The Principle of a Philosopher by Eternal Fool “Asley”

Left with no other option, I took a vial of Pochi Bitande’d from my chest pocket and chugged it down, eliminating any lingering fatigue from yesterday.

And in front of me, young Bright was looking quite delighted as he went to sit in the table that had been prepared just for him.

An old maid followed right behind him. I had expected her to be a young lady at first, but now that I considered how much the master of the house cared for her brother, this did make more sense.

It was only natural for her not to let some random girl approach the boy.

Once young Bright was in place, the old maid, named Jetta, stationed herself where she could see him at all times.

Judging from her appearance and aura… she had probably been serving the Fulbright for a long time now. June wouldn’t have put her in charge otherwise, after all.

While I scratched the back of my head, I detected several presences approaching from behind me. One of them should be Alfred.

I turned around, and sure enough, the man’s sour expression was right there. Two other butlers were behind him, one carrying a set of papers and pen, and the other holding three books.

Magic textbooks and writing materials for the lessons, I assume. They’ll come in handy.

The three put down the items, bowed, then left without saying a word. After seeing them off, Bright stood right up, unable to contain his excitement.

“I am ready, Instructor Poer!”

He’s got his priorities straight as an arrow – makes me think of a boy version of Natsu. I had felt quite excited to be able to use magic for the first time, of course, but had never expected the reaction to be this much stronger when coming from a child.

Picking up the textbook labeled ‘Introductory’, I scanned through it to get an idea of what the entry-level magic spells of this era were.

…All right. The theories weren’t so different from what’s taught in my time, but the explanations here might come off as too rudimentary…

I suppose that does count as progress, if only a little bit.

“Let us start with this question, Master Bright: In your own image, what is an ideal mage?”

“Hmm… An overwhelming presence… that can instantly turn the tides of a battle. Something like that.”

This boy’s got big dreams.

He was right in that mages were a really big deal in the era, though. Especially considering how few there were.

So much so that I hadn’t seen any at the Adventurers’ Guild in this town. Makes me wonder if the Elves were filling in that void.

I had seen a few back at Sodom, at least…

“But most importantly… I would like to be a mage who is useful to my sister.”

Young Bright clenched his fists and pumped them up, showing his enthusiasm.

I sure look forward to seeing the sort of mage he would become.

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“Instructor Poer, what is this?”

“This is the fixed-position type Spell Circle of Magic Shift. While you stand on this Circle, you will be able to draw from my arcane energy pool.”

“Ohh!”

Considering Bright young age and the fact that he was still level 1, it would be quite a challenge for him to successfully invoke magic.

Since he wasn’t allowed to leave town, it wasn’t feasible to try and raise his level, either.

Having gone through numerous ideas, I had decided on the final solution: Magic Shift.

Though it leaned toward being a brute-force method, with this, Bright would be able to cast spells with his small arcane energy stock, and also draw more power from his titles’ positive effects.

Once he learns to use more and more spells, he would eventually not need the Magic Shift anymore, at which point I could just supply him with arcane energy via the Giving Magic spell to keep the lessons going.

Still… I reckon other mages would have gone with an even more brute-force method. With the way I’m going, he’ll end up gathering a great deal of knowledge without his level budging one bit.

There might be some titles that could be gained through amassing one’s knowledge, but I wouldn’t know about those.

Once June comes back, I’d like to ask her for permission to teach Bright how to fight, but it’s a coin flip whether or not she would let me…

“Now, let’s review. Can you list the Four Core Elements?”

“Yes! Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind!”

“Very good. Now, do you remember the names of the elementary-level combat spells that I have taught you so far?”

“Yes! Little Fire, Water Drop, Straw Stone, and Breeze!”

“What is the shape of the magic formulas?”

“- Hey, food’s ready!”

“W-wha-?! T-they take the shape of a pentagram!”

“What are the essential magic formulas for those four spells?”

“Materialization, Movement, and Invocation!”

“All right, heads up – time for target practice! Start with Little Fire!”

“Yes! …But at what?!”

“Three, two, one…-“

“Where’s the food, sir?!”

“There’s your mark!”

“Rise, A-rise, A-rise! Little Fire!”

“Hmph!”

Pochi promptly cut Bright’s Little Fire spell in half, from bottom to top.

