The Last Place Hero's Return-Chapter 103: The Black Sheep of the Ryu Family (4)

A sigh slipped from between my lips, and a crushing sense of despair weighed down on me. What could I do now? If Berald were incapable of using magic for some other reason, I could just identify it and eliminate the cause. If it were a curse, I could lift it. If it were poison, I could detoxify him. With the Primordial Flame in my possession, neither scenario posed much of a problem.

But if the reason he couldn’t use magic, despite years of effort, was simply because he was just not very smart, then there was absolutely nothing I could do. How was I supposed to make someone born dumb suddenly intelligent?

Even if I could, three days were nowhere near enough for that. How could I possibly teach him magic computation, something he hadn’t been able to grasp after over ten years, in a mere three days?

My thoughts spiraled into chaos, and a heavy sigh escaped me. Berald gave a wry smile and shook his head.

“You don’t need to push yourself so hard, Brother. I already knew this would be difficult.”

“Berald...”

He shrugged as he said, “Well, even if the main family cuts off my allowance, I won’t starve. The Ryu family may not be the wealthiest, but we’re not poor either. Of course, my father won’t be able to receive regular treatments anymore... but it’s not like those treatments did any good in the past five years. Whether he gets them or not doesn’t make much of a difference, does it?”

Of course, it did. There was a world of contrast between clinging to a sliver of hope and giving up entirely on recovery.

“Your father, what happened to him?” I asked.

Berald’s father being ill was news I had never heard of in my past life. Even though Berald and I had known each other since our academy days, we hadn’t been close enough to share such personal matters.

With a bitter look in his eyes, Berald replied, “Heh! My father?”

He plopped down on the floor of the training ground and took a bite out of his half of the bread. “Five years ago, there was a conflict between House Ryu and the Demon Cult.”

“That’s the first I’m hearing of this.”

House Ryu was one of the most powerful families in the Republic. If such a family had clashed with the Demon Cult, it would have caused a major uproar. But in all my memories, I recalled no such event.

Berald said with a bitter smile, “The family must’ve covered it up. It wasn’t exactly a large-scale battle, and there weren’t too many casualties either.”

So, even if it wasn’t a huge battle, a fight did take place. And even if the casualties weren’t many, there were still some. Among them was Berald’s father.

Berald continued in a calm tone, “My father sustained serious injuries in that battle. Thankfully, he survived. But he’s been suffering from memory loss ever since.”

His tone remained calm, but emotion bled into his voice, low and subdued. “That bad-tempered old man... He gave me hell when I was a kid, and now he’s forgotten even his own son’s name. It’s punishment, I say.”

He laughed hollowly, wiping his eyes with one hand.

Suddenly, a memory from my past life flashed through my mind. It was a short conversation we had not long before Berald died.

“Hahaha! If we must call it something, how about Berald Combat Style?

“You’re immortal, aren’t you, Brother? You’ll live for ages. My old man was just like that. When folks get old, they start forgetting their own children’s names.

“Even if I die, at least remember my name, alright?”

I recalled the image of him asking me to at least remember his name. Back then, he had made it sound like it was just a side effect of aging. But now I realized the real story behind it. That was why he was so obsessed with his name.

Watching Berald silently sob with his hand over his eyes, I finally said, “There is a way.”

“A way for what?”

“A way for you to use magic in three days.”

Berald looked at me without a word, clearly not following. I closed my eyes and pieced together the idea that had taken shape in my mind. A way for Berald, who lacked any form of magic control, to use magic was simple.

I said firmly, “You give up.”

Paradoxically, the only way for someone like Berald, who had never known how to give up, to use magic was to actually let go.

Berald looked at me, utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You know there are three stages to magic, right?”

“Yes, I know.”

Out of the Emission, Manifestation, and Control stages, Berald’s limit had always been the last one. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t grasp it.

I said, “You just skip the Control phase entirely.”

“Skip it?”

“Yeah.”

It was a plan to focus only on the first two stages.

“Try forming a Mana Bullet again. This time, don’t even think about making it move.”

Berald nodded. “Hmm. Alright, I’ll give it a shot.”

