Ch.25Training (3)

*

Of course, I had expected to be tired.

Moving my body this much after not having done any proper exercise for nearly a month—it would be impossible not to feel exhausted.

However, the fatigue I felt on the way back to the cabin was extraordinary.

It seemed like all the weariness I had been suppressing at the back of my mind was rushing in at once, perhaps because the tension had finally eased.

In truth, if I had succeeded even once, Silvia would have concluded today’s training and gone hunting.

But in the end, she couldn’t go hunting until the sky darkened, as she continued to supervise my training.

So ultimately, this exhaustion was entirely my fault for being unexpectedly talentless.

As soon as we returned to the cabin after training, I thinly sliced some smoked bird meat, then placed it in cornmeal dough along with several types of berries and baked it.

It was a simple meat pie of sorts.

Originally, we were supposed to eat the remaining bear meat for dinner tonight, but being so tired and exhausted, I didn’t want to eat that meat which was difficult to cook, smelly, and tough.

I went straight to bed immediately after finishing my meal, not even bothering about digestion.

Silvia subtly asked if I wanted to sleep together again tonight, but I shook my head.

Whether it was because I had eaten the bear that had tried to eat me,

Or because I had felt Silvia’s strength—more terrifying than the bear—with my entire body all day,

I no longer cared about the sounds of the forest.

I was just extremely tired.

“I see… you must be tired. Sleep well.”

Silvia looked at me with disappointment as I collapsed onto the bed, clicking her tongue, but soon she smiled in resignation and bid me goodnight.

“Good night…”

I fell asleep like I had fainted right after answering her.

And one second later, Silvia woke me up.

“Ash. Good morning.”

“Oh, good grief.”

Since it felt like I had just closed and opened my eyes, I honestly thought—or rather hoped—that she might be playing a joke on me.

But judging by the clear sky, it seems she wasn’t lying.

As soon as I opened my eyes, she took me to a lake in the forest with a basket tucked under her arm.

Since yesterday’s training spot was a nearby river, I wasn’t too concerned, but entering the forest still frightened me a bit.

I tried my best to hide my fear, not wanting it to seem like I didn’t trust Silvia despite her presence, but I couldn’t help my hesitant steps.

Silvia, who was walking slightly ahead while guiding me, turned back several times to check if I was following well.

Still, she didn’t hold my hand or anything.

There was no need, as the lake was much closer than I had expected.

It was only slightly farther than the path from the cabin to the river.

Silvia immediately crouched by the lake and washed her face upon arrival.

Since I hadn’t washed up either, I crouched beside her and removed the sleep from my eyes with the cold lake water.

She said this was the lake she visited for fishing.

After the cold water fully awakened me, I looked around carefully. This lake hidden in the forest was surrounded by trees like a crown, making it both beautiful and somewhat mysterious.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it seems like a place where fairies might live.”

“…Fairies? Ash, you’re more innocent than I thought.”

“It’s just a figure of speech.”

Silvia smiled gently and explained why she had brought me to the lake.

“As I mentioned yesterday, I’m taking you hunting today. While we’re out, we’ll also gather some herbs in this basket.”

“Oh, is today’s hunt going to be fishing?”

“No, we came here to fill our water containers before heading out to hunt. You’ll get thirsty while hunting.”

Silvia took out a leather water container from her waist and shook it.

A sloshing sound came from inside the container.

It probably contained wine.

I had heard that adventurers mix alcohol with water to drink.

I’d heard that drinking water directly from rivers or lakes could risk food poisoning or various parasitic infections, so drinking water mixed with high-proof alcohol was much safer.

It was a kind of experience and wisdom passed down among adventurers.

“Ah, I see.”

“And I also want to check your magic a bit.”

“My magic…?”

Silvia nodded.

“I’m not doubting that you can use advanced magic, but I want to see you casting magic once.”

“If you want advanced magic I could use here… should I create a golem?”

“A golem… how long does it take to cast?”

“…Probably about 30 minutes…?”

“What use is that?”

“…Ugh.”

“Try this.”

She recited a spell so brief it felt like a single word and created a burning flame on her palm.

A basic magic spell without even a name.

It simply created fire on her hand.

“Just a moment.”

I recited the spell and created a round sphere of fire on my palm.

Silvia put one hand on her hip and the other on her forehead, sighing as she spoke.

“…Too slow.”

“I’m sorry.”

Indeed, I took nearly 30 seconds to recite the spell.

However, I did have something to argue about.

“But this is a fire creation spell. Yours is just too simplified.”

The fire creation spell was meant to create a spherical flame on the palm or fingertips.

