Blue, purple, or a pale pink so faint it was almost transparent.
Just a glance away lay the horrific sight of fellow beings' gelatinous bodies, still not fully drained of blood, scattered across the ground in all manner of colors.
The invasion war, as it came to be called, inflicted tremendous damage.
Simply put, the Alphaurians were being plundered.
They had always considered themselves the foremost beings in the world, referring to themselves as the ancient number one (8). They looked down on others as second-rate (8), yet they were utterly overwhelmed by the inhabitants of the satellite.
The combat prowess of the invading Beta beings was terrifying.
Having spent countless years researching ways to reach the main planet for the sake of their species' survival, they had become exceptionally skilled in magic that manipulated speed and distance.
– Damn it. These quick little bastard insects!
– Ah, ah. We were wrong.
– They say Duke Ju[red] has passed away. At this point, we have to assume there's no hope left for the upper class.
The fortresses they had painstakingly constructed collapsed, and in the blink of an eye, countless soldiers on the Alphaurian side were dead.
Still, having developed magic over such a long period of time, they were not annihilated in a completely one-sided massacre.
Even so, the overall situation was anything but favorable.
Wait, though. Didn't an inconsistent term appear in the middle there?
(That's roughly the same title as the noble rank you call a duke on Earth. We used to have a fairly rigid class system ourselves.)
(...)
(But the actual word we used wasn't exactly the same as yours. We had our own titles for nobility, but they're difficult to pronounce and mostly obsolete now, so I didn't see any reason to go out of my way to translate them precisely. From here on, just assume that the terms I use carry roughly the same nuance.)
Alphauri had once possessed the concept of nobility.
Social hierarchy. Privilege. Noblesse oblige.
These were the elements that formed the flesh and blood of those noble, virtuous souls.
But before long, they found themselves forced to surrender part of the very power that sustained their status.
– We're short on troops.
In fact, during this great war, magic had not yet become widespread.
– Until now, we've monopolized magic in order to preserve our overwhelming dominance.
– We've passed incarnations down from generation to generation, using them to protect our wealth and status.
– Unless you possessed noble blood, the use of advanced techniques was forbidden...
– If a rebellion broke out, it would become troublesome.
– While those beggars born of nature were content merely to create ripples in the water, we developed miracles capable of stopping even the current itself. And this is where it brought us.
– So this is the end result of our arrogance.
– The minority can no longer protect the majority.
To prevent their home planet from being taken, and to avoid being conquered by invaders from another world, the ruling class of the era eventually reached an agreement after lengthy debate.
They would open advanced magical knowledge to the general population.
– We're desperately short on troops.
In the end, the severity of the manpower shortage left them with no choice but to train more magicians.
Schools were hastily established.
A harsh system of conscription followed.
Fortunately, the greatest shortage concerned high-level magicians capable of handling a wide variety of spells.
Even then, there were already quite a few specialized knights—skilled warriors who could fight effectively while also performing basic magical techniques.
Thanks to them, the front lines barely held.
But maintaining that stagnant front required approximately 135,000 professional knights.
And before the magicians of the various nations could fully deploy their barriers, the number of free citizens who had already died had climbed into the tens of millions.
.
.
.
How long had it been since Alphauri's population began to plummet?
After battle after battle, repeated without end...
~... ~...
Before anyone realized it, the economy had collapsed.
Refugees multiplied like mushrooms after rain.
They were driven from the relatively calm and habitable mid-level seas, pushed farther and farther downward until the battle lines descended near the abyssal depths.
It was an age of decline.
Buried beneath the dim waters of the deep sea, the Alphaurians sometimes found themselves thinking:
'So this is how we perish.'
But as often happens just before dawn, it was mysteriously during this darkest hour that the first seeds of hope began to sprout.
"Sigh. This area's been picked clean. The bandits swept through everything. There's not even a single strand of edible seaweed left..."
At last, the wizard appeared in the history books.
"Huh?"
As the individual in question would later say, there had certainly been something unusual about him from the moment of his birth.
– What is this?
A ruin tucked away in a remote corner of the ocean.
Thump, thump, thump.
The creature, estimated to have been born only a few weeks earlier, stretched its uneven limbs—shaped like the branching tips of malignant cells—across the barren ground and absorbed nutrients directly from the earth.
