The Measurement Catastrophe
Aria burst out of the booth with a rare flush of excitement on her face and thrust a single sheet of paper right in front of my eyes.
“Whoa, too close!”
“Ah, I’m sorry. I got a little too worked up…”
She cleared her throat awkwardly and took a step back, then showed me the measurement sheet she’d received.
“Mana… 56,200? That’s pretty high.”
From what I remembered, the average mana capacity for a C-rank hero was around 50,000. Which meant Aria was currently sitting above the average for her rank.
‘In the original story, Aria’s mana wasn’t this high… Is this the butterfly effect from Dana becoming an academy professor? Or is it something else?’
My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp, irritated voice coming from inside the booth.
“Next!”
Probably because people had been crowding in since morning, the professor in charge of the booth called me in a clipped tone. I flinched, gave a half-hearted reply, and stepped inside.
“Next… Oh my, isn’t this Miss Plea?”
“You know me?”
“Of course. Is there a single professor at the academy who doesn’t know you?”
Hmm… Well, I guess it made sense. Soloing a B-rank demon would naturally put me on everyone’s radar. Anyway, the professor who recognized my face kindly explained how to use the orb.
“See this orb here? You don’t need to be nervous. Just place your hand on it and stay still.”
“I don’t have to pour mana into it or anything?”
“Oh, right! You absolutely must not inject mana. This device scans the mana already inside your body, so forcing mana in could cause errors.”
Oh no. So it wasn’t something I could manipulate by feeding it mana—it was going to scan my actual internal mana?
I was starting to feel genuinely anxious.
“This thing won’t overheat and explode or anything… right?”
The professor laughed as if I’d said something adorable. “Silly girl. This mana meter can easily handle even an S-rank hero’s output. A student’s mana won’t cause any trouble.”
“Hmm… But when you measured Aria earlier, it went all the way to the highest white stage…”
“That’s because there’s a separate function to adjust light intensity. This is currently set for students. If we switched it to hero mode, you wouldn’t see white unless the person was at least S-rank.”
“That’s a relief…”
“Hm?”
“Never mind. Um… could you set it to hero mode for me?”
“It’s not a problem, but… is there something wrong?”
I couldn’t exactly say, ‘I’m worried the meter’s going to burn out trying to display my mana,’ so I mumbled that I just wanted to compare myself to active heroes. The professor tilted her head but changed the setting as I asked.
“All done. You can start whenever you’re ready.”
“Got it.”
With one worry off my chest, I placed my hand on the mana meter. Geometric patterns bloomed across the crystal orb, and its light began to shift.
From green to blue, blue to red. The color steadily climbed past black and approached white. At the same time, the professor’s face beside me changed color with every passing second.
“W-white… and on hero settings?!”
But it didn’t stop there. Once it hit white, the orb seemed to decide there were no more colors left and started increasing its brightness instead of changing hue.
“Professor, is this really okay?!”
Unfortunately, the professor’s mind had gone completely blank from the overwhelming white light I was producing. She was in no state to answer. So I just kept my hand on the orb, thinking screw it, whatever happens happens.
Current Output: WHITE
Setting: Active Hero Mode
Warning: Brightness Overload Detected
-What the hell? Why is the booth getting so bright?!
The orb’s glow had grown so intense that it was visible from outside the booth. I made an extreme decision and tried to pull my hand away, but—
-Snap.
With a sound like something breaking, the orb’s light suddenly cut out.
“Uh… Professor?”
She still hadn’t snapped out of it, so I removed my hand, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her. Only then did she come back to her senses and stare at me.
“Hic! W-white… How can someone your age have S-rank mana…!”
“That’s not the problem. The orb just turned off.”
“What do you mean…”
The professor tilted her head in confusion, then looked at the now-translucent glass orb that had lost its light.
“Hmm… I’m not from the magic tool department so I’m not entirely sure, but it doesn’t look like there’s any major issue.”
“Thank goodness…”
The orb’s exterior looked perfectly fine, so it must have just shut down automatically.
