Welcome to the Magic Corps! (3)
The training had a deeper purpose behind its brutality. You think I was just messing with them? Like I still held a grudge against Bruno or something?
…Now that I think about it, claiming I had zero lingering resentment might be pushing it. Yesterday afternoon, I’d definitely hurled an unusually high number of Energy Bolts his way.
“Fire Ball.”
"Fire Ball."
⟨ Fire Ball ⟩
Boom!
“Aaaagh! Why do they only fly at me?!”
It’s a misunderstanding. I was casting magic on everyone equally, okay? At least for this particular drill, I really was.
The current training mixed Energy Bolts with occasional Fire Balls. Yesterday we’d scattered Energy Bolts to help them learn how to sense mana. Today we were throwing Fire Balls into the mix.
By exploiting the massive difference in mana between a 2-Circle spell like Energy Bolt and a 3-Circle spell like Fire Ball, we were training the recruits to quickly distinguish the scale of magical power.
Thwack!
“Gwaaak!”
Damn, what a pathetic guy. He was so focused on the Fire Balls that he ate a clean Energy Bolt right to the face.
Ironically, the two people best suited for this training should have been Bruno and Sir Levenstil. They already knew how to handle mana before joining the unit, so they should’ve been able to sense it from the start. This exercise should have been easy for them…
“Huff… huff… Commander, sir… could we… maybe take a short break…?”
One had garbage stamina, and the other—the son of a knight family—had collapsed because he couldn’t even dodge this much. Meanwhile, the three recruits we’d picked up from the village were adapting far better. It was almost comical.
Ugh… this is giving me a headache. Just thinking about those two makes my head throb.
‘Let’s leave those two alone for now. How are the others doing?’
Hans still looked relatively relaxed. Even though yesterday’s PT had been pretty intense, he’d held up well, and today’s training didn’t seem to be giving him too much trouble either.
He’d taken several Energy Bolts thanks to his still-immature mana sensing, but the hits weren’t severe enough to interfere with training, so I figured he was fine.
Elena was still dodging everything beautifully. She seemed to have picked up mana sensing incredibly fast. The moment a spell flew at her, she’d nimbly slip out of its line of fire. Out of everyone, she was following the training the most textbook-perfect way.
Still, watching her dart around like that… for some reason, she reminded me of a squirrel.
…And then there was Helmut.
“Muscles!”
This guy was clearly born in the wrong era and the wrong world. If he’d been born in my previous life, he would’ve been a bodybuilder, a fitness trainer, or at the very least some shredded health influencer.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Three Energy Bolts slammed into his upper body, but he just struck a bodybuilding pose like it was nothing. The sheer absurdity of it irritated me so much that I fired off a Fire Ball.
“Hup-cha! Muscles!”
He immediately dropped the pose and lightly dodged it. If you’re going to dodge, then dodge everything, damn it. This is driving me insane. At the very least, I wish he’d stop yelling “muscles.”
Looking at the three problem children, it was clear they were going to be the biggest headaches for the rest of training.
“Training terminated! That concludes this afternoon’s session! You are free to rest until we reassemble at this clearing at dawn tomorrow! Take care of your fallen comrades and return to the manor to rest!”
“Yes, sir!”
Hans helped Bruno while Helmut supported Sir Levenstil, and the whole group headed back toward the lord’s manor. Watching their retreating backs, I couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.
“Looks like it’s time for some special measures.”
The next day’s afternoon arrived.
We’d continued the same training from the morning, but as expected, there weren’t any dramatic improvements. Maybe I’d pushed them too hard—the bottom had risen quickly, but this method clearly wasn’t enough to reach the top.
So for the afternoon session, I decided to switch things up with a completely different kind of training.
“Light!” “Light! Light! Wait, I think I almost had it—gwaaak!”
Thwack!
“What do you mean you almost had it, you idiot!”
I hurled an angry Energy Bolt at Bruno. I’d clearly explained it to him earlier, but he just couldn’t focus. I told him not to just shout the spell—he needed to visualize the image while circulating his mana.
