The Genius of Absolute Memory Awakens
There was a library in my mind.
Once I saw something, I never forgot it.
Not a single letter. Not a single image. Not even a smear of ink.
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“This month’s interest alone is ten silver. And we haven’t even touched the principal...”
My mother’s sigh settled over the room like a stone.
The ledger I had seen only once, in passing, three days ago.
Carter Family Fabric Shop - April Settlement
Income: 11 silver.
Expenses: 27 silver.
Deficit.
My father sat with his head bowed as if he were a criminal, fidgeting uselessly with a spoon.
“I’m sorry, Hans. You’ve wanted to study so badly... but I’m afraid even the Academy entrance fee is impossible this time.”
“It’s all right, Father. I’m suited to the library work, too.”
Rowen 3rd Library, special collection hall.
The attached archive of the Royal Academy.
It was packed with magical treatises and classics, and only noble children were allowed to enter.
For commoners, it was a place they weren’t even permitted to approach.
There was only one exception.
Someone to dust the shelves, mop the floors, and straighten the rows of books when they’d been left in disarray.
The nobles would never lift a finger for such lowly work.
Library assistant.
More like a cleaner, really.
Still, for a poor seventeen-year-old commoner, it was the only place I could get close to magic books.
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Rowen 3rd Library, special collection hall.
Rows upon rows of shelves lined the walls.
Books you would never see in an ordinary library stood packed together there: Fundamentals of First Tier Mana, Introduction to Second Tier Flame Element Arrays, Revised Edition of Second Tier Barrier Engineering, Introduction to Third Tier Cryology...
As always, I started by dusting the shelves in the corner.
My hand moved slowly with the duster, but my eyes were quick.
Third shelf from the left, fourth book in: Revised Edition of Second Tier Barrier Engineering.
Revised edition, huh? Then the only thing they changed this time was one section.
The entry on Interference Phenomena in Multiple Barriers and the Cancellation Formula.
Seven lines of formulae, two diagrams, four footnotes.
One passing glance was enough.
Because the contents had already been copied perfectly into the library in my head.
Two years since I entered the special collection.
I had read every book shelved there.
From First Tier to Third Tier.
Not a single volume missed.
“Hey, you filthy little rat!”
Something flew into my back with a soft thud while I was putting the shelves in order.
What dropped to the floor was a chunk of half-eaten bread.
When I turned around, I saw three noble students in flashy silk robes snickering.
At the center of them stood Felix, the young heir of the Bergen Count family, one of Rowen’s great houses.
“Why wasn’t my desk cleaned?” Felix asked, narrowing his eyes.
I hesitated for a moment before answering.
“There were parchment sheets and magic stones on it... I thought it might be important research material, so I didn’t touch it. I did, however, neatly put away the books you’d been using beside it.”
His desk was covered in dense formulas and the traces of calculations.
There were ink smears from repeated corrections, and cracked magic stones that had already been drained dry.
Felix glanced at them and snorted.
“Important research, my ass! It’s trash.”
“...Pardon?”
“You ignorant commoner moron probably wouldn’t understand a word of it, but I burned through three magic stones for this damned formula and still failed.”
He waved a hand with a disgusted look.
“Damn it! I can’t stand the sight of it!”
The stack of books I had sorted beside the desk toppled over.
Crash.
Magic books scattered across the floor.
The kind of knowledge you could only learn after paying a fortune in tuition.
Did that bastard know?
That every one of those books was also stored in my head, word for word, with not a single character out of place.
“What are you staring at? Want to get fired? Then get moving and clean it up!”
It was a pointless fit of temper.
“Yes. I’ll sort it out at once.”
I forced down the urge to ram my shoulder into him.
I was furious. Humiliated.
But what was harder to endure than that was the fact that he could study magic so casually.
Those books had already taught me something.
Magic wasn’t something you could use just by memorizing the theory.
You had to be able to burn through expensive magic stones without a care in the world.
In other words, magic was money.
And every time I remembered the theories behind it, despair washed over me instead.
For someone poor like me, it was an unreachable world.
“Take this and throw it away too, you filthy brat!”
A crumpled bundle of parchment smacked me in the head.
“Heh... got you.”
Felix laughed, making a motion as though he were tossing tissue into a trash bin.
“What are you doing? Why aren’t you picking it up? Want to be fired?”
“Where should I take this...?”
“To the incinerator behind the annex. It’s too much trouble for me to go myself.”
“Understood.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
He left the library with a sneering laugh.
I picked up the parchment.
As always, the contents leapt into my eyes at once.
[Second Tier Formula: Barrier Restoration]
[Result: Failure]
A failed research record.
But then.
...Hm? Why is the mana circuit arranged like this?
What was he thinking, twisting the mana acceleration loop this badly while using a heat formula?
No wonder the mana overloaded and scattered. So that’s why burning three magic stones still ended in failure. How pathetic.
