5. Four Visitors

Two months left until my release. 

One day on the weekend. It was a rainy morning. I used a broom to do my daily routine.

After that, I did push-ups and read the study book.

After reading the book, I had a friendly conversation with the guard and the prisoner in the next room. 

In the afternoon, I would train my Mana.

There were special trainings that could increase the amount of Mana.

And, the method changed depending on the color.

Red -> move your body. (Commonly known as: Muscle Training)

Green -> think, means use your head. (Commonly known as: Brain Training)

Blue -> use your Mana. (Commonly known as: Magic Training)

It seemed that yellow color increases by communicating with people, though I didn’t really feel it. (Commonly known as: Communication training)

In a sese, the amount of Mana was fixed, but it can be extended in this way. There were many methods to increase the amount of Mana, but the old man said that the method just mentioned was the common one.

So, it could be said that if you’re living your life healthily, the amount of Mana would increase naturally (other than blue).

The important point was that you couldn’t increase the amount of other Mana by leaving blue (Mana of Operation).

For example, if Blue Mana was 10 and Red Mana was 20 or Green Mana was 30, you would not be able to control your own Manas. In such cases, the human body would limit the increase in Manas other than Blue Mana as a defensive measure.

So, it meant that normal humans who had never used Mana, the Blue Mana was never increased.

Therefore, non-magicians were also limited to some extent in other Manas.

“…”

I worked hard at training…

Anyway, the old man was thinking while reading a book.

The cause was perhaps the customer who rushed in yesterday.

Four visitors who asked to meet the old man.

Each one said as much as they wanted and left.

—————-

The first visitor appeared early in the morning.

“It’s been a long time, Old Man Bar…… “

“Niamh…!”

A woman with a dazzling bright blonde tied together…. I think she is a little older than me?

A beautiful woman… no, she is probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life. But her dull blue eyes and sharp eyes are the minus points. Her skin is white, and no pores are visible.

Wearing an armor where you could see her navel and a cloak with a dragon pattern, in that erotic figure of her there was a feeling of intimidation you could feel from her. A big sword about the same height as her on her back… That Large sword. maybe I can’t hold it without using Mana.

The woman was probably a Knights official as I saw the guard bowing deeply.

“I was surprised to hear that you are in such a countryside …”

“Sorry but I’m not so free. So, what is it?”

The old man was in a bad mood from beginning to end. Well, after I heard the woman’s response, I could understand his feelings somehow.

“Is that so…? But, it looks like you have some spare time though? Well, never mind… Now, I’ll just say it straightforwardly. Please teach me Sealing Technique.”

I was a little panicked at the remark of a woman named Niamh.

Perhaps it was a kind of monopoly desire. Without realizing it, I seemed to cherish the position of the old man’s only student.

I was surprised.

After all, I thought that I was more of a self-satisfied person.

“No.”

Straight to the point…

The old man shook his head without hesitation.

However, the woman seemed to have predicted the old man’s reply, and immediately spoke back.

“If you teach me Sealing Technique, I’ll erase your sins… I will also release you from here immediately and pay the appropriate tuition fee. Your imprisonment will last forever if you keep going like this and you will die in a dirty prison. “

Immediate release & money.

It was normal to give another reply under such favorable conditions, but….

“I refuse. You… are not qualified.”

There, the iron mask of the woman finally cracked.

Grabbed the bar and squeezed it.

Seriously, when I heard a creaking noise of steel, I become panicked for a moment there.

“Why! Why keep it secret?!… That much power, why do you want to monopolize that?!… You.. are you not willing to save humanity?!”

“Sealing Technique is an evil’s technique if mishandled… With my teacher and my fellow discipline (younger) were cursed by the Sealing Technique and dropped themself into the darkness. I won’t repeat that tragedy anymore… I will only pass over the Sealing Technique if I judge the person to be credible!… I will never give it to someone like you who is crazy about power!”

“……”

The old man said that he would only pass over the Sealing Technique to those who can be trusted.

I want to tell him not to lie. I mean, old man, you taught me Sealing Technique immediately after we met.

“Old Man Bar, you have a granddaughter, right? I’m sure she’ll be 16 this year.”

” ――!”

The old man’s expression became cloudy.

16 years old, huh… Maybe she’s about the same age as me.

I’m 16? or 17? or 18?… I don’t really know because there wasn’t anyone to tell me how old I was when I started to aware of things around me, but maybe I’m about that old.

Well, I would love to meet her someday. I’m genuinely interested in the old man’s granddaughter.

Next, the female knight spilled words that were not knight-like from her mouth.

“Your granddaughter seems to have lost her position at the Academy of Magic… She was almost at the top, what a shame, really… but, you know why? Because you have sinned. “

“……that is..”

“It’s not just your granddaughter… Both your wife and your child are seen with white eyes. Everything, is your fault… So, to save your family too, teach me Sealing Technique ―― “

When I saw the old man’s face became gloomy, I decided to quit to be just an outsider.

“Cut it out already! it’s so noisy.”

I literally pinched my mouth from the side, keeping my eyes on the book.

I knew without seeing the frosty gaze from the woman… that she might had a face like ‘Who the f**k, are you?’

