The training grounds were extremely lively. There was the young spirit of the students and their efforts, but the energy released by their spells also contributed to the heat. The students were separated into groups of two in the arena filled with the energy of youth, one facing another training in practical combat skills.
「Youth is such a wonderful thing!」
Mira sat in one of the corners of the place entertaining herself watching them. They were magicians pitted against magicians, flashes and flaming blazes popping up everywhere, a strong wind from shockwaves hitting her while the ground rumbled. Normally a scene like that would never happen in reality, except in the academy.
To Hinata, it looked like just an average class. But when she saw how entertained Mira looked, she felt uneasy and began wondering just what kind of life she led while being a pupil. It was not normal for someone of her age to be forged and tempered by the hero Danbulf and get so strong. Hinata imagined she had never gotten any leisure time, just practicing skills day and night.
(Maybe that’s why she wanted to see how the academy is…? But she looks free now, so she’ll finally be able to live as she likes. I’ll make sure to teach her a bunch of fun things.)
Hinata’s eyes narrowed a bit in a gentle manner while looking at Mira from the side, her decision pumping her up even more.
While Hinata kept worsening her misconception by herself, Mira watched with deep interest how the students used their spells. They were practicing a type of spell that could be used as a feint. The fireballs the students sent to each other were of two types, ones swelled up before exploding while the others shrank before vanishing.
They would launch countless vanishing fireballs with only one real one mixed between them. Others also attempted to distract their opponent with fake fireballs in an attempt to make them move a certain way. Sometimes they changed the attributes of the fireball, and other times they switched targets. Mira observed the arena like that.
From what Mira recalled, that spell appeared to be Magic: Flame, a very basic one. As far as she knew, all it could do was create a fireball that could be launched at an enemy to attack, nothing more. Mira had never seen ones that could vanish in mid-air.
「Hm, Hinata. Is that spell they’re using 『Flame』?」
Figuring it was faster to just ask, Mira asked Hinata who was getting excited beside her for some reason. In reply, Hinata nodded before speaking.
「That’s correct. 『Flame』 is the most basic spell for magicians after all. Training like this, they are able to really build it into their muscle memory while mastering the basics.」
Since Hinata was a summoner instructor, she barely had any classes which meant she spent a lot of time helping other faculties, so she garnered a lot of knowledge from all parts of the academy. Hearing that reply, Mira knew she had not mistaken the type of spell, but there were some points she was still dubious about.
「Some of them vanish in mid-air while others explode, are they using two different spells?」
When Mira asked that, Hinata tilted her head and mulled about her question for a bit before answering.
「Mira, do you know the fundamental process to cast a magic spell?」
「Yes. Selection, aim, consumption, and activation, yes?」
The fundamental process of casting magic. That comprised a series of events taken before a spell would get activated.
First, one had to select which spell to use, then designate where that spell should go, consume the required amount of mana, and lastly the spell was activated. It was slightly different to the process taken by summoners, and the process also changed when chanting was involved for high level magic skills.
「Oh, you know about magicians as well as about summoners. But that’s correct. What you’re seeing is what happens when less mana than required is spent before activating the spell. If less mana is spent, the spell won’t be able to manifest itself and vanishes, so if that amount is regulated correctly then the spell will only appear as a shape without substance, so it can be used as a feint or diversion.」
Now that Hinata was finally able to talk like an instructor, she explained with a proud tone.
「I see. I’m surprised there were techniques like that!」
That explanation left a deep impression on Mira. Attempting something like regulating mana spent was an impossible feat back during the game days. It was either all of it or nothing. Every time a spell would be launched, it would use up the exact mana cost, without exception. Now that everything had turned into reality, even that had become feasible, so it was obvious that spellcasters would explore all their new possibilities.
「Then, what would happen if a summoner attempted to do that?」
Mira asked with eyes full of expectation. When Hinata heard the question, her ears fell down and a shadow covered her smile, her lips slowly moving to reply.
「Only a part appears…like a head…or an arm…or a leg…and then it vanishes.」
So basically a portion of the entity would appear for an instant before vanishing. If time perfectly, it could be used as a form of shield, but other than that, summoning an unmovable object for an instant would only be a waste of mana that would not even work as a bluff.
「Is…that so…」
Hearing that reply, Mira hung her head slightly disappointed. But since it was a new skill she had never heard of before, Mira decided to try summoning a Dark Knight just to get the feel of that type of mana consumption.
「Hmm, let’s try half- nay, even less than half of the regular amount.」
Mira stood up and searched for an empty space without any people around.
