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Volume 1, Extra: The encounter of a young boy. Part 1

“Ruto! Hey, Rutobias!!”

Afternoon in a corner of the academy. A girl yelled up at the rarely used school dormitory.

This was the Feliformia National General Magic Academy. It was an academy with many branch schools outside Feliformia as well, where one could learn about magic. Students entered the academy at ten years old to learn the foundations in the elementary department for three years. Then they would specialize into the magician, magic tools, chivalry, or general education department.

The yelling girl was an elementary first year, Amelia Idyll.

“What, it’s just Amelia.”

Hearing her yell, a boy’s head peeked out from on the roof. He was Rutobias Ashley Mathias, an elementary first year student like Amelia.

“You skipped class again, right! The teacher won’t say anything about it but you should still go to class!”

Shrugging his shoulders to the lecture coming from downstairs, Rutobias went back to napping on the roof.

“Hey! Ruto! Are you listening!?”

Hearing Amelia yell louder, Rutobias sighed and signaled to the entity beside him.

A gentle breeze blew through, enveloping Amelia and moving her to the top of the roof.

“Waah! If you’re using spirit magic say so first! You scared me.”

Amelia complained as she alighted next to Rutobias in surprise. Rutobias thought to himself maybe it was better if he hadn’t brought her up here. Things would get even more annoying if he said that, though, so he closed his eyes in silence.

“Hey! I’m talking, are you listening!?”

“Yeah yeah, I’m listening.”

“One ‘yeah’ is enough!”

“…”

Rutobias had yet to win against Amelia with words when she got like this. He would find it too troublesome before he even started fighting, so he never tried winning in the first place.

“…Geez. We’ll be in our second years soon, you know? Class might be boring for you, Ruto, but there’s more to going to school than just studying!”

“…I know.”

“Then go to class tomorrow, okay?”

While she was noisy, she had grown up with Rutobias. Amelia was an indispensable, rare friend that didn’t care about Rutobias’s titles.

Prodigy, genius, royal magician candidate and heir of the Mathias house. Rutobias had many titles, yet he liked none of them.

Rutobias was born to the Marquis of Mathias, a powerful family in Feliformia. With his birth, the Marquis of Mathias’s problems of a successor were instantly solved and the family rejoiced.

Not only that, but Rutobias was blessed with exceptional magic talent. It was rumored that spirits had circled around Rutobias’s mother when he was in her womb.

Even for the Marquis of Mathias where many talented magicians hailed from, this was a rare sight. They waited with bated breath for him to be born.

The spirits were overjoyed with his birth and never left him alone. They fussed over him more than his mother, flying to his mother and wet nurse whenever he cried and telling them whether he was hungry, his diaper needed changing or he couldn’t sleep. Thanks to them, the adults around him and his mother who was raising her first child had an easy time raising him.

Around when Rutobias turned one, he began to talk.

Although his parents were very depressed when his first word was “shiwit (spirit),” he soon learned to call his parents and even the other adults around him by name. From there, he acquired vocabulary at a very fast pace.

First he learned the names of the things around him and what they were used for. Soon he began to understand adults as well.

His parents hired a tutor for him. The young Rutobias did not understand what it meant to learn something, so he listened to whatever the adults around him said and absorbed all the knowledge he could. He simply knew that when he remembered things, his parents would be happy and the adults around him would compliment him.

Before he found a purpose to learning, Rutobias turned seven. His tutors exclaimed that they had nothing more to teach him.

He learned that he wasn’t normal when he entered the academy at ten.

His father proclaimed that he didn’t need to go to the academy, but encouraged by his mother and his childhood friend Amelia, Rutobias entered the academy.

He had never played with any children other than Amelia, so he was excited about meeting classmates his age.

However, life at the academy could not have been farther from Rutobias’s expectations.

First were the classes. They practiced reading and writing with the universal language chart. In math class, they did arithmetic on fruit. History class was taught with a picture book.

Rutobias was thrown into chaos by the childish material.

There were even children who could not understand such childish teaching amongst his classmates. Rutobias could not understand why they couldn’t understand.

His relationship with his classmates was also completely different than what he imagined.

Rutobias wasn’t used to group work, but as long as he followed the teacher’s instructions in class he was fine.

However, the troubles that happened without teacher supervision during break and after school were very annoying to Rutobias.

There was one male student in Rutobias’s class who held a leader-like position. His grades weren’t bad, he was among the taller kids in the class, and his family was rich. Perhaps because he was strong-willed, he would often walk around with a few other male lackeys.

That was fine. However, he was very hot-tempered and would often pick a fight with timid female classmates or male classmates who had failed during class.

To Rutobias, if he didn’t like something then he would simply ignore it. He failed to understand the student who would lash out at everything.

