WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 77

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A flash of surprise crossed Rivielton's face. He nodded.

"I know. You saw it through dark magic?"

"Yes," Ethan said. "In the war Jimonail told us about, we lose. The Empire won't give up. So we have to run."

Brazen, perhaps. But Rivielton didn't fault him for it.

"West, then. Have you considered heading to Charasen?"

"If the Empire is our enemy, I won't drag the territory and our family into it."

"Respectable."

Rivielton nodded. "But knowing the war is coming, I can't go with you. I received a Hero designation from the Roundtable, and the former king of Kardien cast his vote for me. The debt I owe him and my own honor both make retreat impossible."

The Roundtable, the Kings' Roundtable in full, was the council of kings in Damarth Yumaha. Kings could designate someone a 'Hero', or the rank one step above it, a 'Champion'; those chosen held power and standing befitting their title. Whether the ceremony actually conferred any real ability was debated. In some eyes, the Hero designation was nothing more than a formal rite, and not every designated Hero lived up to the name. What was certain: only by dying as a Hero would you be recorded in history as one.

"Are the two of you going together?" Rivielton asked.

"Yes."

"Good. Boen I can trust." He nodded slowly. "Ethan, the person you need to find is a witch named Lifia."

It struck Ethan as strange that a man who had spent his whole life as a battle mage would have any connection to witches.

"A witch?"

"When I was young and working as a mercenary, I spent some time adventuring. Witches don't often work as battle mages, but they turn up among adventurers fairly often. That's how I met her. And, as you'd expect, witches tend to have some ties to dark magic. You're familiar with that?"

Ethan nodded.

Witches, in the simplest terms, were magic users who worked under a different system from ordinary mages, though the history between the two was far more tangled than that.

In ancient times, mages used magic with no regard for what would later be called dark magic. Then, roughly two thousand years ago, 2,232 years to be precise, marking Year 1 of the Oath Calendar, the Mage Council banned dark magic and resolved to abandon it entirely. Not every mage agreed.

Border shamans who had never set foot in a Mage Council assembly, mage towers that had drawn a hard line between themselves and the Council and lived entirely by their own rules, and witches who had long kept their distance from cities, walls, and kings alike, all pushed back against the Yurmus system.

The struggle for power among magic users ended, eventually, in the Mage Council's victory. The axis of Damarth Yumaha shifted to the Council.

But that didn't mean witches vanished entirely. Noblewomen near their time, couples who couldn't conceive, villagers in mountain hamlets where no herbalist ever came, all of them welcomed a skilled witch without a second thought. And in the distant lands where the Council's influence thinned, witches still filled the mage's role.

Ethan himself had been delivered by a witch. There was even one living at Charasen, under the pretext of being a lodger. From what the other children said, great families usually had a witch in residence, or sent out for one when a birth was coming. He honestly wondered whether any child in Damarth was born without a witch present. Whether the Mage Council had truly "won" against them was a question worth asking.

"Lifia is an expert on dark magic, even among witches. And she's sympathetic to dark mages regardless of who they are, witch or not. I never witnessed it directly, but from what I heard, she helped a few dark mages while we were travelling together, and she's apparently still doing that kind of work."

"But our enemy is the Empire. Will she be safe?"

Rivielton nodded, sure of it. "She'll be fine. Even the Emperor's reach doesn't extend all the way to Tultra."

∞

Ethan told Rivielton and Aincher what he knew about the events that would unfold in Yekatan and Kardien. How much of it would change things for the better was impossible to say, but it would at least be of some help. Aincher, as he always did, arranged travel expenses and handed them two horses.

Walking out of Yurmus Magic Academy, Boen said, "Tultra. I never thought I'd end up going that far."

"Neither did I, until yesterday."

Tultra sat at the western edge of Damarth. Head north from Tultra and you reached Ruure; head west and you were in Patala. Ruure didn't belong to Damarth at all, and depending on the scholar, Patala was either included within it or classified separately. Those who counted Patala outside Damarth sometimes placed it within Kasli Foklain.

So Tultra was well-known as an adventure city. Travelers heading for Ruure or Kasli Foklain always passed through it. Merchants flocked there to sell to adventurers or buy their treasures; bards sang till dawn of courage and betrayal; and, true to the spirit of adventurers who never learned to value their own lives, corpses turned up in alleyways from duels and brawls on a near-daily basis.

"I'm actually excited. Going to Tultra was a dream of mine when I was a kid."

"Most kids dream of becoming adventurers, don't they?"

"Adventurers are dangerous, though. Being in Tultra, you can hear their stories firsthand without having to be one yourself."

It was a good time to be on the road. The air was cold but the first snow hadn't come yet, and there was no wind. In the sunlight, the warmth was almost comfortable.

"Still, don't expect too easy a journey," Boen said.

"Because of the Inquisition?"

"Yes."

Boen scanned the ridgeline for anyone tailing them. Wide-open paddies stretched ahead, the harvest long finished. No one else in sight.

"Tell me more about the Inquisition," Ethan said.