“What was that for, you stupid Master?! But more importantly, where’s the food, sir?! Where?!”

Greed over anger, I see. Good ol’ hilarious Pochi and her unpredictable actions.

She’s sniffing around for food that just flat out doesn’t exist.

…And now she’s narrowing her eyes down. Huh, did she actually find something?

“Ooh, isn’t this black tea?! The tea leaves are high-quality, too!”

Pochi pushed up her… air glasses, and then put her front paws on the table.

“Oh, now I know, Master… Since there’s tea here… cake is coming up next, am I right?!”

Faking a brilliant smile won’t get you anything here, doggo.

Oops, no time to deal with her now. Gotta focus on young Bright.

That was the first spell he had ever invoked successfully-

I turned around, and saw young Bright staring at his own hands.

He closed his palms, opened them, then closed them again. After repeating a few times, he proceeded to raise the edges of his mouth.

That moment, a horrific chill ran through me.

…Oh my God. His smile is starting to resemble that of the other Black Emperor I know. No – it was almost exactly the same.

I mean, this boy would go on to be his ancestor, so I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise, but it didn’t have to be THAT similar.

It was good and all that he soon returned to his usual innocent expression, but… this boy definitely had the makings of his title.

He cared for his sister wholeheartedly, that was for sure, but it was now apparent that he had a lot of hidden layers.

“A-all right, next spell! Use this tea to cast Water Drop!”

“Ah, won’t we need a target? It doesn’t seem like Shiro is willing to cooperate anymore, too…”

“Look, Shiro, we’ll have some cake ready for you later.”

“I am NOT that cheap, sir-“

“Jetta, please direct her to the hall once it is ready.”

“Ooh, yes, please do, miss!”

Young Bright was an exceptionally fast learner; he was already well-adjusted to dealing with Pochi’s shenanigans, and had nailed down the basic attack spells of the four core elements from the early-morning’s lesson alone.

Finishing breakfast before me, he proceeded to flip through the introductory magic textbook, all the way from beginning to end.

The arcane arts itself just had that much of an impact on him.

Then, during the morning period, he learned the Bolt spell, a wind spell with a special application. Which was to say, he had done it of his own accord.

By my lunchtime, Bright has gotten down the basic spells of the elementary level, and then proceeded to finish reading the introductory magic textbook. He retained all the information so well that he could recite every sentence and word without a single mistake.

All in all, his comprehension skills were as good as Lina’s, memorization as good as Tifa’s, and situational application as good as Lala’s.

Yeah, he may very well be a called genius.

Then came the afternoon lessons, the longest period of the day.

We finally got started with recovery magic.

Recovery magic didn’t necessarily have spells that would be considered ‘basic,’ however. So for now, I taught him the elementary-level Cure and Recover.

But then something… ‘different’ happened with young Bright. Despite him being able to perform elementary-level spells so easily, he was taking quite a bit more time to get the recovery magic down. Although he had no issue learning the formulas and gathering the needed arcane energy onto his hands, he felt a repelling force that made it difficult for him to invoke the spells successfully.

Among mages, the phenomenon was called a ‘Spiritual Mismatch.’ He would need some time to get the hang of it, after which it would be nothing to worry about.

It used to happen to me, too. I had learned to deal with it from the few recovery magic lessons I’d had with Billy back at the Magic University.

After all that was done, I had Bright spend the rest of the afternoon period preparing for tomorrow.

The arcane arts were deep and came in a vast variety. Each time we go from the elementary to intermediate to advanced levels, the difficulty and variety would increase exponentially.

Now then, let’s see how young Bright’s statistics are holding up…

――――――――――――――――――――

NAME: BRIGHT

TITLES: Little Brother; Pupil; Apprentice Mage; The Investigator; The Charismatic; The Black Emperor (Young); Genius (Biased)

LV: 1

HP: 88

MP: 199

EXP: 6

SPECIAL SKILLS:

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Yup, he’s definitely got the makings of the other Black Emperor I knew.

And a ‘Genius,’ huh… I’d never met anyone with that title before. He definitely had the makings for it, too, from what I’d seen today. Perhaps it was thanks to this title that he already had that much HP and MP despite being level 1.

…Looks like I might have come across another one of those people that would go on to make a mark in history.

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