Mage? Magic Engineer!-Chapter 82 - 79: Retracing the Path Out of the Mountains

Going "home" and going to the Black Forest were one and the same trip, as Rorschach’s birthplace was a mountain village in the southwestern corner of the Empire. The Black Forest covered the entire mountain range, and the village nestled at the foot of one of its spurs.

The original Rorschach’s memories of his hometown, especially the mountain village, were quite faint. His parents were free farmers with modest savings. With great foresight, they sent him to the Duchy’s school in the local town when he was five, rather than letting him herd sheep and fool around with the children of tenant farmers.

Of course, the Duchy’s schools weren’t local charities. They were established to cultivate a populace for the Duchy’s army, trade, and rural administration—people with a basic education who could understand orders and perform simple writing and arithmetic. They were destined to become assistants to front-line officers, shop accountants, and village chiefs.

Ever since the Marlin Kingdom rose to prominence in the Empire’s Core Area and began to lead the various States, its systems, including this form of limited basic education, were widely implemented.

The students at these schools generally came from the families of Knights with very little land, artisans, or small merchants. As a farmer’s son, Rorschach was an outlier from the start, even if his parents were free farmers who owned a small plot of land.

By chance, the original Rorschach was noticed by the local Viscount and chosen to be a young attendant for the Viscount’s son. They studied and practiced simple Martial Arts together, and it was during this time that Rorschach learned to ride.

Hanging around with the Viscount’s son gave him the opportunity to cross paths with the Town Mage.

In the test for magical potential, the Viscount’s heir showed no Casting Ability. In a dramatic twist, however, his unassuming attendant did. And so, the Town Mage gained an Apprentice born of free farmers. When the news reached his village, Rorschach instantly became everyone’s hope. The village chief and his parents scraped together a sum of money, and with the Town Mage’s support, sent him to the Imperial Capital to officially begin his journey into Magic.

To sum it up, Rorschach’s life in the village consisted of only vague memories from his first five years. While serving the Viscount’s heir, he would occasionally return home, using the Viscount’s spare change and tips to help support his family. After that, he never went home again—the old Rorschach could never afford the fare to travel across more than half the Empire.

He took an Airship to the Duchy’s capital, then rented a carriage to head into the mountains. The roads grew progressively worse, and the mountain forests became more and more dense. Returning to a "hometown" that wasn’t truly his, Rorschach retraced his predecessor’s footsteps and couldn’t help but sigh. The original Rorschach had truly been one of the lucky ones of his time.

Although he’d lost the birth lottery and hadn’t been born into the Nobility, his parents weren’t landless tenant farmers. They were open-minded and had foresight, and he himself had seized every opportunity, miraculously setting foot on the path of Magic one step at a time.

’The difficulty was on par with getting into Harvard or Yale from some backwater town.’ Rorschach mused. But what struck him even more was that a grinder like his predecessor, upon arriving at the Empire Magic Academy, couldn’t afford Learning Scrolls. He certainly couldn’t splurge on private tutoring from the Academy’s Mages. For four years, he could only delve into a handful of Low Tier magic spells.

Even with his diligent study of theory and the help of two good friends and Teacher Caroline, he had still nearly failed the final evaluation to become a full-fledged Mage.

’If I hadn’t transmigrated, he probably would’ve just dropped dead in his dorm, and it might have been a long time before anyone found him.’ He then thought of his own situation. ’If I’d died without transmigrating, the one upside of being in a college dorm is that they would’ve found me before I got cold. My spirit could have even earned some major karma by getting all three of my roommates guaranteed spots in our university’s graduate program.’

"My bones are rattling apart..." Rorschach mumbled. He couldn’t understand it. If people could travel to Other Planes, why were the Teleportation Arrays on the Main Plane only used for transmitting letters? He’d asked the receptionist at the Guild but had only received a vague "I don’t know, I’m not clear on that."

The Middle Tier Mage, currently being tortured by the muddy road and the springless carriage, had apparently not considered that even if he could move between Guild branches using a Teleportation Array, those branches were only located in sizable cities. The awful journey from the branch into the mountains would have been unavoidable regardless.

"Sir, we’re here," the driver informed Rorschach.

"Oh, thank goodness. I’ll pay you the remainder of the fee."

