Somnial shut his book, shifting in his seat as he studied me.

  “I suppose that means you really don’t know who I am,” he muttered to himself, then sighed. “Time truly is the great equalizer.”

  The mage gestured to the second armchair, so I sat. “Redding—my village—is pretty isolated. So I don’t really know anything about, uh… Argadian nobility?” I said, postulating about the man’s status. “Or much about Argadia’s history at all.”

  Somnial chuckled, shaking his head slightly. “How nice, to live in a time of peace,” he said softly.

  I frowned, trying to decipher the old man’s words with my limited information. Argadia being in a peacetime suggested that it hadn’t always been. That much was obvious, because I knew the country had an army, as Mishel had been a soldier. His sons had died serving the army, but that couldn’t have been that long ago. No one in my village ever really talked about a recent war, though.

  But then, I also knew there were opposing forces in the world. The administrator had heavily implied as much when he informed me about [Mana Manipulation].

  “So Argadia isn’t in conflict with its neighbors?”

  “Oh, it very much is,” Somnial answered. “Humans will always squabble over borders. Especially during peace.”

  I shook my head. That seemed like the opposite of peace. “I’m confused. And also about what that has to do with you being, uh, the great sage.”

  Somnial hummed to himself, then stood, walking over to the bookshelves. He browsed a bit, then shook his head, muttering to himself as he crossed the room to a different bookshelf, and withdrew a small book. He walked over to me and handed me the book before settling back down into his armchair.

  “That’s the grimoire for [Create Light],” he said. “The one our mages learn, as opposed to your revelatory skill. Take a look.”

  Confused, but curious, I cracked open the grimoire and started reading the first page with my newfound literacy. Unlike the grimoire that Somnial had been studying on the road, this one was much more approachable in size. The text inside was a lot larger than a book made with a printing press, as well, so the chant probably wasn’t absurdly long. With tighter script, it probably could have fit comfortably on a reasonable size scroll, but a bound grimoire likely lasted longer, and Somnial could clearly afford to pay for bound copies of his full spell library.

  I still couldn’t read quickly, but I didn’t struggle to sound out the letters on the page. Except, sounding out the letters was all I could do.

  “This… isn’t Argadian,” I said after a few minutes of trying to decipher the page.

  “Is that so?” Somnial asked.

  I sounded out the words again, then shook my head. “I mean, the letters are, but these words are gibberish. Is this… hmm. The language of magic, or something like that?”

  Somnial suppressed a small chuckle. “’Something like that,’ indeed. Well, it’s no great secret. That’s the language of the demons.”

  Demons? I thought with a frown. Is that a metaphor? No, wait.

  I knew what he meant when he said the word ‘demons’. That was similar to the previous year, when Hildan told us that goblins had attacked him and killed my brother Toldan. I had known what the Argadian word meant already because I had grown up with stories which I had thought to be only fables. Now, as had been the case for goblins, I again realized I already knew the Argadian word for demons. I quickly tried to summon up my memories of the word, where I had learned it and why, and could only vaguely recall hearing about it during worship. Umbor had spoken about them, and when I had asked my parents what he meant, they had mentioned something about them being creatures of evil.

  Stories about evil creatures were present on Earth as well, but they weren’t real. I had assumed that was the case here, too, and that they were a storytelling tool to impart lessons about good and evil, and my subconscious had categorized them as such. I had proceeded to mostly ignore future sermons about the subject of demons, few as they were, and instead meditate and train my Mind stat.

  I had already updated my worldview to account for monsters existing, after the goblin attack and through what I learned during my revelation in the borderlands, but that hadn’t extended fully to account for religious ideology I had long since ignored. “So demons are real?”

  “They were,” Somnial said. “And perhaps still are, somewhere. And one day, they will be again.”

  My mind flashed up another memory from the borderlands, something the administrator had said about assigned skills. He had mentioned something, by name, that could be assigned to candidates in this world.

  “...You fought them, didn’t you? The demons. Are you a [Hero]?”

  Somnial chuckled again, shaking his head. “No, I’m not the [Hero]. But as the [Sage], I fought alongside him and the [Saint] against the demons, back in my youth.”

  “And you... beat them.”

