“That damned boy!”

It was almost dawn and the soldier who had almost lost his life, Jonathan, was in a tavern at the corner of the castle along with other off-duty soldiers. He was quite drunk.

“Who does he think I am?!”

“Shut up. You might end up in a really bad spot,” another soldier said.

“Won’t you shut up? Whose side are you on?” His friend’s concerns only made him raise his voice.

“What side are you talking about? I’m just saying we should be careful about repercussions. Just lay low for a while. You’re dealing with a mage here.”

“Huh! Repercussions? Lay low? Mage?” Jonathan downed his beer, emptying the wooden cup in the blink of an eye. Throwing the cup away he shouted, “That’s nonsense!”

Jonathan didn’t care about Ian’s warning. “Damn it! I’ve lost my appetite. Excuse me! Put this on my tab!”

“You’ve been doing this for a month...” the owner pointed out hesitantly.

“Did I say I’m not gonna pay? Huh? I’ll pay up soon!” The soldier had put quite a few drinks on his tab. However, he didn’t think the small tavern owner could do anything against him.

As he left the place, the owner let out a sigh. The other soldiers shook their heads.

“He’s been rude and arrogant just because a noble has his back, so repercussions would be good for him.”

“But even that noble probably can’t do anything against a mage, can he?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Not just low-ranking nobles but even the highest-born tuck their tails when faced with the Ivory Tower. Man, Jonathan’s gonna be fretting over this for a while,” the man said, laughing.

Other guards joined in, making fun of the guard. Even his fellow soldiers seemed to hate him.

“Whatever, but that Vanessa really hit the jackpot.”

“That man of hers looked like an orc. Who would have known he had the seed for a mage? If I were a woman, I would have gone for him too!”

“What was his name? He did have a last name, no?”

“Paige.. Ah! Fran Paige!”

“Right! Good memory.”

Having finished bad-mouthing Jonathan, the guards started talking about Ian.

“Maybe he was a mage too?”

“My man, are you stupid? Do you think mages’ children always become mages?”

“They don’t?”

“It’s more likely that the child is ordinary.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“Ahem! There are ways to know.” The chubby soldier started to explain his theory.

Meanwhile, Jonathan was roaming the streets outside the tavern.

“Wh-whatever it takes!” He was having a hard time walking straight. “While the kid watches, I’ll grab his mother and... Hick!” he shouted, hiccuping. “Ha!”

Jonathan showed a lewd smile at the possibilities that popped up in his head. Soon, he halted in front of a stream. He needed to take a piss.

“Now, why isn’t this coming off? Are you messing with me too? Huh?” He was struggling with his belt, acting, for all purposes, like an idiot. “Hick! I’ll make the two of them plead...”

“Didn’t I tell you I’d be watching?”

The voice had come from behind. As Jonathan turned to look behind him, his response died in his throat.

“Paralyze.”

Jonathan’s body froze. He couldn’t run away or even move. All he could do was breathe.

“You’ll be stuck for a while. That’s magic.”

The soldier finally recognized the voice. It was that damn kid, Ian.

“Do what to my mother in front of whom?”

“Urgh...!” Jonathan tried his hardest to move, his blue veins looking like they were about to burst.

“This is how you die. You were humiliated by a kitchen maid’s son, then drank to get rid of your anger. You drank yourself stupid. There are witnesses in the tavern, after all.”

Those things were all true.

“Black-out drunk, you needed to take a piss and saw a stream. The stones were slippery and nobody was around. This could be dangerous, eh? If you were drunk.” As Ian finished speaking, he shoved Jonathan with all his might.

With a splash, the soldier fell into the water, face-first. He was going to drown.

“I was torn. I asked myself if I should be doing this after spending my life researching Dragonian to wash the blood off my hands. If I could turn back time, I had promised myself to make the right choices and atone for my sins.”

Jonathan couldn’t hear his words.

Ian continued to speak as if to himself. “But maybe not. Looking at you now has given me certainty. I didn’t want to erase my past, I just didn’t want other people to see the blood on my hands.” He wanted to eliminate the dark side of a war hero, the stigma that he had taken innocent lives.

Jonathan had almost stopped thrashing around.

“Hate me. Don’t forgive me. That’s what the man who poisoned me said.”

Ian now had a rough idea of why the emperor had said those words.

* * *

Instead of going home, Ian went to an inn because the family’s hut could not accommodate Aaron. So, while Ian and his mother shared one room, Aaron got a room next to theirs.

My head hurts. Ian safely returned to his room. He had been dizzy all day. This was a downside of using up all his mana.

Just one use of Paralyze used up all my mana. He didn’t think he could do it twice. He was still a twelve-year-old who had not even begun mana-breathing. How large could his mana pool be? Even his past eighth-class memories couldn’t help him now.

This much was simply luck. The mana heart was storing and circulating mana the same way the regular heart did with blood. There was a limit to how much mana it could store.

Mages called that the mana pool and Ian needed to develop his quickly. He still remembered all the spells.

I need to start mana-breathing. That was one of the methods to grow the mana pool. It was a special breathing method that increased the circulation of magic in his mana heart. The mana-breathing technique that Ian had developed was unique—it was head and shoulders above the basic mana-breathing techniques taught at the academy.

Sometimes, I wondered what would have happened if I had come up with this earlier on. He had been thirty-four when he discovered the technique, and he had made significant progress since then.

How much higher could I have gone? And that wasn’t all. This unparalleled genius was soon going to the academy. He could receive support from the imperial family and the Ivory Tower.

I can take all the elixirs and artifacts. It was hard to even imagine how much stronger he could get.

I should get started. Ian sat down. Mana-breathing was going to help ease his dizziness as well.

“Whoo...”

Ian carefully breathed in, trying not to wake his mother up. He looked at her face and noticed it had brightened up. She must have been thinking about the fortune that had been granted to her son, completely forgetting about the soldier’s assault.

That’s a relief. The first day of returning to the past was coming to an end. Ian concentrated on his mana-breathing, feeling a sense of ease.