Star Instructor Oscar (3)
"The market is cold."
The moment Fidelina returned from her business trip, she muttered it without preamble.
Maxim looked at her as though something in her had broken down, and asked, "What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
"...We didn't sell a single bottle of potion."
She sank into her chair like a marionette with its strings cut, looking more cowed than anyone had ever seen her. The Deputy Tower Master, watching her, spoke up carefully.
"Not a single bottle? Did something go wrong?"
"I'd love to tell you it was nothing of the sort... but no. There's a serious problem."
She heaved a long sigh before continuing. "Everyone's so afraid of stepping on the Blue Tower's toes that not a single merchant will stock our potions."
"Hmm."
It wasn't a difficult problem to understand. The undisputed ruler of the continent's potion market in this era was the Blue Tower, and no merchant with any sense of survival could afford to ignore their moods.
"A thorny issue, indeed. What about lowering the price further, then?"
At Maxim's question, she shook her head. "We already have more than enough of an advantage on price. Our potions run about fifteen percent cheaper than the Blue Tower's, and since they use Shilin herbs as the main ingredient, they're better for the body and have fewer side effects. Purely on product merit and quality, we win by a landslide."
"Then did no one, even on a small scale, want to do business with us?"
"...A few black markets did request bulk supply, actually, but I turned them down. Trading with places like that would drag the Magic Tower's name through the mud."
The black market was a swamp where every kind of stolen goods circulated, and most of its suppliers were criminals. It was hardly a clean place to do business.
"No buyers despite a flawless product... that truly is a disaster."
At present, virtually all of the White Tower's revenue came from Cadena Flu-related products. But the treatment drugs had already been sold to everyone who would buy them, and the vaccine, by its very nature, was seeing its sales figures drop off fast. If a new source of income wasn't found soon, the tower would inevitably slide back into its old poverty.
Fidelina turned to Maxim. "What's Oscar been up to lately? That boy's got a frightening brain—I'd like to ask if he sees a way out of this."
"You think that child has an answer to this? From what I hear, he's been buried in preparing his lectures these days."
"...Lectures? Something to do with alchemy, I suppose?"
"No, basic magic. Believe it or not, word has it the reviews are excellent."
"Him, teaching people? I can't even imagine it."
Maxim nodded along without thinking, then cleared his throat a beat too late. "Ahem. As it happens, I'm scheduled to observe tomorrow's class, so I'll ask his opinion on the potion problem as well."
That was what he said, but he didn't seriously believe Oscar could solve this. The problem wouldn't be fixed simply by brewing a better potion.
This was a matter closer to politics than to alchemy—the kind of grown-up game that young boys like Oscar couldn't possibly know the rules of.
...Once again, an innocent child is going to be the one hurt by adults' affairs.
Maxim began pondering, deeply and gravely, how he might break the news to soften the blow.
Wednesday morning.
Having stayed up all night finishing his preparations for the next day's class, Oscar made his way to the training hall on the 40th floor. It was his first visit since the day he'd taught Franc here.
Word among the students was that there was something fun up here.
He passed dozens of training rooms before stopping in front of one whose door was a different color from all the rest. His eyes rose to the nameplate set into the wall above it.
Future Innovation Training Room
Future. And innovation.
Two words that could hardly clash more with the White Tower as it stood today, hanging together over a single door.
Of the three hundred private training rooms that filled the entire floor, only three bore this name.
I suppose I'll find out how it differs from the standard ones once I'm inside.
Stepping through, he looked around. To the naked eye, at least, nothing seemed much different from an ordinary training hall.
"...Does it feel a little different, maybe?"
He muttered the foolish thought to himself for a moment—until a clear voice flowed out of the room's speakers.
Greetings. I am Argo, the next-generation training support system.
Entry by an unregistered user has been detected.
Ah. Of course.
A spark of interest lit Oscar's eyes. Magic Engineering. Twenty years ago, when he had still been flesh and blood, this technology had sounded more like magic than magic itself—and this training hall was built on it.
Which means...
His expression soured the moment the realization landed.
Those Yellow Tower bastards must be raking in money hand over fist.
It made him sick with envy.
The voice identifying itself as Argo continued. A system notification unfurled in the air:
A personalized training course will be provided upon user registration. Would you like to register now?
"No."
Registration declined confirmed. Proceeding as unregistered user.
Please select the stage of your desired training program.
"...Stages?"
This training program consists of 100 stages. Training appropriate to your level is available at each stage.
"Hm."
Oscar stroked his chin, interest plainly showing now. "Then start me at stage one."
