Quickening
Quickening
What was spell incantation?
In theory, it was simple. It meant crafting a blueprint of the magic one intended to manifest through language, making the casting process easier, and the act of bringing it forth.
Even speaking the incantation aloud was just one part of that process. It was the same logic as explaining that an apple was red, spherical, and a sweet-and-sour fruit when chewed, but showing it and saying "this is an apple" was far quicker and easier to understand.
Since you were essentially performing it upon yourself, if you really had to pin it down, spell incantation was ultimately the pinnacle of talking to yourself.
Because of that, if your vocabulary was lacking and your incantation unclear, you had to make up the difference with factors outside the spell itself, such as your own Mana or computational ability.
Put the other way, if you had abundant knowledge and vocabulary and could incant a spell efficiently, it meant you could use magic with precision with less effort and cost, so naturally mages lived with their noses buried in every kind of book, pursuing knowledge.
It went without saying, but merely speaking words did not manifest magic. If it did, the world would have been twice the shitshow it currently was. You had to learn a separate process that allowed you to use magic based on theory, and only then could you finally cast spells, which was why mages existed as a profession at all.
Then what about chantless casting?
Since incantation was meant to make the series of steps for spellcasting 'easier,' if you felt no difficulty whatsoever in that process, chantless casting was possible. But the reason chantless casting was treated as the domain of talent while simultaneously considered inefficient had its own logic.
Between incanted and chantless casting, there existed a wall so immense it made the difference between memorization and handwriting look trivial—so the protagonists from novels I read in my past life, who fired off magic without memorizing a single spell or unleashed grand magic with a single word of incantation, were firmly in the realm of fiction even here. Not even the historical magical geniuses could do that. There were cases that neared that realm, but still.
But from the look of it, the Ragnis before my eyes seemed to stand on a similar line as those rare geniuses.
"That's ridiculous."
If an incantation was fast, Magic Power gathered quickly; if it was slow, Magic Power gathered slowly. That was why mages staked their lives on swift and accurate incantation.
But her chantless casting was not on that level. To my eyes, using Magic Sight, the Magic Power that converged in an instant made Ragnis flare up for a moment like a mustachioed plumber who had just scarfed down a superstar.
"Isn't that cheating?"
In the mere blink of an eye, flames had surged up her banner and not only clung to her spear but coiled faintly around her entire body, taking on a shape that practically screamed a buff had been applied. If every spell she cast looked like that, there was no interrupting her incantations. Given that the magic had started from her spear-banner, it was highly likely to be the power of a magic tool, but it wasn't a situation where I could be certain.
My life kept throwing some new, never-before-seen absurdity at me day after day. I let out a hollow laugh at the ridiculousness of it and tossed out a light joke, and Ragnis answered with a look full of disbelief.
"I don't think you're one to talk."
And then she immediately kicked off the floor and charged in. Crouching low, leading with her shield to protect her upper body, her burning banner fluttering as she rushed forward—the form was solid, proving her past training had not been in vain. Within the remnants of Magic Power scattering in all directions like sparks bursting from a thruster, the flashing spear tip was far faster than I had expected.
"Impressive."
So there really was a reason she was specifically classified as a battle mage rather than a magic warrior or magic knight.
I swallowed the exclamation that had almost slipped out on its own and deflected the thrust that came unabashedly for my throat with the blade of my axe; simultaneous with the impact, a small explosion erupted.
The Paang! of the explosion was not something that would be terribly fatal to weapon or armor, but the story would have been different had it torn into skin. So that was why she aimed for the narrow target of the throat instead of the torso—it hadn't been an attack thrown out without thought.
It was a fairly crafty hand to play. Demonfolk were people too, so if they suffered a wound tearing open from an attack like that, their morale would undoubtedly plummet.
"I like that you don't hesitate."
Perhaps she had trampled every cliché about holding back against an acquaintance the moment she charged in, because Ragnis appeared to be going all out. Up to that point, it was more than passing marks, so I pressed inward following the spear as it retracted after its failed thrust and observed how she handled it.
"Hup!"
She didn't close her eyes, nor was she startled. Her piercing gaze fixed precisely on my face, so sharp it made me question whether she was truly the Ragnis I knew.
The face, huh. She wasn't pulling any punches.
-CLANG!
Her shield flew toward my face, but I had already guessed from her eyes where she was aiming, so I hoisted the haft of my axe and blocked it without much trouble. Thanks to that, far from the distance widening, we ended up even closer, and before Ragnis could mount another response, I drove the axe haft upward from below with all my strength.
-THOOM!
"Uwaek?!"
The motion resembled a guard-fighting technique from kendo, but the result was as severe as an adult colliding with a child. Even though Ragnis had not deliberately jumped backward, she flew nearly my full height into the air, her ferocity from just moments ago nowhere to be found, her eyes wide open and genuinely panicked.
"An opening."
I swung my axe toward her. Since it was Ragnis in midair and not me, both correcting my stance and swinging were fast. Even if it looked dangerous at a glance, I had the confidence to stop right at her breastplate, so it was an attack I attempted knowing that.
