Chapter 2095: Stubborn Girl

Sometimes, things in this world were just that strange.

Sein, a peak Rank Five grand mage who had gone nearly ten thousand years without ever taking an apprentice, had finally decided to accept one. Yet just when he had made up his mind, things did not go quite as smoothly as he expected.

After returning to his laboratory at the Divine Tower of Ashes that day, Sein received an unexpected report from Marie.

Her attempt to poach Catherine had failed.

“What? The Divine Tower of Radiant Sun refuses to let her go?” Sein asked with a frown.

He had never dealt with the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun before. If its tower master or academy dean refused to grant him this favor, Sein was hardly in a position to force the issue.

“No, that’s not it. Dean Miladin of the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun is actually quite reasonable. He has already agreed to transfer Catherine’s contract to our Divine Tower of Ashes,” Marie explained.

“In fact, Master Miladin and the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun are more than willing to do us this favor. They aren’t even asking us for any money.”

“Then why...” Sein asked, puzzled.

Marie gave him a wry smile.

“Because Catherine herself doesn’t want to come to the Divine Tower of Ashes.”

“What?” Sein exclaimed in astonishment.

***

Catherine had been born into an ordinary farming family in the Byrne Empire.

As a commoner, she did not even have a surname of her own.[1]

Catherine’s childhood had actually been a happy one. In that regard, she had been far more fortunate than Sein. At least she still remembered those early years clearly.

She remembered her loving parents, as well as an older brother who, in her childhood memories, had seemed as tall as a mountain.

Unfortunately, those happy days did not last. When Catherine was twelve, a group of mountain bandits raided her village and slaughtered her parents and relatives.

Her older brother was among those who died. He had been only eighteen at the time and had just passed the Byrne Empire’s military examination.

He was supposed to enlist soon and begin a new chapter of his life. Instead, he was dismembered by the bandits during the attack.

Small and frail at the time, Catherine survived only because her parents had shielded her beneath their bodies. Their sacrifice bought her just enough time to survive.

Mounted guards dispatched from a nearby city eventually arrived and rescued her before the bandits discovered where she was hiding.

The world was never as beautiful as those who had lived sheltered lives imagined it to be.

Countless wars and violent incidents took place every year among the lower levels of society in Magus World.

Some of those conflicts were indeed influenced by the Nation War Plan deliberately promoted by the major knightly orders.

At the very least, participation was not compulsory.

Most of those who willingly threw themselves into such life-and-death struggles came from the bottom of society, people dissatisfied with their circumstances and desperate for a chance to change their fate.

As for incidents like mountain bandits attacking villages, gangs of thieves raiding merchant caravans, or rampaging magic beasts terrorizing nearby settlements, those could only be blamed on bad luck.

Even at Sein’s Divine Tower of Ashes, missions assigned to initiates often included wiping out groups of mountain bandits, hunting dangerous magic beasts, or even assisting full-fledged mages in tracking down black mages.

Since the Divine Tower of Ashes also extended its influence into the underground world, its initiates actually had a wider variety of missions to choose from than those of most other divine towers.

In Catherine’s case, the nearby city had responded quickly enough to the attack on her village. Otherwise, she would not have survived at all.

Compared to many other orphans with similarly tragic backgrounds, Catherine had at least been fortunate in one respect.

She had been born at the right time, and her late older brother had just passed the Byrne Empire military’s enlistment examination.

Influenced by the ongoing Clash of Civilizations and eager to further develop its war potential, the Byrne Empire had followed the Alveroth Empire’s example three thousand years earlier and launched a nationwide campaign encouraging the study of magic.

To be fair, for an empire traditionally centered around knights, the Byrne Empire had already accomplished a great deal. Its system for selecting and training knights was far more advanced than those of many other powers.

Trying to copy the Alveroth Empire’s approach to cultivating mages, however, proved to be a step too far.

The Byrne Empire’s nationwide enthusiasm for magic lasted barely a thousand years before the program began to fall apart.

