Have Magic - Chapter 91



Only Noblemtl

Embrace the Magic (91)

Margaret’s cooking was a delight to the human tongue. I never wanted to miss out on this taste.

“How much should I give you per month?”

“25 gold……d……”

“25 gold……”

“When I worked at the restaurant, I was paid 30 gold. So I should have received 25 gold….”

Margaret quickly added an explanation. She seemed to think the reason for her worries was the high salary.

In reality, it was the opposite. I wondered if it was worth paying someone who cooked like this for only 25 gold a month.

‘If you have this level of cooking skills, it’s like you have incredible skills.’

I didn’t regret spending 25 gold at all. But since it was my first time, I decided to start with 25 gold and gradually increase the salary.

“How much will it cost to buy groceries for a month?”

“There are two of you?”

“No. There’s another guy who goes to the Kardos Inspectorate. He’ll take care of breakfast and lunch at the Inspectorate, but we’ll eat dinner together. He’s 12 years old, and he sweats every day, so he’ll eat a lot. I also eat about two servings.”

“I eat a lot too. Bianca, please give me a lot too.”

Margaret muttered something under her breath. From what I could tell, she was roughly calculating the cost of groceries.

“What kind of dish would you like? The price varies greatly depending on what ingredients are used to make the dish.”

“The type of cuisine doesn’t matter. It can be the sumptuous cuisine of nobles or royalty, or it can be the food of the common people. What matters is taste and nutrition. As long as it’s delicious and filling, that’s fine.”

“I think I should have around 20 gold.”

“Oh, really?”

I thought that was all there was to it.

Even if you eat a big meal at a nice restaurant, it would easily cost more than 50 silver per meal. For two people, it would be 1 gold. If you eat all three meals a day, it would be 3 gold. In a month, it would be 90 gold.

But it was solved with just 20 gold worth of ingredients. And that was the amount that included Larry’s dinner.

Even including the salary, it was less than 50 gold.

“Uh… if you buy it a little cheaper… ”

“No, everything is fine. Let’s start with 25 gold, and if I like your cooking later, I’ll increase it. We’ll also start with 100 gold for ingredients. But if you run out, please tell me right away. You must never cook with poor ingredients just because you don’t have enough money. But if you have any leftovers, please give them back next month. Is that okay?”

Only when permission was granted did Margaret’s face brighten.

Margaret was hesitant before she came here.

I wasn’t cooking all day at a restaurant, and I was only making a few meals, so I wondered if I could make the amount I wanted. I had expectations, but I was also worried.

But he couldn’t lower his salary. He had a sick son. He was already a grown man in his thirties, but he was sick and couldn’t move.

One day, my son suddenly collapsed and I didn’t even know what his illness was. He just lay there all day. If I didn’t give him potions regularly, he wouldn’t be able to breathe properly.

“Yes, I will do that.”

“And… um. This isn’t really a condition. You said you have a sick son, right? I’d like to see him sometime.”

“Yes? Why my son?”

Margaret reacted awkwardly.

I didn’t want anyone to see my sick son. Everyone who had seen him so far had a bad expression on their face. Some people even felt sick because of the stench.

“Because I’m a wizard. I’d like to see it just in case.”

“Ah! I showed it to other wizards, but they didn’t know what the disease was.”

“You never know, right?”

“All right.”

Eventually, Margaret agreed. She didn’t want to show her son, but she also had a sense of anticipation, thinking, ‘What if?’

* * *

Rodin followed Margaret. Bianca, perhaps bored, followed along.

“While I’m here, I think I should buy some cooking utensils. Can you help me, Margaret?”

“Of course. I will use it in the future.”

Margaret’s steps led from the city center to the outskirts. She walked for quite some time even after reaching the outskirts, and then she walked until she reached a place where the city walls were right in front of her.

“You came all this way this morning?”

“Yes. If you hurry, it will be right away.”

“No way. It would take at least two hours even if we go fast.”

“Brother. My leg hurts.”

As expected, Bianca was also complaining that her legs hurt.

