The Secret Hidden in a Discarded Scribble
“Hans, take this.”
By the time dinner was drawing to a close, Father set a silver coin down on the table with a quiet clink.
It was half of the repair money he’d received from the Valderk family’s butler.
“I haven’t exactly been able to give you proper allowance all this time. Use it to buy some meat with your friends, or pick up a book you like. You saved my hide earlier.”
Father looked much more at ease than before.
He must have finally shaken off the pressure of that one gold piece.
“Thank you, Father. I’ll spend it well.”
Of course, I had no intention of spending this money on meat.
Deep in the drawer in my room, inside an old tin box, sat everything I owned—my entire fortune, painstakingly saved from my work as a library assistant.
[West Continent Trade Company - 40 common shares]
What had started with 10 silver a year ago was now worth 40.
It had been an investment made with information I’d picked up while eavesdropping on nobles at the library.
The war will end soon.
If my analysis was right, these bargain-bin shares would rise at least tenfold.
If things had stayed as they were, this one silver would have gone there too.
But now I had something more urgent to spend it on.
An investment in magic research.
“Father, can I use the basement starting tonight? I’ve got a bit more stuff now, and the attic’s getting cramped.”
“The basement? It’s been untouched for a long time, so it’s probably pretty filthy.”
“That’s fine. I’ll clean it out and use it.”
The attic had windows, which meant if I experimented at night, the light might leak out.
The basement, on the other hand, was a perfect sealed room.
Ideal for my secret laboratory.
“Sure, do as you like. Just watch out for bugs and mice.”
I’d gotten my permission.
With light steps, I left the house and headed for work at the library.
He’s not here today.
The spoiled young master Felix, who acted like he wanted to tear me apart every time he laid eyes on me.
When he’s not at the library, the whole day goes easier.
Like always, I moved between the shelves, dusting them off.
My hands moved slowly; my eyes moved fast.
Then I found two newly arrived books.
Introduction to 2nd Tier Levitation
Theory of 3rd Tier Spellwork Reinforcement
Just pretending to dust...
Rustle, rustle...
I skimmed through the pages once in a flash and returned them to the shelf.
That was enough.
Two new magic books had been added to the library in my head.
By the time I’d worked myself half to death, it was already time to head home.
There’s somewhere I need to stop before I go back today.
An alley on the outskirts of Rowen, thick with acrid smoke and the stink of iron.
A place where anonymous parts, rusted farm tools, and broken implements were piled like mountains.
I walked through the clutter with practiced ease and stopped in front of an old vendor’s stall under a worn canvas tarp.
“Oh! Hans, is it? What brings you here today?”
The one-eyed old man puffed on his pipe and greeted me as if we were old friends.
“Grandpa, can I take a look at those stones piled up in the corner?”
Where I pointed, murky gray stones sat crammed inside a wooden crate.
Spent Magic Stones.
Discarded waste with every last scrap of mana drained from them.
“Those? That’s trash you can’t even use for firewood. What do you want with them?”
“I’m just planning to use them as decoration.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Thank you.”
On page 342 of Magic Stone Mineralogy, the specialist text that had been gathering dust in a corner of the library, it said:
[Some magic stones are unable to release all of their power, causing residue to accumulate inside them. This is called mana sediment. It is difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, but if you refract light through it, a fine red deposit can be seen......]
Let’s see if that’s true.
I picked up one stone and held it up to the sunlight.
This one’s completely empty. Toss it.
I flicked it away and picked up another.
I checked dozens of them in quick succession.
They were all the same gray lumps to anyone else, but to me, tiny differences were visible.
Found it.
When I tilted the light just right, a faint red dot—like a bead of blood—appeared in the center of one stone.
This one isn’t used up. It’s clogged.
In the end, I selected ten spent magic stones that still held mana residue.
“Grandpa, I’ll take these. They’re one copper each, so ten copper, right?”
One hundred copper made one silver coin.
“Ten copper? What are you talking about? Just take them. Consider it me paying you to clear out my trash.”
Nice! I’d made ten copper.
Beaming, I tucked the spent magic stones into my pocket.