This was designed to immediately connect with the intermediate spell Fireball, as a sphere was the most suitable shape for projectiles, which is why we were taught to make the fire creation spell in a spherical form.

If you recited the casting spell along with this state, that would be Fireball.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as it sounded.

While Fireball itself was easier and more common than other intermediate spells, combining the casting spell without disrupting the fire creation spell was still a complex and difficult task.

Many people gave up the path of becoming a mage because they couldn’t overcome this hurdle.

Therefore, Silvia’s fire creation spell, which looked more like a burning campfire, was a simplified version that deliberately omitted several incantations.

Honestly, among mages, it would be ridiculed as a “hack job.”

“But it’s slow. If it takes that much time, you can’t fight or hunt.”

“…That’s true… but.”

“Now, as a mage, you must have heard this saying.”

“…?”

“Magic is a mathematical formula composed of letters.”

“…Ah, yes.”

That sentence was one of the most famous maxims about magic.

Of course, magiologists who deeply studied magic disliked this saying, considering it too simplistic and brutally abbreviated, but it became famous because it was the best analogy to explain what magic is to those who couldn’t use it.

Silvia continued speaking.

“Shaping fire into a sphere isn’t particularly useful in practice. Unlike ice or earth, fire naturally has an inconsistent form. Fire magic is meant to spread and burn rather than strike. So you can deliberately omit the spell that creates a sphere.”

“…Oh.”

“In other words, Ash, you’re trying to apply only what you’ve learned in theory.”

I felt like I had an “aha” moment at Silvia’s words.

I made the fire sphere on my hand disappear, then immediately spread my hand and said:

“Let me try once more.”

Remove the spherical shaping process from the fire creation spell.

Wait, how do I stabilize the fire then?

What about maintaining its form?

Will there be no problems if I omit it?

Ah… if I try like this, like this…

Suddenly, a flame rose high from my palm, blazed brightly, and then disappeared.

“Whoa!”

“That took even longer than before. And you failed.”

“…Yes…”

It took longer and even failed.

Nothing works on the first try, I guess.

Silvia approached me as I became dejected and said:

“Ash.”

“Yes…”

“What’s 5 + 5?”

…What?

I had expected her to encourage me or point out what went wrong, but Silvia started saying something quite strange.

I answered anyway.

“…10, right…?”

“Did you just calculate that?”

“…No, usually something like this comes out immediately without needing calculation… Oh.”

I realized what she was trying to say.

Seeing my expression of realization, Silvia smiled with satisfaction and said:

“Right, it comes out immediately. But when you use magic, you’re doing the equivalent of writing out the calculation for even simple math that could be omitted.”

“…”

“1 + 1 is 2, 5 + 5 is 10—you don’t even need to think about these.”

“That’s true.”

“Light the fire, increase its size, create a sphere, fix its shape, remove the sphere. Instead of calculating like this, just think: create fire, stabilize it.”

I slowly spread my palm and tried to abbreviate the spell in my mind as much as possible.

After cutting out all the unnecessary parts from the spell formula, only something similar to that single word Silvia had recited remained.

Not a hack job, but a practical magic honed by experience.

I recited the compressed spell.

A flame blazed on my palm.

“It worked!”

“Oh, final… huh?”

“What’s wrong?”

I succeeded in making a flame that burned at a consistent size, though irregular.

However, Silvia tilted her head in confusion as she looked at the flame on my palm.

“This shape is strange…?”

“What?”

At her words, I looked at the flickering flame on my palm.

I thought it was just an irregular, bumpy flame, but looking closely, the flame had a specific form.

“…A beast?”

The flame appeared to have four legs and a tail.

It wasn’t flickering irregularly but clearly walking on four legs and wagging its tail.

The muzzle area was blurred due to the flame’s small size and constant movement, but the flame definitely had the shape of some animal.

“A wolf? No, a fox?”

The beast-shaped flame disappeared after doing a somersault in the air.

*

After filling our water containers at the lake, I went hunting with her.

When I tried using the spell again, my flame still took the form of that beast.

Just to experiment, I tried using ice magic, but since spells that summon fixed objects like ice couldn’t omit the shape-defining formula, it activated just like normal ice magic.

Throughout the hunt, I couldn’t get the image of that flame out of my mind.

It seemed the same was true for Silvia.

“There must be something special about your magic power.”

“…You think so?”

“At least according to what I know, there’s no other explanation. You know the theory better than I do. Haven’t you seen anything similar in books?”

“…Well, apart from creating animal-shaped golems, I haven’t really seen anything similar.”

“What could that animal be?”

I don’t know either.

A fox? A wolf? Or a wild dog?