Rodin had no choice but to lift Bianca’s body. Of course, he didn’t lift it with both arms, but used his magic hand to support Bianca from below.

“This way.”

“yes.”

Margaret eventually ended up in the slums.

The surrounding area was full of houses with questionable roofs and walls that were in ruins. There were also traces of excrement from someone who had been there all night, and unidentifiable animal carcasses.

“I’m sorry it’s shabby.”

“no.”

“It’s over there.”

Fortunately, it didn’t go deep into the slums.

It was about a 20 minute walk from the roadside, so it could be said to be on the outskirts of the slum.

“Can I come in?”

“I, I first……”

Margaret rushed in. There was a loud noise of movement inside.

Rodin waited for about ten minutes and then went inside. Margaret, who was cleaning, looked embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Margaret, you don’t have to be sorry. I just came in. Is your son over there?”

“yes.”

I went to where Margaret had pointed. I could see a thin man who looked to be in his thirties lying unconscious.

‘Haa, this is ridiculous. It’s not even magic addiction. It’s mana addiction? Is that possible?’

When I saw Margaret, I felt a slight increase in the concentration of mana. It wasn’t a big difference, so I didn’t think much of it at first.

But I became suspicious because my son collapsed without knowing the name of his illness. I wondered if the concentration of mana had something to do with his illness.

“Do you know what my son’s illness is?”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“Maybe, maybe the treatment is…….”

“I need to look into it further. Can you tell me how your son ended up like this?”

In order for mana to accumulate in the body to the point of addiction, the surrounding mana concentration had to be at least several thousand times higher. This was impossible according to Rodin’s common sense.

There is a device called a mana stone, but it exists in the form of a crystal. It is not an energy that can be absorbed by humans.

‘Did you eat a mana stone?’

The question that briefly occurred was immediately erased.

Common sense tells us that people wouldn’t eat mana stones, but even if they did, they would be excreted right away. Only a small amount of mana remains in the human body, and even that dissipates over time.

‘Then, you’re saying that you stayed in a place where the mana concentration itself was thousands of times higher for a long time. Is it possible for such a place to exist?’

The concentration of mana in the world was not the same. There were high places and low places. However, the difference between high and low places was only about 2 to 3 times.

The ‘Mana Accumulation Magic Circle’ that Rodin developed for his training only absorbed the surrounding mana and increased its concentration by 3-4 times. It was impossible to increase it by thousands of times.

“My son was originally a miner who worked in the mines.”

“A miner? You mean the job where you dig things like iron ore out of the ground?”

“Yes. I dug a pickaxe in the dark every day. Then I suddenly got a call that he had lost consciousness. It was like the sky was falling down. My son was about to get married at the time.”

My son suddenly collapsed. Naturally, the marriage was a disaster. No woman would want to marry a man who was not even conscious.

“When you went there, it looked like this?”

“Yes. I was unconscious. I could barely breathe, and even that would stop at times.”

“You must have used a potion.”

“Yes. If I didn’t regularly feed him disease-curing potions, he wouldn’t even be able to breathe.”

It was fortunate that it was a cheap disease-healing potion. If it had been a much more expensive wound-healing potion, Margaret would not have been able to handle it even with her abilities.

“It must have been hard. Disease cure potions are cheap among potions, but they’re not cheap enough for Margaret to keep stockpiling.”

“Yes. I sold my house and everything else. That’s why I came here.”

“Then, is this only your son?”

“Only your son? Oh! No. I heard later that most of the people who worked in the mine collapsed with the same symptoms as my son. But they soon got up and left. Only my son is still like this….”

Rodin didn’t think much of the part where he got up and shook his head. If he wasn’t exposed for too long, Mana had an instinct to return to its original position. It was a natural phenomenon.

The important thing was that everyone collapsed with the same symptoms, which meant that everyone had been exposed to a huge concentration for a short time.

“Where is the mine where your son worked?”

“It’s a moder wasteland.”

It wasn’t a mountain, it was a wasteland. It was an open-pit mine that went from the ground to the ground.

“Do they still catch fire there these days?”

