WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 5

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The old vendor carefully hid the money beneath the stall and glanced around. Then they let out a sigh of relief and took up the dagger. It was rusted in places, but the blade itself still had a sharp edge.

“Is there something you would like, sir?”

“Just carve anything.”

The old vendor took several pieces of wood from their bundle and laid them out in one corner of the stall. They were the lowest of the low, worm-eaten and soaked through with water. The vendor picked up one piece and began turning it this way and that. Then their knife started moving without hesitation.

“What are you carving?”

I asked as I watched the piece of wood being shaved away.

“Ah, this one’s a rabbit, sir.”

The old vendor answered without stopping their hands. As the knife flashed again and again, the piece of wood quickly began to take the shape of a rabbit. Like the other puppets laid out on the stall, it was full of life.

“With this little fellow, the hind legs are important, see. The hind legs have to look ready to hop, hop, hop, or it won’t seem like a real rabbit.”

As they said that, the old vendor began carefully carving the rabbit’s hind legs. In less than five minutes, the rabbit was complete. Sitting on the stall, it held a crouched strength, as if it might spring up at any moment.

At the center of that strength were the hind legs, just as the old vendor had explained. The sight startled me. I could not feel any mana from this carving at all. And yet it had this much life.

“How is something like this possible?” I asked in surprise.

“Ah, that would be my trade secret…”

The old vendor stopped carving and hesitated. After wetting their lips with their tongue a few times, they checked the gold coins beneath the stall again and squeezed their eyes shut.

“I can tell you, but you mustn’t tell anyone else, sir.”

When I nodded, the old vendor picked up a new piece of wood. Then they poked here and there at the wood with their knife.

“These here are this fellow’s vital points.”

Hearing that, I examined the piece of wood closely. Places where the rings of the wood had gathered, places that had rotted, marks left by insects. The old vendor was making notches in those spots.

“When the rings of the wood gather, I reckon that means it’s a part that didn’t grow properly. And if it’s rotted or eaten by bugs, I reckon that means it’s the weakest part.”

They were right.

“When you look at where these things gather, a kind of grain appears.”

The old vendor connected those points in a strange curve. Once they had joined them all, the character of the wood began to stand out clearly. Even though I was watching it with my own eyes, I could not understand at all why that sort of flow had formed.

“If the grain of the last fellow was coiled up, this one is stretched out straight.”

This wood certainly gave the impression of standing straighter and stiffer than the rabbit’s hind legs. When the old vendor worked their knife over that piece of wood, this time a bird appeared. The nameless bird’s wings seemed to hold the wind, as if it might fly away at any moment.

“In this way, every piece of wood has a grain that only that wood holds, and I draw it out. By adding the shape that suits it best, see.”

Grain. It was something I had never even thought of. No matter how I looked at it, it felt unfamiliar. To resolve that question, I kept asking the old vendor questions. I even took the knife and tried carving for myself, but the result had no life to it at all.

Even so, little by little, I tried to accept what the old vendor was saying. Learning something new like this was incredibly enjoyable. The exchange that felt as if it might go on forever only ended after the sun had set.

The old vendor had run out of stamina and could no longer keep carving. I was full of regret. Still, I could not keep them there any longer. I had already learned everything I could, and the rest was something I had to master myself.

“Hehe, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir!”

The old vendor kept bowing as they gathered the money beneath the stall. I bowed to them in return. To the old vendor, a few gold coins might have been an enormous sum, but to me, the knowledge they had given me felt like the greater treasure. I floated the pieces they had carved into the air and examined them as I returned to the workshop.

This was it.

I could see a breakthrough.

I ran into the workshop and took a carving knife in my hand, just as the old vendor had. I grabbed the simplest piece of wood in the workshop and began carving it down. Only after quite some time did I barely manage to finish one.

The carving was terribly shabby. It was uglier than the first puppet I had ever made. I could not really feel the grain the old vendor had talked about either.

Still, I was not disappointed. I picked up another piece of wood. This wood’s weaknesses. The old vendor had said one could see the grain by connecting those weaknesses. Then why did connecting weaknesses reveal the grain? What was grain?

I kept carving. I could neither find nor understand this thing called grain. This time, I tried carving a rabbit. I could feel no life from it.

Yes, life. I spread out the old vendor’s carvings and examined them. When one followed the grain, life emerged. The rabbit looked ready to leap at any moment, and the bird looked ready to fly at any moment. The snake crawled, and the person overflowed with vitality. I had to understand it with that life at the center.

Several months passed like that.

I still could not fully understand either grain or life.

It was a realm the old vendor had reached over their entire lifetime. It was only natural that I could not grasp it in such a short time. Even so, I had achieved a very small result.

I took out bluewood and began carving.

At first, I carved things like birds and rabbits. Perhaps because I had become very used to carving without mana, the carvings were completed quickly. The mana held by the bluewood did not reject the blade.