Then, the student set his eyes on Rutobias. With many lackeys in tow, he tried to find fault in Rutobias who was quietly reading. His words were empty and ridiculous, but perhaps he couldn’t find anything to attack Rutobias with. Striking an intimidating pose, he rattled on and on, his lackeys agreeing with him.

Amelia couldn’t stand by and watch so she defended Rutobias, and the fight escalated.

Exasperated by the childish back-and-forth, Rutobias joined in with a sigh. He pointed out the holes in the student’s argument as simply as he could. However, perhaps the student couldn’t, no, didn’t want to understand. He cut Rutobias off, denying him a chance to defend himself and spouted profanities. In the end, the student even resorted to violence and threw the book Rutobias was reading.

Amelia was furious, but Rutobias understood how naive he was to dream about life at the academy.

The teacher came and dissolved the fight, but from then on his classmates were distant and cold to him.

Children were cruel sometimes. Regardless of personality, anomalies were ostracized.

Rutobias’s exceptional talent that never surfaced when he entered the academy was finally discovered by his classmates, and he was left out of everything.

Rutobias gave up. He already knew everything the academy had to offer. As long as he could obtain graduation certification for the sake of his future, he had no more expectations for this place.

Less than two months after he entered the academy, Rutobias began to ditch class.

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On the roof of the school dormitory. Next to Rutobias, who was napping in the warm sun, Amelia chatted away.

After Rutobias stopped going to class, Amelia would find him somewhere on academy grounds and start talking to him about everything. From the classes to classmates, what was trending right now, what happened at home, what happened on the streets, her topics were endless. It was impressive even for Rutobias, who knew many things.

There were things Rutobias had no interest in, but if he stopped reacting Amelia would instantly yell at him, “are you listening!?” It was very tiring to calm her down when that happened, so Rutobias became very good at letting things in one ear and out the other in the past few months.

Even so, it wasn’t true that he did not listen nor want to listen to Amelia. He knew she came to talk to him every day for his sake.

While Rutobias felt that he had more knowledge than the average child his age, Amelia knew more about other things. He would find some topics interesting, but Amelia would not give him the space to ask questions and jump from topic to topic.

Today, too, Amelia chattered all about her day while Rutobias listened.

“So, about that girl…”

Today’s topic was one of Amelia’s female friends.

“So, her big sister brought us there. That’s why, here! A souvenir for you, Rutobias!”

Amelia took out a brown package from her school bag and thrust it in front of the napping Rutobias’s eyes.

“What’s this?”

“It’s good so try some!”

Rutobias took the package and looked sideways at Amelia, whose eyes were sparkling with excitement. Her expression urged him to hurry and open it. Rutobias propped himself up and loosened the ribbon tying the package together.

“…Small bread?”

“Bzzt, wrong!”

He peeked into the package to see small circular shapes the color of browned wheat. He knew it was food as Amelia had said, “it’s good!” To Rutobias, it looked like some small version of bread, but Amelia smirked and said no to his guess.

“C’mon, try some!”

“…Okay.”

Rutobias picked one up from the package and put it in his mouth.

“…!?”

His eyes widened in shock.

He assumed it was bread, so he thought it would be hard. It did have some hardness to it. However, it was a different type of hardness from bread, and it broke apart easily in his mouth with a crunch. Above all it had a rich fragrance and a faint sweetness.

“See! It’s good, isn’t it! It’s called a cooky!”

Amelia smiled from ear to ear as if she had just pulled off a prank and leaned towards Rutobias.

“Cooky…”

Rutobias repeated after Amelia as if to solidify the word in his brain.

The cookies disappeared one by one into Rutobias’s stomach.

“Ruto, give me one too!”

Amelia, made hungry by the sight of Rutobias, reached out her hand…but Rutobias raised the package in his hand away from her.

“…Why?”

“…Uh, I’m not sure?”

Still confused, Rutobias was filled with an unfamiliar emotion. He was filled with the desire—gluttony, though Rutobias did not know that yet—to hold on to these cookies.

You gave me these as a souvenir…he thought, but he couldn’t resist Amelia’s stare as she pouted. He slowly brought the package back between them.

“Just a bit.”

“Yay! You’re so kind, Ruto~”

Amelia immediately brightened up and popped a cookie into her mouth.

The cookies disappeared in an instant. Although it was bad manners, they ate everything, even the crumbs.

“That was so good~”

Amelia was satisfied, but Rutobias felt hollow.

…I want more.

Unable to sit still, Rutobias thrust the now empty packaging into his pocket and jumped from the roof.

“Wh- Ruto!?”

Surprised by Rutobias’s sudden jump, Amelia ran to the edge of the roof and looked down. Rutobias fell with gravity, but the power of the wind spirit cushioned his fall and he landed softly. He looked up to the roof.

“Amelia! I want to go to the store that sells these cookies, bring me there!”

“Eh? Ehhhhh!?”