A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 80 Retracing the Path Out of the Mountain

"Going home" and going to the Black Forest are the same journey, because Rorschach's birthplace is a mountain village in the southwest corner of the Empire. The Black Forest covers the entire mountain range, and the village is at the foot of its branch.

Rorschach's original memories of his hometown, especially his mountain village, were also very faint. His parents were free farmers with some savings, and with great foresight, they supported him attending the school the duchy had set up in the town when he was five, instead of herding sheep and playing around with other tenant farmers' children.

The schools in the duchy were certainly not charitable institutions like those of local gentry. Their purpose was to train a population with basic education, capable of understanding instructions and basic writing and arithmetic, for the duchy's army, trade, and village administration. They would become assistants to front-line officers, bookkeepers for shops, and village chiefs.

Since the rise of the Kingdom of Marin, located in the heart of the empire, and its rule over the various states, its system has been promoted, including such limited basic education.

The students of these schools mostly came from families of knights, artisans, and small merchants with very little land. Rorschach was an outcast from the beginning as the son of a farmer, even though his parents were free farmers with some land.

By chance, Yuan Rorschach was chosen by the Viscount to be the Viscount's son's attendant. They learned and practiced simple martial arts together, and it was during this time that Rorschach learned horsemanship.

By associating with the viscount's son, one could potentially come into contact with the resident mage.

In the test of spellcasting potential, the viscount's bloodline showed no spellcasting ability, but dramatically, his unassuming follower did. Thus, the resident mage gained an apprentice from a free farmer background. When the news reached the village, Rorschach instantly became the village's hope. The village chief and his parents scraped together some money, and with the resident mage's support, sent him to the capital to officially begin his magical journey.

In summary, Rorschach only has vague memories of his life in the countryside from the first five years of his life. He would occasionally return home when he was hanging out with the viscount's heir, using the viscount's usual small tips to supplement the family income. After that, he never returned home again—Rorschach couldn't afford the travel expenses to cross most of the empire's territory before.

He took an airship to the capital of the principality, then rented a carriage to travel into the mountains. The road became increasingly difficult and the forests more and more lush. Returning to a "hometown" that was not his own, Rorschach traced the path of his predecessor on this journey and couldn't help but feel that the original Rorschach was a lucky man of this era.

Although he was born into a less fortunate family and didn't become a nobleman, his parents were not proletarian tenant farmers. They were enlightened and farsighted, and he was able to seize opportunities and miraculously embark on the path of magic step by step.

The difficulty level is no less than getting into Tsinghua or Peking University from a remote mountain village. Luo Xia couldn't help but sigh, but what impressed him even more was that even a scroll master like the original owner couldn't afford study scrolls at the Imperial Magic Academy, and couldn't afford to spend a lot of money to hire the academy's mages for private tutoring. In the past four years, he could only study a very small number of low-level spells.

Despite studying various theories diligently, having two good friends and the help of teacher Caroline, he almost failed the final assessment for promotion.

"If he hadn't time-traveled, he might have just died suddenly in the dormitory, and it might have taken a long time for his body to be discovered." Then he thought of himself. If he hadn't time-traveled, one of the advantages of being in a university dormitory was that he could be discovered before he died, and his spirit in heaven could accumulate a lot of merit—ensuring that all three of his roommates were admitted to graduate programs at the same university.

"My bones are about to fall apart." Luo Xia was a little confused. They could go to other dimensions, so why was the teleportation array in the main plane only used to transmit letters? He asked the guild's receptionist, but only received the answer that he didn't know or didn't understand.

The mid-level mage, tormented by the muddy roads and the unshock-free carriage, clearly hadn't anticipated that even if he could move between guild branches using teleportation arrays, the branches would only be in sizable cities, and the arduous journey from the branch to the mountains would still be unavoidable.

"Sir, we've arrived," the coachman reminded Luo Xia.

"Great, great, I'll settle the rest of the bill for you."

