Chapter 3
AFTER FOLLOWING THE MAIN ROAD for about ten minutes, Mira arrived in front of the guild union. However, her business wasn’t with the guild union but with the building next door.
“I’m pretty sure they said they’d be on the second floor.”
Located on the right side of the Mages’ Guild, the building appeared to be a boarding house. And while the three-story building was slightly larger than an aristocrat’s mansion, it had a plain exterior of wood and stone.
Stepping into the entryway, she came into a small hall. In front of her was a staircase and hallways stretching to the left and to the right. Something about it resembled a school.
She didn’t see anyone in the sprawling building. Mira knew that it wasn’t vacant but that everyone was just inside rooms.
“She said I should go up to the second floor, then at the end of the hallway on the right…”
Mira took the stairs in front of her and went down the hallway. After passing a few rooms, a pleasant smile broke across her face, and she said, “They’re hard at work, huh?”
There were children inside the room. Not just any children, either. They were young girls and boys who dreamed of becoming adventurers and were training to do just that. She’d heard from Nina and her sisters that this was a place where they could learn about various aspects of adventuring, such as how to wield a sword, identify medicinal herbs, forage in the wild, understand monsters, and other things.
This building next to the Mages’ Guild, which looked like a school, was an adventurer training center.
“This should be the room.”
Mira had come to the training center to fulfill the promise she’d made to Nina and her sisters.
She opened a door with Reference Room written across the front and walked inside. The room resembled a small library and was furnished with bookshelves, tables, and chairs. Inside were six children using the space to study and do research.
“Now then… I wonder if she’s here.”
The children, who were aspiring adventurers, seemed to know of Mira, the Spirit Queen. As soon as they noticed her sudden arrival, they all began chattering about whether or not she was an impostor or the real thing.
While this was happening, Mira took a quick look around the room. She’d heard from Nina that her sister was named Rina and studied evocation in this room every day.
But there was no one matching her description. Mira turned to the boy closest to her and asked, “Is there a girl here named Rina?”
“Ah, Um… Y-Yes. There is!” the boy answered, looking rather nervous. Perhaps this was because he was speaking with the famed Spirit Queen, or perhaps it was because he’d been asked a question by a beautiful young girl.
Mira heard something fall to the floor behind her. Turning to see what had fallen, she saw an awestruck girl standing beside a bookshelf. She noticed the source of the sound: a book lying at the girl’s feet.
“That’s her!” the boy managed to squeak out. It seemed as if Mira had found who she was looking for.
“I see. Thanks,” Mira said, thanking the boy with a slight smile. She quickly walked over to the girl as the boy behind her blushed and stiffened up. It seemed yet another innocent boy had fallen hopelessly in love.
Clueless, Mira approached the girl. After making sure she matched the description Nina and her sisters had provided, she sweetly asked, “You’re Rina, Nina’s little sister, right?”
The girl didn’t answer. Rather, she was even more nervous than the boy Mira had spoken to a moment ago. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly, and her gaze swept from place to place.
Hrmm… I did hear that she looked up to me. It’s no wonder she’s nervous!
When she thought about it, she was rather famous. With that in mind, Mira picked up the book.
“Th-thank you! I am Rina!” the girl said, taking the book from Mira before bowing abruptly.
But when she raised her head, her nervousness was gone, and her eyes were filled with joy.
“Um, excuse me, but I heard about you from my big sister! She told me! That you would be my teacher, Miss Mira…!” Rina said haltingly, trying to put the overwhelming emotions she was feeling into words. She was not terribly coherent…but she was very loud.
“Hrmm, yes, yes, that’s right. How about you calm down a bit first?” Once Rina had relaxed a little, Mira apologized. “Sorry to disturb you.”
She proceeded to take Rina out of the reference room and, with her new companion, entered a nearby meeting room.
“Um, sorry. I was just so happy…” the shy and fidgety Rina said, looking downward. Mira simply smiled and said that she didn’t need to worry before laughing the whole thing off by saying that if she’d made Rina that happy, then it’d been worth becoming an adventurer.
“All right, how about we hurry and get started?”
“Sure, that sounds good!”
Nina and her sisters had asked Mira to instruct Rina, who was an apprentice summoner, on the art of evocation. And when it came to anything regarding summoning, Mira tended to say yes.
Her lesson began with seeing what Rina was currently capable of.
Rina’s capabilities were in line with those of someone her age. She was a summoner who had yet to really pick up summoning, and so this was to be expected, especially considering that she was still a child.
This, however, wasn’t the case when it came to Mira’s test regarding how much she knew about summoning. Mira asked a series of questions, which Rina promptly answered.
“Excellent, you certainly have been studying!” Mira said after about twenty minutes, praising her for a job well done.
“Thank you!” she shot back with a big grin.
Her knowledge of summoning certainly belied her years, especially when it came to the fundamentals. Mira could confidently say that she had everything down pat. She was deeply impressed. Rina was a very promising summoner.
And that really lit a fire under Mira.
“Since you already know this much, we can probably skip the theory. How about we hurry on to the next step?”
