You wouldn't say that if you'd ever met any of them.
[The sound he makes this time is a darker sort of laugh, more just scoffing, though it's not directed at her—it's purely for himself, as it so often is. If he'd ever felt like he belonged on that elite team of Masters, maybe things would have ended up differently. As it is, even after all this time and everything that's happened, he has no real concept of ever having truly earned a place there.]
I was an exception. Yeah, I was proud of making the cut. I worked my ass off for it. And beyond just my hard work, I've got some specific natural talents too, buried under my no-name bloodline and weak magic circuits. I happened to have the exact two potentials Chaldea needed: Rayshifting, and summoning powerful Servants. . . . It was pure luck that a nobody like me, someone who'd been crushed under the heels of high-class talented mages for my entire life, fit this one purpose. It was the chance of a lifetime. The only way I had to ever amount to anything or do something important. Don't get me wrong, Chaldea's reputation in mage society wasn't good. It was seen as a worthless hack job by the Clock Tower, even with Animusphere in charge of it. But when I was recruited, I joined up, because I was never gonna get an opportunity like that again.
. . . But my teammates were something else. They weren't the types of people who'd joined because they had no other options. They were real geniuses, all of them, from ancient bloodlines, established in mage society, brimming with magical power. I was the youngest, and the outlier. The only one who was practically a charity case.
But still . . . I'd been recognized for something, for the first time. I could contribute.
no subject
[The sound he makes this time is a darker sort of laugh, more just scoffing, though it's not directed at her—it's purely for himself, as it so often is. If he'd ever felt like he belonged on that elite team of Masters, maybe things would have ended up differently. As it is, even after all this time and everything that's happened, he has no real concept of ever having truly earned a place there.]
I was an exception. Yeah, I was proud of making the cut. I worked my ass off for it. And beyond just my hard work, I've got some specific natural talents too, buried under my no-name bloodline and weak magic circuits. I happened to have the exact two potentials Chaldea needed: Rayshifting, and summoning powerful Servants. . . . It was pure luck that a nobody like me, someone who'd been crushed under the heels of high-class talented mages for my entire life, fit this one purpose. It was the chance of a lifetime. The only way I had to ever amount to anything or do something important. Don't get me wrong, Chaldea's reputation in mage society wasn't good. It was seen as a worthless hack job by the Clock Tower, even with Animusphere in charge of it. But when I was recruited, I joined up, because I was never gonna get an opportunity like that again.
. . . But my teammates were something else. They weren't the types of people who'd joined because they had no other options. They were real geniuses, all of them, from ancient bloodlines, established in mage society, brimming with magical power. I was the youngest, and the outlier. The only one who was practically a charity case.
But still . . . I'd been recognized for something, for the first time. I could contribute.