Training Camp (3)
Knock knock.
At the sound of knuckles rapping on the door, the Vice Tower Master called out, “Come in.”
“Pardon the intrusion.”
“……Hm? Oscar?”
It was a guest he had never expected, yet a smile spread across the Vice Tower Master's lips all the same. At some point, Oscar had become that kind of presence to him.
“What brings you here so suddenly?”
“Well… I'm not quite sure how to explain this myself, but…”
Oscar, having perfectly captured the face of a man both troubled and embarrassed, ventured cautiously, “While I was exercising in the forest today, I… found something.”
“……In the forest?”
Curiosity lighting his expression, the Vice Tower Master laced his fingers together and rested his chin upon them. The boy wouldn't be coming to him just because he'd found a pretty stone or an interesting mushroom out in the woods, after all.
“What did you find?”
“Well, it appears to be…”
Trailing off, Oscar scratched the back of his head and finished the sentence. “I believe it's a dungeon.”
After hearing Oscar's report, Vice Tower Master Hamel visited the pond in question alongside the other two elders.
Maxim stared at the water with blank, uncomprehending eyes. “……This is supposed to be a dungeon? Looks like an ordinary pond to me.”
In answer, Oscar launched into the little stage play he had prepared in advance. “I thought the same at first. But the moment I dipped my hands in to wash off some dirt…”
As he spoke, Oscar lowered one hand into the pond — and remarkably, not a single ripple disturbed the surface.
“That's when I realized it was a fake.”
“……Impressive. This is illusion magic of a very high order. Typically, illusion magic of this caliber works by reading the target's mana code to distinguish truth from falsehood — yet the fact that no such procedure is even present is what truly astonishes me.”
Mana code recognition had originally been there, but Oscar had erased it on the way back. Had he left it alone, getting into the hideout would have taken an eternity.
Thud! Maxim landed on the pond's floor and eyed the door planted boldly there with wariness. “Hm. It looks like a classic dungeon entrance. The moment we open that door, every trap under the sun could go off.”
“Are you sure? It just looks like a plain old door to me. Can't we simply open it?”
At Fidelina's skeptical question, Maxim shook his head. “Sorry, but here you'll have to trust the man who's cleared more dungeons than I can count.”
Trust, my foot. It opens if you just grab the handle and turn. Would you please just go in already.
Blissfully unaware of Oscar's thoughts, Maxim began to carefully examine the door handle. “Hmmm. Perhaps the mechanism is concealed with such exquisite craftsmanship that I can't quite make it out…”
He had been inspecting the door for over ten minutes now, and Oscar felt he might die of sheer frustration.
In the end, it took Maxim more than twenty minutes before he finally opened the door and descended the staircase. And when he confirmed the small chamber that unfolded within, his face froze solid.
“……It suddenly opens into a space this comfortable? Everyone, stay sharp! Even this room could be an illusion!”
“It's not, Elder Maxim.”
Having watched long enough, the Vice Tower Master raised a hand lightly to stop him. “From what I can see, this is a hiding place once used by one of the White Tower's predecessors.”
He surveyed every corner of the room, gathering information. “Not a single speck of ordinary dust anywhere — a powerful preservation spell is still holding to this day. I can't tell which senior mage once dwelt here, but one thing is certain: they were a high-level mage at the very least.”
“Perhaps the desk will tell us who it was.”
Having offered this perfectly reasonable suggestion, Fidelina naturally made her way to the desk. She picked up the lone book resting atop it and murmured, “Hmm. The book itself was made quite a while ago. Must be over twenty years old.”
“…….”
I made it today, actually. Oscar had simply cast a decay spell on it to make it look old.
“Let's see, the title is… Breathing Method?”
Reading the plain words on the cover, she felt a wave of disappointment. Renowned breathing techniques usually carried distinctive names of their own. But the moment she turned past the first page, her pupils dilated.
“……Huh?”
She turned, stiff as a rusted golem, to stare at the Vice Tower Master. “V-V-Vice Tower Master! Th-this is…!”
“What is it?”
“It's a trap!”
The two who rushed to her side in an instant were confronted with a single passage of writing:
In hope of harmony and circulation, and the eternal mystery they hold.
Oscar Sage, 17th Master of the White Magic Tower.
In that instant, every sound in the room vanished. No one had cast Silence or Sound Binding. Breath simply caught in every throat, and Fidelina swallowed hard before finally forcing the words out.
“I read that correctly, didn't I?”