  Somnial nodded. “We defeated the demon king, at least, and their offensive fell apart. That was the end of the Great War. This was, oh, decades ago,” he said with a soft smile, then sighed wistfully. “I was barely an adult. Still a boy, really. Children, fighting for all of humanity, against the true enemy. But that’s in the past, now. It’s been generations since. Your grandparents might be old enough to remember it, but to your parents, it was only a story. A cautionary tale. People have already forgotten the reality of it, and the united front between human countries has broken, infighting for power and greed.”

  “Demons… what are they? Are they like monsters?”

  “The propaganda would have you believe so. In truth, they are a lot like us.”

  I glanced down at the book in my hands. “They’re... intelligent. They had a language.” I looked back up at the sage. “Were they always the enemy? Was peace not possible?”

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  Somnial raised his hands, upturned. “Only the Guardians know. The conflict between humans and demons goes back much further than my time. There have been demon kings before, and they were felled by past champions. Then there’s peace, and humans prosper, but eventually, the demons return and new champions rise to meet them.” He paused, and stroked his beard. “I do not know if there has ever been peace between them and us. What history we know only ever speaks of conflict.”

  “And they never beat the humans?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they have, in the past. It’s not in our nature to remember our defeats, though, only our victories. But consider the book in your hands.”

  I glanced at it, then back up to Somnial. “What about it?”

  “Magic,” he said simply. “Humans have tamed it, but it isn’t ours. Demons, like monsters, are creatures of magic. They are born of mana. They can manipulate it at will. We could only copy it, learning to tame bits and pieces of it and weave that into spells.”

  My heart thudded in my chest, and mouth dried out. I swallowed, trying not to display visible discomfort. That sounds a lot like my skill.

  I suddenly recalled our first meeting. Somnial had asked me something, and it wasn’t in Argadian. Had he come to Redding concerned he might find a demon?

  Somnial didn’t seem to notice my distress, or ignored it if he did, and continued his speech. “Once we gained magic, we gained the ability to fight back, but before that… well. Human history only goes back so far. Before that, we were probably little but prey to the demons.”

  I turned a page in the book, then another, allowing myself to calm down. It was interesting that the same letters could easily represent both Argadian and the demon language. There were languages on Earth that used the same alphabet, but there was usually some variances, and the more distant the languages, the different the written word. It seemed like humans and demons would have wildly different origins. “Is the alphabet ours? Or is that from the demons as well?”

  Somnial blinked at me, and I briefly thought I might have asked a dangerous question, but he tilted his head slightly, pensive. “I... don’t actually know,” he said. “Hmm.”

  We sat together in silence for a while longer, while I flipped back to the first page, rereading the words that I now knew were demonic in origin. Clearly, Somnial knew the language to some degree, and I wondered if I would learn it too in my studies. I was interested, but for the moment it might be better to keep some distance from it. I was in Somnial’s care, and as he was basically among the first line of defense against demons, I didn’t want to do anything overly suspicious in case I was accused of… something. Anything. I wasn’t sure what, exactly.

  I obviously wasn’t a demon. My parents were in Redding, and were plainly human. My revelation was probably weird, but it was from the Five Guardian Faith. Somnial had accepted me fairly quickly, and didn’t seem overly suspicious about that, at least beyond the first question.

  “You can take that book with you,” Somnial said, breaking the silence. “It will take some time to memorize, but you are welcome to start now.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking that as an invitation to leave and standing. I walked to the door, but paused before I left. I still had questions, and I figured it was better to get through it all now rather than be worried about it for the foreseeable future. “Somnial… why did you agree to sponsor me? Are you planning on training me to be a [Sage]?”

  Somnial didn’t answer right away, and I stood awkwardly at the door while I wanted for him to gather his thoughts. “I couldn’t train you to be a [Sage], even if I wanted to. It’s something that can only be granted by the Guardians, as is the case for a [Hero] or [Saint], and only in response to the rise of a new demon king. As far as I know, there can only be one, as it were, and, well, I’m still here.

  “When I heard about your revelation, I was worried that… well, no matter. Your revelation is interesting, but it does seem to simply be in response to a natural gift for magic. Unusual, yes, but not unheard of. My Will was higher than yours at your age. You have a sharp mind, and the potential to be a good mage, but that’s all.”

