The Veteran's Training Method (2)
Joy clasped her hands tightly together the moment Lucy promised to help her.
She had no idea what methods Lucy had used, but this was a girl who had grown, in a single year, to a level where she could rightly be called one of the most promising talents on the continent.
If Joy could learn how Lucy had grown, then surely she could become strong enough to stand beside her.
Judging by how firmly Lucy had warned her, the process probably wouldn't be easy.
Even so, that was fine.
Joy hadn't been raised like a hothouse flower all her life, after all.
She had worked hard to become someone worthy of the title of the Patran family's young lady.
She was confident she could endure whatever hardships came her way.
Where will we even start?
While Joy was psyching herself up with such thoughts, Lucy began her explanation.
"Airhead Lady. Starting now, I'm going to turn your scrub self into the greatest mage alive."
"You, Lady Aln?"
Joy had never once doubted that Lucy was an extraordinary person.
If she had, she never would have asked for her help in the first place.
But that faith had been strictly about growing as one of Lucy's party members.
Not about growing as a mage.
Which was only natural.
Luck Aln, born into a knightly house and raised as a knight, couldn't possibly know how to become an outstanding mage.
"What's that supposed to mean? Airhead Lady. You said you'd do as you were told, and now you're already whining?"
"No! That's not it."
"Just listen first, Airhead Lady. And if you don't like something, say so. What kind of baby noble lady has that little patience?"
"...Understood."
When Joy cautiously nodded, Lucy stepped in front of her, crossed her arms, and squared her shoulders with full confidence.
It was adorable, watching the tiny girl stand so proud before her towering frame — but Joy kept that thought to herself.
She had a feeling a torrent of venom would come flying her way otherwise.
"The very first thing we need to do is fix your pathetic stamina, Airhead Lady."
"My stamina?"
"That's right. You're a scrub mage, which makes you dead weight right now, Lady."
Dead weight.
The instant she heard those words, what flashed through Joy's mind was Lucy's dungeon record — clearing a new floor every five minutes.
Lady Aln must consider that pace her baseline.
Which is why she believes building the stamina to keep up with her is essential.
Having understood Lucy's reasoning, Joy nodded.
"I see. What should I do?"
"Airhead Lady. Run."
"So we're running, then."
Is this to warm up first, maybe?
Joy simply started moving her legs, following Lucy and Frey.
Before long, though, she fell behind.
No matter how long she had trained, Joy was still a mage.
There was no way she could match those two's physical conditioning.
At first, she did her best to keep up anyway.
"Airhead Lady. There's no way a scrub mage like you can keep up with me, is there? Take it slow — nice and easy, airhead, airhead."
But when Lucy saw Joy gritting her teeth and told her to ease off, Joy decided to simply run at her own pace instead.
And so Joy kept running.
Thirty minutes passed. Then an hour.
Just as her legs began to go numb and a tearing pain seized her lungs, Joy couldn't help but wonder.
Exactly how long does she intend to have me warming up?
At this rate I'm not going to finish warming up — I'm going to run myself completely dry.
Around the time those doubts formed, Lucy and Frey — still sprinting at a pace that put horses to shame — brushed past her from behind.
"Lady Aln!"
"Hm? What?"
"How long are you planning to run?"
"Aha. What's this~ are your legs going all wobbly on you?"
"It hasn't gotten quite that bad."
It was true that she was exhausted and struggling, but she wasn't about to collapse.
"Hmm. Really? Then let's run just as long as we already have."
Th...at means another hour?
The moment the declaration landed, Joy's lips went stiff — but Lucy only flashed her a maddening little smile.
"What? Don't tell me you can't even manage this? Ohh, so you're a baby noble lady with no patience after all? Should I pat your head and coo at you?"
"Fine. I'll do it!"
"Ahaha. She's mad. She's mad."
Lucy snickered and darted ahead, and Joy gritted her teeth and chased after her.
And so Joy ran for another hour, and then another thirty minutes on top of that, until she finally collapsed from exhaustion.
The truly astonishing part was that even after that, Lucy kept running for quite a while longer — long after Frey had flopped face-down onto the ground — before finally allowing herself a rest.
"Airhead Lady. Tell me which classes you're taking."
Lucy's guidance didn't stop there.
She went through Joy's entire course load, laying out which classes were worth her time and which weren't.
If that explanation had been vague or half-baked, even Joy — who trusted Lucy as much as she did — might have started to doubt.
But Lucy's explanation was so thorough that Joy found it impossible to doubt a single word.
The moment Joy so much as named a professor, Lucy would not only identify the class and detail its contents, but also go on to tell her whether that class was something Joy actually needed or not.
"What you need most right now, Airhead Lady, is a deep mana pool and fast, precise casting. Even if a scrub mage like you learns a pile of spells, there's no way you'll handle them properly, right? So as for which classes you should take..."
That advice matched, down to the letter, what the Patran family's private tutors had once told her.
Lady Aln... you really do have knowledge of magic after all?!
Back then, I'd assumed it was another groundless claim — like before.
