The Gravity of Imagination
They say, if you can't avoid it, just enjoy it.
But to truly enjoy something, you need something worth enjoying.
What is the most important thing in magic?
It is chanting.
It had been an unchanging common sense for countless years.
Every single mage who had ever cast spells had felt it for themselves.
But.
For Shati, this unbreakable truth was shattered in an instant.
Thanks to her magic instructor, Meiel.
Meiel told her that the true source of magic was not chanting, but imagination.
A concept no one had ever dared to imagine.
Yet when Shati firmly visualized it, she could cast magic without any chant at all.
Her own skill had skyrocketed overnight.
And not just her.
Every student in the class experienced the same miraculous breakthrough.
Meiel's words were undeniable truth.
Shati had lived a life full of arrogance.
She had never respected even her father, the grand mage.
But for the first time in her life, she respected someone.
Following in Meiel's footsteps, grasping the hem of her robe, she discovered that Meiel had grown far more in the past ten years than Shati herself had in ten years of practice.
After a month of hard effort chasing her idol, Shati finally understood Meiel deeply.
She was far from lazy.
Despite her sleepy appearance, she was wide awake.
Her body was surprisingly strong.
She could lift over one hundred kilograms with ease.
Yet she solved most problems through magic.
She was completely different from her older sisters.
Shati had heard from friends Arin, Kana, and Riana that the other sisters taught in a brutal Spartan style.
They didn't even blink while wielding weapons.
They were devils themselves.
But Meiel?
Her classes were still Spartan, yet she always looked adorable and healed her students.
Her dragging voice was cute.
Her half-closed eyes were even cuter.
All the students in magic class received healing from this adorable Meiel.
She was an angel.
Not a devil.
She had said it was only the belief she held until recently.
But now she knew better.
Everyone saw the nobleman earlier...
They had watched him fly into the sky and then plummet to the ground.
So today...
We're learning gravity magic.
Shati's face froze the moment she heard Meiel's first words.
All these siblings are the same in their heads.
Why are we learning gravity magic?
They all already knew how to cast non-chant magic.
Adding a tiny bit of attribute to it shouldn't be that hard.
Well, no matter what the reason is, we have to learn it.
It won't kill me to study it.
I'd love to know why they're making us do this...
But there's no point dwelling on it.
I shook my head and moved on.
Gravity magic was going to be crucial when we reached the underwater kingdom.
It was best to master it completely.
No one was allowed to refuse.
Not even if it had always been there.
I finished my thoughts and, just like every other lesson, waved my staff to visualize the magic power in the air.
Being able to cast non-chant magic meant I had reached a certain level of mastery.
Showing magic power directly was far more efficient than writing formulas on the board.
Alright then.
Let's begin the lesson...
Each student instinctively picked up their wand or staff and sat in a cone shape before me.
Since they had already mastered the visualization of imagination, they each reshaped the soil element into chairs.
I confirmed everyone was seated and turned back to the power I had visualized.
Sssssssssssshhh──
The magic power in the air glowed with the blue light of the wind element.
I poked at it with my staff and asked the students.
Before learning gravity magic, you need to understand the nature of elements.
Do any of you know the basic properties of elements?
It was a simple common-sense question that every mage should know.
Of course, every student raised their hands.
They didn't care about grades, but they clearly wanted to answer.
Everyone looked confident enough to give the correct answer.
I pointed at an extra student sitting in the middle.
Yeah, you. Answer it.
Yes! The basic properties of elements are fire, water, earth, wind, light, dark, life, and death. That's eight in total.
Correct.
Easy question, as expected.
I nodded at the extra student and touched each piece of visualized power with my staff.
Uuuuung───
The floating magic power instantly changed color on contact with my staff.
Red, blue, yellow, sky blue, gold, black, green, purple.
In the exact order the extra student had listed.
Each element transformed into its true nature.
The students watching stared with mouths open.
Whoa...
How can they change elements so easily...
I've never seen such cleanly purified elements before!
To mages, changing elements wasn't difficult.
But that was only when changing a lump of magic power.
Doing it individually was truly magical.
Probably every student would need at least ten years to master it properly.
That was why their amazement was natural.
But what I was teaching was not these advanced techniques that required ten years.
It was merely a reference for the colors and forms of elements.
I waved my staff once more, changing all the multicolored power into the yellow of earth and the black of dark.
Among you, some might already know.
Gravity magic is a synthetic element created by combining the earth element with the dark element.
Mastering it allows you to do many things.
For example, creating a small black hole.
Or turning enemies into cube-shaped chunks.
Or, as I showed you this morning, blasting them all the way into the stratosphere.
One by one, I listed the examples.
The students' faces slowly hardened.
I chuckled inside my robe and slowly rose into the sky.
But these are too difficult for you to do...
So today, you'll simply learn to lift heavy objects with gravity magic.
Thank goodness...
Professor, creating black holes is ridiculous.
It won't work anyway.
We're only going to lift light objects, though.
Thank you...
Professor is so mean.
Black holes? No way.
But it seems like it might actually work.
That scares me...
The students began chatting cheerfully after realizing the lesson was simple.
Meanwhile, Shati, who had already started practicing gravity element synthesis, raised her hand.
Professor! So what exactly do we have to lift today?
It looked like she wanted to know what I was planning to create.
Lift what?
That would make it boring if we knew in advance.
I didn't answer her question directly.
Instead, I began stacking shields around us.
Shields so sturdy even an ant couldn't escape.
The students looked up at the shield covering the floor they were standing on with desperate eyes.
I ignored them completely and continued building in silence.
Kaboom─── CRASH!
Done...
A perfect one-hundred-square-meter cube shield.
Only the students were trapped inside.
I floated outside the shield, looking down on them.
The construction was complete.
Time to answer Shati's question properly.
Just a moment...
This feels unstable somehow.
I agree...
Shati and Pina, with their sharp instincts, sensed something wrong with my actions.
But, well, once you were inside the shield, it was already too late to worry about anything.
Now then...
Prepare the gravity element.
We have to use it...
Wait, this is kind of difficult.
Have you done it?
Yeah.
Just keep fusing it a little more.
Like melting it in a furnace.
Alright!
Some students who still hadn't grasped the feeling used the help of others to finally create gravity elements.
Yet I remained merciful.
This was all training for the future.
I waved my staff vigorously and began adjusting the magic power inside the shield.
『Sea, become!』
A single word.
It carried the power to materialize imagination.
And the moment my words echoed, a massive amount of water began materializing above the students' heads.
Water filled half the shield in the blink of an eye.
The students looked at me in disbelief.
No way...
Even if you're Spartan...
This is too much...
Yeah, no matter what, this can't be real.
The students shook their heads, trying to deny reality.
Shati and Pina also disrupted the gravity elements they had created.
They exchanged words saying it was impossible.
But the next instant, my words forced them to grab the elements again.
Today's assignment is to lift all this water with gravity magic...
Group project, so everyone give it your all.
If you fail, you'll just be drowning rats in water.
The moment my words ended, the falling rainstorm collided with the gravity magic the students had squeezed out desperately.
AAAAAHHHHHH───!!
Block it all!!
This is crazy!!
As the students' screams tore through the air, I comfortably sat on my staff and tore open a chocolate bar.
In about ten minutes, I'll need to double the water volume...
While thinking of such demonic thoughts, I bit into the chocolate.