"...The reason I don't talk about it much isn't any particular reluctance. It's that I simply don't know very much."

"Even so, there are things you haven't told me yet."

What Ethan knew was that the Inquisition had a division called 'handlers', which trained outsiders as informants and collaborators. Specifically it was Educational Facility No. 57, and facilities with two-digit numbers like that were scattered across the Empire for training informants like Boen. From the outside, Facility 57 had looked like nothing more than an ordinary storeroom attached to a local office.

"I've never seen it myself, but I hear the places that train the real Inquisition members are single-digit facilities. Those aren't for informants. What they're making, in the end, is an Inquisitor. Only people who are exceptional in ability and proven to be unquestioningly loyal to the Emperor, the Empire, and the Inquisition make the cut. Screened and screened again, then put through the training."

Other kingdoms had once each maintained their own Inquisition offices, but those were rare now. The Empire was different. In the past twenty-some years especially, the Inquisition had grown several times over in size and influence.

"The Empire originally had three main institutions: the Imperial Academy for scholars, the Imperial Mage Institute for mages, and the Martial Institute for military training. Beyond those there are private magic academies set up under pressure from vassal states and the Mage Council, the Isan Archive for those outside the Imperial mainstream, and the Mage Court, which serves as both a demon administrative body and a school for prominent demons. But all of them screen who they take."

"The Mage Court only accepts demons, and private academies like Yurmus take people on talent, as far as I know. Aren't the others exam-based?"

"Setting the Isan Archive aside, since that place is its own kind of strange, you're right. The Imperial Academy, the Imperial Mage Institute, and the Martial Institute all require passing the national examination. You can sit the exam as many times as you like, but passing is brutally difficult. Each attempt means traveling to Wongyeong, the imperial capital, which costs money, and the exam only comes around every three years. Fail once, and you might spend years studying with no guarantee of anything. Your family needs the means to sustain that. In practice, only families who've produced officials before, who have ancestors who passed the exams, noble families in other words, can realistically get their children through."

Boen shook his head. "The Inquisition is the only institution that truly takes people regardless of birth. That's why it has such broad support among commoners."

But to Ethan's eye, Boen didn't appear to share that support himself. He was curious about it, but let it go. Not every question needed an answer.

"If you were trained as an informant, you must have actually seen an Inquisitor at some point."

"Yes."

"What were they like? Might be useful if one comes for us."

"Not particularly."

"Methods probably vary by region," Boen said, "but in the case I witnessed, the Inquisitor arrived wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a black veil covering their face. Dark mages have brought down enough organizations from the inside that even colleagues can't trust one another. And Inquisitors each have different capabilities. One might be skilled with a sword, another with magic. Whatever talent they have gets honed into a tool for catching and killing dark mages."

"So suspect everyone who comes near us."

"Yes."

For a resolution that firm, they loosened up embarrassingly fast. At the next village they stuffed themselves on chicken stew, slept without locking the door, and spent the night blaming each other for who fell asleep first. The following day, camping in the open, Ethan caught a rabbit while Boen came back with berries and mushrooms; they split the meal and made their peace, then went to sleep without setting a watch, woke up, looked at each other, and both went quiet.

The normal route would have skirted Yurmus Forest into the Muhati Kingdom, but Muhati's civil war hadn't ended, so they had to make for the Calon barony instead.

On a small hill road leading into the barony, soldiers in light armor and armed with spears stood at watch.

Ethan was tense, but he reasoned that the Inquisition wouldn't be standing guard over a road checkpoint like this, so he rode up without much wariness. The soldiers moved before he did.

"Halt here."

The apparent captain, helmet off, raised a hand. The others leveled their spear shafts across the path. From atop the hill, Ethan could see wooden barricades behind them. Forcing through would not be easy.

"What's the matter?" Ethan asked.

"By order of Baron Calon, we are controlling passage along this pathway. With the war in the Muhati Kingdom ongoing, bandits have been appearing frequently. The roads aren't safe right now, so we're not letting parties of fewer than five through."

"Even on horseback?"

"Yes."

Ethan and Boen exchanged a glance. He looked around for any other travelers. There were none.

"Are we the first today?"

"First today, yes."

"No telling how long we'd have to wait, then."

"That's right. If you're lucky, before afternoon. If not, you may be spending the night."

"We're battle mages from the Magic Academy. We're capable of looking after ourselves."

The soldier shook his head. "That's exactly why. Baron Calon's intent is that those with strength should help those without it. If you insist on going another way, we won't stop you. But the nearest path around Calon adds at least three days."

Boen clearly approved of the Baron's reasoning and was entirely willing to wait.

"Baron Calon certainly has lofty principles," Ethan said. "And the imagination to match."

"The Baron was worried about the security situation, but the method itself was suggested by a young lady from Charasen who passed through."

Ethan, mid-resentment, raised a hand and slapped himself lightly on the cheek.

"...Why are you slapping yourself?"

"Nothing. I suddenly felt sleepy."

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. Not much time had passed before a carriage appeared from the east, climbing the hill road with the morning sun at its back.

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