There Are No Bad Young Ladies in the World

3-Star (3)

What is life?

It took Drest too long to answer that question.

He was born the son of a tenant farmer in the central part of the empire, in the Countship of Zebulon.

As a child, he frolicked in the mountains and fields, learned to plow as he came of age, tilled the land, harvested crops, and during the lean seasons, he hunted in the wilds to fill his belly.

His family was poor but harmonious, without ambition, dreaming only of acquiring a good partner, decent land, and becoming the proud owner of a sizable farm and a complete household.

He was just a young tenant farmer with no greed, whose only goal was to live a solid, honest life.

But the heavens had bestowed upon him a gift.

Late at night, holding his plow in the field and gazing up at the starry sky, it seemed as if the principles of the heavens were captured in his eyes.

The flowing magical energy appeared like a raging river, a natural landscape, and a speck of magic at his fingertips felt like an extension of his body.

He learned magic. Not out of ambition or dedication to the path of magic, but simply because he could.

Watching city mages wield magic and sensing the flow of magic in nature, he developed his own unique style of magic. He could predict when the wind would blow, and it seemed he could feel when the rain would come.

Walking through the forest, the rustling of each leaf whispered in his ear, and every movement seemed fully comprehensible.

He aimed his bow where the wild animals would land and avoided places where rocks might tumble.

He was a magician of common birth.

By adulthood, he had reached 2-star status, and as he grew a beard and started a family, he attained 3-star status. In a small village on the edge of his domain, he became a heroic figure, and his entire family revered him as their head.

His wife, the miller’s daughter, was kind and beautiful, always caring for him, and his two lovely daughters always sparkled with pride at their father’s magical prowess.

He had an epiphany.

If the first act of my life was as a tenant farmer, then the second act is as a magician. With that, he delved deeper into his magical achievements, poring over magic books brought from the city all day, refining and advancing numerous explorer magics, making them his own.

Before he knew it, there were hardly any common-born mages following in his footsteps.

Could he reach the realm of 4-star before turning forty? Could the second act of his life shine even brighter? With that thought, he devoted himself more to magic and farming in that humble village.

And then, his life entered its third act. The life of an avenging spirit.

The whole world paid homage to him for reaching the 3-star realm. Renowned nobles expressed their astonishment that a common-born mage could achieve such a state, and among common mages, he almost became a spiritual pillar.

—

Rumors of Drest, the search mage of Count Zebulon’s domain, had reached Ebelstain. Even as a commoner, he became a living testament that one could reach the realm of a high mage.

Magicians of all kinds began to flock to his village, seeking his teachings.

Most were deeply engrossed in the study of magic, and conversing with them was a pleasure. However, occasionally, there were those who discussed more than just magic.

They harbored resentment towards the blood nobility who wielded magic as a privilege and dominated the world.

There were those from humble origins, mages with a venomous temperament, who cried out that the world must be changed.

The following year, they were beheaded in the city square.

It seemed they had been caught attempting to assassinate Count Zebulon. It was a terrible end.

Yet, such temperaments in people would resurface from time to time.

For them, Drest’s existence, a commoner daring to reach the domain of four-star magic, was nothing short of a messiah.

They hailed him, saw him as a living proof, and were numerous in their desire to change the world.

Drest had no interest in such revolutions.

Though he was among the ranks of high mages, his essential nature hadn’t changed much from when he was a tenant farmer. What he desired was personal achievement, and he was indifferent to the world’s transformation.

He lived with the hope of reaching higher realms himself, and beyond that, to provide amply for his wife and daughters. That was the extent of his aspirations.

And the year after next, Count Zebulon ordered the execution of Drest’s entire family.

The intermittent revolutionaries all believed in Drest as their savior. As he gradually ascended beyond the four-star level, their numbers would surely grow.

The Count wanted to eradicate all seeds of rebellion. Drest may not have led the revolution, but he was indeed its catalyst.

Numerous crimes were falsely attributed to him. Heinous sins he never committed tarnished his honor. Ironically, the only ones who understood that all these were slanders were the revolutionaries who had driven Drest to this situation.

One day upon returning home, he found his house stained with blood.

His wife’s corpse was hanging on the wall. His two daughters had been slaughtered, their bodies rolling on the floor, smeared with blood.

The house was set ablaze, and the giant bonfire shot a reddish glow into the night sky.