It was later discovered that this newborn Alphaurian had somehow survived alone in that wasteland for approximately eight weeks and three days.
"Ack!"
Whoosh!
The newborn Alphaurian instinctively killed and devoured anything that came within reach.
Yet logically speaking, it was difficult to understand how an infant could have survived for so long on feeding instinct alone.
There had been no guardian.
There was barely any proper food nearby.
The Alphaurians of that era still lived under the constant threat of starvation.
So how in the world had this individual survived alone in such a place for that long?
"What..."
Thump, thump, thump.
'Did it survive by absorbing mana as a nutrient or something?'
It even possessed such a vast quantity of internal magical power that merely standing nearby made the skin of a fully grown Alphaurian tingle.
Its origins were truly difficult to explain.
The first person to discover the child was an unnamed beggar from the distant past.
Yet despite being half-starved, the adult did not devour the infant it found.
"Even if I ate something this small, it wouldn't fill me up anyway."
Instead, it chose another course of action.
"We're desperately short on troops!"
Once again, the binary-star system was currently engulfed in a great war involving every race.
***
"Friends-- Today, we're going to learn the names of animals that live in the world!"
"Wow!"
"Now, who makes this sound?"
"Groundfish! Groundfish!"
Years passed once more.
By then, rumors said that the Beta beings had completely seized control of the upper seas and established a nation of their own.
The walls they built were said to be so tall and thick that they seemed to reach all the way to the sky.
"Excuse me. Is the director here?"
But amid that age of despair, a certain ripple had begun to spread because of one individual.
One day, an unfamiliar-looking Alphaurian appeared at a modest orphanage on the outskirts of the deep sea.
Its enormous body gave off bubbles that rolled around it like the carbonation in champagne.
This Alphaurian clearly possessed an air entirely unlike the beggars of the outer regions.
Even the creature it rode made its status obvious.
Wasn't that a blue-bearded mammal, infamous for the astronomical cost of feeding and maintaining it?
"Oh, yes, yes! I'm the director here—what brings someone like you to our humble institution?"
The director immediately recognized that the visitor was no ordinary person and bowed respectfully.
The other party presented a token engraved with a symbol and spoke.
"It's a summons from the nobility. I've heard that this place has recently taken in a patient suffering from Magic Disorder (*a condition in which the body's internal magical energy cannot be properly regulated)."
The era of the great war being described here belonged to a distant, hazy past somewhat comparable to Earth's medieval period.
In other words, it was a period on the ocean planet known as the "Middle Era."
At the time, Alphaurians could still reproduce only through natural mating.
That meant life remained extremely valuable.
And so, in the aftermath of the Great War, orphanages were established as institutions intended to preserve the population.
In fact, the state even paid compensation for abandoned children brought in from the streets.
Thanks to that system, the future archmage was not devoured by the starving vagabond who found him.
Instead, he was safely delivered to one of those institutions.
From that point onward, he was raised there.
"I heard the child is still young enough to be living in an orphanage, but he's already used magic powerful enough to hunt and kill a whale."
"Well... that's true."
"A magic user with something like Magic Disorder who can kill a giant whale? At that point, there's no reason to wait until the official recruitment age set by the state."
"Hmm?"
"I'm taking him with the next batch of recruits to the training center. Prepare him."
"Uh... Wait a moment. That's..."
"What's the problem? Why are you dragging this out?"
The visitor began to understand why the director had been stammering so much.
"Y-yes. I understand. Then I'll bring him out for now..."
The mysterious figure with a fluorescent orange body soon fell silent upon seeing the orphan.
Granted, the child had consumed enough nutrients that its extremities were larger than average.
Even so...
Wasn't this orphan still so small that the circumference of its entire body was barely equal to that of a single adult tentacle?
"This is impossible."
"It's too small!"
The orange-colored authority figure was visibly shocked.
The newly discovered magician was astonishingly young.
In simpler terms, he was still little more than a child.
That was why the orphanage director had looked so troubled.
"Huh? A little brat who can't even peel a crustacean shell yet is supposed to be hunting..."
The young one, barely old enough to babble words equivalent to "mom" and "dad," suddenly displayed something astonishing while being held in the orphanage director's tentacles.
"!!"