From dawn till dusk, Rorschach stepped onto the land of his "hometown" as darkness fell, with the last rays of sunlight casting shadows on the mountains, forests, and villages, outlining the shapes of farmhouses.

The farmhouses here have a unique feature: their sloping roofs are extremely high, with a very small angle between the two slopes, making the roofs alone as high as or even higher than the stone or wooden walls.

Smoke rose slowly, but not from the houses; it came from the shacks along the road.

Huts? The small village was like a market, with huts of all sizes set up along the muddy road. There were also open-air bonfires. By the light of the torches, Luo Xia could see what was going on inside the huts: a large pot was boiling grain porridge, a peasant woman was adding a clay pot of milk to it, and wild rabbits were being roasted in some huts. The largest hut was serving light beer, which attracted half the village to raise their glasses.

"Who are you?" A villager who had recently come over asked Rorschach. He observed that the boy's clothes suggested he was a nobleman, but strangely, he hadn't come on horseback; instead, he was in an inconspicuous carriage.

"I'm looking for the Merkler family. Are they there? I'm Rorschach."

Rorschach was unaware of their current situation. Sending letters was an extremely expensive and luxurious affair for the rural parents and apprentices themselves, whether through the guild system or the Empire's mail service, which had a high loss rate and took a very long time.

Therefore, during his four years in the capital, the apprentice Luo Xia only exchanged letters with his parents once—in exchange for three months of eating only black bread and water, he received a reply written by the village chief on his behalf.

Since his rise to prominence in recent months, Rorschach has written three letters as instructed by the head of the organization, but has yet to receive a reply.

Don't tell me my adoptive parents moved away.

The villager who was communicating with Rorschach stared wide-eyed at him, scrutinizing him from head to toe for a while, making the boy uncomfortable. Suddenly, he turned and shouted towards the largest thatched hut, "Old Merkle, Old Merkle, your eldest son is back!"

……

Am I some kind of rare species?

A mid-level spellcaster who's almost seventeen, it seems that's really true.

Luo Xia was now positioned in the very center of the largest thatched shed, subjected to the curious gaze of the entire village. He had a feeling that the people closest to him wanted to pinch his face and arms, to thoroughly examine what made this "mage," a humanoid creature, different from everyone else.

It turns out the biggest thatched hut belongs to my own family!

During the winter off-season, people always find ways to have fun, so the concentration of major festivals in this unpleasant season is a common phenomenon throughout history, across cultures, and even in other worlds.

The Winter Solstice Festival is a grand festival common in the countryside of the empire. The timing is not fixed. In some places it is in the last ten days of the year, and in others it is in the first ten days of the following year. People set up thatched huts along the road and exchange food with each other. People who visit neighboring villages can also receive food. They can even eat all the way along the country road, and if they are good at walking, they can even cross mountains and valleys.

"You don't have any special activities planned, right?" Thanks to the "Find My Mother Back" cult, Rorschach had some post-traumatic stress disorder regarding folk festivals.

"Of course we should give you a grand welcome back!" Rorschach's adoptive father, old Merkle, held up a light beer, his face flushed. His beard was thick but hadn't been groomed like a city person, and was as messy as weeds. Rorschach observed him for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief—no baldness, good hairline, great, great.

"Rorschach, Rorschach the Mage, when you sent your letter back in the fall, old Merkle ran out of the village chief's house with the letter and kept calling out, and the whole village knew that you had become a mage."

A grain porridge with milk and minced meat was served, along with dried berries, pine nuts, acorns, and glasses of light beer brought by the villagers.

A woman came out carrying a bowl of meat soup. After putting the soup down, she wiped her hands on her coarse cloth apron again and again. "Is it really you, Rorschach? My son has grown so much?" She stretched out her hands, which she had been wiping repeatedly, but then stood awkwardly in front of the boy without taking another step closer.

Luo Xia stood up and hugged the woman, saying, "It's me, of course it's me."

In the embrace, he smelled the fat of the sheepskin coat and heard suppressed sobs.

(End of this chapter)