Subtitles get added sometimes and skipped other times. Bear with me.
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Three years had passed since Tenma was picked up. The man who’d brought him in turned out to be named Ricardo. A hunter. His wife was Sheelia. They were former adventurers, and apparently both were quite skilled. There were a lot of former adventurers in this village.
The village’s population was about two hundred. More than a hundred and fifty of them were former adventurers. Small as it was, the village had farming, plus a large forest nearby that produced high-quality medicinal herbs. The villagers — geographically savvy and ex-adventurers besides — gathered the herbs themselves and guided in outsiders who came hunting for them. It wasn’t a wealthy village, but no one was hurting.
Tenma had only recently been allowed to walk through the village on his own. Before that, whenever he went anywhere, Mom (Sheelia) came with him and refused to let go of his hand. He still wasn’t allowed to go into the forest alone, but the freedom to just walk around the village by himself was enough to make him happy.
“Heeey, Tenma, come over here!”
A villager who’d spotted him called out. He looked like he was on his way back from a hunt — several mountain fowl hanging over his shoulder.
“Hi, Mister Mark.”
“Hey there. Look at this, Tenma — big haul today! Five maru-birds!”
Maru-birds were two-legged fliers who weren’t very good at flying but were fast on foot — one to two kilograms, and delicious.
“Mind you, Ricardo got three maru-birds and a boar, so. He’ll be back soon — let’s start getting the dressing area ready.”
Mister Mark was also a former adventurer, and apparently he’d known Dad (Ricardo) from back then. While they waited, Mark started teaching him a bit about handling the bow. Obviously he couldn’t actually draw an adult-sized bow yet, but he figured at least the experience points were stacking up. While he was working through the motions, Dad showed up.
“Welcome back, Dad! Big haul!”
“Tenma, I’m home. Tell your mom we want a feast tonight!”
Dad was in a great mood, pulling the boar out of the bag on his shoulder, laughing. A nearly-two-hundred-kilo boar coming out of a shoulder bag was something Tenma still hadn’t gotten used to.
“That [Magic Bag] is still ridiculously useful. Jealous.”
Mister Mark’s comment made Dad even more pleased with himself. This was a treasure he’d worked hard to get back in his adventuring days — apparently even top-tier mages found them difficult to make. It could store anything up to five hundred kilograms, as long as it wasn’t a living creature (parasites or microbes on a corpse didn’t count, and neither did things with very weak vital activity, like eggs).
“And to think this is supposed to be a mid-grade bag. Wild.”
Dad himself had said as much: in this world, bag grades ran lower-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, special-grade, super-grade, legendary-grade, and divine-grade. The same grading applied to magic.
“Oh, did you hear, Ricardo? Old Merlin’s coming back any day now.”
“Old man Sage?! First I’m hearing of it. He’s been gone — what, ten years?”
“Who’s ‘old man Sage’?”
Ricardo and Mark answered in unison.
""A weirdo.""
The answer raised more questions than it answered, so Mark followed up.
“He’s possibly the strongest mage who’s ever lived — historic-level — but he’s also famously eccentric. Used to live in this village a long time ago.”
“There’s a story where a dungeon overflowed with monsters one time, and he ran in there butt-naked and beat them all back single-handed. And when he had an audience with the king he wasn’t wearing anything under his robe. There’s also one where he was strutting around a city in nothing but his underwear.”
Listening to Ricardo’s story, Tenma was thinking:
(That’s not an eccentric, that’s a nudist pervert.)
“Oh, also — unusual for a mage — apparently he had the [War God’s Blessing].”
Mark’s add-on actually made it click for Tenma a little.
“Anyway, less talk. Let’s dress this boar, roast half of it, and have everyone over. Mark, light the fire. Tenma, go round up the neighbors.”
“Sure, but I didn’t bring a flint today.”
“Then nope. You dress the boar instead, Mark — I’ll light the fire with magic.”
Hearing this, Tenma figured this was a good chance.
“Dad, I want to try lighting it. Teach me the spell?”
Ricardo thought it over for a moment, then decided that fire was about as basic as magic got and agreed to teach him.
“Alright. But a lot of people can’t use magic at all, so if you can’t, don’t get hung up about it. And even if you can, don’t go casting it on your own when there aren’t grown-ups around. You can promise me that?”
“Yeah! Promise!”
Ricardo nodded and sent Mark off to fetch the neighbors.
“Alright. First, calm your mind, and put your finger close to where you want the fire to start. Then picture fire, and say the word — ‘Fire.’”
The instant Ricardo said it, the pile of dead leaves caught.
“That’s it. Just that. It’s a simple spell. The key is to picture the fire clearly. Try it.”
Thinking huh, simpler than I expected, Tenma brought his finger close to the leaves and —
“Fire.”
— the moment he said it, the entire pile burst into flame and there was a small explosion. Tenma got bowled backwards onto his back. Ricardo also froze, startled, but immediately checked the surroundings and scooped Tenma up.
“Tenma! You okay?!”
He was checking him over in a near-panic, but luckily Tenma was unhurt and Ricardo let out a relieved breath. Just then, Sheelia — who’d been on her way after Mark’s call — came hurrying up.
“Tenma! What happened?! Are you hurt?!”
Ricardo started explaining the situation to a flustered Sheelia, who immediately misread it as “you taught him combat magic” and got mad. After some desperate clarifying from Ricardo and Tenma both, she grudgingly accepted what had actually happened.
“Let’s table this for tonight and just roast the boar and have dinner.”
“Fine.”
The magic discussion was set aside, and they had dinner with all the neighbors.
That night, after confirming Tenma was asleep, Ricardo and Sheelia had a talk.
“I think it’s too early to be teaching Tenma magic.”
Sheelia’s position was that they should hold off until he was a bit older. Ricardo, by contrast, said:
“I think we should be aggressive about teaching him.”
The opposite stance.
“Tenma has serious magical talent buried in him. To the degree that a spell that should normally just give a small burn instead came out at attack-magic strength.”
“Which is exactly why we should wait until he’s older. It’s dangerous.”
“Sheelia, I’m well aware that your magic power is on a different scale from mine. But Tenma right now is already comfortably above me. And he’ll surpass you, too, within a few years. That’s the level of talent we’re looking at.”
“And what are you basing that on?”
“My instincts as a former adventurer.”
“Instincts… huh.”
“Don’t believe me?”
“I do believe you. Those instincts saved you plenty of times back then. But…”
“Sheelia, I hate saying it, but Tenma isn’t actually our child. Tomorrow his real parents could show up. If they’re decent people, fine. But they could be the other kind. And those kinds will see his talent and try to exploit it. So Tenma needs to know how to protect himself. If he’s holding a sharp knife, I’d rather we teach him how to use it the right way under our eye than have him teach himself in some corner where we can’t watch. It’s better for him and for us.”
”…Fine.”
“We’ll talk to him in the morning.”
“Yes. But — the theory side, I’m going to drill into him properly first.”
“That’s fine. I’ll start him slowly on physical movement. Whether it’s magic or hand-to-hand, you’re better off if you know how to use your own body.”
And so Ricardo and Sheelia worked out Tenma’s curriculum.
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Tenma showed a glimpse of his talent, which fast-tracked his curriculum.
Old Man Sage is scheduled to appear next time. Bear in mind that the ‘pervert’ stories about him are mostly exaggerated, and not all true.