Ch. 3
Chapter 3
I felt something toward the Special Task Force that was nothing like what I felt for the refugees.
Especially the black-haired woman with the bob cut.
“Marcello, quit day-dreaming.”
The Special Task Force Captain spoke to her.
What I felt for the Task Force—and for Marcello—was pure admiration.
She had a whole string of nicknames:
One-Man Legion, Humanity’s Strongest, the Walking Cannon, and more.
Every title shouted power.
Because of her, I got a nickname of my own.
After I stared down the spear-tip at the Training Center,
while cold sweat poured off me, a classmate spat out:
“Look at the way he moves—he’s a dead ringer for that prodigy from the Task Force, Marcello Arnes. Except he’s got a fatal flaw. Total Unlucky Marcello.”
I became the unlucky shadow tacked to the hero’s name.
That label followed me out of the Training Center and would dog me until the day I died.
Marcello and I happened to pass each other just then.
“Been a while.”
Still too green to stand at her side, all I could manage was a muttered sentiment.
We pressed on toward the capital.
“How did you learn to ride?”
Kinjo broke the silence first.
“Learn? You just grab the mane and swing up.”
“I mean properly. Horsemanship.”
“That’s what I said—just do it.”
“Just do it? Most people can’t. They hit the dirt in seconds.”
“So I’m nobody special, is that it?”
“Opposite, actually.”
Kinjo let out a long sigh.
In the old days that sigh would have cost him an eye, yet here he was, whole and riding behind me.
I’d traded the lives of everyone else for one thing: the Clairvoyance spell that would let me strike back.
Unbidden, the Silver Tomb flashed through my mind—
dog-tags nailed so thickly to the wall they looked like scales.
“They’re all alive too, I bet.”
Alive.
The precious people I’ll meet again—
the ones I once called family.
The thought filled my chest until it hurt.
* * *
We sold the brown horse we’d ridden in on to cover living expenses.
Kinjo kept tossing the money-pouch and catching it one-handed.
“If Father knew we’d let Light go for pocket change, he’d leap out of his grave.”
The brown horse’s name had been Light.
“Good riddance. Keep a mount around and you start thinking about running.”
“Running? Don’t insult my resolve.”
The man who bought Light took the reins and left.
“Sir, do you actually know how to ride?” Kinjo called after him.
“What do you take me for—buying a horse I can’t ride?”
With a flourish the man grabbed the saddle and vaulted up,
then promptly slipped and landed flat on the back of his head.
A pitiful groan leaked out.
Kinjo pointed.
“See, Mago? That’s normal. Nobody just ‘rides.’ You sure you never learned?”
“Never.”
“Then it really is raw talent... or something.”
He rested his chin on his left hand.
“Scary.”
Selling Light let us afford an inn room with two beds.
A corner of the window was cracked, letting the wind whistle in.
The beds were worse: the moment you sat, they sagged with a tortured creak.
Between them stood a small desk, paper, ink, and a fountain pen laid out neat as you please.
“Fussing over furniture in a dump like this—priorities.”
“Shall we fill these out now?”
I sat at the desk.
“Yeah, here.”
Kinjo slid two sheets of paper across the scarred wood.
We’d picked up enlistment forms at City Hall.
I dipped the pen and started with mine.
Name: Mago. No surname.
Place of birth: unknown.
Sex: male.
Height: 175 cm. Weight: 63 kg.
Nothing else to declare.
“Lots of blanks. Anyone’d think you’re a spy.”
Kinjo grinned.
Next, his turn.
Since I was already seated, I filled his form out too.
I wrote down everything he said.
“Kinjo Shua, born in the capital. Male, obviously. One hundred and ninety centimeters tall.”
“You’re not one-ninety.”
“Busted... one-eighty-seven.”
I entered 187 cm.
“Weight?”
“Ninety kilos.”
“Nothing else to add?”
“There is. Under ‘other remarks,’ write this.”
Kinjo tapped an empty line with his finger.
“Aquaella.”
Aquaella.
The name of the Northern Country he had visited.
The land of mages the Demon Beasts had since swept away.
“Graduated Watermelon Magic University.”
He folded his arms, proud.
It looked oddly pathetic.
“Should I add that you bought your way in?”
“Are you kidding?”
“A little.”
“Graduating is what matters. Graduating.”
“Then I suppose you can cast magic?”
I twirled the pen, pretending ignorance.
Of course I knew his magic, but in this life I had to feign otherwise.
“W-well, yeah. Naturally. No way I wouldn’t.”
He was clearly trying to brush it off.
“Oh, you said you just played around up there.”
“I didn’t just play!”
“Then what can you cast?”
“Fire.”
“Fire’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
“Fire... a spark.”
He couldn’t lie.
From fire down to a spark.
“I see.”
“No, an ember...?”
It could shrink even further.
From a flower to the seed inside it.
“Mago, those fire arrows the goblins shot—the ones that kept burning on the arrowheads. I bet it’s the same kind of magic. Reinforcement magic that wraps flames around a weapon.”