『Summoning Magic: Dark Knight』
Just so she could feel how it worked, she attempted to perform a regular summoning while limiting her mana. A magic circle smaller than usual appeared, and the intense presence that came from it manifested as only the Dark Knight’s head. When Hinata saw that head she raised a small shriek before the head vanished.
(So this is how it feels to limit mana. It isn’t as hard as it sounds.)
With that small experiment, Mira got the hang of limiting her mana. It was basically pretending to cast a less expensive spell before changing it, so it was simply like learning a combination of two spells for Mira, who had already learned countless of them.
That had been simple enough, so Mira began thinking of what other things she could try with that knowledge. She had that personality that would never stand still if there was something she wanted to try.
『Summoning Magic: Dark Knight』
This time the Dark Knight’s arm holding a massive black sword appeared from the magic circle. What Mira had attempted was to picture the part that would appear while summoning, and it went just like she had thought.
(Looks like this went well too, now…)
「Hinata, this could get a bit dangerous so could you step back a bit?」
「Eh? Ah, alright.」
Even though Mira had only been summoning parts of a Dark Knight, the strongly ominous aura it gave off had terrified Hinata, who stepped back not just a bit but a lot.
From those experiments, Mira slowly began building a process for a new skill. So she glanced to another empty space and formed a magic circle to fill it.
[Summoning Magic: Dark Knight]
Obeying Mira’s command, another arm holding a large black sword appeared from the small magic circle. However, this time it looked somewhat different, the arm was holding the black sword high up in the air.
「Huh!」
Hinata inadvertently exclaimed seeing that. The arm swung the large sword down and pushed it into the ground an instant before vanishing.
「Hmm, that was a success.」
Seeing her experiments succeeding, Mira muttered that while stroking her chin. Meanwhile, Hinata ran forward driven by her doubt after seeing such a surreal scene, examining the place where the black arm had appeared. A large scar was left on the ground there, proving it had been all real.
The summoning process started by designated the spot for the entity to appear, selecting which entity to summon, consuming mana, and activating. That was enough to summon a Dark Knight or other entities. But that was only summoning it, afterwards there was still a need to give it orders like attacking or defending. Doing that was basically another spell in itself, and when limiting mana it would vanish before there was an opportunity to give any orders, so it would only appear still for a moment and vanish.
But it was different with Mira, she had mastered the advanced ability to give orders at the same time as designating a location, so the orders were given even before the entity appeared, which also allowed her to let the arm swing the sword as soon as it came out of the magic circle.
「Mira, what was that just now?!」
「It’s still dangerous there.」
Seeing Hinata run in there surprised, Mira warned her that she was still experimenting and looked to another empty space.
『Summoning Magic : Dark Knight』
The following scene was pushing the boundaries of surreal for Hinata. Six arms appeared forming a circle, all swinging their swords down at the same time towards the center of the circle. The impact was tremendous, lifting a massive cloud of dust like an explosion, and at the same time, the source of that dust vanished, leaving only a crater behind.
It was no longer just Hinata who stood speechless watching that experiment, the students who were training not too far away had also caught sight of it and remained amazed at that destructive power.
Ever since the Dark Knight head had appeared, some of the students had started looking towards Mira’s direction. An object releasing an ominous amount of magic power had appeared out of the blue, so they would obviously be interested in it. The scenes that followed got them completely entranced, and then they realized, the girl in front of them was the representative that got first place in the examination. Hinata being with her was also a clue.
The students of the magic faculty had already heard about the examination results, and they were all secretly happy that the infamous Kairos had been defeated. They did have a slight gripe with being in second place, but the annoyance brought about by Kairos’ haughtiness was way more detested, so they could live with being second place.
The girl in front of them was the one who had defeated Kairos in a single strike. Coupled with her cute appearance and her popularity quickly skyrocketed. But Mira was still completely oblivious to all that.
(If I experiment with this a bit more, I might be able to use it in an actual fight. Hmm… mana regulation… Now that the game systems are gone, I feel like my possibilities only keep increasing. I should try a lot more things when I have the chance.)
Mira had received a good impression from her experiment, so she wrote it down in her mental list as her next topic for research.
Mira turned around to see if there was anything else she would be able to learn from the academy, but when she turned around she saw all the students were looking at her, which made her take a step back.
Noticing a bit too late that she was the center of attention, Mira hurried to run away from the training grounds.
The students remained dumbfounded as they saw Mira running off into the distance, while Siegfried thundered. He swore that next month they would defeat that girl and take the first place.
