When my mother died, I who was left behind had just turned 15.
The cause was when she went on a long ride with her lover at the time, she and her lover got drunk with booze and fell off a cliff along with the coach.
She seemed so drunk I honestly suspect she might not have even noticed she died.
The life of a person who spent her youth as a mercenary, fighting demons and was even hailed as a hero for a time, ended abruptly, but it was still a very mom-like way to die.
I don’t know the details of her youth, but she was a person who loved booze and sex, a person who won’t hesitate to enjoy life.
She was probably satisfied that way, rather than growing old and weak with illness.
When mother had no time because of me being born, she took me to this village in the mountains and started an inn with a tavern in the outskirts of the village.
It’s a village deep in the mountains with nothing to it besides the knowledge that there were metal veins there.
Mother had the strength to fight dangerous animals and monsters who sometimes came out, and on top of that she was a tavern girl who would keep the village men company.
Because of that, when mother was still alive there were very few who said anything about my strange appearance.
Since I was a mother-con when I was little I grumbled, but because she had a large influence I didn’t really complain much.
…… That was because I had small horns that prove I wasn’t human, so I was teased by the village children.
Mother was in her youth, a hero of a certain country, as one who bore the name of hero, she was a member of the army going to attack the demon realm.
I don’t know how big the army or what position she held in it, mother never told me about any of it.
I only knew the outcome.
The army was destroyed, mother was captured by the demons, raped, and became pregnant with a demon’s child. That was me.
Being a half-demon, if I lived in somewhere the Church has a strong influence, there is a good chance I might get burned at a stake.
I don’t know where the “Demon World” they say lies on the other side of the Human World is, and I’m not interested.
But mom escaped from there and into this village out in the sticks in order to raise me.
Because I was such a child, I either play alone or with books, or the many wandering mercenaries who were mother’s customers.
The wandering mercenaries carried their own faults, and almost none of them minded me being a half-demon.
Now that I think about it, they seemed to have loved me, and I also took lessons in spells and fundamentals of magic from mercenaries who dabble in magic. … I only learnt the basics, it’s not like I made anything of it.
The one and only person my age who I was able to make friends with was a girl who would only come to the village every year during summer.
A girl with black hair that had a greenish hue when bathed in sunlight.
It was only her who didn’t fear or make fun of my horns.
Because she only came to the village once a year in the summer, so of course she would be isolated from the village kids.
So naturally, she and I became friends.
She normally lives in the city, she would tell me about big buildings, beautiful churches, and marketplaces packed with mountains of goods. In return, I would teach her how to walk in the forest, how to distinguish animal tracks, byroads used by mercenaries and wanderers, and how to catch bugs. We would also read books together in the inn’s attic.
Those fun summers lasted for five years, and ended abruptly.
At the end of summer when I was twelve years old she told me “I won’t be coming from next year on”, and she never came again since.
That was the memory of my one and only friend.
…… Her mother was a maid working for the Margrave that rules these lands, becoming her master’s mistress and giving birth to her.
It was when I had grown up a little bit that I found out that her mother, who had lived a sheltered life as the Margrave’s mistress, had died to an epidemic, and she was adopted in town as [a niece of a some nobleman whose father does not know of].
Since my mother died, I could only struggle to live on alone, living in the inn with business only coming from travelers, merchants and mother’s old mercenary friends who seldom came.
Anyhow, since mother died her friends stopped coming, and the business from just the mercenaries and merchants became unprofitable.
Additionally, unlike when mother was still alive, I wasn’t recognized as a person of the village.
This wasn’t anything special. It was normal for old villages to dislike strangers.
It might have been good for mother that she died before she grew weak, because she didn’t marry anyone from the village, if her body had become weak, she would probably be expelled from the village.
I was hated just because of these horns.
Mother left behind a little bit of fortune, so I might have been able to live a humble life for 3~5 years, but I would have nothing after that. A hated person probably wouldn’t be hired as a farmhand, too.
…… Ironically, what saved my livelihood was the blood of the father I whose face I never saw, whose name I never knew.
Albeit few, it is known that magic exists in this world, just by being able to use magic one could escape being burnt at the stake by the church.
This village out in the sticks have nothing to do with it, but if you go to town, there seems to be places called [Magicians’ Academies] where you could gather and learn the art and knowledge of magic.
That said, magic is an art that depends on a person’s individual talent more than others, only one in a hundred humans can use it. The power to even only set fire to dried grass is not one that a human could wield. Even among humans who could wield magic only a fraction of them could do that.
However, a lot of demons could use magic to some extent.
(Which is why there’s a deeply rooted prejudice that magic is “a power used by demons”, though)
Being someone of mixed demon blood, I have magic ability, even though just a little.
I wonder if I could do something with this power, I thought as I made my way back from mother’s funeral.
In the songs of minstrels, the methods to do things like hurling balls of fire or freezing things are unclear. Even after trying lots of things, I was of course unable to do anything.
I could only use the “Ignite” magic which was a basic spell I learned long ago, but it uses lots of easily-burnt dry grass, needs tens of minutes of chanting, and only catches fire when I finally became dead tired. If it’s like this then using flints would be hundreds of times faster.
What I could do was granting mana… magic power to objects.
If I imbue a stone with magic, the stone becomes lighter and a little harder.
I can’t explain it well, but it took me over a year to be able to control to some extent how the object would change
Since I was self-taught, I’m sorry if I was so unskillful, but I couldn’t judge whether this one year was a long or a short time since I had nothing to compare against.
Until then, I made lots of “clothes that are easier to break than they look” and “tree branches that would snap as soon as it they hit something”, I don’t really want to remember it.
The resulting amount of stones and tree branches I used for practice probably amounted to a small hill’s worth of failed products.
Even so, after the second year I became able to make “armor that are lighter than they look” or “swords that look short but the blade reaches just a little further”.
The reason I made so many dangerous items is because demand only came from mercenaries and adventurers with money and can invest in equipment (and merchants who deal with them). Anyway, making them takes some time and I failed lots of times. I was also able to make non-stick cooking pots and such but they weren’t really welcomed by the villagers.