* * *
After dinner, I went down into the basement beneath the cloth shop.
I laid my things out on the workbench.
Ten spent magic stones.
I fixed the best-looking one of the bunch into a clamp.
My mana is pitifully small. The problem is that one spell leaves me completely drained.
So I needed to extract mana from these spent stones and burn that instead of my own.
In other words, they’d serve as an external mana source.
As slowly as possible...
I concentrated mana into the hand holding the awl and threaded it into the cracks of the stone.
I was breaking apart the sediment clogging it from the inside.
Tick. Tik-tik.
Faint sounds followed.
If I misjudged the force, the stone would shatter.
Thirty minutes later—
Wooooong—
The gray stone trembled faintly.
A pale thread of light, so weak it was almost invisible.
That’s way too weak.
It was less than a tenth the output of a proper magic stone.
Let’s connect a few of these in a circuit.
I linked three spent magic stones in series.
Flash!
This time, I got about the mana output of a single candle flame.
Good.
It still wasn’t enough for combat magic that demanded serious output, of course.
But I can keep running 1st Tier utility magic nonstop.
Just being able to experiment without burning through my own mana was a huge success.
Rustle!
I dumped scraps of cloth onto the workbench.
Small white cotton pieces, about the size of handkerchiefs.
The centers were blackened with grease, and the edges had frayed completely apart.
I’m going to make these look new.
I laid my hand over the cloth and drew the mana flowing from the spent magic stones toward it.
This kind of contamination won’t be fixed by erasing the trace. It needs cleaning.
Tsst—
Repairing torn fabric and removing dirt.
1st Tier Composite Formula: Mending Fray + Cleansing Stain
Wung! Wooooong!
The moment the spent magic stones quivered and spat out mana—
Swishhh.
The loose threads at the ragged edges of the cloth began to move on their own, knotting together and pulling tight.
Then the grease was broken apart by the vibration of mana and scattered into the air.
There we go. Success!
The ragged cloth transformed into a spotless, milk-white handkerchief.
A soft, faint sheen.
When I smelled it, there was no musty mildew at all—just a fresh, clean scent.
It was basically new cloth now.
At a market stall, I could probably get at least 3 copper for it, maybe 5 if I was lucky.
“At this rate, I could make some serious money.”
Excited, I threw myself into work through the night.
In the end, I restored a total of thirty cloth items.
Unfortunately, the spent magic stones lost all their light and crumbled away completely.
Huh? It’s morning already?
I hadn’t slept at all, but seeing the thirty restored pieces of cloth filled me with satisfaction.
Can’t be helped. I should hurry and get to work.
* * *
Rowen 3rd Library.
The corridor outside Reading Room No. 2.
“Damn it! Why does the calculation keep going wrong? My formula is perfect! So why? Why?! That blasted variable!”
The thunderous roar shattered the library’s silence.
Professor Keil, the Madman of Flame, came storming into the hallway in a billowing red robe and hurled the bundle of parchment he was holding to the floor.
“Throw all of this away! I don’t want to look at it anymore!”
Dale, his assistant, rushed after him and went pale as he scooped up the scattered papers.
“Professor! Please calm down. These are the drafts for the chain explosion spell you’ve been researching every night since last month, aren’t they? You can’t just throw them away!”
“Drafts my ass! The mana array keeps backflowing on the third line! It’s nothing but useless trash!”
Professor Keil snorted furiously and slammed the end of his staff into the floor.
“Get it out of my sight. Take it straight to the annex incinerator, right now! I’d be embarrassed if anyone else saw this, so burn it all until not a single ash is left!”
Bang!
The professor’s office door slammed shut.
Only silence and a scattering of papers remained in the hallway.
“I-I can’t believe this...”
Assistant Dale, on the verge of tears, began gathering up the pages strewn across the floor.
Notes the professor had scrawled whenever his research hit a wall.
Scribbled formulas, diagrams ruined by splattered ink.
“Haah... this is insane. Do I really have to burn all of this?”
That was when I quietly approached him.
“Assistant Dale, would you like some help?”