Crack.
Without any incantation whatsoever, the child froze the water in front of its torso into a small, round sphere.
Then it began playing with the icy orb it had created as casually as though it were nothing more than a toy.
How could anyone possibly remain unimpressed after seeing such an unexpected display of magic?
"This child..."
Swish.
The privileged noble of the old era, whose body had been embedded with all manner of magical enhancements, leaned closer.
Then they brought their visual organs near the child and spoke.
"Could it be that this isn't Magic Disorder after all?"
If the child in front of them was not suffering from that particular condition, then everything changed.
Among Alphaurians, there were rare cases in which an individual was born with malfunctioning organs that caused magical energy to leak continuously from the body.
Because energy flowed through their bodies without proper regulation, such patients often suffered sensory abnormalities.
They were slow.
And although they possessed enormous output, they tended to be capable only of casting large, cumbersome spells.
The defining symptom of Magic Disorder was that magical energy leaked from the body like water pouring from a cracked vessel, resulting in tremendous waste.
Those afflicted with the condition generally suffered sensory abnormalities from that constant flow of energy, leaving them sluggish and suited only to massive, heavy magic.
And yet, the green Alphaurian before them had clearly...
'He performed that freezing spell with almost no wasted mana. It's difficult to believe he learned it on his own, especially at his age.'
And the speed with which he completed the spell had been flawless.
The orange observer wriggled and elongated their body vertically.
It was a gesture of surprise.
Now that they understood the orphan they had mistaken for a patient was simply an extraordinary talent born with an immense amount of magical power, what possible reason was there to hesitate?
"We absolutely have to take this child to the training center! Director, you'll certainly receive a substantial reward for this. With talent like this, it's only a matter of time before he's raised into a great magician capable of reclaiming the upper seas."
Sparkle.
The enormous Alphaurian even brightened the color of their body to express joy.
But just when the atmosphere had reached its peak, someone abruptly poured cold water over it.
"What is a training center?"
The round creature nestled in the orphanage director's arms transmitted those words through vibrations.
"Oh, what a prodigy. He looks so young, yet he can already speak this well..."
"Whaaa!"
Swish.
The orphanage director suddenly panicked and flung the child away with one of his tentacles.
Fortunately, this was an ocean planet.
The child, being an Alphaurian as well, suffered no harm and merely drifted gently through the surrounding water.
That was where the real problem emerged.
"Oh my goodness! What is this?! You little thing! I thought you were deaf?!"
The orphan discovered in the ruins had never spoken even once throughout all the care it had received.
No matter how many times the country's childcare workers spoke to him, he remained silent, doing nothing but fiddling with shards of ice.
Because of this, the orphanage director had unconsciously concluded that there must be something wrong with either his auditory cells or his vocal organs.
"I can hear. I can speak. I just haven't bothered until now."
"What?"
"Why? Because everyone keeps telling me useless things."
"This crazy..."
"Whale. Coral. Ash tree. Core. Stone. Bottom. I've already memorized all of them. Why do you keep pointing at things and making me pronounce them? Annoying noise box. Idiot."
'Is this really the vocabulary of a toddler?!'
The orphanage director and the orange adult were stunned for completely different reasons.
But only for a moment.
The orange adult quickly recovered and grabbed the floating child.
"The way you talk reminds me of myself when I was young..."
And then they made a proposal.
"In that case, we should be able to communicate. To get straight to the point, a training center is a place where you learn magic."
"Learn?"
"There are excellent instructors, rivals you can compete against, and more forks than you could count with all your tentacles."
"Forks. That's a word I don't know."
"That's fine. What I'm really trying to tell you is that it's a place devoted to the most beautiful discipline in this entire world..."
Swish.
The orange Alphaurian lifted the child with its tentacles, which possessed suction similar to an octopus's suckers.
"You'll be going there starting tomorrow. You don't have a choice. You understand, right?"
It was a somewhat coercive admission process.
Fortunately, however, the child raised no objection.
The orphan from the deep sea wholeheartedly agreed with the idea that magic was the most beautiful of all sciences.
"If I go there, can I become a scholar of magic too?"
"Of course. But why have you been switching between polite and informal speech this whole time?"
"I still don't understand honorifics properly. I'm two years old. What more do you want from me?"
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