Absolutely Do Not Touch Eldmia Egga

Chapter 3: Eldmia Egga

   The day passed by hectically.

   Cleaning up the bandits’ gears and tying up the horses, and having swept those dunces’ corpses far away from my parents’ grave, we returned to my house in the mountain.

   I had been staying in the earthen cave since I didn’t know when and how a raid might come, but according to Asileye there no longer was a danger around us.

   The inside of the house was clean.

   It felt as if it was telling me all of my family should still be alive if mom hadn’t gone down to the village that day, and sorrow suddenly welled up in me.

   “Let’s go, sir. We first have to wash. Since hygiene is the most important thing in life, after all.”

   I wasn’t sure if my emotion showed on my face or if she noticed from my hands slowing as I picked up my clothes, but Asileye, having gathered ashes to substitute a soap from a fireplace and placed them in a small wooden box, gently spoke and hugged my shoulders. It was merely 3 days, but the warmth of another felt like the first in far too long a time.

   We didn’t need to go very far since the mountain stream was nearby, but it was dark. I wondered if we needed to at least make a torch, but Asileye really far too naturally summoned a ball of light and surprised me.

   The mountain stream we arrived at like that, because it was a full moon without a single piece of cloud, was actually bright enough to not particularly need the ball of light. My heart felt like it was already stopping at the thought of washing with the cold autumn mountain stream, but Asileye again surprised me without fail.

   As she waved her hand, the mountain stream water floated up in a sphere shape and then flew towards the stream’s edge!

   “This is from help by spirits.”

   Before I knew it, small salamander-looking things flew up from Asileye’s fingertips and began circling and flying around the edge of the floating water ball. Because I could tell what they were doing just by looking, I couldn’t stop gawking at it.

   Warm water…! Eco-friendly warm water in this kind of environment! Asileye made a smile as she looked at my awed face, and began washing my hair.

   “There is a village not far from here, sir. Looking just at its size, it should be closer to a city. We should get some money if we sell the bandits’ gear and horses there.”

   Staring at the stream reflecting the moon, everything that happened today felt like a lie. Especially since just-right warm water was endlessly soaking my hair, it felt as if I was dreaming. Like that, I rested my body in Asileye’s hands washing my hair and listened to her words.

   “The swords, daggers, and the gauntlets at least should be useful if we leave them behind and use them, sir. They weren’t people with much in the first place, but their pockets at least should be pretty heavy since they sacked the slave trader I was originally imprisoned to.”

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   It sounded like something she could have thought to herself alone, but perhaps because she was minding our contract or perhaps minding the conversation itself, she kindly explained them to me one by one. That was really nice, but the honorifics that continued were a little uncomfortable.

   “Big sis, just speak casually.”

   “Eh?”

   “No, I mean, it’s not like it’s a real contract, and I’m not your superior or anything and we’ll be seeing each other for the next 8 years, so it’s a bit weird for big sis to specifically use honorifics.”

   “S, should…I?”

   “Yeah. Please speak casually.”

   “Okay, but I haven’t heard your name yet.”

   Oops. It was so hectic that I even forgot to introduce myself.

   “I’m called Eldmia Egga. Eldmia Egga, the son of Ladan Egga and Ebishe Luina.”

   “You.. don’t seem to not understand what it means to introduce yourself like that, but I never imagined that I’ll hear an introduction like that from someone your age. You’re really a fascinating child the more I look.”

   “Because I don’t look like a child?”

   When I threw a question tossed with a laugh, the hands washing my hair paused for a moment with a laugh and then continued again.

   “You’re aware of that too?”

   “Of course. I always worked hard trying to hide that.”

   “Hide it? From who?”

   “The village people and my parents both.”

   Thanks to that, I was treated as a silent child. It was an image that was made due to watching nearby kids act and adequately following along, since I didn’t have that incredible memory to remember how I behaved when I was younger. I didn’t particularly explain it, but Asileye said “that must’ve been hard” and responded back to me. Was this the expertise of a 120-year old?

   “Come to think of it, your skill when you were fighting the bandits didn’t seem ordinary, so how did you do that?”

   The change of topic was a bit abrupt. Probably, it looked like she was being cautious of me remembering the past and becoming sad. Because there was no need to particularly kick away that kindness, I decided to simply follow the talk along.

   “I strengthened my body with magic power.”

   “Hm? You already know how to use magic?”

   “No. I can’t use magic. I can just sense the magic power and wrap it around my body to make just my strength stronger.”