“Hm? Hans, huh.”
Dale’s face brightened.
At last, someone had appeared to dump the tedious job onto.
“Yeah, perfect timing. The professor’s screaming for it to be burned immediately, so could you handle it? I’ve got my hands full with the academy report right now.”
“Of course. I’ll take care of it properly.”
I quickly accepted the basket full of papers.
“Be careful. To you, it’ll probably just look like meaningless scribbles, but these are the professor’s research materials. If they leak outside, it’ll be a disaster, so make sure you burn every last sheet.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve done this plenty of times.”
Dale gave a snort of a laugh.
He had the expression of someone who thought there was no point worrying if a dumb commoner looked at them anyway.
“Then I’ll be off.”
As I headed toward the incinerator, I casually scanned the papers inside the basket.
......!
Just as the assistant had said.
To a normal person—no, even to an ordinary mage—this would look like the scribblings of a madman.
The writing crawled like worms, and unknown symbols and numbers were everywhere.
Every single character was encrypted.
Professor Keil was notorious for being suspicious, so he always wrote his research notes in his own private code.
That was why even Dale didn’t dare peek at them.
He wouldn’t understand them even if he did.
This pattern looks like the one I compared with the old language translation notes last year.
I could read it.
After all, the complete set of the library’s cryptography books, along with Professor Keil’s old encryption patterns, had already been stored in my head.
What kind of spell is this one, I wonder?
The incinerator’s flames roared hot.
After confirming that no one was around, I began tossing the papers into the fire one by one.
Whoosh.
Before the first sheet even finished burning, my eyes had already moved on.
[5th Tier: Chain Explosion - Failure Record]
An overheating problem in the core? Seems like he used the cooling formula in series instead of parallel...
This was 5th Tier.
A high-level spell far beyond anything I could imitate right now.
And it was unfinished.
Still, I memorized it anyway.
Just knowing why it failed will be useful later.
The second sheet.
This time, it was a crumpled memo shoved into a corner.
[Basic Spell Test: Flame Barrier - Stabilized Version]
Huh?
My eyes snapped wide open.
This wasn’t a failed formula.
It was a note Professor Keil had scribbled while checking the lower 4th Tier formula that served as the foundation for his 5th Tier research.
For him, it was probably so simple it barely counted as a scribble, but to me, this 4th Tier magic was the knowledge of dreams.
I’d already memorized all the 3rd Tier books while organizing the shelves, but there had been no 4th Tier magic books in the library.
So this is 4th Tier... the structure of the spell is insanely beautiful.
It was written in code, so no one else could understand it, but to my eyes it was the blueprint of a perfect magic circle.
A refined formula that reduced mana consumption by 20 percent while increasing its strength by 1.5 times compared to the Flame Barrier in the standard textbook.
Paying to learn this would cost several hundred gold, and maybe still not be enough.
And yet here I was, freely stuffing it into the shelf of my mind.
[4th Tier: Catalyst Blend Ratio for Magic Stone Efficiency Amplification]
I didn’t forget to transfer the rest of the contents in their entirety into my head either.
Today is really my lucky day.
That was when I picked up the final bundle of papers.
On the corner of the parchment, I spotted a cipher note written in flowing script instead of a magic formula.
It was like a private diary entry the professor had scribbled out in frustration when his research wouldn’t go his way.
[......Everyone thinks the war will be over, but think again! The Western Fleet will be annihilated...... 〈truncated〉 ......A cedarwood ship can never withstand acid fog; it’ll melt away before long. Unless we use black ironwood, absurdly sturdy as it is, this operation is doomed to fail. Where in the world does that acid fog even come from......]
My hand, poised to toss the paper into the flames, froze.
Acid fog?
I’d vaguely heard that such a thing sometimes appeared in the western sea, but even Professor Keil seemed to have no idea why it formed.
But that wasn’t the problem right now.
The war won’t end? Then my stock will crash......
In an instant, everything looked different.
Wait... this isn’t a crisis.
My mouth curved up before I even realized it.
This is an enormous opportunity.
There was no time to stand around here.
I headed straight for the exchange.
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