Some of the students had a lot of questions in their minds, wondering if that really was a summoner. All the summoning they had seen until then was in a lower league compared to Mira, but they had all seen her power so it was impossible to deny, and they returned to their training. They wanted to at least surpass what they had just witnessed, no matter how many hours of training it took.
Having seen Mira’s power, they focused on Siegfried’s voice and redoubled their training, without giving up. They really did not want to give up just then. That was what former spellcasters were like. They would follow Luminaria’s guidance and catch up with their power, the scene that unfolded in front of them only motivated them to work more so they could reach that goal.
After Mira basically ran away from the training grounds, Hinata showed her how the spellcasters lived in the academy.
The academy taught conventional topics, as well as ways to learn lower level spells, different types of combat and industrial science, it was a place where all the knowledge of the continent was condensed. The students would choose the topics they were interested in and learn that. There was also the technical studies faculty where they could get even better at a multitude of subjects, so the academy proved to be the best school for any aspiring spellcaster.
There was a lot of research being performed on spells as well, new spells Mira did not know about would constantly be discovered, and other times skills would be combined to develop a new one as well. The spells Kairos used also fell into that category, he combined existing spells in a way that enhanced their appearance. The spells produced that way were called [Compound Skills].
Mira constantly asked questions to Hinata, as her eyes glittered seeing the current spells, how they were evolving and the recently discovered ones. Hearing her ask what this or that was, how it was used, how it was cast, and things like that, made Hinata’s teacher heart throb, imparting on her the detailed knowledge she had gained by helping everywhere when she was free.
In the magic faculty, research on Compound Skills was performed with enthusiasm.
In the saint faculty, they were getting ready for a pilgrimage to the holy land. They would visit the temples of all the deities in the world so they could learn more about Monk Skills.
The onmyoji faculty had a shortage of Spirit Leaves which were needed to create charms, so all the middle level and above students were stumped.
In the exorcist faculty, they were developing holy water guns with Magic Engineering, using it to create a high air pressure that would launch the magic water forward.
The forbidden arts faculty had discovered that a spellcaster’s aptitude was not the only thing affecting how they could adapt to the forbidden arts, but their personality affected that as well, so they were investigating to what degree that effect mattered.
In the necromancy faculty, they were researching how golems could manipulate objects, as well as creating tools for them.
In the sage faculty, they always taught hand to hand combat to all the new students, so now everyone had a well-toned body there and were currently learning armed combat.
The concept faculty was researching ways to manipulate the weather, as well as skills to create light sources to grow plants.
In the summoner faculty, as Mira already knew, Creos was busy inviting more aspirants, and each day he would take them to the Ancient Battlefield to form contracts with armed spirits.
As they visited all the faculties, Hinata spoke about them with expertise. When the tour was over, the academy had entered after school hours and everything was bathed in a red hue. There were clubs just like in any regular school, who were doing their activities now. On the yard, the track team was letting the sweat of youth flow freely, while other students were in their respective classrooms illuminated by the setting sun, passing the time as students should.
「A single day is definitely not enough to see everything, but what did you think?」
「I think spending time here was really worthwhile. Thank you, Hinata.」
Hinata asked that while feeling slightly nervous, but Mira replied satisfied and with a smile.
「I should be the one thanking you for what you did in the examination. You can have this as a thank you.」 As Hinata said that, she extended her hand, a silver ring on her palm. When Mira saw it, she took Hinata’s hand and slowly closed it.
「Everything I did was only for the future of summoners. There’s no need to thank me.」
「But I asked you to do that…」
「In that case, you can show me around next time we have a chance. There are still more things I want to see.」
Mira said so with a smile. Hinata began thinking of how Mira was while they walked around the academy, then she recalled how Mira was acting when they first met. She was just peeping at the academy from afar.
「Yup, you can count on me! I’ll show you around as many times as you want!」
As Hinata’s tail and ears sprung up, she decided she would get permission to show Mira even the portions of the school that were off-limits.
「See you around then.」
「Bye-bye. You can drop by anytime.」
With that, they parted ways. Mira went away walking through the middle of the schoolyard, while Hinata muttered 「Thanks」 to her back before running back to the summoner faculty with high spirits. Mira had succeeded in creating more body reinforcing equipment, so starting tomorrow more people would be joining Creos’ summoner tour, so she had to get ready for that. That way she was certain she would be able to help Mira fulfill her dream.
