Chapter 33

Chapter : 33

Did you know this?

Both Mana and stamina had their limits. No matter how strongly someone wished to practice magic through the night or keep training their muscles without rest, it was impossible.

No matter how strong one’s will might be, there was nothing to be gained from Mana and stamina once they had been exhausted.

If one wanted to grow quickly, then an appropriate amount of training and an appropriate amount of rest were both necessary. Anything taken to excess caused problems.

Naturally, that was true for me as well.

If the Mana Hole inside my body ran empty, then casting magic would become impossible, let alone actually manifesting it.

That was usually what happened with apprentice mages. Their Mana reserves were so small that they could not continue casting until their concentration was fully spent.

Fortunately, there was one thing I possessed in greater abundance than most others.

Money.

There was such a thing in this world as a Mana Potion. Perhaps it contained gold, because it cost nearly twice as much as an ordinary potion.

People commonly referred to potions that rapidly healed wounds as an extra life. That was how precious they were. Then what of Mana Potions?

They could determine the survival of an entire unit.

A Mana Potion was the last bullet for the mage assigned to a unit when his Mana ran dry in the middle of a fierce engagement.

It was the sort of potion one drank with tears of blood on a life-and-death battlefield like a monster subjugation, when some unforeseen crisis struck.

Gulp, gulp.

I pulled the stopper from a Mana Potion and poured the contents down my throat.

Unlike its exorbitant price, the taste was bland. It tasted like sparkling water that had gone flat, and as I frowned at that dull flavor, I felt my Mana Hole, which had been completely empty, gradually filling again.

Whoosh!

I lit a flame in my palm.

There were five major elemental attributes in magic: water, fire, wind, earth, and lightning. It followed the most common cliché exactly. Most mages who specialized in Elemental Magic tended to handle fire.

Why?

Because it was efficient.

Even to me, it seemed that way. If one wanted to attack an opponent using elements like water, wind, or earth, one had to shape them into a particular form. One had to make them into arrows or spears, or at least sharpen them somehow, for them to display proper force. That was true unless one intended to ignore efficiency and simply smash them in recklessly.

But the fire element was different. Throwing a mass of water at someone would only drench their clothes. Throwing fire, however, would spread flames through their clothing, burn their skin, and kill living things.

Except for lightning, which was so erratic it behaved like a restless kindergartener incapable of sitting still for even a moment, fire was overwhelmingly efficient.

I entered the practice room in the Magic Tower and repeated a single process until my Mana ran completely dry: I lit flames, then drank Mana Potions.

Today alone, I spent enough money to buy a perfectly respectable mansion.

It was an enormous expense, but I did not resent it in the slightest.

“What matters first is that I grow stronger.”

In the end, I was doing all of this so that I could live well.

Being stingy about training my own martial power when it was meant to keep me alive would have been idiotic. I was fully prepared to squander as much as necessary.

I formed the Mana Bullets I had practiced with Ian.

Then I tried to alter their attribute and turn them into Flame Bullets, but failed. The Mana Bullets simply scattered apart.

After thinking long and hard about why I kept failing to turn the Mana Bullets themselves into flames, I arrived at an answer.

It was because I was still unskilled in Elemental Magic.

Forming and firing Mana Bullets was something I had practiced with Ian for a long time, but Elemental Magic was different. Ian had only watched over me for a short while, and I had learned almost all of it through self-study. On top of that, the period itself had been short, so there was no way my proficiency could be high.

To overcome that, I spent the entire day toying with Elemental Magic.

I waved flames above my palm as though playing with fire, and I even blew on them for no reason with my own breath. By the time I had done that until my Mana ran dry, I felt that I had grasped a little more of it.

For an ordinary mage, it would have been training they could only manage two or three times a day before their Mana ran dry, but I overcame that with money.

If my Mana emptied, I simply drank a Mana Potion. I spent the whole day drinking Mana Potions as though they were water.

Since it was the weekend and there were no classes, I woke at dawn, finished my swordsmanship and weight training, entered the Magic Tower, and did this for hours on end.

“I’m dying of boredom.”

At first, it had been fascinating.

To the people of this world, magic might have been natural and ordinary, but to me, every little thing about it had felt new, mysterious, and fresh.

That had been true when I first began using magic, when I first advanced through its lessons.

But after repeating the same thing for several days, even forcing myself to believe I was still enjoying it had become exhausting. By now, even the sight of fire itself had grown tiresome.

“This should be enough.”

A Mana Bullet was a single projectile made of mana. Then what determined its force? Things like how solid the projectile was and how fast it flew. Then what about a Flame Bullet?

It added one more factor to hardness and speed.

Explosive force on impact.

The Flame Bullets I had made so far were only Mana Bullets dressed in fire, so their explosive power was lacking. I needed to make a true Flame Bullet. Everything I had practiced until now had been for that.

I cast a mass of fire.

In the air, flames took the form of a sphere and blazed. In one sense, it looked the same as a Flame Bullet, but this was merely a ball-shaped flame. Compared to a Flame Bullet, it was slower and lacked explosive force.

I refined it.

At the same time, as I compressed the Fireball, I realized why I had failed all this time.

Until now, whenever I tried to cast a Flame Bullet, I had focused on its shape. I had worked desperately to create the proper form of a Flame Bullet.

That wasn’t it.

What I truly needed to focus on was its nature.