The reason was simple. The Byrne Empire simply could not afford it.

Hundreds of millions of magicoins were poured into the program every year, yet the returns were nowhere near enough to justify the expense.

At one point, the Byrne Empire’s Minister of Finance nearly came to blows with the military leadership right in front of the emperor.

After several rounds of reform, the grand nationwide magic program was eventually reduced to a rather peculiar policy.

Whenever a military servant died, one of their relatives could be selected to study at a public magic academy in the empire.

The military, which had long demanded more mage legions for the front lines, took it upon itself to shoulder the cost of the program.

Since the military also brought back vast amounts of resources from the battlefields, this arrangement finally put the Minister of Finance in a slightly better mood.

It was under these circumstances that Catherine somewhat unexpectedly found herself enrolled in a public magic academy.

Having watched her parents and relatives die before her eyes at only twelve years old, Catherine studied harder than almost anyone else at the academy. She knew how difficult it had been to receive this opportunity, so she treasured it all the more.

Children from prestigious magic families often began practicing meditation and studying basic magical knowledge when they were only a few years old.

By comparison, Catherine had entered the academy at twelve and could barely even read. Unsurprisingly, she started at the very bottom of her class.

Yet within just five years, that same bottom-ranked initiate had risen to achieve exceptional results at the public magic academy.

Her performance eventually caught the attention of a teaching mage from the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun.

The mage personally wrote Catherine a letter of recommendation, allowing her to enroll at the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun when she was eighteen.

The Byrne Empire and the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun had both treated Catherine well.

Above all, the elderly Rank Two mage who had written her letter of recommendation was the most important mentor Catherine had encountered on her journey thus far.

Without her guidance and support, Catherine could never have reached the level of a senior initiate by the age of thirty-six.

“I’m not leaving. I still have a contract with the public magic academy in Lantescher City. After I become a full-fledged mage, I’m supposed to return there and teach for ten years to repay the academy for everything it did for me back then,” Catherine said as she reorganized the bookshelves in the library.

She looked at the elderly woman in the room and asked, “Weren’t you the one who taught me about the principle of equivalent exchange that all mages should follow?”

The woman had a head full of white hair. Although she was a Rank Two mage, her soul flame had already grown extremely weak. Judging from its condition, she probably had less than a hundred years left to live.

At that moment, however, there was nothing frail about her demeanor. She looked so agitated that she seemed ready to scold Catherine.

“Oh, you silly girl! What do you know?”

“I heard that the dean of the Divine Tower of Ashes Academy personally asked for you! Do you even know who she is? She’s a highly respected Rank Four mage!”

The elderly mage looked as though she wanted to grab Catherine by the collar of her robe and shake some sense into her.

Catherine finally set down the spellbooks in her arms. She bit her lip for a moment before shaking her head.

“I’m still not leaving. My contract with the Divine Tower of Radiant Sun states that after advancing to Rank One, I must remain a registered mage of the tower for at least a hundred years. And I still owe the Byrne Empire military another hundred and thirty years of service.”

Catherine lowered her gaze.

“Besides, if I leave, what will happen to you?”

The elderly mage nearly laughed in frustration.

“I have my own apprentice and my family to look after me. Do you really think I need you worrying about me?”

“Besides, you placed in the top one hundred of this Regional Inter-Divine Tower Academy War. According to the academy rules, all those service obligations should already be cut in half! With how well you performed this time, they might even reduce them further. The dean and the others aren’t blind!” she said.

Catherine, however, remained stubborn.

“No. I was the one who signed those contracts back then. My own signature is on them. If I agreed to something, then I should see it through to the end.”

She looked up at the elderly mage.

“Wasn’t that one of the reasons you took a liking to me in the first place?”

Faced with the stubborn girl before her, the elderly Rank Two mage could only let out a long sigh.

1. Author’s Note: In Magus World, surnames were traditionally a privilege reserved for the nobility. ☜