The Magic Lecture (4)
"And just in case anyone was wondering, forcing questions on students is also forbidden. I won't be taking any questions of that nature."
The mages from the academic society were brimming with dissatisfaction.
One of them even turned around and snapped, "If you're planning to waste everyone's time with pointless questions, leave now."
Luid pointed at a student whose hand had been stiffly raised for some time.
"Go ahead."
"That magic—it seems like something only Prince Luid can use. Am I wrong?"
It was a brown-haired girl with a fair smattering of freckles.
Luid assumed she was probably a commoner. The way she spoke suggested it, and brown hair was typical of commoners.
"No. Anyone who is a 5th-tier mage capable of using the Magic Coordinate System can perform it."
"...You say that as if the 5th tier were easy."
Luid answered without a flicker of hesitation.
"From what I understand, there are quite a few in the Expert Class. It's not easy, but it's hardly impossible."
"...Fine, granting that—but the spell you just demonstrated, Prince, didn't look all that powerful. What I wanted to know about was the magic that blew the Colosseum apart."
That much was true.
During the practical exercise, Luid had stacked dozens of layers, whereas this time he had used it only once, purely for demonstration.
But that didn't mean it was something only he could use.
"Yes. That's because I overlapped only a single element for the demonstration. The more elements you stack on top of one another, the more the power increases exponentially."
At Luid's words, some of the students began murmuring.
"So geniuses really are built different..."
"No kidding. He's got that blank expression like he can't even grasp what's supposed to be hard about this."
"I dunno about all that, but Luid is so cute... Should I start a fan club?"
"That's actually a pretty good idea."
Luid glared icily at that table.
They clamped their mouths shut at once.
"It's impossible."
the questioning student said.
Luid looked at her.
"What part of it is impossible?"
"Well, first of all..."
The brown-haired commoner girl seemed somewhat tense under all the eyes now fixed on her. She took a long, deep breath before speaking.
"First, the very idea of condensing that much pure elemental energy is already beyond reach."
"I was merely showing you an idealized example. There's no need to compress it that far. What actually matters is isolating only the clean core of the element and pinning it to the coordinate system. Ah."
Luid recalled that this was the part that had tripped him up too, back when he'd had to rely on an incantation.
"I forgot to tell you the most important part."
Luid erased the pure-element magic circle drawn on the board and sketched a new one.
There were two circles in all.
One was a circle that separated the core of an element.
The other was a circle that concentrated the separated elemental cores onto a single coordinate.
After a long while of drawing, Luid set down his chalk.
The circles were of such considerable difficulty that the students' eyes went wide.
"Good grief."
One could gauge a mage's skill simply by looking at their magic circle—as a rule, the simpler the better.
Luid's circle was complex, but the closer you looked, the more that judgment began to change.
It was astonishingly efficient.
He had taken a spell that would normally strain even a mage approaching the 6th tier and made it castable at a 5th-tier level.
At the same time, it was so precise that not a single circuit could be touched. Nothing to remove, nothing to add.
But you only ever see as much as you know.
Some of the students gave up on taking notes altogether—
—while the Master of the Magic Tower and Clifford could not hide their utter disbelief.
"...That loafer may be a wastrel, but his talent is nothing short of extraordinary."
"Hohoho, has there ever been a mage like this since the Academy's founding? How about it—I'll grant you the finest treatment I can offer. Come to the Tower society, won't you?"
the Master of the Magic Tower asked. Luid refused outright.
"No."
"Why, you insolent boy!"
Clifford rounded on the Master of the Magic Tower in fury.
"How dare you try to poach my student?"
"Ahem. My apologies. My greed simply got the better of me."
"Not a chance! I'll take this as a grave insult to the Imperial Academy. I'll be filing a damages claim against the Magic Tower, so consider yourself warned."
It seemed money was his true motive.
Luid's eyes went cold and sour.
"...Continuing with questions."
After the small commotion, the questioner's mouth opened again.
Her feelings were rather complicated.
"Second, implementing this magic is impossible for anyone who isn't a genius like Prince Luid. Pinning a coordinate, concentrating so the spell doesn't detonate, and at the same time adding new elements on top? Really?"
She'd been saying 'impossible' over and over, and it was starting to grate on Luid.
Any mage at the 5th-tier level could use this magic. That much was certain.
Of course, matching what he had done—shattering the Colosseum wall—was probably out of reach.
That would require an enormous quantity of mana, and the cost-efficiency was poor on top of it.
But assuming a caster at the 5th-tier level—
'As far as I know, there's no single spell in the 5th tier stronger than this.'
It would yield greater destructive power than any 5th-tier magic in existence.
Highly condensed energy detonating all at once—a force beyond anything one could imagine.
"It's true that casting time shrinks considerably when done my way. But taking it step by step, carefully, doesn't change the power at all."
'If we keep going like this, this will never end.'
Luid raised a barrier.
As ever, showing beat telling.
"First, we summon the elements. I'll base this on the standard of a 5th-tier mage, so I'll lower the purity."
Elements similar to the ones Hershey had summoned earlier floated up, one of each kind.
"The defining trait of elemental magic is that once summoned, an element can persist indefinitely so long as the mana flowing into it isn't cut off. And as everyone knows, the mana cost of a single element isn't very high."
The elements formed slowly, one by one.
"So let's create as many as we can."
Round, elemental spheres filled the front of the lecture hall.
"Next, I'll stack them using the magic circle I wrote on the board. If the computation is too difficult, an incantation will do just fine."
Luid said it a little sheepishly, but firmly. After all, hesitating while saying something embarrassing only makes it more embarrassing.
"Mana, take the vigor of the earth."
The floating brown sphere dimmed and sank.