I carved for a long while like that. Then, from the moment I felt I had fully grasped the nature of bluewood, I began to give it human forms.

When giving it a human form, I gently put mana into the blade. This was the small result I spoke of earlier. I could neither understand nor touch the grain of life. But one thing, and one thing alone, I could see: the grain of mana.

Carving by following the flow without going against the wood’s mana. That was the way to handle this wood. The mana-laden knife brushed naturally across the wood. So this was it. Did this kind of grain exist only in wood? No. Any being that possessed mana must have its own grain.

This kind of grain must exist in me as well. That small realization became rain and soaked the sprout in my chest. I could fully feel the grain the sprout held. I could also feel that flow growing little by little. Feeling the mana surge, I kept carving in a daze.

Within that, the image of the puppets naturally came to mind as well. I would put the years kept by the woman in the portrait into the puppets and express them. That would become the woman’s natural grain.

Like that, I made the puppets’ frames one by one. Rather than simply copying her outer appearance, I carved while imagining the grain that woman must have possessed.

There would be three puppets in total.

Puppets bearing the forms of a girl, a middle-aged woman, and an old woman.

There was no way to express this woman with just one. To express the old woman, I preserved the rough grain of the wood and showed the traces of time. When expressing the girl’s form, I shaped the grain softly and delicately, bringing out the girl’s own frailty.

It took nearly a year just to carve them like this. But during that time, my chest was filled with fulfillment. Each time I completed one part of the puppets, no small realization soaked my heart. The feeling of the sprout growing gave me a satisfaction stronger than any pleasure.

And when I finally finished all the puppets, I sat down on the spot and cried with joy for a long time. The puppets each held their own years. But I still was not satisfied. I felt I could make the puppets’ grain even more perfect.

So I searched for a long time to find what would suit them. An old tree, stones that held the power of the earth, water full of vitality, monster bone, and more. As I looked through these materials with magical characteristics, I carefully chose the puppets’ parts one by one.

First were the eyes. The most important part for a human. For them, I obtained amber jewels forged in lava, split them, and set them in. This amber, which had endured lava and absorbed mana, held the lava’s heat and breathed intelligence into the puppets’ eyes.

I also carved monster bone and covered their joints smoothly to express them naturally.

To express the hair all over their bodies, I melted various ores with mana, drew them out like thread, and decorated them with it. To breathe life into the puppets, I ground milky-white spirit stones, said to be mined only deep beneath the island, into powder and applied it to their skin.

Beyond that, I obtained all sorts of materials and tried to bring out the puppets’ grain. As a result, I was able to make puppets that looked as if they might move at any moment. I poured all the gold coins I had into making them, but I did not regret it.

While making them, I did not think about airships, tickets, universities, or anything else. I simply focused on making these puppets and enjoyed it.

These puppets would soon go to Father.

Why had Father asked me to make these puppets? I did not even know who this woman was. But I knew she was someone Father missed. Otherwise, he would not have kept the portrait so carefully.

When I first began making the puppets, I had no particular thoughts about it, but to the current me, these puppets felt like my own children. Maybe that was why I wanted to bring out their perfection even more.

I thought of Father’s home. That cave-like house. With power like Father’s, it would not have been strange for him to build a much larger castle. But Father stayed there. Even though the chair and table were all worn out, he did not replace them.

Was Father staying in that cramped place because of the memories it held? I dared to guess so. Then I would put that into the puppets. Remembering the scenery of the cave I had seen then, I slowly began drawing magic into the puppets.

This magic was not magic Ojo had taught me. As I made the puppets, it was a magic the sprout had bloomed at some point. Ojo had said that as mages grew, they came to know their own magic like this. Because it was magic only that mage could use, it was called innate magic.

I gave this magic the name ‘Magical Deep Breathing.’ It had only one function: to give a puppet a fixed rhythm and life according to the beating of its mana heart. When this magic was used, the puppet gave the impression that it was alive and moving.

The old me had used this magic simply by planting it in the mana heart. But after realizing the grain of mana, I learned that it could be used in many more ways.

If I did not simply embed it in the heart, but also carved that magic into the veins and vital points formed where the grain gathered, the puppet would move even more like it was alive.

As a girl, she must have run around and played energetically with a boy. When she reached middle age, she must have managed the household. In old age, she must have fought illness. Had she not spent all those stages of life with Father in that cave? I wanted to put that flow of years into the puppets.

They must have made bouquets and given them to each other. They must have sat at the table and eaten together too. As she grew old, her knees must have weakened, hurting each time she walked. Her body would have grown weak, making it hard even to move a single object. Father, being a mage, must have helped her from beside her.

Like that, I looked at the portraits in the book and imagined all sorts of things. Of course, all of this was nothing more than delusion inside my head. But by continuing those imaginings, I was able to realize what magic I had to plant in the puppets.

Into the girl’s veins, I breathed strong power. Every time the mana heart beat, vitality rose throughout the puppet’s entire body.

