Don't Fight, Have Sex (5)
"When you hear the phrase 'mana ratio,' what comes to mind? If you've studied dot characters, you'll already know that two kinds of mana exist within a person."
There was Natural Mana, still untouched by any influence, and Innate Mana, refined in a way unique to one's own body and thus carrying distinctive properties.
In truth, once you recognized that these two existed and learned to manage their proportions to some degree, drawing dot characters wasn't difficult. Suppress the change as much as possible, and you got the same characters you'd always drawn.
"If you don't deliberately hold it in check, the ratio between these two manas will shift — but that doesn't actually change a spell's effects in any major way. With beginner magic especially, the difference is practically nonexistent."
With advanced magic, the difference was slight but real. That was why upperclassmen apparently spent some time learning to adjust the ratio, if only a little. Still, the gap was small enough that it wasn't something you particularly needed to obsess over. Advanced magic was often hard to grasp in terms of pure principle, so mages had no choice but to fine-tune effects through this mana ratio.
Come to think of it, advanced magic wasn't something we constructed the effects for the way we did with beginner spells — we used what had been handed down from the past as-is, right? If that was the case, it made sense.
"Anyway, if this mana ratio suddenly fluctuates too violently, the magic characters will fail to fire. It's just that while you're drawing them, the ratio tends to suppress itself naturally, so most people never notice."
"So when using dot characters, you have to preserve that purity all the way through to the finish. But that only applies when drawing a single character."
In other words, the other letters inside a magic circle could run on different mana ratios without any problem. And then someone discovered that if you completely separated Natural Mana from Innate Mana — you didn't have to project from a single point. You could draw characters from entirely different points of projection.
Which meant: if you could forcibly lock that ratio at one hundred percent during mana projection? Your left and right hands could each use a different type of mana to draw completely different figures. And that was how the Dual Casting we knew came into being.
"There's a reason this was discovered so late. There simply wasn't any need to do it this way."
Regulating Natural Mana to one hundred percent purity was extraordinarily difficult. Even a trace of Innate Mana could serve as a trigger, making it easy for the mana to obey your commands. But with only Natural Mana, it was essentially wild mana — and controlling it was anything but easy.
"In fact, that's the core of this entire method. Separating two manas that desperately want to mix, then drawing magic characters with the hard-to-handle Natural Mana in that separated state."
So all that talk about testing our studies in Basic Magic hadn't been for nothing. The resistance patterns of this Natural Mana were completely different from any mana resistance we'd ever dealt with. You had to study them separately, dig out the principles, and apply those principles to your hands. It was essentially like drawing magic with an entirely new tool.
"You're already familiar with regulating and maintaining mana purity, aren't you? Separating the projection itself shouldn't be that hard, so you'll adapt quickly."
Of course, the professor's idea of "quickly" and our idea of "quickly" seemed to mean slightly different things. Roughly the same feel as when we'd learned those overlapping characters in another lecture. Difficult, sure — but something you could manage with practice.
Once I pulled out Innate Mana — which was easy for me to move — at one hundred percent, the resulting resistance force would make only Natural Mana come out at one hundred percent from the other hand. Using the properties that way, the state would hold for as long as I was drawing. If I alternated stopping the projection of each character, I could draw magic without fretting over the ratio at all. Once you grasped the principle, as long as you didn't make mistakes, it was something you could adapt to.
The problem is this.
The difficulty of handling Natural Mana that the professor herself had openly declared was beyond imagination. I had enough sense to draw a circle in one go by riding the resistance of mana trying to escape my hand — but this was on a level where that kind of resistance couldn't even hold a candle. Even if I wanted to keep my hand still, if I didn't apply strong force in the reverse direction, the shaking was so severe it would fly off. I could see why no one had thought to draw magic this way before. Who would think of drawing pictures with this insane crap?
"This paper also covers formulas and methods for catching that resistance in considerable detail."
"Well, I did teach you all the basics in lecture, didn't I? You've experienced it firsthand, so I trust you all understand the necessity by now."
The most important thing in Basic Magic was building a body that could adapt as quickly as possible, no matter the method. And ultimately, that was needed for moments when usage methods like this appeared. In the past, people didn't even know how to draw what we commonly call overlapping characters — passing over the same line during a single continuous stroke. When research on that method came out, they also devised ways to make it easier to draw, and that was how current magic drawing became standardized.
