Yuno had eaten many tatoes in his life.
It was a given thing to do when you lived in Hage village. The vegetables were nutritious and easy to grow, so in a rural village where having consistent food was everything, tatoes were obviously the best choice plant to grow.
Naturally, this led to the so called 'tato parties,' which were really just gatherings of the village. This was not the case for today. While most tato parties were gatherings or maybe a harvest feast every year, never before had magic knights, especially the golden dawn, been present at one. This of course led to a slightly intimidated priest at the thought of hosting nobles a LOT of excited kids to look out for. Of course, I was now one of those magic knights, the kids definitely would be so excited to see me again. Oh how will I deal with it all, sometimes they can be just a bit too energetic.
Well, that would happen at night, and we still had a few hours of daylight left, which I spent giving my teammates a small tour of the village. The kids weren't out yet as sister Lily put them into hiding in the church when the attack happened. I could take the quiet. Anyways, we were passing by the church and I informed them, "that's the center of the village, the church. We'll be having dinner there tonight, I heard father Orsi wants to throw a tato party."
"Uh Yuno, what's a tato?" Lucy asked.
"A vegetable we grow here, it's tasteless and draining, but healthy. You'll see later. Finally, over in the distance you can see the demon skull." I saw Lucy shiver for a moment when I said that. "That's the skull of the very same demon the first wizard king slew all those years ago. On top is a statue of him, life sized and by far more accurate than any painting of him in the capital."
Even Klaus looked impressed at that. "So a village out in the boonies gets to see the Wizard King's action everyday as it's crown jewel. That's ... actually not that bad." Of course Klaus wouldn't just admit peasants could have something good, whatever, he wouldn't change anytime soon.
"You know, Yuno, I keep hearing about the first Wizard King, but what actually did he do? I still never found that out."
"Right, you're still new here. Surely the priest can tell you tonight, he tells this story to the kids a lot," I responded.
"That story gets told a lot in Clover, eventually you'll get tired of it," Mimosa added.
"Do we have to stay here for dinner?" Klaus asked disappointedly.
"You're staying, maybe you can learn a bit more about peasants that way," Lucy fired back.
Klaus could only look away and touch the nose of his glasses. God why did he keep doing that.
We stuck with walking around the village until it became a bit darker, then headed back to the church. First thing I knew there were a bunch of kids jumping up at me screaming "YUNO, we missed you," "Yuno's back," or some combination of the two. I shrugged it off, never was one to show a bunch of emotion anyways. Mimosa could only taunt me by saying, "You can at least entertain them." I merely looked the other direction.
"Lighten up a bit Yuno, you're not gonna be back home for who knows how long, you never know when that next time is. I still don't," Lucy said. Right, she was still searching for a way back home. If I was completely cut off, I'd probably be doing the same thing.
She continued saying, "Oh but look at you kids, you're such cute younger siblings!" The kids giggled at that and once again I looked away. Lucy clearly caught my lack of stare and called me out saying, "Okay really you need to lighten up, help me out kids." Now the look on her face was downright devious.
Father Orsi jumped in then saying, "Now now kids, leave them alone. I'm Father Orsi of this village, we're so very delighted to have Yuno's squad with us."
Sister Lily then introduced herself saying, "I'm sister Lily, I help out here at the church and raise the kids. You must be Lucy, Yuno's written about you in his letters."
"Letters? Only good things I hope."
"... Yes, of course." Somehow, I didn't sound very sure of myself.
Klaus butted in with, "did you write about us too."
Sister Lily responded for me. "Of course he did, you must be Klaus, and you're Mimosa," she said, looking at each one as she greeted them.
Father Orsi took over again with, "We brought out our finest tato dishes just for you, dig in and enjoy."
A few minutes later, we were all sitting around the table eating away. I was used to the food so I didn't have much to say. Klaus, meanwhile, was clearly not a fan. Well, spoilt nobles wouldn't like commoner food so not a surprise. It didn't take long for the questions to start. One of the kids started it by asking if I'd kept in contact with Asta. I had to admit I hadn't talked to him at all since the trials happened and we went our separate ways. I'd see him again soon.
Lucy was next to speak, "Yuno, I believe I'm owed a story. You did say someone would tell me about this first wizard king."
One of the kids spoke up. "How can you not know that, everyone's heard that story so many times as a kid."
"Well, you see, I'm not actually from Clover. I only arrived here around a month before the magic knight exams."
"Wow, you must have so many cool stories from your home, tell us one and we'll tell you about the first wizard king."
"Uh, sure, deal," Lucy agreed.
"I'll tell this one, yes, you kids will hear it again, it can't be said enough," Father Orsi said.
"Around 500 years ago, there was a great swarm of demons that appeared to be close to destroying humanity. A single mage, the prince of the Clover Kingdom stood up to fight the demon, wielding a legendary four-leaf clover grimoire. He engaged the demon in single combat and slayed it, protecting the kingdom for years. He was given the title of Wizard King, and since then, the strongest mage in the kingdom has taken that title."
"So that's where it comes from, it's in remembrance of the ancient hero. That's very cool, I see why you'd want to push for that title Yuno."