Even though she was an instructor herself, Hinata ran through the hallways with sparkling eyes. Completely oblivious to Siegfried who attempted to invite her to an incredibly alluring dinner.
As Mira walked through the yard, she glanced at the students carrying out their club activities, then she turned her gaze upwards to the crimson bathed sky. She had only planned on taking a quick look at the academy, but things happened one after another and now the day was almost over. Now that the mantle of the night was about to cover her, she no longer felt like going to see another place.
A bit after she crossed the main gates, Mira began wondering what she would do now. It was then that a figure ran out of the shadows until it caught up to her.
「You’re still here.」
It was a girl with a monotone voice and wearing a red hood. It was Amaratte, one of the nine tower attendants. She had finished her business at the academy and was also heading home.
「Well yes, as you can see.」
Mira sounded a bit surprised, but Amaratte paid no attention to it, instead leaning down her back and looking more closely at Mira while tilting her neck.
「By the way, Mira. Are you perhaps an advocate for the no-underwear movement?」
After observing Mira’s chest closely, Amaratte looked up at Mira’s eyes from the position she was in and asked 「Or are you into this sort of thing?」 as she pulled up Mira’s skirt.
「You have these on though.」
Amaratte stood back up as she smiled with a slight hint of disappointment, her eyes seemingly interrogating Mira. On the other hand, Mira shrugged lightly, completely unfazed that her skirt had been lifted.
「I don’t know how to put it on.」
She replied honestly. Hearing such an unexpected reply, Amaratte smiled slightly. The people around them were really confused after the sudden upskirt, but the two of them noticed nothing.
「Is that so. Then I’ll teach you myself.」
As soon as she said that, Amaratte began unbuttoning her top, which Mira hurried to stop.
「What do you think you’re doing?!」
「I told you, I’ll teach you. I’ll take mine off, then you observe how I put it back on.」
It was an incomprehensible offer. Amaratte was basically telling her to look at her bare chest for a continuous period of time. In another situation, Mira would gladly take her up on that, but the place was way too bad. There was no way she would allow a young girl to expose her chest in a place with so much traffic.
Mira refused vehemently, and then said she would ask Lily next time, which finally managed to convince Amaratte.
「I hope you won’t forget my request for her as well.」
「I know.」
Mira softly waved her hand as she replied to Amaratte who had grown attached to the clothes the maid group had built.
An instant after she looked somewhat pleased, Amaratte activated Necromancer Skill: Rock Bear, which made an enormous stone-shaped bear appear in front of Mira.
「Now then, until we meet again.」
Saying that, Amaratte jumped on the back of the bear, which calmly walked into the traffic and left the academy behind. The other passers-by did not seem bothered by that sight at all and just moved on.
Mira saw Amaratte off dumbfounded by how sudden everything was, which also cemented in her the difference between the game and reality. It was the same with the valkyrie Alfina and the spirit of sound Leticia, before she would have never been able to hold a conversation with them. There were many things which were impossible before but now could be done. What Amaratte just did was also like that, namely riding on top of a summoned entity. The reaction from those around also suggested that was something necromancers did regularly.
(If I did that I might be able to forget worrying about my feet.)
There were no summoned entities that counted as mounts, but that was only during the game period. Many of her summons should be able to support her weight if she chose to ride them.
She figured the only way to find out was to try, but then Mira thought about Amaratte once again. Mira would probably stand out more and cause a befitting reaction from the people around.
She had always been bad at dealing with those situations, so she forced her throbbing desires to calm down and decided to try it out the next time she was in an isolated place.
(What should I do now.)
Mira had learned so many new things that she wanted to sort her thoughts out first. And time kept ticking as she stood there idly, so she decided to start by securing a place to sleep.
The first place she thought of was the castle. They should be able to arrange a bed for her to stay one night. But she had finally arrived in a world of fairy tales, so the idea of staying in an inn attracted Mira a lot more.
If anything, she wanted to stay in a regular inn. One similar to the one Écarlate Carillon used, one where the tavern and inn were a single building, the type she was most used to. Until now, Mira had slept in her personal room in the tower, a guest room in the castle, camping outside in a carriage of the king’s secret service, and in the Summer Lantern that was akin to a luxury hotel rather than an inn. All of those places were a far cry from an average inn.
(I’ll just stay in the first inn I find. That’s the real way to enjoy an adventure.)
Mira almost held a desire to spend a night in an inn like those depicted in stories; idle chatter with the shopkeeper, a bustling dining room, an inn with those qualities. The sky was already black when Mira ran to find an inn like that.