“Then it’d be a goblin shaman, not a mage. A goblin shaman.”
“Did you have to bring that up?”
“It’s true.”
“There’s more.”
Kinjo touched thumbs to forefingers on both hands, forming circles he held in front of his eyes.
“I can use clairvoyance too. Write it down.”
A spell so unique it could sum up everything about him.
“That at goblin-shaman level too?”
“Way better, I’d say.”
“Still, you probably wasted it on weird stuff.”
At that, Kinjo’s face went grave.
“Mago. You think I didn’t try?”
He said it with a straight face.
“I wanted to see inside people. The physical inside.”
He shuddered.
“But what I saw wasn’t their insides—it was their entrails.”
His expression darkened further.
“Never bring that up again. I don’t ever want to picture the captain’s wrinkles.”
He’d said it so earnestly.
“So, bottom line: you’re a mage with zero offensive spells.”
“I’d love to deny it, but you’re not wrong.”
He shrugged.
“Mago, can we turn these in tomorrow?”
“We wouldn’t be late if we went back to City Hall now.”
“I want to rest. Tomorrow’s fine.”
“Fine... no rush. Early submission just means longer waiting for the training-center enlistment date.”
Kinjo flopped straight onto the bed.
“Yeah. Let’s rest.”
And he was asleep.
In an instant.
While he slept, I drifted into thought.
Enlisting again in this life was inevitable.
The goal hadn’t changed.
Kill every Demon Beast, reclaim the Empire’s land, and reach Aquaella.
This time, I would make it.
I neatened the papers on the desk.
I began drafting a plan.
The new year was only days away—Year 607.
[Year 607]
I wrote the first line.
After a long while, I slid my hand to the right.
[24 December, Year 614]
I wrote the end.
A single line now joined 607 to 614.
A bare-bones timeline.
I began drawing vertical slashes across the horizontal bar.
First slash; beneath it I wrote:
[Year 610]
Roughly three years after I’d landed a weapon far too good for a raw recruit.
A sword, because “weapon” starts with a blade.
I sketched one in place.
Second slash followed:
[Year 612]
Two years later I shattered that same sword.
I drew the blade again, then crossed it out with a thick X.
From the moment the sword broke, only despair remained.
That I held on until 614 felt like a miracle.
[Year 614]
The third and final slash.
I had come full circle.
In mid-December I found a way to fight with my eyes closed.
Even shut, the world looked blurred, but I still don’t know what the ability is, or how to sharpen it.
“Huh... I dozed off. I should wash up before bed.”
Kinjo opened his eyes.
He rose slowly and peered at the paper.
“What were you doing?”
He reached for the sheet—
then, a soft tap.
“Ah.”
“Oops.”
The ink bottle tipped.
It rolled once and vomited black across the timeline.
The future turned pitch-black.
“Sorry.”
“Forget it. It wasn’t important anyway.”
What mattered was this: no matter how well I did, thousands would still die beside me between 607 and 614.
Soldiers perish in war; nothing can change that.
What counted was that they had stood next to me in the first place.
I remember all of them.
As if I’d studied every enlistment form: name, face, hometown, family ties, what they wanted to do after the war—sometimes even what they planned for tomorrow.
I will remember until my last breath.
Sending them off with makeshift funerals—that is the price of surviving alone.
The Silver Tomb rose in my mind.
This time, I want to protect it.
But a battlefield is never lenient, even on your second visit.
If I can shield the training-camp cadets—geniuses like Marcello—they’ll save multitudes in turn.
Lives chain together, tail to tail.
There are talents indispensable for ending a war.
And there is the place where they die the easiest.
“The Special Task Force.”
The answer pointed there once again.
“Why the Special Task Force?”
“I have to shine in the Task Force. It’s the fastest route to promotion. First step: get in. They only take the top ten graduates, so I have to dominate training from day one.”
“Promotion already...? You’re thinking that far ahead?”
Not already—finally.
I’d lost count of the times I thought a superior’s order was insane, but I had no rank and no power to refuse.
I marched the whole squad into hell, knowing the ending.
Now I know the future too; incompetent officers will look worse than fish heads.
“I have to think. I won’t die as expendable stock.”
I need a far higher rank than before—Task Force Captain, Legion Commander if necessary.
If I can’t command the Imperial Army, all this foreknowledge is useless.
“Why does every plan end with ‘and then I die’? So gloomy.”
Kinjo tapped my shoulder and headed for the bathroom.
He flopped back onto his bed right after washing up and fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.
I stayed awake, tangled in thoughts, while he slept enviably well.
“He was bawling his eyes out not long ago.”
Maybe nobles bounce back faster.
“I’m sorry.”
Then Kinjo’s quiet voice broke the dark.
"I'm sorry, Mother..."
It was only sleep-talk.
"I wanted to be a son you could be proud of. I swore I'd show you that..."
He murmured for a long while.
Kinjo’s younger sister, Erina Shua, had spent a full year trying until, at last, she could ride the brown horse, Light.
The world was still—
No.
From this moment on, it was cruel.