What Ermes was given at the time of his banishment was a reasonably decent set of clothes — nothing like the rags he had been wearing before — along with a modest sum of gold coins.
After all, they were people who had once been family, even if they were casting him out. Perhaps they had shown a small measure of mercy so he would not drop dead immediately —
—That, as it turned out, was a miscalculation.
"Hyahahaha! I'm in luck today!"
"I thought this was going to be a dead-end job, but who knew we'd score such an easy mark!"
"These clothes are unbelievably high quality, too. A noble's kid wandering around a place like that? He might as well have been asking us to grab him!"
In truth, the Frenbreed family had never harbored the slightest intention of letting Ermes live in any meaningful sense.
Ermes had been dumped in the slums, far from the Royal Capital.
A single, frail-looking boy, walking alone through such a place — dressed in clothes that were, by commoner standards, absurdly luxurious, and carrying a sum of money that would make any commoner's eyes spin.
To a group of abductors, he must have looked like nothing short of an open invitation.
The fact that they had not killed him with their own hands was solely to avoid the scandal of having murdered a family member.
So they had dressed him up as bait — a pretense of leniency — just to have some random thug from the lower quarters do the dirty work.
And sure enough — just as Xenos had predicted — Ermes was swiftly captured by a band of rough men, stripped of everything he had, and dumped in an uninhabited area on the outskirts.
"So what do we do with this brat? Ransom, or sell him to a slave trader?"
"Neither. You get these noble castoffs once in a while. Obviously nobody's paying a ransom, and a scrawny kid like this won't fetch much on the market, either."
"Then what—"
"Yeah, just kill him after. Make sure there are no loose ends."
And just like that —
With the casual ease of idle chitchat, they decided on the worst possible fate for him, and one of the men began approaching, blade in hand.
"Ah—!"
I don't want to die.
Obeying that primal terror, Ermes tried to crawl away from the spot, but—
"Hey, hey—don't make this harder than it needs to be, there!"
"Guh—!"
Before such a pathetic escape could be permitted, a boot slammed into his back, pinning him down and sealing any chance of movement.
As if it were nothing more than a bonus, he was kicked aside and sent crashing into a nearby wall.
"Heard about you, kid. You got dumped by some high-and-mighty noble, huh?"
A vulgar grin spread across the man's face as he approached, several others trailing behind him.
"You look like you don't know, so let me spell it out for you. Us bottom-feeders — we hate nobles to our core!"
"Even if you got thrown away, you've been living the good life up until now, right?"
"Then the least you can do is stick around and let us lowly commoners blow off some steam. Isn't that what you'd call a noble's duty?"
They took turns without pause, beating him in succession. Little by little, the will to resist drained out of him.
—What was my life, really?
Eventually, as resignation took hold of his mind, everything that had happened so far flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.
The brilliance of his childhood, and how it had come crashing down in his youth. Every effort he had continued making with the unwavering belief that it would someday pay off — all of it had been for nothing, and now he would perish in a place like this, unknown to anyone.
If that was what his life amounted to — then everything had been pointless. His life had held no meaning whatsoever.
He could not help but reach that conclusion.
*(No… please…)*
Even as denial gripped him, there was nothing left he could do.
The man, bored by the lack of resistance, casually raised his knife.
With hollow eyes, he could not——watch it being brought down upon his own neck.
"Gubaaah?!"
Because just before that, some manner of magic had detonated on the side of the man's face.
The man let out a pathetic scream and was sent flying from sight.
"——Hey, gimme a break."
A reply came in a beautiful woman's voice that carried a boyish lilt.
"Here I was, finally letting loose for the first time in ages, in a great mood heading home, you know?"
What Ermes turned toward with surprise was the figure of a gorgeous woman silhouetted against the evening sunset.
"What the hell are you doing on the way home, huh? A bunch of grown men ganging up on a young boy — there's nothing more disgusting than that. You've gone and ruined my perfectly good mood."
Lustrous red hair that seemed to burn even under the setting sun. Contrasting with it, intelligent blue eyes brimming with an irritable glare stared down the men.
"——So, here's the deal."
From those well-shaped lips, words brimming with hostility were spun.
"I'm gonna beat you senseless to blow off some steam, you pieces of trash. No complaints, alright?"
The battle that erupted from there was, to put it mildly, an unbelievable spectacle.
Enraged by the blatant provocation, the men all charged at the beautiful woman at once.
"Don't you go pulling that self-righteous-hero crap on us, you damn broad!"
"You're gettin' real cocky — I'll teach you what happens when you stand up to us, bitch!"
The men hurled angry shouts laced with rage, embarrassment, and perhaps desire at the sight of the beautiful woman.
Yet despite those rough voices, their fighting stances were refined.
It seemed that several among them had some knowledge of magic, as there were those employing enhancement magic for swift movements alongside powerful long-range spells.
On top of this numerical advantage. Even a Bloodline Magic user would be helpless against this with anything less than exceptional skill.
However.
"Oh my, how scary, how scary."
With an elegant smile that conveyed utter composure, she deflected every single attack.
Those who charged in close were brushed aside without so much as a fingertip touching her, thanks to even greater enhancement magic and martial technique. Long-range spells were blocked completely by a wall of light she erected around herself, not so much as a gentle breeze getting through.
And then, as if returning the favor, she unleashed spell after spell of a magnitude that made everything the men had shown look like child's play.