Drawing a clean straight line as if splitting firewood, my axe came down; Ragnis stared straight at it, and her eyes suddenly blazed with blue light right as the axe blade was about to make contact with her breastplate.
Abruptly, Ragnis scattered like mist.
And then, without warning, a presence was felt from behind.
-FWEET!
The question 'How?' flashed by, but since that wasn't what mattered right then, I first let out a whistle and launched the needles.
I wished I had eyes on the back of my head, but regrettably the two on the front were all I had, so I used the charge Ragnis had just shown as a baseline, predicted the position of her shield, and sent the needles flying without hesitation.
Almost simultaneously, I released the hand holding the axe without a shred of hesitation, moved to my waist, drew my sword, and rotated my whole body into a middle guard stance; what entered my eyes was the sight of a horrified Ragnis and the needle bouncing off after precisely striking her shield.
Truthfully, I was the one who wanted to be surprised. This time there hadn't even been a flash. She scattered like a hazy mist before my very eyes with zero warning, to the point where I wanted to ask if this was really what true magic looked like.
Was I missing something? For now, blocking Ragnis's next attack after her brief hesitation was the priority, but I couldn't help the fact that it kept nagging at me.
"That's seriously insane!"
As Ragnis shouted as if aggrieved, flames once again surged from her spear-banner. And following that, a flash.
But this time, instead of charging, she swung the fire like a flamethrower. Not just fire, but a menacing blaze that looked like it would stick thickly to anything it touched.
"Magic, I swear..."
Thinking that magic whose casting couldn't be intercepted was far more troublesome than expected, I activated the gauntlet's protective magic.
◈
Even though she had moved properly and controlled her breathing, she was out of breath in an instant.
The sparring she'd been handling calmly just moments ago had completely derailed with a single projectile that came flying out of nowhere. Did he have eyes on the back of his head too?
"Hoo!"
She hadn't held anything back. During the thrust, during the shield swing, even at the instant Eldmia moved the axe haft to shove her away, she had poured everything into physical reinforcement just to hold her ground.
Even so, her body had been sent flying and she'd nearly taken the axe head-on. Without a trump card, the spar would have ended right there. She hadn't expected to win, but being tossed around so helplessly had nearly brought Ragnis to tears. Even so, she managed not to cry and instead kept her fighting spirit burning precisely because her opponent was Eldmia.
'I'm chasing after you, so at least look at me too.'
This training session was a place created because she had wanted it. From the start, if she moved to reclaim the Levien Margraviate, Radnelbandes had agreed to move with her. And as long as he was by her side, whether her own ability to protect herself was lacking or entirely nonexistent mattered very little.
But Ragnis did not want that. Because otherwise, she would not be able to follow Eldmia.
So she trained, and she wanted to show Eldmia the fruits of the effort she had made in the capital.
'It's magic learned and training done while being tossed about by all manner of duties and politics, but even so, I can manage this far. If I can just train properly, don't you think there's potential?'
Eldmia charged straight through the clinging flames. She wondered what kind of insane state of mind let him charge through that, but when she saw the barrier activating from the gauntlet he'd received as a gift in the Empire, it made sense.
He was a man who, knowingly or not, scraped together all kinds of magic tools. Given that the armor Esmue had gifted him had no helmet, it was obvious that the earring he had picked up when he returned from that insane journey across the West also held some unknown function.
But there was no way to confirm it firsthand.
It wasn't that she couldn't attack his face just because he was someone she liked. Her ability simply wasn't enough to keep up with Eldmia's movements after he switched from axe to sword.
Shooting fire, erecting walls, hammering him with lightning—it was all futile. In truth, the fight had already been decided the moment her surprise attack through spatial movement failed. All she could do was cling on stubbornly and delay her defeat, yet the longer the fight dragged on, the more Ragnis felt a smile tug at her lips.
'I won't become some princess in a tower.'
She was different from her powerless past. The fact that she could manage even this much was astonishing to herself. It felt like she was proving that the efforts she had made were not in vain, and she even felt a sense of accomplishment.
Of course, that enjoyment did not last long. When she erected a wall a second time to obstruct Eldmia's approach, he simply rammed the earthen wall with his shoulder and shattered it, then batted away her spear, hooked her leg, and pressed down her shoulder, toppling Ragnis.
Unlike her, who was flushed and short of breath despite moving so hard, Eldmia hadn't let a single breath become disordered. Moreover, the performance of the protective magic in the gauntlet was so good that not even the hem of his clothes seemed to have been properly singed.
But Ragnis was certain she had earned a passing grade.
"Chantless casting. Annoying."
So annoying.
As Eldmia said that and smiled, Ragnis looked at him and opened her mouth with satisfaction as well.
"I can stand by your side and fight too. With just a little more training, that is."
"...Looks like you can. You really are one scary young lady."
At Eldmia's answer, which he gave while surveying the training ground that had become a complete mess, Ragnis laughed out loud.