"Got all that?"
"Yes. I understand. So I just add these classes to my schedule?"
"That's right. And now let me tell you what else you need to do, besides the conditioning."
What Lucy demanded of Joy was simple: every evening, without fail, she was to cast the attributeless spell Telekinesis — silently, without incantation — until her mana ran bone dry.
Even the method was specific.
She would start by moving a single orb with telekinesis.
Then, each time she grew comfortable with it, she would add another orb.
"Airhead Lady. You keep doing that until you can handle five objects freely and effortlessly, all at once. Even a baby airhead can manage that much, right?"
Joy had no idea what the point of Lucy's demand was.
But she didn't doubt it.
She had already confirmed, during their talk about academy classes, that Lucy possessed genuine knowledge of magic.
Someone like that would never assign meaningless work — so Joy resolved to follow her instructions.
And then, that very evening.
As she obediently practiced her telekinesis just as Lucy had told her, Joy finally understood why Lucy had ordered it.
"Manipulating multiple objects with telekinesis takes an insane amount of concentration. Far more than I expected."
Telekinesis was a basic spell among the attributeless arts.
Which meant its mana cost was small, and it was easy to squeeze out without an incantation.
But controlling it was another matter entirely.
Lifting and moving a single object wasn't difficult.
She'd done it so many times before that it had bored her to tears.
But the moment she moved two, everything changed.
The concentration required to wield telekinesis on two separate orbs simultaneously wasn't merely double.
It was, at minimum, triple — and for complex movements, four times or more.
Naturally, when she lifted all three at once, the strain grew truly severe.
So severe that trying to control all three left her unable to properly manage any of them.
"It's efficient."
Joy knew many methods for honing her control over mana.
But most of them worked by overloading herself — casting ever harder, more complex spells.
That meant proportionally greater mana consumption, and far shorter training sessions before she ran dry.
What Lucy had shown her was different.
Precisely because telekinesis was a basic spell, the mana it consumed was tiny.
Yet the concentration it devoured rivaled any advanced magic.
It's remarkable.
Luck Aln. Where in the world did you learn a method like this?
No mage anywhere has ever suggested such a training method to me before.
Plenty of renowned mages have told me nothing more than to master harder and harder spells — not one of them ever proposed training built around telekinesis.
Don't tell me this is something you devised yourself, Lady Aln?
If it is... then I don't think I'll be able to help but admire you.
It doesn't make sense.
I, too, was called talented by many people.
I grew up hearing, again and again, that I was destined for greatness.
And yet you, Lady Aln — you make my talent look dim.
However experienced a knight might be, it was difficult for them to possess knowledge of magic.
And with good reason: the knowledge a knight had to master and the knowledge a mage had to master stood in direct opposition to each other.
Learning both was all but impossible.
Even those who claimed to have mastered both were, in most cases, people who had learned them half-heartedly and put on airs.
But Lucy Aln was different.
She clearly possessed true knowledge of magic.
More of it, and greater talent, than Joy — who had studied magic her entire life.
Ahaha. I suppose it wasn't for nothing that you took first place in the academy entrance exam?
Your knowledge simply runs too deep and reaches too wide — and that was the inevitable result.
"Haaah. At this rate, will the day ever come when I can stand beside Lady Aln as an equal?"
Too far.
Far, far too far.
Her back is so distant.
To repay everything I owe her, I have to stand beside her.
"I'll simply have to work harder."
Hard enough to catch up to Lady Aln's talent.
For some reason, ever since I'd taught Joy her training regimen, a look of reverence had settled into her eyes.
Worse still, whenever she hit something about magic she didn't understand, she came running to me with questions.
All I did was tell her the methods I used when leveling up a mage character in Soul Academy!
I don't know a single thing about actual magic!
Joy, even if you ask me, I have nothing to teach you!
I screamed internally like that, but actually telling Joy "I don't know" was impossible.
I didn't want to plant disappointment in those adoring eyes of hers.
So each time, I turned to Grandpa for help.
The one saving grace was that Grandpa had been an extraordinarily versatile holy knight.
Having once been forced to sit through needlessly convoluted, difficult lectures from the Hero's Party's mage back in the day, Grandpa fielded Joy's questions without the slightest trouble.
The problem was that I was the messenger delivering those answers — and every time, Joy's reverence for the messenger only grew.
Child. What do you plan to do if a question comes along that even I cannot answer?
'Well...'
You'd best study your magic. That's what.
'...'
Several days had passed since Joy began training under Lucy's orders.
Running every morning until she collapsed from exhaustion, building her strength.
Standing up during lectures and listening from the back of the room so she wouldn't doze off.
Nights spent wielding Telekinesis until her mana gave out, then dropping into bed.
Seeing herself improve little by little, day by day, Joy had woken every morning brimming with motivation — but today was different.
She rose in the morning, stared up at the ceiling stained with the pale hues of dawn, and passed a hand down her face.
"The dungeon."
Today was the day she had promised to enter a dungeon with Lucy.