Have I ever been associated with such animals?

Ah, there is one thing about wolves.

Silvia once told me that Laila’s body had been eaten by wolves.

Thinking about it now, it seems odd that she would mention such a thing, but at that time, Silvia was trying to get me out of the forest as quickly as possible, so it might have been a way of distancing herself, or deliberately acting cold.

Suddenly, a hypothesis occurred to me.

“Could it be… because of this curse?”

I pointed to my eyes as I spoke.

“Then I should be able to cast such magic too.”

“That’s true…”

Silvia refuted clearly.

Then I really have no idea, no matter how much I think about it.

Could there be some animal’s blood flowing in my body?

…What a fresh, blasphemous thought.

Silvia tilted her head in deep thought, then spoke as if something had occurred to her.

“An old comrade once told me that magic actually has a special form for each person.”

“…Was it that close friend of yours who told you this?”

“Yes, she explained it to me when she was teaching me about magic. I was quite surprised because it wasn’t even taught at the Academy at that time.”

I’ve never seen this information in any book about magic either.

So my sister told Silvia such things…?

I guess that’s what makes a genius a genius.

I looked at Silvia with an excited expression as the conversation turned to my sister.

In contrast, Silvia looked somewhat displeased.

“Usually, magic power has slightly different properties for each person, and sometimes those properties are reflected in its form.”

“Wow… that’s a theory I’ve never heard before.”

I knew that people might have slightly more innate affinity for certain elements, but the form of magic power?

This was the first time I’d heard such a thing.

How much unknown magical knowledge did my sister possess?

“…Meanwhile, she used to tease me, saying I had no imagination because my fire looked honestly like fire and my ice looked honestly like ice.”

“…”

…Sister.

That playfulness of yours never disappeared even as you grew older.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“Ah, no reason…”

Still, it made me feel a bit happy.

Four years at the Academy, two years hunting the Demon Lord, and four years since my sister died.

It’s been ten years since I last saw Maria.

My memory of Maria is frozen at how she looked ten years ago.

But the sister Silvia describes seems to be the same Maria I knew, which made me smile slightly.

“So what was her magic like?”

“…Ah, Maria? Hers was a clean spherical shape. Just as we’re taught.”

“Oh… really?”

“She was a crazy woman who could complete advanced magic formulas in her head within 5 seconds.”

“…She must have been amazing.”

…So that’s what being a genius means.

While I was slightly impressed, I was also surprised by Silvia referring to my sister with such rough language.

They must have been extremely close or constantly bickering.

“Alright, enough of that. If thinking about it won’t give us an answer, let’s move on for now.”

“…Should we?”

“Because prey has appeared.”

Silvia raised a finger to point somewhere in the distance.

“It’s a deer.”

“…”

No matter how hard I looked in the direction she was pointing, I couldn’t see any deer.

But judging by her face, she didn’t seem to be lying.

“…I can’t see anything at all. Isn’t it too far?”

“…Oh, really?”

Silvia took out the bow from her back and shot an arrow in an instant.

The arrow disappeared with the sound of cutting through the wind.

One second, two seconds, three seconds…

After a full three seconds, Silvia said:

“Hit it.”

…I couldn’t even hear the deer’s cry.

I was once again reminded of how insanely heightened her senses were.

My sister was amazing, but this person is certainly extraordinary too.

Were all members of the Hero’s party like this?

Then the Demon Lord who nearly annihilated such a Hero’s party…

The difference was so vast that it felt like a story from another world entirely.

“…If I’m going to practice my magic, please find something closer.”

“Ah, right. Hunting wasn’t our main purpose.”

“Silvia…”

“Sorry, I guess I was a bit hasty because you seemed to dislike eating the remaining bear meat.”

Well, if that was the reason, I had to accept it.

I laughed “hehe” at her ridiculous excuse.

Silvia also patted my head.

We decided to make jerky or smoked meat from the deer we just caught as a precaution, and to look for other prey to continue my training.

After wandering for about an hour more, she found a small rabbit burrow.

She lowered her voice and said:

“Let’s test that strange fire magic of yours.”

Silvia picked up some dry grass and placed it in front of the rabbit burrow.

Then she gestured toward the burrow with her chin, indicating that I should try.

I nodded and began casting Fireball.

I added the casting formula to the abbreviated fire creation formula from earlier.

Fireball.

“Ahhh!”

“Ash!”

I fell backward due to the tremendous recoil.

This was clearly not a Fireball.

The beast with a body of flame that appeared from my hand bypassed the grass in front of the rabbit burrow and fiercely burrowed into the hole, exploding underground.