The geezer took care of the baby as if it was his own grandchildren. He sheltered the baby, he fed the baby and he showered the baby. He took care of every needs of the baby.
The old geezer was already 70 years old when the baby became a 14 years boy. The boy grew up reading books in his grandfather's library.
And out of all kind of books, he loved the stories of heroes most. "The hero that saved earth from the demon king", "Chosen By The Legendary Sword", "A Legendary Hero"... All kind of books that had heroes, he loved all of them!
Even if it was the story about the hero of technology who created game-like systems for the development of children at hero acadamies.
Every kind of books with heroes that helped humanity in their own ways were awesome, at least to the boy, the boy named "Rain Orpheus".
Unfortunately or not, the dark mana that once existed in the boy's body faded over time, although it didn't completely disappear. And the boy never showed any corrupted nature of a dark human.
Still, he couldn't receive gifts from others and wasn't born with one, his mana pool was also lower than average.
He wasn't fit to be a hero that defeats evil to save humanity.
The geezer knew this so he always taught the boy to live peacefully and quietly. Since he lived in a basement in the lawless city, the boy also grew up in an environment of corrupted people.
However, just because it was a lawless city didn't mean it only had bad people in it. Some people were more neutral than good or evil.
The boy grew up not so gentlemanly or good natured but not bad natured either. He was carefree and mischievous, that was all.
The old geezer only allowed the boy to go out in the city only after he reached 17 years old. Even though the boy wasn't exactly talented or born with large mana pools, he was hardworking.
So the old geezer taught him all sorts of magic and ways to exercise his body... Which is just for him to be healthy. Mages didn't need to train their body because they can just defend themselves with magic.
And mana can also help someone stay healthy, so unless you're born with a really low mana pool that can only use basic spells two times like the boy, you wouldn't really need to train your body.
Although that didn't mean all mages didn't train their bodies, some still did it for the looks; yeah, looks.
You can just enchance your body with magic and you'd have the strength enough to crush rocks even if you don't have a physically strong body.
So it just wasn't necessary for mages, but there was of course martial artists too.. so for them, it's mostly essential, just for the looks.
In any cases, the boy was good at running. Yes, running. He could outrun most average mages. He needed to be able to. If he wanted to go around Francis then he'd need to protect himself...
For a 17 years old boy, he wasn't exactly as strong as others his age. But he still knew how to fight, he had never fought but he had practiced. And he knew how people fought through his knowledge of books.
Well, just basing fights on books wouldn't exactly be practical. So he was... kind of looking for trouble because he wanted to fight and save people like the heroes in the books he read.
Well... Let's just say he found the trouble he was looking for. While roaming around the city, he found some people harassing a boy who looked just a year younger than him.
He had finally found the trouble he was looking for! Yay!.. he suddenly remembered the grandfather's reminder of not to cause troubles and live peacefully at this moment and felt kind of guilty.
He then had a thought, if he just said he wasn't trying to cause trouble but found someone getting harassed and that he wanted to help then the old geezer would surely forgive him, right?
So he got involved and saved the boy from getting harassed.
The group of the harassers were chasing after them, they were a gang of the lawless city... Rain knew that if he messed with such gangs, he'd be in big trouble because of some books he had read.
But he didn't know just how much of a big trouble they were...