Into the middle-aged woman’s veins, I expressed fading vigor. One part was slightly misaligned, and I put in the sense of growing worn down by the flow of time.

Into the old woman’s veins, I put only faint traces. That flow of dying alongside illness was the grain an old woman would have.

Completing all of this took another year. After finishing everything, drained of strength, I called Nanny. Nanny had also aged a great deal in that time, and was full of white hair and wrinkles.

“…Tell Father the puppets are complete.”

After saying that, I blacked out and fell asleep. When I woke, I was on the bed. Nanny must have moved me. As I drank the water Nanny had boiled, I organized the realizations I had gained. Nanny told me Father’s attendants had come and taken all the puppets away, then looked at me with worry.

I did not know whether they would satisfy Father’s eye or not. But it was clear that they were my best. No, I could say with confidence that I had created a work even more perfect than that.

I do not know what reaction Father had when he saw those puppets.

Only when Father sent me a ticket a week later did I know he had been satisfied.

Afterward, my puppets gained a reputation for having satisfied even Father, and they sold like hotcakes. By the time the airship was due to arrive, I had enough to buy one more ticket. Before leaving, I handed half of that money to Nanny.

It was not a waste at all to leave that much money for her after I left. Nanny had grown very old now. Since hers was a life no better than a weed, she would likely die soon after I left.

I did not know who my parents were. The clan only gave birth to children. They did not raise them. To someone like me, Nanny was practically family.

I also thought about buying a ticket for her, but I could not take her, already so old, all the way to the continent and make her suffer. The bond between her and me ended here.

I comforted Nanny as she sobbed and boarded the airship.

“Let’s go out to the continent and enter university. And become a true mage!”

The airship began to rise.

Below it, the land where I had been born and raised began to grow smaller and smaller. The airship rose high into the sky past the clouds and turned toward the continent. The island beneath it was smaller than I had thought. Like that, the airship headed for the continent.

I had become a mage, and by following Ojo’s teachings, I had been able to leave the island.

Yes, I moved exactly as that mage had intended.

Ojo planted fantasies about the continent and university in me. I acted as he led me, and in the end, I left the island like this.

I did not know why he had tried to send me out. Since he could not harm the clan because of the contract, I could only think he had wanted to move me far away. Father, too, may have overlooked it despite knowing the truth.

That was not the only thing Ojo intended. Only after I came out to the continent and suffered for several years did I learn of Ojo’s trap. That mage had not taught me with all his effort. He had simply made us mages according to the contract.

The knowledge he gave me, the magic he taught me, were nothing more than the most basic things on this continent. His knowledge of puppets was cheap as well. When I first realized this, I ground my teeth hard.

When he taught me, he acted as if he were granting something incredible, but it had all been nothing more than the basics. Ojo was an old fox who never lied, but hid all sorts of things. I was the idiot for believing in him and following him.

He dressed up small things as something great. He also guided me with edited facts. None of these acts harmed me. They were not things that would trigger the contract. Like that, I wandered the continent as a half-baked mage.

It was ten years after leaving the island that I arrived at the university city. I had used up all the money I had, gone through deadly crises, and barely made it there.

By the time I reached that moment, rather than annoyance or anger, I simply admired Ojo and sincerely respected him.

In that unfavorable situation where he was bound by a contract and could do nothing, Ojo had thought up the greatest benefit he could obtain. This attitude of protecting himself and always thinking of profit could be called the most basic stance a mage should show!

That was the last lesson Ojo granted me.

Anyway, the past was all behind me now. The future was right before my eyes. University!

The young man who had shouted his dream as he left the island had tempered himself through all kinds of crises for ten years and reached this place. The wall called university would never stop me.

I would become a great mage and shock the world!

At that moment,

My surroundings began to blur like water droplets.

The resolution I had just made vanished like foam.

Hope went out, and only a damp, unpleasant feeling filled my body.

Ah, right. It was a dream.

“Damn it.”

I clutched my head. Using mana, I forced out the drunkenness that was kneading my brain. Being driven out of a hopeful dream and dragged back to reality, the reverse whiplash felt like it might kill me.

This beer contained high-purity mana? Bullshit. They definitely stretched it with nightmares. Otherwise, there was no way I would have had such an unpleasant dream.

Tomorrow, I was going to go there and smash everything to pieces. Selling defective goods like this. In a fit of pointless temper, I threw the beer glass away.

Ten years had passed since then.

Twenty years since I left the island, and ten years since I set foot in this massive city.

Over that long stretch of time, I had not advanced even a single step.

Forget university, I had not even set foot inside its entrance.

I had failed the exam nine times.

Ah, today made it ten.

“Fuuuuuck…”

Something wet my face.

Rain must have been falling from somewhere. It absolutely was not tears, sob.

At sixty-three, I was still trying to enter university as an eleventh-attempt applicant.

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