The blood of the villagers, with whom he had shared a bond, flowed like a river. Burning sheaves rolled on the ground, occasionally sparking embers. It was a sight of everything he had known in his village turning to ash and disappearing. The faces of the soldiers setting the fire were all lit with exhilaration.

The revolutionaries whispered in Drest’s ear, “All of this is the doing of those nobles.”

Their instigation turned Drest into a vengeful spirit risen from hell. Years passed, and after numerous skirmishes and pursuits, he infiltrated the mansion, coming close to killing Count Zebulon.

But, he could not kill the Count.

In the burning mansion, the Count, trembling with fear and clutching his daughters, begged for his life with tears. Drest’s eyes, facing Count Zebulon pleading for his daughters’ lives, still blazed with vengeance.

Vengeance is futile. All that remains after revenge is new hatred and emptiness.

From noble mtl dot com

He was not unaware of this fact. Still, it had to be done. Even if it was empty and futile, it was something to ponder after the act. He could not live with this burning desire for revenge for the rest of his life.

The cycle of hatred must be broken someday, but it need not start with him.

At the moment when the murderous magic surged, he remembered his own innocent children in the terrified Count’s daughters. They were images of innocent children. Just as his own daughters had died in vain, these children too were innocent.

Drest closed his eyes and pondered, then cut out one of Count Zebulon’s eyes, his tongue, and the tendons in both legs. The Count writhed in pain, bleeding out. Leaving him to live a crippled life, Drest left the mansion.

And so, he became the public enemy of the aristocracy.

For over a decade, he lived as a fugitive.

Many wizards who believed in and followed him tried to protect him, and they died.

Even those close to him, all perished. As countless years passed, and everyone else was captured, Drest alone remained elusive.

Not even the high nobles, nor the imperial court’s five-star wizards, could succeed in capturing him.

By the time he reached fifty, he had surpassed the threshold of a five-star wizard, his vengeance forging him into the finest seeker mage in the world.

Already succumbing to age, he did not run fast. He had no special means of transportation, nor secret passages known only to him.

With his leisurely pace, walking slowly on the same roads as everyone else, no one could catch him. As if he knew when and where the pursuers would appear, the old man’s movements, drifting through the world, seemed ghostly.

Fifteen more years passed, and as he aged beyond sixty, the high aristocracy completely gave up on capturing him.

It had been nearly thirty years since he had wronged Count Zebulon. Time erodes all things in this world, sins included.

After three decades, the nobles had to admit it: capturing Drest Wolftail was an impossible task.

If they couldn’t fully suppress the seed of revolution he carried, they had to at least draw him into their domain. Only after such a long time did the nobles resign themselves and decide to deal with him using a different approach.

Years later, the imperial court bestowed upon Sir Drest the title of baronet.

If they couldn’t control him, they would make him a noble to protect their authority. It took over thirty-five years for him to finally be free from the pursuers, as many stepped forward to clear up the misunderstandings about him.

The emperor himself settled the grudge with the Count Zebulon family, offering ample courtesy, compensation, and apologies, and at last, he was free. Coming to his senses, he found life had entered its twilight, and he had become a proper noble. Now, he was no longer a figure of the common folk but of the nobility.

Without a domain or even a mansion, yet he was accepted as a noble, purely on the merit of his magical prowess, completely separated from the commoners.

The commoners no longer looked at him as someone who would overturn the nobility.

He became a noble solely through his magical skills, leading many commoners to believe that if they lived diligently, they too might one day receive such fortune.

Drest paid no mind to such public perception. By this point, everything in life had become hollow to him.

And to some extent, it wasn’t incorrect. He was indeed the only person who had shattered the privilege of the nobles with nothing but pure magical talent.

He had reached the realm of a six-star wizard, becoming one of the most renowned mages in the world, though the public knew him as a four-star.

He had no proper faction, but rumors painted him as living in luxury.

He harbored no ambitions, yet to the people, he was an ambitious commoner mage.

Those who followed him established an academy in his name, and he occasionally supported them, but whenever he could, he wandered the world.

He climbed high mountains to gaze upon the world below and entered the deepest caves to surrender to the darkness.

Living a life without family or friends, he drifted along, and before long, he turned eighty, then ninety.

As he looked down upon the world, everything had changed.

The old man gazed up at the lofty sky. Despite the countless years, the sun, the moon, and the stars remained fixed in their places. Such a tumultuous journey it had been, yet everything in the heavens appeared as if it had always been the same.

Walking quietly, the old man, without any warning, looked up at the sky and murmured,

“So it is. This is life.”