"Take the flow of water."
Likewise the blue sphere vanished, and this time a massive magic circle bloomed across the entire board.
"Take the burning flame."
Two fires now burned within the circle. A red glow had just been added.
"Take unto yourself the whirl of the wind."
And with that, the magic circle fully activated, blazing with brilliant light.
Luid stretched his hand into the empty air.
He fixed the coordinate system. Behind him, dozens of the circles drawn on the board rose up, layered one atop another.
"Stack."
Woooong—!
The spheres of every color converged at the point Luid designated.
The spheres writhed desperately, trying to tear their way out of that space, but Luid's telekinesis held them fast.
Unstable—ready to burst at any moment.
"Once you've made it this far, you're done. Release the mana and—"
KWAAANG—!
A deafening roar erupted inside the barrier. A shock massive enough to jolt their bodies washed over the room.
An impact comparable to the first time he had cast it.
"That's only because I used a barrier. Otherwise this building would have vanished without a trace."
Luid said flatly, looking at his questioner.
"This is exactly why purity matters. I compressed eighty elements in total, and it's about as strong as four compressed properly. Do you understand now? It is not impossible."
"..."
With those words, Luid looked at her.
Her mouth was pressed shut in a tight line.
Taking her silence as understanding, he swept his gaze over the students once more.
'Was that a success?'
It was his first time lecturing on magic. Since he'd gone to the trouble of braving the inconvenience, he'd hoped to earn a good impression.
But the students were all frantically scribbling notes, eyes glued to the magic board.
Hershey in particular was concentrating so hard that her tongue poked out slightly between her teeth, her pen flying across the page without pause.
'So that's what she looks like when she's focused.'
It was a strangely endearing sight—she was usually the picture of a proper 'noble young lady,' so this slightly airheaded expression came as a surprise.
Anyway, it seemed to be going not half badly, and he was just about to wrap up the lecture when—
"...That magic that holds everything in place."
She wasn't finished after all. The girl asked again.
"...That's something only nobles can do, isn't it? Holding all that together with telekinesis would take an enormous well of mana—on the level of yours, Prince."
"Keeping it from exploding without a family's ancestral magic—one refined and passed down through generations—would indeed be difficult."
She bit her lip.
"...Then perhaps Prince Luid's magic is impressive, but it isn't suited for a public lecture. Only a select few exceptional nobles could ever use it."
As she spoke, an unmistakable bitterness bled through her voice.
Only then did Luid remember who the brown-haired girl was.
Her name was Hannah. A prodigy ranked 2nd in Magic Theory.
Nursing an inferiority complex toward Hershey, who ranked 1st, she was the one who in the original story had played the victim against the already ill-reputed Hershey and gotten her disciplined.
But she was also someone who posed no threat to him whatsoever.
Luid didn't answer her question. It didn't sound like a question asked in genuine search of an answer.
The answer was already fixed in her mind. He had no intention of playing along with it.
Instead, Luid pointed at the noble girl with the extremely long ringlets who had been waving her hand and sparkling-eyed since earlier.
"You there. Your question, please."
"Does Prince Luid happen to have a fiancée? How about me?"
"?"
Shiver—.
Hershey, absorbed in her frantic note-taking, felt a prickling unease and glanced around.
'What was that?'
She had been deep in concentration, and now her focus was fraying. As she gnawed at her lip, she caught the sound of someone muttering beside her, over and over.
"Hmm, so that's how it's done."
Certain it was Damon who had shattered her concentration, Hershey shot him a glare. But Damon paid her no mind at all and muttered again.
"A target right in front of me. How convenient."
Damon leveled his wand at the commoner tables.
A stupendous mass of mana gathered, elements converging.
KWAANG!
In nearly the same instant, Hershey thrust out her wand and threw up a barrier. It was an act born of pure instinct.
Hershey's wind enveloped the sphere and smothered the explosion, but for a split second her heart felt scraped hollow.
The commoner who had asked the question earlier collapsed where she stood, her legs giving out beneath her.
Hershey shouted in fury.
"You! Are you out of your mind?!"
Damon looked at Hershey with interest.
"Ho? Not bad at all. Imperfect though it was, you managed to block my magic."
"You...! What is wrong with you?!"
Justin stalked toward Damon, seething.
The brow that hadn't so much as twitched at Hershey's shout knotted instantly.
"Did you just dare address this body as 'you'?"
Killer intent swirled in Damon's eyes. He shot to his feet and roared.
"Insolence! You gutter-born wretch!"
The space around Justin warped, and both his knees buckled.
"Gkh—!"
"The sin of naming this body with such a filthy tongue is grave. Your sentence is death!"
At Damon's gesture, Justin knelt and writhed in agony. A crushing weight of gravity was bearing down on him.
Damon reached out and clenched his hand into a fist.
Justin clutched at his own throat and crumpled to the floor.
Watching it all, Hershey thought:
'Th-that lunatic.'
"Dispel!"
Catherine hastily swept her wand. Damon released his grip and, with evident distaste, watched Catherine rush to steady Justin.
"A near miss—my noble mana almost touched something filthy. Enough. My mood is spoiled. Take him and get out."
Catherine shot Damon a silent, murderous glare and seated Justin back in his place.
Then she strode off at a brisk pace toward the front of the hall—toward Clifford.
"Headmaster!"
Catherine called out urgently.
"Did you not just see that? Someone used magic indoors—"
"Bahahaha! You're nothing special yourself, girl. Is that all you've got? I just finished my 186th layer!"
"Hehehe... just you wait, you old codger."
The two old men were busy shoving at each other, arguing over which of them was superior.
For a moment, Catherine forgot to be angry entirely and simply wore a look of dumbfounded disbelief.