They had traveled from dawn to dusk. By the time Rorschach set foot on the soil of his "hometown," the sky had grown dim. The last vestiges of twilight fell over the forested mountains and the village, outlining the shapes of the farmhouses.

The farmhouses here had a distinctive feature: extremely high, steeply-pitched roofs. The angle of the slopes was so sharp that the roof itself was as tall, or even taller, than the stone or wood walls below it.

Wisps of cooking smoke curled into the air, not from the houses, but from crude huts set up along the road.

Huts? The small village looked like it was having a festival. Large and small thatched stalls, interspersed with open bonfires, were set up along the muddy road. The torchlight revealed the scene within: a large pot of bubbling grain gruel, a woman pouring in a jug of milk, wild rabbits roasting in another stall, and the largest stall serving pale ale, drawing half the village to raise their mugs.

"And you are?" A nearby villager approached Rorschach. He eyed the young man’s clothes, which suggested he was a nobleman, but it was odd that he hadn’t arrived on horseback, but in an inconspicuous carriage.

"I’m looking for the Mercer family. Are they around? I’m Rorschach."

Rorschach had no idea what their current situation was. Sending letters was an incredible luxury, both for his humble parents in the countryside and for an Apprentice like himself, whether he used the Guild’s system or the Empire’s own postal service, which was notorious for its high loss rate and glacial pace.

That was why, during his four years in the Imperial Capital, Apprentice Rorschach had only exchanged letters with his parents once—a single reply, written on their behalf by the village chief, that had cost him three months of eating nothing but black bread and water.

Since his fortunes had turned in recent months, Rorschach had written three letters as instructed by the Mechanical Director, but he hadn’t received a reply to any of them.

’Please don’t tell me my parents moved...’

The villager speaking with Rorschach stared wide-eyed, giving him a long, blatant once-over. Just as the young man was starting to feel uncomfortable, the villager abruptly spun around and bellowed toward the largest stall, "Old Mercer! Old Mercer! Your eldest son is back!"

...

’Am I some kind of rare species?’

’A Middle Level Caster who’s about to turn seventeen... I guess I really am.’

Rorschach was now seated in the very center of the largest thatched stall, enduring the curious stares of the entire village. He felt as if the people closest to him wanted to pinch his cheeks and squeeze his arms, to properly study this humanoid creature called a "Mage" and see how it differed from ordinary people.

’So the biggest stall belongs to my family!’

During winter, when farm work was slow, people always found ways to have a little fun. It was a common phenomenon—throughout all of history, across all cultures, and even in Otherworlds—for major festivals to be concentrated in this bleak season.

The Winter Festival was a grand and common holiday in the rural parts of the Empire. Its timing wasn’t fixed—some places held it in the last ten days of the year, others in the first ten days of the new year. People would build stalls along the roads to exchange food. Visitors from neighboring villages could have their share, and if your legs were strong enough to cross the mountains, you could even eat your way from one village to the next.

"You don’t have any... ’special’ activities planned, do you?" Thanks to his run-in with the "Bring Momma Back" Sect, Rorschach now had some trauma related to folk festivals.

"Of course we have to give you a grand welcome now that you’re back!" Rorschach’s father, Old Mercer, raised his pale ale, his face flushed and beaming. His beard was bushy but lacked the grooming of a city dweller, looking more like a patch of mottled, tangled weeds. Rorschach observed him for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief. ’No bald spot, and a solid hairline. Thank goodness.’

"Rorschach, Rorschach Mage! When your letter arrived in the fall, Old Mercer came running out of the village chief’s house with it, shouting the news over and over. The whole village found out you’d become a Mage!"

A grain porridge with milk and minced meat was served, and the table was soon filled with dried berries, pine nuts, and acorns brought over by other villagers, along with mug after mug of pale ale.

A woman emerged carrying a meat broth. After setting it down, she wiped her hands over and over on her coarse-spun apron. "Is it really you, Rorschach? My little boy is all grown up?" She held out her freshly wiped hands but remained standing hesitantly before the young man, not daring to take another step.

Rorschach stood and stepped forward to embrace her. "It’s me. Of course, it’s me."

As he held her, he smelled the faint scent of lanolin from her sheepskin vest and heard the sound of a soft, suppressed sob.