He was the beloved only son of a father, the steadfast head of a household, and a bloodthirsty avenger.

A recluse consumed by emptiness, a spiritual pillar of an academy, an idol to some commoners, and an enemy to some nobles.

And sometimes, he was someone’s comrade, and at other times, someone’s foe.

As he entered the twilight of his life, there remained little sentiment.

“After all is said and done, there’s not much to it.”

Such was life.

Only in the twilight of life does the old man realize.

He had run as if chased, and at times, he had moved forward mindlessly…

But in the end, this too was a life.

*

“Boy, your magical talent is too ambiguous.”

In the southwest of the empire, a wandering spirit roams.

Derrick may not know the rumor circulating among the high nobility, but at least the opinion that this ringed old man appeared ghost-like was unanimous.

The old man who left the tavern with Derrick walked the streets bathed in dawn’s air as if floating.

Following behind him, Drest assessed his magical talent with a hoarse yet frail voice.

“Ambiguous?”

“Yes.”

No one in Derrick’s life had ever deemed his magical talent ambiguous.

He had reached two-star status at the mere age of fourteen, and was eyeing three-star status at seventeen.

Perhaps he might even achieve magical feats faster than Drest. Derrick’s magical talent was that exceptional.

Yet, Drest judged such talent of Derrick’s as ambiguous. It seemed to him that some far-off realm was visible.

“If you dream of reaching high realms as a commoner mage, mediocrity will not bode well for the end.”

“…”

“If you seek a path, you must be overwhelming.”

Derrick internally debated what to respond. Honestly, he thought his current level was already overwhelming.

“There will be great turmoil in the western part of the empire. To survive, you must become more exceptional.”

“…”

He walked through the dark, shabby alleyways of the night, and eventually, straightening his robe, he turned back.

In the place shrouded in darkness, the cold gaze of the venerable mage faintly glowed.

“Combat magic will protect you from numerous anomalies, and chaos magic will create countless variables in various situations. But to utilize such magic aptly, one must also know how to properly acquire information about the situation and environment.”

Drest’s slender hand sliced through the air, and then, with resolve, clenched into a tight fist.

The amount of magic that burst forth seemed to veil the sky. The intricacies of the various spells etched above, so refined that even Derrick, who had become quite versed in various magical fields, couldn’t help but widen his eyes in awe.

Gazing at the magical formulas that shone brilliantly, adorning the dark streets of the night, Derrick’s eyes were completely captivated and gleamed with fascination.

The array of exploratory magic that unfolded was on a completely different trajectory from anything Derrick had experienced before.

The grand display of magical power seemed like a nautical chart, pointing the way to a distant golden realm.

*

The next day,

At the tavern ‘Tears of Beldern’

From morning, Jayden was busy with a pile of letters that had arrived.

While it was routine to receive commission letters, today was special because of the unusually significant ones that had come.

‘To think I’d receive letters from the Beltus, Belmierd, and Duplain houses all at once. Indeed, life is full of surprises.’

The reputation of the Beldern Mercenary Group had risen considerably since its founding.

Thanks to Derrick’s contributions, Jayden’s own legwork, and the strength of the other members.

But even so, it wasn’t as if they were famous enough to receive simultaneous commissions from the three most renowned families in the western empire.

Surely, there was only one person these letters were seeking.

Jayden pondered how to handle this situation.

– Thud!

“Oh, Derrick!”

As Derrick boldly entered through the tavern door, Jayden greeted him with a welcoming gesture.

There were plenty of lucrative commissions. Just as he was about to say this, Derrick grabbed a food pouch from the corner of the bar table, laid down a silver coin, and said urgently,

“Please reject all commissions from today. There are enough other members, right? It’s also time for me to rest.”

“…What?”

Jayden knew that Derrick took regular breaks, but the clients were all too influential this time.

Such requests couldn’t be easily refused. As Jayden was about to explain this, Derrick, seemingly in a hurry, said,

“I’ll be leaving now. I have urgent matters to attend to.”

It was rare to see the usually composed Derrick act as if fire was set to his heels.

The strange anticipation in his eyes seemed to gleam with the excitement of fulfilling a long-held aspiration. The disparity from his usual calm demeanor was unsettling.

Jayden was about to explain the difficulty of refusing these commissions, but Derrick had already left the tavern with light steps.

To a stranger, it might not be noticeable, but Jayden, who had known Derrick for a long time, could tell. Derrick was in a state of extreme excitement.

He had no intention of teaching anyone at the moment.