Fireballs, wind blades, ice chunks. She displayed a dizzying variety of spells in rapid succession, launching them freely as she soared through the air.
Their power, her movements — utterly overwhelming. It was a one-sided slaughter.
"Impossible..."
The whispered murmur that slipped out mid-battle belonged to Ermes von Frenbreed.
He was certainly stunned by the sheer gap in their class — but that wasn't what shocked him the most.
"That person, what on earth,
what kind of magic
are they using
...!?"
At this point, let us explain one property of Bloodline Magic.
In principle, Bloodline Magic manifests only once per individual.
Therefore, the magic a single person wields is fundamentally limited to a single attribute.
There are exceptions, of course. For instance, so-called General-purpose Magic — spells anyone can use — carries no such one-per-person restriction. That was likely what the men had been employing, and with those, it wouldn't be impossible for someone to deploy a wide variety of spells as she did.
However, there was one critical contradiction in that logic.
" Its power is... too strong...!"
Indeed, every single one of her spells vastly exceeded the bounds of General-purpose Magic. They even rivaled the performance of mediocre Bloodline Magic.
It wasn't just Ermes who was stunned by this sight. Any noble with even a passing understanding of Bloodline Magic would have questioned their own eyes.
What unfolded before them was the very embodiment of such absurdity. Ermes gazed upon it—but soon, it stopped bothering him.
Because.
"...Amazing."
He was captivated. A person who tore across the battlefield more freely than anyone, who understood magic more deeply than anyone, and who wielded magic more freely than anyone.
This was, without question, the great mage he had always admired. The incarnation of the aspiration he had dreamed of since childhood stood right there before him.
"...That hair, that way of speaking, and above all that ridiculous magic—don't tell me...!"
Before long, one of the men realized something, and a look of despair spread across his face.
"All of you, fall back! This is Rose, the 'Sky Witch'—a walking disaster! Before any more damage—"
"You're too late, you fools."
She wouldn't let them escape.
As if to declare exactly that, the beauty called Rose encircled the entire surrounding area with walls of light, trapping every last one of the men inside.
"You guys were actually pretty tough for such a sleazy-looking bunch. So to save myself the hassle—as a courtesy, I'll let you see my magic."
She raised her left hand toward the sky, drew a deep breath, and began to sing.
"[
Heaven and earth—
All things surveyed—eyes like twin springs of
The skull
be a sacrifice — know that my rank is the pinnacle!"""]]
With a fearless grin, she swung her hand downward and declared in a booming voice.
"Bloodline Magic —'
Meteor Throne
'!"
Immediately after.
Countless beams of light — the only way to describe them — rained down from the heavens and struck across the entire area.
An otherworldly display of power, worthy of being called her trump card, far beyond even her usual magic. A massive cloud of dust erupted all at once, and amid it, the screams of men echoed everywhere.
Eventually the screaming ceased, and when the dust had cleared—
"I'm not going to kill you. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty with trash, right?"
There lay the fallen men, and at their center, the beautiful woman still standing there in all her elegance.
"...Well then."
Having confirmed the result, she let the tension leave her shoulders.
"You over there. You're safe now—"
With a gentle smile, she started to rush over toward him, but—
In that instant, Ermes detected a faint fluctuation of magic power in the distance.
"—Sister! Left rear, sniper!"
"—?!"
Drawing on pure instinct alone, Ermes squeezed out the last dregs of his strength and shouted.
Before that word could even finish, a single streak of light shot forth from a building far in the distance.
It was heading straight for her temple — inches away from striking.
"...Not bad."
A wall of light, deployed at a hair's breadth, blocked it.
"If that had hit, it might have at least left a scratch on me."
As if in return, she pointed toward the source of the light, and immediately a meteor-like beam slammed down onto the building.
"You hired a sniper just in case, huh? You're more thorough than I expected — though I suppose it doesn't really matter."
After confirming the target had been neutralized, she finally walked over this way and stopped in front of Ermes.
...Looking at her again, she was even younger than he'd imagined. Just by appearance, she couldn't be more than around twenty years old.
Large eyes that still faintly carried the shadow of a young girl, a straight and refined nose — a beauty rarely seen even in the Royal Capital.
Wrapped in a sleek black dress that hugged limbs with a perfect golden ratio, the stark contrast between the fabric and the translucent whiteness of her long arms and legs was vividly illuminated by the evening sun.
Combined with her overwhelming magical abilities from moments ago, she gave off an aura of being altogether otherworldly — and now she matched Ermes' gaze, crouching down to his level.
"—You're amazing!"
Her entire demeanor shifted as her eyes sparkled like a child's, and she brought her face close to his.
"Even if I was off my guard, the fact that you sensed magic power from that far away — magic power even I didn't notice — what kind of perception ability do you have!?"
The sheer difference from her earlier impression, combined with her cheeks flushed pink with excitement, made her already beautiful face even more lovely as it hovered right in front of him.
Overwhelmed by nerves and shock alike, Ermes forgot the pain and exhaustion in his body for a brief moment.
"And at your age, too! You're truly incredible — you might be the first person I've ever met with more talent than me."
Paying him no further heed, she broke into a warm, friendly smile, and finally said:
"You've piqued my interest, cute little mage. My name is Rose — what's yours?"
Ermes von Frenbreed, age ten.
The boy who had hit rock bottom at age seven — at this very moment, age ten…
With his encounter with Rose the Sky Witch, he was about to experience his second turning point — one that would be the complete opposite of the first.