“……Let us examine it.”
Taking the book into his hands, the Vice Tower Master began turning pages, reading through the contents in earnest.
Rustle, rustle. For some thirty minutes, the only sound in the silent room was the turning of pages.
“It would seem…”
Closing the book carefully, the Vice Tower Master raised his head. “…that the heavens have not yet abandoned the White Tower.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“The contents are genuine, beyond any doubt.”
“Good heavens!”
Maxim and Fidelina, mouths hanging wide open, threw their arms around each other without thinking. And small wonder — if it was the breathing method of Oscar Sage, then it could only be the legendary Oscar-style Breathing Method itself. The supreme technique the Blue Tower had longed for above all else, one said to have perfectly overcome the weaknesses of the Harmony Sphere.
For once unable to hide his excitement, the Vice Tower Master turned to look at Oscar. “You likely have no idea how great an achievement you've made, Oscar. This book will become the White Tower's tomorrow — a future, and wings called hope.”
“Is it really that significant?”
“It is exactly that significant.”
Watching the three of them rejoice like little children warmed something in Oscar as well.
……If anything, I should be the one thanking them.
They were the ones who had kept the White Tower standing all this way, after he was the one who had dragged it down into ruin with his own hands. They were his benefactors — the people who had given him the chance to scoop the water he himself had once spilled back out of the drain.
“I'm glad it proves useful to the White Tower.”
A contented smile bloomed across Oscar's face.
Floor 36 of the Magic Tower — the campus.
After a long absence, human warmth returned to the lecture hall of the main building, the largest on the floor.
“Feels like it's been ages since I was in this lecture hall.”
“It has been ages, actually. Hasn't it been two weeks?”
“Has it really been that long already…”
One mage swept a glance around the room. A hall that had once been so packed students had to stand through lectures now sat rather sparse.
“There seem to be an awful lot of empty seats today, don't you think?”
“Isn't this the normal state of things? It was weird that seniors were showing up to basic magic lectures in the first place.”
One by one, the mages of 4th level and above had quietly stopped coming after only a few sessions. Not because there was nothing left to learn — quite the opposite: they had finally pinned down the very things that had confused them. They would all be buried in their own training right now, digging deep into the insights they'd gained.
The hall today held once more only the same thirty-two 3rd-level mages from the very first day.
“Still, a training camp out of nowhere? Isn't that awfully sudden for this stage of things?”
“Ah, well, here's what happened…”
Benjamin Scott explained to everyone what had happened a few days back between him and Sylvia.
“……Hm. I did hear the rumor that Leo Bruhlt became the first intermediate mage of our cohort.”
“Apparently the others from our class at the Four Great Towers are starting to reach 4th level one by one too.”
“That fast? You mean the other towers, right?”
“Yeah. Everyone with real promise went to them from the academy days on.”
They might all be lumped together as the Four Great Magic Towers, but the gaps within that rank were unmistakable. People didn't call it three strong and one weak for nothing. And no one knew this better than the mages of the White Tower itself.
“……Feels like we're the only ones being left behind to wither.”
“Why do you keep thinking like that? We'll all hit 4th level eventually too.”
“Right, let's not sweat it. The capable ones just started climbing first, that's all.”
The capable ones, huh…
So everyone gathered here is the incapable sort, is that it?
Just as a gloomy haze began to drift through the lecture hall, the door swung open and a familiar figure walked in. “It's been a while.”
Oscar Crucian.
The eyes of the junior mages gazing at their proud senior lit up like lamps. He was the talk of the town these days, after all — the man who had just made new history in Baran.
“Senior! Did the Security Bureau and the Violet Brigade really clash in Baran City?”
“They say you crossed blades with the Ink Swordsman at the scene — is that true?”
“And that you took down the Mage Hunters on your way back! Please, tell us everything!”
At this rate they'll be asking about my first love next.
“That's enough chattering. I noticed the looks on your faces when I walked in — all rather dark. Something on your minds?”
“Ah, well… someone brought up the other towers right before you arrived, Senior.”
“We heard some of our old academy classmates have become intermediate mages, and… it's left us feeling a bit off.”
He had never experienced it himself, but falling behind one's own cohort, it seemed, bred a considerable amount of stress.
Oscar asked point-blank, “What do you all think is the reason you're growing more slowly than your academy classmates?”