Rather than being a simple beginner, Rina already knew everything an intermediate-level summoner needed to know. Mira left the training center with Rina, then summoned Pegasus and told Rina—who was very excited to see the evocation—to hop on before taking off.
“This is incredible. It feels amazing!”
“Doesn’t it, though?!”
Smiling at the sight of Rina enjoying herself, Mira told Pegasus to land beside the ruins that sat below them. They were about a ten-minute flight from Haxthausen city and seemed to be the lifeless remains of an old fort.
“U-um… Are those what I think they are…?” Rina said, squeezing Mira’s hand and pointing to something wandering a bit further off.
“Hrmm, they are. Armor spirits. We can’t start until you forge a contract.”
Armor spirits were the basic evocation that most summoners started off with. Deciding that Rina no longer needed to do any reading, Mira had brought her to an ancient battlefield to form a contract with an armor spirit.
“Ah, I defeated them!” Rina called out happily, surveying her work. She’d used a blasting stone in accordance with Mira’s instruction. The ground had been scorched within a fifteen-foot radius of where the blasting stone had landed, and the black and white armor spirits that had been there had vanished in a single blow.
“Hrmm, well done.”
The blasting stone Mira had given her wasn’t meant for making contracts but rather for actual combat. It contained power of a much greater magnitude than the ones she’d given to Cleos.
Since Rina had succeeded in defeating the armor spirits, Mira hurriedly grabbed her hand and took her to the spirit-infused armors. She then helped Rina forge a summoning contract with the dark knight and the holy knight.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
Perhaps because it was her first time making a real contract, Rina was so happy that it looked as if she was ready to dance. Mira, smiling, was happy to indulge her. But only for a moment—from now on, the real training would begin.
The sun had sunk halfway below the horizon when Mira popped the potion bottle into Rina’s mouth as she lay flat in the sprawling meadow. Rina gulped down its contents before she slowly got to her feet and forced herself to speak. “Please, let me try one more time…!”
“Hrmm, sure,” Mira responded, readying her dark knight.
The two of them had been training hard from the moment Rina got the hang of summoning her new contracts. The purpose of this training was both to practice proper summoning and to train her brand-new dark knight and holy knight. With Mira reviving Rina with a mana potion every time she exhausted her supply, they’d been able to train almost nonstop.
Considering that she was still just a child, it must’ve been very tough for Rina. But Rina’s motivation meshed well with Mira’s peerless instruction, and it was clear that she had talent, based on how much she was improving. At first, it’d taken her ten seconds to summon an evocation…but she could now do it in less than three. Furthermore, where her knights were initially being cut down before they could even swing their swords, they had improved to the point where they could now exchange blows with Mira’s dark knight two or three times.
“All right, I guess we should stop here for today.” Mira sighed, catching Rina in her arms and popping another mana potion into her mouth after she’d passed out from exhausting her supply yet again.
The sun had gone down, and night was quickly descending. It wouldn’t be right to keep someone’s younger sibling out for any longer. She informed Rina of this once she opened her eyes, and the girl protested and asked to keep going. But even with her mana restored, she couldn’t hide her physical and mental exhaustion. A sliver of daylight was left, but Mira felt that the girl was at her limit.
As an afterthought, she told Rina that resting was also an important part of such training and informed her that they’d move on to the next step once Rina had grown a bit more as a summoner.
“Okay, I understand…”
To Rina, each and every moment of this private lesson from the legendary Spirit Queen had been a dream come true. But all dreams had to come to an end. Despite looking extremely let down, Rina accepted Mira’s counsel.
She did, however, have questions. “Um… Just how much do I need to grow before you’ll teach me again?”
It seemed to her that she’d never have another such day with Mira. She was a lowly novice summoner—it didn’t seem likely that she’d ever have someone she admired as much as Mira for a mentor. With this in mind, she looked at Mira, hoping that they might have a chance to meet again.
“Hrmm, good question… How about when you master summoning instantaneously?” she answered. Mira then looked to the left and added, “Like this.”
She instantaneously summoned a dark knight.
Being able to determine where one would summon an evocation and then instantly summoning it was the gateway to higher-level evocation. For this reason, about half of what they’d done that day had been designed to lay the foundation for that.
But Mira still had more to teach. “Once you’ve improved enough to do that, then how about doing some intensive training to learn this?” she said as she looked to the right.
Five dark knights and five holy knights appeared beside her in alternating order. It was Mira’s specialty: simultaneous evocation.
“Whoa…!”
To someone like Rina, who needed three seconds to summon a single evocation, it was a very distant goal. And yet, her eyes shined while beholding the sight. It was a technique so advanced that she couldn’t even fathom how it was done–but Mira had demonstrated that it was possible. For that reason, Rina felt hopeful.
“All right, shall we head back?”
“Sure!” Rina said cheerfully, climbing on Pegasus’s back as Mira summoned it. It seemed as if the girl’s horizons were expanding endlessly.
While on the way back, her teacher gave an in-depth lecture on the different applications of evocations. She didn’t want to waste a single second. Despite being such an excellent student, Rina’s head was about ready to burst by the time they made it back to the city.
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