He began to focus. A loud hum echoed as his soul stigmata radiated light, and a torrent of immense mana surged through the air.

With a spirited shout from him, an orb made from magical energy formed in the air. It was about the size of a fist. The once squishy, mochi-like consistency had hardened noticeably.

It was just as I thought. Watching that Mana Bullet, I clenched my fist in excitement. It was far more refined than the one he had first managed to produce. By giving up on controlling the magic altogether, he had drastically improved the orb’s quality.

When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. It could be compared to the task of building a magi-car. Wouldn’t making a model that only looked like a real one be far easier than actually creating one that worked?

Berald, too, widened his eyes in surprise. “Huh?”

He was clearly impressed by his creation. His voice almost trembled as he excitedly shouted, “B-Brother! Did you see this? I made a Mana Bullet the size of a fist!”

“See? Isn’t it way better now that you’ve abandoned control altogether?”

“Better? This feels like... like I’ve been hopping on one leg all this time, and someone finally handed me a wheelchair!”

That was a spot-on metaphor. He had been wasting energy trying to control something he couldn’t handle. The moment he gave up on that impossible task, everything fell into place. Magic became much easier to manifest.

“Great. Let’s keep going and push the quality even higher.”

Nodding eagerly, he said, “Hehe! You got it!”

Berald summoned another Mana Bullet.

***

Three days passed just like that. The Mana Bullet that Berald created was now on a whole different level compared to the crude one he had first produced. What was once a fragile orb the size of a fingertip had grown to the size of a human head, and its once doughy texture now felt tougher than steel.

I hadn’t expected him to improve this much in just three days. Of course, this kind of progress didn’t happen just because he gave up trying to control the magic. It was definitely the result of all the effort he had poured into it until now. Berald had likely been training harder than anyone else from the very day he started learning magic.

It was because he was Berald. Even if no one recognized him, even if no one acknowledged him, I knew. I knew better than anyone how he never gave up. When everyone else whispered behind his back, telling him he would never make it, he kept practicing, all alone. Now, all those efforts had finally found the right direction, and they were blooming.

Berald stared at the translucent sphere, as large as a human head, in disbelief. “T-this... I really made this Mana Bullet?”

Compared to the pathetic Mana Bullet he had first made during the training, this one was almost embarrassingly well-crafted. It was still inefficient in terms of mana output, but if his earlier attempts required 100 drops of mana to produce a result worth 1 drop, now he needed only 10 drops to achieve the same.

In front of someone like Senior Sophia, who could produce results two or three times greater than the amount of mana she invested, Berald’s magic seemed primitive. Even if I put a positive spin on it, it was still below average, and he couldn’t use any other spells besides this one.

But that was fine. Compared to his past life, where he couldn’t manifest any magic at all, this was a breakthrough. A new path had opened up for Berald. Now, all that remained was to guide him down that new path.

Berald suddenly looked at me, “But, Brother...”

“Yeah?”

He scratched the back of his head and gave me a sheepish smile. “I know it’s kind of ridiculous to say this now, but... This Mana Bullet just floats there, doesn’t it? It can’t actually move, right?”

“Of course not. You gave up control, remember?”

He looked at me, baffled. “So what’s the point of this, then? How am I supposed to beat Senior Raios with a Mana Bullet that can’t even move?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Really? That’s the question you’re asking after three full days of training?” 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Berald let out an awkward cough and averted his gaze. “Ahem! It just means I trusted you that much, Brother!”

Clearly, he had been so happy about finally making a functioning Mana Bullet that he hadn’t thought about what came next. That was such a Berald thing to do.

However, I naturally hadn’t made him practice immobile Mana Bullets on a whim. I said to him, “Berald, have you ever heard this saying?”

“What saying?”

It was one of the Republic’s old proverbs. “If your brain’s no good, your body will suffer for it.”

Berald laughed, as if the phrase brought back countless memories. “Haha! My father used to say that to me until I was sick of hearing it.”

“Then just think of it the other way around.”

“The other way around?”

I grinned as I looked at Berald’s ridiculously muscular body, packed with explosive strength. “If your body’s that damn good, who cares if your brain’s a little slow?”