Caught off guard by the sudden question, they all fidgeted and traded sidelong glances. When it looked like the silence might stretch on forever, Demian couldn't bear it and answered bluntly, “You're asking because you don't know? Obviously it's because we lack talent compared to those bastards.”
“Hm.”
It wasn't exactly wrong. Those who had distinguished themselves at the academy were indeed scouted by the prestigious towers.
Which means, at present, every tower except the White Tower is doing the scouting.
The mages already filtered out at the first pass — in a word, the comparatively lesser ones were the ones flowing into the White Tower. And with the White Tower's reputation flat on the ground these days, talented mages preferred the Blood Tower or the Black Tower over it.
In short, my students' talent is utterly ordinary — or at very best, they'd be called gifted.
In truth, even Demian, the most talented among them, fell far short of anything one could call a genius. He had only barely solved the reverse-engineering problem on Sound Binding from the first lecture, right at the wire.
“Of course, differences in talent exist. But for a mere 4th level? Who's talking about talent?”
“……Says the man who's still 3rd level himself.”
“Oh my. I can hear you.”
Tap tap, scritch scritch!
Chalk rose nimbly into the air and began carving words onto the blackboard:
Level 1: The stage at which one can handle mana and cast simple basic spells.
Level 2: The stage at which one can compute complex basic spells, raising a spell's accuracy and efficiency.
Level 3: The stage at which one understands all basic magic and begins to apply it.
He wrote nothing beyond that. Those were things they had no need to know yet.
Oscar spoke. “This is the academic world's official definition of each stage of a beginner mage. If anyone here believes they still cannot understand basic magic, or that applying it is beyond them — raise your hand.”
“…….”
Everyone shuffled in place and half-raised their hands. At the sight, Oscar let out a long sigh. “Put your hands down. What exactly do you think I've been teaching you all this time?”
The Reinterpretation of Basic Magic had been a lecture designed from the ground up for the White Tower's junior mages. In other words, its entire purpose was to give them the framework through which they could perfectly understand and apply basic magic.
“When it comes to basic magic, you no longer need to learn a single thing from anyone.”
“……!”
They didn't know it, but he had made them that way.
“And one more thing I'll state flatly: even if you dragged a 3rd-level mage from any tower on the continent in here right now, their fundamentals wouldn't be as solid as yours.”
A 9th-level archmage had melted his every insight into something easy to grasp and taught it to them directly. If a tower existed that taught better than this, it would have conquered the continent long ago.
The quiet Amy Ravin raised her hand hesitantly. “……D-does that mean… we could, even right now, reach 4th… 4th level?”
“No.”
Oscar shook his head. “As you all know, reaching the high ranks of 7th level and above requires accompanying enlightenment. But 4th level — intermediate mage? Any mage qualified to enter a tower in the first place can get there eventually, enlightenment or no. So let me ask again: why have you been unable to cross the threshold of 4th level until now?”
“…….”
The students shut their mouths and sank into thought. By his account, they had already perfectly completed their understanding and application of basic magic. If they still hadn't reached 4th level, something else was lacking.
Demian scowled and muttered, “Don't tell me… our mana circuits haven't finished stabilizing?”
“Correct.”
Nodding, Oscar continued. “Normally, once a new mana circuit is installed, the standard expectation is anywhere from six months to as long as two or three years for it to fully settle and stabilize.”
“What happens if you install another mana circuit before the current one finishes stabilizing?”
“You die.”
There was not a grain of exaggeration or metaphor in that chilling answer. “It's nothing more than stacking a sandcastle on top of another sandcastle — a mirage that collapses meaninglessly the moment the waves come. If you install a new circuit while the existing ones haven't stabilized perfectly, it is simply a bomb guaranteed to go off one day.”
The sound of swallowing echoed around the room. Those very mages were the ones who had felt the temptation to install new mana circuits unprepared more keenly than anyone.
As an aside, the same applied to Oscar himself. If being a former archmage had meant he could blast straight to 9th level the moment he opened his eyes in this body, he would have done it long ago.
“So in other words… the moment our mana circuits finish stabilizing, we can reach 4th level at any time?”
“Exactly right.”
Yet even after being handed such a crystal-clear answer, the students only wore blank, vacant expressions. None of them knew how to stabilize mana circuits quickly.
“Through this training camp, you will learn how to do exactly that.”
Swish.
Oscar donned a pair of sunglasses and a hat from who-knows-where, then blew a sharp blast on his whistle. Scree!
“Everyone assemble at the campus grounds. I'm giving you five minutes.”