It's Best When Eaten Cold
The criteria that divided the ranks of magic were, in their own way, quite clear.
It came down to the number of targets affected.
A 1-Star Magic, for example, was any spell that could influence a single target. Personal attack magic such as Ice Spear, or lesser healing that mended a wound on one part of the body, fell into this category—and a great many of them were relatively easy to learn. Even a novice mage, so long as they carefully studied a grimoire, grasped the underlying principles, and drilled them through repetition, could call them forth without much trouble. That was 1-Star Magic.
Above that, 2-Star Magic meant any spell that affected two or more targets. Wide-area attack spells such as Rain of Frost and Fireball clustered thickly here—and from this point on, a mage had to invest considerable effort to reach them. The formulas themselves were woven from multiple strands of 1-Star Magic, demanding that one first polish the fundamentals and then learn to apply them. The mana cost of casting was several times that of a 1-Star spell, so mastery required a great deal of time and labor.
For that reason, most mages stopped there. Fully mastering even a single 2-Star spell could consume years, and being able to handle a handful of such spells was already more than enough to make a living.
Which made learning 3-Star Magic an unusual case in more ways than one.
"Are you serious? Using 3-Star Magic in a duel between students…!"
Where 1-Star and 2-Star Magic affected a predetermined number of targets, 3-Star Magic and above influenced a range of dozens of meters. A stark example was the blizzard Silvia had just conjured—a spell that induced localized weather extremes. A magic powerful enough to turn a bright spring day, in an instant, into the depths of a bitter winter.
To learn a spell of that caliber by orthodox means, one needed a mentor capable of casting 4-Star Magic and years of rigorous training under them. Yet even with an excellent teacher, a mage of anything less than remarkable talent usually failed to grasp the principle at all. For someone to spontaneously call forth magic of this level on their own—no matter how gifted—was impossible without a string of fortuitous encounters stacking one atop another.
And so this was a miracle born of chance and necessity braided together.
"See? Now it's getting through."
Silvia had wanted to win with all her heart. In her whole life, she had never longed for anything quite this fiercely.
Come to think of it—why had that been?
"Ahh, I almost have to thank that toughness of yours. You're the first one who's ever held out this long!"
A gifted mage had trained diligently in the field where her gift shone brightest. Nothing about it had been difficult, and everyone around her had praised her every achievement. It was like racing down a road paved smooth, free of any obstacle—a life spent wandering a course the world itself seemed to have laid out for her. There might be trial and error along the way, but once she set her mind to something, there was no height she could not conquer.
A life without failure. No—a life in which failure was simply not possible.
"So… why haven't you fallen yet?"
The bright sky had long since clouded over with snow. Within the blizzard, a razor wind of killing cold tore past. In the plummeting temperature, the grass around them had already frozen solid, locked in the shape of its own death. A cold that nothing could survive.
And standing alone within it were still two human silhouettes.
"Why… why won't you…?"
An obstacle. Something had risen to block the path of a girl who had believed there would never be anything to stop her.
She had thought it a mere pebble and kicked it lightly—only for it not to budge. Puzzled, she had kicked harder. The result did not change. It irritated her. It felt as though her own ability were being slighted, as if she could not even clear away a worthless stone.
And so she had poured out every ounce of power beyond her limits—a near-miraculous achievement forged from overflowing talent, relentless effort, and a crystal-clear sense of direction.
Still, she could not reach it.
Only then did Silvia understand. There were things in this world that simply would not break. To her, that truth was utterly alien.
"It's about time, I should think."
The world spun with a soft ringing. The sudden shift startled her—but only for a moment. She already knew what it was. The classic symptom of mana exhaustion, come to claim a mage who had cast beyond the measure of her reserves.
"Ah…"
Her legs gave out. In a world gone white, Silvia sank to her knees. Instinct told her the rest. She no longer had the means to sustain the blizzard. On her first attempt at 3-Star Magic, she had dumped every scrap of mana into it without craft or measure. Strength drained from her limbs until she could not so much as twitch a fingertip, and the sight of herself like that struck her as almost funny.
Only then did the other begin to move. One step. Two.
Against a backdrop of whirling snow, Silvia could only watch, helpless, as the silhouette drew slowly nearer. Words she had not meant to speak slipped from her lips.
"So this… is the taste of defeat…"
Footfalls, slow but certain, closed the distance—then stopped. The gaze looking down on her held neither mockery nor reproach. What approached her in silence was something cold. At the chill that touched her chin, Silvia understood at once.
So this is the end.