An exploding projectile. The essence of a Flame Bullet.

Holding that in mind, I cast the Flame Bullet. I did not concern myself with the exact shape at all. So long as the projectile exploded, I decided it did not matter what form it took.

Even so, the Flame Bullet appeared in exactly the shape I had always been trying to make.

I fired the Flame Bullet at the training dummy.

Had my concentration finally reached its limit after refilling my Mana Hole over and over again with Mana Potions?

A sharp dizziness struck me, and it felt as though my legs might give out beneath me.

At the same time, the Flame Bullet shot forward at tremendous speed and struck down the dummy.

BOOOOM!

A thrill ran from the tips of my toes all the way to my scalp as though a current had passed through me.

At the successful casting, I found myself clenching my fist, driving my elbow into the air, and kicking up one knee without even realizing it.

There was something deeply satisfying about becoming capable of doing what one could not do before.

Not wanting to forget the sensation, I practiced three more times.

I succeeded twice out of those three, then returned to the dormitory and slept.

---

The next day, I practiced it again.

I rose early, swung my sword, pushed and pulled iron weights, then entered the practice room in the Magic Tower. I spent about half the day practicing Flame Bullets. At the end, I attempted it ten times and succeeded nine.

It was an excellent result.

---

Monday dawn.

I finished breakfast quickly, finished my physical training quickly, and then entered the practice room in the Magic Tower quickly.

If I succeeded nine times out of ten when casting a spell, then that meant I failed once out of ten.

What did that mean?

It meant that in a life-or-death crisis, if all the Mana I had left was enough for only one last Flame Bullet, then there was a ten percent chance I would lose that final shot.

Until I could succeed ten times out of ten, I would never feel at ease.

Before class, I stole spare moments to keep practicing magic. Unlike last night, when my concentration had already reached its limit, I had slept well, and perhaps because of that, my success rate was unusually high. Thankfully, I began the day on a light step, without experiencing a single failed spell.

Then I attended class.

After that came Katarina’s private instruction.

She looked me over and said,

“You’ve put on some size. Looks like you’ve been eating well lately.”

“Yes. I’ve been paying some attention to it.”

“Then shall we check your skills for the first time in a while? Let’s see how much you’ve improved.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

BOOOOM!

“Not bad.”

The moment Katarina told me to come at her, I rushed her with everything I had.

She was curious about the extent of my skill.

That meant she would meet my attack rather than evade it. Then what would benefit me most if she chose to block?

A Vertical Slash, one into which I could pour my weight.

From the very start, I detonated the Mana within my body and displayed explosive force.

While practicing magic, I had come to understand at least a little more about mana. Thanks to that, I had gained some insight into Force Release and was able to draw out greater power.

KWAAAAANG!

Receiving the full force of the centrifugal motion, I brought the sword down from above with all its weight onto Katarina.

She blocked it with a movement that looked as though she were simply setting her one-handed sword in place, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

What was that?

What was she enjoying?

Though it lasted only a moment, I read her expression.

She was pleased by my growth.

I understood.

Even by my own reckoning, my development had been dazzling enough to be difficult to believe, achieved in only a few months. Katarina was satisfied with that. Then what?

She would want to see more. She would want to confirm with her own eyes how far I could go.

There would be no evasion.

And if she meant to counterattack, it would be after at least two exchanges.

For at least two sword strikes, no matter what I did, she would accept the attack.

Then what did I need to do?

Break Katarina’s stance and seize the initiative within those two strikes.

How?

Ordinary swordplay would never break through the wall between Katarina and me.

No matter how I swung my blade, Katarina wouldn’t so much as blink.

I stepped on Katarina’s foot.

Then I swung my sword at the leg attached to the foot I had pinned.

Katarina knocked my blade aside.

CLAAANG!

Sparks burst between us.

The instant her sword passed, I shifted my grip and held my own sword with one hand.

Then I thrust out my free hand and struck Katarina in the stomach with my palm. She snorted and took the blow as it was, as though a slap from me could pose no threat whatsoever.

That much was true.

No matter how hard I struck with my palm, Katarina would hardly feel it.

So I used magic.

Flame Bullet.

Flames sprang into existence from my palm, scorching the air.

They gathered, burning the cloth of Katarina’s clothes as they prepared to launch.

Fire.

I fired the Flame Bullet.

BOOOOOM!

Katarina kicked me squarely with the foot I hadn’t pinned. My body flipped halfway over and flew backward, and because of that, the aim of the Flame Bullet went astray. It smashed into the ground and exploded. Katarina looked at it, then shook her head as though she were fed up.

“This is insane. Hey, when did you even learn magic? Who taught you?”

“It hasn’t been long since I started. I learned it from a friend.”

“Good grief. I only let this go on because it was amusing watching a weakling try to beat me, and you’ve gone crazy, haven’t you? Hey. What if that had actually hit me?”

“You told me to fight with everything I had.”

“Tsk. If that’s how it was going to be, then you could at least have told me you could use magic. No, forget that. More importantly, why did you learn magic at all? I told you, didn’t I? Focus on one thing.”

“It’s a hobby.”

Katarina scratched at her chin, then said,

“Well, you’ll handle that as you see fit.”

I pushed myself up from the ground with one hand.

“Shall we try again without magic?”

“No. That’s enough.”

Katarina punched my upper arm several times with her fist.

“That’s enough.”