"Understood."
A moment later, three balls the size of a human head materialized in front of him, and began to move with the languid crawl of a tortoise.
Pop all 3 balls using physical or magical attacks.
⚠ Using area-of-effect magic will cancel the training.
He popped the balls with a light burst of mana, and cheerful music filled the training hall.
"Ah, so it's like that."
For a training exercise, the method was surprisingly fun. It would be no exaggeration to call it ideal for training reaction speed, casting speed, and mana control.
I like that they've blocked the shortcut of cheesing it with area magic, too.
Frankly, most mages would see a sizable improvement in their skills just by playing with this thing.
If stage one is this level, what would stage 100 look like?
Curiosity got the better of him. "I'd like to raise the stage."
To which stage would you like to set the program?
"Stage 100."
The instant the words left his mouth, the lights of the training hall shifted to a deep red and began to pulse slowly.
From Stage 80 onward, the balls become extremely small and fast and will attack the user. The elderly, pregnant women, and young children are advised to discontinue the challenge in preparation for potential danger.
"It's fine. Proceed."
As the lights returned to normal, Oscar rolled his neck lightly, loosening up. Really, how bad could it possibly be?
The moment that thought formed, a swarm of balls far smaller than before spawned into existence. Each one was barely the size of two knuckles.
Pop all 1,000 balls using physical or magical attacks.
⚠ Using area-of-effect magic will cancel the training.
⚠ Being struck by a moving ball 10 or more times will cancel the training.
"...!"
Oscar twisted his head on pure instinct.
Whoooong!
The ball he'd narrowly evicted was moving at a speed rivaling a fired arrow—and a full thousand of them were whirling around the training hall at that velocity.
...And they don't lose speed even when they ricochet off the walls.
A surge of genuine danger sharpened his senses. He hastily scattered four Wind Cutters into the air.
Poom! Poo-poong!
The Wind Cutters moved like living creatures, chasing down the incoming balls and bursting them mid-flight—but the number of balls showed no sign of thinning.
...If I keep this up, I'll run out of mana long before I run out of balls.
Oscar dispersed every Wind Cutter on the spot. What I need now is something with lower mana consumption than a Wind Cutter that can still pop a ball—
—and that can deploy in far greater numbers.
Decision came in the same breath as deliberation. He shaped his mana, and what he conjured was twelve needles of pure force.
Compared to a Wind Cutter, that's a 96% reduction in mana cost—and a 200% increase in quantity.
It was a method only possible because his magical calculation ability and his control over the distribution of his mana had been honed to the absolute limit.
In this body, twelve is about the most I can handle at once... but it's more than enough.
And so the twelve needles began mercilessly popping every ball that came near him, keening through the air as they went.
Get hit ten times and the training's over, right?
A former Tower Master, beaten senseless by a few balls? Not on his life.
Oscar threw himself into dodging the incoming barrage.
At least the morning conditioning has been worth something.
His lungs still burned after the slightest exertion, but he had undeniably improved from before.
Though hold on—isn't this already far beyond the level of training the kids here do?
He gave a small whistle of admiration.
It demands mana control, calculation, and manifestation—and raw physical ability on top of all that.
In other words, this 100-stage training tested not effort, but talent. It demanded something innate, something unfair and congenital.
Well. Even so.
To a man who had waded through countless battlefields, it all felt rather cute.
Pop! Paaang! Po-poong!
The sound of popcorn popping filled the training hall—until, with the thousandth ball, the notification rang out.
"Hah... hah. As a warm-up... it'll do."
Flattened on the floor, Oscar gasped for breath as sweat poured off him like rain.
Do the mages of this era train like this from childhood?
If so, the modern mage's standard might already have climbed far above the one he remembered. Which would mean the road the White Tower had to walk to catch up was longer than he'd thought.
...No rushing. One step at a time.
Smiling faintly, Oscar sprang to his feet. His strength had bottomed out in barely fifteen minutes, but his mood was never brighter.
"Might be nice to come here and blow off steam now and then."
Dragging his spent body out of the training hall, he froze mid-step as his eyes met someone else's.
"...."
A woman with long brown hair tied back at the nape of her neck. Those characteristically sharp, upward-tilted eyes caught his gaze and held it.
It was his first time seeing her in person, but he knew exactly who she was.
Veronica Frix.
She, too, was one of the problem children written down in little Oscar's journal.
Veronica Frix had come to the training hall again today, punctual as ever. Starting each morning drenched in sweat was a ritual she'd kept for years.
