ten days of the next year. People build huts along the road, exchange food with each other, and visit people from neighboring villages. You can also get it, and even eat it along the country road, if you have good foot strength and can climb mountains and ridges.

"You don't have any special activities going on, right?" Thanks to the "Bring My Mother Back" cult, Rorschach has some post-traumatic stress about folk festivals.

"Of course you will be given a grand welcome when you come back!" Rorschach's cheap daddy, old Merkler, was glowing with a light beer in his hand. His beard was lush but not cared for by the city people. It was as messy as weeds. Rorschach said After observing, I was relieved - no bald spots, good hairline, great, great.

"Rorschach, Master Rorschach, when you sent the letter back in the fall, old Mekler ran out of the village chief's house with the letter and shouted again and again. The whole village knew that you had become a mage."

Grain porridge with milk and minced meat was served, and there were dried berries, pine nuts and acorns brought by the villagers on the table, as well as cups of light beer.

A woman came out with broth. After putting down the soup, she wiped her hands on her coarse cloth apron: "Is it really you, Rorschach? Has my son grown so big?" She stretched out her hands that she had wiped repeatedly. , but stood awkwardly in front of the young man without taking another step closer.

Rorschach stood up and hugged the woman: "It's me, of course it's me."

In the embrace he smelled the suet of the sheepskin jacket and heard the small, suppressed sobs.