Prologue 2: Shower Thoughts.

Nagoya, June 17.

Muffled pecks of water echoed in the steamy confines of the shower, where a young blonde man stood lost in thought.

"Tetsuo Shinpei! A rank Scarlet mage!'

An ideal. A miscalculation. Pure fiction.

A phrase kid-me would bite his fingers bloody from excitement just at the thought of claiming. Maybe then I could’ve sucker-punched those perverted priests and shown my sister that her pathetic brother was actually capable of protecting her.

My sister..

Well rank Helfer aint that bad either.

Was any of it worth it?

In 3002, I graduated from the Institute of Mana Mastery, a funny name for the worst-rated university in Japan.

From there? Off to Australia. For how many years? Does it even matter?

All it took at the end was one unrealistic dream, eleven years of basic studies, and another nine years of hellish supervised training, hunting magic beasts in the Australian outback.

Perfectly reasonable!

Those Denvelts gave me a hard, hard time. Whenever I’d talk about my day online, people would confuse them with the Dazvelts. The Humanoid ones.

They’re Denvelts. Not humanoid. Not even close to as scary as the Dazvelts.

Please, people, I know you’re comfortable in your warm homes, but just read a book before flooding my account with hate.

“Oh, is that a Dazvelt you’re fighting? Looks weaker than my grandma’s spine.”

Yeah, give your grandma invisible mana consumption and a pool of a few thousand probable spells, then we’ll talk.

Then again, I can’t totally blame them. Scientists probably just see something that possesses mana and slap ‘velt’ on the end.

…Oops. Forgot my towel. Hope there’s no breeze tonight, I’m exhausted.

The bruises on my back still sing like they’re brand new. What a pain.

Actually, thinking about it… what are the Dazvelts? If ‘velt’ just means ‘mana-possessing,’ shouldn’t humans be considered Dazvelts too?

I’ll have to ask my colleagues at the Light Fortress tomorrow.

…Wow. I’m really a Light Child now.

And I am in dire need of some cheese toast. Haven’t eaten since my plane landed.

I wonder how Shiori’s doing. Where she’s at. Our rivalry ended… pretty much underwhelmingly.

I still can’t believe it. A sewer rat like me got accepted into the Tokyo Sunlight Fortress, and not her. After nine whole years. They even gave me my paycheck a year in advance.

Life’s taught me one thing: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What the hell are the higher-ups planning? I hope it’s not another useless war over resources.

Shiori, on the other hand, the one who destroyed me in every written test, shook in her boots at the slightest field assessment.

“I-I feel sorry for the den-de-den-denvelts…”

Yeah, yeah. Heard that one before. we grew under the same roof, get creative.

Safe to say I won, right?

Ha Ha. No.

There’s no such thing as winning in capitalism.

Shinpei walked to the foggy mirror and swiped it with his palm, revealing a tired young face marked by a scar running from his brow down to his left nostril.

First day at work's tomorrow huh. Supervising some conference or whatever.

I wonder which of my idols I’ll meet. Face all blushing,

Itano? Aramaki?

…SOLFIN??

I can only bite my finger and hope there are no troublemakers on my shift.

You hear me, God? No troublemakers. Please.

Thank you.

I need to dry my hair before it gets all thin.

Now… where did I put my staff again?