"I imagined plenty of endings, but this absolutely wasn't one of them," Johnston Hainalson said with a sigh. "You, the young Hainalson down there—which branch are you from?"
Felis hesitated.
Noticing his hesitation, Johnston couldn't help asking gloomily, "Don't tell me you're Pierre's descendant?"
"No," Felis sighed. "If I were Mage Pierre's descendant, I might have been a little happier!
My name is Felis Hainalson.
My branch... well, the ancestor from your generation would have been called Nigel, according to the genealogy used in your time."
"Who's that?" Johnston asked without hesitation.
Felis had known it.
Even now, when there were very few mage apprentices left among Felis's generation, Russell remembered only a handful of his siblings and cousins.
Just because Felis could argue with Russell and Carpenter didn't mean every mage apprentice could.
After all, his aptitude simply wasn't outstanding. It was still passable.
Some people barely qualified to become apprentices and learned no more than a Light Spell in several years.
Apprentices like that, even if they were cousins of Russell's generation, had no chance of appearing before him often.
And how could Russell, immersed in studying spells, remember someone who passed silently and unobtrusively through his life?
It was middling people like Felis who knew a little about everyone around them.
After all, they were the ones who would spend more time together in the family in the future.
Someone like Russell, even if he stayed with the family, would never be reduced to competing with them for work.
At the very least, there would certainly be a place for him in the library.
Mages understood better than anyone that the gap between two people could sometimes be greater than the gap between a person and a dog.
Those with a healthier mindset could still struggle to