Chapter 55

Chapter : 55

We moved to the seventh floor.

On the seventh floor, lecture halls stretched out in a row, and most of them had young mages receiving lessons inside.

On average, they seemed to be roughly between eight and thirteen years old.

There were no clothing regulations in the Magic Tower, so everyone wore different clothes, but if there was one thing they had in common, it was the cone-shaped hats on their heads.

Mages were arrogant.

They touched mysteries that others could not handle, their level was determined purely by talent, and as they learned magic, they sometimes became steeped in a sense of elitism.

In the Magic Tower, those cone-shaped hats were placed on new mages in order to teach them.

Those ridiculous cone-shaped hats were something like dunce caps, carrying the meaning, Know your level and be humble.

Ian took me to an empty lecture hall and placed a cone-shaped hat on my head.

Every time I tilted my head, the yellow cone-shaped hat moved along with it.

It felt awkward, so I felt around it with my hand. I was at least ten years older than the students in the other lecture halls who were wearing hats and taking lessons, so it felt as though he was making fun of me.

“Do I really have to do this?”

“A rule is a rule. Everyone who learns magic here for the first time does it. You do not need to worry about it.”

I was too tired to argue over something pointless, so I answered as though I understood.

“Yes, I suppose that is how it is. I will let it pass.”

“Good thinking. There is no real need to put one on you too, but making exceptions becomes troublesome, so please understand.”

Wearing the cone-shaped hat, I learned magic from Ian.

Listening to his lecture made me feel that if one mastered it properly, there was nothing magic could not do. In fact, learning magic solely for Combat Magic felt like a waste.

Magic was something far more valuable than that.

“Using several spells at the same time is difficult even for skilled mages. To solve that, several spells are sometimes combined into one, and that is called Overlap. The Cold-Protection Magic you mentioned is magic created by overlapping two spells into a single spell.”

The core of Cold-Protection Magic was blocking external heat.

Emitting warmth around the body was an additional matter. Usually, when two spells of different difficulty were overlapped, one spell was made the center, and the other spell was added onto it.

“Removing external stimuli is difficult, so Cold Protection is excessively difficult compared to its use. You could say its efficiency is poor. But if you learn it, you can utilize and apply it in many ways, so work hard.”

---

And so I stayed in the Magic Tower, learning all sorts of miscellaneous magic.

The pattern of my life was not all that different from when I trained, studied, and learned magic at the Academy, but my heart felt light.

It was after I had set down the major problems, and there was no need to struggle desperately to produce results.

“Well done. You seem to have an aptitude for this. Not radiating the same heat outward, but more like pushing it away... Yes, you are doing well.”

It was fun.

“You seem to have more aptitude for this side than Combat Magic.”

It seemed so.

“Repelling heat? Heat is not a person, but you call it repelling? That is amusing. Yes, that works on a principle similar to Cold-Protection Magic. Exclude the heat from outside...”

I learned miscellaneous spells one by one.

Now I no longer had to worry about my hands freezing in winter, nor did I have to worry about sweating profusely and suffering from the heat in summer. My future grew brighter and brighter.

Even if I could not reach the level of a great Archmage like Ian, I felt that if I kept learning magic one spell at a time like this, there would be no need to envy modern civilization.

As long as there was magic, there was nothing I could not do. And so I stayed in the Magic Tower and learned magic. Since the best teacher was right beside me, my skill improved every day.

I stayed at an inn nearby. Ian had offered to give me one of the spare rooms in the Magic Tower, but I tactfully refused because it felt as though I would be receiving too many special privileges.

That was because the glares from the mages affiliated with the Magic Tower were already fierce.

It was only recently that Ian had begun handling work as the Master of the Magic Tower and teaching other mages.

There must have been many mages who wanted to learn from him, and I was essentially taking that time away. I understood the envy of the mages in the Magic Tower.

Sometimes, I also looked around nearby places that could be called tourist attractions. Labor was cheap, and while there was no modern architectural technology, thanks to magic and magical engineering, there were buildings that would have been hard to imagine in the modern world. I admired them as I looked around. That was how I spent my days.

I rested moderately while learning magic. Then, one day, a letter came from Koromang at the family estate. Jefrin had come to the Isaac territory.

The hand holding the letter trembled. What kind of sudden accident was this?

Apparently, after losing to me during the entrance examination, Jefrin had gone to the captain of the White Lion Knights and learned swordsmanship. After bone-shaving training, he had improved his skill and declared that he would challenge me again.

I crumpled the letter and went to find Ian.

“Hey, teach me something that will help in a fight. This is urgent.”

As I was now, I was not enough to guarantee a perfect victory.

---

Jefrin had challenged me.

I did not necessarily have to accept his challenge, but having read the original, I had a rough understanding of his personality. Unless Bishot asked him, he was the kind of man who would never bend his stubbornness no matter what happened.

Even if I avoided this occasion, there would surely come a time when I had to cross swords with him at least once.

If it was going to happen anyway, it would be more comfortable in several ways to finish it early and be done with it.

Then what?

Should I simply fight him?