"Eventually, Dual Casting may become mainstream in combat magic. Above all else, the response speed is extremely fast."
But if you failed to learn this method, you'd be completely overrun by the rising new mages who had mastered it. Even with the same magical skill, if you couldn't keep up with the latest trends, you fell behind — that was the world of magic. She hoped we'd take time to reconsider the foundation of magic — drawing — and practice Dual Casting.
"That concludes today's lecture. It ended a bit early, but what you need from here on isn't me — it's time for all of you to adapt. I'll be waiting."
From now until summer break started, the exam was to go directly to Professor Londo and demonstrate Dual Casting. Succeed, and with no other requirements, she'd raise your grade rank by one level as bonus points. But since I was already at A0, unless I was aiming for A+, there wasn't really a need.
Honestly, I'm going to have to do it eventually anyway.
Even after coming to the club room, the fact that I hadn't succeeded yet left me unsettled, so I kept challenging it. But damn — no matter how you looked at it, there was a lot to study from the materials...
"Augh, honestly if it weren't for the fingers I'd have succeeded ages ago."
To achieve one hundred percent purity, you had to project mana through your fingers specifically. As if it weren't hard enough having to anticipate Natural Mana's resistance based on rules, precursors, and surrounding conditions while drawing — having to do it with unfamiliar fingers was pure hell. Honestly, I felt envious of Yuria next to me, handling her fingers perfectly. How the hell did she wield her fingers like a brush like that?
"Whoa, you've drawn quite a lot. At that rate, Yuria, you'll succeed soon, right?"
I recalled Yuria had gotten a B+ because midterms had dropped her score a bit, so this time she could definitely raise it to A+. Still, basically if you just followed the materials the professor gave, there was no problem — especially if you chose something easy for the character you had to draw with Natural Mana.
But since Natural Mana is hard to control, you have to work with your dominant hand. So even if it's "easy," the Innate Mana side has to be drawn with the unfamiliar hand.
Thinking it was tough in many ways, I clutched my head. Actually, as the professor had said, for this kind of thing, just practicing until your body learned it was best. You had to make mistakes while doing it for them to stick in your memory and gradually decrease.
"Uh, Cali. Is this how it's supposed to be?"
"Holy shit.... You succeeded already?"
Meanwhile Yuria had already succeeded, and saying she'd practice with slightly harder magic, she switched into hardcore study mode on her own. I was more amazed that she could do that while still sensitive and heated up from the breast development earlier. Was this the true power of a genius?
"Hah, I'm tired.... I'm gonna head in early and sleep today."
Normally I'd ask Yuria for a boob pillow at least. But interrupting her when she was studying that hard felt too greedy. Honestly, the bigger factor was that I hadn't slept well until yesterday from working out the new series settings.
The world's greatest magic academy is an all-girls school, and the story of a cross-dressing male student's harem.
That was roughly the base of the plot I was currently considering. It seemed like there'd be plenty to unpack about what I felt attending the female-dominated magic department as a guy. I'd been thinking a harem story might be nice instead of pure romance for a change, and even if it was a bit dated, it was a classic setup that came to mind for harem stories.
But unlike a normal academy, it had to be a completely pure girls' academy with zero interaction with men. And girls who found the very existence of a man fascinating, approaching the protagonist's secret one by one, getting skewered on his cock and lewdly corrupted.... Anyway, I was thinking about a harem story along those lines.
Honestly, it's all because of Nia.
Lately, whenever things got hard, he'd act weirdly like a girl — and he even had a body close to a girl's, right? Every time I saw that, I was shouting I'm not gay dozens of times. And because of that, I wanted to draw a manga with a character who actually contemplates that kind of thing.
"What's this, is Nia asleep? His shoes are here but I don't see him."
I was about to just go to sleep without much thought, then remembered I'd left my indoor clothes to change into in the changing room next to the bathroom that morning. Figured I'd just grab those and come out, so I opened the bathroom door and went in.
"Mmnh, mmnh-mmnh.... Hm? Eh? Eeeek!?"
"N-Nia?"
And in the changing room I'd opened without a second thought — there was Nia, completely naked, shaking those enormous breasts.
...What the fuck?