From the very beginning, the attacks aimed at killing had come for this place. After all, the duel they were fighting was the sort where one of them dying would hardly be remarkable. Taking the loser's head was a victor's natural right.
If I'd known it would end like this, I should have lived however I pleased.
She had hated the path decided for her without her consent. Follow that neatly paved road far enough, and its end would be decorated with bloodstains. The truth was, she had never wanted to kill anyone. She had wanted to live like an ordinary noble—eyes filled with nothing but bright things. The everyday life granted to everyone else had been, for her alone, a distant longing. If talent was what barred her from that life, then talent was nothing but a curse. And if death could free her from fate, then perhaps this was for the best.
Having talked herself into acceptance, Silvia quietly closed her eyes.
"Ugh, it's freezing… I'm going to catch a cold at this rate…"
I had expected as much. At this point in time, Silvia was a mage so outstanding that few could stand comparison. For someone like me, who had yet to properly master any real magic, the odds of beating her head-on were not high.
But they were not zero, either—not yet.
"Without the level-up bonuses, I would probably have frozen to death…"
Thanks to the trait Lord of Gastronomy, I had reached Level 2. Upon leveling up, I had points I did not know how to spend, so I poked around the status window until I uncovered a few things. Leveling granted three points that could be freely distributed wherever one wished. The peculiar part was that they were not limited to stats alone—you could raise magical proficiency or elemental resistance as well.
If I just wanted to get stronger right this second, dumping them into stats would be the obvious play… but my stats were going to rise on their own anyway.
The bonus stats I had gained from Luca and Roxanna came to roughly three. It might have looked small at a glance, but every stat rose at once, so in practical terms it was equivalent to a fifteen-point increase—an overwhelming leap. That alone had already pushed me past the average for a first-year Academy student, so there was no need to push further.
Naturally, then, the points had to go toward preparing for the duel with Silvia.
Cold-attribute magic is basically a physical attack wearing a magic costume, so I'll learn a Barrier spell first…
Barrier was among the simpler 1-Star spells in terms of principle, so a single point was enough to master it completely. That left two points.
Honestly, I could have saved them. Under ordinary conditions, Silvia could only use 2-Star Magic. As long as she stuck to cold-attribute spells, there were not many ways to break Barrier. If she tried to crack it by forcing magic outside her affinity and burning mana inefficiently, I could simply dodge or tank it. In the end, all I had to do was hold out until her mana ran dry.
"I was half-skeptical about her pulling off 3-Star Magic… but well, this worked out in its own way."
The condition for Silvia to conjure a blizzard was surprisingly simple: she had to feel an insurmountable wall. Originally, it was a spell she would only awaken against a powerful enemy encountered later in the main story. But if I took a strategy of blocking every single one of her attacks, she would feel something like a wall even now. In the game, there had never been an event that let you fight Silvia this early, so it had been impossible—but here, it was possible.
Well. Truthfully, I could not be sure. The condition I mentioned was only something I had inferred from the on-screen text; the real trigger might simply have been meeting a strong opponent. That was why I had held the points in reserve. If she truly did call forth a blizzard, I could dump both remaining points into cold resistance on the spot and endure.
Besides, no matter how exceptional she was, she was still only a second-year. She simply did not have the absolute volume of mana to maintain a 3-Star spell. A mana-guzzler like a blizzard would last thirty seconds at best. With cold resistance raised to ++, I could weather it without much trouble.
Still, just in case, I had layered on a few extra thick clothes before coming—so ending up merely a bit chilly was something of a relief.
"Sniff."
Even so, I was probably going to catch a cold. Maybe I should sleep warm tonight.
With that idle thought, I checked today's spoils.
"Well then—shall we see how it turned out…"
The idea of the blizzard had occurred to me yesterday. If Silvia successfully conjured one, I figured I could run a rather amusing little experiment. I put in a request at a nearby general store, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy to arrange.
A long, narrow, rounded mold stitched together from leftover scraps of leather. I filled it with the sweet juice of fruit and the like, then set a wooden stick into it. Once it got cold enough, what you would have was…
A fruit-flavored popsicle.
"Ohhh—it came out better than I expected!"
Thanks to the thorough chill of the blizzard, the popsicle had set into exactly the shape I had imagined. The long, familiar form you would see in any supermarket. Paired with weather cold enough to set your teeth chattering, it was the absolute ideal snack.
As a matter of principle, ice cream is meant to be eaten when it is cold.
"Hehe. She's probably running low on sugar as it is—I suppose I should go share some."
A complete success.
Silvia, it seemed, was a refrigerator talent of the highest order.