She was a devoted believer in the creed that healthy mana dwelled in a healthy body.
"...?"
Her footsteps stopped only because of an unexpected face.
Oscar Crucian?
The man the world had once called a genius came stumbling out of the training hall, lungs heaving. The moment their eyes met in the corridor, he stared straight at her.
"...."
Those eyes were so deep and so still that nothing behind them could be read.
She hated those eyes. They made her feel like he was looking down on the entire world.
Standing before them, she felt as if she—a person of no particular consequence to begin with—became smaller and shabbier still.
So, as always, she was the one who spoke first.
"What are you staring at?"
"...You came to train this early in the morning?"
"It's a training hall, genius. Why, did you think I came here for breakfast?"
Despite her acidic tone, Oscar held his usual blank expression and answered, slow and unhurried. "Excellent."
"...What?"
"My own philosophy is that healthy mana dwells in a healthy body. Keep training hard."
Veronica stared after him with something close to alarm as he walked away.
"...What is wrong with him? Did he swallow something bad this morning?"
He'd treated her like air and ignored her this whole time, and now suddenly he was playing the friendly senior? Even the advice itself was a joke beyond laughing at.
"Healthy mana dwells in a healthy body."
That was a famous saying of the 17th Tower Master she revered—Oscar Sage. And this boy was walking around spouting it as if he'd thought it up himself. It was absurd.
Frowning, she glared for a long while in the direction he'd vanished.
...Huh. So he does actually train.
It was a first. She'd never once seen that walking personification of arrogance put in work until he dropped.
Does he come here often?
Maybe their schedules simply hadn't overlapped until now.
...Whatever. None of my business.
Some insufferable noble's brat who looked down on her just because she was an orphan, too—what did she care?
Scowling with her whole face, she shoved the door open and stormed into the Future Innovation Training Room.
"Argo, warm-up. Stage 50."
"Understood."
She peeled off her coat and tossed it against the wall, stretching as she asked, casually, "No changes to the rankings, right?"
"There are."
"Yeah, yeah. Obviously th... what?"
Her eyes went round. "Show me the leaderboard."
The moment she asked, Argo projected a holographic ranking board into the air.
1st:Stage 100 — 9 min 57 sec — AAA
2nd: Stage 100 — 14 min 02 sec — Kilian Lockwood
3rd: Stage 100 — 14 min 55 sec — Veronica Frix
...
Veronica's lips parted, slack with disbelief as she stared at the board.
AAA?
That was the placeholder automatically recorded when an unregistered user set a new record. Her thoughts tangled into a knot.
Could one of the elders have set it? No—this board only counts mages of Level 5 and below.
Which meant that somewhere in the White Tower, a mage who wasn't an elder had just set a new record.
And not just any record. They'd shattered the accursed ten-minute wall. As far as she knew, no mage of Level 5 or below, anywhere on the continent, had ever put up a time like that.
"...Who is that?"
Due to personal information security, this cannot be disclosed.
At the expected answer, her brows drew together.
Kilian's off on an external commission, so he's not even in the tower. Then who on earth?
This training wasn't structured so that raw mana or a high level alone could buy a good score. Mana control, situational judgment, crisis awareness—and the physical ability to execute all of it under pressure.
Only a mage whose balance across every one of those axes was flawless could dream of touching the top rankings.
Right now, in our tower, who could even come close to a record like that...?
The faces of the training hall's regulars flickered through her mind one by one. She was sifting through them for a candidate when she froze for an instant.
Someone she would never normally have spared a thought had, for the briefest moment, snagged on her attention.
...Oscar Crucian?
That was probably just because she'd watched him stagger out of this very training hall a few minutes ago.
But she shook her head hard. "Pfft. No way in hell it's that guy."
A Level 2 mage who could barely cast basic magic, setting that record? It would be more credible to say the man was the reincarnation of Oscar Sage himself.
...It really can't be him... right?
And yet, like a small thorn caught in her throat, the thought of him kept pricking at her. He had once been a genius who drew the world's attention, after all.
Ugh, I'm too proud to just ask him to his face. This is driving me insane.
She wrung her hands and stewed over it for ages—until suddenly a lightbulb went off in her head.
That's it. The Reinterpretation of Basic Magic.
The lecture where Oscar Crucian himself would be teaching magic. Rumors of how extraordinary the class was had been the talk of the tower for days running, loud enough to reach her own ears.
...If I sit in on his class, I should be able to get a decent read on how good he actually is.
Long after she'd left the training hall, the mystery of AAA—and of Oscar—kept circling round and round in her head.