In that instant, a bolt of shock struck straight through my mind.
!!!
Until then, I had thought the reason I couldn’t use magic was simply because I lacked mana.
But that wasn’t it.
He wasted mana because he was an idiot. Magic itself isn’t supposed to be this inefficient.
This was a world the nobles, who could pour money into everything, would never understand.
To my eyes alone, eyes that belonged to a miserably poor boy who couldn’t afford to waste even a single point of mana, the flaws in that wasteful formula stood out in stark relief.
If I closed every one of those holes...
I shoved the crumpled parchment into my pocket.
My heart had started pounding hard enough to burst.
This... I can fix it.
The humiliation vanished before I even noticed, replaced by a strange, electrifying thrill that ran down my spine.
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That night, in the attic room.
I spread Felix’s botched formula across the desk and picked up a quill.
Every time the memory of being humiliated at the library came back to me, the nib moved more sharply, more fiercely.
Magic smeared with money is nothing but waste.
Magic should be a formula of efficiency.
The multilayer circuit structure on page 147 of Revised Edition of Second Tier Barrier Engineering. The restorative spell pattern on page 92 of Second Tier Mana Condensation Theory.
The answer to how to mend the damaged sections Felix had ruined was already right in front of me.
Untangle the mana acceleration loop.
Separate the points of conflict with the heat formula.
Seal the leakage points in the circuit with a multiple-barrier method.
How long had passed?
At last, Felix’s Second Tier Barrier Restoration Formula lay complete in my hands.
...Perfect.
It would operate stably even with just one magic stone.
A result good enough that if I handed it to Felix, he’d applaud and declare it a success on the spot.
And yet.
What good is this to me?
I dropped the quill onto the desk.
This was a Second Tier formula.
To me, who couldn’t even cast First Tier magic, it was nothing more than one neatly arranged sheet of paper.
...Wait.
Something suddenly crossed my mind.
Does this really have to stay Second Tier?
My fingertips trembled faintly.
What Felix wanted was restoration—filling in the cracks of a damaged barrier.
Then the essence of this formula was, in the end, the principle of joining split things back together.
Tier wasn’t the essence of magic.
It was only the amount of mana consumed and the scale of its output.
Then...
If I keep the principle intact and only drag the tier down?
Fundamentals of First Tier Mana Use, page 83, the minimum mana circuit.
The compression spell pattern on page 12 of First Tier Basic Element Arrays.
Extract the core principle from the multilayer circuit structure of barrier engineering and compress it to First Tier scale.
...I think it’ll work.
I butchered Felix’s Second Tier formula once more.
This time, it wasn’t revision. It was reinvention.
[Process 1: Remove all unnecessary mana output sections]
[Process 2: Compress the spell formula down to a First Tier circuit scale]
[Process 3: Eliminate dependence on magic stones; convert it to direct caster mana use]
A little while later.
Felix’s Second Tier Barrier Restoration Formula was reborn in my hands in a completely different form.
The same principle. A different tier.
A new kind of magic that had never existed in this world before.
The name was mine to choose.
First Tier Magic: Seam Mend
It was a household spell.
I can perfectly mend torn and frayed clothes.
I decided to see if it really worked.
Test materials.
Just then, my eyes fell on two scraps of torn cloth lying in the corner.
Could I join those two together?
The problem was how little mana I had.
For ordinary mages, it was enough to make them laugh.
But there’s still a way.
I’d draw a magic circle.
I copied the magic circuit of Seam Mend directly into a magic circle.
All I need is to feed in a little mana here.
Thread-thin mana seeped into the circuit.
Hissss.
It flowed along the designed path without leaking anywhere.
Because the circuit I drew was perfect.
Wooooong—
A transparent aura bloomed with a small vibration.
Come on, please attach!
Flash—
The light of mana filled the split seam and joined the two pieces of cloth into one.
Did it work?
I lifted the cloth and pulled hard at both ends.
!
It held.
It had fused perfectly, as though it had been one sheet from the beginning.
There wasn’t a single stitch mark, not one trace of sewing.
Only a smooth, seamless surface remained.
“Ha... haha.”
A dry laugh burst out of me.
The Second Tier formula Felix had failed to complete even after burning through three magic stones.
I had converted it into First Tier magic and manifested it without a magic stone at all.
Then wouldn’t other things be possible too?
What if I could drag a First Tier fire formula down into a household spell?
What if I transformed the core principle of a Second Tier barrier for another use?
What if I compressed Third Tier cryology into First Tier scale...?
Countless inspirations bloomed as if they had been waiting for this very moment.
All sorts of strange magics began to dance together in my head.
Of course, these were only theoretical formulas. Whether they would actually work was another matter.
Still, a new possibility had opened.
For me—a poor library cleaner who had only ever stolen knowledge and learned in secret.
Until now, I only memorized things.
But from now on, that would change.
I’ll alter them and make them new.
The formulas. The magic.
And my life.
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