I'm Not a Genius (2)
Magic is the act of using mana to construct a spell formula and then releasing it.
The formula itself can be of any kind, but it has to possess a form uniquely its own — whether that form is drawn from a person's inner image, a legend circulating among people, or even from pain. It's a little hard to put into words, but it means you have to shape it so that even someone seeing it for the first time can picture the magic and understand it.
I spread a stiff sheet of blank parchment wide across the desk and took up my quill. Piece by piece, I began transferring onto the paper the structure of that colossal clockwork my future self had completed.
A geometric magic square that reversed the flow of time. Raising the framework and overlaying the mental image onto it came without a hitch, for the form of that brilliant golden clockwork I had seen that day was perfectly engraved in my mind.
But the quill that had been racing across the paper without pause suddenly stopped dead.
Huh.
One cog that should have meshed smoothly was ever so slightly out of true. It wasn't a simple miscalculation. The math itself was flawless — what was missing were the vanishingly fine currents of mana and the connecting links that should have joined those pieces together. They were simply empty.
Only then did I realize a fatal blind spot in the regression magic stored in my memory.
The one who used to fine-tune the formulas... was her.
Completing the formula in my previous life had not been my achievement alone. My assistant — no. That hopelessly kindhearted romance-fantasy protagonist, Cecile, had been there to help.
I'm going to lose my mind.
Checking every line of the formula by pouring mana into it one by one was laughably beyond my current reserves. In the end, I would have to finish this thing on pure calculation alone.
"Haa..."
I pressed my throbbing temples and let out a long sigh. Not that I had the faintest intention of giving up.
I'll just have to brute-force it with raw brainpower.
I tightened my grip on the quill and started over, reverse-calculating every formula I had written, working backward from the end.
One sheet. Then another.
Parchment stained with wrong answers and crumpled into balls piled up on the floor like snowflakes. The ink ran dry several times, and bloodshot veins stood out around my stiffening eyes, but I never stopped. If I couldn't pour mana in and confirm it with my own eyes, I would simply run every last one of the tens of thousands of possible errors as a simulation inside my head.
How many days passed like that, food and drink abandoned, as I clung to the work like a man possessed?
"Never again..."
At last I all but flung the quill down onto the desk. Dozens of parchment sheets lay spread before me, magical equations arrayed without a hair's breadth of empty space.
"That was genuinely insane."
A cracked, hoarse voice leaked out. As I scanned the completed formula from beginning to end, a hollow laugh spread across my lips, like a man who'd lost his mind. To be clear, it wasn't joy at finishing the formula that made me laugh.
Does true talent actually exist?
I'd been told that Cecile, in my previous life, had never properly studied magic. And yet she had kept pace with me on nothing but instinct and brought the regression formula to completion. Once again, I felt it in my bones just how far off the scale this world's protagonist truly was.
For the sake of the world, Cecile has to learn magic.
Sweating over a blade day after day will never match the heights of force that magic can reach. Even in the original romance fantasy's descriptions, a sword trained to its absolute limit still only cuts the sky. From 8th Tier Magician onward, you can tear the heavens themselves open with a spell. Leaving her to rot as a mere swordsman would be a loss for all of humanity.
It wasn't some personal hatred of knights talking. To stop the apocalypse that was coming, her magic was indispensable.
It won't be easy.
Thinking back on the original, getting Cecile onto a magic path was hardly going to be easy.
"Well, I'll figure it out somehow."
First I had to get into the academy and find her. I carefully gathered the dense bundles of formulas scattered across the desk and tucked them into my coat.
When I finally emerged from the laboratory after several days, Master was sprawled across the living-room sofa as usual, humming under her breath. I walked over without a word and dropped the bundle of parchment I'd tucked away onto the table.
"Master."
"Hm? My adorable disciple, giving up already and coming ou— wait, what is all this?"
"Isn't this the homework you assigned me?"
At my answer, Master snorted a laugh and picked up the parchment.