It's not just that, the wizard king is both a sign of strength and a figure that protects the helpless. I've thought a lot about why I want to be the wizard king, and I keep coming back to the village. As wizard king, I can do so much more for them. "Yeah, pretty much," I responded.
"Oh, you've grown so much Yuno, you're a magic knight and sending money back to us. Look at how many tatoes we were able to get this year, the kids can eat as much as they want." Father Orsi had tears in his eyes, I guess it was a bit endearing.
"You could always get something other than tatoes," one of the kids said.
"That's nonsense, you saw how big Yuno and Asta got eating tatoes everyday."
Lucy spoke up saying, "You're telling me it's bad enough here you're not always able to get enough food?"
"Klaus responded saying, "It's called the forsaken realm for a reason. No one cares what the peasants go through as long as they pay taxes to their local lord."
"What, you still have feudalism here?" Lucy seemed completely shocked here. I thought she was from a noble family, maybe her society had a bit more freedom than we do. "Seems I keep getting unpleasantly surprised here. Even if we still have nobles in my homeland, most cities are run by an elected mayor and the nobles only really bother with large-scale politics, not ruling over people." Yeah, really must be a different type of place.
"Lucy, you still owe us a story, you don't have anything about defeating great demons do you," One of the kids asked. Lucy seemed to take quite a while to think before responding, "I may have a story to tell you, and this is new for my squad too. Unlike your stories there's more nuance and there isn't really a clear bad guy, so I hope you learn something by listening."
"Around 400 years ago lived the Dragneel family. They were a pretty standard consisting of two parents and two brothers, Natsu and Zeref. One day, a war spilled into their village and killed the parents and Natsu, which left Zeref an orphan. He was so saddened by this loss that he spent years trying to resurrect his brother. Sometime during that process, he performed black magic and was cursed. He was made immortal, and cursed such that anything he cared about near him would die. He killed all of his academy just by thinking of his brother, then went into exile to stop killing people. He looked for a way to die, and so he created powerful demons with the goal of dying to one. This gained him the title of the most evil wizard in my homeland thanks to the destruction his demons caused."
"How could he be seen as evil, he never tried to kill anyone, that's not right!" One of the kids cried out.
"No it's not right, but no one knew where he came from. That's one of the lessons of the story, you can't call a person a hero or villain if you don't know where they came from. Anyone who knew Zeref's story from the beginning would find it hard to call him a villain then. Moving on, eventually he did succeed in bringing back Natsu. Along the way, he met the founder of the wizard's guild I joined, which was called Fairy Tail. He helped our founder learn magic, then they eventually fell in love, but because of his curse, she died."
"That's so sad, was he unable to make friends with anyone!" Mimosa asked.
"He wasn't, which is what drove him so insane. Eventually, he did end up becoming a villain to me since in my time, he tried to destroy the world so he could go back in time and stop himself from becoming cursed. But someone stood up to him, his brother Natsu, who was my closest friend, defeated him before he could win, protecting the world. And so, the story ended, our guild, including Natsu and myself lived happily ever after, or it should have been. That's the same time that I was lost and ended up in clover. You know, your Asta seems similar to Natsu. I miss him. Anyways, you learned a lesson with this story, it's always good to know where evil people came from and how they became so bad. I don't believe any person is born a villain."
Well, that was more about her old family than she'd ever told us, yet I still wasn't sure if everything there was correct. I mean, really, a person cursed to immortality of all things! There was something wrong with her explanation of how she ended up here, I wasn't going to go digging too far. It showed her trust in us, something I still wasn't sure how she did so easily. Did she see something in her old guild in us, was that why?
We continued eating and chatting about less important things after that for the rest of our time until it got dark and the kids were tucked in bed. I asked sister Lily how much money Asta was sending back and got shocked by the answer. All of it! He was literally sending back his entire paycheck. Well, we had a rivalry to keep up, so I told her I'd also send back all of my next few checks. I wasn't going to lose to Asta that easily, and besides, the golden dawn paychecks had to be higher. That answer caused shocked faces to appear on my squad's faces. With that done, it really was time to go, so we thanked Father Orsi and sister Lily before heading off in the night.
Up in the sky, Klaus asked me, "I didn't bring it up there, but you got some information from the interrogation we haven't discussed. Share that now."
Right, we hadn't talked at all about the motives of those criminals. "They were an independent crime group that got paid off by a group called the Eye of the Midnight Sun to control my four-leaf. How they knew I would be here I don't know."
"You're right in thinking it's suspicious, Only our squad or the captains should have known we would be here, and they couldn't have gotten the info about you any other way. I hate to say it but we may have someone suspicious in our squad, I can only say that the people here are safe," Klaus said.
"That doesn't answer too much. We can't go around suspecting everyone of being a traitor. It's best we ignore this and keep information just to ourselves," Lucy said.
Yeah, couldn't argue with that. We chose not to list out suspicions on who could have done it, instead preferring a silent trip back to the base along with a calm night's sleep.
The next week was spent doing standard magic knight stuff for newbies at least, with all of us recruits doing training battles and patrol missions. That was our life for the next few weeks. Just like I promised, I sent my next paycheck back to Hage. Hopefully, Asta and I could start changing around their lives for the better, that's what I'm aiming to do as wizard king. Until then, I'm sticking to the rhythm of life as a magic knight of the Golden Dawn.