“Come on in.”
“Mm, Sorry for disturbing.”
Miguel invited me into a room near the entrance on the first floor of the three-story dormitory. As I recalled, the better the results of the entrance exam, the larger the room on the outside, so the fact that Miguel was living in this room indicated his position.
However, it was not small. It was about the size of a room in an inn, a miscellaneous mercenary who was on the run would use. It was enough for a single person… Yes, only if you were alone.
“Ah, What should I do? I didn’t think I could sign a contract with a spirit bigger than me, so my bed is …”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll stay beside the window here.”
“Ehh!? I can’t treat Eidos that way, who went to the trouble of signing a contract with me… It’s a little cramped but would you like to sleep with me on my bed?”
“I appreciate the gesture, but It’s rather cramped. I just want a meal prepared, and that’s it.”
“Ah, As expected you eat normal food. I learned in class that spirits eat foods associated with their attributes, and in Eidos’ case, …”
“Of course it’s human food. Just prepare the same thing as you would for yourself, my Lord.”
“Understood. I’ll let the cafeteria staff know later.”
After the necessary exchanges, Miguel sat down on the bed. I sat down on a chair by his side as his gaze urged me to do so, and Miguel began to talk again.
“Let me introduce myself again. My name is Miguel. I am a first-year student at the Rowan Royal Academy of Magic. And this school is a place where children with a talent for magic are gathered from all over the country, and everyone here makes a contract with a spirit to use magic. ….”
Miguel had spoken so vigorously, but he immediately stopped talking and looked at me awkwardly.
“Hmm. I am a ‘Human Spirit’, So I can’t use spirit-like powers… i.e Magic?”
“…. Well, yeah. I’m sorry, I know it’s not really Eidos’s fault. In fact, I know I should be thanking you for at least signing a contract with me like this.”
“I certainly can’t create the kind of comprehensible magical phenomena that my Lord wishes for. And, if I may be presumptuous, even if a spirit other than myself were to make a contract, my Lord would not be able to invoke magic.”
For some reason, there was only spirit magic in this world. And when I saw Miguel in [Rainbow Glass] before, his talent for spirit magic was pretty precocious…. As a child, he showed exceptional talent that was present only in 1 in 1000 people. but he hit his ceiling there.
In short, Miguel was recruited here when he was about five or six years old because of his talent, but since then he had hardly grown up, and tragically, he never will.
“Ugh!? Is it possible for spirits to know about someone’s talents?”
“I don’t know about other spirits, but I am a ‘Human Spirit.’ I can at least recognize the talents of my contractors.”
“I see, haa…”
Hearing my words, Miguel’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. I could only imagine how bitter the taste of failure must be at the age of 12. … I felt similarly when I found out I had no magical talent, so I could only imagine what it must be like.
That was both a lie and the truth. It was the will of some God that made me appear and had nothing to do with Miguel’s abilities, but no matter how immature he was and how little room he had for growth, there was no mistaking Miguel’s talent. The difference between 0 and 1 was infinitely greater, but whether … a 12 year old would understand and accept that was a different matter.
What then? You ask. The answer was simple and clear.
“My Lord. What do you want to be from now on?”
“What? What do you mean … it’s futile, right? Isn’t that what Eidos just said?”
“Not that. My Lord, I only said that it is impossible for you to use ordinary spirit magic. With my power, you would be able to use it fully if you put in the effort.”
“Wha? What do you mean by that, because you can only do what other normal humans are capable of doing?”
“Hmm. It seems that My Lord has a very low opinion of the power of mankind. Then let me show you something.”
With that, I rose from my seat and took out a copper coin from my bag at my waist to show it to him.
“Fufu, look here then …… Oh and it’s dangerous, don’t move. okay?”
After a quick reminder, I flipped the copper coin into the air. It was extremely difficult to do this in a small room, but this was where I roused my fighting spirit.
“Ha!”
Fiercely, I unsheathed the sword at my waist, and a flash of silver flashed across the copper coin in the air. I stood where I was as I swung my sword, and soon after, a clicking sound echoed twice on the floor.
“How is it, My Lord? How is my sword?”
“Eh? No way! You cut it!? You cut a copper coin with a sword!?”
“Yes, I did. Though not that precise because of the location and the wrong weapon.”
The area was too small to increase the sword speed and the weapon I used was just a generic basic sword, a Namakura iron sword, so the copper coins, picked up from the floor, were in the shape of two half moons. If I had used a better weapon, in a larger area, I could have sliced it into thin vertical strips, but right now, this was the limit of what I could do.
“Wow, wow! Amazing, You really cut it! Awesome, Eidos! I can’t believe you can do this!”
“Hahaha, quick to be excited, my Lord. Have you forgotten what I am?”
“Eh? Eidos is a human spirit, right? That’s why… ah!”
Miguel, who tilted his head lightly, looked at me timidly.
“Eidos, you said, right? You are a human spirit, so you can only do what others can do. And …”
“Yes. What I can do, My Lord can do. It is not by the power of spirit magic, which relies on spirits. A person, my Lord, can do this only by his own strength. What do you think? Do you still consider yourself useless and incompetent when you can do all this?”
“Me, this… …?”
At my words, Miguel’s eyes widened as he stared at the copper coin in his hand. In a world with magic enchantments, it would be relatively easy to do this, but in this world without such enchantments, “cutting coins” was a miraculous feat that could easily be mistaken for magic.
“Am I really going to be able to do this?”
“It’s possible. Of course, it requires effort, but my Lord can manage this degree of work without any difficulty. That is the true talent that sleeps in my Lord who was able to summon me … A “Human Spirit”. I cannot use magic like true magic. However, if My Lord truly desires, I will pass on to you a skill far higher than any magic which is capable of cutting down any magic. I will give you the power of a true human being, which will not be lost when my contract with you is over.”
First-year students at this school only signed a basic one-year contract. After that time, the spirit would leave and unless a new contract was made with another spirit, the spirit that used its power would naturally become unusable.
On the other hand, the swordsmanship I would teach him would be learned by him . And Miguel, who was a Hero, had by far the highest talent with a sword. In the first round, I stumbled here and I didn’t know what to do, so my words didn’t reach Miguel because I was just “something, that wasn’t a spirit, that came out of nowhere” and even if it had reached him, I couldn’t have taught him much at that time.
But now it was different. I was proud to say that my swordsmanship, which I had honed over the past 100 years, had reached the peak of what a human was capable of. If I passed it on to a child who was overflowing with talent, …. The future would not come for abandoning a miserable child who had given up on everything half-heartedly.
“Now what will you do, my Lord?”
Still, if he was not willing to do it, there was nothing I could do about it. If he turns me down here, he would have to rethink his future..
“…I’ll do. I’ll do it!. Hey, Eidos, teach me the sword… power of the humans!”
I nodded broadly with a big smile on my face as Miguel gave me a motivation-filled look.