Right before the Academy entrance examination, Jefrin’s swordsmanship had been on the verge of reaching Expert. The reason I had been able to win against him then was because I had used the cheat called the original. I knew every one of his techniques and weaknesses, and I could also predict his actions. With that as my foundation, I even gained the upper hand in the battle of nerves, which was why I had won.

I won because everything was stacked in my favor.

Would that work this time too?

Jefrin knew his own weakness now, so he must have worked to make up for it. Above all, if he had reached Expert, I could not possibly face him with swordsmanship alone. If we fought, defeat seemed certain. Then I had only one thing left: magic.

I had to defeat him with magic.

“I need new magic.”

“Why? Is your Combat Magic not enough? You were more interested in Overlap than that side too.”

“I have an opponent I have to fight once I return to the estate.”

“Who is it, for you to say that? At your level, you would not be outmatched just anywhere. Or is your life at stake?”

“No, I probably will not get hurt. But my opponent is strong. If we are talking only about swordsmanship, he will be better than me.”

Ian inhaled with a thoughtful hum. He held his chin with his index finger and thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“It will be difficult to win with magic. Your swordsmanship has reached a certain level. If your opponent is beyond that, there is no way to do much with magic at your level. He is not an opponent who will fall for cheap tricks.”

I wanted to deny it, but he was right. After hearing what Ian said, another thought soon came to mind as well.

Did I absolutely have to fight Jefrin and win? No. During the entrance examination, we had competed for the position of Katarina’s disciple, but this was a different matter.

It would be fine even if I simply lost. If Jefrin won, he would probably be satisfied and leave.

“But I want to win.”

It was not a match where victory or defeat mattered. Even so, how much sweat had I shed all this time? It was fine if I lost, but fighting without even the will to win felt unfair.

“Help me.”

Ian swept his hair back and smiled softly.

“All right. Let us try.”

---

In the original, Haok, the captain of the White Lion Knights, was a character in name only. He merely occupied one seat as one of the only two Sword Masters in the Empire alongside Katarina, and had practically never appeared in person. That Haok had taught Jefrin.

It was possible Jefrin had grown in a direction different from the original. Haok’s swordsmanship and Katarina’s swordsmanship had also been said to differ in nature, so there would certainly be differences from the original.

In the original, Jefrin eventually rose all the way to Sword Master in the latter half, and even then, the defining trait of his swordsmanship was speed.

He specialized in swordsmanship that valued swiftness and developed it to the very end.

There was a high possibility that would be true this time as well, but I could not be certain.

I had to think through several possibilities. I consulted Ian and searched for a method to fight Jefrin.

“If your opponent’s swordsmanship is superior to yours, magic alone will not be enough.”

“You mean I have to use both the sword and magic?”

“Most likely, yes.”

“That will be difficult.”

Magic demanded extreme concentration. Casting and aiming magic while fighting through intense physical movement was exhausting.

That was especially true the stronger and higher-level the magic was. It seemed difficult to use against Jefrin.

At present, there were two kinds of Combat Magic I mainly used.

Mana Bullet and Flame Bullet.

Flame Bullet might look like a superior version of Mana Bullet, but in reality, that was not the case. Mana Bullet’s advantages were its short chant, low mana consumption, and the fact that it could be cast with only brief concentration, making it more useful while moving one’s body.

By contrast, Flame Bullet required more effort to cast in several ways, but its power was twice as strong to match.

I had already learned magic suitable for use while fighting with my body.

As I was wondering what else I should add here, Ian spoke.

“You need to learn Elemental Magic.”

“Because it is easy to cast?”

“Yes. And it suits your aptitude. Elemental Magic is easy and simple, but it is also the magic most closely tied to talent. Unless your innate mana and Magical Power support it, you will achieve nothing no matter how hard you devote yourself to it. Conversely, if your mana and Magical Power are good, it is the most efficient kind of magic.”

“How long will it take to learn?”

“That depends on your goal. It is easy magic, so if we are talking only about using the magic itself, one week should be enough.”

As I learned magic from Ian, I planned my fight with Jefrin.

How could I win? What would Jefrin do?

Then I remembered one extremely important thing. The decisive key that had allowed me to win in the sparring match during the entrance examination.

It was because I had broken through Jefrin’s decisive technique.

If one had to name the finest sword technique Jefrin could use, it would be Crescent Slash.

That lightning-fast sword strike, which was difficult even for the eye to follow, was troublesome enough that reacting to it was nearly impossible.

But there was one decisive problem: Crescent Slash always went toward the left.

During the entrance examination, I sealed Crescent Slash by blocking the left side in advance. But a long time had passed since that sparring match. If Jefrin, that effort-mad bastard, was who he was, then he would have compensated for Crescent Slash’s weakness.

As expected, avoiding a fight within Jefrin’s range was the right answer.

“I need to rely more heavily on magic.”

I informed Koromang that I would return to the family estate exactly three weeks later.

The sparring match with Jefrin would be three weeks later.

If I could, I wanted to learn magic beside Ian for a long, long time before the sparring match, but I wanted to settle this before the Academy semester began.

When I burned with enthusiasm and entered meditation, Ian pointed at my head and corrected me.

“You have to wear the hat while you do it.”

I placed the cone-shaped hat on my head and closed my eyes.