The Evil Mage’s Drop Table
Packed snow could not cool the fiery excitement of youth.
“Hiyah!”
“Whoa! Oh yeah? How’s this?!”
Off in the woods of Konigstuhl Canton, a band of children were merrily throwing snow at one another. Snow hardly ever fell this far south, and the little boys and girls of the village were set on enjoying the rare seasonal specialty to its fullest—even if their hands and faces were glowing red.
“...How did playing adventurer lead to this?”
“Hup! Take this, Mister Erich! Ice Spear, go!”
“Nice try, kiddo.”
The laughably oversized adventurer “party” I’d been watching over had, in proper childlike fashion, spontaneously decided they wanted to have a snowball fight instead. The kids remembered the original premise and shouted incantations as they pretended to cast spells—their reference points were common mages and not magia—but we were mainly just playing with snow.
Of them, one of the oldest was a rambunctious kid who tried to get me from behind with his “ice spear,” but I dodged, caught it midair, and threw it right back at him.
“Pwah?!”
“You can’t go around shouting if you want to surprise me. Only raise your voice after you land a hit—or at the very least, while you’re throwing.”
Catching a delicate snowball without breaking it was a trivial task with Scale IX Dexterity. The boy, who’d eaten a faceful of his own projectile, fell back on his butt and shook the powder off his face.
This was some really good snow: fluffy and smooth, it would have been perfect to ski on. It was too bad our farming canton didn’t have any real slopes to speak of.
“But that’s not cool!”
“Adventurers aren’t knights: winning is more important than getting in a fancy line.”
Technically, I wasn’t yet an adventurer myself, but a lesson smugly delivered by someone most of the way there was enough to light a fire in the boy’s heart.
“Dangit! Prepare yourself, villain! I’ll defeat you, fair and square!”
“Oh? Come at me, little adventurer! Quiver, for you face an evil greatmage on the battlefield today!”
Matching the boy’s heroic role-play, I took the role of a true baddie who deserved to be brought to justice. Though I felt more silly than intimidating, I lowered my voice and dramatically flapped my mantle as the young adventurer approached.
I ran around dodging snowballs and clumping together my own “attack spells” to fight back. I kicked up a huge white wave, but he pushed through with a brave battle cry. We’ve got a little hero on our hands!
“Ooh, me too! Yah!”
“All right, let’s all get him at the same time!”
“Mwa ha ha! You’ll need more than— Hey, wait! Hold it! What happened to fair and square?! What’s with the seven-on-one?!”
At last, the other distracted adventurers had been successfully mustered to battle: a barrage of snowballs rained down on me from every direction. Wailing on a boss that lacked any adds with a bunch of people was textbook adventuring, to be sure, but I couldn’t do anything against this.
In a real fight, I would’ve been able to close the distance one by one and pick off the attackers before getting overwhelmed, but I wasn’t going to do anything so brutal while playing with kids. Rather, that the thought crossed my mind at all gave me reason to reflect on my brain’s violent tendencies.
Dodging all of their rapid-fire attacks was tough, especially since I wasn’t a sore enough loser to whip out my real magic here. I’d brought Schutzwolfe along just in case we ran into a wild beast or something, but I couldn’t exactly swing her around against a bunch of kids.
In the end, the unified efforts of the adventurers were enough to fell the evil mage.
“Graaah... You’ve done well to defeat me, adventurers. But you’ll have to split my body into seven pieces and seal them in faraway holy lands if you want to stop me from resurrecting!”
“That’s scary!”
“Mister Erich, what saga is that from?”
“Unka... Is there really bad guys that scary?”
Shoot, I went too far. Even Herman, who’d been celebrating his participation in besting the evil mage, looked spooked.
No, no, no. There aren’t any bad guys like that...around here. I’d just gotten the idea from a book in the College library. That said, there had been formula documentation inside that had clearly flown under the radar of censorship, and Lady Leizniz had admittedly gone white upon seeing me with it, immediately snatching it out of my hands.
“Don’t worry. If a bad guy that scary shows up, your uncle will take care of it.” I brushed the snow off myself as I got up and patted my tiny nephew on the head. “And I shall bequeath you all with weapons so that, one day, you too will be able to defeat a real evil mage.”
“Really?!”
Sure, sure. Kids sure were simple: the prospect of new toys was enough to overwrite their fears with sheer anticipation.
“Ooh, a sword! I want a sword!”
“Me too, me too!”
“Unka! Me! I wanna wand! Like a magic!”
Okay, okay—calm down, you little adventurers. The big bad villain had lost, and I owed them some item drops. I guessed my plans for tomorrow were set: I’d need to go look for the scrap wood to turn into their deluxe gear.
[Tips] Adventurers are famous for going around slaying dragons and defeating evil mages, but the crimes of many an antagonist have been glossed over in service of more palatable stories.
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