“Wait just a moment. I’ll print out your measurement sheet right away…”
She pressed the print button on the printer beside her. The machine whirred to life and spat out a sheet with my mana value on it. The result was…
“Err…or?”
MANA OVERFLOW DETECTED
-Psssssh…
At the same time, gray smoke hissed out from the orb. Both the professor and I instinctively realized the situation had gone completely to shit.
ERROR: Mana measurement device has malfunctioned.
Cause: Unmeasurable output.
Status: Overheated. Smoke detected.
“A-alright everyone! There appears to be a slight problem with the mana meter, so we will be ending today’s mana measurement event here!”
Faced with an orb spewing smoke like a broken kettle, the professor chose the bold frontal approach. In truth, she had no idea how to handle the situation and had simply gone with screw it, let’s just charge ahead, but it somehow worked out. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
While the professor was busy dealing with the smoking orb, I quietly slipped out of the booth and ran over to where Aria was waiting.
“Plea? The booth was making a lot of noise earlier… Did something happen?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“…Really?”
“Yep. Let’s hurry to the next booth.”
Aria kept staring suspiciously at the mana measurement booth I’d just fled from, so I quickly dragged her toward a different station.
“This one’s target practice.”
The second booth we visited was running an event where participants shot at floating targets in mid-air.
“Let’s see… Hitting a target creates another one at a random location. The more you hit within the time limit, the higher your score… This is perfect for Camilla.”
“Because she’s a sniper, right? She’s also the top of our grade when it comes to shooting… Oh, there she is.”
Speak of the devil. At the end of Aria’s pointing finger stood Camilla, proudly shouldering a rifle.
“Hehe, now’s the time to show my true ability!”
Unlike the mana measurement booth, this target practice station displayed the testing process to the outside, so we could watch Camilla’s test live.
“She really is good with a gun.”
“Right? Even with a standard-issue rifle instead of her personal weapon… If it’s a long-range fight, there probably aren’t many first-years who could beat her.”
The rifle Camilla was using wasn’t her usual custom weapon but a basic model provided by the booth. Its aiming assist and recoil control were mediocre at best, yet she still destroyed every target that appeared with perfect center shots.
‘Yeah, when it comes to shooting alone, she’s easily one of the best in the academy…’
As if to prove my thoughts, when Camilla stepped out of the booth she had naturally broken the previous record.
“210 shots in 3 minutes? That’s insane.”
One student watching shouted, and the others around him nodded in agreement. 210 shots in 3 minutes meant roughly one target every 0.85 seconds. Even with stationary targets, landing two shots per second is hard. Doing it against randomly spawning ones made me think back to my reserve training days, desperately pumping bullets into paper targets. Of course, unlike Camilla the expert marksman, I had only managed to hit six.
‘Still… now that I have mana…’
With the help of mana, maybe I wouldn’t be stuck as a supporter giving covering fire anymore. Maybe I could actually become a proper top-tier shooter.
Holding onto that small hope, I strode forward confidently.
“Hehe… This is the true power of the Escal family heiress… Eh, Miss Plea…?”
“I want to give it a try next. Is that okay?”
“Y-yes…”
Camilla, who had been about to boast, instantly shriveled up the moment I stepped forward. She meekly handed me the rifle and quietly retreated to the spectator area.
“I’ll give it a go.”
“You’re… Miss Plea, correct? I’ve heard a lot about you. I’d love to see that skill of yours applied to shooting as well.”
I gave a quiet nod and stepped into the shooting range where the target practice event was held.
“Now that I think about it, you have a personal weapon, don’t you? I’m personally quite curious. Let’s begin.”
The moment the professor finished speaking, a red target appeared in front of me.
That’s right. I might not be on Camilla’s level, but I was still a hero aspirant who knew how to use firearms. Even if a minigun and a rifle were different, they were both guns. There was no reason I couldn’t aim for a high score.
With that hope in my heart, I pulled the trigger.