   Though, I might have learned it if I had held out for just 1 more year. I just thought that when Asileye stopped her hands washing my head and then turned my body and faced me. The face I looked up at wondering what it was was rather serious.

   “How long has it been since you sensed magic power?”

   “I don’t know the exact date, but should be around 3 years?”

   “3 years? At 5 years old? Did you perhaps have somewhere that hurt or got any fever in that time?”

   “I actually was always healthy my entire 8-year life.”

   Why didn’t her reaction look normal? Was it perhaps that? Was I a talented bastard? Did I actually have a reason I reincarnated?

   But the answer I heard from casually asking “why?” was something shocking.

   “That… don’t do it. It might not be a coincidence if it’s this much, but you’ll die.”

   “…eh?”

   Even as Asileye contemplated with a rather serious face while covering her mouth, she nodded her head and confirmed it.

   “Really… it might be weird to say this in your situation, but it’s basically like a god having protected you. It’s not just probable, but normal to die if you do that.”

   The skill I thought of as Eldmia Ultimate was actually a suicide skill, she said. The story she told me after laboriously collecting her expression and then washing me was a shock in itself.

   Mage manifested magic with mana. Knight strengthened its body with aura. They weren’t simply a synonym, but called that because they really were different.

   One refined magic power and recreated it as mana, and one refined magic power and recreated it as aura. Magic power was merely raw ore.

   “Battle mages and magic knights are really rare. If they really used the same magic power, there shouldn’t be any reason they are rare, right?”

   I thought there wasn’t particularly a need for an analogy, but having listened to it, every word of it was correct.

   It wasn’t simply because it was hard to learn them. If there was one person who simply went only one way, it was natural for someone trying to go both ways in any way to also appear somewhere.

   But even then there were few. Even then those whose names were known were an extreme minority. That reason wasn’t simply because the theories were different, but because they literally were completely different skills.

   I thought it was an issue just at the scale of a bread-baking master dreaming of becoming a master cake artisan, but apparently there was as much a gap as a steak master chef and a sushi master chef.

   Yes. The thing I was sensing right now was unrefined pure magic power. A simple chunk of magic power that no one thought of using as was.

   “To give a comparison… it’s a rock salt. Right now, you’re eating by a chunk a salt you should chip off a tiny bit, ground to a powder, and eat only by a tiny bit.”

   It was an incredible comparison that literally turned the inside of my mouth salty. Even worse, it had to be a salt and felt like it really fucking-seriously wouldn’t be good for the body. When I actually said it like that, Asileye’s face once more turned puzzled.

   “You’re really unexpected the more I look. Humans only act frugal with it because it’s expensive, and rather, they even have a trend that it’s absolutely good for the body the more one eats it, you know?”

   I wondered if that became like that again as I thought about it while swirling along the hands drying my head and body after coming back home, but it was already a spilled water so I decided to just casually pass over it.

   “Let’s just say those guys are uncivilized.”

   “Huhuhu. It feels like the 8 years won’t be boring. Could this be Asha’s blessing, I wonder?”

   Was that the protector of the World Tree and the elves’ god? I got curious if it had its own religious teachings, but I decided to ask next time.

   Anyhow, now was about the rock salt.

   Of course it wasn’t good for the body. Just the people recorded as having died at the first attempt to get even stronger power were hundreds, she said.

   She said they literally popped and died by exploding, so what a horrifying end this was!

   “Stronger mages and knights are more akin to more and more proficiently increasing the concentration of the magic power together with that refining technique. I haven’t even heard nor seen even those who ultimately climbed to the grand mage’s standing using magic power in whole. And I don’t even need to mention knights.”

   In the first place, the way to sense magic power that the mage taught me was literally just sensing it. However many years one trained it to death, she said that it merely went from sensing it at the fingers to sensing it with the whole body, and it wasn’t a way that progressed to directly using the magic power sensed like that. In short, I normally shouldn’t have been able to do anything in the first place.

   It was like the thing I passed was a driver’s license, but I piloted a plane without any problem. Wait, then what the hell was I?

   “For now, let’s wait and see since I also need to know more about you. You could be a prodigy unprecedented in history, but I don’t want to bet my savior’s life on that slim of a possibility.”

   “Okay.”

   There wasn’t anything to get anxious about in the first place, so I calmly accepted it. Because I was Eldmia Egga, mental age facing thirties. I was a man who knew how to wait.

   Asileye seemed like she was about to express concern at that calm reaction, but soon drew a faint smile and ended it with brushing my hair. I accepted it as a sign of her trust.