Argh, seriously. If he couldn’t handle mana at all, I’d understand. But the fact that he could control it and still acted like this made me wonder if he was doing it on purpose just to spite me. It wasn’t even a difficult spell. It was just Light, for crying out loud.
Among 1-Circle spells, Light was one of the easiest to visualize, which was why I’d made practicing it the main focus of the afternoon session.
It was the most intuitive one, right? You just had to imagine creating a sphere of light with mana. That was why I chose it as the assignment… but was he really doing this on purpose?
No, please let it be on purpose. If he’s failing this badly without even trying, I might actually lose my mind.
Everyone except Bruno was making decent progress with the practice.
Ah, correction. There was one other person who wasn’t progressing smoothly.
“Fire Ball!”
Tick. Tick. Tt-dick!Pshuuu——.
I’d given Sir Levenstil a different assignment. Since he was already a 3-Circle mage, there was no point in making him practice Light. Instead, I’d told him to construct a Fire Ball with a modified image.
“Fire Ball!”
Tt-dick! Tick! Tick!Pshuuu——.
But it clearly wasn’t working. The mana kept dissipating into the air before it could fully form into a spell. It looked like he couldn’t build a clear enough mental image.
“Sir Levenstil, is something wrong?”
“…Yes, it is.”
Hmm. Strange. It wasn’t that difficult of a task.
I’d simply told him to reduce the power but modify the image so that it would make a loud noise when it exploded. What was so hard about that? Two days ago I’d thrown one together on the spot in the commoner village, so I didn’t think it would be that challenging.
As I was thinking that, Sir Levenstil spoke up in a slightly dissatisfied tone.
“This… is strange. Why are you telling me to use magic in a way that deviates from the established form?”
“…? Because it works? Fire Ball.”
Pshwooooong! Boom!
When I constructed the spell and launched it into the sky like a firework, Sir Levenstil stared at me with a blank expression. His next words sounded almost dazed.
“I… I have never seen magic conceptualized and used in this manner before!”
Huh? That was an odd thing to say. When Inti taught me, she only emphasized that the image was important. I’d never heard that modifying spells like this was forbidden.
“You’re really seeing this for the first time?”
“I swear it. My master never used magic in such a way either.”
“What about the Magic Tower? What about their mages?”
“They are the same. They only use the established forms assigned to each spell. At least within my knowledge, there are no examples of mages improvising and modifying spells on the spot like this.”
…For real?
Then what exactly was the method Inti had taught me? She’d clearly said that magic was created according to the image, and I’d been using it that way this entire time.
“…I see.”
Hmm… It had been a while since I felt this deep in thought. This kind of headache was something I hadn’t experienced since Inti stayed at the estate. And since the root cause of this dilemma was the magic construction method she’d taught me, in the end, Inti was to blame once again.
“For now, do you think you can construct the Fire Ball in the way I just demonstrated?”
“…I will try.”
I reassigned the task to Sir Levenstil, but even by the end of the afternoon training on the third day, he still hadn’t succeeded.
It seemed to be a matter of perception. That was the conclusion I reached after returning to the manor and reflecting on today’s training.
The reason Sir Levenstil couldn’t create a firework-style Fire Ball was probably because he had no concept of primitive magic to begin with.
“If primitive magic is essentially the root form of magic, then spells built purely from imagery would also fall under primitive magic.”
In other words, the way I freely altered the spell formula on the fly was, on a fundamental level, much closer to primitive magic than modern magic. I was arbitrarily reshaping an existing spell according to whatever image I wanted.
“Most ordinary mages like Sir Levenstil probably only know and use modern magic—spells with fixed, predetermined formulas.”
They were trapped by a kind of cognitive bias that limited their freedom of thought.
“So if they need a different effect, they’d develop an entirely new spell rather than improvising the image on the spot.”
I’d been casually changing formulas and images this whole time without thinking much of it. I never realized there was such a massive gap in understanding.
“…Just who the hell is Master, really?”
Inti. Her true identity was becoming more and more intriguing.
As I stared at the magic tome Inti had lent me, the day in Weissenfels territory came to a close amid deep contemplation.