Hero's Dead Brother

42. Seven

I was able to win the third place. I lost the last spar against a fire and light mage student, Emilia Rotzell from a very powerful family that supports the King like the Leonhearts.

She was not only gifted with two powers but was also a very good strategist.

Caleb and Greg would have a hard time against her if they had to spar.

After the round, I was surprised to see that she came to see me in my lodge. She wanted to get to know me because we would have to work together in the future. She also asked me to greet my brother for her and I proposed to invite her so that she could meet him.

Third place was better than expected. The place doesn't change the grade or if a person passed the exam or not. Even though the results were obvious for Caleb, it was very different from me.

My ridiculous first round could get me.

But surprisingly, I passed.

After the graduation, we went home to celebrate so I invited Lady Rotzell.

She had a very easy personality and I thought that she would look well whit Mika. They were both goofy and easygoing.

As the evening came, the 'Musketeers' invited her to go to the festival with them... wait. Am I a 'Musketeer' now? We're five now. I have to find us a new name. Looking how fast she became part of the group, 'so... we're six now?' Five or six?
As the Princess joined the group, I was taken aback. So... seven?

Since I couldn't know exactly how many we were, I chose to call us the Power Rangers.

We had a lot of fun, of course. It's fun when you do it but it's boring to tell about it so I'll just skip to the moment when Mika got so drunk that we had to all stop him from attacking the wooden bear statue in the bar.

The poor bartender decided to get rid of it, understanding that statues and alcohol wasn't a good combination.

We all went to our places and Caleb and I accompanied Emilia to her place.

As the night sky was shining with visible stars Noah could never see from his polluted city, we were lying in the grass, contemplating them.

"Tell me about your world."

She was confidently asking me the question because I didn't freak out anymore. Quite the opposite. I felt eager to tell about it.

"We're all supposed to be equal there. So there's no nobles. And distinguishing people by their blood is considered wrong.
It's like this world but in a thousand years, every thing is different. But it used to be like this world, with nobles, kings, knights. Except for magic. There was mo magic."

"No magic? So you were all like villagers, just worked to make food? No one protected you?"

"War existed but we were only fighting with arrows and swords. Then new inventions made new weapons appear. More and more powerful. More powerful than magic because the weapons in my times could destroy a whole city".

"H...how?"

"Explosions, chemical explosions. They created weapons that could destroy everything, not leaving a tree. There's also chemical weapons, like gaz that made people die choking. There are guns too. You just press with a finger like this and a ball flies from it and kills people."

"Were... were you killed by that thing?"

"No. It was a simple knife. A kitchen knife. He cut here, in my stomach."

"That piece of s...!"

I closed her mouth with my hand. "Don't swear. It's a bad habit I taught you. Greg too, swore the other day."

"Swearing exists in our world too, you know?"

"Yeah but no nobleman swears."

"Hah! You should see my parents when they're alone!"

I took some time to decide to ask.

"How's... your relationship?"

"Great. They treat me like a king now. They know I can bring them a lot of money because if they have a high level mage in their family, they'll gain popularity. You know. Their usual hypocrisy."

"I'm happy."

"... Why didn't you... I mean was it impossible to run away from your mother?
I thought about running away before meeting you but I knew they'd just hire a shadow mage to find me and it would get worse. Were they able to track you down with their weapons?"

"Haha no. It's just that... here, you have good willing people. The villagers are nice and they'd help a little kid. There's no slavery in our Empire. While there, I could get kidnapped by even more sick people. I lived in a poor district, full of drug addicts. And I could also get found by the police sooner or later..."

I looked at her confused face "police is like knights but it's just that they don't care about poor kids like me. I mean... no they do care but there's not much they can do. They'd just throw me back there. Or I'd have to denounce them for abusing me and... I didn't have the guts to do it. My mom was a good actress, she could get out of the situation all nice and clean and I was scared of what she would do then."

"You... you said you were all equal so how come there was a 'poor district'?"

Her question made me laugh.

"Haha one day I'll tell you about a beautiful dream called 'democracy'."

Thank you for reading!