  I tried not to let that rankle me too much, because he wasn’t wrong. “Then why bring me here? I’m just a commoner. A farmer. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, quite a lot, but what do you get out of it?”

  The silence stretched a bit longer this time, before the sage spoke again, with far less of the confidence that was in his voice earlier. “I’m old, Tovar. Every year it becomes more and more apparent that I’m approaching my end. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Oh,” I said softly.

  “I’ve spent my whole life studying magic,” he continued. “Even after defeating the demon king, I pursued more and more. Decades worth of knowledge and mastery. But I never truly did anything with it, in the end, save for the events of my youth. And I have no one to pass it all on to.”

  “Do… you have any family?”

  Somnial scoffed, which was a surprising sound from the usually composed man. “Only a brother, and he’s even worse than me.” He shook his head, and I shifted in place, still standing awkwardly near the door. “The best part of returning home as a champion was also the worst. People worshiped me, venerated the Great Sage. But save for nobles angling to leverage my power politically, I became unapproachable. I have no tolerance for political games and machinations. It became difficult, impossible to connect with anyone. When Elsa…”

  He trailed off, then cleared his throat.

  “No matter. The past is the past. And then I met you, a boy granted a peculiar gift of magic by the Guardians. You may not be a [Sage], but I can’t help but see a bit of myself in you.” He shrugged. “Not to lessen this for you, but sponsoring your education isn’t exactly a strain on me. I was handsomely rewarded for my part in defeating the demon king, and I can’t take it with me when I leave this life. I could have referred you off to some noble house, and still can if you prefer—someone in this domain will surely sponsor you after I displayed an interest, even if that were revoked—but I think you’ll learn better without being caught up in inter-house politics.”

  “I… appreciate that. I’m not sure I’d be any good at any of... that, either,” I said. Nothing from my previous life prepared me for dealing with nobles in this life, and I was pretty sure I’d say the wrong thing and screw things up for myself immediately with a less forgiving sponsor. “Thank you, Somnial. I, uh, hope I can make it up to you somehow.”

  He smiled at me, a kinder smile than I had seen on the man so far. “Thank you as well, Tovar.”

  I stepped out of the sage’s library and headed back to my room with the [Create Light] grimoire. I would study it soon, but before that, I had something I needed to sort out, despite the late hour.

  “Byron,” I said when I found the head butler. “Is there a chapel nearby? I’d like to offer a prayer to the Guardians.”

  “Of course, young master,” the butler said. “I’ll call a carriage.”

  From Somnial’s manor, we headed back into Ivarnel proper. It had grown dark already, and had been a very long day, but it was interesting to see what qualified as a night life in the domain’s capital. Instead of heading towards the markets, the carriage turned down a different set of streets, stopping in front of a massive, ornate building.

  “That’s a big chapel,” I muttered.

  “Pardon me, young master, but this is actually the local temple,” Byron corrected me. “The chapel you’re familiar with is a privately held place of worship, and a branch of this temple.”

  “Oh,” I said, not particularly that interested in the religious hierarchy of the country. Still, the structure was rather magnificent, the kind of thing I would have visited as a tourist.

  I was granted access with some quiet words from Byron, despite the fact that there were no services at the moment and that it was late and normally closed up. With practically no other people around, the large interior was echoey and slightly intimidating, particularly as I approached the front with the enormous statues of the Five Guardians. They were an order of magnitude larger and fancier than the ones I grew up with, and I shook my head a bit at the ostentatiousness of it before I closed my eyes and dropped my head in prayer.

  “Oh, traveler, you’re back,” the administrator said. “How’s it going?”

  I opened my eyes to the white metaversal borderlands and the librarian-looking figure that acted in place of the gods and goddesses of this world, and let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Did you seriously fucking teach me demon magic?”

  Patreon. I had all the way up to Chapter 38 already posted there from earlier this year, but a bunch of people showed up confused about whether or not EoR was on hiatus since it had been a few months since my last chapter post.

  was, as I finished up my , but I planned to return to it with the launch of it here on RR. I just wasn't expecting to hit Rising Stars in the first week! All that to say that, since people are so excited for the story, I'm back to posting chapters as of today, right away, with Chapter 39. I'm aiming to post MWF to match the long-term posting schedule of EoR here, and give me time to hopefully also finish my on the off days. Thank you all for reading!