"Let's see... what on earth has my cheeky little disciple been holed up in his room for days doi—"
Her languid voice cut off the instant she turned the first page. Master's eyes began racing along the densely written formulas. The playful glint in her gaze gradually hardened, then darkened into outright shock.
Rustle, rustle.
I could feel her hands moving faster and rougher as they scanned the formulas. For a long while she kept her nose buried in the paper without even breathing, until at last she snapped her head up.
A voice steeped in wonder and horror alike. Watching the greatest magician's expression crumble so satisfyingly made every day I'd spent reverse-calculating until I spat blood feel worth it.
The admiration lasted only a moment. Master immediately furrowed her brow and stroked her chin.
"But, disciple. This magic... it doesn't activate just by pouring in a massive amount of mana."
"It'll need countless materials for the preliminary work, I assume."
At my calm reply, Master's eyes went round.
"A large-scale working of this magnitude... I'm not sure even stripping the Imperial treasury bare would be enough to cast it."
She wasn't wrong. Which was precisely why I had shown Master the formula for this regression magic without a second thought.
Master isn't a villain, but.
That only meant she wouldn't harm the innocent unless someone picked a fight first — she was still an eccentric among eccentrics. If a grand magician drunk on the pursuit of truth learned of this tremendous magic that reversed time itself, there was no telling what she might do in her excitement. For the moment, however, it was a magic no one on this continent could actually execute, which was why I could afford to show it.
In my previous life I bribed the Imperial warehouse keeper to obtain the materials.
At this point in time, with the world still intact and turning peacefully, there was no chance the Empire would be mad enough to simply hand those materials over from the Imperial vaults.
"The condition you set was to bring you a magic formula surprising enough to startle you, was it not?"
"That's right, that's right. And this was more than enough to surprise me. How should this master of yours praise you? Is there something you want from me?"
Master smiled with her eyes and leaned in toward me.
"While we're at it, I could even pass on one of my secret arts. With that clever head of yours, you'd pick up my magic in no time, wouldn't you?"
Her scheme to keep me planted in this magic tower was painfully obvious. I shook my head without a hint of hesitation.
"I don't need any of that."
"Ahem. This is a reward your great master is bestowing in person. Then what in the world do you wan—"
I cut her off and made the demand in a very clear voice.
"Write me a Recommendation Letter so I can sit the academy entrance exam."
Fifteen days after setting out with a single Recommendation Letter and a bit of luggage, I finally arrived at the Imperial Capital.
To be fair, fourteen of those days had gone to peeling Master off of me, and I'd covered the remaining distance in a single day via her teleportation magic. Same difference, really.
...It was this impressive?
What mattered was that the Imperial Capital I had arrived in looked considerably different from the one I knew.
The region around the Black Thorn Magic Tower was practically the countryside. And the Imperial Capital I had visited in my previous life, after war with the Demon King's army had broken out, had been a similar wreck of collapsed buildings — so I had assumed that even a capital wouldn't amount to much.
But just as the romance fantasy had described it, the streets unfolding before my eyes were a colossal work of art in themselves. Above all, the Imperial Palace — which in my memory had sat hideously abandoned with its roof blown clean off — now displayed an overwhelming, majestic presence in the far distance.
So this is what a world at peace looks like.
The feeling was strangely new. But I didn't have time to stand in the middle of the street soaking it in. I hadn't come here to sightsee.
I hurried my steps and arrived at the Empire's finest educational institution: Royax Academy.
The academy's front gate, in the thick of admissions season, overflowed with ornate carriages from every corner of the country, young noble heirs, and prospective students. And in that noisy crush, I found her far too easily.
There she is.
Cherry-blossom pink hair and clear emerald eyes. The only difference from back then was that instead of armor stained with blood, she wore a modest set of civilian clothes that didn't even fit her properly.
Cecile.
The protagonist of this damned romance-fantasy world was standing right there.