“No. I heard that too many people have fallen, so the Marquisate has issued an order to stop mining.”

“I see. The Mode Wasteland… Ah! I can fix your son. It’ll only take a day, so let’s move him to my house for now. I have a spare room, so you can stay there.”

Mana’s instinct had already made Margaret’s son’s body her home. That body was now her home, so even if she were to forcibly drag him out, it was obvious that he would return.

Changing this instinct required some preparation, and home was better than a strange place to do that preparation.

“Really? Can you really cure it?”

“Yes, it can be cured. And when it is cured, tell your son. Would you like to work in my house?”

There weren’t many people at home these days. So when guests came to the house, Rodin, who had been resting in his room, had to run out to the front door.

“Your son?”

“Wouldn’t it be hard for Margaret to go shopping alone? Take your son to work. Teach him how to cook if you can. It would also be good to take care of the house.”

“Understood. Thank you, Wizard. Thank you very much.”

“Let’s go back home first. I’ll take care of my son with magic. Magic Hand.”

Rodin magically carried Margaret’s son Matthew to the house, his mind constantly thinking of the Moud Wasteland as he walked.

‘Something strange happened, but no one knew what caused it. Of course. Because they couldn’t sense mana.’

Through past experience, Rodin learned that people cannot sense mana, which is not magical power. Even wizards cannot sense mana.

So, they probably didn’t figure out why people suddenly started collapsing. They also didn’t know that Margaret’s son Matthew was being neglected because he was sick from excessive mana.

‘The treatment is easy. But it’s a wasteland… I have to make time to go there.’

It was absolutely impossible for the concentration of mana to be thousands of times higher than the surroundings. There must be a reason why the concentration of mana was so high.

* * *

As soon as they got home, Rodin carried Margaret’s son Matthew to the nursery. Margaret looked at her son with an anxious face.

“Okay, are you okay?”

“It’ll be over in two hours. It’ll be lunchtime then. Please prepare some food. Matthew, I think? Even some thin soup for him.”

“All right.”

The door to the training room was closed. Margaret, who had been loitering around for a while, also went up to the ground.

Rodin examined Matthew’s body again. As expected, the excessively dense mana was harming Matthew’s body.

But Mana wasn’t harming Matthew’s body because she wanted to. They were just flowing, pooling, and moving as usual.

It’s just that humans can’t stand it.

“Shall we begin? Sleep!”

Since he might wake up in the middle, I put the unconscious Matthew to sleep once more. When the magic using magical power reached him, Mana tried to strongly resist.

“Tch. These guys are a pain in the ass.”

Rodin placed his hand on Matthew’s back and moved Mana carefully.

Rodin had moved mana long ago, before the Circle was even created.

Moreover, now that he had five circles, he had the power to suppress this level of mana backlash.

“But that won’t do.”

If you forcefully suppress Mana, it will cause problems for Matthew’s body. You have to suppress Mana’s reaction as naturally as possible, without affecting his body.

I aroused my will and breathed magic into it. Then I forced the mana down from my head and used magic again.

“slip!”

Only then did Matthew’s body fall into a state of perfect sleep. Rodin took his hand off, but Mana did not forcefully wake Matthew, who was already asleep.

Unless you chant the rune word that is opposite to sleep, mana in its natural state rarely does anything for humans.

“What will be the seniority efficiency?”

Although it was an act to heal Matthew, today’s work also greatly helps Rodin.

“Let’s try.”

Rodin closed his eyes and chanted the runes. As he cycled through the spell, he sucked in not only the surrounding mana, but also the mana within Matthew’s body.

‘This is amazing.’

Dense mana was gathered in the limited space of the human body. It was much easier to absorb and convert into magical power than mana spread out in a wide natural state.

Rodin quickly turned the circle and changed the mana in Matthew’s body into magic power. The magic power changed in this way was gradually accumulated in Rodin’s body.

About 100 minutes passed. Rodin took his hands off Matthew’s body and stepped back.

“Whew. This is it, okay.”

I gained an absurd amount of magical power. If I did this three or four more times, I could aim for the 6th circle.