” ‘Dirty Rat’, Did you say something?… Now I’m talking about something in a higher dimension than what you could understand. So, would you please to not get in the way? ” [TN: Btw, the rat species is ‘Rattus norvegicus’]

The woman was no longer tried to hide her arrogant attitude.

“Oi, oi, what do you mean by the higher dimension if you just did something so low level like ‘intimidating someone’?… I could only see and hear that a scammer was bullying a bad old man.”

“You mean… me? You said that this, ‘I’… am a scammer???”

She was upset. I intended to say a very light provocation, but it seemed I perfectly hit her sore spot.

It was childish to get angry with a red face. No, wait, she was a kid indeed.

A kid who tried to keep up her appearance with some ‘polite speech’ but did not know to hide her own emotions. I felt like I knew why the old man didn’t teach Sealing Technique to her.

“The world I live in is different from you. Choose your language.”

I closed the book, stood up and walked to the front of the woman.

With a lazy footstep, I thrust my hand into my pocket.

I looked at the woman, our eyes met and….. I looked down at her a little from above.

“That’s right. You and I are inhabitants from different world, separated by this bar….That’s why your sword won’t reach me.”

I raised my chin and provoked the woman.

“What do you want do now? Break the bar with your back sword and hit my neck?”

“You piece of s**t!!”

“If you kill a non-resisting prisoner, it means that you will live in the same world as me. So, what you will do, Knight-sama… “

The knight tried to put her hand on her back but stopped at the last minute and turned to the right.

At the end, the woman said, ‘You will regret it’, to the old man behind me, and left with the guard.

Thus, the first guest went away.

The second visitor was a middle-aged knight who called himself ‘Pearl’. He wore the same armor as a woman named Niamh. I was glad that he wore a thick heavy equipment.  the navel of a middle-aged man is just… ‘no, thank you’…

The mark of the knight and cloak were the same as the first visitor, so it seemed that they belong to the same order.

I thought the old man would look unpleasant, but he was rather close to the middle-aged knight.

“Thank you for helping me out, Pearl. Thanks to you, I moved to a peaceful prison…That noisy and annoying little girl can’t come often now.”

The little girl that the old man meant was probably the first visitor.

When the old man bowed his head, the middle-aged man suddenly wept.

“I, I’m sorry… Old Man Bar. If I had a little more power ―― you wouldn’t be in a crappy prison that wouldn’t even have a meeting room like this … “

“Don’t worry. Thanks to that, I also picked up something good.”

I felt that there were various emotions behind the words.

Pearl seemed to be attached to the old man.

“By the way, Pearl, let me introduce you. It’s my disciple, Seal.”

Suddenly my name was called, and I was surprised.

But there was a man who was more surprised than I was. It was Pearl.

“O,O,Olll――d Man Bar, your disciple you said?!!”

“… Well, nice to meet you.”

I said hello to the middle-aged knight, Pearl.

“Please keep this a secret.”

“I, I understand, but … you have a disciple. That You, who had rejected more than a thousand people…!”

“I changed my mind before death.”

Pearl looked at me with a promising look.

“I envy you…. Do your best, boy.”

The words from the middle-aged knight were somehow heavy.

After apologizing to the old man, the second visitor went back home after noon.

The third visitor… I wasn’t particularly involved at that time.

A red-eyed woman dressed in a black robe. She had a nice body, even though she didn’t show her skin at all, she could make a man lust to her with just with the body line. She was a bewitching older sister.

The older sister talked with the old man in a small voice, spilled a drop of tears and left.

The old man also had a sad face somehow.

And the fourth, the last visitor.

Hooded sand-colored jacket and tattered black long trousers. A rucksack that swelled up on the back.

He was a man who looked like the definition of ‘The Traveler’. I thought he was a lot older than me, but he was younger that I expected… Was he about 20 years old?

When the man found the old man, he matched the height of his eyes with the old man sitting on the ground and said something ridiculous like jailbreaking.

“Well, what should I do? Do you want to me to break you free? All the guards here, I will handle them.”

Upon hearing the statement, the guard wrinkled his eyebrows and tried to grab the man’s shoulders… But as soon as the man opened his eyes, the guard stepped back.

It might be only my imagination, but… I felt that I could see dragon-like scales and sharp yellow eyes through the gaps in the hood.

The next time I saw the man, he looked like a normal young man.

“Adolphos, Stop joking around.”

“It’s not a joke. I can take handle all the people who chase you… Even the Knights, I will deal with it too.”

“Adol…”

“I’ll say it again. I’m not kidding… I still have a favor that I haven’t repay yet… And to repay that, I won’t hesitate to do all of that for you…”

I stopped reading the book involuntarily.

Each one of the remarks was a mess. It was not like a joke either… A man named Adolphos was serious about his words, and the old man was also seriously stopping him. So, it can be said that at least both of them thought that a man named Adolphos could defeat the entire Knights.

“I couldn’t fulfill my role properly.”

The old man said so.

“If so, who will take over that role?”

He said in a stunned voice.

The old man shook his head.

“No one needs to take over.”

“….. Really?… I see.”

A man named Adolfos bowed deeply and left the prison.

Four visitors.

Female Knight ‘Niamh’, Middle-aged Knight ‘Pearl’, Mysterious Witch, and Traveler ‘Adolphos’.

Somehow, I felt like I would meet these four people somewhere again.